Movie Binge

I saw The hangover yesterday, with my friend Happy Tanya who is visiting for a few days. It was definitely just as funny as I expected, if not more. I went to Vegas for the first time last spring break and it was a blast, so I definitely appreciated all the references and witty dings the movie made about the casino culture. What I liked most about the movie was that it was crazy but didn’t push the limits of credibility too hard. It would have been very easy for this film to fall into a pit of sloppy shtick and shock valueless humor but the characters were very likable and realistic and the ridiculous elements were tied neatly and cohesively into the story.

I love reading and I love films, yes I am a total escapist buff lol but even for me I have watched a lot of films this week. The first three films that stand out had a shocking trend of pedophilia (I am told by the friend who rented them that this was purely coincidence, but I have my doubts …) The Reader, Old Boy, and Doubt.

The most disturbing of the three, would definitely be Old Boy, a Korean film about a man who wakes up from a drunken stupor to find his wife and daughter have been murdered and is then kidnapped and secretly imprisoned in a hotel room for 15 years. The rest of the film is him trying to figure out who had him imprisoned and why, and him seeking his revenge. This movie was done very well but I had a lot of trouble sleeping afterwards because of all the darker psychological elements. It definitely makes you think and forces you to question modern paradigms of love and sacrifice.

(Stop reading now if you don’t want spoilers)

ok so in the movie, after he is imprisoned the main guy Dei Sui meets this beautiful young women who is instantly intrigued by him and offers to help him in his search. In the end you find out that his captor is a kid from his high school who Dei Sui caught fooling around with a girl that turned out to be the captors sister –eww incest right- to punish him for spreading rumors about his sister that ultimately led to her suicide, the captor tricked Dei Sui into falling in love and sleeping with his own daughter!!!

Ok so here is where I get caught up, Dei Sui is obviously distraught that he slept with his daughter and insists that she never find out they are related. Instead of just stopping it there though he is determined to keep their relationship alive! He finds a hypnotist to erase the knowledge that he is her father from his memory so that he no longer feels any guilt and they can live happily ever after. What I want to know is why didn’t he just get the hypnotist to erase both their memories of having slept with each other and of being in love (they were hypnotized to fall in love with each other in the first place). That seems like the obvious solution to me, but I guess he wasn’t willing to sacrifice their love. I can’t imagine being so in love with someone that I would sacrifice my moral integrity like that, even if I knew that I would never know that I had.

(start reading now if you skipped the spoiler)

The Reader was also very good but sad. I enjoyed trying to understand the character’s motives, and it is always refreshing to see a movie that doesn’t romanticize the uglier and more damaging parts of love. All I can say about doubt is, he did it, of course he did it, he was so defensive and guilty the whole movie if you really want to know why I am so convinced you can ask lol but I feel like the movie was designed as a question and this is my answer :)

I also watched the movie Choke this week. Fight Club is probably one of my favorite movies of all time, so I obviously had to give this movie a chance, and though no where near as amazing as fight club, this film had the same dark and witty humor so I enjoyed it very much.

On a happier note I had a girly sleepover last night with Tanya and our friend Marcy where we drank dry Riesling and watched Audrey Tautou movies, He Loves Me He Loves Me Not, and Priceless until 3am. It was oddly appropriate since we all took French together and yet still needed to rely on subtitles for the most part. Miss Tautou creeped the heck out of me in the first movie, but was absolutely perfect in the second. If it had been anyone else I probably would have hated the character Irene but she just made the character’s ruthlessness seem eerily charming and attractive. And the clothes!!!! When she first steps into the elevator in that beautiful Azzaro dress that just screams simple elegance and luxury it was perfect.

I think I will take a break from movies for a while now lol and hopefully go out tonight but now I have to stop procrastinating and get back to studying :)

-Nessa Rose