Eros

Eros is another anthology film that has parts that work better than others.

The first one was Wong Kar-Wai's The Hand, which is why I wanted to see the film, and why it was given to me. To give you an idea of whether I liked the film, I was crying through a good portion of the next one. I seem to have this tendency to fall in love with people who don't love me back, and then stay in love even after they've made it clear how they feel. So, of course, I was going to identify with the tailor who gets a handjob from a prostitute and then proceeds to make her gorgeous cheongsams and fall in love with her. It was also shot by Christopher Doyle, so it was also beautifully filmed, and that was some of the saddest rain I've ever seen. As it's a Wong Kar-Wai film, there were some great scenes, such as the two main tailor sequences, which include a sort of sex scene with the newest cheongsam after the aforementioned sad rain, and a scene where Chang Chen measures Gong Li for a dress using only his hands.

Equilibrium by Steven Soderbergh was far lighter, funnier, and has a bit of quite well done dreamlike footage at the beginning. Robert Downey, Jr. and Alan Arkin are funny as an ad man and a psychiatrist trying to understand the ad man's dream. Although Arkin is far more interested in some sort of tryst rather than this dream that seemed to be the only thing that Downey could focus on. I liked it, but not nearly as much as The Hand.

On the other hand (see what I did there? It's funny!), The Dangerous Thread of Things by Michelangelo Antonioni is full of some of the worst dialogue ever written and the two female leads spend no time waiting to get naked. The movie felt like it was made by a 14 year old boy, not a master of cinema. About the only way I could tell the women apart was that one liked horses, was slightly mopier, and had small breasts, while the other was a "free-spirit" who laughs a lot and had larger breasts. Oh, and the small breasted one likes to do ballet in the nude on the beach, while the large breasted one likes to just draw on the beach with a big stick while nude.

Although The Hand was the only one without nudity (Equilibrium has some fleeting glimpses in the dream bit, and The Dangerous Thread of Things would be easier to note scenes without nudity), it was by far the most erotic. I pretty much didn't need to write this review, really, since Roger Ebert expressed my feelings about the film. I even agree with his star ratings for the films, although for Antonioni's it might be better to say, "I award you no stars, and may God have mercy on your soul."