A Girl & A Gun

Dalkomhan insaeng (aka A Bittersweet Life) (2005), Ji-woon Kim

This is a beautiful looking film, and if you're a fan of 80's and 90's American gangster movie aesthetics - think Mann, Scorsese and Coppola - this is probably going to provide you with a couple of interior design ideas. The narrative is straight-forward/thin - obedient enforcer Sun-Woo (Byung-hun Lee) disobeys orders, is horribly punished, and then goes on a killing fest. So far so typically ultra-violence - if the film gets a place in movie history it'll be for having the most protracted death scene in a movie, ever - it even manages to whip the ending of House of Flying Daggers, which is no mean feat.

Other reasons to watch include Byung-hun Lee taking most of his clothes off and Gi-yeong Lee as a rival gang leader with a penchant for slaughter houses - the man manages to make a bucket hat look menacing.

The Simpsons go to the movies

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Te doy mis ojos (aka Take my eyes) (2003), Icíar Bollaín

Probably the one thing that's harder to convince people to go watch than a 1960s sub-committee drama is a film about domestic violence. This is a really good film though and - I promise - is a far less brutally  traumatizing than Once Were Warriors.

The focus here is on the context of abusive relationships - the power play of insecurity, dependency and love that cuts across a spectrum of relationships from those considered to be outright abusive to some more 'normal' ones. So probably there will be something here for anyone who's been in a relationship. And some stuff to look out for for those who haven't previously bothered.

The all of the actors are excellent. Special mention has to go to Laia Marull as Pilar - a performance which pins down fear, desire, lust, love, neediness, hope, confusion, submission and strength.  Luis Tosar is also outstanding as her abusive husband Antonio, a horribly insecure, frightened, and irrationally jealous man wrapped up in his own perceived victimhood. He tries to do something about the situation but completely fails to understand what change might actually involve. It's testament to the skill of the director, script and cast that you actually wish he'd get it together, rather than just spend the whole film shouting "walk away!" at Pilar. He's so good in this it's almost tempting to watch the 2006 Miami Vice movie - although I'm guessing they cast him as a sociopath Eastern European gangster.

Advise & Consent (1962), Otto Preminger

I was disappointed to miss Laura when it screened last week, but managed to catch Advise & Consent by accident. It's a twisty and complex political portrait which sits uncomfortably on the brink of the 1960s. Henry Fonda plays Leffingwell, the dying Presidents nominated Secretary of State. His unimpassioned performance doesn't really justify the  Presidents determination to get him into office, or the resulting political snake party. Worth watching for Laughton's final performance, and for the typically Preminger styled gay bar scene.

The inner workings of a US Senate sub committee circa 1960 is a topic which is only going to appeal to a certain type of film watcher, and they'll probably be patient enough to put up with the slow pacing.

This was also the first of six movies Preminger (who played Mr. Freeze in the Adam West Batman teevee show) cast the previously blacklisted Burgess "The Penguin" Meredith - he plays Gelman, a man who had once mistakenly found himself in a four-person Communist cell.

Memoirs of a Geisha (2005), Rob Marshall

Marshall & screenplay writer Robin Swicord apparently did a good job toning down the implicit racism of the original book, but the sickly sweet enduring subservience of the plot manages to be more grimly misogynistic than Pretty Woman, a significant feat. The fact that it's visually about a zillion times far more attractive than Pretty Woman makes it easier to watch in a more goldfish like way, which is a good thing if you were planning on holding your wayward  female relative captive and use repeated viewings as a brain washing device. Fundamentally, it's impossible to recommend a film where the happy outcome consists of a woman becoming the official mistress of a guy she falls in love with as a kid. It's just all wrong.