Léon: The Professional

Léon (Jean Reno) is a profession hit man for the mafia with a simple life. He drinks milk, tends to a plant and kills people. All that changes when when his teenage neighbor Mathilda’s (Natalie Portman) family is killed by a group gun totting assassins led by snarly Gary Oldman. Mathilda becomes his responsibility and against his better judgment he starts to train her so that she can take revenge.

It is hard to feel fear with Oldman’s villainous incarnation after seeing the likes of Javier Bardem and  Heath Ledger. However, Natalie Portman has arguably played her best role to date. Unfortunately the role was her first. A cult classic that has not aged well in some parts but timeless in others.

Rating: * * +

The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec

Based on a graphic novel from the 60s, the film follows the adventures of an “investigative” journalist, Adele Blanc-Sec (Louise Bourgoin), during the early 20th century. While she is away excavating tombs of mummies in Egypt with the hope resuscitating them to help cure her sister, Paris is under attack from a pterodactyl. Soon it is up to beautiful journalist to bring order back without any help from the bumbling police. If a slightly classier version of Tombraider with French humor appeals to you, then this film will be hugely satisfying.

Rating: * *

Dance Town

The movie opens with a slice of life in North Korea. A husband and wife furtively watch porn with some fear and exaltation. It might have been cool to dwell a while longer in that mysterious country but director Kyu-hwan Jeon, races across the border to the south as the wife, Jung-nim Rhee (),  escapes on Chinese fishing boat soon after her husband is arrested. Rhee soon is soon faced with a land with “freedom” abound. But being “free” does not equate to contentment and happiness. She is soon confronted with demons called loneliness and despondence. Like it was said in Into the Wild, happiness is only real when shared.

Rating: * * *

Almost Perfect

Vanessa (Kelly Hu) is supposedly an overworked and badly dressed NGO professional with an insanely demanding family. Her life is so busy that she has no time for a relationship. All that changes when Mr. Right shows up in the guise of her kid brother’s best friend. Soon a tiresome romance ensues with myriad of forced problems that leaves you wanting to tear your hair out. The only hope is to focus on the stunning Ms. Hu who fails miserably in trying to look plain. Even more painful was the after film question and answer session with the director Bertha Pan, who obviously needs a crash course in South East Asia cinema. It is a wonder that this film was short listed for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival 2011.

Rating: *

I Wish I Knew

Jia Zhang Ke’s documentary loosely follows the pulse of Shanghai from the 1850s to present day. He feels the pulse by interviewing a spectrum of Shanghainese . Some recognizable like Hsiao-hsien Hou, Rebecca Pan others obscure to a western audience. Their stories bring forth different emotions but none really test your emotional threshold. Plus the lack of interviews with the common man left a gaping hole in the film. Somehow it was the quiet presence of Zhang Ke’s muse, Tao Zhao, that left an impression. Her silent presence evokes the trademark stillness of Zhang Ke and showing that he might be better of sticking to fiction.

Rating: * *

Moon

A distant future and the moon has become the next frontier for energy. Sam Bell toils away in solitude at the moon station, ensuring all harvesting is in ship shape waiting for his three year contract to complete. Strangely, conversations with Earth are not in real time and everything is recorded and “mailed” over. The only day to day contact he has is with GERTY, the robot voiced eerily by Kevin Spacey. And slowly things start to go bump in the Moon and the expected unraveling occurs. A film with a solid premise but the plot is a little too transparent.

Rating: * *

The Milk of Sorrow

Fausta (Magaly Solier) is weighed down by a disease passed to her from her mother. The Milk of Sorrow seeped in to her while being breast fed by her mother during the fearful days in Peru of the reign of terror caused by the conflict between Sendero Luminosa and parliamentary troops . Now her mother’s sudden death has left Fausta like a boat with out a sail in the high seas. The situation forces her to fight the “disease” in her own unique way. A film and an actress that seem straight out of a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel.

 

Update: Why to root against The Milk of Sorrow’s Oscar nomination.

 

Rating: * * +