The End of Summer, The Bow, Les Enfants Terribles, & The Sorrow and the Pity

The End of Summer is another Ozu film, and basically the same plot as the others. Family struggles with a variety of issues, this one being about a father who has a mistress, possibly an unknown daughter (who dates white boys! Shock! Horror!), and the three daughters who have to figure out what to do. It's quite as good as the other films in the late Ozu collection.

The Bow is a Kim Ki-Duk film, and it's just as f'ed up as most of the others. An old guy has found a seven year old girl, and instead of trying to find her parents, he raises her on a fishing boat until he marries her on her 17th birthday. And then she falls for a boy who goes on one of the fishing jaunts. Oh, did I mention that there's almost no dialogue, he drives men away from the girl by shooting at them with a bow and arrow, and that he tells fortunes by shooting at a buddha on the side of the boat with the bow as the girl swings back and forth in front of it? Kim Ki-Duk, you're crazy.

Les Enfants Terribles is an early Jean-Pierre Melville film, although it isn't nearly as good as his later ones. And it's clear whose fault that is: Jean Cocteau, who sabotages the adaptation of his novel by putting a completely inexpressive male lead in the film. Otherwise, it's an interesting story about two siblings who drift through life getting everything they want and being evil, evil people. And, of course, how they're not emotionally healthy due to that.

The Sorrow and the Pity is a 260 minute long French documentary about a town, Clermont-Ferrand, during World War II, and the collaborators who lived there. Did I mention it was 260 minutes long, in French, and a documentary including people justifying their collaborations with the Nazis? Why the hell did I think it was a good idea for me to watch it? Stupid Annie Hall.