The Twelve Chairs, The Passenger, & The Eel

The Twelve Chairs has a very early performance from Frank Langella. I never would have recognized him without the opening credits having the pictures of the characters along with names and who they were playing. Too bad the film is one of those that my dad recommended as hilarious years ago. For some reason, it doesn't work nearly as well as his other films of the time period, all of which are classics. This one is just minor. Partly because Dom DeLuise isn't funny at all. Ron Moody and Langella attempt the accent, but DeLuise doesn't even bother. It's like Joe Dallesandro in Blood for Dracula: that one non-attempt to do the accent along with everyone else at least attempting bothers me far more than if no one attempted it.

The Passenger is probably Antonioni's last great film. Not like he's going to make another one now, but that I haven't seen any of his later films besides the horrendous Eros segment. It also has Jack Nicholson and Maria Schneider (Who doesn't get anally penetrated with the help of butter! Probably a request in her contract!). It's not as good as Blow-Up, but better than the others I've seen. Nicholson is actually interesting. Man, I miss when he acted. Yeah, he was great in The Departed, but there are so many films where he's just terrible. Anyway, that final shot was masterfully put together.

The Eel is another Shohei Imamura film, so it's about sex and Japanese society. This one also messes with what we believe, with the possibility that some of what we are seeing is not true. I was a little disappointed in that, because things presented as true and later turn out to be false break one of the rules of the relationship of the film and the viewer. Given that, at least there's evidence well ahead of time that it's not entirely trustworthy. It's also quite funny, is about a barber (like The Pornographers), and has an eel in it. That eel is not at all a metaphor for a penis. Also there was discussion of sushi and the title of the film is Unagi, so I just got a little hungry watching it. The two leads of the film, besides being in a combination of other Imamura films, they're also both in Shall We Dansu? one of the first Japanese films I distinctly remember watching in the theater. I loved it. Kôji Yakusho has been in quite a few films like Cure, Pulse, Tampopo, and even as Nobu in Memoirs of a Geisha. So he's actually one of those guys, mainly because I haven't spent any time trying to remember his name. But I will now. Anyway, it also had Sho Aikawa in it, who's been in a bunch of Miike films like the Dead or Alive trilogy, Gozu, and Rainy Dog and Ley Lines. Man, that's a lot of linkage. I also want to mention that the UFO guy was hilariously bizarre, and thank everyone involved for not making abortion a horrendous possibility or event. It's a quirky little film, one I'm surprised won the Golden Palm, due to it being a small film, and some of the competition that year (The Ice Storm, L.A. Confidential, Happy Together, and Welcome to Sarajevo, all quite good to great).