Well, I've basically seen jack all new over the past few days and seeing as I'm going to be completely busy tomorrow I thought I may as well talk about a couple of films which, while I've seen before, I've never seen them in their entirity before. These are two "ten minute" films where I come in after the first ten minutes and end up watching it and then hating that I missed the beginning. Show Me Love is probably my most loved film that I discovered in this way and Before Sunrise & In the Mood For Love are the opposites in that I saw everything but the *last* ten minutes (and those turn into proper obsessions, let me tell you 
).
Anyway, I digress (you can tell I've not written for a few days, 
) - first up is the Korean film Take Care of My Cat. Now this may be an appalling title, but it is probably the greatest chick-flick of the 21st Century. I first saw this on BBC Four when Jonathan Ross was doing his shows on South-East Asian cinema and they messed up the start time which made me miss the opening 10 mins or so. I went on and completely enjoyed this lovely little film and lovefilm sent it to me as I thought it deserved a re-watch. I was right.
The plot set up is five schoolfriends are getting on with their lives and struggling to stay in touch. One girl has a job as a glorified coffee maker in an office yet she feels and acts superior to her friends. One works for free for her Dad's sauna/baths, another is from a very poor family and can't find work and rounding out the five are a set of twins who sell home made crafts. The film is us following these characters and seeing how their lives unfold. The eponymous cat is a kitten who is bought for one as a present but eventually gets passed around the set of girls. This is really sweet, very well made and quite beautifully drawn and acted (especially Bae Doo-na). It's first rate stuff and about as good as the genre gets. Highly recommended.
The other of the 10 minute movies I've seen recently (well, today actually) was Italian For Beginners - I liked this very much when I saw it on Sky years ago (must have been 3 or 4 years, I was amazed how little I remembered of the film even though I held certain aspects of it very firmly to my heart in the meantime), this time I flat out adored it.
It's another one about a group of people, this lot linked by an Italian class run by the local council. Two attendees work at the local football stadium & hotel, one is a clumsy blonde who works in a cake shop (the utterly DIVINE Anette Støvelbæk, who was the standout for me when I first saw it and it was no different second time around), another a nurse at a hospital where we see a hairdresser (who regularly does the guy at the hotel's hair and gets recommended by him to others), a priest who is filling in temporarily at the local parish (I'd TOTALLY forgotten that subplot but it's very nicely done) and a couple of others.
This is a wonderful romantic comedy/drama but the body count is actually quite impressive, a LOT of peripheral characters bite the dust to add to the drama and journey of our linguistically inquisitive octet. The relationship between the suit in the hotel and the Italian girl in the kitchen of the stadium restaurant is absolutely beautifully done, extremely sweet and delightfully real and my favourite element of the story. The best part of the film though is undoubtedly Støvelbæk, superlatives don't really cover it, she's up there with Amy Adams in Junebug for supporting female of the decade.
It's a genuine ensemble and it's nicely shared out. Despite the interweaving of the plots it rarely feels contrived as ways the plot moves and the relationships deepen feel so natural out of the situations. I read somewhere it's the most successful Danish movie globally and it's easy to see why, it's so accessible. Of course though this gem, despite doing very well at the Berlin Film Festival got pretty much ignored in terms of critics awards in English speaking countries, even in the limited world of the "foreign language film". That said though this is one of the best you'll find from the last decade, the acting is uniformly excellent and it's marvellously written, I can't recommend it highly enough.
p.s. I saw Cat Ballou at the weekend because Lee Marvin won an oscar for it. What a steaming pile of excrement that was. His oscar win = funnier than anything in that disgrace to celluloid. I won't dignify it further by discussing it at length 
.