Fighting Elegy & The Mosquito Coast

Fighting Elegy is a satire of the militarism that lead to Japanese involvement in World War II. It's very well done and touching, although the touching parts depends if you can handle a character playing the piano with his erection. Actually, it's not really touching. Well, the erection is touching the piano, but the movie is just touching in the normal way. The most interesting aspect is just how ridiculous everything is played out in the film, with Kiroku feeling frustrated by the fact that the Catholic girl he's in love with is not going to get physically intimate with him, and taking out his sexual frustrations with violence. And, by extension, suggesting that a lot of militarism is a result of not enough sex. I'm not sure where the writer was going with Michiko's statement about why they couldn't be together. Maybe there was something more explicit in the original novel, because that seems a little bizarre and like it came out of nowhere.

The Mosquito Coast has one of Jason Alexander's first roles. I didn't recognize him, but the IMDB did. Harrison Ford is very good, and it's an interesting premise, but I just don't understand how someone can be so obsessed with something so ridiculous. I mean, building an ice-making machine in the middle of the Honduran jungle is really crazy. A young River Phoenix was nice. It seems like something that probably would have been better in the original novel, again. Weird how that is.