Movie reviews

Not to excuse his actions in any way, but I wonder how much Polanski changed after the Manson girls murdered his pregnant wife. I was always amazed how popular Michael Jackson remained after his multiple offenses.

I remember seeing an interview with the woman who was involved in the Polanski incident, and she seemed to me to almost say he was innocent--or it was consensual sex in her mind, even as an adult, and that she's almost like friends with him still? At least that's what I remember. But that open letter from Dylan Farrow is pretty straight-forward--he took a seven year old girl up in an attic and...

So, what did I do after reading that disturbing disclosure? I watched a disturbing documentary called, "The Act of Killing"(2013). Some background is necessary: Starting in 1965, in Indonesia, the murder of over 2.5 million people took place. The murdered people were called "communists". The murderers called themselves "gangsters", meaning, in their view, "free people". The U.S. government supported the "gangsters". The main gangster in this documentary, Anwar Congo, got a lot of his ideas on how to murder people from American films, which he loved. In fact, he loved movies so much that he decided to make a movie about how he killed people in 1965. Of course, just like the U.S. government calls anyone today a "terrorist", back then they called them a "communist", which was just a label that didn't mean anything. They were just the "enemies of freedom" in propaganda-speak. The Indonesian, U.S. supported "gangsters" did the same thing. If they wanted to steal from you, then you were a "communist". If they wanted to suppress protests, then you were a communist. If they wanted to rape you, then you were a "communist" and you "deserved it". In this documentary, Anwar Congo, and his friends, re-enact how they killed people. It's about 45 minutes into the film that one of them finally brings up being possibly regretful. From that point they slowly become more self-aware of the immorality of it all.

It's one of the strangest movies I've ever seen. There are psychological, political, and sociological profundities throughout the film. I kept being confused about whether or not what I'm watching is being invented or is real. Am I watching actual crimes in certain scenes or are those scenes a part of a re-enactment? But there is no doubt that you're watching criminals--murderers, rapists, torturers, etc. The end credits are as strange as the film, with such names as Werner Herzog and Errol Morris as producers, while a number of credits are left "anonymous", perhaps out of fear. I doubt if I'll ever forget watching this documentary.

Wow, I was just informed of this:

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/philip-seymour-hoffman-found-dead-new-york-city-apartment-report-article-1.1599537

He was probably one of the best actors since he showed up in the 1990s, in my view. I can't recall ever seeing him in a bad performance.

Favourite: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N5m6FrFsi8Y

I never saw that movie. I liked him in Cold Mountain, Truman, and The Ides of March. But he was also in a lot of films I didn't see:)

         He played the bad guy in one of Tom Cruise's Mission Immpossible films. He wanted the rabbit's foot.

Good narrative flick illuminated by Phillip Baker Hall's stellar performance.  Hoffman is only in for that scene.

Have you seen "The Act of Killing" yet, TB? I don't think I should have watched it. It's been hanging around in my mind all day.

No, I haven't; the description does make it sound rather frightening.  A long time ago I planned on seeing it at the cinema but came down with a stomach ache.  Good job I decided against going anyway, I guess.

It may be the film that will never stop being talked about decades from now(if there is a human population decades from now).

Phillip Seymour Hoffman ws good in the title role in Capote. I liked him in Ed Norton's 25th Hour and as the CIA agent in Charlie Wilson's War. Sad news.

            Your, "Act of Killing"; is that the unsanitized version of, "The Killing Fields"?

Oh yeah, "Capote"--I called that movie "Truman" earlier.

I didn't see The Killing Fields. Wasn't that set in Vietnam, though?

             Yeah; its about how Po Pot slaughtered a generation of people.

Cambodia, then.

Yes, that was like the mid to late 1970s, Cambodia(I think at that time it was called "The People's Republic of Kampuchea"). The film I saw last night recounts the events between 1965-1966, Indonesia.

Yes, the "disappearing" of Indonesian communists and trade unionists.  With the West's stamp of approval, naturally.