The first day of working out of my employers' sister company in Montreal went pretty well - I stayed until about four o'clock, don't believe I disturbed anybody too much, and through a combination of finally finishing something I've been working on for weeks and grabbing a couple of unusually straightforward assignments out of the work queue, I have probably set an unreasonable standard for how much work I can get done when I am actually in the office.
And now, for some fun facts about getting around Montreal without a car: Unlike most American cities, those dotted lines for when the road goes underground do, in fact, indicate places that pedestrians can go. I know this now because it enabled me to take a straight line to work on Tuesday that I didn't manage on a hot, sweaty Monday. Also, if you're taking the Metro from a spot on the green line between Lionel-Groulx and Berri-UQAM to a spot on the orange line between the two stations (or vice versa), it doesn't matter which direction you initially go. Heck, when getting from the office (Place des Armes) to the festival (Guy-Concordia), either way is seven stops with one transfer.
Long Nga (Legendary Assassin)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)
It seems like everybody's been talking about Wu Jing being the next big action star for a few years, but it hasn't directly translated into lead roles - for crying out loud, he was "Assassin #1" in The Mummy 3 last year! Why that is when Jackie Chan and Jet Li aren't what they used to be and Donnie Yen can't be in everything, I don't know, but he's apparently decided that if getting behind the camera is what it takes to get front-and-center, that's what he'll do - and it's not a bad choice.
Wu plays Bo, who has just arrived on one of Hong Kong's outlying islands to collect the head of Timothy "Chairman" Ma (Keu Zhan-wen), which he has done without a lot of trouble. The hitch is that a typhoon has shut the ferries down, just after they've disgorged a couple other gangsters, Jellyfish ("Tenky" Tin Kai-man) and Fat Wing (Lam Suet) and their crew, looking for Ma at the request behest of his wife (Noriko Aoyama), who is running the business while Ma hides out. Oh, and that nice girl Bo caught falling out of a tree after chasing her cat? Hiu Wor (Celina Jade) is a cop - who immediately gets in more trouble trying to arrest three large bank robbers.
Legendary Assassin is a star vehicle for Wu Jing, I believe the first for a guy generally brought in as a challenging screen opponent for bigger names, and he does have a nice, understated charisma in this film. He doesn't have a lot of dialog - there seem to be hints in the subtitles that Bo is not as adept in Cantonese as in Mandarin - but he's got expressive eyes and does a nice job of communicating physically even when he's not fighting. Being the mysterious, quiet man in this movie probably helps him, actually, letting him underplay the comedy that everyone else plays broadly.
Full review at EFC.
"Hold Your Fire"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)
This short (playing in front of "Book of Blood") features a lot of grotesque imagery of the ravages of an east-asian war (could be WWII, could be Vietnam), and one genuinely heart-stopping moment, but the storytelling is a bit iffy - if it's supposed to be making a point, I'm not sure what it is. Also, it's an odd combination of live-action and CGI where even the actual performers look a bit unreal, throwing the whole thing into the so-called uncanny valley.
Book of Blood
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)
When the DVD & Blu-ray for The Midnight Meat Train came out, I was honestly kind of surprised to see nearly every review approaching it in terms of it being Clive Barker's story, rather than Ryuhei Kitamura's first American feature. That makes sense, of course - Barker has been a big name in horror for decades, while Kitamura is not particularly well-known in the English-speaking world. That I went to the screening last year jazzed to see what Kitamura did with Hollywood money and actors doesn't mean that the rest of the world felt the same way.
Which is a roundabout way of saying that I went to Book of Blood without much attachment to the material, even though it's taken from the same anthology that The Midnight Meat Train was. I didn't like it nearly as much as Kitamura's movie, either - for far too long, it feels like a generic haunted house movie, shot in an unpleasant green pallette that doesn't do much to add to the atmosphere, and acted rather flatly. I've seen this, including the relatively standard-issue twists before. The difference, of course, comes in the ending - Barker has grand and horrible nightmares, and the filmmakers do a fine job of visualizing them. It's almost worth slogging through the rest, including what seems like an awkward method of tying two stories together, to see the oft-repeated phrase about the dead having roads pictured.
I won't be hitting Dread tonight; Barker's style of horror isn't really my cup of tea when I have other options. I do have to admire him for having big ideas.
"Ice Cream Sunday"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
"Ice Cream Sunday" is a skillfully, creepily made take on the mind of a pedophile, spending much of its time on a simple, unashamed confession, interspersed with footage of young kids made more disturbingly intimate by being shot on 8mm, like a home movie. Then, of course, it goes and brings the church in, and gets weird, and goes on for a while. It's still disturbing as can be, but maybe loses something in its garishness.
Stoic
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2009 at Concordia Theatre de Seve (Fantasia Festival)
You know, if Uwe Boll keeps directing movies as watchable as Tunnel Rats and Stoic, he may lose the "worst director ever" tag. Stoic is not a great movie, but it's certainly watchable enough, though it's also plain to see that it could have been even better in the hands of a really good director.
It opens with Mitch Palmer (Shaun Sipos), a prison inmate, found hanged in his cell. An unseen investigator questions his three cellmates: Tearful Harry (Edward Furlong), defiant Peter (Sam Levinson), and icy Jack (Steffen Mennekes). As each tells their story - either truthfully or in lies - a narrative starts to emerge, starting with Mitch trying to back out of a poker bet and continually escalating as the other inmates begin bullying him to put him in his place.
The credits for this movie on the IMDB have some odd but noteworthy omissions: There's no writer listed, although the closing titles start with "Directed, Written, and Produced by Uwe Boll". Supposedly much of the movie was improvised, so it's understandable that the screenplay credits would be a bit vague. If that's the case, though, it might be nice to know who the editor was, as the film does wind up being fairly well put-together on that count. It's not flashy, but given that improvisation often provides a mountain of footage that can be hard to make into a single narrative, it's very solid.
Full review at EFC.
If you're in town today, you've probably already started seeing movies by the time this gets posted. I'm doing Yatterman, Tokyo OnlyPic 2008, and The Clone Returns Home. I'd recommend Power Kids, Stoic, and Dead Snow to various extents, but they've already played.
For Wednesday, my plan is Go Go 70s, Mutants, and either "DJ XL5's Razzle Dazzle Zappin' Party" or Slam-Bang.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment