Movie Blurbs

Dirty Pretty Things--Okwe, a fugitive from Lagos working illicitly at a London hotel desk, uncovers a gruesome scheme by which his Spaniard boss "Sneaky Juan" uses the plight of illegal immigrants to his advantage. I appreciated the social commentary underlying the plot, but the cast of characters struck me as unrealistically multi-ethnic--the only white-bread home-grown Britons we see are a couple of pharmacists who get about 15 seconds of screen time, and even the bad-guy immigration cops look imported. Despite her prominence in the movie poster, Audrey Tautou's Senay is a secondary character, a Turkish chambermaid who is Sneaky Juan's latest prey. It's a low-key movie, only occasionally funny or suspenseful. It is, however, refreshingly old-fashioned: the heros behave with quiet integrity in the midst of a corrupt underworld and sustain a love affair that doesn't end in rutting. B-

To Live (Huozhe)--J.E.'s wife loaned me this one on an authentic pirated Chinese DVD. It's a typically solid Zhang Yimou historical drama, rather like Kaige Chen's Farewell My Concubine in following a character from the last decadent days of the Chinese aristocracy to the terror of the Cultural Revolution--except here the featured traditional Chinese art form is shadow puppetry rather than Peking opera. B+

The Talented Mr. Ripley--An intense meditation on the destructive power of envy. Beautiful setting, although I doubt Italy was ever that clean. A

Kiki's Delivery Service--This early Miyazaki is, like Spirited Away, a story about a young girl thrust into a new world without parental support; but, though cute, it is not nearly as imaginative. Not as exotic, either; while Miyazaki's latest films draw from Japanese mythology, Kiki's inhabits a Brother Grimm world of witches on broomsticks and Bavarian towns with cobblestone streets. B-