-scattered words (3)- Not My Films!

Nauval's note:
-scattered words- series is a series of scattered files in the form of Notepad or Microsoft Word files that are found on my computer and were made long time ago, when blogging was never heard of, when publishing my thoughts to residents of virtual world never came across to my mind. Alas, you will see the progress in how I have evolved, to some extent, and particularly in this case, when the notes below were written sometime back in 2003, when I already started paying attention to film-review, sort of. Save your accusations for later cause, just read if you want to, no harms were done to the people working on dvd-rental stores as I always returned the dvds on time, or to the ushers of cinema halls as I politely woke up by myself after drooling on my sleeps upon watching some horrible films that were best left dreaming. Enjoy!

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MOVIES SEEN BUT NOT MADE TO MY LIST :

(not in any particular order)

1. DAYS OF BEING WILD
reason: Wong Kar Wai at his absurdness! While it portrays Leslie Cheung and Maggie Cheung applaudable performances well, and stealing scenes from Rebecca Pan, one can't help wondering, what Andy Lau's character has got to do with the whole storyline? (and I suspect the same case happens to Jacky Cheung's appearance in "Chungking Express"?)

(present reflection: Oh how Ben's gonna bash me for this! Hahahaha! My deep apology to all WKW's fan, it took me a little longer to finally appreciate WKW's gorgeousness of self-indulgent cinematic experience in which arts melts into pieces of scenes in which every angle would scream "grandeur!", and not to mention understanding his masterful grasp of underlaying emotions of the characters through subtext of his powerful cinematographic films. Call it pretentious or overtly-stylized, yet WKW stands tall as one of the most respectable directors the modern cinema would shamelessly bow to his greatness.)

2. SOLYARIS (Solaris) (1971)
reason: Intolerably tedious w/ unnecessary scenes go lengthy! Even me and Pei Chin had to take turn sleeping (me at the end of the first part, and she at the beginning)! If you are claustrophobic, definitely this film is something I won't recommend to you as a cure.

(present reflection: I wholeheartedly stick to my point above, despite getting enough exposure on Andrei Tarkovsky from some articles found in Sights & Sounds earlier this month. It doesn't mean that I'm not gonna go for his other movies though, but I guess for anyone to make a 4-hour film in a slow-pace movement depicting about the life inside a space shuttle, audience may choose to go for suicidal thoughts happily rather than sacrificing themselves to be tortured mentally. Yet, some scenes in the film linger on my mind until now, particularly the traffic scene in which Andrei chose to show the image of street lights forming into linear pattern, an image impossibly made in the era when the film was made, yet the result strikes as familiar to modern audience.)

3. LA FAUSSE SUIVANTE (The False Servant)
reason: While the concept of transforming a play into a (low budget) film never works any better than this, I can't help thinking that the lines are uttered plainly, a la French do their talking, maybe? Don't blame me for falling asleep in the middle of crucial part, but after all, the screenplay puts a nice touch to the characterization of the roles.

(present reflection: Have you ever had an experience that you dislike a certain film so much, yet the film sticks on your memory after it has long gone? This is what I feel towards the film until now, for I can still recall the vivid "staging" the film is made, in which the whole story about the ship-wreck is staged in an entire theatre hall, and the director made it obvious! Perhaps an experiment of a not-properly-tested breakthrough, the main draw of this film lies on Isabelle Huppert's dignified presence, yet I should've known that if I wanted to go for this, I would've chosen her other far more superb works.)

4. TO CATCH A THIEF
reason: Surely the film's breathtaking cinematography match the catch-me-if-you-can
thriller Hitchcock is best known as in 1950's, it's just a matter of time I took when I watched this film. A lesson learned: NEVER watch any thrillers in midday! Definitely one of those films I'm gonna watch again.

(present reflection: Blame it on a heaty afternoon that made me lose my concentration in watching this enjoyable flick which is not supposedly requiring any particular attention in the first place! There you go, figure it out yourself, this is Hitchcock's at his relaxed, playful direction like the way he did in The Trouble with Harry or even Notorious. Considering the pairing of Grace Kelly and Cary Grant is something worth watching itself, I may have to watch this film one more time before I can give my fair judgment.)