HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (1986)

"I can't fathom my own heart."

[Update 07/18/2021: Need to edit this review and fix the screenshots.]

HANNAH AND HER SISTERS is anchored around three consecutive Thanksgivings. Kinda like Bergman's FANNY AND ALEXANDER had three Christmas'. The movie opens with a dinner celebration taking place on the first Thanksgiving. Michael Caine (who's married to Hannah - played by Mia Farrow) is moaning away over Hannah's sister Lee, played by Barbara Hershey. He is bored with his marriage and deeply in lust with Lee. Lee is in a relationship with painter Max van Sydow. Hannah's other sister is played by Diane Wiest. She's a drug addicted wannabe actress who is constantly borrowing money from Hannah to support her various ideas like to be a writer or to run a catering company. She also once went on a horrible date with Hannah's ex-husband Mickey, played by Woody Allen.

Everything about this film is engaging. The acting, the cinematography, the music, but what makes it such a great movie to me is the script. Every single line is a treasure. Classic Woody Allen. Just look at this passage where Michael Caine is thinking to himself while watching Lee at the Thanksgiving party:

"God, she's beautiful. She's got the prettiest eyes. She looks so sexy in that sweater. I just want to be alone with her and hold her and kiss her and tell her how much I love her and take care of her. Stop it you idiot, she's your wife's sister. But I can't help it. I'm consumed by her. It's been months now. I dream about her, I - I - I think about her at the office. Oh Lee, what am I gonna do? I hear myself moaning over you and it's disgusting. Before, when she squeezed past me at the doorway and I smelt that perfume on the back of her neck - Jesus, I - I thought I was gonna swoon. Easy! You're a dignified financial adviser. It doesn't look good for you to swoon."

I'm swooning just reading it. I would give 10 inches off my dick if I could write like that.  I get so much pleasure out of watch old Woody Allen movies. He was so great back in the 80's. So great that I nearly forget he later made MELINDA AND MELINDA. [vomits all over keyboard]

If you've never seen HANNAH AND HER SISTERS, I cannot recommend it enough. It has an organic quality. Entirely interdependent, if you know what I mean. I can't put it into words. The important thing is, it breathes. An epiphany of the soul!

MAID-DROID (2009)

[Update 03/02/2021: Need to redo this review completely. Fix the screenshots also.]

What the fuck is the point of this movie? On the one hand you have the police investigating the case of a Rape Machine that's going around raping women in dark alleys and then on the other hand you have a sad story about a old man who was raised by a maid-droid and now, many decades later, her batteries have gone dead so the old man spends his last lonely days talking to the inanimate robot shell and being extremely depressing. Then out of nowhere there's a long scene in the middle about a guy testing out a illegally modified sexbot that ends up exploding his dick. It's all so discombobulated.

The stuff about the Rape Machine sounds interesting, but it was horrible because it looks so goddamn shitty. The pervert test-driving the sexbot was humorous, but not erotic. Finally, the story about the old man pining away over his lifelong partner having a dead battery was actually touching and surprisingly thought provoking. The entire movie should have just been this story and the other stuff trashed. The girl who played the maid did a great job as did the older man, but I cannot recommend this movie. The filmmakers really dropped the ball because they had the makings of a good movie but instead they shot off in multiple directions for no reason.

Fair amount of tits, but it's not erotic. Only the actual maid scenes are hot, but they're over too quickly. There's no way anybody could jack off this this. Skip it.

CHARACTER (1997)

Set in the early 1900's, the boringly-titled CHARACTER tells the story of a stern quiet man who bangs his maid once and they produce a baby boy. She leaves before the child is born and the man stalks her and even proposes to her, but she refuses over and over. The child grows up, but the woman is not much of a mother. She rarely speaks and doesn't have a loving nature. Despite this, the boy grows into a successful young man and even goes to law school. Throughout all of this his father and him have a quiet (and sometimes violent) ongoing war of wits to shows each other who's the boss.

The characters in CHARACTER are so rich that watching the movie is almost like reading a novel. It's like the darker elements of a Dickens novel come to live. A poor boy with no future rises from the ghetto purely by his intelligence and his intense hatred of his father. While the father who goes out of his way to torture the boy because he thinks it will make him strong.

Excellent performances by everybody (especially Jan Decleir as the brutal father), impressive costumes, nice photography.  I don't know how well it would hold up under repeat viewings, it's easy to see why it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film.