Far Flungers

Remembering my father’s face

Pablo Villaça

I remember my father’s face, but not his voice. If I close my eyes I can perfectly see his expression of disapproval this one time when I was five years old, and another one of deep affection, at more or less the same time, but I cannot remember what he said – or even if said something – in each of those moments. What I do know beyond any doubt is that The Tree of Life, a masterpiece of filmmaker Terrence Malick, kindly led me to these reminiscences through his own philosophical reflection on human nature and our history on this planet. In this sense, the film represents a deeply religious experience for atheists, humanists, and especially film lovers.

Too much frosting, not enough cake

Gerardo Valero

Is Bryan Singer’s “The Usual Suspects” (1995) one of the greatest films ever made? I admit there was a time, right after I saw it, that it seemed special. For most of my first viewing, I thought I was watching a standard crime thriller when suddenly it caught me off-guard and left me stunned. Once the DVD came out, I rushed to buy it but then, as the years went by, I noticed it had been left on its shelf abandoned as I had little interest in watching it again. I couldn’t remember much about the characters or the plot, in fact, there was only one thing that stuck in my mind about it. Readers who’ve previously watched it will instantly know what I’m taking about.

Life as a poker game

“Maverick” starts with the protagonist in the middle of nowhere. He helplessly sits on a horse; his neck is at the end of a noose tied to a tree branch. The men who put him in this vulnerable situation surround him. They drop a bag containing a snake and ride away. If the horse bolts, Bret Maverick dies. It is one of the most attention-grabbing opening scenes in film.

“The Chaser,” a great thriller from South Korea

The movie I want to talk about is Korean Movie “The Chaser”. I watched it in early 2008 and I hadn’t had much expectation since watching its trailer. However, after watching the movie, I chose it as one of the best Korean movies of 2008.

Several weeks ago, Mr. Ebert gave enthusiastic review to this terrific film and I decided to talk about it as one of Korean audience.

A man with inklings of a soul

The 60s were a rough transition for America. Major shifts seemed to be occurring in every fabric of society from civil rights to sexual mores. The worsening course of the Vietnam war fueled distrust in political institutions. Women’s rights highlighted a breaking from oppressive traditions. The old seemed to be fading away more radically than ever before.

Like the era it was made in, “Hud” was a key shift. As film critic Emmanuel Levy correctly puts it, it is “a transitional film between the naive films of the early 60s and the more cynical ones later in the decade.” Though it plays as a compelling drama of small town life and family tribulation, through its lens of father-son conflict, it also captures the angst in the loss of authority, the gap between of two different generations, and an elegy for the good ole’ days.

He coulda been a contender

Elia Kazan’s “On the Waterfront” has been discussed endlessly by film fans, critics and film historians. It’s easy to see why, for “On the Waterfront” can be studied from various perspectives. On the one hand the film reflects a time in history when some Americans named names before the House of Un-American Activities Committee much like Terry Malloy does in court. It has also been argued to be Kazan’s answer to Arthur Miller’s play “The Crucible” or his redemption and justification for falling victim of Joseph McCarthy’s witch-hunt of the 1950’s.

A man living at the edge

Gerardo Valero

Hi, this is Gerardo Valero and today I’d like to talk to you about “Changing Lanes” in which Ben Affleck plays the typical bright but self-absorbed, school-smart Yuppie who gets to marry the boss’ daughter but his knowledge of the ways of the world are rather limited, specially since he’s mastered the art of lying to himself all his life. His best friend and ex-lover played by the always excellent Toni Colette is much more self-aware than him but she doesn’t have his ambitions, or simply put, she knows the ways of the world too well to want anything to do with what it would require from her, to take the next step in life. It is only because of her love for Banek that she tries to help him by providing ill-advised solutions to his problems, which despite her good intentions only make things worse. 

“Blade Runner:” Great, but a little dull

Gerardo Valero

Does groundbreaking cinema go hand in hand with movie greatness? That’s a question answered by Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner” (1982). Like “Metropolis” before it, here’s a rare film with sequences that generate a sense of awe. Even though we now live in an age when the creation of extraordinary cities of the future has become routine thanks to digital effects, it’s hard to imagine the Canyons of Coruscant (in the “Star Wars” prequels); the futuristic Washington in “Minority Report” or even the forthcoming versions of present day cities (in the new adaptation of “Total Recall”) without the influence of “Runner” and none of these examples keep the audience’s eyes fixed to the screen like Scott’s Los Angeles of 2019. Here’s a director whose doesn’t just use special-effects to tell a story, he creates visual works of art in every frame of his films.

Beautiful people staring at each other

Omer M. Mozaffar

Sometimes, I just want to stare at beautiful people, even if they spend most of the movie just staring at each other. I think it’s in the eyes, especially when the eyes are smiling. Sometimes, I just want to sigh, watching them longing for each other. Ashutosh Gowariker’s 2008 film, “Jodhaa Akbar” let me do so, for three hours.

This Indian film is an unabashed epic that targets that greatest of all Indian epics, K. Asif’s 1960 film, “Mughal-e-Azam” (“The Greatest of Mughals”). It is a prequel of sorts: “Jodhaa Akbar” tells us the story of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his wife Jodhaa; “Mughal-e-Azam” is about their son, Jehangir. Like any other man of withering virility and receded hairline, I like beautiful things and beautiful people, and “Jodhaa Akbar” is loaded with carved reddish palaces, golden decorations, and silk scarves of every color. And beautiful people.

The Tale of Two Cetis

Omer M. Mozaffar

We know that “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan” (1982) is the best of all of the “Star Trek” movies. I am not stating anything new here. The rest of the series of films struggled to repeat the mastery of this film, and the reboot has also fallen short, thus far. I did, however, watch Star Trek 2 recently to see if the overlooked “Star Trek: First Contact” was able to take the helm as the Best of the Treks. In the process, however, I realized that Star Trek 2 is a much better movie than I remembered. I invite everyone to watch this movie again to appreciate how great it really is. This is a great movie. It is exciting. It is complex. It is emotional and philosophical. It is one of the great adventure movies.

Happiness is a little daughter

Omer M. Mozaffar

How long does it take for a good movie to convince you to watch it? Ridley Scott’s “Matchstick Men,” announced itself in the first scene, presented its product in the second, introduced paperwork in the third, and closed the deal in the fourth. The two hour long “Matchstick Men” sold in me less than seven minutes.

We are all Untouchables: A Bollywood Ballad:Discussed by Omer Mozaffar

Omer M. Mozaffar

After commenting on George Clooney as Hollywood star, and as star of the very excellent Jason Reitman film UP IN THE AIR, I decided to shift attention to a similar figure in Bollywood cinema: Aamir Khan. Aamir Khan is the star of the most successful Bollywood movie in history, the comedy THREE IDIOTS. Like Clooney (and perhaps Redford before him) he uses his star power to make serious movies, with the most famous being LAGAAN. Here, in MANGAL PANDEY: THE RISING we look at this story of one of the respected heroes of Indian cultural memory.

On the surface, the film continues the popular David vs. Goliath anti-imperialist genre we find in such films as THE TEN COMMANDMENTS, KING OF KINGS, LION OF THE DESERT, THE BATTLE FOR ALGIERS, some revisionist westerns like THE

OUTLAW JOSEY WALES, the TV miniseries MASADA, BRAVEHEART,

The “Shawshank” Greatness

Gerardo Valero

Is Frank Darabont’s “The Shawshank Redemption” the best motion-picture of all time? According to Internet Movie Database users, that is exactly the case. The advent of the internet likely brought together the largest congregation of movie fans in history, ready to express their opinions in the most accessed movie data base ever, and the best rated film there is “The Shawshank Redemption.”

This isn’t something to take lightly, true, but there are peculiarities about the website’s data that needs to be considered. If you’ve followed their rankings in the past you may have noticed that the response by users to recently released films tends to be more extreme than that of older ones, in other words, a recent good movie might initially appear with a higher rating and a bad one with a lower one; films only seem to reach their rightful place with the passage of time and particularly with the accumulation of a larger number of votes. Their opening weekend is not the most accurate of moments to evaluate what audiences really think about them.

The Arikan Agenda: Best films of 2010

Ali Arikan

An old friend and I reunited for the first time in 13 years in Washington, DC last month, and the talk eventually turned to Facebook, the primary way we’ve managed to keep in touch, at least recently. I have a particular trait, usually reserved for after a night out on the town, by which friends can easily identify the level of my joviality, when I post videos of classic rock songs. Despite my assertion that a certain amount of fastidiousness should be necessary when it comes to sharing links on Facebook, I tend to disregard my own advice and post widely popular songs by legendary bands, for which I apologized to my friend.

The Jackal takes aim

Gerardo Valero

Fred Zinnemann’s “The Day of the Jackal” (1973) is a great example of how a film can do a good job of creating tension and involving the viewer by sticking with the most basic cinematic elements. We have the benefit of comparing it with a remake (“Jackal,” 1997) that went on the opposite direction and by wrongly doing everything that its predecessor got right, making he merits of the earlier version all the more evident. Both are distinctive reflections of how studios perceived audience tastes in their respective time periods. They are as different as two movies based on the same source might be and can hardly be classified in the same genre. The later entry is a brainless action flick; the original is a “thriller” in every sense of the word.

Lars von Trier and the Antichrist

Pablo Villaça

So, Cannes 2011: Malick was booed, Lars von Trier was banned and “Pirates of the Caribbean 4” was presented as hors-concours. If those are any indication, I predict “Deuce Bigalow, Male Gigolo 3” will win the Palm d’Or in 2012.

But in all seriousness, Cannes: banning von Trier? Really? Persona non grata for making some jokes (yes, in very poor taste, but jokes still) in the same year you had Mel Gibson over? The same Mel Gibson who made anti-semitic remarks, defended his father for denying the Holocaust and was recorded in a racist rant over the telephone?

Venus if you will, send a girl for me to thrill

Sometimes an actor’s face tells so much about his character that the movie doesn’t have to waste its time describing the character’s past to us. Roger Michell’s “Venus” (2006) doesn’t tell us in details how famous its hero was as an actor, but that’s not a problem because he is played by Peter O’Toole, a living legend who gave us a bunch of memorable larger-than-life characters including Henry II of England, Eli Cross, the 14th Earl of Gurney, Alan Swann, and, above all, Lawrence of Arabia. When we look at him in the movie, we instantly remember how magnificent he was, and that aspect is naturally incorporated into his character.

Cinema through a cloudy eye

Charlie Schmidlin

Bolstered by Akira Ifukube’s trudging “Gojira” theme and the shorthand it affords, on two separate filmic occasions director Leos Carax chose to pair it with a city-scrolling vista, and in doing so reference his past work for the first time. Homage and visual motifs have always earmarked the enigmatic auteur’s films, namely in the unstable romances of “Boy Meets Girl” and “Les Amants de Pont Neuf,” but within his two most recent efforts — a section of the 2008 triptych “Tokyo!” and his 2012 vexing “Holy Motors” — he centers this rare repetition on one character that is not so much a reprisal as it is an emotional transformation.

Kathryn Bigelow’s uncanny “Strange Days,” by Michael Mirasol of the Philippines

2009 was a great year for Kathryn Bigelow. After a 7-year hiatus from filming K-19: The Widowmaker, she returned to direct The Hurt Locker, a suspense and war film set in Iraq that has deservedly been recognized by critics and award bodies alike, and is expected to be one of the primary contenders for the Academy Awards. Bigelow is known for her superb work in the action genre, which is rarity among female directors. Her skill in filming tension and violence is as good as any of today’s directors.

“Don’t mess Malcolm up”

From its incendiary opening to its somber but exultant conclusion, Spike Lee’s grand and important film “Malcolm X” captures the life of a complex, charismatic and gravely misunderstood man who fought for human rights and justice for Africans and African-Americans. The film, based on The Autobiography of Malcolm X as told to Alex Haley, is arguably Mr. Lee’s best and most universal film, and one of the great American film biographies.

For context, “Malcolm X” had extraordinary publicity leading up to its 1991 production. Numerous black activists in New York City and elsewhere had forecasted that Mr. Lee’s film would not accurately depict the essence of Malcolm. “Don’t mess Malcolm up,” was a refrain the director heard over and over again.