A mixed bag of viewing delights (?)

Of the 22 movies (!) I watched last week, only three got the full-blown treatment below, but since I always live in hope of finding something really great, I thought I might comment on some of the other nineteen:

Dumplings (2004): This is an expansion of Hong Kong director Fruit Chan's segment in the three-parter "Three Extremes" and I wish no one had bothered.  It's the story of a back-street "doctor" who peddles a remedy for staying youthful of dumplings stuffed with human foetuses.  In a word: unsavoury!

"The Isle" (2000):  I saw this originally at a film festival before the UK censors got their scissors out.  It's another remarkable feature from Korean director Ki-duk Kim, who gave us the wonderful "Spring, Summer..." among others.  This film tells in its beautiful style of a murderer on the run holing up in a floating fishing hut and his odd relationship with the mute caretaker-cum-prostitute who looks after the site.  The cuts incidentally were mainly omitting cruelty to fish (!) rather than the many scenes of explicit sex and self-mutilation.  A remarkable and puzzling film and most of all, very strange.

Zathura (2005): This is a similar movie to "Jumanji" where a board game takes over and pitches two brothers and the teenaged sister who is supposed to be looking after things into a terrifying journey through outer space with its many monsters and hazards.  Pretty imaginative but I wonder if it will pass the test of time which the earlier film hasn't.  At least this one doesn't have Robin Williams in it.

Woman on the Moon (1929):  Probably the last silent movie from German director Fritz Lang and while inventive, ever so long and tedious.   A mad professor claims there is gold on the moon and an oddball assortment of heroes and a villain join the mission to retrieve it.  For completists only.

The Human Stain (2003):  Based on a Phillip Roth novel I doubt that this made any dents at the box office despite the pairing of Anthony Hopkins and Nicole Kidman.  He plays a light-skinned black passing as a white Jew and she plays a down-in-the-mouth custodian with whom he starts an affair.  You may suspect poor casting of both roles and you are partially right: Hopkins seems to be on autopilot whileKidman who the critics hated for this part is more believable than one would expect.  But all hardly worth anyone's time.

Gosh I'm getting tired of all this remembering, so I'll cut back now to briefer comments on some of the balance:

The Great Gatsby (2000): Yet another version of this tale done for TV with perhaps rather more faithfulness to its literary roots, but totally superfluous when one has the Redford/Farrow version and the cracking 1949 one.

Il Grido (1957):  Also known as "The Outcry" this is yet another bleak affair from that great bore (to me) Antonioni.  Steve Cochrane hits the road as love goes sour in rural Italy.

Battling Butler (1926): The great Buster apparently loved this film about a louche sybarite who must pretend to be a famous boxer, but it's not really one of his best.  But so-so Keaton is still better than nothing.

Shirley Valentine (1989) and Exodus (1960):  I hadn't watched either of these in a while and can report that the former holds up well and that the latter is a somewhat patchy slog (all 199 minutes of it!)

The rest was made up of an early Hitchcock (not too special), the 2006 Disney animation "The Wild" (which was really no worse than "Zanzibar"), a late Paul Muni fantasy from 1946 ("Angel on my Shoulder") which is a heck of a lot better than its remake, another look at the Japanese film "Death Trance" which is still as weird as when I reviewed it last March, and a few stinkers which shall remain nameless and which are definitely best forgotten.

So now you know everything....