The Trip

In what is now common fair, satirical narratives involving the daily lives of successful actors attempt to take the mundane of luxury and find absurd. It is quite an easy thing to do, as the inhabitants of their universe mock the self-righteous decorum which they do not belong in, yet merely savor.

The pairing of these two actors begins farcically enough, yet descends into nuisance, particularly with the voice-actor who cannot escape one sentence without mimicry.

The self-parody is not excessive as seen in Curb Your Enthusiasm, as there is a soft background of a missed romance that inspired the entire journey through Northern England foodie heaven. However, it cannot emotionally endure when the level of banter does not rise above sophomoric comedic jabs about other actors.

In short, there is no narrative, only eating and self-absorption. Not to say the film attempts anything else, only that the humor recycles itself hastily, creating unwanted and annoying redundancy.

Grade: C-

Broken English

The modern day woman possesses too many choices, according to the female protagonist's mother. Such possibilities nonexistent before appear a burden to the mother for the reason that they create a disappointing lifestyle exuded by Nora, her daughter.

Nora feels hopeless with men. She wants one so she can know someone loves her yet strikes out routinely and spends more nights drunkenly falling asleep than in a passionate embrace. The general recommendation she has received from her close female confidants is to play the numbers game. And yet all are oblivious to the self-destruction that accompanies aimless dating for the sake of dating.

Strangely, in the age of feminism, having a man in one's life is not intended to be a collaborator in the creation of the family unit. Thus the prospecting of men leads to perpetual disappointment even when married to a success, such as with Nora's best friend. Men never can fulfill the constant desire of want when they are approached like a fashion accessory to a woman's life.

And thus the emptiness of Nora's yearning for love while willfully being seduced by an actor and falling for a random French man who beds her in less than 24 hours, quicker than even the actor who had to wait at least a full day. There is supposed to be some sort of chemistry or romance between Julian the Frenchmen and Nora simply because he is tolerant of her anxious melancholy about the emptiness in her life.

The film proudly is about this emptiness and loneliness that Nora is trying to escape. She even physically runs away from New York City with her best friend with the excuse to find the French man she had a weekend affair with alongside her friend who herself indulges in the escapist fantasy by committing adultery.

The ease in which men penetrate women in this film is indicative of the meaninglessness which is attached to sexuality now. It is improper to say that women are abusing the norms of feminism by recklessly indulging themselves for mediocre reasons; but it is rather ironic that the choice to marry for family, or to use sexuality for pro-creation, is one that is ostensibly excluded to urban women.

In the end Nora is deceived into believing she has found herself in a brief deluded Eat Pray Love dalliance with Paris, when she is merely a pinball that is pushed around by everyone she meets. Her misery, which I believe is a firm critique of feminism, is summed up eloquently when she tells Julian she still does not know what she wants to be when she grows up. She has no identity, no sense of what being a woman actually is. 

In the end, she cannot find love because there is nothing to love about her.

Grade: C

Pete Smalls Is Dead

This is simply an eclectic disarray. It does not know exactly what to be, other than an attempt at irreverence, which misses. However, failure in itself still has meaning, in demonstrating the new found viability for filmmaking.

This clearly is a script which would not pass the benchmark for most studios. They are in the movie business to make money by making movies. Clearly and proudly championing its independent heritage, the script bobs and weaves incoherently while trying to tell a sleuthing story for which no excitement is aroused to begin with.

I don't know who the characters are and most importantly, why I should care about what they care about. There is a mediocre effort in being clever revealing the plot so haphazardly which only adds a dissonance to what the point of the story is.

Vaguely it is about a washed-up actor trying to recuperate love via the kidnapping of the only cherished possession from his diseased lover: Buddha. Coincidentally, to save Buddha his dog from his debt collectors, he must somehow coordinate selling the rights to a film his ex-triad successor left in limbo upon is death.

I wish there was a more ample survey of the underbelly of Los Angeles filmmaking, as if such quasi-Bukowskian men exist to make movies. I wish, also, of more of the setting of LA to have played a stronger supporting character than what was filmed - we could feel the organic environment but we did not get a sense of itself. 

And this is the general problem with the film: there is no center of gravity. It is so impetuous that it actually becomes flaccid. This is only exacerbated by a script that feigns wit and style but comes off as cute and not in a good way.

As mentioned however, this movie is a success for the spirit of creativity. Digital filmmaking made it possible to create the opportunity for my criticism and for the acting roles, which I am confident helped Mr. Dinklage secure his masterful Game of Thrones role. Likewise for Ms. Heady playing beside Steve Buscemi, who fittingly advertised herself as a queen for Game of Thrones by playing a personal assistant slut. I kid.

In the new path for making film with projects easier to conceive, there will be failed attempts which certify the profit signals of the big studios to make consumerist trash. However, the inertia of such projects will create a higher rate of quality independent films for release. All in all, this is a price that must be paid.

Grade: D

The Wedding Banquet

In the first meditation on homosexuality in America, with Brokeback Mountain the more famous remembrance, Ang Lee directs his attention to the stigma of gayness in the Chinese culture. Contrasted with American inimical behavior where it is downright violent towards gays on the frontier, the Chinese are disappointed yet value sexuality in another aspect: purely as a function of procreation. 

Thus culturally, the difference shows the significance of the corporeal body. Clearly the incubation of Christianity reveals sin as something worth purging. To the Chinese, so long as a child can be birthed, the dysfunction of gayness is manageable.

Here too, the difference in the insistence of patrilineal inheritance. Marriage serves this ultimate purpose to the Chinese. In Brokeback Mountain, we do not have a clear sense of the urgency of procreation to continue the surname of the father. Thus in the latter film, the immorality of homosexuality ends in tragedy ironically because heterosexuality does not convey any meaning outside of maintaining the homogeneity of a society, preserving it from uncertainty (i.e. decay).

In regards to portraying the fusion of gay and Chinese culture in early 90's New York, Mr. Lee does not hit the mark. There is too much concentration on the Chinese family which distracts from the gay life which Wei Tsung and Simon attempt to hide. As is telling, at least 60% of the film is in Chinese.

The lack of blending of the two minority statuses in America is a disappointment. We do not get a sense of the struggle to be a gay Chinese despite the apparent comfort the character has in his skin - only in the city itself, mind you, as he does not have the same comfort level to approach his parents. The center of the narrative is in his fear of failing his family. As if the gay community is devoid of those who have shared similar fates that he cannot rely upon for advice? Is he truly the only gay Chinese person at his wedding? 

The banquet itself is worth seeing to absorb a disturbingly unknown culture in America (disturbing because we do not see enough Chinese culture despite being ancient and innumerable). But Chinese cultural production in the film was atrociously done. In fact, the story itself barely hangs on a thread: it is too vain in its efforts to be a diagram of cultural crossroads found in America. Mr. Lee would have been better served filming a documentary titled "Homo and Hun".

Grade: D+

Take This Waltz

Take this Waltz is a splendid contemporary portrayal of the openness of sexual normativity. The vacuousness of marriage in the present, with ample birth control and luxurious abundance that makes child-rearing no longer a mandatory course of human life but a consumerist decision - like whether to upgrade television sets - is seen in all of its decay.

Margot seems to have a friend more than a husband. They play childish games together and act as bedtime companions. She is supportive of his chicken recipes, but to an extent. She seeks more from her life and her hubby is not giving it to her.

Conveniently, she finds some chemistry while on a writing trip to Montreal. And even more conveniently, that excitement in her life follows her home. The man who so seamlessly energizes her to the point she plans her day around waking up to stalk her now-recognized neighbor, provides what little significance she has in her life. It is a replacement for creating this significance. She wants to write her own works for instance, and when cornered about why she hasn't begun, she is left creating a diversion.

Her intrigue in the sexy neighbor is another such diversion in her life. The chemistry they immediately amplify shows to her some sort of serendipity in the entire ordeal. It does not matter to her that, through her wedding vows, the life she leads is no longer completely solitary. Historically, a husband and wife have been seen as creating a new life, with each a part of the assembly. Thus, Margot's interest in another man takes no consideration of the participation of the other member of her life.

Obviously not-and in general, the reprehensibility of infidelity underlies the self-indulgence of the act. Technically, however, the film is clever to preserve the matrimonial vows - yet the underlying self-indulgence cannot be escaped by simple cultural normativity. Unsurprisingly, Margot abandons a man who is making something with his life - a successful book, something she is incapable of making herself - and decides to indulge.

The audacious sexual montage is perfect to encapsulate the ecstasy of the indulgence. We see immediately after the ending of her marriage Margot and the man engage in penetrating intercourse, which then follows into several highlighted ménage-a-trois, accentuating the self-centered ness of her decision making.

Wisely, the film does not contemplate on such sexual narcissism. It uses the scenery to reveal how ephemeral her lust actually is. Instead of looking to her husband for support in becoming a better woman, Margot follows the cultural acceptance of women's liberation: one can disavow her marriage for no sufficient reason - or for an absurd reason such as having a lustful fantasy realized.

When matrimony was respected, men and women of course had sexual urges towards other people. Yet the significance and indeed burden of marriage has always been in the culturally perceived permanency, or sacredness, of the vow.  As contributory to the sacredness has been in the creation of the family. 

At present there is no natural tendency, neither natural order, for the logic of marriage. It is treated as a custom, really the aftermath of a large party, more than a formal institution. The meaning has been lost to the point where the reality of a fantasy can destroy its establishment.

I commend the film for its realism; that in the end, childishness cannot be a lifestyle.

Grade: A-