Vibrator

This one is a Japanese-language inappropriate workplace behavior tale (cf. Secretary), but this time the workplace is a semitruck out on the road. Whoa.

She has issues: Check. She's afraid: Double check. He's ... uh... WTF is his story again?? Triple check!!!

Unlike Secretary, there is no safe haven for her trust, so no intimacy develops.

Sometimes that happens in real life. Sometimes it gets translated to film in a way that isn't quite gentle or endearing, but the soft edges of self-discovery are what we remember most.

Sometimes we find those films at the library for free.

Dreams, aka "Akira Kurosawa's 'Dreams'"

I probably don't need to explain that I go to the twice-yearly Friends of Seattle Public Library sale not for the books, but for the DVDs. And like everyone else, I never know what I'll find there until I find it. The sale isn't just an outlet for the Seattle Public Library to offload their surplus material. Anyone can donate whatever is in their personal collection and at some point it'll probably show up in a cardboard box in Magnuson Park's Building 30.

Which is the best way of explaining how I found a homemade copy on DVD-R of this film, in a clear plastic slimline case, and oh yeah it was Sunday (half-price day) so it cost me fifty cents instead of a dollar. And there was a second DVD-R of a film called "Four Rooms" in the same case. I've since given each of them their own slimline.

The video doesn't skip exactly, but it jumps around as though the player is trying to catch up, or the video isn't able to keep up. There are no subtitles. It's on a standard single-layer (4.7 GB) disc rather than a dual-layer disc.

So now thanks to some anonymous donor who made something less than an ideal bootleg but something more than a coaster, I have a sampler of this Kurosawa dream-journal, and the Seattle Public Library has fifty more cents to help ease their budget woes.

If I had a dream about walking through a van Gogh painting, I don't think my dream-van-Gogh would be the only character who speaks perfect English. Or that he would be played by Martin Scorsese. But lacking subtitles, I thoroughly enjoyed that Kurosawa's dream-van-Gogh did exactly those things.

A Colt Is My Passport

Out of all the movies I've seen this year, this one has, by far, the best title.

A hitman is caught in a trap between two rival gangs. Sounds simple enough.

You know it's hardboiled when the following line:

"All that's left for me is dust, and the smell of men and gasoline"

is spoken by a woman.

Love the in-dash 2-way radios. Bond's got nothing on these guys.

Children of Men

A war movie not about territory (a bridge, a beach, airspace) but about: a baby. A person.

There won't be any abstract "victory" by moving forward or holding the line. Either the baby makes it, or not.

This movie reminded me of "Cloverfield," which is just about one of the most territory-centric war movies in recent memory. It had a similar up-close, in-the-street, lookout-for-that-exploding-car feel that kept up the pace and tension, even during the sequences that merely set up some later scene.

All the way up to the final shot, whether the baby makes it is an open question, no matter how much territory they've covered.

In The Realm Of The Senses

A film about a couple of people who like to Do It. My favorite storyline! Although the drama escalates alongside a period of government imperialism, not much of that came through onscreen.

Maybe because this was a deprecated version checked out from the Seattle Public Library, rather than the recent Criterion reissue? The cover of SPL's copy says it runs 104 minutes; the DVD player says it's 97. Criterion says their version is 102 minutes... hmmm. Either way, it sounds like someone forgot to include five to seven minutes worth of government imperialism in the version I watched.

Seven Samurai

Now HERE's what can happen when Criterion takes a noteworthy film and upgrades the barebones initial release. I picked up this expanded three-disc set at Barnes & Noble's half-price Criterion sale, and waited until the 100th anniversary of Akira Kurosawa taking his first breath to soak it in again.

Um. A day late. Because on March 23, AK's 100th birthday, I worked hellish long hours and would have fallen asleep watching a three-hour film afterward, even one that doesn't drag. So I watched it on March 24 instead. Despite that, it remained a three-hour joyride that doesn't drag. And now I have several discs worth of commentary and extras to work my way through. Because I have lots of spare time to do that, haha! Maybe I'll finish up those discs for his bicentennial....

Ran

Criterion's edition of this Kurosawa epic went out of print a while back, and I found one still for sale at Scarecrow Video, so I picked it up (thanks for the gift certificate, mom! :). I still haven't opened the shrink-wrap, and why should I when Scarecrow also has the discs for rent?

So I also rented it, to make sure of what's on the DVDs I may never open. There are a bunch more Criterion titles going out-of-print in the near future, some of which are now headed my way, and most of which I will probably just rent from Scarecrow while I decide which vault to stick the DVD boxes into.

FWIW, Lionsgate (which is getting the lion's share of these titles Criterion is losing the rights to) just released their Blu-Ray of "Ran," to what could kindly be described as "mixed reviews."

Oh, the movie, yeah right. Here's a trailer, synopsis and essay which with one link saves me the trouble of transcribing it all, even though you can't buy it anymore. But maybe you have a cool video rental store where you live?

And I know exactly how this guy feels.