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The Lobster (2015) -- It's a romantic comedy. A dark, surreal, absurdist romantic comedy. I thought it was hilarious.



EDIT: And the next day I saw…

Alice Through the Looking Glass (2016) -- In 1871, Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, writing under the pseudonym Lewis Carroll, published a book entitled Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. By my estimate, approximately 1% of the film's story derives from that book. Having seen the trailers, the only reason I even went to see the movie was to learn just how little it resembled the book, and it turned out to be even less than I had imagined. Do I have any desire to see it again? To quote Tweedledum: "Nohow!"

Our Little Sister (海街 diary) (2015) -- Funny, sad, and sweet, Kore-eda Hirokazu gives us yet another winner.

Good Bye Lenin - I saw this in my German class, and I rewatched it (the day I was done with the class) with English subtitles to make sure I caught everything I didn't understand. I liked it a lot. It's probably one of my favorite movies right now. We talked a lot about East Germany in my class, and I also remember my few days in Berlin.

The last film I saw was Fukigen na Kako aka Kako, My Sullen Past.


It was about a girl who lives in an amusingly dysfunctional household and how she copes with the sudden return of one of her "aunts." Warning, the trailer actually spoils the film's main reveal. Sort-of-not-really though, since it was obvious throughout even for someone like me who tends to be clueless about those things. How clueless am I? I had just seen the main actress, up-and-coming Fumi Nikaido in another film a few days before that and didn't even notice it was the same person.

Anyway, the little girl in the glasses, who kept making me think of Eggs-era Manami Arai, was hilarious and stole every scene that she was in, not easy when she had to compete with the likes of Kyouko Koizumi.

I finally saw Human Highway, a bizarro cult film from 1982. Dean Stockwell plays Young Otto, who has recently inherited his father's roadside diner and gas station. The cast playing his employees includes Sally Kirkland, Charlotte Stewart, Russ Tamblyn, and Dennis Hopper. DEVO (including Booji Boy) do a poor job of hauling nuclear waste. Neil Young plays a dorky auto mechanic named Lionel Switch and an Elvis-esque superstar named Frankie Fontaine, and under the pseudonym of Bernard Shakey he also directed the film. 80 minutes of WTF.

esm wrote:Good Bye Lenin - I saw this in my German class, and I rewatched it (the day I was done with the class) with English subtitles to make sure I caught everything I didn't understand. I liked it a lot. It's probably one of my favorite movies right now. We talked a lot about East Germany in my class, and I also remember my few days in Berlin.

That's a fun movie, probably my favorite German comedy.

The Wall came down during my first semester of grad school, and thus also my first semester of teaching German, so we had some pretty amazing stuff to talk about in class. The Loma Prieta earthquake hit the Bay Area the previous month, so it was quite an eventful semester!

I had been to West and East Berlin in '84, so when I returned to Berlin in '92, it felt really strange, especially walking through the Brandenburg Gate, which had previously been surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

Speaking of German comedies...

Look Who's Back (Er ist wieder da) (2015). Hitler wakes up and finds himself in 2014 Berlin. Mistaken for a comedian portraying Hitler, he becomes a media sensation.

It's a comedy with a serious message for the people of today, and not just Germans. As Hitler reminds us in the movie, he was elected.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016) –– Excellent stop-motion animated tale of a magical quest, set in old Japan. I highly recommend it.

I would love to see that movie. Too bad I'm cheap.

The Fugitive was on TV earlier. I'd never seen the whole thing before, so I'm glad I wasn't disappointed by the ending.

Golden Bat (黄金バット) (1966) — Wacky Japanese sci-fi superhero action with cheesy effects and ridiculous costumes, starring Shin'ichi "Sonny" Chiba.

Here's an excellent review: http://www.coolasscinema.com/2011/09/go ... eview.html

And a trailer:


I saw it in a double feature with George Pal's Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961) at "The Super Shangri-La Show" at the Balboa Theatre in San Francisco. They had prizes for answering trivia questions, and I won a very cool book: Attack of the "B" Movie Posters!

It's been awhile since I posted here. So ...
Farewell My Concubine (1993)
"In 1924, young Cheng Dieyi (Leslie Cheung) begins training at the Beijing Opera House at the same time as Duan Xiaolou (Fengyi Zhang). Cheng specializes in playing female parts, often against Duan's commanding male leads. While pretending to be in love with Duan onstage, Cheng begins to develop actual romantic feelings for his co-star, which are not reciprocated. Over the next 50 years, the two men maintain a complicated friendship as China undergoes turbulent changes."