BYU International Cinema: Third Time's NOT the Charm!

BYU really has a cool thing going for them, and that is International Cinema: Three foreign films a week, free, and the raunchy ones are edited. Along with some of my favorite people, I made a goal to go to international cinema at least once a week. And we have succeeded so far!

Week one: Il Postino. It was a charming little Italian movie.

Week two: Babette's Feast. This one is my favorite so far. I highly recommend it. It's a Danish film about a French woman who shows an isolated Puritan community on the coast of Denmark the wonders of good food. Kind of sounds like "Chocolat", but I thought it was better. And I was salivating for that delicious French food. In the words of Liz Lemon, "I want to got to there!"

Week three needs a little explanation as to why I wanted to see the film that I did. Years ago (three and a half, to be exact), I found myself in the wonderful land of China. Our last stop before heading home was Hong Kong, and being the broke volunteers that we were, we found a cheap hostel on the internet. The location was ideal, and it was the best priced for sure. It was located in this building:The ChungKing Mansions.

Can you say ghetto?! And it was. The bottom floors were full of porn stands and other stores, and crammed with people of all nationalities. The owner of our hostel even refused to let the big black guys into his hostel (maybe it was because they were shady, or chinese people are racist. Probably both), and when we told a lady in the Hong Kong ward where we were staying she asked, "HOW did you end up staying there?" So yeah, it was kind of shady. Turns out, there was a movie made inspired by the ChungKing Mansions, and all of its ghetto-ness.

Enter movie #3: Chungking Express. This movie was on crack. What started out as a mystery thriller about a drug deal going down in the ChungKing Mansions completely changed plot and characters half way through, with no connection between the two whatsoever. And what killed me was the second "plot." Girl works at restaurant and gets crush on cop (who was actually a hot chinese guy: those are rare in my opinion) who is still sad over past girlfriend leaving him. Girl starts breaking into cop's apartment everyday and does all kinds of things: re-decorates, waters his plants, dances around, changes the labels on his canned goods... I told you, this movie was on crack! Then cop finds out and instead of being totally creeped out, he asks her out!! Does that even work?! Maybe I should try doing that and guys would start asking me out. Oh wait, I am NOT going to do that because I'm not crazy.

Well, moving on. I can say one positive thing about the movie and that was the soundtrack. Particularly the cantonese version of the Cranberries song "Dreams."


This clip is seriously the most crack head part of the movie. Watch it, it's funny. And in case you were wondering if that was for real, YES, she is slipping him something in his water, and yes, she is searching his bed for bugs (I think).

I don't get this movie!! Maybe I'll stick to the European ones for next week.