Screening Log
This new site feature is a collective effort to summarize our viewing habits. Occasionally, you will find titles here that are coming to a theater near you, in addition to films viewed on television, and even films viewed in piecemeal. The screening log is archived each month; to view past entries select a month in the menu below.
October 2007 activity
Total Log Entries: 46
- Adam (12)
- Andrew (0)
- Chet (0)
- Chiranjit (0)
- David (0)
- Eva (2)
- Evan (0)
- Ian (18)
- Jenny (1)
- Katherine (0)
- Leo (1)
- Megan (1)
- Rumsey (7)
- Teddy (2)
- Thomas (2)
- Timothy (0)
- Victoria (0)
Total Comments: 12
- The Werewolf vs. The Vampire Woman (0)
- Les Enfants Terribles (0)
- 3:10 To Yuma (0)
- The Kingdom (0)
- Orchestra Rehearsal (0)
- The Voice of the Moon (0)
- Ginger and Fred (0)
- No Country for Old Men (0)
- The Wicker Man (0)
- 28 Days Later (0)
- Braindead (0)
- Shaun of the Dead (0)
- Robyn Hitchcock: Sex, Food, Death… and Insects (0)
- Project Grizzly (0)
- The Host (0)
- My Super Ex-Girlfriend (0)
- Crazy Love (0)
- Freaks (0)
- Cat People (1)
- Toby Dammit (0)
- The Temptations of Doctor Antonio (0)
- A Marriage Agency (0)
- 4 (0)
- The Bridge (0)
- Severance (0)
- The Clowns (0)
- Amarcord (0)
- City of Women (0)
- Boys and Girls (0)
- Breaking and Entering (0)
- The Proposition (1)
- The Baron of Arizona (0)
- I Shot Jesse James (0)
- Little Miss Sunshine (0)
- No Country for Old Men (1)
- Avida (7)
- Dragon Wars (1)
- The Boss of it All (0)
- L’Iceberg (0)
- Lust, Caution (0)
- Bonnie And Clyde (0)
- The Alps (1)
- Eastern Promises (0)
- Zoo (0)
- Lenny (0)
- Klute (0)
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Lust, Caution / Se, jie / U.S.A. / China / Taiwan / 2007
Lust, Caution certainly didn’t deserve to win the Golden Lion at Venice (Jia Zhang-ke must be thankful Zhang Yimou wasn’t president of the jury last year), but nor does it deserve the lukewarm-to-cold critical reception it seems to be getting. This handsomely-mounted period espionage drama (set in wartime Shanghai, with the emphasis on the “drama” rather than the “espionage”) has all the virtues — and, of course, the limitations — of Ang Lee’s cinema: solid and slightly old-fashioned virtues of an attention to story and character and a clean and functional narrative style. Tang Wei does a fine job in the lead performance as the drama student at the centre of an assassination plot aimed at Tony Leung’s nasty collaborationist Mr Yee, but Leung’s acting is characteristically a little too one-note — we miss the emotion that Heath Ledger brought to Brokeback Mountain. Still, in the context of Chinese culture where vilification of the Japanese is par for the course (somewhat justified, I should add, given what they did in China and their reluctance to offer any adequate apology), there’s something courageous even today (as there was even more when Eileen Chang published her original novella) about the sympathetic shadings that are brought to Yee’s character and about the privileging of personal emotions over patriotic duty.
One of the strongest scenes in the film is when Wong Chia Chi (the Tang Wei) embarrasses and drives away her spymaster with the intimate details of how sex with Yee constitutes an assault on her body and her soul. It’s interesting that (once you’re past the first sex scene between Yee and Chia Chi — all spanking and bondage) we never get as deep a feeling of the psychological effects on Chia Chi from the sex scenes themselves. And to be honest I don’t think in the end the film really needs Lee’s tastefully-arranged displays of Tang and Leung’s body-part contortions.
by Ian Johnston | Source: 35mm print
06 Oct 2007 1:51 PM | Submit Comment