And So It Goes

The Silver Screen

Potentially, it was big weekend for movies for me. For the last few months, I've been too tired, too busy, or too uninterested in what was on offer to go to the movies. Last showings on weekdays in Tokyo are almost always way too early (7 o'clock!?!), so weekends are pretty much the best chance I get to see movies.

(Of course, thanks to some midday cancellations, I was able to catch The Matrix Reloaded at a 10:45 a.m. showing at a suburban movie theater.)

This past weekend, things came together, in that I had time and a sudden wide range of choices of movies I might actually want to see. These included:

Still playing in first or second-run theaters:

The Hours
About Schmidt
One-Hour Photo
The Pianist
Stolen Summer (opened here only a couple of weeks ago)
Searching for Debra Winger (Rosanne Arquette's documentary about what it takes for an actress to have a career in Hollywood)
Die Another Day
Gangs of New York

(The last two, oddly enough, on a double bill)

Opening last weekend:

My Big Fat Greek Wedding (Japanese title: My Big Fat Wedding)
Punch-Drunk Love
Secretary

Of course, I could have also seen Terminator 3 or the new Charlie's Angels movie. Or I could have seen The Matrix Reloaded again to see if it made sense this time.

(Next week, both The Hulk and Pirates of the Caribbean open, but I'll have to wait until October for The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (which I already know will bad, but which I will see anyway) and December for Finding Nemo.)

Jacques Tati::

Of course, I wound up seeing none of the above. What I did was invite MXG to a Jacques Tati retrospective at the new Virgin Roppongi Hills Cinema. It's four weeks of Tati films (followed by two weeks of repeat showings) and began last weekend with 1967's Playtime.

MXG, despite being French, had never heard of Tati; and while I'd heard of Tati, I had never seen any of his films: this seemed a good opportunity to check him out, especially if I needed someone to translate the French for me.

That turned out to be unnecessary, since what I didn't understand of the dialogue wasn't important.

What we saw were two early Tati shorts (Soigne ton gauche, or Guard Your Left (1936), a not-particularly-brilliant boxing comedy; and L' École des facteurs, or School for Postmen (1947), a rather funny slapstick short following a postman riding his bike on his rounds in the French countryside, followed by the main feature, 1953's Les Vacances de M. Hulot, aka Mr. Hulot's Holiday.

Mr. Hulot's Holiday, despite (to steal a line from Joe Bob Briggs) having no plot to get in the way of the story, was an absolute riot, a mostly silent masterpiece of gentle slapstick as gangly, well-meaning Mr. Hulot ambles his way into various predicaments during his seashore holiday. It's all very subtle but very funny, and makes me wonder why they don't make movies like this anymore (instead, we get bodily functions and gross stupidity masquerading as humor in the persons of, say, Mike Myers or Adam Sandler). MXG and I were in stitches throughout the movie, despite the Virgin Cinema's projection problems (whoever set up the projection gate didn't set it up right, cutting off the top 10-15% of the screen, occasionally rendering characters headless)

Next week, Mon Oncle.