YNOT at the Movies

Thanks Taro who just came back from Pusan International Film Festival and brought back some DVDs, including a few Kim Ki-duk's early films. So I had some overdose of Kim last couple days.

"The Birdcage Inn" (파란대문) is about this young girl Jin-a moves in a family inn as "the girl" by the locals, so the landlady can make money from her prostitution activity. As a consequence, this "family" business gets everybody involved deeper than they anticipated.

Director Kim never shies away from shocking his audience by his original characters. I really like some of them in this film. Most of the men seem ordinary and they are not bad people (except one), but they all seem to surrender to their sexual urge.

It's a sad story with great performance by the lead actress. But I feel it's a little strange why the girl has to stay at the inn to be a prostitute.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

I didn't like "The Coast Guard" (해안선) as much.

South Korean's coast line is guarded by wired fences. If one is found on the beach after sunset, they can be shot at by the coast guard as spies.

That's exactly a dedicated (or obsessed) coast guard Kang Sang-byeong wants to do: kill spies. But there is one big problem, there are few spies, if any at all. Surrounded these young, horny, buffed, cute coast guards are civilians. So, one tragedy simply leads to another one.

While there are a few very shocking scenes, which I will not reveal, but most of time I actually see these young soldiers wrestling in the mud, sleeping on a bunk beds (I wonder what happens when the light goes off, like when I was in the middle school), playing silly games etc.

Homoerotic? I am not sure if that was director's intension, but I definitely enjoy looking at them doing all those stuff.

But the fun stops there. The story is bizarre and is pieced together to serve for the scenes Kim wants to create.

These coast guards live totally isolated and can do whatever they want themselves. I just don't buy it.

I get tired of watching the screen time showing how crazy the characters get after the traumatizing events. What's the point? We know they are crazy already, why recycle the same thing again and again without any new development?

This will be a fun film at a gay party, especially when people don't pay much attention to the subtitle or the story, just watch how they wrestle with the mud without a shirt will be entertaining enough.

My rating: 5 out of 10.

I went to see "The Departed" with Eric. It's Martin Scorsese's remake of the Hong Kong film "Infernal Affairs" (無間道).

I am glad that I am like watching a complete new film, except I sorta know the plot even I saw the original one long long time ago.

Now the story is set in Boston. The police force installed a spy inside the mafia, while the mafia has an informant inside the police department. The game is to find out the "rat" from each other.

Martin Scorsese indeed is a master of filmmaking. With the first class star powers, this film is very entertaining and engrossing. I probably would have enjoyed much more if I had not known the plot from the original Hong Kong film.

Although the dialogues are completely rewritten with the word "fuck" is spoken 226 times (definitely not that vulgar in Chinese), I still can't get over the bitterness that they have to remake a pretty darn good film.

So, no matter how great Scorsese does it, it's a remake and not original.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

After dinner, I met up Jay and went to Carmike Blue Ridge 14 Cinema to see "An Inconvenient Truth."

I thought that theater must have raised its ticket price by now. Nope. Still $1.50! I counted that there were 12 people for that show tonight, so the theater's ticket sale for this show is a bloody $18! That's not even enough to buy me half of tonight's dinner. How could they do that?

So, for $1.5, I finally watched the documentary about Al Gore's advacacy on Global Warming: "An Inconvenient Truth."

His articulate presentation gives an informative description on the Global Warming problem we are facing and its disastrous consequences.

The film is quite effective but a little bit like a lecture rather than a documentary. While watching the film, I kept thinking what if Al Gore had been the president of the US, the history would have been so different, definitely a better place than right now.

Being an environmentalist myself, watching this film just makes me feel more frustrated and despair. Being in North Carolina just makes that feeling worsen. I can't wait to get back home next week.

My rating: 7 out of 10.

After hanging out with a few friends, I came home and finished the Italian film "The Best of Youth" (La Meglio Gioventù).

Yes, everybody makes a big deal about how long this film is: 366 min (or about 6 hours), but it's time well spent. I really enjoyed this film.

It's an epic film over a span of 40 years, from 1963 to 2003. Using a family as its focal point, the film reflects the changing politics and the society in Italy during that period of time. Nicola and Matteo are brothers with distinct personalities. Nicola becomes a doctor to help the patients in abusive mental hospitals. He meets and falls in love with Giulia who becomes member of the Red Brigades. Matteo joins the army compulsively and becomes a police man. They, along with their family and friends, experience love and hatred, friendship and betrayal, happiness and tragedy, ideality and reality, right and wrong, birth and death, and basically, their lives.

Just like when I was watching the "The Godfather," the fascinating story of these characters are so engrossing that I don't feel the movie is six hour long at all.

The film is a celebration of humanity. It shows how an Italian family stays together despite the life changing events and difficulties over the years. It shows love and forgiveness can unite people together and give us happiness in return.

My rating: 8 out of 10.