<n>These are my notes to remember what I watched and kinda what I thought about it. I've recently transferred my reviews to IMDb and made <a href="http://www.imdb.com/user/ur1323291/ratings">the list</a> of almost 1200 ratings publicly available. I've included the individual ratings with my notes for each movie. These ratings are not absolutely comparable to each other---I rate the film on how well it suited me for the <i>genre</i> and my mood. YMMV. Also, I make no attempt to avoid <b>spoilers</b>.</n> <dl dt_class="field"> True Romance (1993) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108399/">9/10</a> <div>Clarence Worley (Christian Slater) and Alabama (Patricia Arquette) star as a quiet comic-book store employee and martial-arts film aficionado and the call girl hired by his boss for his birthday, respectively. Their affair is quick and sweet and they are married within the day. She had a pimp though, Dexter. He's played by a typically unrecognizable Gary Oldman, with a scarred eye and white-boy dreadlocks. Clarence pays Drexel a visit to clear things up. Things go south. The cast overall is not-to-be-believed: in additional to Oldman, Slater and Arquette, there's Samuel Jackson, Brad Pitt, Dennis Hopper, Val Kilmer, Christopher Walken, Bronson Pinchot, Michael Rapaport, James Gandolfini, Chris Penn, Tom Sizemore, Kevin Corrigan, Conchata Ferrell, Paul Ben-Victor, Saul Rubinek, Eric Allan Kramer and the bloody thing was written by Quentin Tarantino.<fn> And I would put money on having briefly seen an uncredited John C. McGinley as a cop, near the end. Dennis Hopper plays Clarence's dad, a former cop. Clarence and 'Bama pay him a visit to have him find out if anyone suspects anything about Drexel's death. They hit the road. Dad goes on a patrol around the rail depot that he guards. When he gets back to his house, Christopher Walken (Coccotti) is waiting. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yon2GyoiM">I remember this scene</a>. Walken vs. Hopper. The interrogation begins; when Coccotti tells him the story, Worley replies. <bq><b>Worley</b>: I don't believe you. <b>Coccotti</b>: That's of minor importance. What's important is that I believe you.</bq> The next bit is easy to mistake today as "racist" but the point of it is that Worley makes his decision, then aims his weapon at Coccotti's most sensitive spot. If you're trying to provoke someone, you don't have to be a racist; but if the other guy is, you've got him. Worley goes out without bowing. The gestures, the facial expressions, so much goodness in this scene. That was only the first hour. This movie is so old that Brad Pitt's role is as Michael Rappaport's stoner roommate. And Rappaport was playing the lovable moron 25 years ago. Tom Sizemore also plays the same character as he always does. James Gandolfini is a monster. Alabama's got the same stones as Clarence's father. After he's tooled her up terribly, he tells her <iq>OK, baby, no more Mr. Fuckin' Nice Guy</iq>. She whimpers, but stays strong. The makeup and filming is amazing in this scene. Arquette is an avenging angel. Events progress and the cops get wind of all of the coke. They set up a sting. The Sicilians are loaded out like you wouldn't believe. I love how savvy Clarence is---utterly not the hapless stumblebum he was at the start of the movie. All the guts in the world can't stop a bullet to the forehead. Or can they? Recommended. </div> Before the Devil Knows You're Dead (2007) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292963/">8/10</a> <div>Sidney Lumet directs this non-chronological story about two brothers. Philip Seymour Hoffman plays the older brother, Andy; Ethan Hawke the younger, Hank. Andy is married to Gina (Marisa Tomei, who is spectacularly naked in much of the film). Gina is also sleeping with Hank. Andy and Hank both need money. They don't like each other much. Andy comes up with the idea to rob their own parents' jewelery store and it goes spectularly wrong. Andy is also on heroin, visiting a high-class heroin den (this is probably why he needs money). Hanks needs money because he's got alimony payments to the hectoring harpy Martha (Amy Ryan). The robbery goes wrong and their mother is shot. The sons have to watch their father spiral through grief and then a desire for revenge on the perpetrator. They have to pretend they have no idea what happened. The mother will not survive and her machines must be turned off. No-one in the movie is nice. Hank might think he's nice but he's been on the wrong side of bad luck for so long that he can't even remember what he was trying to do when he started reacting to life all those years ago. Gina's kinda nice, but she's cheating on her husband and seems to have severe mood-swings. Andy is not nice. Their father mourns his wife, but he's not really nice either. Maybe the Mom was nice, but she's gone. Hanks's ex-wife is a relentless shrew who doesn't care whether her father's daughter lives or dies. Other people (his partner's widow and her brother) are also distinctly not nice people, reduced to pure predator/prey dynamics. But Andy's the linchpin: his life is falling apart. He's addicted to heroin, his company is being audited, he was the mastermind of the failed robbery attempt that got his mother killed, he's never fit into his family, his financial schemes will be exposed because his company is being audited, he doesn't know his wife is cheating---or with whom---but that looms in the background as well. When she finally tells him, it doesn't faze him at all---he even gives her money for the cab to her mother's house when she leaves him. Andy and Hank are in deep shit, assailed from all sides. Andy comes up with a plan: rob his high-end heroin dealer. Two murders later and they have a bag full of cash and top-shelf heroin. Next stop: Hank's partner's widow's apartment to pay her off. Instead, Andy racks up another victim, then turns on Hank long enough for the widow to shoot Andy in the back. Hank leaves some money and takes off. Their father is waiting outside and yells for Hank to stop. Only now does he realize that maybe both sons were involved in the death of his wife, that both of his sons are colossal fuckups. Pops exacts retribution on Andy in the hospital. Hank presumably got away with Gina and all the money---although he probably had to give most of it to Martha. </div> Malcolm X (1992) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0292963/">7/10</a> <div>This is Spike Lee's biographical depiction of Malcolm X's life, from his criminal youth to his awakening to Islam in prison to his rising to the top of the Nation of Islam as its most inspirational preacher to his murder by what appears to be Nation of Islam members. Denzel Washington can't help but play himself, as usual. There are a ton of well-known actors and actresses: Angelas Bassett as X's wife, Delroy Lindo as his criminal mentor, Spike Lee played his best friend from youth, Kate Vernon as Bonnie to his Clyde, James McDaniel, Debi Mazar and even Wendell Pierce (Bunk from <i>The Wire</i>). It was well-made, but at almost 3.5 hours, too indulgent. It could have been cut down considerably. I much preferred the <a href="https://www.earthli.com/news/view_article.php?id=2897">Malcolm X documentary from 1972</a>, which featured the much-more inspirational and eloquent original. (See link for citations.)</div> Lemon Tree (2008) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1172963/">9/10</a> <div>This movie is set in Palestine, in a newly occupied settlement near the lemon grove of a Palestinian widow, Salma Zidane. The minister of defense has set up a nice villa for himself right on the edge of the grove. The movie shows the soldiers moving in, setting up guard towers, razor wire, perimeter defenses. But it's not enough: terrorists could sneak up through the grove to threaten the minister's family. It will have to go. The movie depicts nicely---without saying it---the unbalanced, unhinged view of the world that an upper-class (or middle-class) Israeli citizen has.<fn> The Palestinians are animals, to be feared and exterminated. The dichotomy between lifestyles is shown in stark relief. The Israeli defense minister's wife in a house of sumptuous luxury, while the Palestinian widow lives in a modest, deteriorating home. At a pre-housewarming party, the clearly first-world clique of invitees are oohing and aahing over the house while one asks the wife if she isn't afraid? She replies that it's worth the gorgeous view and points out the window to the lemon grove, only partially obscured by the fence, razor wire and defense tower. She doesn't even see it anymore. Later, without a hint of irony, she suggests to her husband that they should do a traditional Arabic banquet for their housewarming dinner. She suggests that they ask a posh city restaurant for help---instead of their neighbors. Her husband mows the lawn with a security detail. Her husband shows all signs of cheating on her with a female member of his army staff. When Salma goes to the Israeli authorities, they tell her they can do nothing. Her problem is laughable in comparison to those of many others. She should be happy with what she has. There are soldiers everywhere. It seems to be true what Finkelstein says: nearly every able-bodied Israeli is conscripted into the IDF. There is also the juxtaposition of the lifestyles: there is construction everywhere, on very, very cheap land. Military everywhere. The process for annexing this land is very structured...very fair. Salma has a chance at regress, but if she misses it, she forfeits her land and that will have been her own fault. The minister built his house right next to a half-century--old lemon grove, but now <i>it</i> has to go, for Israeli safety. It <iq>threatens security</iq>. Salma goes to court with Zaid Doud (Ali Suliman) but Israeli justice quickly finds against her. She vows to go to the Supreme Court. In the meantime, the IDF throws up a new fence, to block her from her own property. She enters anyway, in defiance and to water her dying trees. The members of the security detail all look like Mr. Smith from <i>The Matrix</i>. Zaid and Salms prepare their case, trying everything. She digs up jewelery for funds. They grow closer. He returns late at night from a visit because the road back to his home is blocked, so he must stay the night. Neither one can sleep. Next to his bed is a little poster of Zinedine Zidane. Get it? They have a moment. This movie is quite masterfully directed and edited. The next morning sees the young guard climbing his tower, presumably to continue his Arabic lessons on-tape. His lessons are bizarre: <iq>The mice that are allergic to the grenadine...</iq> Salma is picking lemons. Mira, the minister's wife, tries to approach, but is utterly frozen by her deeply indoctrinated terror. Also acted and filmed beautifully. Salma was picking lemons for Zaid. Zaid's office is messy, the door hangs in a shattered, mostly missing door frame. He is late, so she starts to clean, indicating, without words, that Zaid's life is missing "a woman's touch". As if she didn't have enough to deal with, the morality police show up in the form of Abu Kamal to warn her that she better not be dallying about with the lawyer. She'd better get back to spending each day mourning her husband, dead these past ten years. The next day is the housewarming at the minister's house. The traditional Arab meal. It's a bit pat, but they forgot the lemons. So they hop over the fence to steal them, of course. I mean, they're right there. Salma hurries to stop them. The soldiers throw her to the ground. She starts to throw lemons over the fence because fuck you that's why. Mira tells her that they just wanted lemons. But Mira never said hello, nor asked for lemons, nor ever indicated that Salma exists as a person. So obviously she sent her minions to steal them. Later that night, during the ostentatious festivities---again, a stark contrast to Salma's quiet good-night call with Zaid---a bomb goes off nearby. Israeli soldiers storm Salma's house. They toss the place. I bet the attack was faked by the minister to make sure he wins the case in the Supreme Court, so he can "prove" that the grove must be eradicated. He then lies to the press that he has no way to contact Salma. The press, of course, believes him, because Salma is an animal---there's no reaching an animal. Mira is changing her mind (as minds are wont to do in such films). She helped publish a giant piece in support of Salma. Then she is forced to retract everything by her husband. She escapes her guards and goes into the lemon grove. She finds Salma in her house, crying, because that asshole Abu Kamal came back to threaten her again. The guards corral Mira before she can talk to Salma; the bulletproof blinds go down on her prison. The next day Mira gets a call from her daughter, telling her not to try it again (the guards told on Mira). That gets into a creepy level of surveillance, but it jibes well with what Finkelstein describes in the video linked in the footnote below. Before the trial, Salma and Ziad must allow a single kiss to requite their love...forever. She will not see him again because her community forbids it. She is truly a woman assailed on all sides. The kiss is incredibly subtly filmed, lit in a way that it suggests an entire alternate life they could have lived together, before returning to the bleak reality. On the way to their day in court, they are blocked at the border because <iq>Jerusalem is closed.</iq> Abu Kamal shows up again and, this time, uses his connections to get them through the border. The court rules that the trees will not be uprooted, but half will be cut down to 50cm so that no-one can hide behind them. Everybody wins. In the end, Zaid marries another woman he was seeing. The caretaker of the orchard---a celibate for 70 years---tells Salma <iq>it's better this way.</iq> She agrees, <iq>it's true</iq>. In the end, Mira leaves the Minister of Defense to his lemon-grove--less house, with a giant cement wall surrounding the whole property. On the other side of the wall, we see Salma wandering through the stunted 50cm trees with no leaves and no fruits. She pauses to stare at the 6-meter wall, then walks away. Saw it in Hebrew, Arabic and some English with French subtitles.</div> Rashomon (Rashômon) (1950) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0042876/">8/10</a> <div>This is a story, a fable, of a terrible crime committed in a grove, told in four parts: the perpetrator and both victims and a woodcutter who saw everything. The perpetrator is the bandit (Toshirô Mifune), who is seemingly certifiable, laughing maniacally throughout his deed and testimony. The first victim is the wife, who the bandit raped. The second victim is the husband, who died. The trial is to determine who killed the husband. The bandit claims that he did it, but in honorable combat. He is not ashamed at all to cop to the rape. The wife claims that the bandit ran away laughing after his shameful act and that she begged the husband to kill her, to end her shame, but she fainted. When she woke, he had been stabbed with her dagger. The husband is dead, but that doesn't stop him from testifying: his testimony is interpreted by a medium who can speak to the dead. If you thought the wife's crocodile tears were overly dramatic and hardly believable, you're in for a treat with the medium's histrionics. The medium is quite brilliant. Her clothes flap in a divine wind while she's channeling. The two men in the background are undisturbed. When she is finished channeling, the wind dies completely, even for her. <bq><b>Medium</b>: Everything was silent. How quiet it was. Suddenly the sun went away. I was enveloped in deep silence. I lay there in the stillness. Then someone quietly approached me. That someone gently withdrew the dagger from my heart.</bq> The husband---through the medium---tells us that the bandit lured his wife away from him with declarations of love and, that his wife reciprocated unreservedly. The wife begs the bandit to kill her husband. The bandit refuses and asks the husband what he should do with the wife. She escapes before the husband can answer. The bandit frees the samurai, who kills himself to avoid living with the shame of his dishonor. The story is retold in a ramshackle and severely dilapidated temple during an absolutely torrential downpour. Two men who met the couple on the trail that day and testified in court are joined in the temple by a third man, to whom they relate the story. The woodcutter is cajoled into telling his part, the part he didn't tell the court. He tells how the bandit begged the woman to be his wife. She frees her husband but only so that they may fight to the death over her. The samurai tells her <iq>you've been with two men. Why don't you kill yourself?</iq> before saying he'd rather lose her than his horse. As in <i>Lemon Tree</i> where the men (Israeli and Arab alike) tell the women how they live their lives. This is a true patriarchy, with women as second-class citizens, because <iq>Women are weak by nature</iq>. There's a twist, though. The wife leaps up, cackling, telling them that they're both weak fools, not man enough for her. She continues to cackle maniacally as they prepare to lock in battle. The bandit's arm shakes; the samurai retreats, his mouth twitches. They are terrified, all three locked into a societal ritual, a system that none of them want. The three in the temple find an abandoned baby. The priest laments that he doesn't want to live in a hell. The commoner steals the baby's kimono. The woodcutter chastises him, but the commoner throws back in his face that he's the one who stole the dagger---which is why he lied at trial. The priest stands stunned, holding the baby, staring into the rain, realizing he is in the hell he didn't want. There is no good in the world. The rain has stopped. The woodcutter offers to take the child to his wife. The priest sees a glimmer of hope, a ray of sunshine as it were. The writing, dialogue and pacing, use of flashbacks and unreliable narrators, the lighting and framing are all top-notch. The bandit is covered in perfectly formed water (or sweat) droplets in almost every scene. Each one looks lovingly placed. The restored HD version is gorgeous. Some of it's a bit over the top, the music is a bit too violin-y for my tastes, but it's a 66-year--old movie. Black and white. Saw it in Japanese with English subtitles.</div> La Dolce Vita (1960) --- <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0053779/">8/10</a> <div>On the surface, Fellini's masterpiece is about Marcello, a journalist in charge of a band of paparazzi.<fn> Below the surface? I'm still not sure what this movie is about. It seems to be a bunch of semi-connected skits about Marcello, in Rome. In the first scene, he takes a drive with a bored rich girl and a prostitute randomly chosen off the street. They drive her home and she invites them in for coffee. The apartment is semi-flooded but this does not kill the rich girl's mood---or Marcello's. While the prostitute makes coffee, they make use of the bedroom, for the whole night. The next morning, they leave, having paid her for her "services". In the next scene, Marcello is part of the reception for a movie star, Sylvia. She's a ditzy actress with Attention-Deficit Disorder, flitting from topic to topic and dragging Marcello all over town. They crash a nice, outdoor café and make it an utterly American affair: an American actor named Freddy shows up to make the band change the music and tear the place up. Marcello is happy to comply with Sylvia's wishes, on the off chance that he will be there when her utterly spectacular and bewilderingly gravity-defying bodice finally capitulates to physics. They end up wading in the Trevi fountain because she's a free spirit---or an idiot who forces people to do things for control, depending on how you look at it. All the while, there's Marcello's jealous fianceé Emma in the background. She accompanies Marcello on his next shoot: the filming of a miracle tree and a Madonna-sighting. While the paparazzi and the film crew cavort about, setting up "enhanced" scenes, it is the fianceé who has misgivings as she sees a woman with a crippled child, who really believes in the power of the Madonna, pray at this false shrine. I wonder how pitiable the woman is, though? It seems to me that people pray the same way that they play the lottery: you're not gonna win most of the time, but you won't win if you don't play. Same scene, but at night now: the crowds are restless. There are lame and sick people strewn about the field around the tree; two children who can see the Madonna arrive and being to pray. God responds with a downpour. The children pretend to see the Madonna everywhere, dragging the crowd behind them like a train. The kids think it's a grand game. The people are so into the miracle that they don't even notice. They don't even notice when they trample the lame child to death. In the next scene, they are back in Steiner's salon (there was a brief interlude before where Marcello visited Steiner in a church, a scene that showed immense, lovely white buildings as a backdrop for Marcello's photoshoot). Various people hold forth on their opinions of life, love and happiness---and Orientals. Things get quite surreal and esoteric. Steiner holds forth on life and accomplishment. Marcello expresses frustration, dissatisfaction. The next scene is again a wide-angle scene, this time at a beachfront restaurant. Beautifully framed and lit, smooth camera. As in another scene, the background music seems to be part of the movie's atmosphere, but Marcello tells them to turn it off---and then it's obvious that the radio is <i>in the scene</i> and suddenly things are much more silent than they would have been had the radio never been playing at all. Marcello fights with jealous Emma. Next scene: Marcello meets his father in a café. `They chit-chat and head off to the Cha Cha club, which is exactly what it sounds like. Papa pretends he barely knows what it is, but he knows. He knows very well. He busily cleans his glasses to get a better view. Papa starts to tell stories and threatens to spiral out of control, ordering girls to the table, ordering champagne, whisky. He's just like Marcello in many ways. He's quite a wolf. They leave the restaurant happily drunk with several voluptuous ladies, falling into a couple of cars to go to a dancer's house to eat spaghetti bolognese. The evening proves too much for Papa. He catches the 05:30 train back home. Once again, Marcello is in downtown Rome, strolling through the cafés. He meets up with another friend, who's on her way to her fiancé's castle for a giant party. Marcello tags along, in the usual way, by jumping into an available car (this time, as two more in a back seat already filled with two people). Fellini's absurdity isn't like Ken Russell or John Waters---it's more subtle. It dawns on you slowly that Marcello is in the back with three girls, a young man smokes in the passenger seat with a Dachshund on his lap while an older lady in a tiara drives. At the party, it's a cast of the rich and disaffected, all a bit off-kilter. We are introduced by Maddalena, who is followed by Marcello and a camera spinning slowly around the room. She takes him into the castle's museum where she discusses marriage with him through a "whispering gallery"/echo chamber. She grows distracted and leaves him. Marcello joins up with a procession of dingbats on a drunken snipe hunt of sorts that leads into an older part of the castle. Jane mugs into the camera, chanting/rhyming <iq>for every biologic test/says octopi are oversexed.</iq>...Marcello ends up with her for the night. In the next scene, Marcello and Emma break up in spectacular fashion, along a deserted and dark road. Marcello throws her out of the car, then begs her back, then tells her to get out, then she won't go, then throws her out forcefully and tell her that he <iq>hopes a truck-driver picks her up.</iq> At dawn, he pulls up again and she gets in without a word. Cut-scene to them lying in bed after what we can only imagine was nearly unbelievably torrid make-up sex.<fn> Next, Marcello hurries to Steiner's house, where Steiner has killed his own two children and then himself. Marcello doesn't let his photojournalist crew inside. He is devastated. He meets with Steiner's wife to break the news, but his photog crew flits around like vultures. New scene: once again, cabriolet cars packed with young folk careen up the road, this time to a beach house. They break in. It is much later, as Marcello's hair is grayer, but he's still a party animal and a louche. Things spiral frenetically and drunkenly out of control. Christmas music is playing, drag queens dance, a distraught divorceé offers to strip-tease, but it's interrupted by the arrival of her recently divorced husband. Marcello is quite drunk and tries to incite an orgy, but it devolves into bedlam, with Marcello riding a very drunk and <iq>chubby country girl</iq><fn> around the living room. The devolution continues until they've covered the poor girl with feathers from broken pillows. Lovely long/wide angle on the party. It is 5:15AM. They wander down to the beach, where they meet fishermen who've hauled what looks like a giant ray in with their nets. Finally Marchello sees the young waitress again from the beach restaurant, but they can't communicate because the waves crash too loudly. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. Fin. Black and white. Saw it in the original Italian with English subtitles.<fn> </div> </dl> <hr> <ft>You can tell Tarantino didn't direct because, although it's filmed quite well, a lot of the angles are too close, just framed differently than he would do it. On the other hand, I would have spotted this as a Tarantino script from a mile away.</ft> <ft>See any talk with Normal Finkelstein, but this is a good one, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EcVytIz1gCE" source="YouTube">Left Forum 2016 - A Dialogue on Israel and Palestine with Tariq Ali and Norman Finkelstein</a>.</ft> <ft>Fun fact, the words "paparazzo/paparazzi" originated with his movie. Marcello's main photographer's last name is "Paparazzo". The world picked up the term from this movie.</ft> <ft>If the act was proportionate to the argument, as the saying goes.</ft> <ft>She is in no way chubby.</ft> <ft>Although there's a lot of side-chatter that's interesting but untranslated, so without any Italian, you're missing a bunch of inside jokes. Also, none of the French is translated, so you should be armed with that language as well.</ft>