Up until Halloween, I had gone for over two months without watching a single movie in the theater. It was a bit of a sacrifice considering how fond I am of movies in general, and there were a couple that I had wanted to see, but in general it was not that big a loss on my part. There just wasn't enough time or money.
With the long holiday that began last Thursday, though, during payday, that little problem was solved (though I admit I did stretch the budget a little bit). I got to see, in no particular order, Ang Lee's Lust, Caution, Judd Apatow's Knocked Up, the adaptation of Neil Gaiman's Stardust, and a gloriously silly little sports/martial arts spoof entitled Balls of Fury.
It would feel wrong if, having enjoyed a virtual smorgasbord, I didn't review at least two of them. I've decided to review all four, though in two installments.
Lust, Caution
directed by Ang Lee
starring Tang Wei, Tony Leung
Of the bunch, this was the film I enjoyed least, though it was arguably one of the best made. It was the heaviest of the four movies I watched, and nearly devoid of any humor which really made it stand out considering the other films were decidedly comedic in tone.
The movie is basically about a Chinese student who, during World War II, essentially lures a collaborator into bed in the hopes of helping the Chinese resistance find an opportunity to blow his brains out. It's a long, excruciating process that is, admittedly, helped along by some really riveting storytelling, and about two hours into the movie, the most explicit sex scenes I've ever seen outside of a porn movie.
Now the movie is a love story between a spy and the man she is setting up for assassination, so it's essentially a no-brainer that the story will end very badly for one or both of them and the movie does not disappoint in that respect. It's weighty, deliberately paced storytelling, which is another way of saying that Ang Lee well and truly takes his sweet time setting things up, which is not necessarily a good thing. His tendency to overcook his exposition is what bogged down The Hulk (a movie I still managed to like, being one of the very few people I know that did) and blunted the green goliath's first appearance, which didn't happen until halfway into the movie.
Arguably, it's necessary in this film to show how Wong, the spy/lover goes from wide-eyed, innocent student to would be femme-fatale, and there are quite a number tension-inducing scenes throughout the movie, so one certainly cannot accuse Lee of being boring, for the most part, but ultimately it still feels like the movie drags out too long.
Now, most of the attention this movie has gotten has been for its three highly explicit sex scenes. While I won't debate how graphic they were, I have to say at the outset that this movie doesn't qualify as pornography for a number of reasons, the first being that the sex doesn't take place until about an hour and a half (I checked) into the film, after the premise and the characters have been rather firmly established. The second is that if Lee had wanted nothing more than to titillate, he could have done a lot better than casting Tang Wei. There are women out there with bigger boobs and longer legs who probably shave their armpits. Thirdly, I feel it would be hard for a viewer to truly get into the scenes because for me all I could think about was what would happen to Wong if she ever got caught. They were certainly gratuitous, but I still don't think they qualify as pornography.
Finally, I don't think I could ever bring myself to see that movie again. It was just too heavy, and as a love story, it didn't particularly do anything for me considering how brutal the Chinese collaborator was.
I'm curious, though; can Lee ever tell a "normal" love story between people that doesn't involve tragic death, homosexuality, wartime massacres, or transformation into a green monster? I'd really like to see how he pulls it off.
Balls of Fury
directed by Ben Garrant
starring Dan Fogler, Christopher Walken
Now here's a movie I really enjoyed! Loud, self-deprecating and devoid of any intelligence, this one basically had me (and the guy beside me) howling with laughter from start to finish.
It's a basic riff on the martial arts "tournament to the death" movies of old, with Ping Pong being the "martial art" of choice.
The story begins in the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where pingpong prodigy Randy Daytona, whose dad is apparently a compulsive gambler, loses the table tennis finals to a rival, causing his father to lose his life to the Chinese Triad led by the mysterious Feng.
Twenty-years later, a washed-up Randy (Fogler) is approached by an FBI agent (George Lopez) with a mission; infiltrate Feng's lair by joining his underground pingpong tournament and provide the FBI with evidence to put him away for good. Of course, as rusty as he is, Randy must learn how to be a ping-pong master, and he gets the best tutelage around from a Master Wong (James Hong) and his sexy niece Maggie (Maggie Q). After he defeats the fearsome "Dragon" (whose appearance is good for quite a few laughs), Randy is drafted into Feng's tournament via a "golden ping pong paddle" delivered to him by Feng's henchmen. Feng turns out to be none other than Christopher Walken, taking an absurdly flamboyant turn as Wong's best pupil who never finished his training.
The story takes a turn for the predictable from there and suffice it to say there's never any doubt that we're in for a happy ending.
A lot of the martial arts references were unfortunately lost on me, but none of the low-brow humor was, and it was practically therapeutic to howl in laughter at the non-stop stupidity. Fogler clearly has aspirations of being the next Jack Black, and although I don't see that happening, he's certainly funny enough here. As Wong, Hong is good for a lot of slapstick jokes at blind people's expense, as well as a lot of gross-out humor, but for my money the real star of this show is Walken, whose mock-serious visage on the poster was what got me to the see the movie in the first place. There is nothing to reflect on after this movie is done, no commentary on the human condition, but at the end of the day, I honestly felt I'd gotten my money's worth.
Yes, it was completely predictable and the plot was without any depth, real or imagined, from start to finish, but that's not the point. The point is that I was laughing all the way there.
No comments:
Post a Comment