I'm going to try to take this thing more seriously and do essays on my favorite movies in the next few weeks but first I want to catch up on a couple of recent views.
WARM WATER UNDER A RED BRIDGE
This was one of the last films of Japanese filmmaker Shohei Imamura. The Imamura films I've seen before like "Pigs And Battleships" and "The Pornographers" had a black comic, earthy view of the world that was pretty out there. "Warm Water" was still strange but had a more whimsical tone. It was essentially one of those "Local Hero" type films where an uptight businessman visits some remote village and learns to how to really live from the locals, including the inevitable beautiful girl that he falls in love with. Being Japanese it had its own wacko twists, the biggest being the heroine literally spurting like a geyser when she has sex.
IN HER LINE OF FIRE
I should have known better. Making the hero of a generic action movie a lesbian does not make it a better movie. This was typical cheap stuff about a Secret Service agent saving the Vice-President from mercenaries while shipwrecked on a remote island. The only twist was Mariel Hemingway played the Secret Service agent and she had the usual sexual tension going with a pretty reporter. The strange thing is Hemingway has played a straight version of this part in two previous direct to cable movies. She's also played bisexual or gay characters in several movies before this, not just "Personal Best". Anyway it was by the numbers cheapness that at least moved fast and didn't last too long. You still noticed all the low budget signs though, like "mercenaries" and "revolutionaries" who all had the same New Zealand accent and two people talking in a room standing for all of official Washington's concern about this crisis.
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