Milk of Sorrow

I was reminded of The Headless Woman while watching this. In that film, I was more interested in the white-skinned protagonist's brown-skinned help and here, I was more interested in the brown-skinned protagonist's white-skinned employer. When you win, you can't win. Only shot that made an impression on me was a shot of a floor scattered and covered with pearls with the protagonist and her employer slowly picking up the pearls mainly because the actress that portrays the protagonist's employer has a grace of movement in this shot that is often afforded to actors and actresses in Rivette. In regards to the whole, it's arthouse up the ass and has a dead-serious fable quality to it that I frankly found kind of annoying.

Amer

I can't comment on how giallo this supposed homage to giallo is due to my experience with the genre only limited to a few Argento films and even then, I'm not sure if any or all of those are actually categorized in the genre. I do know that the film contains some tripped-out lighting that is reminiscent of the kind in Suspiria and disembodied black-gloved hands make an appearance that are a hallmark of the genre (or are they?). Every shot in this bad boy drips of sex, menace, and, several times, both. The framing of the shots often dismembers body parts and it both dehumanizes and heightens the sense of physicality involved with mundane gestures. The film works best when it generates suspense out of seemingly thin air and the danger is imagined instead of reality. Plot doesn't matter here since the film goes straight to the jugular of the subconscious through pure stylistic bravado. This is one seductive and sinister experiment that is surpisingly successful.

Piranha 3D

Jerry O'Connell portrays "not" Joe Francis and Christopher Lloyd plays the Doc Brown of man-eating fish instead of time travel and they both seem to be giving performances in the movie I signed up for. The special effects aren't much to look at with the exception of Riley Steele. Ving Rhames's last stand with a boat propeller is glorious but sadly cut short for obvious reasons. The film is what it is except when it isn't. At one minute, the film seems to want me to take pleasure at the sight of Eli Roth getting his head smashed in by a speed boat and at the next moment, it wants me to give a shit about the plight of Elizabeth Shue and her dumb kids. I'm indiscriminate when it comes to horror victims. I wanted them all as food for the fishes. Unlike such fare as, say, Snakes on a Plane, it never builds to a transcendent stupidity like I wanted it to and the violence is actually pretty dang grody and didn't lend itself well as fodder for derisive laughter. Forgettable except for O'Connell's character "not" inspired by the creator and producer of the "Girls Gone Wild"(TM) series's final words, which will haunt me for ages.

I Am Love

All the shots scream art and they are but not of the good variety. Only one shot got to me and it was a shot of the daughter up real close and you couldn't see her ears and can barely catch a glimpse of her hair. It was just face. It was intriguing in a humane way, if that makes sense. A bevy of shots from various angles of buildings, food, and such does nothing for me.

The drama is melodrama, but the heightening that comes along with the territory is less about emotion and more about the sensation of artistic significance. Brother obviously wants to go down in history as the next Visconti since you get the vibe that he's just doing a loose modern-set re-staging of The Leopard with this. The current of time is touched upon and is symbolized, strangely enough, by the Indian dude from The Life Aquatic. In an interesting twist (if you're being generous), the one that can't handle that the times are a-changin' is not either of the patriarchs but the son. And what happens to that son is designed to generate some extraneous drama and make some pronouncement about how time is unfair or some such nonsense.

The film is chiefly about an extramarital affair. The way this enterprise blossoms can best be described by myself like this: just imagine the scene in Ratatouille where the critic eats the titular treat, replace the critic with Tilda Swinton, replace the pack of cooking rats with a slightly goofy-looking Italian dude, and replace the critic's nostalgic reverie with Tilda thinking about "making love" to the Italian dude and you get an idea of this film's approach to romance.

Tilda's performance is impressive in terms of actorly dedication. She learned to speak another goddamn language for this part. Some looks on her face got to me near the end, but I've never liked her as much as I did in Benjamin Button.

The ending, with the swelling of music to disproportionate levels, tears and gestures signifying "big emotion," is obviously intended to have you experience a bunch of disparate feelings rushing through you all at once, but all it did was underline how much I didn't care.