Monday, July 28, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Nineteen: The Moss, Going by the Book, Dance of the Dead

Aaaaand... Done. Mostly; I came away with five screeners to catch up with over the next month, as I try and catch up on the roughly thirty movies I didn't get to fully write up during the festival. One is Before the Fall, the other four are stuff that I couldn't make time for with everything else playing.

Fantasia is huge, although one thing that surprised me is that 19 days doesn't seem that much more overwhelming that 11. In previous years, I found myself feeling crushed by the end, with one film blending into another, but even though I was there nearly twice as long, the festival experience itself didn't leave me feeling fatigued by the end, just the writing about it. I think the festival's programmers did a great job of putting together a more varied festival, in terms of genres, styles, and cultures represented. I get the folks who say it's too big and too specialized, but if it were to contract, it would likely either become more specialized or lose some of the gems.

Will I try to do the entire festival again in eleven months' time? I don't know yet. It uses a huge chunk of my vacation time, so I'll want to figure out a better way to manage that, and maybe find a better place to stay (the apartment I found did the job, but drove me nuts at points). It's still an event I can't recommend highly enough to fans of this sort of movie.

Ching Toi (The Moss)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The Moss opens with a little girl narrating a fairy tale, about a princess with a green gemstone who is abducted by a demon the be saved by a knight. By the time it's finished, the time for such stories will have passed. After all, Derek Kwok's second feature doesn't take place in some fairy kingdom, but in one of Hong Kong's slums.

There is a green gemstone, which fat Kei has purchased for his mother, the crime boss of a local neighborhood. On the way home, he stops for a few minutes with a prostitute, which turns out to be a really bad idea - there's a police raid, during which the gem flies away, he hits the girl, and though she doesn't start that fight, she sure finishes it. The gem lands at the feet of Fa (Si Suet-yee), an 11-year-old girl who has come to live with her big sister, a fellow hooker named Lulu (Bonnie Xian), and join the business if it will make her money. When Kei doesn't make it home, "Chong mom" (Susan Shaw) takes action - first calling in a favor from former undercover cop Jan (Shawn Yue), then dispatching a homeless assassin (Fan Siu-wong) to take out the rival she thinks is responsible, "Four-Eye" Tong (Liu Kai-chi). All hell breaks loose, and Jan winds up in the middle of all of it.

There's actually even more than that going on; Kwok and his co-writers have a group of Pakistani armed robbers lurking in the background, too. The Moss is a busy film, especially in the beginning, as the filmmakers throw out a great many characters without tipping their hands too much about which ones will be important and/or active as things get going. Sure, we're likely going to see a certain amount of focus on Fa - she narrates the opening scene and a kid in the middle of a brothel is (hopefully) too unusual and delicate a storyline to consign to the background - but some characters make strong first impressions only to be knocked off minutes later.

Full review at EFC.

Bareuge Salja (Going by the Book)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Going by the Book works on a wonderfully simple comedy principle: As long as you don't repeat gags, a clever underdog getting the best of overconfident people in authority will make people laugh and want more. Once you've got that sort of situation and enough good jokes, it's just a matter of setting them up and knocking them down. At least, a movie as funny as Going by the Book can make it look that easy.

Jung Do-man (Jeong Jae-yeong) is our underdog; a former detective demoted to traffic cop after failing to make a corruption case against the governor stick, he still takes his job seriously, going to work every morning with his uniform spotless and enforcing the law to the letter, including giving he new Sampo chief of police Lee Seung-woo (Son Byung-ho) a ticket for a illegal left turn on an empty street. Sam-po has been hit with a rash of bank robberies, and Seung-woo proposes a special training exercise: They simulate a robbery, allowing the police to publicly demonstrate their effectiveness and hone their skills a little. Everyone has their assigned roles, and the chief personally assigns Do-man the part of the robber. And, remember, Do-man takes his job seriously.

To his credit, he does worry that the chief may regret his decision.

Jung Do-man is a familiar enough character; Simon Pegg played a variation on the type in Hot Fuzz. Jeong Jae-yeong is careful not to make Do-man insufferable; he looks apologetic when the clerk at the video store mentions that since they make their money off late fees, Do-man always returning his movies on time doesn't really help the business. Indeed, part of the reason that the audience can laugh so heartily at Do-man making the entire police department look like fools is that he seems to be taking very little pleasure in it; he wants to be caught but is unable to give less than a full effort. If he was a jerk about it, we might not enjoy the other cops getting their comeuppance quite so much.

Full review at EFC.

Dance of the Dead

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Sometimes writers (and the companies that deliver their works to you) have a devil of a time with finding a title for something, and it will undergo many changes and permutations before they decide that, yes, this is the one that will grab people's interest. And then there are movies like Dance of the Dead, where the title (apparently) comes in a fit of inspiration and the filmmakers seemingly work backwards from that. It doesn't usually work nearly this well.

The situations of the title are laid out pretty straightforwardly in the start: Some sludge from the nearby nuclear power plant (right next to the cemetery) seems to be causing outbreaks of the dead suddenly showing signs of life, much to the annoyance of the gravedigger (James Jarett), while across town the local high schoolers are getting ready for the prom. Organizer Lindsay (Greyson Chadwick) is annoyed that her slacker boyfriend Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz) doesn't seem to take it (or anything) seriously, and opts to go with student council president Mitch (Jeff Adelman) instead; Jimmy's friend Steven (Chandler Darby) is trying to ask his lab partner Gwen (Carissa Capobianco), but the cheerleader has her eyes on Nash (Blair Redford). No girl would want to go with backyard wrestling-loving thug Kyle (Justin Welborn) in the first place. It's a good thing all of them wind up late or not going, though - when the living dead attack the prom, it's up to them to come to the rescue!

Why, exactly, the school dance should wind up the focal point of the zombie outbreak is left somewhat fuzzy; we're to take it somewhat on faith that teenager is a zombie delicacy to the point where they will all naturally converge upon the gym rather than just shamble about randomly. Of course, these zombies aren't quite the Romero standard-issue variety; they're articulate enough to express their desire for brains and a few of them are tool-users. Heck, they've got enough energy to burst out of their graves like their coffins have ejection seats.

Full review at EFC, along with one other review.

Monday, July 21, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Eighteen: 1968 Tunnel Rats, Muay Thai Chaiya, Voice of a Murderer, Alone, and Pig Hunt

Today's my last day in Montreal - I leave on the 8am bus tomorrow - and it has been a blast. My only regret is that between trying to get two or three reviews up a day and doing some work for the day job, I wound up not getting to go out and about nearly as much as I would have liked. I'm not sure what the "right" way to do a festival is - I kind of feel obligated to see as many movies as I can and spread the word on them if they're going to give me a media pass, but I have spent way too much time in this apartment typing on a computer.

Ah, well. I've got the place rented through next month, so I'll probably take an unclaimed weekend and just see the city with no obligations at some point.

Today's plan: The Moss, Going by the Book, Dance of the Dead, and probably Tokyo Gore Police, though I might decide I want to end the fest on Dance of the Dead and make sure I get enough sleep to wake up early tomorrow. If you're in town, Alone and La Tueur are good today and The Midnight Meat Train is good tomorrow.

1968 Tunnel Rats

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

So, has this whole "Uwe Boll is quite possibly the worst filmmaker ever!" been an elaborate hoax? I haven't seen any of his videogame-derived movies, which are apparenty unbearably awful, but Tunnel Rats is a pretty solid piece of work. It has a little trouble getting started - the scenes in the camp where we try to get to know a dozen or so characters in very little time wiht not-always-fitting music aren't great - but once it gets down into the tunnels, it's a pretty tense bit of work.

Of course, it seems to still be a bit of a work in progress, as there was just a black placeholder screen for the end credits, so perhaps there's time for him to screw it up yet.

Chaiya (Muay Thai Chaiya)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm not generally a fan of boxing films; even so-called classics of the genre leave me cold. Because, let's face it - boxing is about violence and fighting as an end unto itself, and while it's one thing to engage in it for physical fitness or self defense, it's hardly surprising when boxers wind up entangled in crime and thuggery. At that point, it's a question of how compelling the filmmakers make the details and how much style they bring to the story. While Chaiya doesn't stand out too much on the first front, it is exceptional on the second.

We start with three friends in rural Thailand, training under the tutelage of a master at his camp. Samor (Sonthaya Chitmanee), our narrator, suffers from an early leg injury, and misses his chance to perform in the ring himself, and so winds up supporting the other two. Pao (Thawatchai Phanpakdee), is the son of coach Thew (Samart Payakarun) and brother of a champion, and is considered to have the most potential, although he is somewhat timid, being in their shadow. Piak (Akara Amarttayakul), is more aggressive, both as a fighter and in life, as he woos pretty nurse Sriprai (Phreeta Kongpetch) before Pao can make his move. After a time, the four make their way to Bangkok so that Pao and Piak can try to break in as professional boxers. Though Piak has more early success, a false accusation soon has him reduced to underground cage matches - and soon doing "favors" for the man who runs them.

The movie takes place over the course of years during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and as a result feels a bit like a mauy thai version of Boogie Nights. The cinematography takes on a retro feel as well, with lots of grain and the occasional split screen during montage sequences to have Pao's and Piak's paths run literally in parallel. Director Kongkiat Khomsiri and his editors do a very nice job with those sequences, which are both filled with muay thai action and pretty good storytelling. Having this sort of narrative sweep does mean that he has to fit a lot of information into the film's two hours, and that's often accomplished by literally stopping the film and giving the audience names and vital statistics on new figures entering the friends' world.

Full review at EFC.

Geunom Moksori (Voice of a Murderer)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

That title threatens to give the game away, but then again, the outcome won't exactly be in doubt for the film's target audience - the 1991 kidnapping of Lee Hyong-ho is one of Korea's most famous true-crime stories. That's worth remembering when one sits down to watch this movie: For us, this looks like a thriller, but it is perhaps best appreciated as a character study of two parents trapped in their worst nightmare. There's a great scene that sums up the entire movie, as the parents rush to a cable car that slowly makes its way to the top of a tower, watching the kidnapper take their car and ransom while they helplessly wait to reach the top and hope they will find their son there.

Seen that way, it's a pretty strong movie; Sol Kyung-gu's breakdown in the final scene is a thing of terrible beauty.

Faet (Alone)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

When I saw the original Thai version of Shutter at Fantasia a few years back, I told friends that the only way it seemed Thai horror could get less subtle would be to have the ushers actually throwing cats at the audience. That turns out to be an unfair stereotype, but the makers of that movie are back and looking to get the audience to jump again. They manage it, too, throwing in a story that's actually fairly clever besides.

When we first meet elegant Pim (Masha Wattanapanich) and scruffy Wee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan), they are living in Soeul, South Korea, and seem happy enough - they have friends, a dog, and live comfortably. Bad news comes from their native Thailand when they find out that Pim's mother (Ratchanoo Bunchootwong) has just had a stroke. They fly back to be at her side, but returning home dredges up a lot of bad memories for Pim. She was born a conjoined twin, and her sister Ploy did not survive the separation that she insisted upon. Now, Ploy appears to be appearing in every mirror and any other place she can. Wee and his psychiatrist friend Donai try to convince Pim that it's all in her head... but is it?

Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom made a pretty decent horror movie in Shutter, and though the story here is different, they spend much of the movie keeping to the same template: Introduce the situation, punctuate the film with lots of flashes of a dead girl accompanied by loud crashes in the score, and flesh out the characters' backstory in flashback, including how the twins' first meetings with Wee when they were hospitalized teenagers (Wee for complications from diabetes) set in motion both Pim's desire to separate and Ploy's increasingly hostile nature. (The latter is nice; a haunting makes more sense if the ghost was ornery even before death) The first half of Alone is an unapologetic jump movie, but Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom are really, really good at making the audience jump.

Full review at EFC.

Pig Hunt

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

Perhaps the funniest moment during last night's screening of Pig Hunt was the director and executive producer trying to push it as an allegory for America today and the war in Iraq. Sure, they make good connections, and I don't doubt that was in their mind. Of course, with their next breath they try to claim they were being subtle about their politics, but I don't know if a hunting cabin full of newspaper clippings with "LIES!" scribbled on them qualifies as subtle.

In the end, it's a decent monster movie featuring a giant pig and all the bloody violence they could cram into it. Not bad at all, and it will do you all right if you're looking for some monster-fighting hillbilly action.

Sunday, July 20, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Seventeen: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and The Midnight Meat Train

Almost got shut out of The Midnight Meat Train last night, which would have bummed me out because I wouldn't have been able to see Ryuhei Kitamura's entertaining Q&A. Hopefully someone will have a transcript up soon, because he was entertainingly honest about his adventures in Hollywood thus far - it sounds like he passed on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and wound up directing this picture in large part because of a chance encounter with Samuel L. Jackson (who, by being a Kitamura fan, just adds more cred to him being the coolest guy in Hollywood). He mentioned working on an American version of Versus along with some other big, crazy action movies, and the latter part at least makes me happy (although I wonder about the former, considering his comments earlier in the talk about not being interested in sequels, remakes, or otherwise revisiting material).

That wound up letting out at 2:30am. It is probably just a matter of time until I wind up taking some kind of nap in a theater. Hopefully it'll be one of the disposable-looking movies at the ends of my day rather than the nifty-looking stuff in the middle. My plan is Tunnel Rats (will my first exposure to Uwe Boll actually be the one that doesn't suck?), Muay Thai Chaiya, Voice of a Murderer, Alone, and Pig Hunt. If you're in town, Island of Lost Souls is fun, Punch Lady... less so.

De Fortabte sjæles ø (Island of Lost Souls)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I hate to bring up Harry Potter when describing Island of Lost Souls, but there wouldn't be so many movies of this type - kids fighting supernatural threats - if it wasn't such a phenomenon, and it is an easy point of reference. Nikolaj Arcel's taken on the idea is maybe not so grandiose as the most well-known, but it is still a ton of fun, and better in some ways.

14-year-old Lulu (Sara Langebæk Gaarmann) and her little brother Sylvester (Lucas Munk Billing) have just moved to the quiet seaside town of Broby with their mother Beate (Anette Støvelbæk) after her divorce. Lulu's got a keen interest in magic and the occult, and one of the first thing she does is pull out her Ouija board and see if the new house contains any spirits who would like to talk to her. It doesn't seem to have much effect, but later that night a glowing light comes out of their closet and is absorbed into Sylvester. It turns out to be the soul of Herman Hartmann, who in 1871 was part of a secret lodge dedicated to fighting supernatural evil. And while Herman mainly wants to return to the sweet oblivion of death, he's stuck in Sylvester's body unless some sort of mystic can be found to release him. 13-year-old neighbor Oliver (Lasse Borg) suggests his mother's "psychic physical therapist", Ricard (Nicolaj Kopernikus), who turns out to be surprisingly helpful.

There are a lot of things I like about Island of Lost Souls that other juvenile fantasies don't do, to their detriment by my way of thinking. One of them is that Lulu is not any sort of Chosen One, descendant of the mystics from the prologue, or prophesied savior; she's just a brave and smart girl who steps up when stepping up is called for. Sure, it's a nice fantasy that you're secretly more special and important than the other kids around you, but the fact that these kids do cool things on their own makes them even more impressive.

Full review at EFC.

Seven Days

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Is it petty for me to be pleased that the screening of Seven Days was not packed with Lost fans coming to see that program's Yunjin Kim, though they would not otherwise go near a Korean film? Probably. I'm a little surprised that didn't happen, although maybe Lost isn't as big a deal in Quebec as it is elsewhere.

The movie itself is a decent enough thriller, although it's the sort that would have me questioning the legal processes like mad if it were set in the United States, and I still wonder about it even though I know next to nothing about South Korea's justice system. Within that ridiculously accelerated context, though, it's an enjoyable enough mystery.

See Prang (4bia)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I must admit, I wasn't expecting this to be such a complete delight, but it winds up being one of the more enjoyable horror flicks at Fantasia. It's a sort of Thai-horror sampler, in turns creepy, gory, funny, and just plain scary, with the four loosely connected stories each entertaining in their own way. Well worth checking out if you get the chance.

Sasori

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

This one is kind of a mess, but it's a slick mess. The mix of Hong Kong and Japanese style action is interesting, but I think it suffers a bit from seeming to compress a long-running manga, cramming a whole bunch of wild characters and ideas into a bit over an hour and a half without much time to really get into them.

The Midnight Meat Train

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival - Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

Assigning a star rating to The Midnight Meat Train puts me in a quandary. On the one hand, I think that something like 90% or more of this is fantastic, some of the best recent horror filmmaking you will see. On the other, I really like endings, especially ones where the end feels like the logical culmination of what had come before, and my reaction to the movie's ending was, well, that it was something else. And yet, I'm told that most of the original short story is contained in that ending, and it's handled faithfully, which is generally a good thing on principle. So, you see, there it is: A quandary.

We start with Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper), a young photographer making ends meet with crime-scene work while hoping to put together better things. His girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) and friend/agent Jurgis (Roger Bart) have finally gotten noted gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields) to look at some of his work, which elicits a comment about how he's not really capturing the city the way he wants to. What he does wind up capturing is the last shot of a model before she disappears on the subway. He connects it with another picture, this one of Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), a silent, imposing butcher whom we've seen ambushing people on the late night trains, brutally murdering them. Soon, Leon becomes obsessed with proving that this man is behind a rash of disappearances.

Clive Barker's short story is apparently a popular one among horror fans, though I've never read it. For me, the big drawing card was Ryuhei Kitamura's English-language debut, and Barker's fans should be pleased to see that the story is in good hands. Often described (or accused, depending on who is making the statement) of having a Hollywood sensibility in Japan, and he doesn't make The Midnight Meat Train into a J-horror-styled picture at all. He and director of photography Jonathan Sela do shot the heck out of the film, though, finding all the nifty angles and great compositions that a movie about a photographer really should have. He does a lot of nifty things with the camera, from the continuous static shot of Mahogany's first kill to the way the point of view whips around the subway car in the big climactic fight, emphasizing the cold brutality in the first and the increasing frenzy in the latter.

Full review at EFC.

Saturday, July 19, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Sixteen: Handle Me With Care, Cryptozoologie, Le Tueur, and Special Magnum

Sometimes, having a media pass works against you - if I had bought a ticket, I would have gotten into Repo! The Genetic Opera, but it was so sold out and popular with the media/VIPs that about half of us were left out. Not that I think it's unfair - I got the email about the press screening, which I passed on of my own free will in order to see An Empress and the Warriors and May 18, and it would be downright churlish to act like I haven't made out like a bandit seeing dozens of movies over the past few weeks and often being first in line to get seats. Besides, it gave me time to have a late dinner, and that was a pretty good steak and baked potato.

Also, it helps to speak French. I sat through the La Bête du Lac Q&A hoping in vain for someone to either ask a question in English of for my 15-years-dormant high school french to suddenly kick in, but to no avail.

Today's plan is to camp at the Hall theater, where the movies are somewhat spread out: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and Midnight Meat Train (with Ryuhei Kitamura present). If you're here, I can recommend The Rebel highly, Le Grand Chef with reservations, and wish I could make Triangle work for me.

Kod (Handle Me With Care)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

When you're born with a third arm, losing your tailor is far more traumatic than losing your girlfriend.

At least, that's the impression one gets from Kwan Traithep (Kiatkamol Latha) at the start of Handle Me With Care. His high-school girlfriend Lin is getting married, and his current girl Ann has just broken up with him, but it's the sudden death of "Uncle" Tawee, the tailor who makes his special three-sleeved shirts, that apparently pushes him to take a Bangkok clinic up on their offer to amputate his extra left arm. Getting there from rural Lampang will be something of an adventure - his car is busted, so he winds up hitching a ride with his friend Lorlee, who is delivering a bus there. On the way, they meet up with Na (Supaksorn Chaimongkol), also on her way to Bangkok to find the husband who she hasn't seen for a year.

Take away the whole third arm thing, and what's left is still quite the entertaining road movie. Writer/director Kongdej Jaturanrasamee plagues Kwan, Na, and Lorlee with a series of disasters that are more challenging than dangerous, and shuffles Lorlee off the stage once he starts just being an interruption to the scenes with Kwan and Na (and it becomes clear that the bus would make things too easy). They meet up with some interesting people, but the emphasis never shifts too much from them getting to know each other.

They're a nice pair to meet for the audience as well. Both of them tend to draw looks for their appearance (many comments are made about the size of Na's breasts, although she seems more generally curvy than notably busty), leaving them more alienated as they feel nobody pays attention to them as whole people. Latha plays Kwan as having a chip on his shoulder for much of the movie, although he's charmingly awkward at other times. Chaimongkol tends to present Na as more extroverted and likely to joke around, but shifts gears to lonely and sad well enough to make it abundantly clear that being seen as sexy isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. The simple and heartfelt way she pays off a sort of annoying series of comments about having a great ringtone is kind of wonderful.

Full review at EFC.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I missed this one at IFFB, so I was glad to catch up with it here. It doesn't quite clock in at feature length at a mere 62 minutes, but does fill that time with an intriguing portrayal of two men trying to do something extraordinary amid their ordinary lives. Director Jay Delaney walks a nice tightrope here, looking at their claims in a way that's not quite skeptical but lets the evidence (or lack thereof) speak for itself, without being too harsh on his subjects.

La Bête du Lac

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I couldn't find myself nearly as intrigued by Nicolas Renaud's half of the Cryptozoology double bill, though. It drew plenty of local interest by taking part in a Quebec community near the Maine border, but despite being even shorter than Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, sometimes felt very stretched out. There are some nice bits of underwater photography, and a couple of interesting storytellers, but when you get right down to it, it's kind of repetitive: People say they've seen the lake's monster fish, but can't offer any evidence other than "if you've seen it, you know", even though, as one resident says, when one person says they've seen a monster, everybody starts looking for them.

Le Tueur (The Killer)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Le Tueur is the very image of what the phrase "French film" often brings to mind. It's alternatively talkative and quiet, casually sexual, and deals with matters of life and death with what seems like emotionless detachment. What makes it notable is that it manages to scratch beneath that surface without seeming arch or self-satisfied about it.

We start out with Leo Zimmerman (Gilbert Melki), a reasonably successful financier, doing some shopping with his beautiful daughter Alana. He seems nervous, as if he can sense the man following and filming him. That footage winds up in the hands of Dimitri Kopas (Gregoire Colin), an assassin who has been hired to kill Leo. When Kopas visits Leo in his office, he knows his number is up, so he confronts him and asks a favor - let him live until Saturday, so he can pull off one last big deal and make sure Alana is taken care of. He knows his wife Sylvia (Sophie Cattani) is having an affair with his partner Xavier Franzen (Xavier Beauvois), and the idea of Franzen raising his daughter makes him blind with rage. Kopas agrees - why not? - using the free time to strike something up with Stella (Melanie Laurent), a model he meets in the hotel lobby.

There have been hundreds of cinematic hitmen, so often played as cool to the point where it's become almost impossible to avoid self-parody. Gregoire Colin doesn't quite sidestep that, but he handles it. He's got the cool exterior (and interior, for that matter), but there's something awkward about his isolation from regular people. He trips over his own tongue when hitting on Sylvia, and seems to become keenly aware that he doesn't have much of an existence outside of his job. He is so conditioned to leave no trace of his presence that he sometimes seems likely to disappear entirely.

Full review at EFC.

Special Magnum (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Damn, I wish I hadn't nodded off during this one. Not just because it's apparently not available on DVD, and was only issued cut on VHS, but just because it is a really crazy action movie. The big car chase in the middle of the movie really needs to be seen to be believed (especially since it was apparently filmed without permits of any kind), and even on the 16mm print the Montreal locations looked gorgeous. I really hope this comes out on DVD or Blu-ray soon; I want to catch up.

Friday, July 18, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Fifteen: The Detective, Dark Floors, The Echo, Babysitter Wanted

Again, no time to actually write a whole lot up before getting to today's movies. The object lesson for yesterday seems to be that a 20oz soda with no calories will fill you up, leading to not actually feeling like supper despite having one of the few two hour blocks to eat an actual meal during the course of the festival. I really wanted to visit that steakhouse again, and have a grilled steak rather than (very good, mind you) roast beef. Maybe Monday.

Today's plan: Handle Me With Care, the cryptozoology min-doc double feature, Le Tueur, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and Special Magnum. If you're in town, Our Town isn't bad, and [REC] is pretty darn good.

C+ jing taam (The Detective)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The funny thing about most memorable film noir detective movies is that they don't actually involve a lot of detection - the private investigator just sort of ping-pongs from one strange situation to another, often winding up in a spot where the whole mess seems contradictory. Why should Oxide Pang mess with tradition?

His Tam (Aaron Kwok) is a P.I. working out of Bangkok's Chinatown, and not a great one. One day, Lung the butcher (Shing Fui-On) knocks on his door, saying that some girl is following him, trying to kill him. Tam looks at the picture, surmises that there's no way this pretty girl has much interest in Lung, and figures it's about stalking by proxy. He's sending Lung home when Lung drops a large wad of bills on the table. Well, it can't hurt to look...

Famous last words, of course - a lead on her apartment brings Tam face-to-face with a dead body, and it won't be the last. Longtime friend Inspector Chak (Liu Kai-Chi) will inclined to call Tam the angel of death by the time it's over.

Full review at EFC.

Dark Floors

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

There are times when I feel guilty about being part of the American audience, which is simultaneously so big that international productions above a certain scale feel they need it to make back their budget, yet so fiercely parochial and well-served by what is made here that it's almost impossible to crack. This leads to things like Dark Floors, a movie conceived by Finnish heavy-metal act Lordi and their music video director, opting to shoot in English and then having the cast they import from the UK affect American accents. I don't know that this movie would have better in Finnish, but it's hard not to watch all the way to the end and wonder if maybe something got lost in translation.

We open with Sarah (Skye Bennett), an autistic girl who finds her MRI frightening even before the machine malfunctions, almost setting on fire. That's the tipping point for her father Ben (Noah Huntley), who decides that this hospital isn't going to do her much good and she might as well be comfortable at home, despite the warnings of nurse Emily (Dominique McElligott). The power goes out while they're in the elevator - shared with impatient businessman Jon (William Hope), mentally unstable Tobias (Ronald Pickup), and security guard Rick (Leon Herbert) - and when it finally comes back on, something is definitely not right: The sixth floor of the hospital seems to be completely empty, for starters, and that's before the ghosts and monsters start showing up.

Hospitals are scary places to begin with, and not necessarily because of the sickness. There's something unnatural about how cleanly-designed and sterile those places can be, and emptying them out makes them even more disconcerting - it increases the feeling of helplessness most non-medical professionals feel there. Dark Floors plays into all that, and then, just at the point where audiences might start taking that for granted, starts messing things up - the lower floors are dirtier and no longer unoccupied - ghosts, monsters, and corpses start appearing, bringing the atmosphere from unnerving-but-safe to outright dangerous.

Full review at EFC.

The Echo

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Apparently the quest to find Asian horror to remake has now expanded its eye to the Philippines, where Yam Laranas's Sigaw was a hit and did fairly well on the festival circuit. The good news about this one is that Laranas transplanted it to New York himself, and appears to have done a pretty good job of making this second version worth the effort.

Meet Bobby (Jesse Bradford); he's just been paroled from prison after serving three years for involuntary manslaughter, and he's not looking for any trouble. When his parole officer asks where he's planning to stay, he says his mother's apartment, though his mother died while he was in prison. It's still full of her things, still bearing all the signs of the mental breakdown that preceded her death. Bobby is able to find a job, working for Hector (Carlos Leon) as a mechanic, though he's on a short leash there. He's isolated most of the time, though - none of his old friends talk to him other than his ex Alyssa (Amelia Warner), and she's as wary as you might expect. And his neighbors aren't helping him get a good night's sleep - Walter (Kevin Durand) makes life hell for his wife (Iza Calzado) and daughter (Jamie Bloch), but what can Bobby do, since he's an ex-con and Walter's a cop?

Laranas plays up how the culture of the big city is all about being careful: Friends tell Alyssa to stay away from Bobby, Hector certainly doesn't trust him to begin with, and while the manager of the apartment building tells Bobby that he and one other person (Pruitt Taylor Vince) are the only ones complaining about some of the sounds on their floor, Bobby is standoffish when the other man wants to talk. It may be the natural response to seal oneself up in a bubble with so much humanity on all sides, but it's not healthy, and it's no surprise when Bobby starts to crack.

Full review at EFC.

Babysitter Wanted

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

And just like yesterday, I find myself running out of time to write even a mini-review if I want to get myself some food before starting the festival. Well, I'll catch up later. In brief: Pretty darn good, even if it does make its plot twist fairly obvious even if you're not looking for one.

Still, it gets the job done, and is legitimately thrilling even while it works a lot of comedy into the mix. During the Q&A, the director mentioned that even though it does a great job of making the audience queasy, there's actually only something like three minutes of gore to it.

Thursday, July 17, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Fourteen: An Empress and the Warriors, May 18, The Rebel, and From Within

It's probably good that I don't have time to write up my story about sitting next to the same annoying people in consecutive screenings, as that could go on forever and I'd just sound like a crank rather than somebody who was enjoying films. Maybe tomorrow.

Today's plan: The Detective, Dark Floors, either The Echo or Handle Me With Care, late dinner, Babysitter Wanted. If you're in town, neither Who Is KK Downey? nor L: Change the World is a bad choice.

Kwong saan mei yan (An Empress and the Warriors

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

An Empress and the Warriors has ambitions of being a full-on action romance date movie, which makes it sound like more of a mess than it actually is. At any given moment, it is absolutely certain of what it wants to be, and gives that audience all it has.

It is the time of China's ten kingdoms, and the Yan are fighting the Zhao. The Yan king is, like all of his line, a fierce warrior, and his daughter Feier (Kelly Chan) is less the cloistered-in-the-palace-wearing-fine-silks princess than the one who straps on some armor to help out on the front lines. When the King dies in battle, there are three candidates to rule - Wu Ba (Guo Xiaodong), the king's ambitious nephew; Muyong "Hu" Xuehu (Donnie Yen), an orphan who has risen to the position of Lord; and Feier, though women do not traditionally rule. Wu Ba plots to kill Feier before her coronation, thus disgracing Hu, but she is rescued by Duan Lan-Quan (Leon Lai), a doctor who lives in seclusion. Outside the royal circle for the first time in her life, she falls in love with the handsome pacifist, but once her injuries are healed, she must return to the Hall of Swords to deal with Wu Ba and the Zhaos.

Director "Tony" Ching Siu Tung isn't messing around, no matter what part of the movie he's working on: The battle scenes are big and loud, as are the training scenes, the palace scenes, and the... Well, not the romantic stuff; those are extraordinarily earnest, with the music suddenly going from martial to lilting, the costumes going from leather to simple cloth, and combat chick Feier gets fairly girly fairly fast. It's not exactly uncommon for the romantic subplot of a Hong Kong action film to be a sharp detour from the rest of the movie, but the effect is somewhat magnified here: There is a lot of testosterone in the first act without any form of comic relief, so going from Feier sparring with Muyong to getting cute with Lan-Quan is a major tonal shift.

Full review at EFC.

Hwaryeohan hyooga (May 18

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

This one was fairly sparsely attended, which is too bad. It shades a little too much toward romantic comedy goofiness in the beginning, trying a little hard to set the mood as placid with little to worry about, but once it gets going, it is pretty engrossing. Most films about Korea's recent history good enough to make it onto the international festival circuit tend to be that way: The material itself is pretty astonishing, especially as it's the sort of thing that Cold War stereotyping often reserved to the Communist Nations. The combination of that material with a suddenly very strong Korean film industry (as much talk as there is of a slump, it's worth remembering that Korea was barely on the map as a place where great film is found a dozen years ago) creates amazing results.

This one tells of a 1980 protest that became a massacre that became a riot that became a siege. The object lesson for military dictatorships is that the competent soldiers your compulsory military service creates today are tomorrow's unhappy civilians, and look out if they get hold of some guns - as much as the government will have superior firepower, there exists the potential for an incredible mess.

Dong Mau anh Hung (The Rebel

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I don't know how busy a local film industry Vietnam has, although I'm guessing it's small and relatively young - following IMDB links from The Rebel soon leads back to many of the same people and to foreign productions. That's not wholly a bad thing for an action-adventure flick like The Rebel, though - it means limited screwing around with things like wires, padding, stunt doubles, or deceptive camera angles when the fighting starts.

The scene is 1922 Vietnam. The French have established a secret intelligence force to work against the rebels, and while their top team of Cuong (Johnny Nguyen) and Sy (Dustin Nguyen) isn't quite able to prevent the assassination of a French official, they do manage to capture a valuable prisoner - Vo Tranh Thuy (Thanh Van Ngo), daughter of a resistance leader and a fierce fighter in her own right. Though Sy mainly has his eye on career advancement, Cuong is increasingly uneasy with the violence necessary to maintain a system that doesn't seem to be bringing much to the Vietnamese people. This time, he snaps, breaking the girl out of prison. Sy, blamed for his subordinate's rebellion, decides to use this as an opportunity to track them back to the rebel leader.

Johnny Nguyen is a producer and writer as well as the lead actor, and along with Truc "Charlie" Nguyen (writer, director, executive producer, editor), he's built himself a pretty decent star vehicle. He's maybe not the greatest actor, but he and the filmmakers know how to work his brooding good looks in between action scenes. He's also smart enough to surround himself with good people: The actor playing Cuong's opium-addicted father, Chanh Tin Nguyen, is a local legend; Dustin Nguyen balances Sy's role as the villain nicely with his tension at how the French treat him; and Thanh Van Ngo is good whether asked to serve as the love interest or kick some butt.

Full review at EFC.

From Within

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm down to zero time before heading out, so From Within gets the short shrift until I start catching up next week. In short: Not bad, I'd really like to see it on film as opposed to HD projection, and I kind of felt a little cheated by what was going on as the credits rolled.

Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Thirteen: Our Town, The End, Stuck, and Red

Spent the day working on SQL scripts for work, so I can afford to see movies. I'm very tempted just to say I'm using the extra vacation days, though - not only have the expected T-storms not appeared, but trying to work for any period of time here is an absolute back-killer.

Anyway, off to the movies. Today's plan is An Empress and the Warriors, May 18, The Rebel, and From Within. If you're in town, I really dug Akanbo Shojo.

Uri Dongne (Our Town)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The trailer and description for Our Town had me expecting something a little different - a little more cat and mouse, a little less "it's all connected". It's unfair to be disappointed by that (judge the movie one what it is, rather than what you expect it to be), but the idea of two serial killers becoming aware of each other and looking to take each other out is so good that I hope someone else picks up on it.

This mid-sized Korean town does have a serial killer - four dead girls in as many months, strung up and displayed in public places. Jae-shin (Lee Sun-kyun) is investigating, but the killer is much too careful and meticulous. Meanwhile, Jae-shin's longtime friend Gyeong-joo (Oh Man-suk) is writing a novel about a serial killer, which his editor dismisses as unrealistic despite it being based on true events. As a result, he's having a hard time paying the rent, which leads to a situation where he kills his landlady in a fit of rage. He hits on the idea of staging a scene to look like another killing in the series, putting the cops on the wrong track. Of course, there's an obvious flaw in his plan - when Hyoi (Ryou Duck-hwan) at the general store sees the news about a fifth body, he's more than a little curious about what's going on.

So, it's not exactly dueling serial killers, but there's still an interesting thriller to be had here. The potential trouble comes from writer Mo Hong-jin taking that situation and weighing it down with prior events. It makes a certain level of sense to have it be the chief investigator's best friend be the copycat killer; he's the one with reason to believe that he might get away with it. Then, okay, maybe Gyeong-joo walks into Hyoi's store while the news breaks. Soon, though, there comes a point where the mounting connections between the three leads becomes too much. Each of them is interesting in and of themselves, but at a certain point the cumulative effect becomes just too much.

Full review at EFC.

The End

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

It is a bit worrisome when, prior to a festival screening, the director is offering what can seem like excuses or explanations - they had less money than the short film that precedes it, but it is long for a zero-budget indie, there's a big plot twist in the middle, etc., etc. If you believe in your movie, let it stand, I figure. I'm pretty sure I still would have enjoyed The End without my expectations being managed.

I admit, it may have helped a little. The opening is kind of clunky; we seem to hear about what high school teacher Joseph Rickman (Jeremy Thomas) did sixteen years ago in every other line of dialog before finally getting into details. Back then, as a teenager, he found a missing girl on sheer intuition, and he's starting to get weird hunches again, seeing a strange robed, limping man in a tragedy mask who may be responsible for a rash of recent kidnappings. Joseph's long-time friend, Det. Clara Wilkie (Ella May) worries about him, but is willing to take whatever help she can get with the case - even after Joseph recognizes and shares the unorthodox source of his intuition.

To let that cat out of the bag would be a shame, and I'm not going to do it, but it is one of the rare mid-thriller twists that makes the movie funnier rather than more grim. It's clever and relatively unexpected based upon what had come before, but does make the things that might have seemed irritating earlier on go down easier in retrospect. That doesn't mean the film completely transforms into a comedy; the characters still take the mystery story seriously, and what is funny to the audience is in fact disturbing to the people within the film.

Full review at EFC.

Stuck

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Stuck is based on a true story that made headlines a few years back, although much-beloved cult filmmaker Stuart Gordon has changed almost all the details to make a feature-length film out of it. That's fine, though; the real story was likely not nearly as much fun.

We're introduced to Brandi (Mena Suvari) and Tom (Stephen Rea). Tom is unemployed and his landlord intends to change the locks on his apartment as soon as he's out the door for a job interview, rendering him homeless; Brandi has just been informed she's up for a supervisor's position, but that might just be a ploy to get her to work a second Saturday in a row. While Brandi is unwinding at a club with friend Tanya (Rukiya Bernard) and (drug-dealing) boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby), Tom is learning the ins and outs of homelessness. As Tom is making his way to a shelter, he's hit by Brandi's car. Rather than call the police, she drives back home - with Tom still lodged in her windshield.

To this point, the movie has followed the actual events reasonably closely, although with many of the details changed. Things start to diverge at this point, but the core of what Gordon found appealing in this story is crystal-clear throughout - and despite Gordon's history of gory horror flicks, it's not Tom's broken and bloodied body. Gordon and screenwriter John Strysik see a parable about the inability of people to look outside their own immediate interests - not just Brandi, but nearly every other person in the film. Just about the only exception to this is a homeless man who shares a drink with Tom and sets the new guy up with a shopping cart of his own. Tom is on the receiving end of the callousness most of the time, but even he will look at a waiting room full of people who likely also had appointments at specific times and ask why he can't have his interview right away.

Full review at EFC.

Red

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Ah, I should have written this one up instead of Stuck; there seems to be much more going on to talk about.

I liked it, in large part because it's got a cast absolutely packed with people I enjoy, and I like dogs. It's also the sort of story that could have easily become a violent revenge thriller (and it arguably does), but there's a lack of sadism too it - Brian Cox's character is determined to go about things the right way, and the filmmakers don't choose to use that as justification for throwing up a ton of hollow violence.

I'm kind of curious about the two directors working on it - I remember Lucky McKee talking about this project either at Fantasia or BUFF a couple years ago, and I'm left wondering how it wound up in Trygve Allister Diesen's hands - did McKee abandon it, run out of money, cause trouble, or what? There are scenes toward the end where it seems Diesen could only get a couple of the cast on set at a time, necessitating weird silhouette shots.

Oh, and I'm kind of amused by the small-town newspaper being the Portland Press-Herald, the actual name of the paper in Portland, ME. I don't think it was supposed to be set in Maine, but what are the odds of that sort of coincidence?

Full review at EFC.

Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Twelve: From Inside, Shadow Spirit, and Gangster VIP

I'll admit, my lack of enthusiasm for From Inside may have come from having worn myself out a little beforehand; the walk up and down Mont Royal can leave a person a bit worn out. The best way to follow that up is not necessarily an hour and a half in a chair having to look up because you arrived just as the movie was scheduled to start, at least not if staying alert and engaged is the goal. Still, blah, doom and gloom nastiness. Not really my thing.

I think I chose fairly wisely with the rest of the evening's films - Shadow Spirits and Gangster VIP were enjoyable, and I got to have supper at a supper-like hour. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with No Mercy for the Rude and Flick down the road.

Note to self: Apparently, the first Kyogokudo book is coming out in English... next year. I enjoyed Shadow Spirits enough that it's worth looking out for.

Today's plan: Hitting a couple tourist spots (I'll probably wind up telecommuting the rest of the week), followed by Our Town, The End, Stuck (I guess), and Red. If you're in town, Chasing World isn't bad.

From Inside

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Animated Auteur Visions)

On the one hand, I'm glad something like From Inside can get made: A feature-length (if just barely) animated feature that represents one man's unique vision, with no interest whatsoever in the family audience. On the other hand... Good lord, this is grim, to the point where even the folks who like their darkness might wonder why they're putting themselves through it.

The world has ended, our narrator Cee (voice of Corryn Cummins) tells us; she and other survivors are on a train, and have been so long that she can't remember getting on. Cee has been given her own cabin, as she is the only pregnant woman on the train. The landscape is hellish, and the conditions on the train are bad enough that she sometimes has difficulty telling the difference between her life and her nightmares. She considers the question of whether or not it is right to bring a child into the world quite a bit.

Filmmaker John Bergin goes to dark imagery right away, with engineers using pitchforks to feed babies into the burner. He gives us actual seas of blood, for instance, which is kind of over the top but serves to point up just how continually unpleasant things are. While Cee is drawn pretty, most of the other passengers and engineers are stylized and grotesque. It's a pretty constant stream of unpleasantness, and maybe could have used a little leavening, especially considering how beautiful the sequence where Bergin allows a little joy to enter the film is - enough so that there was a combination of laughs and groans when the pendulum swings the other way.

Full review at EFC.

Moryo no hako (The Shadow Spirit)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Modern genres and their rules have been fairly rigidly codified for a while now, but it wasn't always thus; the original pulps and serials would mix them up with abandon. The novels of Natsuhiko Kyogoku appear to be throwbacks to that kind of audaciousness, if The Shadow Spirit is any indication.

It starts out looking like a classic detective story, the sort that might show up on PBS's Mystery! series, albeit with an unusual detective: Reijiro Enokizu (Hiroshi Abe) can see a person's memories. After a brief prologue where we see him demonstrate this ability to Shunko Kubo (Kankuro Kudo) during their WWII service, the film picks up in the early 1950s, where Enokizu's uncle, a movie studio executive, wants the private detective to find the missing daughter of one of his stars, Yoko "Minami" Yuzuki (Hitomi Kuroki), who is potentially the heir to a vast fortune. It is not a good time to be a missing young girl, as across Tokyo, a group of writers - Tatsumi Sekiguchi (Kippei Shiina), Atsuko Chuzenji (Rena Tanaka), and Morihiko Toriguchi (Magi) - and cops Aoki (Keisuke Horibe) and Kiba (Hiroyuki Miyasako) are investigating gruesome murders where only mismatched limbs have been found. To get to the bottom of their cases, both groups will have to consult with Atsuko's brother, Akihiko "Kyogokudo" Chuzenji (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi), a rare book dealer whose encyclopedic knowledge of spirituality and the occult serves him well in his avocation of exorcist. Boxes of one sort or another will play a role in the investigation - Kubo, now a pulp fiction writer, finds them comforting, having the opposite of claustrophobia; a strange Shinto sect called the "Purifiers of the Sacred Box" claims they can remove people's ills; and there's a strange box-like building high on a mountaintop where Dr. Koshiro Mimakasa (Akira Emoto) did research during the war.

The Shadow Spirit is actually the second movie adapted from a novel series, so what comes across to foreign audiences as a surprising leaps from one genre to another will likely seem just like how these stories work to the Japanese. It is an interesting marriage of forms, though: The sleuths are a group of charming characters that it's quite easy to grow comfortable with, a fairly perfect fit for the mystery novel feel of the early film - even though set in post-war Tokyo, there is something very Agatha Christie about the movie's first act. They remain that way as the film goes on, even though the crimes have gotten much nastier, and they're now surrounded by the nasty pulp dismemberments and mad scientists out of old serials. The movie takes on the feel of a serial by the end, especially in how they could be quite far afield from how they started by the time they finished.

Full review at EFC.

Burai yori daikanbu (Gangster V.I.P.)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Nikkatsu Action!)

I'll catch up on this review when I'm back in Boston and have No Borders, No Limits for reference; after all, despite the success of the touring program, it looks like this won't be available on English-subtitled DVD any time soon (in part because it's the start of a six-film series that the rights-holders would like to package as a box set), and there are only a couple more stops for the tour (Seattle, Vancouver, enjoy!).

It is the most conventional of the movies included, a yakuza film starring Tetsuya Watari as a young gangster with a sense of honor, looking to do the right thing even as everything around him goes to hell. The director describes it as a youth film taking place against a yakuza background, and I see that.

It may not be quite so different as the other Nikkatsu Action films that showed up in the tour, but it is a pretty darn good movie; I'd be interested to see the others in the series.

Monday, July 14, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Eleven: Robo Rock, Chasing World, Be a Man! Samurai School, Akanbo Shojo, and Trailer Park of Terror

A pretty good day, all told - it rained like crazy for a while in the afternoon while I was safely inside, but the cheap Japanese sci-fi was kind of endearingly cheap. Tak Sakaguchi showed up to introduce and lead a Q&A of Be a Man! Samurai School, and the ugy certainly brings a lot of energy - he practically ran down the steps in Theatre Hall, looking damn cool in the long white trenchcoat he wore in the film and happily demonstrating action and stuntwork with a fellow action choreographer (man, how cool would it have been to have him and Gordon Liu on the same stage?).

After that came Akanbo Shojo, and it's kind of weird to read the other reviews of that. There's not a lot, since it doesn't officially open in Japan until next month, but everything out of the New York Asian Film Festival plays it up as wacky and kind of self-parodying. I guess I can see that perspective, but I did see it as an effectively scary horror flick first, with Yamaguchi having fun on the edges.

Finally, there was a break before Trailer Park of Terror, which is plenty of fun although I can see why the MPAA kept hitting it with an NC-17; it is pretty gory toward the end.

Today's a weird day, schedule-wise; the one hat frustrates me the most. From Inside to start at 3pm is a given, but after that Shadow Spirit overlaps with No Mercy for the Rude by fifteen minutes, and then at 9:40 there's the nifty looking Faye Dunaway zombie movie Flick and one of the Nikkatsu Action movies I didn't get to see at the Brattle, Gangster VIP. It's the first really nasty choice of the festival.

Also enjoyable: Spine Tingler! The William Castle Story and All the Boys Love Mandy Lane.

Robo Rock

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Somewhere in Japan, the makers of Robo Rock have to be wondering how their little movie wound up in a North American festival; it plays so much like something made by friends screwing around with a video camera and some special effect software. It might be; looking at IMDB, it seems that most of the cast and crew have worked on the same projects together.

The acting winds up being kind of amateurish and goofy, but the story is often just off-kilter enough to be fun, and the giant robot is a very cool design.

Riaru Onigokko (Chasing World)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Parallel universes could very easily become the new post-apocalyptic future if given a chance to catch on. After all, it takes even less to build one of those and say it's a science fictional milieu - where the apocalyptic movies would require beat up locations a parallel Earth can look just like ours, maybe with a little cheap CGI to add differences. So you can get movies like Chasing World, not-bad little sci-fi adventures done on a budget.

The film opens with several people dying sudden and bizarre deaths; a news report says they're all named Sato. Tsubasa Sato (Takuya Ishida) isn't terribly concerned; Sato is the most common name in Japan, after all - sister Ai (Mitsuki Tanimura) has been in a non-responsive state for as far as he can remember, and father Teruhiko (Mitsuru Fukikoshi) is a pretty useless drunk. And he's constantly being chased by would-be yakuza and former childhood friend Hiroshi (Shunsuki Daito), but if Tsubasa has one skill, it's running and escaping. He'll need it - when Hiroshi and company finally catch him, they suddenly disappear - although from their perspective, he's the one who disappears. He soon finds out he's somehow slipped into a parallel world, where for the past week the King of Japan has been running a "Death Chase", with everyone named Sato the target. Here, Ai is up and about, and Hiroshi is not a jerk... But there are "its", as in a game of tag, trying to round Satos up, killing anyone who tries to escape.

Screenwriter/director Issei Shibata is working on a fairly limited budget, but he does manage to squeeze a fair amount out of it at certain points. Takuya Ishida or his stuntman does some pretty neat tricks as he runs, so the foot chase scenes are more fun and visually interesting than one might expect. The "its" are a simple, yet effectively creepy design: The hooded jackets that overlap masks that suggest a too-wide smile with glowing, unblinking red eyes manage to look both practical and threatening without being overly elaborate, and positing that the individual "its" would decorate their masks is a nice touch. Those foot chases can't last the entire movie, but Shibata stops short of them becoming tiresome.

Full review at EFC.

Sakigake!! Otokojuku (Be a Man! Samurai School)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Tak Sakaguchi wears a lot of hats for this goofy little picture - writer, director, star, action choreographer - and it's a good thing he's a charismatic presence enough to sell it. Like Cromartie High School, it's a series of goofy vignettes that have a story grafted onto them by the end, where Sakaguchi and company can do some fighting. Also, none of the cast look like believable high school kids, with a really surprising number in full mustaches.

Akanbo Shojo (aka Tamami: The Baby's Curse)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, From Manga to Screen)

For all I know, Kazuo Umezu, the creator of the manga series on which Akanbo Shojo is based, may be one of the sweetest folks a person could ever meet, as was Vincent Price by all reports. You wouldn't be able to tell that from his body of work, though, which is full of exceptionally bloody horror comics, often featuring children as villains and victims. Not my thing, generally, but I found myself loving Yudai Yamaguchi's adaptation of this particular series.

It starts as many horror movies might, with a young girl coming to a scary house. Taxis from the train station would rather not take Yoko (Nako Mizusawa) and her chaperone Yoshimura to Nanjo mansion, and the elderly housekeeper immediately tries to send them away, saying Mr. Nanjo isn't seeing any visitors. While Yoshimura goes to talk with Mr. Nanjo, Yoko warms herself by a fire, until she hears a baby crying. This leads her to a creepy room filled with dolls and a door that suddenly lockes her in, but when she awakes after escaping she's told it's just a dream. Something's not right, though - though Mr. Nanjo seems to be nothing but elated to be reunited with his long-lost daughter, Mrs. Nanjo carries around a stuffed animal that she calls "Tamami", refusing to acknowledge Yoko. And it soon becomes very clear that the Nanjos and their servant are not alone in the house.

Akanbo Shojo is directed by Yudai Yamaguchi, and initially seems quite the change of pace for him: Yamaguchi comes from the group that burst onto the scene with Versus nearly a decade ago, and his previous work has been outrageous, full of (sometimes gory) slapstick and comedy; even his segment of Ten Nights of Dream was a wild ride. He does a surprisingly good job of slowing things down in this movie's first act, letting the audience be antsy about what might happen rather than laughing at the latest bit of mayhem on-screen. It sets quite a mood for when the crazy stuff starts happening.

Full review at EFC.

Trailer Park of Terror

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

A great deal of schlocky fun. The director mentioned in the Q&A that he hadn't really wanted to do it as "six kids wind up in zombieland and get picked off", and you can kind of see that in how he really does seem to be enjoying the parts set before that, with Nichole Hiltz's Norma making her deal with the devil (Trace Adkins!) and generally loathing the creeps she's stuck with.

Once he gets rolling, though, it is at least a good dead teenager movie, with one or two worth cheering for and the rest providing enjoyably nasty kills. The ghoulish makeup is pretty darn good for such a low budget movie (the FX house was a partner in the production), and the cast dives into it with relish.

Sunday, July 13, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Ten: L: Change the World, Wicked Lake, Chanbara Beauty, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, and Shamo

Long day yesterday, highlighted by All the Boys Love Mandy Lane and Shamo. I could tell by the end of Shamo that I wasn't going to make it through another movie, so I wound up going back here and to bed instead. The way the schedule has been shuffled means I still have a pretty good chance of catching Tokyo Gore Police should I choose to on closing night, although the guests likely won't be there.

Today's plan is Japan-heavy: Robo Rock!, Chasing World, Be a Man! Samurai School (with Tak Sakaguchi apparently present), Akanbo Shojo, and Trailer Park of Terror. If you're in town, I can recommend A Colt Is My Passport.

L: Change the World

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Kenichi Matsuyama's performance as "L" may not have been the best thing to come out of the Death Note double feature, but it's certainly one of the most memorable. Fans mainly familiar with the original manga may find the idea of a spin-off movie featuring the character unlikely, but the premise does work for the movie series, even if some of the execution is lacking.

(Spoilers for the Death Note movies follow, as you may expect)

Full review at EFC.

Wicked Lake

* ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Here's what you need to know about the quality of this film: They were giving away posters at the door, and a number of them were left in the theater, because who wants to have a reminder of this turd hanging around, even if it's free?

Just bad exploitation all around, full of bad acting without an idea in its plastic-looking head. There's got to be better ways to get one's fill of boobs and blood.

Chanbara Beauty (Onechanbara)

* * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Apparently, no matter what continent they come from, video game movies suck. Not that I've been stuck seeing many, but Chanbara Beauty feels like it would be typical - random zombie attacks, ridiculous costume designs (I don't care how badass someone is as a fighter, when you're living in a world defined by a nasty fluid-borne pathogen and your weapon of choice is a sword, exposed skin is not a good idea), powers that don't hold up to logic, etc., etc.

Even more than expected, Chanbara Beauty is unsatisfying and cheap-looking, although I'll grant that it might be a fun game.

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

There is a lot of crap in the "slasher" subgenre, enough so that a person can be reasonably forgiven for giving the entire thing a pass because the occasional gem is not worth the vast mountains of poorly made movies that camouflage it. The occasional gem like Mandy Lane argues against that position, so of course it's stayed hidden for two years.

Mandy Lane (Amber Heard) really blossomed the summer before her junior year, and as it starts, really doesn't seem comfortable with all the new attention, and still tends to hang out with her far less popular friend Emmet (Michael Welch). At a pool party, jocky host Dylan (Adam Powell) constantly hits on Mandy and harasses Emmet, and after both have had a little too much to drink, Emmet goads Dylan into something foolish and shocking. Jump forward nine months, and Mandy and Emmet are no longer friends. She's still the good girl among the people she hangs out with - cheerleaders Chloe (Whitney Able) and Marlin (Melissa Price), rich kid Red (Aaron Himelstein), and athletes Bird (Adiwn Hodge) and Jake (Luke Grimes). They're going to spend the weekend at Red's family's ranch, with only hand Garth (Anson Mount) to supervise. Mandy still does tend to attract unwanted attention, though...

It may not seem like writer Jacob Forman has done anything particularly special here at first glance. He seems to have a better handle on how teenagers actually act than many others - the characters aren't self-referential constructs like in the Scream movies or lazy stereotypes - but that's not completely unusual. What he does is to rebuild the genre from the ground up, letting us see the killer's face much earlier than is typical and giving us some idea of his or her motives, although there are still a few complications to make the end more interesting. This doesn't seem like much, but for so long it seems as though there have just been a couple basic paths these movies could go down (bloody whodunit and gimmick killer, or some combination of the two) that playing up the characters rather than the mechanics seems downright revolutionary.

Full review at EFC, along with two others.

Shamo (Gwan Gaai)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm going to guess that Shamo was a fairly long manga series; like a lot of anime based on such series, the movie feels cut to the bone, with jumps in the story made in order to get to all the flashy scenes, and characters there because they were in the book but not given very much to do. It works better than usual in this one, in part because we're supposed to think of the protagonist as at least partly a dangerous maniac who can't be reasoned with; the randomness works in its favor.

Visually, it's also a treat, as director Soi Cheang sets it in a garish hightened reality that gives a certain amount of glitz to it trashy settings. The fight scenes are pretty bone-crunching affairs as well.

Saturday, July 12, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Nine: The Objective, Adrift In Tokyo, Shadows in the Palace and X-Cross

Fantasia 2008, Day Nine: The Objective, Adrift In Tokyo, Shadows in the Palace and X-Cross

A pretty successful day, all told: The Objective was a fairly crushing disappointment, true - I really did love Blair Witch and had high hopes for the premise of Daniel Myrick's first theatrical feature since - but Adrift in Tokyo was a very nice palate cleanser. Then I crossed the street to see a very good murder mystery and the sort of absolute insanity that Japan does better than anyone else. I know there's no chance of X-Cross getting much in the way of an American release, and that's too bad - the movie is flat-out fun, without anything close to a dull or slow moment.

Today's plan: L: Change the World, Wicked Lake, Chanbara Beauty, All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, and Shamo. Maybe The Butcher or Tokyo Gore Police if I think I can swing a sixth movie at midnight.

The Objective

* * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

There are roughly a dozen good movies you could make with the hook stated at the beginning of The Objective. The trouble, unfortunately, is that most of them would require more money than Daniel Myrick apparently had to work with. Sure, he's been part of a gigantic hit on a budget before, but The Blair Witch Project was small by design; this needed to be bigger.

That hook? That on September 14, 2001, CIA satellite imagery picked up a hot spot in the mountains of Afghanistan - heat and radiation similar to the detonation of a small atomic device. They send Ben Keynes (Jonas Ball) to the area to investigate; he hooks up with a special forces team led by Matthew Anderson's Wally, telling them that they are looking for a cleric - who is, in fact, a good source of intel. What he doesn't tell them is that the CIA thinks that this could be a much bigger deal than a mere atomic bomb.

Given the apparent budget Myrick and the other filmmakers had to work with, creating something of the scale Keynes describes probably isn't going to happen - you're not going to get the teaser where something explodes in the desert, or cuts to a situation room in Washington, where a potential atomic or paranormal threat just days after 9/11 if given the constant attention it deserves. Instead, there's a small team that doesn't get any chance at all to show they're elite troops, walking around a featureless desert. Most of the good stuff is being saved for the finale minutes.

Full review at EFC.


Tenten (Adrift In Tokyo)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

I love movies shot like Adrift In Tokyo, on real city streets that give a feeling of being real and unique to that neighborhood but aren't necessarily the places tourists take pictures or filmmakers generally stage scenes. It's fun to play tourist that way, and when the unexpected happens - as it often does in Satoshi Miki's film - it seems both more surprising and more authentic, because those scenes seldom look staged to start.

There's also a great performance in here by Miura Tomokazu, who transforms a big, imposing beast into a guy we really like by the end of the film. Co-star Jo Odagiri is good, too, but it's Tomokazu that really grabs the attention of the audience as the film goes on.


Goongnyeo (Shadows in the Palace)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Ah, murder. It's been around since time immemorial, among the rich and the poor, whenever someone stood to gain from having another person not be around. The modern police force which methodically investigates these crimes is a relatively modern invention, although detective fiction tells us that no matter what the time and place, there's an amateur sleuth ahead of her time. Even in the maid's quarters of a Chosun Dynasty king.

A body is discovered: Wol-ryung (Seo Yeong-hie), a personal maid to the king's concubine, is found hanged in her quarters. The court nurse, Choi Chun-ryun (Park Jin-hie), starts the autopsy, and finds that this was no suicide - the lack of brusing on the neck says she was dead beforehand. Aside from that, the girl was lactating, clearly showing that she had broken the oath of celibacy taken by the entire staff. The head maid, Kam-cheol (Kim Sung-ryeong), tells Chun-ryun to report it as a suicide, since the consequences of a murder would be terrible for everyone: Masters' and servants' behavior reflects on each other, and royal concubine Hee-bin (Yun Se-ah) is battling the queen mother to have her child recognized as the royal heir, and implicating the household could weaken her position. Chun-ryun isn't about to let the matter go, especially once she's gained Hee-bin's tacit approval for the investigation. But who will tell her what she needs to know? Queen's maid Jung-ryul (Jeon Hye-jin), who found the body? Bullied mute Ok-jin (Lim Jeong-eun), the dead girl's roommate? What of Lee Hyung-ik (Kim Nam-jin), the king's nephew, who has taken Wol-ryung's medical records? Or the hints that there may be a supernatural explanation?

There's no type of story quite so engrossing as a good murder mystery, although no genre is more unforgiving when it fails. The audience knows early on to pay careful attention to details, since anything could be a clue, so any weakness in story, performance, direction, and even continuity will be thrown into sharper relief. Director Kim-Mee Jeung and her co-writer Choi Seok-Hwan create a film that holds up to such scrutiny; though it may not be a classically solvable mystery per se, the details all fit together perfectly and each scene seems to contain at least one bit of information that not only helps the viewer create a more complete picture but whets the appetite for what is going to come next.

Full review at EFC.


XX (Eksu Kurosu) : Makyo Densetsu (X-Cross)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

How much of a blast is X-Cross? At one point, noting character names for future reference, I put "Reika - insane lolita wields giant scissors" down in my notebook - and she's basically a side note to the film's main action-packed storyline!

We hit the ground running, as Shiyori (Nao Matsushita) finds a ringing cell phone in a closet of the hot-spring resort she's staying at, and hears something along the lines of "run! quickly! they'll cut off your leg!" when she answers it. In no time flat, she's strung up in front of a crowd as someone gets set to swing a big axe. Then it's flashback time, as we see Shiyori and her friend Aiko (Ami Suzuki) arriving at this very secluded hot spring, with Shiyori looking to get away after a break-up. Once we're caught up, it's something close to non-stop action as the voice on the phone tells us that the village's residents are descendants of a cult who folklore says would cut off their wives' legs to keep them from leaving - but who is this voice, and can he (or anyone) be trusted? And just what is up with that nutjob with the giant scissors (Shoko Nakagawa), anyway?

X-Cross is a film that implores you to just sit back and enjoy the ride, but it happily doesn't count on the audience taking things for granted. It's pure B-movie fun, yes, packed with pretty girls, ugly redneck cultists, blood, sharp and ridiculous weapons, and crazy costumes, but it's also got a story that, while simple, keeps the audience guessing. And not just in terms of having random stuff happen, but actually letting you enjoy figure things out and match them up: Everything fits together, and the back and forth jumping in time and location gives the audience several "ah-ha!" moments as they see how pieces fit together.

Full review at EFC.

Friday, July 11, 2008

Fantasia 2008, Day Eight: Beautiful Sunday, Epitaph, Accuracy of Death and Black Belt

There are just way too many Korean thrillers that I don't follow even though I'm taking notes, or at least that's how it seemed halfway through the day. Beautiful Sunday and Epitaph were both more than a bit overstuffed, relying on multiple twists that some folks in the lobby afterward were trying to puzzle out. Wide Awake was the same way, and I wonder if this is just the way it is in Korea right now, or whether I just happen to be seeing the wrong movies. I seem a lot more likely to get lost during Korean movies than any others, it seems, and I wonder why that is.

Ah, well. The Japanese half of the day was solid enough to make up for that. As I say in the full review on EFC/HBS, I had kind of been wary of Accuracy of Death (and why does it have that title in the subtitles and listings when it says "Sweet Rain" in plain English on the title screen). I don't have much interest in the "death is beautiful" meme, so both the description in the New York Asian Film Festival guide and Fantasia's turned me off; it just turned out to be so ubiquitous that I couldn't avoid it without deliberately avoiding it. Turns out that was a good thing, and Black Belt wound up being a solid, no-messing-around karate movie.

Today's plan: The Objective, Adrift In Tokyo, Shadows in the Palace and X-Cross. I suppose I could do a midnight, but Bad Biology looks like too much for me and Shamo would leave a gap in my schedule tomorrow where I really don't need one. If you're here, I can recommend Accuracy of Death, Assembly, Black Belt, and A Colt Is My Passport.

Beautiful Sunday (Byootipul Seondei)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Beautiful Sunday doesn't quite accomplish magic, but it's got one of the basic principles down pat. In fact, it might be a little too good with its misdirection, as a good chunk of what's going on is, in the final analysis, not really that important, just a smokescreen of complication to obscure the really clever bit.

We start with Detective Kang (Park Yong-woo); one of the Seoul PD's most aggressive cops, he tears through a major drug deal to take down the kingpin, Song-tae. Then, immediately afterward, he sells 90% of the product to another drug dealer. 200g goes on the report rather than 2kg, and as much as Song-tae is livid at someone stealing from him, he keeps quiet to avoid more jail time. As soon as he gets out of jail, though, he and his second-in-command Yoo Chun-yon are gunning for Kang, who has other problems: His ill-gotten gains are being spent on his comatose wife's medical bills, and there's a serial rapist on the loose that Kang's captain really wants put away.

Meanwhile, we're also introduced to Min-woo (Nam Goog-min); his attraction to pretty Su-yeon (Min Jee-hye) quickly becomes an obsession. One night he goes up to introduce himself, she freaks out, and he grabs her, initially to calm her down, but once he's already got his hands on her, he takes the next step. That's bad enough, but when he later sees her working in a bookstore, he approaches her; she doesn't recognize him and they start dating.

It's almost inevitable that the two stories will cross (sure, sometimes they don't in movies like this, but that's rare and unsatisfying). Truth be told, waiting to see how this happens is the thing that drives most of the movie, and filmmaker Jin Kwang-kyo plays his cards pretty close to the vest on that one. Kang's story has a lot of characters and things going on, but ultimately doesn't amount to that much. Min-woo's, by contrast, is very minimalist, as we get uncomfortable waiting for Su-yeon to grasp just who she's falling in love with. Despite all the action in Kang's part of the movie, it's Min-woo's that's actually more engrossing most of the time; a ticking time bomb hidden behind happiness is more interesting than one in the middle of people who regard each other as enemies anyway.

Full review at EFC.


Gidam (Epitaph)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Epitaph is one of the busiest horror films I've seen lately, starting in 1979 before flashing back to 1942, offering up ghosts and serial killers and obsessions that may or may not be connected in ways other than happening in close proximity to each other. It's good and proper for each character in a film to have his or her own story, but it doesn't quite work here; the three stories could each have been their own film. The end result is that none of the threads are really satisfying.

Still, brothers Jung Beom-sik and Jung Sik will likely be something once they start giving their stories a little more room to breathe. They're already pretty good at creepy atmosphere, setting up interesting situations, and knowing just when and how to hit the audience with the jump moment.

As with Beautiful Sunday, the audience was coming out of Epitaph trying to figure out what it was all about. Too bad; they could have been coming out gushing.


Suwito Rein: Sinigami No Seido (Accuracy of Death, aka Sweet Rain)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Those who have lost a loved one suddenly may take issue with this film's premise - that a Grim Reaper has allowed it because that person has fulfilled their life's purpose. Still, it might be some small comfort to believe that the Reaper who made that judgment is someone akin to Takeshi Kaneshiro' Chiba.

Grim Reapers, we're told at the start, do not actually kill people, and they're not involved with cases where death is a result of age or disease. They spend a few days examining someone's life and then decide "proceed" or "suspend" depending on what they've seen. We follow Chiba in three cases over the years. In 1985, he meets Kazue Fujiki (Manami Konishi), a call center employee who has lost everybody she has loved and now has a stalker calling customer service and asking for her specifically. In the present day, he judges a yakuza (Ken Mitsuishi) who is at odds with his fellow gangsters over using children to push drugs and also keeps a watchful eye on would-be younger brother Akutso (Takuya Ishida). Finally, in 2028, an old hairdresser (Sumiko "Junko" Fuji) pegs him for a Grim Reaper and has an odd favor to ask of him before she goes.

Supposedly, the movie would not have been made without Takeshi Kaneshiro's participation (original novelist Kotaro Isaka was reticent about a film version), and it is a wonderful piece of casting. Kaneshiro is handsome, yes, and brings a wonderful guilelessness to Chiba. What very easily could be groan-worthy moments as Chiba fails to understand figures of speech are instead full of innocent charm. He is anything but cold as he goes about his job, playing his immortal being not as jaded but instead as interested in everything around him. Just watching Chiba listen to music is a little delight.

Full review at EFC.


Kuro-Obi (Black Belt)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Most martial-arts films make some noise, at least, about there being more to their practices than just violence, although most wind up seeming a bit hypocritical on some level. Black Belt (or Kuro-Obi) is no different, really, although it seems to take its pacifist teacher's beliefs more to heart than most. Yes, it will ultimately come down to fighting, but at least those that want to avoid combat seem sincere about it.

Three black belt karate masters are learning from their sensei (Shinya Owada) in 1932 when the military police come to the Shibihara dojo, looking to take possession of it for more useful purposes. Choei (Yuji Suzuki) is injured immediately, cut by a ceremonial sword. Taikan (Tatsuya Naka) attacks, disobeying sensei Eiken Shibihara's edict to only use karate to block attacks, not to thrust and kick, which leads to a series of challenges with the captain. Giryu (Akihito Yagi) is brought into the challenges, obeying the sensei's wishes, and the captain feels dishonor is brought upon him when Giryu will not finish him off. This doesn't run them off for very long, though, and soon Army commander Hidesha Goda is conscripting the masters. Giryu faces the consequences of his mercy, while Taikan becomes fond of the status afforded him and becomes corrupted. The dying master has given Choei the responsibility of choosing who will next wear the ancient belt (the "kuro-obi" of the title) and be considered the true master.

This is not a movie of great subtlety or moral gray areas. The opening duel with Captain Tanahara lets us know with crystal clarity who will be the good student and who will be the bad one, and the film quickly bears that out: Taikan is soon working for Goda, deciding he likes women and fights to the death, while Giryu joins with a poor but kind farming family. Commander Goda himself lacks only a moustache to twirl; he plans to not only have Taikan train his troops in hand-to-hand combat, but to use the dojos Taikan takes over as brothels, stocked with girls who have been all but kidnapped. He tends to laugh maniacally, too. In contrast, the farmers that take in Giryu are as good as he is bad: There's a spunky young boy, a beautiful daughter, and an elderly father who does, admittedly, have a weakness for gambling (at rigged tables! it's a front for swindling old men to force them to sell their daughters!).

Full review at EFC.