Jay's Movie Blog

Not much time for other comments after finishing the review of Paco (didn't get back in until nearly 3am last night, first film today is at noon, so not a lot of time in between), but I will say that that is how you do a film festival day right - six films, all pretty good, guests at three who give entertaining Q&A afterward.

Pako to mahô no ehon (Paco and the Magical Book)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

You could probably cut quite the deceptive trailer for Paco and the Magical Book, if you chose, by concentrating on the fast-paced, animation-heavy last act. It wouldn't be a complete misrepresentation, but it sure wouldn't give a true idea of what director Tetsuya Nakashima has in store for the audience.

He starts with a framing sequence in which an eccentric old man (Sadao Abe) goes to visit an aimless heir. He's looking for the book of the title, now beaten and worn. But once upon a time, there was a hospital. The patients included badly injured firefighter Takita (Hitori Gekidan), hypochondriac drag queen Kinomoto (Jun Kunimura), a psych case who wishes he wasn't human, and failed suicide Muromachi (Satoshi Tsumabuki). There was a doctor who looked forward to the annual play put on for the "Summer Christmas" celebration, and two nurses - Tamako (Anna Tsuchiya), who was always angry, and Masami (Eiko Koike), with vampire-sharp teeth that she frequently sank into her husband, the nephew of the hospital's wealthiest patient, Onuki (Koji Yakusho). Onuki was a mean old man, cruel to everyone he met, even Paco (Ayaka Wilson), whom he thought had stolen his solid-gold cigarette lighter. What Onuki didn't know was that Paco cannot retain a new day's memories after a night's sleep - hence her excitement at reading her new book for the first time every morning. After their first encounter, though, she vaguely remembers Onuki the next day, which stirs some small vestige of human emotion in the old grouch.

It's not much of a spoiler to say that Onuki's heart will grow three sizes by the end of the film. Despite the unorthodox cast of characters, Paco is a fairy tale, and even the smallest of children will not fail to see the connection between Onuki and the greedy, selfish Toad Prince in Paco's storybook. Nakashima and co-writer Nobuhiro Monma (working from a book by Hirohito "Elvis" Goto) are a step or two ahead of the audience in that case, though, using the framing scenes to comment on how most stories work and then sending it off in a different direction - one that doesn't feel arbitrary at all.

Full review at EFC.

"Hâdo ribenji, Mirî" & Hâdo ribenji, Mirî: Buraddi batoru ("Hard Revenge, Milly" & Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm going to have to add these two to the EFC database so that reviews can go in, even though the first is about half-length at 44 minutes. They are pretty exceptional pieces of work for their low budget: Exciting action movies, for sure, but not only does director Takanori Tsujimoto shoot a good action scene - which he does, and having a screen fighter as good as Miki Mizuno in his corner doesn't hurt at all - but he's actually built enough of a story and a world around pretty standard post-apocalyptic trappings that I really want to see more.

Yesterday

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Another no-budget special, almost literally - a bunch of Vancouver film students shot it during their summer vacation for about $10k - and while it doesn't break new zombie-movie ground, it is a pretty darn good "no-one is safe" example of the genre.

Misseu Hongdangmu (Crush and Blush)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Fantasia being the sort of festival that it is, it doesn't always feature a lot of female-oriented movies, so it's nice to see something like Crush and Blush every once in a while. It's written and directed by a woman, and there's really only one noteworthy male character in it. It's also the sort of movie where the knives are out, with the various characters finding ways to make each others' lives miserable even under the occasional guise of sisterhood.

Orochi

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Darn it, I'm not going to start buying Kazuo Umezu horror manga from the comic shop, no matter how many stylish horror movies they make from his work. Orochi is actually pretty restrained (although also a bit plot-heavy) compared to last year's Akanbo Shojo, not showing much in the way of gore or grotesquery at all, and featuring some nice performances from Yoshino Kimura and Noriko Nakagoshi. I've just picked up too many things like The Drifting Classroom, opened to a random page, and put it down having seen something I couldn't unsee.

Smash Cut

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Smash Cut is a lot more fun this sort of "homage" usually is, in large part due to the performance of David Hess as a director of crappy horror movies who finally snaps and starts making his latest flick more real by actually killing people and using their corpses as props (as well as acting out some low-budget filmmaker revenge fantasies). Much of the rest is enjoyably silly, but it's Hess that makes this film worth watching.


Today's plan is Samurai Princess, both 20th Century Boys pictures, Portait of a Beauty, and A Quelle Heure le Train pour Nulle Part.

Monday is looking like La Marque, The Warlords, Coweb, and Life is Hot in Cracktown

Labels: action, Canada, comedy, drama, family, Fantasia, horror, Japan, Korea, sci-fi, zombies

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Huh; I could have sworn I slept through Arcanum as a work-in-progress when it screened at Fantasia back in 2006, but I can't find any record in the blog of doing so. So I guess my being knocked out this time around may entirely be me being tired after a few hours in the office, four movies, and one shorts package.

GS Wandarando (GS Wonderland)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

One of the signs of a particularly good comedy - or any sort of movie, really - is when there are funny or interesting things happening in the corners; stuff that the movie doesn't need but which make things even better. GS Wonderland has plenty of these things, but rather than enhancing an above-average movie, they point out how bland the actual center of the film is.

It's the summer of 1968, and Beatlemania has hit Japan with the sort of pop-cultural wallop that gives rise to scores of imitators. Tomonoro Sasaki (Tetta Sugimoto) has been charged with starting a "group sounds" label for his company (or it's back to producing nursery rhyme flexi-discs!), and has agent Kajii Ryosuke (Shinji Takeda) hunt up a band. He stumbles upon The Diamonds, three guys who had had a cruel prank played upon them by another band - guitarist Masao (Takuya Ishida), drummer Shun (Hiro Mizushima), and bass player Kenta (Yosuke Asari). The song that the company has requires an organist, though - and the only keyboard player Kajii can find is Miku Ono (Chiaki Kuriyama)... and who has ever heard of a girl in a GS band? So, one promise of a solo contract and wig later, "Michio 'Mick' Ono" is part of the group. The Diamonds are a disaster, but when the label rebrands them as "The Tightsmen", they score a smash hit - in part, of course, because the girls find Mick so dreamy.

This is a fun idea, dressed up in colorful 1960s costumes, and with a bit of satire about the music industry that is still relevant today; what could go wrong? Well, mainly, director Ryuichi Honda and his co-writer Yuji Nagamori could fail to make the Tightsmen interesting in almost any way. Masao, Shun, and Kenta are completely interchangeable; their supposed characterizations (Shun was bullied by his seven older sisters, Masao has dropped out of school to pursue his music career) are briefly mentioned but never matter that much. Miku is a bit of an enigma herself; she's strong-willed and tough, but that's sort of the extent of what we know about her.

Full review at EFC

Insutanto Numa (Instant Swamp)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Satoshi Miki's follow-up to Adrift in Tokyo isn't quite as magical as that movie was, and it's not hard to guess the reason - it feels like it's trying harder, rather than just capturing a moment between a couple of characters. It does have a lead character that is awful easy to like in Kumiko Aso's Haname Jinchoge, who early on does a nice job of balancing quirkiness and with a sort of no-nonsense attitude, although the quirk starts to take over as the film goes on.

It's a fun movie, though, and props must be given for the ending, which features an event so audacious as to be ridiculous, and yet it works for this film.

The Outer Limits of Animation 2009

N/A (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Unfortunately, the longest two segments of this shorts package ("God of Tears" and "Spaceman on Earth") were also among the least entertaining - doubly sad, given that the directors were there in person. In sharp contrast were the four tiny pieces by PES - delightful in a very compact package - and some of the other short-shorts like Philip Eddolls's "Gib Gob" and Patrick Boivin's "businessman version" of the Iggy Pop song "King of the Dogs". I also rather dug Run Wrake's "Control Master" and "This is J03" from Rory Lowe & Tom Schrapnel". "Aerius" by Tanya Erzinclioglu & Nicola Coppack is utterly beautiful and I loved the imagination in "Après la Pluie". Best of show, though, was easily "Mr. Wire's Nostalgia" by Jonathan Ostos Yaber, both for its nifty stop-motion design and the emotional wallop it packs at the end.

(Maruhi) yu no machi - Yoru no hitode (Secret Hot Spring Resort)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Okay, maybe I'm not so keen on the Brattle picking up the pink movie series. I liked this a little better than Gushing Prayer, and actually thought there was a pretty good movie in here somewhere. It kind of goes a little off the rails in the end, though, and there's something distinctively unsavory about how the characters are trying to sell what is basically a rape as titillation (and, by extension, how the film is trying to sell that to us).

Chugyeogja (The Chaser)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

The Chaser was not quite the movie I expected, but not in a bad way - where I sort of figured on it being a feet-on-the-ground race across Seoul, that part ends fairly quickly; from then on, it's a bit of a mind-game as former-cop-turned-pimp Jung-ho (Kim Yun-seok) as well as the police force tries to find proof that Ji Young-min (Ha Jung-woo) actually is the monster they know him to be: A tough enough job with the force's hands tied by procedure, but even Jung-ho is hampered by a distinct lack of information.

I believe this has been optioned for a Hollywood remake, and it's one I wouldn't necessarily mind, in that I can't see how they wouldn't tone the end down a little bit.

Today's plan is Paco and the Magic Book, the Hard Revenge Milly double bill, Yesterday, Crush and Blush, The Horseman, and Smash Cut. Alien Trespass isn't bad.

Sunday, it's Samurai Princess, both 20th Century Boys pictures, Portait of a Beauty, and A Quelle Heure le Train pour Nulle Part.

Labels: animation, anthology, comedy, drama, Fantasia, Japan, Korea, music, sex, thriller

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I think I was kind of sick on Thursday: I felt chilly in the de Seve theater, had a headache later on (and maybe a fever), my legs felt pretty weak, and this morning nothing tastes right. It sucks when you have a day like that on "vacation", although it didn't seem to affect me much at work.

In the "ain't that always the way" file: It took me longer than I wanted to get out of the office, as I was trying to upload a spreadsheet that was too big. I got on the Metro, did the transfer, found the wrong exit at Guy-Concordia, and arrived at the theater just as Rough Cut was scheduled to start... And then proceeded to wait a half hour because the previous show had a long Q&A going on.

"Très (très) chasse"

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

A Quebec DIY short just good enough to also play in front of Slam-Bang, and it is a nicely-shot action piece, although once you get beyond the camera work and action staging, it's not so clever. The action gets started because the villain makes two crack shots to take out 2/3 of a hunting party, but then cannot hit the broad side of a barn thereafter. The twist at the end is kind of clever, but still requires the antagonists to be unreasonably stupid, even by inbred inarticulate redneck standards.

Slam-Bang

* * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

I was kind of excited to see this one, as I'm curious about the chances of seeing interesting things coming out of South Africa. There's some money there (and also an appalling lack of money in other quarters), and that parallel-universe show that blipped on the Sci-Fi channel a year or so ago was an indication that they'd make things that might not come out of other English-speaking countries.

Sadly, Slam-Bang is just kind of unpleasant, from the voice of "the Chinaman" on the phone who always addresses the hero as "Lound-eye", to the casual violence that doesn't even provide much in the way of atmosphere, to the ending that just isn't satisfying in any way whatsoever. A lot more intestines than this sort of gangster/thriller film needs, too.

Funshutsu kigan: 15-sai baishunfu (Gushing Prayer)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival: Behind the Pink Curtain)

I hope that the touring pink eiga film series included in Fantasia makes a stop at Boston, as the Nikkatsu Action! series did a couple years ago. I didn't love Gushing Prayer, but found it fairly interesting. There was a fairly involved discussion before and after about what sex was the stand-in for in this movie, but I think it works well enough if you just take it as it is - a story about kids who are experimenting with sex and trying to devise rules for it that will prevent them from being their parents.

It's an uncomfortable watch in places - the subtitle that has been dropped in order to cause less trouble with bookings is "A 15-Year-Old Prostitute", and lead actress Aki Sasaki does look young enough to make the sex scenes more than a little questionable. If the series does show up in the area, well, that's what you're getting into with this one.

Heruzu Enjueruzu (Hells)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

It's fitting that this adaptation of Sin-ichi Hiromoto's manga Hells Angels is produced by a company called Madhouse, because it is apparently the result of throwing in everything, plus the kitchen sink, plus any other sinks that may be around. The animation is hand-drawn and stylized, and some new crazy thing, whether it be a visual, an idea, or just a bit of crazy optimism from its blue-haired heroine Linne, pops up every thirty seconds or so. It's dizzying, but delightful, for ninety minutes, at least.

And then it's as if the filmmakers are utterly ignorant of the concept of "enough"; the thing just won't end! They're still pumping out creative and astonishing visuals, but the movie is dry on ideas; the final battle blasts through multiple logical endpoints, and it just gets repetitive: "You have to believe!" "I believe!" "I have doubts!" "Nooooooooo!!!!..." "You have to believe!" And so on. Maybe I'd have been a bit more tolerant if it weren't late and I wasn't feeling kind of under the weather, but there's a real strong vibe of "weren't we just here five minutes ago?" throughout the last half hour.

"Le Tueur de Montmarte" ("The Killer of Montmarte")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Because as midnight approached, what I really needed was another featurette that ran nearly an hour. It's a nifty one, though, with fantastic character designs, pitch-black comedy, and a way of combining what may be traditional or digital animation (it can be difficult to tell with this sort of chunky character design) with photographic backgrounds that is much more effective than the technique usually is.

It also seems a bit strung out, and there were a number of walk-outs, though I believe that was more due to the lateness of the hour than the quality of the film. It's got a tendency to go off on tangents that are generally more nifty than tiresome.



Today's plan is GS Wonderland (if I can finish work early), Instant Swamp, "Outer Limits of Animation", Les Lascars, The Chaser (or maybe the other screening of GS Wonderland, if work doesn't co-operate), and Arcanum.

Saturday's plan is Paco and the Magic Book, the Hard Revenge Milly double bill, Yesterday, Crush and Blush, The Horseman, and Smash Cut. Alien Trespass isn't bad.

Labels: action, animation, anime, drama, Fantasia, fantasy, France, horror, Japan sex, Quebec, South Africa, thriller

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I finally met up with Scott Weinberg and William Goss, a couple of fellow writers for eFilmCritic, who are here to cover the festival for Cinematical/Horror Squad and FEARnet this week. I finally met them for the first time in Austin back in March, after having internet-known Scott for years, and they're pretty cool folks. They're up here until Sunday and will likely be posting regularly, although, let's face it - that's only a a side note to the coverage going on here. You won't even find out what I had to eat on those pages!

Gogo Chilship (Go Go 70's)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

What does a classic rock & roll movie need? A new sound. Rebellion against authority. Strife within the band. A girl. Clubs. Maybe a writer. And, of course, music that rocks, even if a generation has passed since the film's events. Go Go 70's delivers right down the list, to a greater or lesser extent, telling the story of a band, and a country, that needed to rock.

The time: 1969. The place, Kyungsang Province, right on the border between the Koreas. In a bar catering to American GIs, Im Sang-kyu (Cho Seung-woo) unenthusiastically fronts a country & western trio. After the gig, he and the band head across town to check out another show, where Man-sik (Cha Seung-wu) is demonstrating that he has neither the voice nor command of English to sing James Brown. Things get wild, both trios end up on stage, and as they bond over their love of "black music" afterward, they opt to join forces as "The Devils". They're soon headed to Seoul for a battle of the bands, with Mimi (Shin Min-a), who may be as fond of the music as she is of Sang-kyu, in tow. It's not a great time to be trying something new: Martial law is being declared, and Sang-kyu is a draft dodger. Still, some ingenuity on the part of writer/promoter Lee Byung-wuk (Lee Sung-min) gets them a regular gig, and a little sex appeal injected by Mimi creates a go-go sensation! But once you reach the top, the fall is inevitable.

Go Go 70's is an affectionate look back at The Devils. Other filmmakers may have chosen to play up any sort of rift between Sang-kyu and Man-sik, delved deeper into the relationship between Sang-kyu and Mimi, or taken a broader look at what it calls the first generation of Koran rock & roll (there are hints of a rivalry with another band, The Phoenixes); writer/director Choi Ho does not. There's a very brief bit of conflict in the middle, as Sang-kyu is upset that between the others' side gigs and the popularity of the "go-go" style, they haven't written much new music and have drifted from their soul roots, but the story goes off in another direction fairly quickly.

Full review at EFC.

"Die Schneider Krankheit" ("The Schneider Disease")

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival; screened with Mutants)

An extremely high-concept short from Spain, purpouting to be about a zombie-like plague that infected a small town near the German border fifty years ago, presented as an old German educational film. Kind of clever, but it certainly makes its conceit convoluted, too much so for it ever to be either very scary or very funny.

Mutants

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Zombie movies, even more than other types of horror movies, are kind of like Westerns. The specific background of how the characters got to where they start doesn't matter; the science or taxonomy of the monsters is secondary. The important part is that, like the western, you have people who have the ideals of a rational world, one with laws, ethics, and protection, trying to handle a world without them. David Morlet's Mutants doesn't break a lot of new ground in the field, but what it does come up with is worth seeing.

It opens with an ambulance screaming down a country road. Marco (Francis Renaud) is driving. Sonia (Hélène de Fougerolles), an EMT, is trying to treat a patient in the back; the is starting starting to turn into one of the mindless cannibals that has plunged the nation into chaos since summer. Perez (Marie-Sohna Conde), a hard-bitten soldier, is ready to cut their losses; she's also trying to raise NOAH, the government health/emergency management organization, on the radio. Stopping for gas, they come across a man who may have turned or may simply be autistic. More cannibals are heard. Guns come out. By the time they arrive at a large, abandoned building in the forest, their numbers have already been reduced, Marco has been bitten, although Sonia has reason to think that they have a chance if they can hold out long enough for the army to pick them up. Unfortunately, the first person to answer their radio call, Frank (Nicolas Briançon), isn't from the government.

There is clearly a great deal of 28 Days Later in the DNA of Mutants, although it makes some interesting contributions to the genre. The most interesting is how it adopts a somewhat realistic approach to how the virus affects the victims: In most zombie/ghoul/biohorror movies, it's close to instantaneous after an initial incubation period; Morlet has it attack Marco gradually, tormenting him, chipping away at his mental state, ebbing and strengthening almost randomly. It's in some ways even more horrifying than the physical attacks, because it gets at our sense of self. If Sonia is unable to stop the process, there won't be a single moment when Marco dies and his body becomes a zombie; just a gray area where you can't say exactly which he is.

Full review at EFC.

DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party

N/A (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

The pros didn't stick around for the Zappin' Party, although I didn't really give them a hard sell. It is something you want to do at least once as part of the Fantasia Experience, to get an idea of just how much this thing is a community as well as a festival - though, to be fair, I didn't partake until last year (my fourth), the first time I had the block free.

It is, objectively, mostly not very good, filled with a ton of inside jokes and deliberately chincy parodies. There are a few nuggets of god worth sifting for:

* "Starlight" - a funny CGI piece about the how the hole in the ozone layer is affecting Antartica's penguins.

* "Jazz with a General Problem" and "Iron Man vs. Bruce Lee" - enjoyable stop-motion toy animation, and you could probably sell many nostalgic nerds like me a transforming General Lee.

* "Deathspiel" - Zombie curling.

* "Momma" - the rare piece of straight horror in among the parodies, a chilling mood piece about two children worried that their mother will wake up.

... plus, I also finally realized that festival president Pierre Corbeil and DJ XL5 are the same person. Unless my meager french screwed that up last night and I'm a fool now rather than a fool before.


My plan for today was Slam-Bang, Gushing Prayer, and Hells; Lesbian Vampire Slayers (5pm, Hall) was recommended, but I'm apparently falling further and further behind.

Friday's plan looks like GS Wonderland (if I can finish work early), Instant Swamp, "Outer Limits of Animation", Les Lascars, The Chaser (or maybe the other screening of GS Wonderland, if work doesn't co-operate), and Arcanum.

Labels: action, anthology, Canada, drama, Fantasia, France, history, horror, Korea, sci-fi, Spain

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Another day running late, but I would just like to point out: The rain only came down on the 14th during the time when I was neither in the office nor seeing a movie.

Yattaman (Yatterman)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Years ago, when it first came out, and before everyone I knew who would even consider watching a foreign film knew what it was, I would tell people that Takashi Miike's Audition was a sweet romantic comedy, which, well, it is not (although you could make an enjoyable one if you started from the same premise). I bring this up mainly so that you understand what I mean when I saw that Miike's Yatterman is nothing but wholesome family entertainment - maybe a little on the bland side for adults.

Yatterman 1 & 2 are toymaker Gan Takada (Sho Sakurai) and his girlfriend, electronics whiz Ai Kaminari. As the film opens, they ("ably" assisted by their robots Botty and Yatterwoof) are fighting off the weekly attack of Lady Doronjo (Kyoko Fukada) and her henchmen Tanzra (Kendo Kobayashi) and Boyacky (Katsuhisa Namase), intent as ever on getting the four segments of the Skull Stone for their "God of Thieves", Skullobey. In the midst of the rubble from the battle, that Yatter-crew finds Shoko Kaieda (Anri Okamoto), daughter of the archaeologist (Sadao Abe) who knows where the other skull fragments are to be found. Gan thinks she's kind of cute.

At first, I thought that the opening scene's bright Day-Glo color scheme, mangled language, and over-the top action was just going to be the hook, and then things might quiet back down to something close to normal, but no... The entire movie, minus one oddly conventional daydream sequence, is like that, as thoroughly dedicated to its cartoon aesthetic as the live-action Speed Racer. Indeed, even never having seen an episode of the original 1970s series, I can probably tell you some of its quirks, just from the stuff that gets repeated - the rickety bicycle built for three, for instance - or the way the movie's structure could essentially be two or three episodes grafted together.

Full review at EFC.

Tokyo OnlyPic 2008

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Anthology films like Tokyo OnlyPic should probably not be graded on how good they are as a whole, but more on how good the best segments are, and how man segments should be in that group. On those grounds, Tokyo OnlyPic 2008 is an unqualified hit - the opening ceremony alone had my crying from laughter, and there are a number of other bits nearly as funny. Some don't work quite as well, but you'll get your money's worth from the good ones.

The premise is simple - the Tokyo OnlyPic ("Only Pictures") games are going on at roughly the same time as the Beijing Olympics, although these games contain some rather more esoteric events - like the "Hellmaraton", "Samurai Call", and "1000-character SMS". Many of them are presented as animation of various styles, some as live action, others as a mix, and in between, studio hosts Junichi Mogi and Shoko Nakagawa (genuine D-list celebrities!) introduce and analyze events from the studio.

Even the live-action segments are cartoons at heart, filled with painful slapstick, national stereotypes, and outlandish, silly events. Which isn't a bad thing - these are often excellent little cartoons. Main director Riichiro Mashima's opening ceremonies look like a video game into which some real people have occasionally been inserted for close-ups, but contains more laughs per second than anything else I've seen in a long, long time. It starts with the introduction of pigeons as the mascots for the games, continues with a final relay of the OnlyPic flame that will make the participants glad that there's a pool in the middle of the arena, and continues with a magnificent giant Buddha statue that for some reason shoots death rays from its eyes, and an introduction of the various teams that plays on their national reputations along with good slapstick. It's a mini-masterpiece of steady but escalating chaos, pushing each gag just a little further until it's a complete and utter madhouse.

Full review at EFC.

Kuron wa Kokyo wo Mezasu (The Clone Returns Home)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

I don't think this was a "boring movie nap", although I'll probably request a screener just to make sure. It is, however, a pretty boring movie, one that takes its science-fiction concept and then does very little of interest with it. It touches on the ethics of cloning and memory transfer without really digging into them, ponders a metaphysical question or two without coming to many interesting conclusions. It's been compared to Tartakovsky, which is fitting, but not necessarily complimentary.

It is, however, beautiful - cinematographer Hideho Urata shoots it marvelously. Mitsuhiro Oikawa gives a fine performance as the astronaut who is cloned after dying in an accident in orbit. I can see where the praise comes from, but I tend to prefer a more active story to this sort of meditation.


My plan for today is Go Go 70s, Mutants, and either "DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party" or Slam-Bang. Thursday's plan is likely Slam-Bang (if I don't see it tonight), The Warlords or Gushing Prayer, and Hells

Labels: action, animation, anime, anthology, comedy, drama, Fantasia, Japan, sci-fi, sports

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The first day of working out of my employers' sister company in Montreal went pretty well - I stayed until about four o'clock, don't believe I disturbed anybody too much, and through a combination of finally finishing something I've been working on for weeks and grabbing a couple of unusually straightforward assignments out of the work queue, I have probably set an unreasonable standard for how much work I can get done when I am actually in the office.

And now, for some fun facts about getting around Montreal without a car: Unlike most American cities, those dotted lines for when the road goes underground do, in fact, indicate places that pedestrians can go. I know this now because it enabled me to take a straight line to work on Tuesday that I didn't manage on a hot, sweaty Monday. Also, if you're taking the Metro from a spot on the green line between Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM to a spot on the orange line between the two stations (or vice versa), it doesn't matter which direction you initially go. Heck, when getting from the office (Place des Armes) to the festival (Guy-Concordia), either way is seven stops with one transfer.

Long Nga (Legendary Assassin)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

It seems like everybody's been talking about Wu Jing being the next big action star for a few years, but it hasn't directly translated into lead roles - for crying out loud, he was "Assassin #1" in The Mummy 3 last year! Why that is when Jackie Chan and Jet Li aren't what they used to be and Donnie Yen can't be in everything, I don't know, but he's apparently decided that if getting behind the camera is what it takes to get front-and-center, that's what he'll do - and it's not a bad choice.

Wu plays Bo, who has just arrived on one of Hong Kong's outlying islands to collect the head of Timothy "Chairman" Ma (Keu Zhan-wen), which he has done without a lot of trouble. The hitch is that a typhoon has shut the ferries down, just after they've disgorged a couple other gangsters, Jellyfish ("Tenky" Tin Kai-man) and Fat Wing (Lam Suet) and their crew, looking for Ma at the request behest of his wife (Noriko Aoyama), who is running the business while Ma hides out. Oh, and that nice girl Bo caught falling out of a tree after chasing her cat? Hiu Wor (Celina Jade) is a cop - who immediately gets in more trouble trying to arrest three large bank robbers.

Legendary Assassin is a star vehicle for Wu Jing, I believe the first for a guy generally brought in as a challenging screen opponent for bigger names, and he does have a nice, understated charisma in this film. He doesn't have a lot of dialog - there seem to be hints in the subtitles that Bo is not as adept in Cantonese as in Mandarin - but he's got expressive eyes and does a nice job of communicating physically even when he's not fighting. Being the mysterious, quiet man in this movie probably helps him, actually, letting him underplay the comedy that everyone else plays broadly.

Full review at EFC.

"Hold Your Fire"

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

This short (playing in front of "Book of Blood") features a lot of grotesque imagery of the ravages of an east-asian war (could be WWII, could be Vietnam), and one genuinely heart-stopping moment, but the storytelling is a bit iffy - if it's supposed to be making a point, I'm not sure what it is. Also, it's an odd combination of live-action and CGI where even the actual performers look a bit unreal, throwing the whole thing into the so-called uncanny valley.

Book of Blood

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

When the DVD & Blu-ray for The Midnight Meat Train came out, I was honestly kind of surprised to see nearly every review approaching it in terms of it being Clive Barker's story, rather than Ryuhei Kitamura's first American feature. That makes sense, of course - Barker has been a big name in horror for decades, while Kitamura is not particularly well-known in the English-speaking world. That I went to the screening last year jazzed to see what Kitamura did with Hollywood money and actors doesn't mean that the rest of the world felt the same way.

Which is a roundabout way of saying that I went to Book of Blood without much attachment to the material, even though it's taken from the same anthology that The Midnight Meat Train was. I didn't like it nearly as much as Kitamura's movie, either - for far too long, it feels like a generic haunted house movie, shot in an unpleasant green pallette that doesn't do much to add to the atmosphere, and acted rather flatly. I've seen this, including the relatively standard-issue twists before. The difference, of course, comes in the ending - Barker has grand and horrible nightmares, and the filmmakers do a fine job of visualizing them. It's almost worth slogging through the rest, including what seems like an awkward method of tying two stories together, to see the oft-repeated phrase about the dead having roads pictured.

I won't be hitting Dread tonight; Barker's style of horror isn't really my cup of tea when I have other options. I do have to admire him for having big ideas.

"Ice Cream Sunday"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

"Ice Cream Sunday" is a skillfully, creepily made take on the mind of a pedophile, spending much of its time on a simple, unashamed confession, interspersed with footage of young kids made more disturbingly intimate by being shot on 8mm, like a home movie. Then, of course, it goes and brings the church in, and gets weird, and goes on for a while. It's still disturbing as can be, but maybe loses something in its garishness.

Stoic

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

You know, if Uwe Boll keeps directing movies as watchable as Tunnel Rats and Stoic, he may lose the "worst director ever" tag. Stoic is not a great movie, but it's certainly watchable enough, though it's also plain to see that it could have been even better in the hands of a really good director.

It opens with Mitch Palmer (Shaun Sipos), a prison inmate, found hanged in his cell. An unseen investigator questions his three cellmates: Tearful Harry (Edward Furlong), defiant Peter (Sam Levinson), and icy Jack (Steffen Mennekes). As each tells their story - either truthfully or in lies - a narrative starts to emerge, starting with Mitch trying to back out of a poker bet and continually escalating as the other inmates begin bullying him to put him in his place.

The credits for this movie on the IMDB have some odd but noteworthy omissions: There's no writer listed, although the closing titles start with "Directed, Written, and Produced by Uwe Boll". Supposedly much of the movie was improvised, so it's understandable that the screenplay credits would be a bit vague. If that's the case, though, it might be nice to know who the editor was, as the film does wind up being fairly well put-together on that count. It's not flashy, but given that improvisation often provides a mountain of footage that can be hard to make into a single narrative, it's very solid.

Full review at EFC.

If you're in town today, you've probably already started seeing movies by the time this gets posted. I'm doing Yatterman, Tokyo OnlyPic 2008, and The Clone Returns Home. I'd recommend Power Kids, Stoic, and Dead Snow to various extents, but they've already played.

For Wednesday, my plan is Go Go 70s, Mutants, and either "DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party" or Slam-Bang.

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Not a whole lot to say about yesterday: It was my first real morning-to-late night day of seeing movies here, and as much as folks don't believe it, that takes a bit out of you, engaging the same part of your brain for close to twelve hours straight. I met a nice lady from Anchor Bay Canada, gearing up for the evenings screening of Grace, during Thirst, and actually had a little more time than I expected to wander around looking for food after Lalapipo: Both the Fantasia program and NYAFF had it listed as around two hours, when it's actually right around the ninety-minute mark.

And I lost my program sometime between then and Evil Spirit: Viy, which is annoying as heck. A couple years ago, they actually had piles of programs out for the taking so long as you didn't want the DVD-o-trailers; this year I'm going to have to drop $5 to get another. But, someone will get the gift of a disc full of incomprehensible movie previews, as my copy of that is already sitting back at the apartment.

Bakjwi (Thirst)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I wish I could take credit for this line, but it was the lady in the next seat over who turned to me after the Fantasia screening of Thirst and said "isn't it cool to see a vampire movie that's not all gothy?"

Believe it or not, it is. It means Park Chan-wook is doing the sort of movie he's good at: The sort where, even when horrible things happen, there may be something funny about it, and not in an ironic, self-conscious way. The sort where things happen in bright light and full color. And the sort where, instead of moping over the tragic ironies of their lives, the characters go out and do stuff - sometimes noble, sometimes horrible, but always interesting.

Friar Hyan Sang-hyun (Song Kang-ho) is a good man; he ministers to the ill at a Seoul hospital, and counsels heartbroken nurses against suicide. Wanting to do more, he volunteers to test an experimental vaccine for Emmanuel Virus (EV), a nasty flesh-eating disease. The experiment is a tragic failure, as he's the only one of 500 to survive. But it's not the miracle it appears to be - he was somehow transfused with vampire blood. The vampirism holds the EV in check, along with having the usual side effects. And it's not just his appetite for blood that he's having trouble holding back - he's feeling a strong drive to do things that a Catholic priest, especially, shouldn't be doing.

Enter Tae-ju (Kim Ok-vin). The onetime foster sister, now wife, of Sang-hyun's childhood friend Kang-woo (Shin Ha-kyun) is immensely dissatisfied with her life, running around the neighborhood barefoot at night just for a moment's escape. She's immediately attracted to the newly-virile priest, who should beware - an unhappy wife can be just as dangerous as a hungry vampire.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

5 Huajai Hero (Power Kids)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I can't recommend Power Kids to families, and it's not just because it is an amazing example of how what is apparently considered to be enjoyable family entertainment in one culture (say, Thailand) comes off as mind-bogglingly inappropriate in another (say, the U.S.). It's because, with the exception of the fight choreography, everything about the movie is cloying and amateurish.

The movie gives off its "really, this is for kids?" vibe even before the credits start, with refugees getting machine-gunned in the jungle. The scene still shifts to a more peaceful spot in Bangkok, where muay thai master Lek (Arunya Pawilai) looks after four kids - his niece Catt (Sasisa Jindamanee), nephews Wuth (Nantawooti Boonrapsap) and little Wun, and son of a friend Pong (Paytaai Wongkamlao). Sadly, Wun has a heart condition, and the need for a transplant is pushed up when some bullies chase him away from a remote control car race that their friend Jib (Nawarat Techarathanaprasert) is participating in. The good news: A donor heart has been found! The bad news: It needs to be transplanted within four hours and is currently located in a hospital that has been taken over by terrorists led by a cruel leader (Johnny Nguyen) and an uncertain young girl (Pimchanok Leuwisetpaiboon).

Yes, you are reading this right - the second half of this movie involves four junior-high-schoolers sneaking into a hospital filled with terrorists holding machine guns to retrieve a donor heart. Sure, they've got some muay thai skills, but this is still kids getting shot at even before you get to behavior you might not want your kids imitating, like smashing fluorescent lights on people and flying through panes of glass face first (and unless they spent a lot more on CGI than I imagine, there's really not much chance Boonrapsap is being doubled for there). Heck, just the "fun" scene meant to show us the kids' skills early on might be a little alarming for parents: I'm not sure I like the idea of kids whose elbows are at groin level learning to do Tony Jaa stuff anyway, let alone giving them the idea of strapping lengths of pipe to their arms and legs!

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Lalapipo

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Tetsuya Nakashima wrote this, and it's not hard to see his fingerprints on it - Lalapipo has all the jumping around, bright colors, crisscrossing plots and outright absurdity that Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko featured, but director Masayuki Miyano doesn't quite seem to have the magic touch with it that Nakashima himself does. There's charm to his movie, but it's only enough to just get the audience curious about the characters, not fall in love with them like I did with the films Nakashima directed himself.

Also, and it may just be the digital projection used, but the film looks kind of cheap in places. Shots out one character's window at a busy Tokyo intersection just get overpowered by yellow, and while it may be a stylistic choice, it makes the movie hard to look at. A little grottiness is expected given how much of the film revolves around characters in low-rent porn-oriented professions, but even the fantasy sequences look kind of half-hearted.

Evil Spirit: Viy

Seen 12 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Hey, check it out... My first boring movie nap of the festival!

To be fair, I scarfed a bunch of pizza right before the movie started, so there was food-coma action going on too, but this really is the sort of navel-gazing orouborus of a movie that needs to be a lot more clever, or scary, or witty, to really be worth the effort. There are moments when it seems to be doing something neat, especially in the first third, but not enough to really suck me in.

Seu-pe-eo (Spare)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I kind of wish I could get away from work to hit the second screening of this; I saw the whole thing but was still kind of worn out. It is a ton of fun, though, with comments from the peanut gallery built into the soundtrack, plenty of good fighting, and a laid-back atmosphere about dealing with gamblers and gangsters that wouldn't feel out of place in a Guy Ritchie film.

It's a slight-but-fun buddy movie where the eventual buddies don't speak the same language, and really looks like it gets a lot of action out of a shoestring budget.


Well, this is going up too late to say much about recommendations for the day. I might just give Evil Spirit: Viy another try (7pm, de Seve), since the alternative is Clive Barker and "Book of Blood" is a title that promises a little more than I want in a horror movie, to be honest; those looking for something goofy and fun might dig The Immaculate Conception of Little Dizzle (10pm, Hall). Tuesday offers another chance to sample the insanity that is Power Kids (3pm, de Seve), and I may have another review for Tuesday up in time.

Today's plan: Legendary Assassin, Book of Blood, Stoic

Labels: action, comedy, drama, family, Fantasia, horror, Japan, Korea, martial-arts, sex, Thailand, thriller, vampires

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