Daryl Hannah's character complains about her ex-boyfriend idolizing her: "He thinks I'm an angel. (pause) It got to be a f-cking bore." If that didn't make you laugh, avoid this film. If it did make you laugh, there are certainly other films that would be funnier to you.
Reviews
5 Reviews
Beautiful futility.
4 August 2001
Warning: Spoilers
*SOME MINOR SPOILERS FOLLOW*
Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai represent the monk/warrior/meditative class seeking Nirvana. While Shu Lien still thinks there is virtue in such discipline, Mu Bai has become disillusioned. He has outdone his masters and achieved a meditative state of complete radiance, but for him it was unfulling and painful. Because of the impersonal nature of Nirvana, Shu Lien could never be there with him as an individual. Since they are deeply in love, yet chaste, Mu Bai has realized that no fulfillment exists for him apart from Shu Lien. That is, author Du Lu Wang has rejected the classical Chinese program of salvation through mental discipline in favor of the Western ideal of romantic love.
Lu Wang also rejects the Confucian ideal of submission to social order. Sha-Long is approvingly portrayed abandoning her husband from the marriage arranged for her by her aristorcratic parents. Again, the Western ideal of romantic love is given to us as superior to classical Chinese values. The willful Sha-Long is allowed to experience the freedom of unfettered romantic love in a desert sequence with the equally independent Sha-Hu. This sequence is essential to the storyline. It shows the kind of freedom which Lu Wang takes to be the `right kind' of freedom, as opposed to the mean, totally self-centered freedom exemplified by Jade Fox.
The problem, of course, is that romantic love does not provide the meaning of life any more than does meditation or scrupulous observation of social rules. We need only look at the Western experience, steeped as it is in willful romanticism, to notice the shortcomings of romantic love as a religion. In the closing scene, Sha-Hu is grieved. He knows that Sha-Long's leap from the bridge is impossible. It will not close the gap between them, nor bring them to a realm of romantic freedom. Sha-Long's leap is about herself, not them. It cannot be otherwise within a Western humanism centered on personal fulfillment. It's success depends on the unreality of those portions of the human heart that perpetually foil the human quest for meaning. There is no non-theistic answer to the question of the meaning of life.
That said, `Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is a great film. The music is great. Yo Yo Ma is great. The cinematography is great. The sense of yearning and unfulfillment in the film's characters is portrayed with gracious understatement. Their passion is expressed with poetry in the dreamlike, yet personal, martial arts sequences. Only in the segments exhalting romantic love are sex scenes necessary or even relevant.
`Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is a beautiful reductio-ad-absurdum of its own ambition.
Shu Lien and Li Mu Bai represent the monk/warrior/meditative class seeking Nirvana. While Shu Lien still thinks there is virtue in such discipline, Mu Bai has become disillusioned. He has outdone his masters and achieved a meditative state of complete radiance, but for him it was unfulling and painful. Because of the impersonal nature of Nirvana, Shu Lien could never be there with him as an individual. Since they are deeply in love, yet chaste, Mu Bai has realized that no fulfillment exists for him apart from Shu Lien. That is, author Du Lu Wang has rejected the classical Chinese program of salvation through mental discipline in favor of the Western ideal of romantic love.
Lu Wang also rejects the Confucian ideal of submission to social order. Sha-Long is approvingly portrayed abandoning her husband from the marriage arranged for her by her aristorcratic parents. Again, the Western ideal of romantic love is given to us as superior to classical Chinese values. The willful Sha-Long is allowed to experience the freedom of unfettered romantic love in a desert sequence with the equally independent Sha-Hu. This sequence is essential to the storyline. It shows the kind of freedom which Lu Wang takes to be the `right kind' of freedom, as opposed to the mean, totally self-centered freedom exemplified by Jade Fox.
The problem, of course, is that romantic love does not provide the meaning of life any more than does meditation or scrupulous observation of social rules. We need only look at the Western experience, steeped as it is in willful romanticism, to notice the shortcomings of romantic love as a religion. In the closing scene, Sha-Hu is grieved. He knows that Sha-Long's leap from the bridge is impossible. It will not close the gap between them, nor bring them to a realm of romantic freedom. Sha-Long's leap is about herself, not them. It cannot be otherwise within a Western humanism centered on personal fulfillment. It's success depends on the unreality of those portions of the human heart that perpetually foil the human quest for meaning. There is no non-theistic answer to the question of the meaning of life.
That said, `Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is a great film. The music is great. Yo Yo Ma is great. The cinematography is great. The sense of yearning and unfulfillment in the film's characters is portrayed with gracious understatement. Their passion is expressed with poetry in the dreamlike, yet personal, martial arts sequences. Only in the segments exhalting romantic love are sex scenes necessary or even relevant.
`Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon' is a beautiful reductio-ad-absurdum of its own ambition.
Stuart Little
(1999)
Who is the target audience?
1 October 2000
Not appropriate for our two-year-old. She doesn't yet, if ever, need to learn to say "Talk to the butt", "What the hell . . .", etc. Perhaps the film is targeted at a more sophisticated, eight-year-old audience that would snicker heartily at such witticisms. Ok, they're _alley_ cats talking, but this is a childrens' movie. Alley cat language aside, this is a slow, mildly entertaining film. I share the puzzlement of another reviewer in that we are given a squeaky-clean Leave-It-to-Beaver family that lives in cliff-hanger world of lethal washing machines, deadly serious gangster cats, spoiled children who cheat by racing armored model sailboats, and adult racing judges who apparently let them. Stuart Little the mouse is endearing. He is very obviously _intended_ to be endearing, but with Michael J. Fox's voice the cutesy-mouse thing works very well. Snowbell, the family cat, is voiced ably by Nathan Lane. He can be menacing inside the house, while believably shrinking into a coward when out in world dealing with alley cats. There is not much here for adults. Too much raunch for kids. Older kids may like the cats, but they will be disappointed that Stuart isn't killed.
Monkey Business
(1952)
Youth formula is put into water cooler with comic results.
30 June 2000
_Monkey Business_ works if, and only if, you can buy the premise that a lab monkey, working behind the scientist's back, can produce an elixer that makes people young again and dump it into the lab's water cooler to watch the results. I find suspending disbelief here no problem, and the result is a wonderfully silly movie. Cary Grant is spot on as the absent-minded scientist, Barnaby Fulton. (The opening credit scene, which seques seamlessly from Cary being referred to as "Mr. Grant" by the off-camera director to Cary being Barnaby Fulton, is a classic in itself.) Ginger Rogers (Mrs. Fulton), is hardly credible as a scientist's wife, but she is brilliant whenever Mrs. Fulton is under the influence of the elixer. Monroe is effortless as the dumb blonde secretary wanting to have "fun" with the youthful version of Barnaby Fulton. Charles Coburn is perfect as the frumpy boss, Mr. Oxley. The comedy is in the situations and dialog that develop as the elixer is repeatedly unwittingly imbibed by Grant and Rogers, and then by others. I would rather not spell these out, but they are fully within the screwball comedy genre that goes back to the 1930's.
The Checkered Flag
(1963)
Two boring racers tangle over a woman.
16 June 2000
OK, so I haven't seen this movie in 38 years. I still have a strong impression of how bad this movie was (I was seven years old). There are no sympathetic characters. By the time of the film's pseudo-climax, we've long since stopped caring whether anything happens to the three principles. This is the kind of movie you want to warn people against.
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