Not the best bunch of films I'll ever talk about. First one I saw was Japan's submission to the oscars last year, which was the chronicle/expose of the Japanese legal system I Just Didn't Do It. The story is that a young man is accused of groping on a crowded train. The girl grabs him by the arm, he voluntarily goes to the station office to explain himself but he is whisked off the police station where the court-appointed lawyer tells him to pay the fine and be out of jail tomorrow rather than risk a lengthy incarceration prior to a trial where he has a 0.1% chance of winning. He claims innocence so balks at paying the fine. The acting is fine, Ryo Kase in the lead is very watchable, but it gets so ponderous and repetetive that while you get the frustration the lead character must be feeling in his situation, it doesn't hold interest dramatically.

Whisking along I watched a film I've half-wanted to for a while, La Haine (while it has a reputation it didn't really seem my cup of tea hence it has been on online-rental queues of mine in the past, but never very high). This is one I should have missed because coincidentally (the film's title means "hate") I loathed it. The direction is one of the most immature, ill-conceived efforts I've seen in years. Mathieu Kassovitz (while a decent enough actor) has no idea what he's doing, he has all these tricks but that's all they are - directorial tricks that get you thinking "oh ... that's how he did that" and it doesn't serve the storytelling at all. It's just an exercise in showing off rather than crafting a story, it's a complete vanity-fest. The influence of Tarantino is obvious, the glorification of these characters is pathetic and there is neither comedic nor dramatic intrigue to make following these thoroughly hateful people even mildly worthwhile. Atrocious.

Another in the "half-wanted to" stakes was La Notte. I had almost gotten to the end of my rope with Antonioni, but this is to him what Manhattan is to Woody Allen for me - the one in the catalogue I've seen that I like. It follows a married couple for a day, Marcello Mastroianni the lauded author and Jeanne Moreau his seemingly apathetic wife. It's nicely shot as Antonioni's always are but he manages to retain interest in these characters and I think that has more than a little to do with the performances which are uniformly good. I don't think it says a tremendous amount (it's certainly no Scenes From a Marriage on the insight front) and some aspects of it are too indulgent but it's an intriguing enough study of a relationship going nowhere.

Jeanne Moreau & Marcello Mastroianni

In keeping with the "half" theme of the day I half-watched a couple of things which I nowhere near finished/paid attention to so I can't really go into too much detail. Trouble the Water was on More4 but I was more interested in sorting out the start-up routines of our laptop to pay too much attention to it. I also tried to watch this year's submission to the oscars from Taiwan, Cape No.7 but it was such a stilton-factory I gave up within half an hour.

One I did finish and pay attention to though was The Abdication which incredibly (given its lack of reputation and general obscurity) was on TCM. I think TCM is going through a very strange patch at the moment, they're playing The Bonfire of the Vanities for crying out loud () but I won't complain at all about this one because I've tried to find it online before but to no avail. It stars Liv Ullmann in the story of Queen Christina of Sweden (whose story was so beautifully butchered in Queen Christina) - it's hardly historically accurate itself but far more in comparison with the classic Garbo film. It's about the relationship between her and a Cardinal in the Vatican (Peter Finch) who is interrogating her to assess the sincerity of her conversion to Catholicism following her abdication in Protestant-Sweden.

Ullmann is her usual excellent self, I've never seen her move so much on film before (running hither and thither) - the film itself is not great. Where they take the relationship between the two isn't very convincing and it doesn't really get into the meat and bones of why she abdicated in the first place. What remains is the appealing nature of both performers and they ensure that at all times it is a decent watch. There's not very much chemistry between the two and the script hampers that a fair deal, but it's a different side to Liv and a solid performance from Finch - probably only worth making the effort for if you're a fan of the people involved though.