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Goth (2008)
just your typical, indifferent ( cruel, Gothic, whatever you want) teenagers
for all the disappointed people around here, this is an adaptation of a manga series by Otsuichi. And... as most such adaptations, it's bound to be a little naive about the reality one expects to be portrayed in a movie. in my opinion, this was quite a good movie starring young actors. it has a decent amount of suspense, it has mystery and I didn't find a moment of it to be anticlimactic. The only thing that struck me as odd was the main characters' rooms. that made me laugh. that was a bad move. we might think there are no parents in this movie at all and the children roam freely with credit cards so they can buy weird stuff like knives, ropes, chains and other murder related paraphernalia just to keep them in a secret closet. oh come on, Japan!
I liked the characters very much so I'll take the liberty of talking a bit about them. the girl: she maintains a Victorian Gothic aura around her even in broad daylight, her strange past and her unexplainable attraction for hanging ropes and playing suicide. the teenage Japanese boy is a typical depiction of horror mangas, he is a top student, mysterious,quiet and meditative, with a love for the morbid, a bit too mature for his age, and he reads Hp Lovecraft, an author that used too many tentacle references for his own good. these two meet, they are connected by the same attraction for death. they tease each other a bit and they quietly observe the murders around them. There is nothing more, nothing less. just the strange interaction between these two. morbid teenagers.
these facts aside, the movie has a tranquility to it that few other have attained. it's like it's paced by a metronome.
Rofuto (2005)
Painful hallucination
This is a movie that requires a certain mood. It is dark, morbid, reluctant to show more than you need, very silent at times, very slow developing, it has enough predictability not to give you goosebumps... and that sums it up. what made me give it an average vote wasn't necessarily the movie, but the trailer. the movie was bearable, quite beautiful. about the trailer... then well, it could have been worse than that, with that pop song going through the middle made it look like a pastiche. I hate it how a bad trailer can set the mood wrong for such a serious movie. I know better when to criticize and when to shut up, but this had to be spilled.
the dialogue isn't complicated. it has a few memorable lines, but they are all contextually related, like the one that says I'll throw everything but you. it seeps with silence, hatred, regret and misunderstanding.
Innocent Lies (1995)
breaking a taboo, becoming a taboo
I tend to like movies like this one- quiet, destined to be seen on TV late at night after some red wine to quench insomnia. Yeah... some called it a bore, but so was Mansfield Park...to an extent. it's been quite a while since I have seen it and the details are a bit fuzzy, but if a movie of its rank made it in the realm of my daily wanderings, then it has to have at least one quality. Maybe I liked the setting,the cold morning air-the blue air that conveys darkness and mystery to most Poirot series or the landscapist pov it offered at times just to be changed with the eye of a mute detective at others. I almost liked those, but not quite. Being very fond of art, this movie reminded me of Tamara de Lempicka's paintings: very art deco, showing us more than just a glimpse of the 30s aristocracy, very daring without excelling in creativity. just that. the ending was unsurprising,not really a letdown but the deranged late 30s atmosphere, the uncontrollable animalism depicted in different character liaisons saved it.