SCREENING LOG - 10/10-10/16/2005

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2 x Playing video catch-up with the NY Film Festival:

The President's Last Bang (2005, Im Sang-soo)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0445396/

This film has stirred up scandalous publicity in South Korea as it depicts the 1979 assassination of Prime Minister Park Chung-hee as a bloody comic farce, with the PM a womanizing old fogey in search of skinny young broads and beef testicles. Plotting his assassination is the head of the Korean CIA, and while we follow his organization and execution step-by-step, we never really get a sense of his motivation for such a drastic course of action. It could be that those explanatory sequences were excised following the libel suit raised by Park's surviving family. Whatever the case, the singular lack of an ideological position seems to be shared by Im, who mixes sexual slapstick with slickly stylized action sequences and a lot of old male VIPs acting stupid -- it's basic modus operandi seems to be one of shocking the establishment, in a way that recalls DR. STRANGELOVE. This strikes me as a more complex and loaded political film than GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK, though for some reason I like GOOD NIGHT AND GOOD LUCK more, maybe because there is an earnestness to it that I could embrace, however one-sidedly left-wing it is. Im's film one feels like a big cold raspberry being blown at almost everyone. I guess I don't totally trust Im Sang-soo's approach to the material, whether he's really trying to get at the bottom of what happened or if he just wants to mock everyone and everything as ridiculous, and the way he treats the shootouts seems so stylized to the point of reveling in the reenactments, which strikes me as nihilistic and juvenile. (His previous film, A GOOD LAWYER'S WIFE, was a more focused and less flashy exploration of marital discontent). But maybe that kind of instability of tone is what it takes when dealing with subject matter that's so loaded and any kind of "authoritative" account must come into question. This may be a landmark in its nation's cinematic history, though it may also prove to look juvenile with the passing of time.
a tentative yes

Beyond the Rocks (1922, Sam Wood)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0012938/
Long considered a lost film save for a seven second fragment, this, the only onscreen pairing of Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino, recently resurfaced in Europe and has been fully restored. Unfortunately the DVD screener I watched only had Dutch intertitles, but from a cinematic standpoint it plays like a static succession of set-pieces, nothing really remarkable save for its two leads -- and frankly, Valentino doesn't quite light it up with Swanson the way one would expect.
mixed

Ride the High Country (1962, Sam Peckinpah)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056412/
yes

The Bellboy (1960, Jerry Lewis)
yes (#9 for 1960 between MUGHAL-E-AZAM and THE TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS)

The Nutty Professor (1963, Jerry Lewis)
yes (#10 for 1963 between MOTHLIGHT and LE PETIT SOLDAT)

C.R.A.Z.Y. (2005, Jean-Marc Vallee)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0401085/
a high yes (#7 for new films seen in 2005 between REGULAR LOVERS and MYSTERIOUS SKIN)

Grizzly Man (2005, Werner Herzog)
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427312/
YES (#2 for 2005 between MICHELANGELO'S GAZE and THE DEATH OF MR. LAZARESCU)

Sunset Blvd. (1950, Billy Wilder) second viewing
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0043014/
still yes (#10 for 1950 between THE MUNEKATA SISTERS and RASHOMON)
no for the DVD commentary

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