Cashback, The Last Winter, Winter Soldier, No End in Sight, Night and Fog, Tokyo-Ga, & Paper Dolls

Cashback is the extended feature length version of the short I saw a couple years ago. Now, I don't normally see the short film that longer films are based on first, but I have to say that the film works quite well as an extended version of the short, with added bits not detracting all that much. I thought some of them worked quite well, but really, it's just your typical boy loses girl, boy can't sleep, boy stops time, boy gets job at a supermarket on the night shift, boy falls for checkout girl, boy loses a soccer game 26-0, boy gets girl, boy loses girl, boy stops time, boy gets girl with creepy stalkery art exhibit, boy stops time with girl. You know, old school romance. But I still liked it. Of course, some of the more explicit shots of female genitalia are darkened in the feature length version, but if you want to see vaginas, the short is also on the DVD, but more importantly, there's this little thing called the internet. Which, as far as I can tell, is for porn.

The Last Winter moves toward the documentary theme that the rest of the movies I've seen in the last couple weeks fit in. It's not a documentary, but it's an environmental horror film, starring Ron Perlman. There are other people in the movie, but who really cares? Global warming has been thawing out permafrost releasing something that starts driving people crazy. Problem is that it takes forever to actually go anywhere. It's just not a particularly effective thriller or anything. Ron Perlman can't save it.

Winter Soldier just makes me more and more annoyed about Vietnam. Seriously, people, if we didn't have Vietnam, this country would be even more messed up, but that doesn't excuse, I don't know, cutting women open for no reason, skinning people, shooting people for no reason, and more atrocities. John Kerry was right, Republicans were wrong, blah blah blah. Look, Americans aren't perfect, hell, for many years, we've been horribly wrong on a lot of things, so stop acting like we're better than everyone else (except maybe at Football). Vietnam was a mess, but we learned valuable lessons that some people in the Bush administration didn't bother to remember when it came to Iraq.

No End in Sight, is of course, one of the best examples of how we didn't learn anything. Not listening to reasonable people, allowing for decisions to be made without any experience on the ground, supporting corrupt people... hmmm, sounds just like Vietnam, eh? It's frustrating to watch people be completely oblivious (or plain lying) about their decisions and how they have led to the current mess in Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter). It's even more frustrating to have been right about it ahead of time. As a civilian, I certainly was right about going into Iraq being a terrible thing (you're lucky I'm only reposting my movie reviews from my last blog, because I was full of great vengeance and furious anger throughout most of 2002 and 2003 and 2004 about Bush), but it must feel even worse to have been a member of the administration and not been able to tell your superiors that they're fraking stupid without them just ignoring you.

Night and Fog is a 30-minute-long look at Auschwitz (and other concentration camps) during the war and in 1955. As it's only 30 minutes long, it glosses over things, makes generalizations and the like, but it does have extremely powerful footage and narration about the actual structure of the death camps, and who was responsible. I had no idea it was that short (even after looking at the Netflix envelope), and was extremely confused when it just seemed to end. The lack of in-depth... anything, really, means that it would work perfectly for classroom viewing, but there have to be better ways to cover the Holocaust. Although the enormous amount of documentaries and movies may put the lie to that.

Tokyo-Ga is Wim Wenders (doing his best Werner Herzog impression (and they do sound exactly the same)) going to Tokyo to try to figure out what made Yasujiro Ozu tick but mainly just pointing out how odd Japan was in the 80s. Driving ranges, pachinko parlors, and Japanese people with feathered hair mix with Chishu Ryu talking about his experience with Ozu, Wenders filming kids playing baseball in a cemetary, and, in the strangest scene, a rockabily dance off on the streets. There's also bits where he meets Chris Marker (of La Jetee and Sans Soleil fame) and visits a wax food factory (which was wild). But ultimately, as with most Herzog documentaries, this is less about the ostensible subjects of the film and more about Wenders. I can't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of Wenders, Ozu, AND Japan in the 80s, so that really limits people's interest in this film.

Paper Dolls is about a group of people I never knew existed: transsexual Filipino(a?)s who came to Israel to fill jobs that Palestinians used to do before the Intifada caused Israel to close the borders. And they're as mistreated as guest workers in any other country are: if there are any problems or the patient that they're working as nurses dies, they get deported. It's sick. These transsexuals also spend time dancing and lip synching (horribly) in clubs, and part of the plot is that they're trying to put together a show. It would make a much more Hollywood movie if they were great and took the world by storm, but they kinda sucked. And this caused some problems for them, because it just made some of them depressed.