The Last Days & Zhou Yu's Train

The Last Days is about the destruction of the Jews in Hungary at the end of WWII. But really, it's about five particular Hungarian Jews. Unfortunately, I'm really just Holocaust-documentary'd-out. I know it's really evil for me, a Jew, to say this, but there's no escaping it: a Holocaust documentary really needs to be outstanding to rate. About the only thing that really stood out in this one was that it included interviews with Tom Lantos (D-CA), the only Holocaust survivor to be elected to Congress. I found him more interesting than the others. Otherwise it's just a 90 minute very, very brief overview of Hungarian Jews in the Holocaust with some footage of some of them going to the camps afterwards. But very little makes this one stand out from others. It's clearly just the Zionist conspiracy that got this one the Oscar. Well, I haven't really seen any of the other documentaries that could have won an Oscar then, but I doubt it could be better than Regret to Inform. That one is probably outstanding.

Zhou Yu's Train has the bad Tony Leung. Well, he's actually the not quite as good as the awesome Tony Leung, but that's way too long of a title. And the movie had censorship problems in China because of some sex scenes. Appropriately, it was rated PG-13 in the US. At least I'm not trying to watch movies there. My complaining about NC-17 films here probably would be a serious issue there. Then again, Category III films in Hong Kong are pretty much all R-rated here as well. As for the movie, as much as I find Gong Li extremely attractive, was there a need for her to play two parts? And then edit the film in a very confusing fashion so that it's not really clear as to whether the characters are the same person at different times in her life or if they're two different people. I mean the ending seems to suggest one thing, but beh. It's a well-filmed movie, but the plot was a mess. It also was an obvious attempt to use crappy slo-mo to heighten the effect of some scenes. Just because Wong Kar-Wai does something very well doesn't mean you all have to rip him off. Be your own director! I need to avoid renting films just because attractive Asian women are in them. I need to stick to renting films that have attractive Asian women in them and are good! At least the movie makes me want to go on long train rides...