Tuesday, July 31, 2007

"Virtual" Fantasia : Time

Distribution for foreign films is a funny thing. Kim Ki-duk's Time barely played in Korea - isn't this the one where he wasn't even going to bother releasing it in Korea at all? - and right now it's just scheduled for about eight shows in ten days at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. And yet, it will probably get a whole lot more exposure in the United States than 200 Pounds Beauty, which I saw at Fantasia, and was a gigantic hit in its native land, making a star out of Kim Ah-jung.

And I'll bet 200 Pounds Beauty barely registers here. Romantic comedies are way down the ladder in terms of what foreign-language films get theatrical play here, well below art-house films like Time. Maybe that's justice of a sort, since Time is a much better movie than Beauty.

Time (Shi Gan)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2007 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia 2007 Screener)

The opening moments of Time are some of the more stomach-churning shots I've seen in a movie in a while, but it's not a gore movie. They're shots of cosmetic surgery, and my reaction was just a knee-jerk response to stock medical footage, what filmmaker Kim Ki-duk does afterward is perhaps even creepier.

First, he introduces us to Ji-woo (Ha Jung-woo) and Seh-hee (Park Ji-yeon), who have been together for two years. Their relationship is starting to fray; Ji-woo occasionally turns his head to look at other girls and Seh-hee reacts with near-hysterical jealousy. They seem to make up after one outburst in a coffee shop, but soon afterward Seh-hee visits a plastic surgeon and suddenly disappears from Ji-woo's life. He's miserable, even as his friends try to cheer him up and introduce him to other girls. After six months, though, he hits it off with the new waitress at the coffee shop he and Seh-hee used to go to. He and See-hee (Seong Hyeon-a) have some weirdness going on, though - he accidentally uses Seh-hee's name, and she's got no pictures of herself as a child.

The twist here is obvious, and it's to Kim's credit that he doesn't treat it as something to be revealed: even if he doesn't initially spell it out, we catch on to Seh-hee and See-hee being one and the same very quick. For most of the movie, Kim avoids obvious melodrama, using low-key scenes of Ji-woo and See-hee dating to give us a chance to ponder the idea of what it might be worth to repeat the early, good years of a relationship, or to have a fresh start. But as much as we see See-hee and Ji-woo enjoying themselves, we're also aware of how they're visiting the same sculpture park Ji-woo and Seh-hee did, even taking photos that are eerily similar to the first times they visited the place.

Updated Day Seven's post with are reviews of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society and Big Bang Love.

Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Sunshine

I'm taking a quick break from reviewing Fantasia films to talk about Sunshine. Same basic type of film, but, hey, this one's actually in widening release, and deserves some word of mouth. Still, for more Fantasia stuff, I've reviewed through Monday and Tuesday, adding EFC/HBS reviews for Aachi & Ssipak, Jade Warrior, Minushi, and Exte: Hair Extensions. Today (Tuesday) is the last day, so now it's all playing catch-up with the dozen or so films I have left.

Anyway, I loved this movie, and was gratified to see that Matt and his girlfriend Morgan did too. It initially had a vibe of being "just for me", in that it seemed to zero in on the things I, in particular, like and sometimes complain about not seeing in science fiction movies.

Sunshine

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2007 at Landmark Kendall Square #1 (first-run)

Sunshine is a real treat - a great big special-effects laden adventure movie that at no point asks the audience to turn its brain off. That doesn't make it inaccessible - to the contrary, it means that there are more ways for the audience to enjoy it.

We start off in media res, with the dubiously-named spaceship Icarus II already a year and a half into its journey to the Sun's south pole, where they will launch a bomb the size of Manhattan into the heart of our nearest star, hoping to give it a needed jump-start. Already, nevers are becoming a bit frayed - Dr. Searle (Cliff Curtis), the man in charge of the the crew's physical and mental health, is addicted to viewing the sun with as little filtering as possible, and trying to get Captain Kaneda (Hiroyuki Sanada) to join in; physicist/payload specialist Capa (Cillian Murphy) and computer tech Mace (Chris Evans) have just come to blows, likely in part over one of the only two women in the crew, pilot Cassie (Rose Byrne). The other woman is Corazon (Michelle Yeoh), in charge of the ship's oxygen garden; also on board are communications officer Harvey (Troy Garity) and navigator Trey (Benedict Wong). Aside from needing to blow off a little steam, the mission is going well, at least until they receive a signal from Icarus I, which disappeared seven years earlier. Mace insists they continue with the mission as planned; Capa says attempting to recover the ship's payload is worth the risk. Agreeing that two last hopes are better than one, Kaneda follows Capa's advice. And, of course, all hell breaks loose.

Director Danny Boyle and Writer Alex Garland (who previously teamed on 28 Days Later) throw us into a very cool environment right off; the first shot of the film appears to be the sun but is actually the massive set of heat shields/solar panels that covers the ship; when we look behind that, we see a rotating skeleton that reminds us more of the present-day International Space Station than the sleek, fighter-jet-modeled ships that frequently populate the movies. It's one of my favorite movie spaceships ever. Garland, Boyle, and the art department sweat more details than the average sci-fi film, things like approaching the sun at a pole rather than head-on, although they are smart enough to not dump a whole lot of science adviser Dr. Brian Cox told them into the script; they just paid heed. Sure, sometimes the pseudo-gravity doesn't seem to be lined up with thrust or spin, but we always get the feeling that this is an environment with rules and limits.

Full review at EFC.

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Fantasia Day Eleven: Kiltro, Ultraman Mebius & Ultra Brothers, Mulberry Street, et Memories of Matsuko

Eleven days is just about my limit for Fantasia, or at least I'll say that for as long as I can only do eleven days. I admit to kind of going through my last day in Montreal in a daze - I didn't even write any reviews in my note pad. No breakfast will do that to you; by the time I got the two Death Note reviews written, got my luggage packed, and had the hamper bag stowed in a bus station locker until later, it was practically time for Kiltro to start at noon. Let me re-iterate: A Kit-Kat and a cranberry juice drink does not make for a healthy meal.

Anyway, Kiltro was pretty good stuff, good enough that when the producers said that the crews second movie was even better and showing at seven-thirty, I kicked myself for not requesting a screener, because no way was I missing Memories of Matsuko. After that, I went to the office to pick some DVDs up, came back for Ultraman. You sort of have to see a kaiju or sentai movie at these festivals, and since Toho's not making Gojira movies any more, we get stuck with this. The crowd loved it, though - I guess they were old-school Ultraman fans; they went absolutely nuts when "Zoffy" and "Taro" showed up at the end. I can't mock them, though - I did willingly pay for a ticket to Transformers just before the festival started.

Another wait (my movies were oddly spaced this afternoon) and then Mulberry Street, which is going to make Lion's Gate (according to the program) a ton of money. That's in part because it's a darn good horror movie, and in part because it cost very little to make; the director quoted us a five figure number, and a big chunk of that was music clearance. The stories of the filmmakers' ingenuity in shooting the movie were impressive - they redressed the star's apartment several times to use it as the set for every apartment in the place, they shot people racing to get to the fireworks on the Fourth of July and called it footage of people fleeing the city, they probably covered a fair amount of make-up by using available light. Studios should take notice of these guys, because they might be able to do amazing things with even a little money.

Then, finally, Memories of Matsuko, which is going to be hard to do justice. I'm pretty sure that if you don't cry during the final sequence, you've got a rock where your heart should be; I was thinking of bits of this and welling up throughout the seven-hour bus ride home. It's a ridiculously audacious bit of filmmaking: A fast-cut, day-glo-colored musical tragedy about a woman who dies alone after a lifetime of being ill-treated, it was slotted into the same spot Train Man had last year, and about where the director's Kamikaze Girls was two years ago. It's a great way to end the festival - a legitimately great movie from Japan that doesn't fit into the reasons I originally started going to the festival but which I almost cannot imagine stumbling across anywhere else. I hope like heck that this one shows up in theaters around here, because I don't know if I'll see a better movie all year.

And now, back to work. --sigh--

Kiltro

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Concorida (Fantasia 2007)

There's an opening for someone like Marko Zaror in the action world, especially for martial arts movies: All the guys who hit it big in the eighties are getting older, and there doesn't seem to be much of a next generation around (a man can't live on a diet of Tony Jaa and Wu Jing alone). Chile may be an odd place to find the next martial arts star, and Zaror's acting could use some polishing, but the guy can fight.

His character in this movie, Zami, fights a lot; he's got a crush on Kim (Caterina Jadresic), a half-Korean girl he saved from being raped a few months earlier, and tends to lay out anybody who touches her. Annoyed, she tries to get him off her back by having her father's entire tae kwan do class fight him; he tells Zami that though his father was a great fighter, he is little more than a brawler. Still, Teran (Man-soo Yoon) and Kim will need his help when Max Kalba (Miguel Angel De Luca) returns to town: Kalba has a grudge against Teran and other members of his martial arts sect that goes back seventeen years, and he's looking to collect. He wipes the floor with Zami in their first encounter, but that just pushes him to head north to be trained by master Jose Soto (Alejandro Castillo) before coming back to kick some ass.

First and most important things first: Marko Zaror's got some chops as a martial artist, even if he's still very raw as an actor. He won awards as Duane "The Rock" Johnson's stunt double in The Rundown, and though he's got about the same build (a little over six feet, built like a truck), he's extremely quick and agile for a guy his size. He can (and frequently does) get up in the air and move quickly enough to take on multiple opponents. Zaror also handles the fight choreography, and my only real complaint with it is that the fight scenes tend to be too short; except for the finale with De Luca (Zaror's original teacher), they are, by and large, mismatches. The flip side of that is that they do look like actual fights, rather than something staged for the camera.

(Interestingly, the producers said afterward that they were precisely blocked while the action in Zaror's new movie, Mirageman, is much more improvised. I wish I'd had time to see that!)

Full review at EFC.

Ultraman Mebius & Ultra Brothers (Urutoraman Mebiusu ando Urutora Kyôdai)

* * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2007 in D.B Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

If you're already a fan of Ultraman, you can probably ignore that low-to-middling rating: In the same way that I enjoy bits of Transformers in spite of myself and am a mark for things like the Dukes of Hazard reunion TV-movies, this movie is made for you. Not having been exposed to Ultraman at an impressionable age, I don't share your enthusiasm, but I don't begrudge you any enjoyment you may get from this film.

Twenty-five years ago the Yapool, a particularly nasty alien menace, landed on the moon and fought the Ultraman brothers by controlling a "U-Killersaurus" monster. It makes it to Earth, but the brothers create a "final force field" to imprison him in the ocean near Kobe, at the cost of their special energy and ability to transform into Ultramen. Now, young oceanographer Aya Jinguuji (Aiko Ito) is detecting something anomolous, so international paranormal respone team GUYS sends Mirai Hibino (Shunji Igarashi), who is secretly the alien hero Ultraman Mebius, to investigate. A team of four aliens are planning to attack the city and fight Mebius. Meanwhile, Mirai befriends Aya's seven-year-old brother Takato (Ouga Tanaka), who used to be a big fan of Ultraman and GUYS but has become timid since encountering a giant monster while playing.

The Ultraman Seven and Ultraman Mebius television series upon which the film is based are kids' shows, and the film is aimed directly at the pre-teen audience: All of the characters aside from the original Ultraman Brothers and Takato are barely out of their teens, a lot of time is spent on Takato and his dog, and the monsters are all men in brightly-colored suits, far from realistic enough to scare anyone. The story is as simple as they come, and it seems like a story a kid would tell, with things changing in the middle and new characters showing up out of nowhere. Adults may find themselves growing impatient at times, maybe even snickering if the film has no particular power of nostalgia over them.

Full review at EFC.

Mulberry Street

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2007 in D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

There are certain elements of a good horror movie (of a certain type) that don't necessarily come as easily as expected: The slow build, the characters we genuinely care about, the sense that there may be nothing that can be done. Mulberry Street has all that and more; it's got something to say on other subjects without getting away from the rat-borne plague.

The day starts off with a certain amount of potential - former boxer Clutch (Nick Damici) is expecting his daughter Casey (Kim Blair) home after her tour in Iraq. Of course, while he prepares for her return, he's awkwardly dealing with the attentions of a still-attractive single mother (Bo Corre) and engaging in idle chit-chat with his neighbors about how they'll all probably be out soon because the city has used eminent domain to seize the building for a developer, which is also one of the lead stories on the local news, at least for a while. Then there's a nasty rat attack on the subway, and another, and the victims are acting strange. Soon Manhattan is being cut off from the rest of the city, the building's super has been bitten by an unusually large rat, and while the Mulberry Street residents are trying to lock things down, Casey is trying to get home through an unusually quiet and dangerous city.

The screenplay by star Nick Damici and director Jim Mickle is a thing of well-measured beauty and attention to detail. Native New Yorkers, for instance, will appreciate that Casey's journey home has fairly accurate geography. This may not matter to 99% of the film's prospective audience, but it lets the people who do know such things play along a bit, and rather than taking them out of the movie even a little bit, it enhances the suspense, as they know how far she has to go and what obstacles may be in her path. There's also a certain subtext to her journey home, in that every veteran finds what was once familiar somewhat alien after having been through combat. It's also not hard to connect the dots between the rats destroying the heart of the city and its most vulnerable residents from within and the developers about to displace these characters - not to mention the nasty double meaning of the development's (and movie's) tagline of "The Neighborhood Is Changing". It's tough to miss parallels to New Orleans at how characters assume the government will do something, but they remain invisible.

Full review at EFC.

Memories of Matsuko (Kiraware Matsuko no Issho)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Concorida (Fantasia 2007)

I don't want to describe Memories of Matsuko glibly. It would be so easy to point out the huge difference between the story's subject matter and the methods used to tell the story in a way that sounds like I'm being sarcastic, comes across as trying to show off how sophisticated I am because I love something off the beaten path, or simply makes it sound distasteful. It's too good a movie for that. Lord knows I was put off by the premise - a brightly colored musical about the life of a lonely woman found murdered in a field - until I recognized the director.

That director is Tetsuya Nakashima, whose previous film Kamikaze Girls was a particular favorite of mine when it played two years ago, and the style of the two films are very similar: Bright colors, fanciful compositions, larger-than-life personalities and a great deal of jumping back and forth in time. While many might choose to tone things down for the darker subject matter of Matsuko, he instead adds an extra layer of exuberance, with elaborately staged musical numbers. It works - with the high points of the title character's life so beautiful, the lows become even more ghastly.

The story starts with Sho Kawajiri ("Eita") waking up to find his father Norio (Teruyuki Kagawa) in his apartment, idly looking through his porn. The two haven't spoken since Sho came to Tokyo to try to make it as a musician two years ago, and it turns out that this isn't a first for Norio: He had an older sister, Matsuko (Miki Nakatani), who left home thirty years earlier (Sho didn't know she existed) and has just been found murdered. Norio is bringing her ashes home, but asks Sho to clean out her apartment. It's filthy, but soon begins to offer up tantalizing glimpses of Matsuko's history: There's a picture of her making a funny face as a child and a poster of a recent boy band. A garishly tattooed but gregarious neighbor mentions a scarred man who had been lurking about recently, and the lead detective mentions that she was a popular teacher thirty years ago. From there, Sho starts to piece together the story of her life.

It's a life of extremes, and several of the episodes have a similar feel: They start with Matsuko happy, and singing, maybe in love, only to have things collapse into physical abuse, betrayal, and disappointment. But watch Miki Nakatani's performance closely; there's more going on than her hairstyle and costumes changing with the times; as much as Matsuko seems resilient and able to bounce back from her latest disaster, the bounce is a little less far, and a little less genuine, each time. Some of what Nakatani does is very broad comedy and some is heartbreaking, and it's quite impressive to watch what she does turn on a dime and turn back again, without making the character seem schizophrenic or disjointed. And she can sing, too.


Full review at EFC.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

Fantasia Day Ten: Death Note, Death Note: The Last Name, Puritan, Isabella, et Midnight Ballad For Ghost Theater

All day at the movies yesterday, including the pretty decent Death Note double feature, hosted by Shusuke Kaneko, who strikes me as a pretty cool guy - low key and friendly, and seeing as it's his third or fourth time presenting something at Fantasia personally (he must have been too busy working on these movies to come last year), I imagine he just likes coming here, too, which is a nice perk if you can get it. I found the first movie to be very good, and I wish the second had been up to it. It wasn't bad, but I think it might have been more convoluted than necessary.

If you're in Montreal for the festival, I can recommend both Death Note films and wouldn't talk anyone out of The Fox Family. I'll be seeing Kiltro, Ultraman Mebius & Ultra Brothers, Mulberry Street and Memories of Matsuko. I didn't realize the last was from the director of Kamikaze Girls until a couple days ago, so it it jumped to the top of my radar pretty quickly.

Death Note (Desu Noto)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Concorida (Fantasia 2007)

It's almost pointless to write a review of Death Note alone; its Japanese release was similar to that of Kill Bill, with what is arguably one five-hour epic split in half and the two parts released several months apart. Still, as I write this particular paragraph during an intermission between the two parts, I will say that the first movie ends with one of the nemeses seeming to gain a huge advantage, and it has certainly left me stoked for The Last Name.

Across Japan and around the world, criminals are dying on their feet, victims of heart attacks despite no medical reason for it to happen. One falls in the middle of a hostage situation, and that's when we find out that the deaths are caused by law student Light Yagami (Tatsuya Fujiwara) writing their names in a magical notebook - the "Death Note" of the title. It was given to him by death god Ryuk (a CGI creation only Light can see), and Light has vowed to use it to rid the world of evil. Popular sentiment is with Light (code-named "Kira" by the police and news media), although Light's girlfriend and fellow law student Shiori (Yu Kashii) doesn't share that opinion. Neither do the police, who have assigned a high-ranking detective (Takeshi Kaga) to the investigation, and are also consulting with a mysterious investigator known only as "L". Fearing (rightly) that Tokyo's MPD has a leak, he has also called on the American FBI, notably Ray Iwatari (Shigeki Hosokawa) and his fiancée, Naomi Misora (Asako Seto).

Death Note doesn't go in for moral ambiguity as much as complete amorality. Light seldom if ever discusses the idea of whether or not writing someone's name in the book is simply wrong, and it doesn't come up much in the debates we see among students and in flashes of newspaper clippings and text messages. The point is made several times that "Kira" is having a powerful deterrant effect, both by noting that violent crime statistics are down and a simple text message from an unknown teen saying "no-one bullies me any more". Ryuk flat-out says he's on neither Light's nor L's side, and more to the point, Light doesn't even blink when he first attempts to kill L, nor attempt to justify the action in terms of how many more lives he'd be able to save. Of course, L does something pretty lacking in conscience to fight back.

Full review at EFC.

Death Note: The Last Name (Desu Noto: The Last Name)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia 2007)

Death Note: The Last Name came out hot on the heels of the first film (about four months later), and fulfills the promises made at Death Note's finale. It's got a more complex story than its predecessor, not always to its benefit, but it's far from being one of those sequels that undoes much of the goodwill of the first.

(If you haven't seen the first movie, don't read any farther: There will be spoilers.)

Full review at EFC.

Puritan

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

The atmosphere is thick in Puritan, and sometimes it feels as if the film is constructed entirely out of atmosphere - you could get lost in the shadows, the strange lighting, the hints of the paranormal. Underneath it all is a classically-structured film noir, one which plays by the rules of that sort of film while at the same time injecting something supernatural without the two feeling in conflict.

Simon Puritan (Nick Moran) used to be a reporter, but has made his living by giving "psychic" readings in between migraines ever since his father died. Before one reading, a terribly burned man (Pete Hodge) tells him that his wife will be coming in for a reading soon, and gives him a little information about her dead sister. Simon, of course, will fall for the beautiful Ann Bridges (Georgina Rylance), but soon discovers that she is married to a wealthy and unscarred American self-help author (David Soul). The burned man shows up again, saying to stay away from, because she'll only bring trouble - but once someone like Ann has you...

Simon may not truly be able to contact the dead, but he hangs around in eerie places. The house in Whitechapel that he inherited from his father was once the property of Aleister Crowley, and there are stories of hauntings ever since he summoned the devil himself there one night. It was built , as were several nearby churches, but Nicholas Hawksmoore, said to be a pagan who imbued his buildings with dark magic. All of this is, of course, almost completely irrelevant to the main plot of the film, but they are interesting little facts and details on their own, the sort of thing that makes a person pay closer attention and maybe pick up on truly important bits of information.

Full review at EFC.

Isabella

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

It's easy to say what Isabella is about - a middle-aged man coming to terms with the daughter he never knew he had - although it's a little more difficult to nail down the specific plot, especially while it's playing. After a while it doesn't quite matter, though, since we're getting very nice work from Chapman To and Isabella Leong.

The film takes place against the background of Macau just before its handover to mainland China; as the occasional on-screen text informs us, the local police department has been rocked by a corruption scandal and is trying to put its house in order before the new bureaucracy does it for them. Shing (Chapman To) doesn't look like a particularly honest cop, so he's got enough on his plate when one of the teenage girls he has been hitting on tells him that he is her father, and needs his help to get into her apartment to rescue her dog. Yan (Isabella Leong) doesn't expect Shing to actually act like a father, but the orphaned girl inspires something in him beyond the usual apathy and scuzziness.

The title of the film refers to the name of Yan's dog, but one can be easily forgiven for believing the film is named after its lead actress. Isabella Leong first gained fame in Hong Kong as a pop singer, though she has been doing a bunch of films over the past two years, and she certainly seems to have an aptitude for it. Her Yan probably thinks that she's old for her years, but while she's certainly had to deal with more troubles than a girl her age should, she's always wearing her young heart on her sleeve. Yan tries to mask it, by being deliberately pushy when she first meets Shing or misrepresenting her relationship to Sing to a boy at school with a crush on her, but Ms. Leong never loses sight of how Yan is still a kid who needs a parent, rather than someone who grew up fast.

Full review at EFC.

Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater (Samgeori Geukjang)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

In an odd quirk of festival programming, I somehow wound up seeing four musicals at Fantasia this year (or, at least, four films with multiple musical numbers), which under normal circumstances is roughly what I would see in five years. One of them (Memories of Matsuko) was possibly the best film of the festival; most of the others, including Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater, are hit-and-miss (generally more hit than miss), though in the case of Ghost Theater it's got little to do with the film being a musical.

The premise is promising enough, and might strike a chord with many moviegoers: Late one evening, Seong So-dan's grandmother goes out, saying she has to see a movie at the Sam Geo Ri theater, but doesn't return. So-dan (Kim Kkot-bi), already without her parents, first has to find the theater - like many old single screen theaters the world over, it's on its last legs, and even though it's not far from home, So-dan has never heard of it. They haven't seen her grandmother, but have an opening at the box office, which So-dan takes - after all, if Grandmother says she is coming here, then she'll probably make it eventually.

Of course, this is no ordinary theater - when So-dan stays late one night to close up, she sees the ancient, listless staff literally transformed, like some sort of ghosts: The overweight woman at the candy counter is Elisa (Park Joon-myeon), a lost princess; the custodian is Hiroshi (Jo Hee-bong), a Japanese soldier from WWII; the projectionist is Mosquito (Park Yeong-soo), an acrobatic clown; and the usher is Wanda (Han Ae-ri), a sexy goth girl. All, like So-dan, once came to Sam Geo Ri and never left. Then there's the owner (Cheon Ho-jin), whom So-dan finds out once made a movie, now believed lost, starring her grandmother. Maybe finding that movie can fix everything!

Full review at EFC.

Saturday, July 14, 2007

Fantasia Day Nine: The Unseeable, The Matrimony, End of the Line, The Fox Family, et The Rage

Updated Tuesday's post about Monday with a like to my EFC review of Once in a Summer.

Much rain to start yesterday before it cleared up and got humid. It was a horror-themed Friday the Thirteenth, with ghost stories from Thailand and China, gore flicks from Quebec and Ohio, and an offbeat musical comedy about circus performers who want to kill you and eat your liver from Korea.

Not much else to say, as I was in the theater all day, but walking home at 2.30am, I came upon a head-scratcher: Le Festival Juste pour Rire is set up along Rue Maisoneuve, and along with stages and concession areas there are what look like stationary parade floats of some of the great comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Jacques Tati, Mister Bean, Mike Myers...

Wait a minute. Mister Bean, I'll give you, especially as his silent comedy is pretty universal, but Mike Myers? Seriously? I think Myers himself would ask that you show Peter Sellers some respect first, and Myers probably thinks he's done something funny in recent memory.

Anyway, back to seeing movies. I can recommend The Matrimony if you're at the festival today. My plan is the Death Note & Death Note: The Last Name double feature before heading across the street for Puritan, Isabella, and Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater

The Unseeable (Pen Choo Kab Pee)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Wisit Sasanatieng isn't exactly a secret that die-hard film buffs are keeping to themselves; his films have just been hard to stumble upon in the west. Miramax, unable to figure out how to market a garish Thai Western, sat on distribution rights for his first, Tears of the Black Tiger, for years before Magnolia bought them out; his second, Citizen Dog, managed to be even more peculiar. The Unseeable, however, is pretty straightforward: A good old-fashioned story of a creepy house with a creepy mistress and creepy servants.

Nualjan (Siraphan Wattanajinda) comes to this place looking for her husband; he left several months ago to take care of something in Bangkok but has yet to return. The very pregnant Nualjan stops at the estate for the night, only to find the next morning that taxis won't sop at the place because of the various dark magics that seem to haunt the house. She winds up staying in the servants' quarters, and her talkative new roommate fills her head with stories of vampires and the twisted old woman who lives in the shed. Nualjan sees strange things herself - a little girl who seems to disappear when she rounds a corner, an ominous chest that housekeeper Somjit (Tassawan Seneewongse) screams at Nualjan for approaching, and all the rules Somjit lays down. There's no need for supernatural explanations to find Madame Ranjuan (Suporntip Chuangrangsri) off-putting; she's been a recluse since her own husband vanished, and her behavior around the baby after Nualjan give birth is rather odd.

As you can see, there's a bit of an "everything including the kitchen sink" feel to Kongkiat Khomsiri's story. Nualjan encounters nearly every type of supernatural entity known to film (with a couple of ice queens thrown in for good measure, receives cryptic warnings, and has disturbing flashbacks. Gratifyingly, it doesn't feel like overkill; Khomsiri and Sasanatieng prime and tease the audience by contrasting the unnerving things Nualjan sees with how laughable things sound when her excitable, superstitious roommate Choy describes them to her. It's clever reverse psychology; we go in expecting a ghost story, and we get things that look supernatural, but we're inclined to look for a rational explanation because they make the alternative sound like superstitious nonsense.

Full review at EFC.

The Matrimony (Xin Zhong you Gui)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

The Matrimony takes the gothic romance out of storage, puts a (relatively) modern coat of paint on it, and lets it loose. The result is surprisingly appealing: A ghost story that for the most part delivers everything this sort of film should be while at the same time feeling new and exciting as opposed to played-out. It falters a little toward the end, but the meat of the story is prime stuff.

Xu Manli (Fan Bingbing) is a stylish modern woman in 1930s Shanghai: She's got a Louise Brooks haircut, a job as a disk jockey playing jazz on a local radio station, and she knows her boyfriend, cinematographer Shen Junchu (Leon Lai) is about to propose to her. Just before he can, though, she's killed when a car plows into her on her bicycle, killing her instantly.

A year later, Junchu's mother has arranged a marriage to country girl Sansan (Rene Liu), but he shows her no affection, saying he will never think of her as more than a guest in his house - whose attic is filled with Manli's things. It's while investigating this that Sansan encounters Manli's ghost, who proposes a deal: Seeing Junchu sad hurts her too, and when Manli touches someone as a spirit it makes them ill. If Sansan allows Manli to possess her body on occasion, Manli will teach her how to make her husband happy. Sansan agrees - she really does love him - and at first it seems to work, but Sansan should have realized that deals with spirits always have a higher price than appears at first glance.

The basic story here wouldn't seem too far out of place if it were set in a stone mansion somewhere out in the foggy English countryside - big house, new young wife, jealous ghost, attic filled with old memories covered in sheets. Instead of being set in a remote place bound by restrictive traditions, though, it takes place in a bustling, prosperous city: The house is well-lit and full of modern amenities such as radios and even a film-editing station, Sansan is an active participant in her story rather than just a naif assaulted by the forces around her, Manli is an independent woman rather than someone who only exists as Junchu's one time lover. The costumes and production design are sumptuous: Shanghai looks like an exciting place that would naturally produce someone like Manli, the house is both intimidating and a place Sansan would want to become her home. The flashbacks of how Junchu and Sansan met are perfect, too, with a snow that is both a fitting backdrop to what Sansan considers a magical first meeting and a reminder of her humble origins. Rene Liu's performance in those scenes is especially important, since otherwise a modern audience could look at Sansan's arranged marriage as a job and think less of her; instead, we want Junchu to really love her, not just treat her better because she's nice and also thrust into an uncomfortable position.

Full review at EFC.

End of the Line

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Maurice Deveraux is a perennial favorite at this festival, a local filmmaker who has always had more ambition than his low-budget slasher flicks have let on. This movie could be his ticket to bigger things; it's another horror movie, sure, but it's a smart, well-made one.

Karen (Ilona Elkin) is a nurse in a Montreal psych ward who is feeling a little bit unsteady herself; a troubled patient (Christine Lan) who had visions of demons attacking has just killed herself by jumping onto the subway tracks. When she heads home for the evening, she encounters a couple of men on the subway platform: Patrick (Robin Wilcock), who comes on too strong, and Mike (Nicolas Wright) fakes being an old friend to keep him at bay. That's not the worst trouble they'll face; also on the train are a bunch of well-dressed, clean-scrubbed types who have just been to an evangelist's rally. Midway through the ride home, those God-fearing people will get a call on their pagers: The apocalypse is coming tonight, so save as many people as you can.

And by "save", Reverend Hope (David L. McCallum) means "stab them to death with your cross-shaped daggers before the demons I say are coming get to them".

Devereaux could have gone the route of having the folks with the knives be this oncoming wave of effectively brainwashed zealots, but he does something a little more interesting: He lets them have doubts, for various reasons. Some get squeamish about killing people. Some are sociopaths using this as an excuse to rape and kill. Teenage Sarah (Nina Fillis) makes out with her boyfriend John (Tim Rozon) and has big-time doubts about the whole program. One guy is only a member of the sect because his wife was. What doing this does, aside from provide some exposition to the band of survivors trying to make their way to the surface, is make the marauders a little scarier. In part, it's because it means these people have all chosen to do something horrific individually, which is a scarier prospect than one central puppet master. But in part, it's because the people who have decided to switch sides aren't sure, while the others remain resolute - maybe these guys really do know something.

Full review at EFC.

The Fox Family (Gumiho Gajok)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The Fox Family vexes me; I'm not sure who the audience for it is. On the one hand, it certainly feels like a kids' or family film with its songs and fanciful story about a family of foxes wishing to be human. But how many kids' movies would have a subplot about a serial killer? Maybe it's not really for kids... Or western kids and/or their parents are just wimps. Still, I'm not quite sure who out there is going to really love this movie.

A "kumiho" is a sort of fox spirit in Korean mythology, and is the name a group of them take when they assume human form. They're a family - father (Joo Hyeon), son (Ha Jeong-woo), older daughter (Park Si-yeon), younger daughter (Koo Joo-yeon) - and they've assumed human form, posing as a circus until a once-in-a-century eclipse when they can become human for real - if they each eat a human liver. Meanwhile, a grifter (Park Joon-gyoo) stumbles upon their camp looking for a spot to hide from some mobsters he owes money, and takes an interest in the older sister, and there's a serial killer preying on women with small dogs - the kind whose livers the younger sister finds particularly delicious - and a sad-sack detective (Yongnyeo Seon-woo) is on the case.

It's a bit tough to connect with the Kumihos in part because they really do feel non-human. The writing has them kind of oblivious to the everyday world, and their circus act scares children in a hilariously bloody way. There's a very peculiar amorality to them when they talk about their plans to kill people and eat their livers in order to become human; they just don't give any thought at all to how this is really would not be a particularly auspicious start to their lives as humans. I'm also a little unclear as to how long the family has been in human guise; sometimes, the subtitled dialog makes it sound like it's been for a long time, although they seem kind of ignorant of human society to have been around that long.

Full review at EFC.

The Rage

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

If you like horror movies, you've probably liked some of Robert Kurtzman's work. The "K" in KNB, he's created some of the bloody and otherwise great make-up effects for scores of movies over the past twenty years or so. As expected, he serves up a heaping helping of the nasty stuff as a writer/director. As might also be expected, when it comes to everything else, there's a good argument for sticking to what he knows.

So, you've got these two groups of people. One are a bunch of teenagers in a fan heading somewhere; the other is a mad scientist (Andrew Divoff) who is experimenting with a rapidly mutating virus that causes rage, enhanced strength, craving for human blood/flesh, etc., and his subjects. One of the subjects from group B gets loose but doesn't last long. The real trouble starts when the vultures go for his body, get infected, and... well, you know.

When Kurtzman has his make-up effects hat on, he is really good. The raving, flesh-eating infectees look good and nasty, with sores and pustules and cracks appearing in the skin, sunken eyeballs, and icky stuff coming out of the mouth. People get hit with all manner of blunt and sharp objects, or cut up for all sorts of nasty wounds and viscera being torn out. If all you're looking for is gross-out stuff, this is close to a five-star movie.

Full review at EFC.

Friday, July 13, 2007

Fantasia Day Eight: Special, Ghosts of Cité Soleil, et Silk

Updated Monday's post about Tuesday with a review of The Show Must Go On.

'Twas a very nice day to spend out in the Old Port. I looked at the Body Worlds 2 exhibit at the science museum, which was educational and kind of nasty, although some of the compositions (like the "exploded" man) were kind of cool. I don't think this version has come to the Boston Museum of Science yet.

Whoever is running the vending machines has apparently not caught up with how strong the Canadian dollar is, though. $2.50 Canadian for a 600 mL soda works out to about $2.38 American, and that is WAY above the going rate in Boston. Like, a dollar more. Sure, the fact that these machines are placed a good distance away from the nearest convenience store works into it, but boo, Pepsi. Boo. You are ripping the good people of Montreal (and visiting tourists from America) off.

Today's plan: The Unseeable, The Matrimony, End of the Line (which I had really wanted to see at BUFF), The Fox Family, and maybe The Rage (I've been kind of dragging at the end of the day, so the question of whether or not I should stay up for a retro gore movie is an open one). Amazingly, it looks like I might get an hour-long dinner break for the second night in a row between Matrimony and End of the Line. That just usually doesn't happen without skipping movies. If you're in Montreal for the festival, I can recommend Ghosts of Cité Soleil with some caveats and The Signal without reservation.

Special

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Special has a very fine line to walk - we've got to basically like its main character, and we've got to like him for the very same things that make us laugh at him, and make him an object of our pity. It's tricky to make a movie about someone who is not that bright, and I don't know if the people making Special quite pull it off the way they'd like.

"Special" is the name of an antidepressant just starting clinical trials, and Les (Michael Rappaport) is one of the first to test it. The comic-book-loving parking enforcement officer says he doesn't feel depressed, but his mood isn't positive either, so he takes the pills and goes about his business. Soon, he discovers that they're having side effects: At first, he can hover in the air; when he tells this to Dr. Dobson (Jack Kehler), he discovers he's telepathic, too - Dobson's mouth is saying to stop taking them, but mentally he's saying to keep going. The only people he tells are the brothers who run the comic book shop he frequents, who are skeptical, but if he doesn't have powers, why do the brothers funding the drug try to kidnap him after he gets on the news by saving Maggie (Alexandra Holden), the pretty clerk at the local all-night market, from a holdup?

This is a low-budget independent film, so aside from not expecting much in the way of eye-popping effects, folks going to see it should temper their expectations of the cast a bit, too. Michael Rappaport is the biggest name in the cast, and having him play the lead as this character makes the film a bit of a challenge for the audience: Les is timid by nature and probably of below-average intelligence, so he's going to spend a great deal of the movie being pushed around and/or looking like a fool. And while I think Rappaport overplays the character a little, he does get across what this guy is like, what goes on in his head. The trouble is that a character like that doesn't quite reach and and grab the audience, and as well as Rappaport plays Les, I didn't quite reach in and grab him, so to speak. It might just be that Rappaport is better as part of an ensemble and isn't a leading man who can appear in nearly every scene; he just doesn't quite have a big enough personality to carry this movie.

Full review at EFC.

Ghosts of Cité Soleil

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

According to the information presented at the start of this film, the Cité Soleil section of Haiti's capital, Port-au-Prince, is considered the most dangerous place in the world by the United Nations. The poorest section of the poorest country on Earth, it is almost completely run by gangs, some of whom the film alleges worked as enforcers for President Aristide - the "chimeres", ghost soldiers.

At least, that's what they tell us. Ghosts of Cité Soleil, which follows two of the city's five major gang chiefs, doesn't present a lot of evidence linking them to Aristide's Lavalas party beyond their own assertions. In some ways, it's somewhat irrelevant; though there are frequent cut-aways to the events in Haiti at large during early 2004, this is a story about the contentious relationship between brothers, with how they effect the world around them a sidenote.

The pair are Wilson "2pac" Jean and James "Bily" Petit Frère. Bily is a more vociferous Lavalas loyalist who according to his brother, seeing himself as a future President of Haiti. 2pac doesn't see any point in thinking that big; he's too practical. While he'll tell the camera that the government provided him with a car and guns, his music expresses more doubt. He also expresses disdain for how his brother runs his gang "like a police station". For all that, 2pac is the one who seems to have the greater charisma and stability - it's Bily who rails about being shown "respect", and who calls a UN relief worker in after he shoots one of his underlings in the foot to make a point.

Full review at EFC.

Silk (Guisi)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

The line between science fiction and fantasy is often blurred, especially in film - many science fiction fans will tell you that most sci-fi is really just fantasy with energy beings instead of ghosts, lightsabers instead of swords, psychics instead of seers. Silk is in some ways like that, but in some ways the opposite - though it is unabashedly a ghost story, it thinks and acts like sci-fi much of the time.

Silk posits that ghosts exist, and can be seen, but are too dim for the eye to see. Enter Professor Hashimoto (Yosuke Eguchi), who has built a fractal structure known as a Menger Sponge, which can trap energy like no other material - including the energy a ghost child in a Taipei apartment. He and his team recruit Tung (Chang Chen), a detective with exemplary eyesight, to help them investigate. The one thing they know is that anyone who makes eye contact with the boy dies horribly; what Tung discovers is that there is a nearly invisible strand of silk that connects the boy with his potential victims.

Now, filmmaker Su Chao-bin may not have the strongest grasp on what a Menger Sponge is - a fractal pattern is a mathematical concept, by definition impossible to construct physically - but once he has introduced the idea, he's enormously clever with how to apply it. Film can be coated with in, for instance, to capture a ghost photographically. Put it in eyedrops, and a person can see ghosts for a bit. Build a big enough one, and you can capture a ghost inside. But it's not just that Su uses scientific jargon in his story, but the way the characters act. They seldom run from the supernatural, but are drawn out of curiosity, and investigate methodically, rather than acting in a foolish manner.

Full review at EFC.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

Fantasia Day Seven: Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society, Km. 31, Big Bang Love, et The Tripper

Updated Sunday's post with are review of Arch Angels.

Yesterday wound up being pretty nice; I spent the few hours I had before movies started in the Canadian Center for Architecture's museum. The exhibit on Bernard Rudofsky was pretty interesting, although the one on 1960s/1970s architecture magazines seemed kind of tedious - I quit reading the information on the walls at somewhere around 1969, and didn't feel it made a lot of sense as a museum exhibition - if you can't flip through them, see how they're organized and read articles first hand, what's the point? I don't claim to know a lot about museums, but the best ones allow you to interact with and experience their material in your own way; this was just looking at covers and reading a description while standing. That's a website, only a website would be better because you'd be in a better reading position and it might let you actually browse the magazine's content. Still, Rudefsky's studies of aesthetics and what we now call ergonomics was pretty interesting. Although, being from Maine and living in Massachusetts, I'm not sure how well those houses that prize harmony with the environment would fly: Around February I tend to want the environment to stay the heck away.

Looks like a short day today; I'm skipping Naruto: Ninja Clash in the Land of Snow because if yesterday's Ghost in the Shell feature taught me anything, it was not to try and access the latest part of an anime you're not familiar with. So I'll head down the La Vielle-Porte before returning here for Special, either Ghosts of Cité Soleil or On Evil Grounds probably the first "well, I should probably see something" decision of the festival), and then Silk.

Ghost In the Shell: Stand Alone Complex: Solid State Society (Kôkaku kidôtai: Stand Alone Complex Solid State Society)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Cyberpunk's not quite dead, but it's been on life support for a while. Once everybody started using the internet, it became difficult to make computer-oriented stories seem futuristic and cool without also making them arcane at best and incomprehensible at worst. It's a problem which vexes the latest entry in the Ghost in the Shell franchise, although I imagine that those who have been following the Stand Alone Complex television series will be in much more familiar territory.

As the film opens, Japan's top counterterrorism squad, Section 9, is responding to a hostage crisis at the airport. It ends with the hostage-taker committing suicide, afraid of someone called "The Puppeteer", and he's not the first - other officials of the defunct Seok Republic have also taken their own lives, leading Section 9 to suspect some sort of systematic corruption of their cybernetic implants. Lead detective Togusa and his team investigate, and while veteran team-member Batou is following a lead, he runs into Major Motoko Kusanagi, the former head of the team who resigned two years earlier and is now investigating mysteries that conventional government organizations are ill-equipped to solve, and she's found links to both a seeming plague of missing children and the computer system devoted to the care of Japan's senior citizens.

There's a lot going on here that at least those of us not familiar with Stand Alone Complex - I suspect that storylines about the Seok Republic, the infighting among various agencies, and certain members of the Diet worrying about the influx of refugees' effect on Japan's ethnic makeup are carryovers from the previous series. Director Kenji Kamiyama and his collaborators mostly assume that the audience is up to date, both on continuity and jargon, so if all you've seen before is Mamoru Oshii's theatrical features (if that), I'd recommend being very attentive as you watch, because the details about the world and the specific story can fly past you otherwise.

Full review at EFC.

Km. 31 (Kilómetro 31)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Km. 31 is a good ghost story, and comes fairly close to being a great one. In fact, I won't argue much with someone who comes out of it saying that it is a legitimately great ghost story, as I seem to be hampered by my insistence that these things make sense.

I don't mean that sarcastically; it's a legitimate blind spot. Ghost stories and other types of supernatural horror are based upon something irrational and unquantifiable happening in an otherwise rational world, but my brain is wired to expect a mechanism that can be understood and worked with. Failing that, I want everything to at least fit in thematically. Km. 31 seems to be doing pretty good in that regard almost literally right up to the final scene, and when the film doesn't give me the conclusion it had seemed to be leading me toward, I feel cheated. Those who find that sort of randomness a virtue will have no problem with it.

But let's back up a bit. The film starts with Agata (Iliana Fox) driving down the highway. At the Km. 31 marker, a small boy jumps out in front of the car, and Agata hits him. She gets out of the car, calls her boyfriend Omar (Raul Mendez), and while looking for the boy (who has mysteriously vanished), she herself is run over. A few miles away, this triggers a sort of reaction in her identical twin Catalina (Fox again), who leads her Spanish friend Nuno (Adira Collado) to where Agata lays, barely alive. The doctors have to amputate Agata's legs and she comes out of surgery in a coma; when Catalina and Omar ask about the boy she mentioned, they're told there was no boy. The search for answers leads Omar to Martin Ugalde (Carlos Aragon), a detective obsessed with the dozens of hit-and-run accidents that have happened at that highway marker, and Catalina and Nuno to an old woman (Luisa Huertas) who sheds some light on the supernatural forces at work.

Full review at EFC.

Big Bang Love: Juvenile A (46-okunen no koi)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Takashi Miike showed down a bit a couple years ago to take a stab at doing a big-budget family movie, but since then he's gotten back to what passes for normal where he's concerned: Churning out movies at a rate nearly unheard of for other filmmakers, working cheap and occasionally tossing something downright peculiar in among the yakuza dramas and horror films. Big Bang Love is one of the strange ones, an interesting mixture of unusual styles and subject matter that works more often than not, if only just.

After an opening that is deliberately abstract and related to the main story thematically more than literally, we get into the meat of the story: Prisoner Shiro Kazuki (Masanobu Ando) has just been killed, apparently strangled by cell-mate Jun Ariyoshi (Ryuhei Matsuda), who is saying things like "I did it". Still, an official investigation must be made, but it leaves the investigating officers perplexed: Shiro is a timid young man, despite the brutal crime that placed him behind bars, while Shiro was a belligerent repeat offender who had made an enemy of everyone else in the building; even the warden has a motive.

The murder mystery is mainly a framework off which to hang an examination of how these characters never really had any kind of shot, as opposed to a puzzle to be solved. Indeed, there's so little to it that the film occasionally seems to repeat himself, having his detectives run in circles, covering the same material multiple times (once or twice, I suspect, re-cutting the same footage to do it). Instead, Miike gives us vignettes about how the environment Shiro grew up in seemingly offered him the choice of becoming a thug or becoming a victim. Jun, on the other hand, becomes a bit more of a cipher by design, as the film abjectly refuses to stick him in any of the typical gay pigeonholes; indeed, occasionally the audience will find themselves wondering just what his sexual orientation is, or whether that's too binary a concept for someone like Jun.

Full review at EFC.

The Tripper

* * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

I'm not saying that The Tripper should have been a slam dunk by any means, but it does kind of have something for everyone - an axe-wielding Ronald Reagan going to town on a bunch of hippies? There's pleasure to be had there, unless you like both Reagan AND hippies, in which case I suspect you're in a tiny minority. That it's as political as it is goofy is part of the fun, but co-writer/director/co-star David Arquette doesn't quite seem able to harness the potential of his good idea.

After some scathing quotes from Reagan and a "thirty years ago" prologue that we know will be important later, we meet a group of already half-baked, half-drunk slackers heading for a big outdoor concert in their van. Well, one's pretty sober - Samantha (Jaime King) isn't terribly interested in the chemicals, although she doesn't regret leaving her conservative boyfriend Jimmy (Balthazar Getty) behind. They get harassed by some redneck lumberjacks along the way, but eventually make it to see local Sherriff Buzz Hall (Thomas Jane) trying to shut it down as unsafe, despite the graft promoter Frank Baker (Paul Reubens) has paid Mayor Burton (Rick Overton). Now, sure, Buzz is only thinking about the weather, the privacy-loving local pot growers, and the tiny size of his police department, but he certainly seems to have the right idea when some guy in a Ronald Reagan mask starts going after the visiting (faux) hippies with an axe.

Give Arquette some credit where it's due - the man has a clear love for the slasher genre and doesn't hold back from giving the gorehounds what they want. Ronnie takes out a couple dozen people in this movie, and it's seldom off-screen. Axes get buried in heads, people get mauled by dogs, and gallons of sticky red blood spatter all over everything. There's bad jokes, attack dogs, and Ronnie breaking out some of his most famous sound bites before a kill. On a certain basic level, it delivers the goods.

...

It's kind of a shame, actually; the movie is so self-consciously aiming for satire that its failure in that regard negates some of its virtues as a splatter movie.

Full review at EFC.

Wednesday, July 11, 2007

Fantasia Day Six: Jade Warrior, Minushi, Exte: Hair Extensions, et Right at Your Door

Updated yesterday's post with a revew of Roommates (D-Day).

Yesterday wound up pretty nice outside, so I went up Mount Royal to try and burn off a heavy breakfast from Eggspectation. Nice, as always, then I came back down for four pretty good movies.

I also met Kurt Halfyard from Twitch and we compared notes. It was cool to talk to someone who writes for a site I read every day. I made the Boston film scene probably sound a bit cooler than it is (though it ain't bad), and I hope I didn't make too bad an impression on him by my obvious disdain for some of the Q&A sessions for Hair Extensions and Right at Your Door. I think Sion Sono and Chris Gorak each got asked the same questions several times, but I was also amused by how the need for a translator in Sono's case highlighted just how dumb some of the questions were - she would seem to struggle to find a way to interpret the question so that it didn't seem like a complete waste of time. Major props to Sono for answering "I don't care" to questions about American remakes of Japanese horror and the state of J-horror in general (the first after an extended exchange between Sono, the translator, and host Mitch Davis). I got the impression that he was a guy who just had an idea for a wacky horror movie, and the rest of the industry didn't matter to him.

To close the day, I probably slightly disappointed my father who asks if I'm taking advantage of Montreal's fine dining when I see him online in the mornings by grabbing a 12.30am supper from Burger King. One of the side-effects of having three screens this year is that there seem to be far fewer times without something I want to see playing and fewer gaps between films long enough for me to actually sit down in a restaurant. I'm actually looking forward to just being able to sit down and eat when I get home.

Today's plans: I recommend Right at Your Door to those who are up there; I'll probably be seeing Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, Km. 31, Big Bang Love: Juvenile A and The Tripper

Jade Warrior (Jadesoturi)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in the J.A. de Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Some of the hype around Jade Warrior is that it's the first martial arts film from Finland, which kind of misrepresents it - there's a few nice martial arts sequences, but what really makes it tick is everything around the martial arts. We get a story of the destructive things people do to themselves to try to make their love work, and a reminder that Finland's great, epic story, the Kalevala, seldom if ever left its lovers happy. The idea of connecting bits of the Kalevala to Chinese legends is also a pretty nifty idea. I have no idea how it works anthropologically, but if there's anything to it, that's fascinating.

To give the martial arts its due - the big fight scene involves sledgehammers. Don't see that very often.

Full review at EFC.

Minushi

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

As I said to Kurt while waiting in line for the next movie, Minushi is a nice start. I think Tyler Gibb has a way to go on writing dialogue, and the decision to release it online in bits as segments were finished gives the story a very episodic feel, but it also lets us see him developing as a filmmaker over the four years it took to finish the film.

Not bad for a guy working in Flash on his home PC. I think Gibb's still got a way to go before he's in the same category as Makoto Shinkai as far as being a one-man band, but he's on his way (and this film could also help him hook up with some good collaborators).

Full review at EFC.

Exte: Hair Extensions (Ekusute)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

I remember Ned Hinkle calling the likes of The Ring and The Grudge "hair horror" a few years ago. I'm not sure how mainstream the term ever got, but I do dig what Sion Sono has done with the subgenre here. It's the kind of parody that will likely make it hard to do play it straight for a while, because Sono hits the clichés in a way that is both merciless and also, perversely, more effective than a lot of straight horror movies done by less talented people.

I hope it gets a theatrical relase in the U.S. before DVD. It's the rare movie that works very well as both a horror movie and a comedy, both for people who like horror films and those who don't.

Full review at EFC.

Right at Your Door

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

No-one uses the word "terrorism" in Right at Your Door, but that's not because it's irrelevant to the movie. It's all about terror, and the fear that comes from not knowing what just happened, what's going to happen, and what to do next. What it isn't about is terrorists - there's plenty of action movies for that.

Brad (Rory Cochrane) and Lexi (Mary McCormack) have just moved into a new place in L.A., and this morning she's off to her job while he waits for the cable guy and makes some calls to try to help his music career. A fairly ordinary day, until a series of explosions rocks the city. Brad tries to get through to Lexi, but all the circuits are jammed, and police are setting up roadblocks. It gets worse: These were not just explosives, but some sort of chemical/biological/"dirty" bombs, and the authorities are advising citizens to seal themselves in their homes. Brad wants to wait for Lexi, but his neighbor's handyman Alvaro (Tony Perez) shows up needing shelter...

Early parts of the movie move in something close to real time, with what at least feels like unbroken shots of Brad and Alvaro trying to do whatever they can to deal with the situation actively. Whether it be Brad's early attempts to get into the city or the near-panicked attempts to get the house sealed off, there's not a lot of talking, and filmmaker Chris Gorak avoids anything that pulls us away from the immediacy of the situation. Some time must pass between Alvaro's arrival and when they start sealing the house, and by a similar token we don't see them sealing every single window, but it never feels like a montage or as if they've had time to stop and think.

Full review at EFC.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

Fantasia Day Five: Diary, Once in a Summer, Roommates, et Aachi & Ssipak

I'm not letting writing reviews eat my entire morning again. I'm writing up Diary, capsulizaing the others, and then getting out of this hotel room.

Today's plan: Jade Warrior, Minushi, Exte: Hair Extensions, and then a game-time decision on Isabella, Right at Your Door, and Square Jaw Theatre

Diary (Mon Seung)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théâtre (Fantasia 2007)

Winnie Leung is not well.

You can tell just by looking at her. She's uncomfortably thin, her hair covers her face, and she appears generally fragile. And that's before her phone calls to Seth Lau escalate from lonely to upset to "why have you taken your possessions?" over the film's first three minutes. The break-up has crushed her, and she stays in her dark apartment, carving puppets, writing in her diary, and occasionally talking to her friend Yvonne (Isabella Leong). It's on Yvonne's advice that she goes to confront Seth and winds up meeting Ray Lau (Shawn Yue), who happens to be a dead ringer for Seth. Ray's nice, but "reminds me of my ex-boyfriend" is probably not the greatest basis for a relationship.

The films Oxide Pang has made with his brother Danny have tended toward a supernatural explanation for their horrors, but Winnie's precarious mental state is quite enough to make anyone nervous in this case. That doesn't keep Pang from breaking out some unearthly visuals. The fantastical images Winnie sees are nicely off-putting, though not necessarily looking to make the audience jump. The scattered special effect bits also tend to echo the genuinely creepy vibe of the production design, especially of Winnie's apartment; it never seems to get enough light and has hand-carved marionettes scattered throughout as a blatant attempt for Winnie to make herself feel less lonely.

Full review at EFC.

Once In a Summer (Geuhae Yeoreum)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théâtre (Fantasia 2007)

One of the things I'm really liking about this year's Fantasia is that there are a lot more options than zombie and serial killer movies; specifically, there are more chances to see mainstream Korean dramas like this one, which gives us Lee Byung-hun and Su-Ae as a pair of young people who meet in the Korean countryside during the summer of '67 and fall in love, though we know from the framing sequence that it won't end happily.

Lee is almost unrecognizable as the cool action hero of A Bittersweet Life, and is honestly a little long in the tooth to play a college student, but the story works. Su-Ae is adorable as the village's beautiful outcast - her father defected to the north - and the background of Korea's student unrest is always interesting The framing device isn't perfectly integrated with the movie proper, although I liked the people in it.

Full review at EFC.

Roommates (D-Day)

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théâtre (Fantasia 2007)

There's a difference between having a good idea and a good story. D-Day/Roommates (both titles appear on-screen) has a basic idea that should resonate with teenagers the world over, but has no clear direction to go with it. The filmmakers try several approaches, but it seems like maybe they should have chosen one and run with it.

The film opens with a commercial for an intensive test-prep school, where girls who did not pass their college entrance exams on their first try can receive nearly a full year of comprehensive, distraction-free lessons with regular practice tests. We meet four who are assigned to the same dorm room. Our narrator, Bo-ram, is shy and self-effacing. Da-young is a sweet, friendly girl who has somehow snuck her hamster "Happy" in despite it being against the all-important rules. Eun-su actually passed her exams, but not with scores good enough for top-rates Seoul National University, and her family has high standards. Yoo-jin is, well, a bitch, who wastes no time holding Happy over Da-young's head or defying the staff by sleeping late, smoking, and having a liberal interpretation of the dress code. The staff comes down hard on her, soo when she's the first to hear strange noises and see dead girls littering the hallway, it's fair to ask whether they're real or the stress and a story about a fire at the school several years earlier getting to her.

For all that horror movies are frequently targeted to and feature people in their teens, few touch on academic pressures. This despite them being something every teen can relate to and a topic ripe for satire. The MCAS is a subject of constant controversy for how it distorts school curricula here in Massachusetts, students in Japan routinely attend "cram schools" after their regular classes, and if this film is to be believed, and all across America high school students run themselves ragged by choosing classes taking part in extracurricular activities out of a desire to make their transcripts look better during the competitive college application process. At its best moments, Roommates taps into this - students are informed by the dean on entry that they are losers since they didn't make it into college, and the school's methods involve the worst aspects of making a competition out of learning. Eun-su's storyline features her breaking down as she loses her #1 place and sinks into depression, popping pills, chewing her lip raw, and finally seeing things that aren't there, all while the Dean seems unable to recognize that Eun-su needs something other than prodding to do better.

Full review at EFC.

Aachi & Ssipak (Geuhae Yeoreum)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2007 in Théâtre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Oh. My. God.

This is one of the most outrageously violent animated films I've seen in quite a while, and also one of the most fast-moving and funny to boot. It's got scatalogical humor at its very core, ridiculous characters, and probably enough blown-off heads and carnage to earn it an NC-17 should someone try to release it here. The title characters are a pair of small-time hoods trying to make it big off a girl who is rewarded with hundreds of highly-addictive Juicybars whenever she takes a dump (in the future, fecal matter is used as energy, so it's important that everyone spends a lot of time on the throne), only to be pursued by the dim-witted mutant addicts of the Diaper Gang, the vicious schoolgirl Chief of police, and Geko, her cyborg supercop.

The animation is also darn slick, almost never slowing down to let the audience catch their breath even a little. The film joyously rips off anything from Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom to Basic Instinct to Equilibrium, and does it with style.

It's a shame that there's no way that this will ever, ever play American theaters beyond a midnight show or offbeat festival.

Full review at EFC

Monday, July 09, 2007

Fantasia Day Four: War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On, et Spiral

Updated yesterday's post with The Banquet.

I spent too long writing yesterday morning, and thus didn't get to the festival on time for Wolfhound. On the one hand, it was sword and sorcery stuff, which I don't have much particular love for; on the other hand, it was the one new Russian movie I could fit into the schedule, and I'm bummed to miss it - there's cool stuff going on in Russia right now (and has been for some time).

It did give me a chance to poke around a couple of book/magazine shops and discover that Canada/Quebec/Montreal doesn't appear to have the same love for pencil puzzles as America. There weren't even a lot of French-language crossword magazines for sale, let alone English ones, and even Sudoku/Kakuro was tough to find. I wonder why that is.

Today's plan: Oxide Pang's Diary, then Korea for the rest of the night - Once in a Summer, Roommates, and Aachi and Ssipak. This means making darn sure I wrap tourism up early on Friday, because that's the only other time I can catch The Unseeable.

War of Flowers (aka Tazza: The High Rollers, Tajja)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

It's probably not a good idea to try to learn about a game by seeing a movie about it. Based upon War of Flowers (aka Tazza: The High Rollers), I'm dumbfounded at the idea that hwatu could consume someone's life - it looks like poker, only with smaller hands, fewer cards, and no discards. That said, with the right characters and story, you could probably make an exciting movie about flipping coins.

Kim Goni (Cho Seung-woo) starts out as a man with a gambling problem, and leaves home in shame after stealing and losing his sister's alimony payment. Driven practically to the edge, he gains the attention of of Pyeong Gyung-jang (Baek Yun-shik), who claims to be one of the three greatest gamblers in Korea (but lives modestly because he is much better at judging cards that real estate). Pyeong teaches Goni how to cheat... er, "use tricks" rather than "play the traditional way", but makes him promise to leave the life after he's achieved his goal of repaying his sister five times over. That's not happening, especially after Pyeong introduces him to grifter Madame Jeong (Kim Hye-su), the "Flower of Gamblers". Goni joins her operation, but winds up on his own after he and new comrade Gwang (Yu Hae-jin) escape a police raid. Even if Madame Jeong didn't still need gamblers for her scams, though, Goni has made enemies of vicious scarred gambler Agwee (Kim Yun-seok) and gangster Kwak Cheol-yeong (Kim Eung-su), which could place his and Gwang's new girlfriends, sisters Hwa-ran (Lee Su-kyeong) and Seo-ran (Kim Jeong-nan), in danger.

War of Flowers has the makings of a caper epic, as Goni starts at the bottom and then works his way up, if not to the top, than to the point where he's on his own. It hits a lot of familiar targets - the mentor character who teaches the audience along with the star and has an effect on the story well after his initial exit, the femme fatale, the motormouthed sidekick, the taste of a normal life, the schemes spelled out for the audience that get twisted into something else. Writer/director Choi Cong-hun (working from a comic by Ha Yeong-min) does a great job of keeping it interesting, telling the story in flashback with Mme. Jeong as our guide. Other narrators contribute toward the end, but Jeong's seductive voice adds a hint of glamour to the world of gamblers even as Goni starts out in the dirt, and the cuts to her being interviewed in an expensive dress hint that Goni will eventually transcend his humble origins to become a big deal.

Full review at EFC.

Ten Nights of Dreams (aka Yume Ju-ya)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The bit that opens this film has legendary Japanese novelist Soseki Natsume admitting that the book "Ten Nights of Dreams" is meant to be a mystery, one which might not be solved for a hundred years. He says this in 1906, and the maid he's addressing comments that she'd have to reincarnate to see that. A hundred years later, ten notable directors have each made a short film based on one of the book's surreal stories, and while the results must often be quite far from what a Meiji-era writer imagined, they are nearly all fascinating.

The first dream is realized by the late Akio Jissoji, and gets the anthology off to a suitably surreal start: It features Soseki himself, speaking to his wife (Kyoko Koizumi) and, in true dream-like manner, feeling unstuck in time. Jissoji frequently pulls the camera back to show that Soseki's home is nothing more than a pair of sets on a stage. It's a theme that other directors will come back to - that Soseki not only wrote about fantasies, but was himself somewhat disconnected from reality.

The second dream comes from Kon Ichikawa, in which a samurai (Tsuyoshi Ujiki) is briefly visited by a wise man who challenges him to find enlightenment on a deadline. Presented as a silent film pastiche, it playfully tweaks the idea of enlightenment and understanding as something that can be strived for.

Takashi Shimizu is up next, and as you might expect from the man behind the Grudge franchise, his third dream is a nightmare, as a grotesque child leads Soseki through his wife's dream about broken idols and miscarried children being reincarnated in her womb. Shimizu draws upon Soseki's life from after the publication of Ten Nights to add an extra level of eeriness, and also demonstrates that he's well able to create scares without relying on his usual standbys. He also has room for a little wit, as his Natsume ponders that he cannot remember his own childhood clearly, and his own children sometimes seem alien to him.

Full review at EFC.

The Show Must Go On (Wooahan Segye)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Being a gangster sounds cool until you try to make a career out of it. Maybe the money's okay, but the hours stink, it's awkward when your daughter's teacher asks you what you do for a living, and the lack of insurance really causes trouble when getting beaten or stabbed is an occupational hazard. It's no wonder Kang In-gu's wife wants a divorce.

In-gu (Song Kang-ho) isn't thrilled with the way his life is going, either - his daughter hates him, the boss's brother is a screw-up, and the construction job he's just muscled his gang into controlling is causing problems, both with a rival gang and with the workers (though he gets along well with his opposite number in the other gang; they've been best friends since elementary school). He'd quit, but he also wants to buy one of those Western-style houses in the suburbs, but can he really afford it if he goes straight? Being a gangster is all he knows.

Someone coming to The Show Must Go On expecting a comedy will probably be a bit disappointed; although it functions as a sort of parody of the gangster movie genre, writer/director Han Jae-rim opts to rely less on jokes and more on simply sucking the glamor out of the activity. Someone like In-gu is likely never going to become chief, so he's basically stuck in a middle management position, with all the aggravation that entails. One of the funniest sequences has In-gu trying to handle a labor dispute only to find that the contractors know full well that the mob needs them working more than they need publicity, and that their construction equipment trumps the knives and bats the gangsters bring to intimidate them. The audience winds up just feeling sort of sorry for In-gu, especially since the incident leads into another trip to the hospital. A life of danger and violence seems much less sexy if there's a good chance of one's wife and daughter waiting outside the emergency room door becoming a regular event.

Full review at EFC.

Spiral

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre D.B. Clarke (Fantasia 2007)

Spiral is about as thin as a feature film can be, to the point where I think that maybe there's not a feature's worth of material to it. I wonder if it wouldn't drift into obscurity, even by festival-circuit standards, if programmers didn't find it to be an interesting counterpoint to Hatchet, a slasher flick with which it shares a star and director that has been doing the midnight-movie rounds at the same time.

While I'm told Hatchet is a funny, high-energy piece, Spiral is fairly somber. Mason (Joel Moore) works in an insurance company call center, his only friend his boss and high-school classmate Berkeley (Zachary Levi). Mason likes jazz, and painting, and is carrying some bad memories around. His last relationship has just ended, but a new girl has taken interest in him: Amber (Amber Tamblyn) works in the same call center, likes the spot that Mason had staked out for eating lunch by himself, and certainly doesn't mind that Mason lets her chatter on without complaint. She seems oblivious to how creepy everyone else finds Mason. It doesn't escape the audience's notice, though, that the sketches and paintings Mason starts making of her after they start dating are eerily reminiscent of the ones he removed from his apartment earlier.

The film is a nice calling card for Joel Moore, who stars, co-wrote the script with Jeremy Boreing, served as an executive producer, and directs along with Adam Green (since Moore is in nearly ever scene, Green served as the on-set director with Moore handling the rest of the work). Mason is a good character for him; Moore's hangdog face and deep voice hint that there's something tragic hanging over him that makes the audience want to understand why he's so cut off. Most of the people at his workplace are put off by him, but one can see where people would occasionally be drawn in, too. As the movie goes on, there's an occasionally scary edge of anger in his voice, and he's got a line at the end ("how can you tell the difference?") that drives home what kind of anguish his particular troubles must be.

Full review at EFC.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

Fantasia Day Three: Arch Angels, 200 Pounds Beauty, Dasepo Naughty Girls, The Banquet, The Rug Cop and zzzzzzzzzz..

Updated yesterday's post with Flight of the Living Dead.

Nothing but movies yesterday, and today looks similar. I kind of ran out of gas at around ten o'clock last night, so I dozed off a bit during The Rug Cop and a lot during Hell's Ground. It's a shame, because The Rug Cop was pretty funny. Hell's Ground I didn't quite enjoy so much; it seemed to go on forever even while I was drifting in and out of sleep, and it seemed like every time I woke up, the same kids were still in the car, one was still bleeding, and I had no idea what they were fighting. It probably didn't help that they showed a twenty minute montage of how goofy Pakistani exploitation has been in the past beforehand; I was not in a good spot for having my endurance tested.

If you're in Montreal today, I wouldn't talk you out of 200 Pounds Beauty or Dasepo Naughty Girls, though I might suggest that there's better ways to spend your time than Viva. My plan is Wolfhound, War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On and Spiral.

Arch Angels (Waru Mikearu)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Teen and tween girls in Japan get this, and in America they get Bratz. Something is just not fair.

All you pervs who reached this page by searching for "Japanese Catholic Schoolgirls" may leave now; this almost lighter-than air trifle isn't really for you. The young girls it's made for should get a kick out of it, though - it's a fun, upbeat little fantasy, equal parts Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Nancy Drew.

As with many such tales, it starts with a dead parent, in this case the mother of Fumio Shijo (Juri Ueno). This leads her to her wealthy brother Kazuomi (Yusuke Iseya), whom she didn't know existed before. "The Prince", as she calls him, enrolls her in St. Michael's Academy, a Catholic girls' school on a sort-of remote island (she takes the train over what appears to be a twenty-mile-long bridge every day). The formal students make her feel out of place, but she winds up finding a couple other girls who would rather sneak out to snack on chicken ramen than stay in the stuffy confines of the school all day: Class President Yuzuko Sarashina (Airi Taira) is faking the upper class thing herself, as her parents are new millionaires, while star athlete Kazune Saiki (Megumi Seki) associates it with her hunky tutor Shunsuke (Toshinobu Matsuo), who lets her eat it between bonks on the head while studying. They're hanging around together when a strange explosion gives them superpowers - which could come in useful, what with the recent series of teenaged asian girls from wealthy families being kidnapped.

The superpowers and the kidnappings are basically an excuse to give the movie a big action finale, while the rest is occupied with girl stuff - secret clubs, preparing for a big party/school festival, and Fumio fretting about how she really doesn't seem to fit into her brother's world. There is, of course, a potential suitor for Kazuomi with visions of sending Fumio off to Switzerland, but it's indicative of how good-natured Fumio and the film in general are that she rapidly embraces the idea, wanting to please this potential sister, feeling that she's screwed up her brother's life and that it is wrong for her to expect him to make changes to accommodate her.

Full review at EFC.
200 Pounds Beauty (Minyeo-neun Geoerowo)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The thing about 200 Pounds Beauty is that there's no satisfying way to end it. The premise (fat girl becomes a beauty through extensive surgery) leads to the film either presenting radical, dangerous cosmetic surgery as a viable course of action, ending in tears, or trying to have things both ways. It's inevitable. So it's a real testament to Kim Ah-jung's performance that we spend the film hoping it will find some way to pull it off.

Ms. Kim plays Kan Han-na, an overweight, unattractive woman who nevertheless has a lovely voice. It serves her well both as a phone-sex operator and as the real singer behind pop tart Ammy (who's pretty and can dance, but can't carry a tune at all). Han-na has a crush on Ammy's manager Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), and he seems to like her... And then Han-na overhears them talking about her. Crushed, she goes to one of her phone-sex regulars, a plastic surgeon, and demands he change everything. He reluctantly agrees, and after a year of surgery and recovery, Han-na re-emerges at half her original weight, with a new face, new boobs, etc. Hearing that Ammy's second album has been delayed (while Sang-jun and Ammy tried to find Han-na), she auditions to be Ammy's replacement under another name. "Jenny" gets the gig, and the guy, but pretending to be someone else creates its own problems.

Kim Ah-jung is the reason to see this movie; she brings the same sort of innocent, kind of dorky charm to Han-na at both sizes, always at least a bit out of step with what people expect from someone who looks like she does. She always hits the right note to get the audience to believe in and like Han-na, whether it's squealing upon having her bandages cut off that she even cries pretty now, telling her doctor that the dangers of the surgery don't matter because she feels like she's already died, appearing genuinely tortured that she has to pretend not to know her senile father or risk exposing her deception, or imitating glamor poses as she walks. She's got great comic chops and a pretty darn good voice for the singing scenes; her face is expressive enough for silent comedy. She never loses sight of the fact that we're supposed to like Han-na, even when she's screwing up or not at her best.

Full review at EFC.

Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Dasepo Naughty Girls is based on an internet comic strip, and it's got that kind of manic energy: It starts out with a whole bunch of quick, raunchy gags that aren't much more than crude but don't really need to be. By the end, though, it's started to pull its punches a little, and stitched together more story than it really needs.

"No Use High" is a multi-religious high school whose students probably have names, but we don't hear them much. Poverty Girl (Kim Ok-bin) carries her poverty around on her back, and her attempts to sell her virtue for money tend to go bizarrely awry. She's got a huge crush on Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), who meanwhile has fallen hard for Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong), the beautiful sister of outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon). Only issue: She's actually a boy. Meanwhile, Anthony's friends are launching an investigation into why Class Monitor Girl (Park Hye-won) and Student Vice President Girl (Nam Oh-jeong) are suddenly more interested in studying and getting into college than putting out after trips to the principal's office.

Dasepo has a lot of the same feel as American Pie in how it's superficially very crude while at the same time celebrating its characters' youthful innocence. Sure, the movie opens with a bit where a substitute announces that their English teacher won't be coming in because he's being treated for syphilis. Oh, and Class Monitor Girl, you should get checked to. Which leads to another student saying he has to leave class early to visit the doctor. And then another, and so on until poor Cyclops is sitting there all alone. As much as the movie makes jokes about casual promiscuity, it doesn't go in much for actual titillation: The scene where Poverty Girl becomes an internet sensation is almost ridiculous in its tameness - it feels like more than it is because it's one of the only times we see her not weighed down by her mother's financial problems and ill health.

Full review on EFC.

The Banquet (Ye Yan)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Even in an age where period martial-arts epics have been made by the likes of Ang Lee, Kaige Chen, and Zhang Yimou, The Banquet stands out as high-gloss. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they've built the largest set ever used for a Chinese film. Executive producer Yuen Woo-ping handles fight choreography, and there are five featured soloists and singers on Tan Dun's score. Director Feng Xiaogang is going all out.

Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly tubulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship.

And it's a good one. Although it borders on sacrelige to suggest that Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular can be improved upon, there aren't many changes I'd want taken back. Wu Luan's fascination with actors and acrobats is now an integral part of his character - he has chosen to spend his time studying the arts, and it's made some think he is not cut out to be Emperor. Qing (Xun Zhou), the Ophelia character, is just as hopelessly linked to the prince, but it feels more like true love, at least from her end; she's strong and noble enough to do more than drown heartbroken offstage. Oddly, she's a stronger character in part because instead of feeling like she's there as an obligatory love interest until her death motivates Laertes, there's a little more depth to her relationship with Wu Luan because of Wan's presense.

Full review at EFC.

The Rug Cop (Zura Deka)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

This would be a kick-ass pilot for a TV series, and nails the 70s/80s cop show clichés it spoofs with frequent hilarity. I may have to try and get a screener so I can see the whole thing and post a full review.