yarrow

Member since 4/21/2007, last signed in awhile ago.

""...the love you take is equal to the love you make." Paul McCartney"

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Interested in:Action, Adventure, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, History, Mystery, Science & Technology, Science Fiction, Spy Film

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The Million Dollar Hotel

Million Dollar Hotel: Noirish Q ...
By yarrow in yarrow Blog
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"An LA flophouse inhabited by an extended family of the walking wounded and more than a few scheming schemers. A mysterious death. Add earnest, and psychotic, FBI Agent Skinner (Mel Gibson) who's at least as strange as any of the hotel's inhabitants. What's not to like? Million Dollar Hotel is fairly enticing at the front end if for nothing more than the opening scene and Jeremy Davies character, Tom Tom, a damaged but sweet-innocent narrator who guides us through a byzantine plot stitched together from a series of vignettes, flashbacks and reactions to Skinner's investigatory shenanigans. As the story progresses, the plot gets muddy but the freaks are intersting enough to keep you engaged. I may be the only person on this planet who wanted to watch it a second time, but I did and I liked it even more. See this film for it's great soundtrack, some interesting plot gimmicks (Bono wrote the story with Nicholas Klein) and it's crew of flakey grifters surviving ... " [More]

The Piano

Sweetie Gave me a Toothache
By yarrow in yarrow Blog
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"Now I love perverse, tortured characters as much as the next guy, but Sweetie's family is so overdone that I nearly stopped watching. What Campion achieved with The Piano, was at least slicker and more polished if equally disturbing. It feels like her mission is more to titllate than to fascinate or to expose irony.And where is hope in this movie? For just a few moments, you think that protaganist Kay, flat affect and all, will actually loosen up and turn vaguely normal, but, alas, it's just a tease. Sweetie is just too weird to countenance...yet colorful in a grotesque, unbelievable way. And as for Mom and Dad... If people like this actually exist and reproduce, the world is a more dangerous place than I'd ever considered. " [More]

A Comedy of Power

Chabrol Noir: The Bridesmaid an ...
By yarrow in yarrow Blog
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"I've recently been on a bit of a Claude Chabrol jag and have greatly enjoyed the subtlety (and twisted nature) of his darker work. Both films are noirish in mood if better lit, with satisfyingly-warped characters slowly exposed. Like a parlor magician, Chabrol has you looking at the right hand, while slowly revealing that the left hand is where the real action takes place. In The Bridesmaid (La Demoiselle d'Honneur), a sister's friend ensnares an awkward and naive brother. In Merci Pour le Chocolat, the good-mother/businesswoman/phil anthropist turns out to have a darker side. I love the movies and look forward to diving deeper into his work. I place these films in a different class from Chabrol's A Comedy of Power, which also has a dark side, but not such deliciously perverse characters. " [More]