Day 155: This Girl's Life

A porn star takes us through her life at work and at home. As well as taking part in porn films and be a part of an internet porn house, she also cares for her father who has Parkinson’s.

Moon (Juliette Marquis) is comfortable and content in her work and she says that rather than get paid doing something that makes you miserable, why not do something you love? She and the other women we meet all seem to enjoy what they do for whatever reason they do it. That is, to begin with. As the film progresses, Moon questions the way she's living her life. After being asked by a friend to check to see if her boyfriend would cheat on her, Moon decides that this is something she wants to do all the time. She was dissatisfied with the lack of women involved in the behind-the-scenes aspects of porn and she thinks that if she starts up a sex investigator business then she’ll be calling the shots. She is very enthusiastic about it and has a lot of clients but after a frightening encounter with one of the men she was meant to deceive, she questions what she’s doing and whether she’s causing damage to families. Moon seems to come to the decision that the sex investigator business is bad news and around the same time she decides not to renew her contract at the porn company she had been working for. She doesn’t know what she wants to do with her life but she knows it’s got to be something different.

If you don’t like films where the character(s) talk to the camera, then I’d give this one a miss. The idea was good but I didn’t like the way it was shot in a sort of documentary style. Interesting but could’ve been better executed.

6/10

Day 154: Carnage

Following a fight, the parents of the two children involved meet to discuss what happened and how best to go about resolving it. They start off as overly polite and attempt to remain adult about things but it soon descends into chaos after being stuck together in the same room for a while.

Having never been in a fight, I’ve never had to experience the sheer awkwardness of parents attempting to be sensible about dealing with it. There’s a part of them that’s obviously furious that it would happen and that their child is hurt, but there’s also a part that realises that it was the children who did it and the adults have to behave in a polite way. Penelope (Jodie Foster) is clearly furious that her son was beaten up but she also tries to rise above it and see things in a more impartial way. Her attempts at being the bigger person, however, fail right off the bat due to her inability to stop making little remarks at every available opportunity. It’s clear that she doesn’t have the support of her husband and that she forced him into the meeting; he starts off doing exactly what she wants but in the end, he doesn’t actually care about any of it. The other mother, Nancy (Kate Winslet), tries to be accommodating to Penelope and Michael (John C Reilly) because she knows her son has done wrong but she doesn’t care about resolving it in a healthy way, she just wants it over with. After continual provocation from Penelope, she lashes out and tries to lessen her son’s responsibility in the incident. Her husband, Alan (Christoph Waltz), couldn’t care less about any of this as he is completely preoccupied by his work. During the time they spend together, he continually answers his phone in the middle of everybody talking and as the film progresses everyone becomes more irritated by it. In the end, nothing is resolved and everybody has said and done things that they will no doubt later regret.

I kept comparing this film to ‘Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?’ despite them not having similar storylines. The set-up is similar in that there are 4 people and they are mainly confined to one place and they all get progressively drunker and more aggressive. Carnage is the poorer of the two, so I’d suggest watching the other if that’s what you’re looking for. It’s not that it was bad, but it was all done too quickly. I understand that they were all on the edge anyway and that it certainly wouldn’t have taken them long to topple into anger but I would’ve preferred if it had been drawn out. The film itself is only 76 minutes long and it does do well in that short amount of time but it might’ve benefitted from taking some time to build the tension.

7/10

Day 153: 50/50

Adam (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) doesn’t smoke, drink or drive because they’re all dangerous and so when he gets cancer, it puts the danger of those into perspective. His best friend is there for him in ways particular to friends (trying to get him laid, using the cancer to hit on cute women, etc.) and he considers his relationship with his parents from a different angle, which seems to lessen the tension.

I’ve never had anyone close to me be seriously ill so I have no idea what that must feel like. It seems like it would be such a difficult thing to deal with. Kyle (Seth Rogen), Adam’s best friend, is his normal self around Adam and he doesn’t let the whole cancer thing affect what they get up to. Adam is eventually frustrated because he thinks Kyle isn’t taking it seriously but he learns that Kyle has been reading up on how to be there for him and he understands. Kyle has probably found it so difficult to deal with the fact that his friend could die very soon but he knew that what he’s feeling can’t get in the way of the friendship because it’s not about him, it’s about Adam. I liked Kyle and his unapologetically way of being honest. He seemed like a genuine person.

The balance between humour and sadness is well done here. The lighter aspects don’t seem forced and so it helps to feel the darker parts in a stronger way. I liked the film. Good and sad, what more could you want?

8/10

Day 152: Oldboy

After being kidnapped and imprisoned for 15 years, Dae-su (Min-sik Choi) is freed and he wants vengeance. His captor wants Dae-su to understand why he wanted to keep him locked up for 15 years. Perhaps it would’ve been better to have just left Korea because what he finds out is devastating. Spoilers!

We follow Dae-su as he recounts his ‘story’, which consists of being kidnapped, drugged, imprisoned for 15 years and having his wife’s murder pinned on him. After he is freed, he meets Mi-do (Hye-jeong Kang) and the two become close very quickly. She helps him to find out where he was being held and she tends his various injuries. His captor, Woo-jin (Ji-tae Yu), says that unless Dae-su can work out why he was imprisoned, he’ll kill Mi-do. Dae-su races to work out what could possibly be the reason but he does eventually remember; when they were all at school, Dae-su saw Woo-jin getting intimate with his own sister and then rumours began to spread which made her life hell and eventually led to her suicide. Woo-jin hypnotised Dae-su and Mi-do in order for them to come together and fall in love, but it’s revealed that Mi-do is actually Dae-su’s daughter. Dae-su is obviously horrified (they had a lot of sex) and he begs Woo-jin not to tell Mi-do. He agrees and then goes off and kills himself, his work now complete.

I find incest such an interesting subject. It seems so alien to me that you could develop feelings for a relative, especially one you were raised with. But then, people usually end up developing feelings for the people they spend a lot of time around and have shared experiences with, which sounds like the relationship you’d have with a close relative, no? I don’t know, it’s so interesting. I wonder how many people are in relationships with someone they’re related to and I wonder how they cope with the stigma surrounding it.

Thiiiiis fiiiiiilm. I can’t believe I’ve not watched it until just now. It is excellent and you should all be watching it right this second.

9/10

Day 151: Lady and the Tramp

After her owners have a baby, Lady stands guard. But when Aunt Sarah comes to stay, she misinterprets Lady’s intentions and she’s kept away from the baby. Lady has made a new friend and he’s more about adventure and experiencing life away from humans. That doesn’t last too long though and he’s happy to have the family life with Lady.

I love dogs and I love films about dogs. This is just as cute as I remember it to be. Although I wish there had been some sort of spin-off that focused on Jock and Trusty and their obvious relationship. Pretty sure their spaghetti moment would be just as cute.

7/10

Day 150: You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger

Two couples are having troubles in their lives and relationships. Alfie (Anthony Hopkins) leaves his wife of 40 years because he doesn’t want to accept that he’s old now. Their daughter, Sally (Naomi Watts), wants to start a family and open an art gallery but neither is happening and it puts a strain on her marriage.

It never really occurred to me before how difficult it must be to go through a divorce when you’re a pensioner. I always thought that so long as you had people around then you’d be alright, but obviously that’s just not even close to being correct. Just having people around doesn’t make anyone less lonely, the number of people you have in your life doesn’t have any bearing on the loneliness you feel. Intimacy can reduce loneliness (it can also increase it too, I know), and I don’t mean sexual intimacy, although that too. Even just the little things between you and a partner can reassure you that you’re not alone in this isolating place. And so losing the person closest to you would be hard on anyone but I think perhaps losing them when you’re older would be more difficult. When Alfie leaves her, Helena (Gemma Jones) tries to kill herself and seeks comfort in a fortune teller to try and get through. She spends a lot of her time bothering her daughter and drinking large quantities of alcohol but seems more content now that the fortune teller has told her positive things about her future. Alfie isn’t doing too well; he feels young at heart and after having sex with a young prostitute he proposes to her and lavishes a small fortune on her. She’s not interested in the things he is and she soon cheats on him with a man her own age. He realises that the something extra he wanted out of life was just a dream and he tries to reunite with Helena, but she has moved on. It all seemed rather difficult and I’m not convinced either of them were happy with the choices they made.

Sally has a crush on her new boss and she thinks he might like her too. Her husband, Roy (Josh Brolin), is a writer who is struggling to finish his new novel and he seems reluctant to start a family with her. She decides that what she needs to do is open up an art gallery since that has been her lifelong dream, and her mum has agreed to lend her the money necessary to do so. But she discovers that her boss doesn’t actually feel anything for her and is instead having an affair with her friend, and when she goes to her mum to ask about getting more than the initial amount of money, she is told that she can’t have any of the money. Sally and Roy divorce, her boss has stated he has no interest in her, and her dream of opening a gallery seems to be getting further away. It all gets too much and she takes it out on her mother, calling her an idiot for listening to this fortune teller. Despite being supportive of her mother’s apparent improvement due to the meetings with the fortune teller, hearing that she can’t have the money seems to be the last straw and she lets out all the vicious feelings she had been holding back. Everything she wanted in life has been ripped away all quite quickly and so she hits out at the easiest target.

Instead of working within the relationship to improve their lives and help each other, they choose to look for what they want away from their partners. I want to hope most people would try to make it work within their relationship but I don’t think that’s actually what happens. It seems that when people feel some sort of dissatisfaction in their lives, they hold those closest to them responsible. It’s almost like they see them as some sort of anchor that is weighing them down and stopping them from moving forward to new and better things. While I’ll agree that some people can be anchors, I don’t think that’s fair for everyone. People will always bring something to your life and especially those closest to you, who you share things with. To blame them for your dissatisfaction is to pick an easy target and it most likely won’t lead to anything good.

The film was alright but I wasn’t bowled over by it. I didn’t really believe any of the characters and so their relationships with each other just seemed forced. The story was interesting, I do like this kind of thing.

6/10

Day 149: Memoirs of a Geisha

A little girl is sold out of her small village to a woman who will raise her in the ways of a geisha. That was the initial plan but after many run-ins, it is decided that Chiyo (Ziyi Zhang) will work as a servant instead. Until the wonderful geisha Mameha (Michelle Yeoh) takes her under her wing and makes her into the most sought-after geisha.

Chiyo’s strength despite all the hardships and spitefulness she faces is quite impressive. She works hard for what she wants and even after she thinks she won’t get what it is she has worked so hard for, she still carries on. Finally though, her perseverance is rewarded and she gets to be with the Chairman (Ken Watanabe). That’s quite a touching scene itself and you can see that the Chairman and Chiyo had so both wanted to be with each other but couldn’t due to circumstance and loyalty.

The film itself is quite visually interesting. It did well in documenting the change from poor village girl to wonderful geisha with Chiyo. I liked that we got to see a lot of what went into the process as it gave some insight into how exact and unforgiving it all is.

7/10