The Hire *
Various, 2001-2002
US
@ MoMA

Eight films produced by BMW of North America: Ambush (John Frankenheimer), Chosen (Ang Lee), The Follow (Wong Kar-Wai), Star (Guy Ritchie), and Powder Keg (Alejandro González Iñárritu) (all 2001); and Hostage (John Woo), Ticker (Joe Carnahan), and Beat the Devil (Tony Scott) (all 2002). With Clive Owen as "the driver."

Frankenheimer's is straightforward car chase with just a bit of narrative twist at the end. Lee has more of a twist, and more time outside the car. WKW does exactly his thing, and is the chase even really a chase? Ritchie's stars Madonna as a spoiled diva who gets tossed around in the back seat due to Owen's driving. The last three expand the narrative element some more. I guess you can probably find these all together on BitTorrent or something, but it was nice to see them full-force on a big screen. And MoMA used a Cinemascope-width screen, but the credits scrolled in an Academy frame, so they started on the floor and ended on the ceiling, which was a nice if unintended effect.

See also: IMDb

Lust, Caution (Se, Jei) *
Ang Lee, 2007
Taiwan
@ Landmark Sunshine

The critical consensus is right: this movie is really boring except for the few scenes that earned the NC-17 rating. The prologue seems just peremptory, full of flat dialogue and uninteresting characters. Particularly the camera work indicates to me that not much attention is paid to the less integral moments in the movie, of which there are a lot over 158 minutes. Scenes are rarely well-conceived, shots mostly cut from one close-up to another, sometimes almost at random. Maybe Ang Lee knows things about these minor characters (the acting troupe, the mah jongg players) that he fails to reveal effectively, but it seems appalling that we spend so much time watching go-nowhere characters through an uninspired lens.

The few high points: there's one scene where the camera is set near the ceiling, craning down toward the couple, and it kind of circles around as one of them leaves, reframing around the other. It's not worldchanging by any means, but it reveals just how dull most of the other similar scenes are. Then you've got the sex scenes, and maybe even better, Tang Wei's monologue about what her role as a Mata Hari is doing too her emotionally, which is obviously much more than her supposedly tough intelligence liaisons can handle. In particular her description of the longed-for assassination of her target/lover as a kind of metaphysical and bloody Cronenberg-esque orgasm feels really inspired.

Tony Leung's character in 2046 was similar in many ways, but somehow his muted emotions in that film resonated whereas here they almost don't even register.

See also: IMDb | Metacritic