A Snake of June

I liked this a whole lot. I suppose my main atraction to this is the complete new way of film expression. The multi-tiered storyline is almost schizophrenic but hangs together rather well. It also manages to be highly erotic in one scene that has no nudity whatsoever. Is it about fear of death? Emasculation of sexual desires? A sexually estranged couple regaining their vigour? Acceptance of deformity?

It is all this and more. With the rain a constant backdrop, this one tinges dread but it's dread of something your subconscious would desire, shattering though it may be. Also has a bit of Lynchian dreamscapes but ultimately it's Shinya Tsukamoto's (Tetsuo 1 and 2) own personal vision. He would do well as a marriage counsellor, I guess.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

The final part of Park Chan Wook's Vengeance trilogy and by far, the weakest. Eschewing the stylicism of Oldboy and the emotional manipulation of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, this one runs like any other soap opera which the Koreans are so good at putting out.

If there are any allusions to anything at all, this one is more of a homage to the Female Prisoner #701 series with Lee Young Ae's performance a nod to Kaji Meiko's in said film. The plot is paper-thin. For its benefit, the set designs are striking and evokes what Park designed in that part of "Three Extremes", "Cut", which I enjoyed thoroughly. I have no idea how Lee Young Ae won the Korean Best Actress Award for this film as she just sleepwalks through the role. To its credit, the final revenge sequence is a bit of black comedy gold. Found this in the soft porn section even if no nudity and some pretty ugly sex. Hello? I think the rating is for violence. Bah!

Southland Tales

What can I say? This one is a glorious mess. All Richard Kelly did was film the unfilmable aspects of a Philip K. Dick novel thrown in with some Frank Miller's Dark Knight-style media chiaruscuro. Time travel, pop culture porn icon, Bush bashing, new fangled drugs. It really shouldn't work and it doesn't. The Rock also puts in a very fey performace as a neurotic action star.

Add to the fact that if you do so much as blink, you'd miss an important part of the plot. The plot really really really cannot fit into the 140 minutes here. Yeah throughout it all, I found this likable for its ambition and its imminent destiny as a cult favourite. File under "Hudson Hawk" for critical and commercial failures that Patrick Lim enjoys.