Bill Maher: The Decider, Dr. Akagi, & The Ice Harvest

Bill Maher: The Decider was a new HBO special recorded on Saturday night in Boston. Maher continues to be really funny, even if a lot of it isn't particularly new for him. But even if a lot of it is stuff he's been complaining about for years, he's hilarious, and I will continue to watch him.

Dr. Akagi has a scene where a perverted man sticks an egg up a woman and then eats it. Somehow, this is the second film I've seen about life in Japan during World War II that had a scene like that. I don't know what that says about me, but I really don't have a strong desire to do the same thing. Maybe the Japanese are far more food-sex obsessed. Well, there's also Tampopo, the best food-sex film ever. At least it's better than violence-sex obsessed like America. The film's about a doctor in rural Japan, near Hiroshima, who tries to deal with the hepatitis outbreak. With the help of a drunk priest, a morphine-addicted surgeon, an escaped Dutch POW, and a prostitute-fisherwoman who can't stop working and wants to kill a whale. It's a Shohei Imamura film, so of course it's obsessed with sex, but it's also pretty funny. And anti-war, like many of the best Japanese films. Gotta love that obsession with sex, humor, and being anti-war. Somehow, he's Bill Maher.

Ice Harvest is a film I kept hoping would become good. Damn shame about that film. Oliver Platt's character, and, actually, pretty much every single character in the film is just annoying as hell. That the film just came so close to actually become not bad is worse than if it hadn't come close. The alternate endings fit the movie well, but continuing that mean streak to the end was just too much.