"Suicide is painless. Take it or leave it."

KIPPUR

Original Title: כיפור (Kippur)
Year: 2000
Country: Israel/France
Language: Hebrew
Number: 967
Director: Amos Gitai
Starring: Liron Levo, Tomer Russo, Uri Klauzner, Yoram Hattab


In 1973, during Yom Kippur, the holiest and most solemn holiday in the jewish fate, Israel was surprisingly attacked by the arabs on two fronts, by Egypt and Syria. The director Amos Gitai himself was called up for the war, as part of a helicopter rescue crew, who had the job of caring injured soldiers to the helicopters, and it's exactly what Kippur is about. It all begins with two friends, from the same platoon who first tries to find the rest of their platoon, but they have disappeared. And the two friends decides to volunteer as helicopter medics in the Golan Heights.

There some people who might call Kippur the Israeli Platoon or Saving Private Ryan. I would rather call it the Israeli M*A*S*H, with out the humor of corse. There's no gunfight, and the soldiers don't seems to be in any danger. It doesn't look like any of those films. Kippur is rather the kind big budget film that's play it very safe and unoriginal made. A desperate attempt to make their sole war epic. The acting is also over the top, and is not believable. It ironically also tries to be an art film, by having an opening scene where we see two people making love on a white sheet, covered in nothing but oil paint in all colors. Another desperate attempt of winning our attention, by trow in art. It's practically forced on us, and practically the whole movie as well.




But I also have something good to say about this movie. There's very few handhold camera scenes, and those are the once that is amazing, to bad is to few of them, or else this movie would have felled more authentic, like being at the battlefield yourself. And there also some amazing air photos from the helicopter. The film also contains some monologues from some of the soldiers, who tells about who they are, or some events before the war that had some impacts on their life. And those are usually good, It's actually something that is typical with the Israeli war movies, such as Waltz with Bashir and Lebanon, with is actually much better than this one, unlike Kippur, they actually have a point, and is not desperately trying to seek attention by dress up like an art film. My conclusion is that Kippur could been a good movie, if they haven't taken it so serious, and started to experimenting much more, instead of trowing a big budged and do nothing more that conclude this movie with an art scene that give us the illusion that it's symbolize something. The problem is, it's symbolizing symbolism. I had great expectations for this film, and I somehow wish I could say I liked it, because of it's message. But when art and the technical come in the way, and force us to watch, I feel like I'm being forced to buy it.


Grade: C-


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"Mmmm... cherry"

TASTE OF CHERRY

Original Title: طعم گيلاس  (Ta'm-e gīlās)

Year: 1997

Country: Iran/France

Language: Persian

Number: 927

Director: Abbas Kiarostami 

Starring: Homayoun Ershadi, Abdolrahman Bagheri, Afshin Khorshid Bakhtiari, Safar Ali Moradi

Abbas Kiarostami's Taste of Cherry is an extremely deep, reflecting drama about the values of life and death. It's a realistic film, in sense of time, we don't feel any jump in time, and it's not even filmed in real life time. But it might feel like that because of it's many long shots, which is just incredibly beautiful and relaxing as yourself was a part of that scene, in the same environment as the characters. Taste of Cherry is a story where we follow the middle-aged Mr. Baadi who is driving around Teheran's industrial landscape, to find some one who will take the job of bury him after he has taken his suicide pills, lying in his grave, a hole he dug near a cherry tree. But it's easier said than done, many people don't like the idea of being a part of someones suicide. Some of the people he meets even quotes The Quran. Some are just very frighten.



 
Taste of Cherry is just a terrific piece of filmmaking, about a man who drives around on a quest, and we are so lucky to get along on his quest, we even get a long in his car. We get to meet every kind of different personalities, who tell their own stories about who they are, where they are from, and what they are doing in the dusty outside of town. A great colorful movie, with a lot of colorful characters.


Grade: A


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"The Worst Movie Ever Made?"

SALÒ, OR THE 120 DAYS OF SODOM





Original Title: Salò o le 120 giornate di Sodoma
Year: 1975
Country: Italy/France
Language: Italian
Number: 601
Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
Starring: Paolo Bonacelli, Giorgio Cataldi, Umberto Paolo Quintavalle, Aldo Valletti


What do I think about Pier Paolo Pasolini's last motion picture, Salo, or the 120 days of sodom? Well it's a horrible, pervert, grotesque and soul ripping piece of a feature film. The word humanity doesn't exist, neither do mercy and neither salvation. And I can ask myself: "Does god exist". This is a movie that one should think more than twice about seeing. This was Pasolini's last film, which was released only twenty days after he was brutally murdered in 1975.


Salo is set in the year 1944 in the Mussolini controlled part of Italy, the Italian Social Republic commonly known as the Salò Republic. A bunch of upper class fascists, which includes a Bishop, a duke and a magistrate, decides to buy over a dozen of young people of both sexes, which they gonna use to practice all their nasty sexual fantasies. Only just describing them can give you nightmares. And let I just put it straight right away, there's no happy ending. Due to the year it's set in, you might think that Allied soldiers will break in and free the poor souls any minutes. But it doesn't happens. There's no light in the tunnel, except maybe the title which says 120 days. It's pure sodomizing just as the title says. One other little positive thing is that this is not a pornographic film, There's no close-ups of erected genitals . And that's probably because it's not gonna seems tempting in anyway. And it's actually the close-ups of a man's and a woman's genitals what makes it a porno film. I'm not saying that I would have enjoyed it if it was, but it might have distracted you from following the story and it's points, as many other porno films does.





There's no proof that such grusome even have taken place in the fascist Italy, But orgies just like in the movie have, in every part of the humanhistory and it's more and more shoking for each time, specially that this can happen right now as we speak, like in a basement. But in Salo it's not a basement it's a mation of sodom. There's no coincidence that the rich people are fascist, the people on earth that we know have exicuted the biggest, most terrible crimes against humanity. But my question is, whould there be any Salo if they had used other people than nazis? It would have worked with upper class people who's ordinary outside, but then it would have been to offensive towards all rich people, though Salo itself is excactly that, except most people who'd only see them as fascists, but the message is there, that's mostly because Pasolini himself was a communist, but also because his brother was killed by the fascist.


One can ask one self the question: Why? Why would anyone make such a horrible movie? The answer is very simple, to show how terrible the fascist regime was in the eyes of Pasolini. Not that I'm denying that it wasn't, because it was probably that horrible, because many people got killed. The paradox with Salo is that most of the sex slaves don't want nothing else but die. But it's also the ones that begins to accepting their masters, and starts to enjoying it all, the Stockholm syndrome.

Did I enjoy this movie? No. Did I like it? Yes. Because it's a movie that breaks boundaries of what's appropriate in films. In some cases it is necessary to do so. To get as close as possible to the people's minds and horrors. To get directly into the nightmare itself. To understand the reality of some ones pain. To get as close as hell itself. I want reality, though the plot might not be reality, the people and their pain certainly are. The fact that react with disgust makes me happy that I actually have a load of humanity inside. I would not sit next to a person that didn't do the same.


This is to date the longest review I have ever written, I could talk about this movie all night. But I stop here and conclude this movie as gruesome but necessary. I give it a Thumbs up. The only thing that remains is only to warn you. If you have to watch this movie, make sure you got no food and drink on the table, most because the horror of seeing what the people on the screen are eating, and you don't want vomit all over your carpet. One advise to prepare yourself is to read a lot about the movie before you see it. You must be scared as hell of this movie, it's eases the pain that you would have felt if you have seen this without knowing anything about it before you saw it.


Don't say I didn't warned you.

Grade: B+


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"Shocking Footage"

PEEPING TOM



Year: 1960
Country: United Kingdom
Language: English
Number: 365
Director: Michael Powell
Starring: Carl Boehm, Anna Massey, Moira Shearer, Maxine Audley


In 1960, Alfred Hitchcock's american Psyco was released and horrified moviesgoers all over the world. But little did they know that a british horror thriller named Peeping Tom, horrified and was panned by both audience and critic so much that it ruined the until then successful director Michael Powell's career. However Peeping Tom gained cult following in the 1970s.

Peeping Tom is the story about the young man named Mark Lewis who works as a camera assistant on a film set. On his time off, he himself like to direct his own films, a documentary about people's reactions and fear of the unknown. That's right he's filming people that he murders, just so he can see them scream, snuff filming. His incomes doesn't come from his job alone, he also rent out apartments in his house, and one day a girl named Vivian who's very curious about this boy that has always lived there and whom she have not spoken to. And they fall in love, and Mark even show his some of her works, not any of his snuff material, but still some shocking footage about his father who liked to experimenting on Mark's fears. How will this turn out? Well I can't tell you that, but I promise you will not be disappointed. 

Peeping Tom is as many of Powell's early pictures along with Pressburger, this is also a beautiful colored film. It something I actually don't mind, though it's the completely opposite of what Hitchcock did with Psyco, and sure this movie would be good in black and white, most because of the brilliant story itself. But the color in this film is representing reality, while some of Mark's footage is black and white. But I like it just that way it is with color, it's also representing the spirit of Powell and Pressburger's earlier films, remember how colors horrified us while watching The Red Shoes and Black Narcissus. How the color red, symbolized death.


This picture really blowed my mind. It's in many ways a metafilm, not just because some of the movie takes place on a film set. But most because of the fact that Mark himself makes a documentary. A documentary I actually who'd like to see. A cinematical version, of corse, not a real one, thank god, but so close to reallity as possible, a grindhouse horror flick. Peeping Tom is an excellent study of the horror when you know when you're going to die. Mark's motto is, everything he filming he have to kill. Peeping Tom is after my opinion among the greatest psychological horror films ever made.


Grade: A+

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"The heavy lightning of reality"

HAPPINESS



Year: 1998
Country: United States
Language: English, Russian
Number: 939
Director: Todd Solondz
Starring: Jane Adams, Cynthia Stevenson, Dylan Baker, Philip Seymour Hoffman


Though the title of this movie is Happiness, this is not a fairytale of any kind, but rather the lightning of reality, and so unbearable that I can't understand why someone would make this kind of movie.

The movies is splited up in three different plots, the one thing they have in common, is that least one person in each plot are sisters, the Jordan sisters; Joy, Helen and Trish. The youngest sister Joy just broke up with her boyfriend, who later kill himself because of that. She hasn't find her way in life yet and lives with her upper-middle class sister Trish who have three children and is married to a psychiatrist, who seems not to be so satisfied with his sex life, and worse is, that he developed a sexual desire for young boys, That's right he's a pedophile. The second oldest sister Helen is a successful author who have all things in life she could wish for, fame, money and men. But she's bored with it all and wish something or some one to treat her like dirt. She one day resive a phone call from a pervert who says a lot on inappropriate and filthy thing to her. It was her neighbor, who lives in the same block, Allen (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) who uses his time of to call random numbers to unknown women, talk dirty and masturbate to them. Helen is interested, and wait for him to call back.

Happiness is classified as a dark comedy. I didn't laugh, I was horrified, specialy when it comes to the pedophile psychiatrist. I feel embarrass and so sorry for Hoffman's character. All character in this film has in their own way sink as low as possible. There's nothing in this movie that look like clichés, it's all taken right out of reality. This picture is a real reminder that life is a bitch and how dark the reality really is. If you love the Coen brothers' hilarious black comedies, you must really check this comedy out. Besides who can say no to a lovely indie film with Philip Seymour Hoffman.


Grade: A

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"Time to look after my roots"

SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS



Original title: Тіні забутих предків (Tini Zabutykh Predkiv)

Year: 1965

Country: Ukraine (Soviet Union)

Language: Ukrainian

Number: 424

Director: Sergei Parajanov

Starring: Ivan Mikolajchuk, Larisa Kadochnikova, Tatyana Bestayeva, Spartak Bagashvili

Armenian filmmaker Sergei Parajanov always fought for his armernian heritage against the Soviet-Russia's cultural repression. But he also fought for other dying culture's in other soviet regions. Parajanov's Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors takes place in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine, where we follow the life of the Hutsuls. This picture is the story about the young man named Ivan who falls in love with Marichka, the daughter of the man who killed his father. We can see that they are ment to be together, but a twist of fate happens when Marichka falls from a cliff into the water and dies. After a hard black and white winter, Ivan decides that the life must go on, and goes ahead and marrying the first woman that he shows some tiny interest for, named Palagna. But his love for Marichka remains strong, that he forget to pay atention to his present wife. And then Palagna falls in love with an evil sorcerer, which doesn't bring any good for anyone.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a beautiful looking film, beautiful cinematography, a lot of beautiful colors and landscapes. The story itself isn't that original. I loved the first part of the film where we see two people who are ment to be together. The second part of the film is kind of slow and not so colorful. But I still recommend it, for it's beautiful use of color and culture.

Grade: B

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"8 ½ Harry"

DECONSTRUCTING HARRY



Year: 1997
Country: United States
Language: English
Number: 916
Director: Woody Allen
Starring: Woody Allen, Kirstie Alley, Elisabeth Shue, Judy Davis


Woody Allen's Deconstructing Harry is a wonderful creative, well made and structured comedy. I just love all the new twist, satire and word games Woody Allen has written. In this delightfull comedy we once again follow Allen, this time as the author Harry Block who is hated by most of his friends and family, for using them in his material. One day his been invited to the university which he dropped out of, to be honored. He don't want to go there alone, he is companied by his friend Richard, a hooker named Cookie and his son who his not actually allowed to take with him because of the visiting time set by his ex-wife Joan (Kirstie Alley).

The creative mind of Allen, lets us into Harry's books, and we get some reconstructed scene's from his novels. But their manage to get out of the book and into the real world (Just like as in The Purple Rose of Cairo) where they give advice and support Harry and helps him to understand himself and the people who he has hurt. We also get to meet the real people whom theese characters are based on. One example is Harry's older sister who is an extremely faithful jewish woman. This was the inspiration to the character Helen (Demi Moore). 

We have also one of Harry's other characters named Mel (Robin Williams) who's is out of focus, literary out focus, camera focus, while everything and every one around him isn't. This is what I love about most of Allen's films, he's not afraid to use surrealism, and he does it so well that we find it so natural. One can imagine that Deconstructing Harry is based on Woody Allen himself, but some critics has stated that this picture is more inspired by Jewish-American novelist Phillip Roth. Deconstructing Harry is a wonderful creative comedy. So if you love any of Woody Allen's earlier work, this is definitely among his best.


Grade: A-

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