netflix binge

In the last week or so I've been on a bit of a Netflix kick:

Before Sunrise and Before Sunset
I watched these movies back to back because I didn't really remember much of Before Sunrise from when I saw it 9 years ago or whatever. It's kind of a lot of time to spend eavesdropping on Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, but I enjoyed it. The second movie takes their meeting from the first movie and reveals how that brief encounter has insinuated itself into their lives and personalities. I guess that sounds kind of pretentious, but I think part of the appeal of the characters is that when they're around each other, they aren't afraid of sounding like pretentious fuckwads. So if I start sounding like a pretentious fuckwad, blame them. Also, someone needs to give Ethan Hawke a sandwich or something. That boy is wasting away.

East is East
I thought this movie was a disappointment. It starts off promisingly as a portrait of a family that's kind of like a half-English, half-Pakistani version of the Rabbittes. There are some funny moments, good use of soundtrack music, and a strong sense of the neighborhood and time in which they live, but I thought the movie became unbalanced when it tried to show the conflict between the values of the Pakistani father and the English mother. A.O. Scott's review in the New York Times pretty much captured what I thought the main problem with the movie was:

Mr. Puri's performance demands our sympathy, even when George is at his most monstrous. But the film affords this sympathy no context because it presents George's beliefs as arbitrary, hypocritical and absurd. Mr. O'Donnell clearly means to portray and endorse a multicultural Britain and to argue for tolerance and understanding among its variegated citizenry. But ''East Is East'' holds up everything Pakistani -- movies, styles of dress, physical appearances, family relations -- to uninterrupted ridicule while equating freedom, progress and self-realization with Englishness.

I think between this movie and The Guru (not a good movie, but it had some inspired wackiness) I am starting to develop a mini-crush on Jimi Mistry. For some reason, he always seems to look greasy and slightly pained in photos, but on screen he is a cutie.

Munnabhai, M.B.B.S.
Most of the time, the comedy in Hindi movies is lost on me. Whether it gets lost in translation or was never there to begin with, I'm not sure. But I had come across some good reviews of this movie, plus I heard about the U.S. remake by Mira Nair, so I figured I'd give it a shot. Bad idea. I think part of the problem is that a lot of the humor seems to be based on the main character's Mumbai mafia slang, which gets changed in the English translation into unfunny exclamations like, "No tension, dude!" and "What's up, doofus?" So all that was left for me was a saccharine story about a mafia don with a heart of gold who teaches a bunch of arrogant doctors how to really care about their patients. According to the movie, one of the ways to really care about patients is to gaze at them empathetically and then give them a "Magic Hug." It wasn't clear to me whether the concept of the Magic Hug was supposed to be intentionally funny or not, but in the movie the use of Magic Hugs allows a catatonic man to wake up and walk again. That's pretty much the kind of movie it is.

Etre et Avoir (To Be and To Have)
This movie is basically the reason I decided to write a post about the movies I watched recently. Though I'm still not sure whether to delete this post, since a visit to Rotten Tomatoes would be a lot more informative than this random babbling. Anyway, you should see this movie. It's about a bunch of cute little children living in Bumfuck, France who learn how to read and count and do other things that sound equally boring but are actually quite fun to watch. Once you get used to the fact that the movie unfolds at a pace that is roughly equivalent to real time in a classroom, this movie turns out to be surprisingly affecting. It's a bit like Spellbound on sedatives, but with less spelling, and more actual learning. My favorite kid was Axel.