Going to have to circle back around for Sunday, because it was shorts day, and there's twenty of those things which probably take a half-hour each to write up even if they only lasted five minutes. Remember that the next time you say critics are paid to watch movies - they're paid to write about them. Or not paid but given press passes, as the case may be here.
No guests - the last week of the festival really slows down on that count before a few people on the last couple days. It's almost kind of relaxing - just hanging out, watching good movies - at least to the extent that a film festival can be.
Will today be the same? We'll see - I'm at The Brink, River's Edge, Arizona, and trying to get into what is sure to be a huge crowd for Monteral Dead End. Amiko is pretty darn good, and I wouldn't be opposed to trying to stay awake through a non-midnight screening of Rokuroku, even if it is a big mess.
Nommer 37 (Number 37)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Basically an uncredited remake of Rear Window set in an unsavory Cape Town neighborhood, but that's not exactly a bad place to start if the goal is to make a decent thriller, and Number 37 is that. It's not as inventive as the things that inspired it, and there's really not a beat that you can't predict once the basics have been put into place.
It goes through those motions well, though, and its James Stewart and Grace Kelly substitutes, Irshaad Ally and Monique Rockman, are well-chosen for this particular production. It's got one really nice villain in Danny Ross's loan shark, and once the finale gets where it's been going, it is undeniably satisfying.
Gatta Cenerentola (Cinderella the Cat)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Axis, digital)
This modern/futuristic retelling of Cinderella has a bunch of wonderfully loopy pieces to it, from a yacht seemingly designed to be a ghost ship, a tragic wicked stepmother, a transvestite stepsister, glass slippers used to smuggle cocaine, and a spunky take on the title character who is anything but passive in the last few minutes. That it never really seems to go off the rails is at least partially a product of its Italian DNA: It's got songs that are equal parts cheery and mournful, casual sexiness, a certain fatalism and loyalty where the characters' hometown is concerned.
Of course, it still is Cinderella, which means that Mia doesn't actually do much until the end - indeed, she's a fairly minor part of the story for much of the movie. And though the motion-captured animation is probably wise not to attempt too much detail, it does tend to feel a bit stiff at times (visually, a proper DCP would probably be a huge help as well). And given how adult some of the movie is, I'm not sure who it's for - its too much this for some, not enough that for others, in practically every facet.
I'll probably watch it again given a chance, though - the thrilling promise of the opening and the moments when it shines make up for its failings.
"Backstore"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
A cute little short that kind of just messes around for ten minutes as a mall Santa and the "star fairy" working with him take a ten-minute break, planning to get it on in the back room, but kind of getting derailed by Christmas-y puns, foreplay, and the logistical difficulties imposed by their costumes get in the way. There's really not much to it other than hanging out, but there doesn't really need to be; the two main cast members are likable and able to hit some pretty specific beats when need be. They and filmmaker Valérie Leclair make them pretty believably two people you might catch working at the mall, not secretly brilliant folks slumming it.
It's got a decent enough end, although I think the goal is more to just get the audience out without things getting too sappy. Which isn't a bad way to go about it at all.
Hevi reissu (Heavy Trip)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Though the "trip" part of the movie only includes a fiercely funny last act, that's no disappointment; this Finnish heavy-metal comedy is pretty much a delight throughout, mostly because our never feels like its characters being both big metalheads and lovable dorks is any sort of conflict that has to be resolved. It's well aware that some parts of this type of music are kind of ridiculous even if very serious, but doesn't disrespect that.
It's also filled with funny people, playing deadpan with enthusiasm, straight-faced when called for and full of joy otherwise. It's got big, ridiculous slapstick, body fluid jokes that make sense and involve giving a damn, and never sells or what makes one le a character for a cheap laugh.
And, again, that last act is some concentrated funny. It's utterly ridiculous in a bigger way than the rest of the film, but it earns that and executes perfectly. Sometimes, it seems, being metal as heck means rolling with the insanity that comes your way.
Full review at EFC.
Tokyo Vampire Hotel (film version)
* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
So, maybe this thing has saved me a little time, because how do you commit to six hours of this mess, even if it is basically free on Prime? And you have, in fact, been waiting impatiently for Amazon to bring it over from Japan for the better part of a year. I mean, there's still a non-trivial chance that I will go for the full version, because this thing cut down to half that size is just such an obvious editing disaster that you kind of have to see what Sion Sono doing a TV series with this premise is like.
Still, there's a lot about Tokyo Vampire Hotel that is just generally Not Good. The character dumped in what counts for the protagonist slot, Manami (Ami Tomite), is abused so constantly that it's hard to really care beyond wanting her to just stop crying, and the potentially interesting anti-heroes of K (Kaho) and Nao (Ami Fukuda, I think) feel like side characters whose history is a distraction here. Maybe as an ensemble, they work a whole lot better.
As a film, Tokyo Vampire Hotel becomes a loud, obnoxious thing that gets into the exaggerated violence too early and never has a point to its vampire mythology other than "vampires are cool". But they're really not, and complicated mythology of warring families may make for a good RPG but it makes them hollow, not meaning anything. The one time this seems kind of interesting is when a Rumanian vampire sucking the blood of a woman on an underground ferris wheel makes one recoil because Sono has set it up to feel an awful lot like a rape, and beyond the disgust, there's potentially a metaphor to that, but the movie just doesn't have time for it at all. Sono may also be aging past the point where him doing stuff that is primarily about girls this young dressed sexy is kind of creepy - they definitely get a lot more weird outfits than their less-numerous male counterparts.
I'll probably want the show, because I like Sono for the most part and I'm weak. But it's way on the backburner now.
Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts
Showing posts with label WTF. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 31, 2018
Friday, August 07, 2015
The Fantasia Daily 2015.21 (3 August 2015): A Hard Day, Crumbs, Marshland, The Invitation, and Tag
No visitors? No visitors. Just a full day that had me really scrambling out of "the office" early enough that I feel like I'm going to have to make some of this week up somehow and just enough time between Crumbs and Marshland to grab dinner with Gabriella, who suffers from much less option-paralysis as I do in this situation.
Not a whole lot to say, otherwise. It was a very solid day - even the kind of disappointing film, The Invitation, had things it did very well, and Tag deserves a little more mulling over.
One thing that didn't make it into a review because it really doesn't matter, but "Javier Gutierrez" felt like it was Spanish for "Michael Keaton" in a way that was almost distracting while watching to movie; they not only look similar, but Juan is this charming/funny character with the potential for darkness that is right in Keaton's warehouse. If they were going to do an English-language remake, he would kill in that role. Of course, taking this movie out of post-Franco Spain would gut it, but I'm almost willing to accept that with this hypothetical casting.
Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da (A Hard Day)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
"Chekhov's _____" is an extremely easy joke to make when watching and reviewing thrillers and the like, and like most trope-related comments, folks often say that in terms of "don't do this" as opposed to "make sure you do it well". I mention this because A Hard Day has a fake-out/play-out that delighted me, and making sure that people who know movies knew something was coming was a big part of why it worked. Writer/director Kim Seong-hun does a lot of that, setting things up in plain sight but creating delight from how the situations he's created evolve.
Just look at how this begins: Detective Ko Gun-su (Lee Sun-kyun), speeding away from his mother's funeral (much to the disdain of his sister) because his fellow corrupt cops need him to help out with hiding evidence with Internal Affairs on the way. But wouldn't you know it, he hits a man with his car while swerving to avoid a dog. Covering everything up is a real pain, and that's before it turns out that the man he hit was not some anonymous vagrant - and that someone knows he's hiding something.
Kim piles a whole lot on the audience from the word go, but in doing so he allows the rest of the film to switch into problem-solving mode, and for all that Gun-su is a character who is not going to immediately endear himself to the audience for his pure heart and good intentions, there is a real delight in watching him, faced with a high-stakes puzzle, come up with a clever way to use what's available and still sweat because he's pressed for time. The film has a number of scenes like that, and while it doesn't always prefer them to a straight-up fight, turning a fight into a situation where the audience is keeping track of stuff tends to work better than Gun-su just slugging away.
Full review on EFC.
"Fish Out of Water"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, HD)
Someday, someone should curate a post-apocalyptic anthology film where each segment is something like "Fish Out of Water", showing how the same end-of-the-world scenario plays out around the globe, even in such unconventional locations as Northern Canada, where this short has a scarred hunter and ice-fisher (Mira Hall) struggling to make ends meet when the ice is endless and the fish are mutated before finding another survivor (Ella Bertelsen).
It's an impressively atmospheric piece, leaving out all the irrelevant backstory about this world and woman but making the everyday details of it specific and intriguing. Indeed, much of the short's ten minutes seems to be about getting the feel of the place, making the actual horror of the piece quick and, while a bit out of left field, particularly tragic for that. Throw in some nice creature and make-up work, and "Fish Out of Water" becomes quite the impressive and unique story of life after the fall.
Crumbs
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
Science fiction films about a man on a quest in a post-collapse wasteland are so far from uncommon that entries in the subgenre need something truly special in order to stand out from a low-budget haze of deserts, abandoned buildings, and pessimistic philosophy. Well, Crumbs comes from Ethiopia, and it's a comedy of sorts. It may not be to everyone's taste, but writer/director Miguel Llansó certainly made something that audience have seen a thousand times into something of which they've seldom seen the like.
According to the "History Written for No-One" at the start, humanity is more or less dying out of its own accord,no longer interested in creating new life as its creations fail. That means hunchbacked scavenger Candy (Daniel Tadesse) has relatively little competition as he picks over the scraps of fallen civilizations. It not just his latest finds that send him on a rater quest, though - the spaceship that has been hovering over the land since the last war has become more active, throwing off magnetic pulses that briefly activate the electricity in the bowling alley and his beloved, Sayat (Selam Tesfaye), call home. He consults with a witch (Shitay Abreha), who tells him to let the train guide him to the city, where he will find Santa Claus (Tsegaye Abegaz).
It is actually stranger than that: As Candy heads toward the city, Sayat finds the alley's ball return turning on and mostly spewing out bowling balls, although the occasional variation is disturbing. A thrift-store owner (Mengistu Berhanu) may lowball scavengers on the pieces of 20th/21st-Century pop culture detritus they find even while spinning tales of how they were valued by the possibly-mythical Molegon Warriors, and it's not hard to see the thrust of that, at least - the effort our civilization has put into promoting its frequently silly and hollow pop culture and exporting it around the world means that it's what will last and be treated as having significance. It gives the film a world where Michael Jordan is still worshiped as an idol and Michael Jackson LPs can be a nest egg despite a lack of context for them, and where the myth of Superman is badly misinterpreted.
Full review on EFC.
La isla mínima (Marshland)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
While, to a certain extent, murder is murder, a story that could be easily set in any era becomes much more fascinating when placed in a specific time, and not just because cell phones, GPS, and security cameras make things "too easy". Marshland, for instance, could easily be done in the present day, but setting it in 1980, a time when Spain was very much in transition, makes it even more thrilling.
The period is most visible in the detectives sent to a small town to investigate a pair of missing sisters - Juan (Javier Gutierrez) has had a long career under the Franco regime, and tends to think in terms of having dictatorially-backed authority; Pedro (Raul Arevalo) is younger and has seen his career stall as a result of writing a liberal-leaning letter to the editor he wrote. It's soon clear that mother Rocio (Nerea Barros) has something to share and father Rodrigo (Antonio de la Torre) has something to hide, but even more importantly, the father of another girl who went missing a year earlier convinces them that this may be the work of a serial killer. They soon have a suspect (Jesus Castro), though forensics seem to imply it wasn't him, and a potential next victim (Ana Tomeno) - but can they uncover the truth while still acting within the law?
That, arguably, is the real story that director & co-writer Alberto Rodriguez is telling, and it's one that never truly gets old: The very nature and importance of police work lends itself to abuse of authority that creates mistrust, and those who would attempt reform and the old guard are never going to see eye to eye. Rodriguez seldom has Juan and Pedro actively opposing each other - indeed, Juan seems to support Pedro in principle even if he tends toward the pragmatic - but there's a tension underneath that he constantly fans, and the difficulty of having police with different values and histories working together is the idea that the film ends on and wants the audience to ponder afterward.
Full review on EFC.
The Invitation
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
That I was asking myself when the stabbing was going to start fairly early on in The Invitation implies bad things, either about my character or the filmmakers' performance in terms of telling a story that, in fact, need not have that sort of violence at all. So which is it? Well, I'm fairly sure that I'm not a terrible person, enough so that I'll at least entertain the idea that this was a sign of building tension.
Tension is certainly understandable; it starts with Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) on the way to a dinner party with a fancy invitation and a reason to be uncomfortable: It's being hosted by Will's alarmingly cheerful ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) in the house where Will and Eden lost their son - and Eden had more or less dropped off the radar for the previous two years. Five out of six long-time friends of Will and Eden are already there, as is Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), a houseguest they met while spending time in Mexico. Another acquaintance from that time with "The Invited", Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch), also joins them, and they show an video which throws the already edgy mood even further off.
The reasonably clever thing about the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (against whom director Karyn Kusama apparently holds no feelings from their also writing Aeon Flux) is that it does not, necessarily, need to develop into a thriller. In fact, for the first good chunk of the movie, the drama is all driven by conventional things - Will is still obviously a wreck years after his son's death while Eden's deciding not to bother with negative emotions seems obviously unhealthy (if also practical) and a contrast to how the house seems to be locked down like a fortress, and the tension between Will and David is obvious. Even the obviously heavy foreshadowing of Will having to put down a coyote he hit on the drive up may perhaps only be reflected in that video of an assisted suicide. There's meaty material there, although the sort of movie where people simply confront each other about their past and emotions could probably be done with roughly half as many characters.
Full review on EFC.
Real Oni Gokko (Tag)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Tag is the most recent of three films at the festival by Sion Sono, who is having an absurdly productive year, and there are points where it seems like this frantic pace is overtaking him, like you can't expect him to crank this much out and still expect all of it to have some sort of plot that makes sense. He almost seems to be asking us to just take the often jaw-dropping scenes, accept that the weird ways they're being strung together have some weight, and accept that such an assembly is more entertaining than most movies. If that were the case, he wouldn't be wrong.
After all, he does start the movie with one of the bloodiest school outings ever before immediately slipping into upending everything for main character Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) on a regular basis, right down to her situation and name, swapping in a new actress with each of those major changes. Nothing seems off-limits, and the over-the-top absurdity initially seems to have no pattern other than the complete lack of men on-screen, and just as soon as that seems firmly established, it's time to change things up again. These scenes seem impossible to link up even though Sono has them run right into each other; it's a contradiction that says amazing things about what a filmmaker of Sono's innovation and energy can do.
And yet, even as Sono establishes an even stranger sci-fi premise, things click into place, and what initially seems like a gentle satire about the male gaze snaps into sharper focus. Video games seem to be the biggest target, specifically referenced in the dialog while also building a sort of demure fantasy woman who can kick ass but only with the gamer's guidance. Not that the medium has any sort of monopoly on this, but the last act certainly cries out for breaking out of the control of men and stereotypes, even if Sono's not going to give Mitsuko/Keiko/Izumi any sort of speech about it. The audience is expected to unpack this on its own, and I suspect it may take a few more viewings before I truly manage that.
Which is fine, because Sono has made an immensely entertaining movie that will be a blast to revisit (though comparing it to The Chasing World, he seems to have retained very little beyond the idea of analogs on multiple worlds from the source material). This got the best of festival award, as did Triendl - I do kind of wonder if the judges realized she shared the role with two other actresses - and while I don't necessarily see that right away, I wouldn't be shocked if I could be convinced.
Not a whole lot to say, otherwise. It was a very solid day - even the kind of disappointing film, The Invitation, had things it did very well, and Tag deserves a little more mulling over.
One thing that didn't make it into a review because it really doesn't matter, but "Javier Gutierrez" felt like it was Spanish for "Michael Keaton" in a way that was almost distracting while watching to movie; they not only look similar, but Juan is this charming/funny character with the potential for darkness that is right in Keaton's warehouse. If they were going to do an English-language remake, he would kill in that role. Of course, taking this movie out of post-Franco Spain would gut it, but I'm almost willing to accept that with this hypothetical casting.
Kkeut-kka-ji-gan-da (A Hard Day)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
"Chekhov's _____" is an extremely easy joke to make when watching and reviewing thrillers and the like, and like most trope-related comments, folks often say that in terms of "don't do this" as opposed to "make sure you do it well". I mention this because A Hard Day has a fake-out/play-out that delighted me, and making sure that people who know movies knew something was coming was a big part of why it worked. Writer/director Kim Seong-hun does a lot of that, setting things up in plain sight but creating delight from how the situations he's created evolve.
Just look at how this begins: Detective Ko Gun-su (Lee Sun-kyun), speeding away from his mother's funeral (much to the disdain of his sister) because his fellow corrupt cops need him to help out with hiding evidence with Internal Affairs on the way. But wouldn't you know it, he hits a man with his car while swerving to avoid a dog. Covering everything up is a real pain, and that's before it turns out that the man he hit was not some anonymous vagrant - and that someone knows he's hiding something.
Kim piles a whole lot on the audience from the word go, but in doing so he allows the rest of the film to switch into problem-solving mode, and for all that Gun-su is a character who is not going to immediately endear himself to the audience for his pure heart and good intentions, there is a real delight in watching him, faced with a high-stakes puzzle, come up with a clever way to use what's available and still sweat because he's pressed for time. The film has a number of scenes like that, and while it doesn't always prefer them to a straight-up fight, turning a fight into a situation where the audience is keeping track of stuff tends to work better than Gun-su just slugging away.
Full review on EFC.
"Fish Out of Water"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival, HD)
Someday, someone should curate a post-apocalyptic anthology film where each segment is something like "Fish Out of Water", showing how the same end-of-the-world scenario plays out around the globe, even in such unconventional locations as Northern Canada, where this short has a scarred hunter and ice-fisher (Mira Hall) struggling to make ends meet when the ice is endless and the fish are mutated before finding another survivor (Ella Bertelsen).
It's an impressively atmospheric piece, leaving out all the irrelevant backstory about this world and woman but making the everyday details of it specific and intriguing. Indeed, much of the short's ten minutes seems to be about getting the feel of the place, making the actual horror of the piece quick and, while a bit out of left field, particularly tragic for that. Throw in some nice creature and make-up work, and "Fish Out of Water" becomes quite the impressive and unique story of life after the fall.
Crumbs
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia International Film Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
Science fiction films about a man on a quest in a post-collapse wasteland are so far from uncommon that entries in the subgenre need something truly special in order to stand out from a low-budget haze of deserts, abandoned buildings, and pessimistic philosophy. Well, Crumbs comes from Ethiopia, and it's a comedy of sorts. It may not be to everyone's taste, but writer/director Miguel Llansó certainly made something that audience have seen a thousand times into something of which they've seldom seen the like.
According to the "History Written for No-One" at the start, humanity is more or less dying out of its own accord,no longer interested in creating new life as its creations fail. That means hunchbacked scavenger Candy (Daniel Tadesse) has relatively little competition as he picks over the scraps of fallen civilizations. It not just his latest finds that send him on a rater quest, though - the spaceship that has been hovering over the land since the last war has become more active, throwing off magnetic pulses that briefly activate the electricity in the bowling alley and his beloved, Sayat (Selam Tesfaye), call home. He consults with a witch (Shitay Abreha), who tells him to let the train guide him to the city, where he will find Santa Claus (Tsegaye Abegaz).
It is actually stranger than that: As Candy heads toward the city, Sayat finds the alley's ball return turning on and mostly spewing out bowling balls, although the occasional variation is disturbing. A thrift-store owner (Mengistu Berhanu) may lowball scavengers on the pieces of 20th/21st-Century pop culture detritus they find even while spinning tales of how they were valued by the possibly-mythical Molegon Warriors, and it's not hard to see the thrust of that, at least - the effort our civilization has put into promoting its frequently silly and hollow pop culture and exporting it around the world means that it's what will last and be treated as having significance. It gives the film a world where Michael Jordan is still worshiped as an idol and Michael Jackson LPs can be a nest egg despite a lack of context for them, and where the myth of Superman is badly misinterpreted.
Full review on EFC.
La isla mínima (Marshland)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
While, to a certain extent, murder is murder, a story that could be easily set in any era becomes much more fascinating when placed in a specific time, and not just because cell phones, GPS, and security cameras make things "too easy". Marshland, for instance, could easily be done in the present day, but setting it in 1980, a time when Spain was very much in transition, makes it even more thrilling.
The period is most visible in the detectives sent to a small town to investigate a pair of missing sisters - Juan (Javier Gutierrez) has had a long career under the Franco regime, and tends to think in terms of having dictatorially-backed authority; Pedro (Raul Arevalo) is younger and has seen his career stall as a result of writing a liberal-leaning letter to the editor he wrote. It's soon clear that mother Rocio (Nerea Barros) has something to share and father Rodrigo (Antonio de la Torre) has something to hide, but even more importantly, the father of another girl who went missing a year earlier convinces them that this may be the work of a serial killer. They soon have a suspect (Jesus Castro), though forensics seem to imply it wasn't him, and a potential next victim (Ana Tomeno) - but can they uncover the truth while still acting within the law?
That, arguably, is the real story that director & co-writer Alberto Rodriguez is telling, and it's one that never truly gets old: The very nature and importance of police work lends itself to abuse of authority that creates mistrust, and those who would attempt reform and the old guard are never going to see eye to eye. Rodriguez seldom has Juan and Pedro actively opposing each other - indeed, Juan seems to support Pedro in principle even if he tends toward the pragmatic - but there's a tension underneath that he constantly fans, and the difficulty of having police with different values and histories working together is the idea that the film ends on and wants the audience to ponder afterward.
Full review on EFC.
The Invitation
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
That I was asking myself when the stabbing was going to start fairly early on in The Invitation implies bad things, either about my character or the filmmakers' performance in terms of telling a story that, in fact, need not have that sort of violence at all. So which is it? Well, I'm fairly sure that I'm not a terrible person, enough so that I'll at least entertain the idea that this was a sign of building tension.
Tension is certainly understandable; it starts with Will (Logan Marshall-Green) and his girlfriend Kira (Emayatzy Corinealdi) on the way to a dinner party with a fancy invitation and a reason to be uncomfortable: It's being hosted by Will's alarmingly cheerful ex-wife Eden (Tammy Blanchard) and her new husband David (Michiel Huisman) in the house where Will and Eden lost their son - and Eden had more or less dropped off the radar for the previous two years. Five out of six long-time friends of Will and Eden are already there, as is Sadie (Lindsay Burdge), a houseguest they met while spending time in Mexico. Another acquaintance from that time with "The Invited", Pruitt (John Carroll Lynch), also joins them, and they show an video which throws the already edgy mood even further off.
The reasonably clever thing about the script by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi (against whom director Karyn Kusama apparently holds no feelings from their also writing Aeon Flux) is that it does not, necessarily, need to develop into a thriller. In fact, for the first good chunk of the movie, the drama is all driven by conventional things - Will is still obviously a wreck years after his son's death while Eden's deciding not to bother with negative emotions seems obviously unhealthy (if also practical) and a contrast to how the house seems to be locked down like a fortress, and the tension between Will and David is obvious. Even the obviously heavy foreshadowing of Will having to put down a coyote he hit on the drive up may perhaps only be reflected in that video of an assisted suicide. There's meaty material there, although the sort of movie where people simply confront each other about their past and emotions could probably be done with roughly half as many characters.
Full review on EFC.
Real Oni Gokko (Tag)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2015 in Theatre Hall Concordia (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Tag is the most recent of three films at the festival by Sion Sono, who is having an absurdly productive year, and there are points where it seems like this frantic pace is overtaking him, like you can't expect him to crank this much out and still expect all of it to have some sort of plot that makes sense. He almost seems to be asking us to just take the often jaw-dropping scenes, accept that the weird ways they're being strung together have some weight, and accept that such an assembly is more entertaining than most movies. If that were the case, he wouldn't be wrong.
After all, he does start the movie with one of the bloodiest school outings ever before immediately slipping into upending everything for main character Mitsuko (Reina Triendl) on a regular basis, right down to her situation and name, swapping in a new actress with each of those major changes. Nothing seems off-limits, and the over-the-top absurdity initially seems to have no pattern other than the complete lack of men on-screen, and just as soon as that seems firmly established, it's time to change things up again. These scenes seem impossible to link up even though Sono has them run right into each other; it's a contradiction that says amazing things about what a filmmaker of Sono's innovation and energy can do.
And yet, even as Sono establishes an even stranger sci-fi premise, things click into place, and what initially seems like a gentle satire about the male gaze snaps into sharper focus. Video games seem to be the biggest target, specifically referenced in the dialog while also building a sort of demure fantasy woman who can kick ass but only with the gamer's guidance. Not that the medium has any sort of monopoly on this, but the last act certainly cries out for breaking out of the control of men and stereotypes, even if Sono's not going to give Mitsuko/Keiko/Izumi any sort of speech about it. The audience is expected to unpack this on its own, and I suspect it may take a few more viewings before I truly manage that.
Which is fine, because Sono has made an immensely entertaining movie that will be a blast to revisit (though comparing it to The Chasing World, he seems to have retained very little beyond the idea of analogs on multiple worlds from the source material). This got the best of festival award, as did Triendl - I do kind of wonder if the judges realized she shared the role with two other actresses - and while I don't necessarily see that right away, I wouldn't be shocked if I could be convinced.
Monday, September 10, 2012
This Week In Tickets: 3 September 2012 - 9 September 2012
Busy week!
A lot of it was packed into the weekend, but there was a lot of good variety. I must admit, I'm kind of disappointed in myself that all I did for moviegoing on Labor Day was The Ocean Waves; I was still pretty wiped out from the pre-code marathon on Saturday night. Getting old sucks.
Still, I was happy to get the chance to see a couple favorites on the big screen. I kind of wonder if Regal would have announced and advertised that The Avengers was going to be one of four films they played on the deluxe RPX screen for a reduced price if they knew Disney would be bringing it back Labor Day weekend to try and goose the box office a little bit; the $5 I paid to see it in 3D on the screen with the great sound and comfy seats was less than half what the 2D show in one of the lesser screens cost. Not that this was a bad plan; there wasn't a whole lot worthy of the deluxe screen that weekend and reduced prices might have given some people impetus to sample and discover that, yeah, it really is worth a buck or two to upgrade from the standard. Suffice it to say, that wasn't exactly the plan with Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Imax-branded screen across town; despite basically being promotion for the upcoming Blu-ray release, that's a full-cost ticket, and I half-suspect that it will look better in 35mm at the Brattle.
Between them, there was one long day of movies - I saw (and liked) [REC] 3 at midnight on Friday, got home, and because there was still blood pumping, wrote a review before hitting the sack at four-thirty. You'd think my body would take the hint and let me sleep until noon, but no, the body can't read a calendar like the brain can, and it tought I had to go to work or something on Saturday. So, I was able to make it to matinees of Branded and Bachelorette and regret it. That is one occasion when you make use of the refillable large soda, let me tell you, although that second Coke Zero tastes disgusting.
Also disgusting: Sunday's baseball game. Well, not really completely disgusting, as Buchholz looked really good and might have won the game for the team if not for some subpar defense in the 4th. Still, it was nice to head down to a friend's seats and visit toward the end of the game, especially since I got stuck holding extra tickets again.
Umi ga kikoeru (The Ocean Waves)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 September 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (Castles in the Sky: Ghibli, digital)
The Ocean Waves is seen relatively rarely in the United States; having been made for Japanese television, featuring no fantasy elements, and not being directed by either of Studio Ghibli's most renowned filmmakers (Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata), it never received a DVD release here. Too bad; it's a nice little movie, worth a look if the touring Ghibli retrospective lands in your town.
Taku (voice of Nobuo Tobita) and Yutaka (voice of Toshihiko Seki) were never in the same homeroom at school, but became close friends when they were the only ones to protest the cancellation of their class trip. One day, Yutaka calls Taku during vacation to give him exciting news about a transfer student: Rikako (voice of Yoko Sakamoto) comes to their small town from Tokyo and is pretty, athletic, and smart; Yutaka clearly has a crush already. But when Rikako gets in a bind during their senior class trip, it's Taku she turns to, leading to a number of messy situations.
Though Taku serves as the movie's narrator and certainly comes into his own over the course of the film, the focal point is clearly Rikako, his first experience with how simultaneously wonderful and frustrating women and other people can be. For a character in a seventy-two minute animated movie, she's a surprisingly rich creation - often aloof, scheming, and self-centered, although the roots of her less appealing qualities serve to make her a sympathetic figure. She's clearly got some issues, and they are lodged deep enough that it's going to take more than a weekend with Taku to resolve them.
Full review at eFilmCritic
The Avengers
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 September 2012 in Regal Fenway #13 (second-run, Sony digital/RPX 3D)
It's interesting to see how there's been a bit of walking-back of some of the ebuillant praise of The Avengers from the start of the summer, though I still like it as much as I did then. I think part of that is sidestepping comparisons to The Dark Knight Rises in end-of-season/year pieces. When director Joss Whedon says "it's not a great film, but it is a great time", that's a line being drawn: You can have the critics who talk about thematic richness and real-world parallels, but man, did allow that we blew stuff up really well.
And that's fair, but it is worth mentioning that I dropped some cash to see this again for a second time four months later and I don't know if I'll do that should The Dark Knight Rises still be playing the Aquarium in November. The Avengers really is a lot of fun, and of the three superhero movies to come out this summer, it's the one that happily embraces its genre the most. The Amazing Spider-Man never seemed to really embrace the fact that it's about Peter Parker fighting a were-lizard who wants to turn the rest of New York into were-lizards; TDKR (like its predecessors) does such a good job of grounding its world and avoiding the overtly fantastical material from the comics that it's sometimes tough to recognize just how much larger than life those movies are.
Still, it's kind of amazing that Marvel started this franchise with Iron Man, both because Iron Man is pretty close to that universe's Batman, and has ramped it up to flying space monsters within about five years. And over the course of the next cycle leading up to Avengers 2, they're going to have James Gunn direct a movie that features Rocket Racoon. That, folks, is kind of amazing.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 9 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #2 (special engagement, Imax-branded digital)
Raiders of the Lost Ark is as close to perfect as a movie can be, and I've said things along these lines before (though apparently not since 2006). I don't know if I still think it gets better every time I watch it - in part that's me; I vacillate between favoring its recreation of classic acting styles and something more naturalistic; I've gotten more analytical with scripts and can spot where it doesn't quite make sense - but it's still really, really good.
And, it's not just really good, but gets better toward the end. Not that there aren't great moments before then, but once Indy punches out of the Well of Souls... Well, the sustained action until the end is amazing. The fistfight on and around the flying wing has the sort of precise choreography you generally expect from Hong Kong, humor, and just an amazing way of escalating , with each thing Indy and company does making something else happen that will catch up with him two or three beats later in the scene. Then, it leads into the horse/car/truck chase, and you know how Indy says "Nazis... I hate these guys!" in Last Crusade? He really does; there's a nasty sort of joy on his face as he throws them from the truck. And then the island...
Yeah, any chance to see it on the big screen is money well spent. If you're in Boston, well, I'm certainly not going to suggest missing it while it's on the Imax-branded screen at Boston Common, although I did think there were a couple of weird moments with projection, and unless Imax has upgraded the specs of these theaters in the last couple of years, the raw resolution (basically HDTV quality) is actually less than the 4K screens everywhere else in the building. There will be a new 35mm print playing the Brattle at the end of October, though, and for less money to boot.
A lot of it was packed into the weekend, but there was a lot of good variety. I must admit, I'm kind of disappointed in myself that all I did for moviegoing on Labor Day was The Ocean Waves; I was still pretty wiped out from the pre-code marathon on Saturday night. Getting old sucks.
Still, I was happy to get the chance to see a couple favorites on the big screen. I kind of wonder if Regal would have announced and advertised that The Avengers was going to be one of four films they played on the deluxe RPX screen for a reduced price if they knew Disney would be bringing it back Labor Day weekend to try and goose the box office a little bit; the $5 I paid to see it in 3D on the screen with the great sound and comfy seats was less than half what the 2D show in one of the lesser screens cost. Not that this was a bad plan; there wasn't a whole lot worthy of the deluxe screen that weekend and reduced prices might have given some people impetus to sample and discover that, yeah, it really is worth a buck or two to upgrade from the standard. Suffice it to say, that wasn't exactly the plan with Raiders of the Lost Ark on the Imax-branded screen across town; despite basically being promotion for the upcoming Blu-ray release, that's a full-cost ticket, and I half-suspect that it will look better in 35mm at the Brattle.
Between them, there was one long day of movies - I saw (and liked) [REC] 3 at midnight on Friday, got home, and because there was still blood pumping, wrote a review before hitting the sack at four-thirty. You'd think my body would take the hint and let me sleep until noon, but no, the body can't read a calendar like the brain can, and it tought I had to go to work or something on Saturday. So, I was able to make it to matinees of Branded and Bachelorette and regret it. That is one occasion when you make use of the refillable large soda, let me tell you, although that second Coke Zero tastes disgusting.
Also disgusting: Sunday's baseball game. Well, not really completely disgusting, as Buchholz looked really good and might have won the game for the team if not for some subpar defense in the 4th. Still, it was nice to head down to a friend's seats and visit toward the end of the game, especially since I got stuck holding extra tickets again.
Umi ga kikoeru (The Ocean Waves)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 September 2012 in the Brattle Theatre (Castles in the Sky: Ghibli, digital)
The Ocean Waves is seen relatively rarely in the United States; having been made for Japanese television, featuring no fantasy elements, and not being directed by either of Studio Ghibli's most renowned filmmakers (Hayao Miyazaki & Isao Takahata), it never received a DVD release here. Too bad; it's a nice little movie, worth a look if the touring Ghibli retrospective lands in your town.
Taku (voice of Nobuo Tobita) and Yutaka (voice of Toshihiko Seki) were never in the same homeroom at school, but became close friends when they were the only ones to protest the cancellation of their class trip. One day, Yutaka calls Taku during vacation to give him exciting news about a transfer student: Rikako (voice of Yoko Sakamoto) comes to their small town from Tokyo and is pretty, athletic, and smart; Yutaka clearly has a crush already. But when Rikako gets in a bind during their senior class trip, it's Taku she turns to, leading to a number of messy situations.
Though Taku serves as the movie's narrator and certainly comes into his own over the course of the film, the focal point is clearly Rikako, his first experience with how simultaneously wonderful and frustrating women and other people can be. For a character in a seventy-two minute animated movie, she's a surprisingly rich creation - often aloof, scheming, and self-centered, although the roots of her less appealing qualities serve to make her a sympathetic figure. She's clearly got some issues, and they are lodged deep enough that it's going to take more than a weekend with Taku to resolve them.
Full review at eFilmCritic
The Avengers
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 September 2012 in Regal Fenway #13 (second-run, Sony digital/RPX 3D)
It's interesting to see how there's been a bit of walking-back of some of the ebuillant praise of The Avengers from the start of the summer, though I still like it as much as I did then. I think part of that is sidestepping comparisons to The Dark Knight Rises in end-of-season/year pieces. When director Joss Whedon says "it's not a great film, but it is a great time", that's a line being drawn: You can have the critics who talk about thematic richness and real-world parallels, but man, did allow that we blew stuff up really well.
And that's fair, but it is worth mentioning that I dropped some cash to see this again for a second time four months later and I don't know if I'll do that should The Dark Knight Rises still be playing the Aquarium in November. The Avengers really is a lot of fun, and of the three superhero movies to come out this summer, it's the one that happily embraces its genre the most. The Amazing Spider-Man never seemed to really embrace the fact that it's about Peter Parker fighting a were-lizard who wants to turn the rest of New York into were-lizards; TDKR (like its predecessors) does such a good job of grounding its world and avoiding the overtly fantastical material from the comics that it's sometimes tough to recognize just how much larger than life those movies are.
Still, it's kind of amazing that Marvel started this franchise with Iron Man, both because Iron Man is pretty close to that universe's Batman, and has ramped it up to flying space monsters within about five years. And over the course of the next cycle leading up to Avengers 2, they're going to have James Gunn direct a movie that features Rocket Racoon. That, folks, is kind of amazing.
Raiders of the Lost Ark
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 9 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #2 (special engagement, Imax-branded digital)
Raiders of the Lost Ark is as close to perfect as a movie can be, and I've said things along these lines before (though apparently not since 2006). I don't know if I still think it gets better every time I watch it - in part that's me; I vacillate between favoring its recreation of classic acting styles and something more naturalistic; I've gotten more analytical with scripts and can spot where it doesn't quite make sense - but it's still really, really good.
And, it's not just really good, but gets better toward the end. Not that there aren't great moments before then, but once Indy punches out of the Well of Souls... Well, the sustained action until the end is amazing. The fistfight on and around the flying wing has the sort of precise choreography you generally expect from Hong Kong, humor, and just an amazing way of escalating , with each thing Indy and company does making something else happen that will catch up with him two or three beats later in the scene. Then, it leads into the horse/car/truck chase, and you know how Indy says "Nazis... I hate these guys!" in Last Crusade? He really does; there's a nasty sort of joy on his face as he throws them from the truck. And then the island...
Yeah, any chance to see it on the big screen is money well spent. If you're in Boston, well, I'm certainly not going to suggest missing it while it's on the Imax-branded screen at Boston Common, although I did think there were a couple of weird moments with projection, and unless Imax has upgraded the specs of these theaters in the last couple of years, the raw resolution (basically HDTV quality) is actually less than the 4K screens everywhere else in the building. There will be a new 35mm print playing the Brattle at the end of October, though, and for less money to boot.
Sunday, September 09, 2012
B is for Bad Movies: Branded and Bachelorette
This was not a good day at the movies, unless you count seeing the Cloud Atlas trailer twice. It probably didn't help that I'd been up until 4am writing my [REC] 3 review (hey, was still awake, alert, and rolling) but my body thought I should be up by 9am anyway. It meant I could do the cheap show for Branded, and write up both new releases for EFC while the guys who usually do that are up in Toronto. Apparently, studios hold the really crappy movies for when North American critics are out of town.
Writing negative reviews is no fun. I know there are some people who really get a kick out of it, but I have a hard time getting into that frame of mind, especially when the time to say "so-and-so is not good at his or her job" comes around. I mean, I don't know that; it could just be that a lot of little things aggregated into something not working, although it's not like I'm shy about saying that when things go well. Truth be told, there is a lot more stuff that could go into these reviews - the number of ways that Branded is completely insane is astonishing, but listing them out my just be spoiling the experience for someone who wants to go looking for strange. Bachelorette, at least, is just disappointing, as I am tremendously fond of both Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher, who need to be in more movies that I like.
A couple more movies featuring people I like and which haven't been reviewed at EFC also came out this weekend, but after what is sure to be a painful Red Sox loss this afternoon, I think I'm going to go with Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX. Too many letdowns this weekend already!
Branded
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)
Branded is a movie so bizarre at points that it must be intended as metaphor or satire, except that nothing about this film ever gives the the impression that it's nearly that clever. It's a weird example of someone trying to be clever beyond their capabilities, but doesn't even have the charm necessary to be good camp.
Mikhail "Misha" Glakin (Ed Stoppard) is a marketing savant who was struck by lightning as a child in 1980s Russia, and now works for American Bob Gibbons (Jeffrey Tambor). Bob's niece Abby (Leelee Sobieski) is also in town, looking to produce a Russian version of reality program Extreme Cosmetic, eventually enlisting Misha as a partner and lover. What they don't know, though, is that this is part of a bigger plan by a mysterious marketing guru (Max von Sydow), though he doesn't count on Misha having a vision.
That Branded (also listed on IMDB as "The Mad Cow" and "Moscow 2017") is built up around an almost childishly simple theme that marketing/advertising is bad is one thing; that it doesn't build anything interesting around that is quite another. Weird, sure - Misha doesn't simply hear voices, but comes to have visions through a whole strange ritual, and then the visions themselves are downright peculiar bits of visual effects - but filmmakers Jamie Bradshaw & Aleksandr Dulerayn utterly fail to make them worth the audience's attention. It tries to assert that it's got stuff going on; there's lots of bridging/explanatory narration, after-the-fact discussion of Misha and Abby being in love that should maybe have been more obvious through their actions, and young Misha is told that being struck by lightning means he will have an interesting life, but it's a lot of making claims that don't have any weight based on what the audience sees on screen.
Full review at EFC.
Bachelorette
* * (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)
In some ways, I suppose, it's kind of cool that Bachelorette feels free to run with its cast of abrasive female characters without particular concern of making them people that the audience wants to identify with; moviemakers tend to shy away from that. Still, as much as it's easy to comment about Hollywood clichés and personal transformations over the course of a single night, this movie really could have used a little more along those lines. After all, liking the characters can be a pretty nice fallback for a comedy to have when the laughs don't come that often.
Things start in a restaurant, where Regan (Kirsten Dunst) is trying to impress her friend Becky (Rebel Wilson) with her volunteer work, only to be blindsided by the news that Becky is engaged; not only did Regan see herself getting married first among her friends, but, Becky's fat and her boyfriend Dale (Hayes MacArthur) is kind of a hunk! She's soon on the phone sharing this news with her other friends from high school, trainwreck Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and not-so-bright Katie (Isla Fisher). Jump to the night before the wedding, and the wasted bridesmaids suddenly have to scramble to fix the wedding dress they accidentally ruined, occasionally crossing paths with the groomsmen - best man Trevor (James Marsden); Gena's high-school boyfriend Clyde (Adam Scott); and Joe (Kyle Bornheimer), who used to sell Katie pot and still has a crush on her.
It seems like these three should be able to get into enough misadventures over the course of a night to fill an hour and a half's worth of movie, but they really don't; none of the situations they get into are particularly funny in and of themselves, and while there's occasionally an enjoyably crude or oblivious bit, the characters just don't say or do funny things often enough. Mean and self-centered, sure, but that works best when there's some expectation of civility; otherwise, it's not much of a joke.
Full review at EFC.
Writing negative reviews is no fun. I know there are some people who really get a kick out of it, but I have a hard time getting into that frame of mind, especially when the time to say "so-and-so is not good at his or her job" comes around. I mean, I don't know that; it could just be that a lot of little things aggregated into something not working, although it's not like I'm shy about saying that when things go well. Truth be told, there is a lot more stuff that could go into these reviews - the number of ways that Branded is completely insane is astonishing, but listing them out my just be spoiling the experience for someone who wants to go looking for strange. Bachelorette, at least, is just disappointing, as I am tremendously fond of both Kirsten Dunst and Isla Fisher, who need to be in more movies that I like.
A couple more movies featuring people I like and which haven't been reviewed at EFC also came out this weekend, but after what is sure to be a painful Red Sox loss this afternoon, I think I'm going to go with Raiders of the Lost Ark in IMAX. Too many letdowns this weekend already!
Branded
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)
Branded is a movie so bizarre at points that it must be intended as metaphor or satire, except that nothing about this film ever gives the the impression that it's nearly that clever. It's a weird example of someone trying to be clever beyond their capabilities, but doesn't even have the charm necessary to be good camp.
Mikhail "Misha" Glakin (Ed Stoppard) is a marketing savant who was struck by lightning as a child in 1980s Russia, and now works for American Bob Gibbons (Jeffrey Tambor). Bob's niece Abby (Leelee Sobieski) is also in town, looking to produce a Russian version of reality program Extreme Cosmetic, eventually enlisting Misha as a partner and lover. What they don't know, though, is that this is part of a bigger plan by a mysterious marketing guru (Max von Sydow), though he doesn't count on Misha having a vision.
That Branded (also listed on IMDB as "The Mad Cow" and "Moscow 2017") is built up around an almost childishly simple theme that marketing/advertising is bad is one thing; that it doesn't build anything interesting around that is quite another. Weird, sure - Misha doesn't simply hear voices, but comes to have visions through a whole strange ritual, and then the visions themselves are downright peculiar bits of visual effects - but filmmakers Jamie Bradshaw & Aleksandr Dulerayn utterly fail to make them worth the audience's attention. It tries to assert that it's got stuff going on; there's lots of bridging/explanatory narration, after-the-fact discussion of Misha and Abby being in love that should maybe have been more obvious through their actions, and young Misha is told that being struck by lightning means he will have an interesting life, but it's a lot of making claims that don't have any weight based on what the audience sees on screen.
Full review at EFC.
Bachelorette
* * (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2012 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, Sony Digital 4K)
In some ways, I suppose, it's kind of cool that Bachelorette feels free to run with its cast of abrasive female characters without particular concern of making them people that the audience wants to identify with; moviemakers tend to shy away from that. Still, as much as it's easy to comment about Hollywood clichés and personal transformations over the course of a single night, this movie really could have used a little more along those lines. After all, liking the characters can be a pretty nice fallback for a comedy to have when the laughs don't come that often.
Things start in a restaurant, where Regan (Kirsten Dunst) is trying to impress her friend Becky (Rebel Wilson) with her volunteer work, only to be blindsided by the news that Becky is engaged; not only did Regan see herself getting married first among her friends, but, Becky's fat and her boyfriend Dale (Hayes MacArthur) is kind of a hunk! She's soon on the phone sharing this news with her other friends from high school, trainwreck Gena (Lizzy Caplan) and not-so-bright Katie (Isla Fisher). Jump to the night before the wedding, and the wasted bridesmaids suddenly have to scramble to fix the wedding dress they accidentally ruined, occasionally crossing paths with the groomsmen - best man Trevor (James Marsden); Gena's high-school boyfriend Clyde (Adam Scott); and Joe (Kyle Bornheimer), who used to sell Katie pot and still has a crush on her.
It seems like these three should be able to get into enough misadventures over the course of a night to fill an hour and a half's worth of movie, but they really don't; none of the situations they get into are particularly funny in and of themselves, and while there's occasionally an enjoyably crude or oblivious bit, the characters just don't say or do funny things often enough. Mean and self-centered, sure, but that works best when there's some expectation of civility; otherwise, it's not much of a joke.
Full review at EFC.
Saturday, September 08, 2012
[REC]³ Génesis & more Fantasia catch-up
It's fair to tag [REC] 3 with Fantasia catch-up, in part because I saw the previous two at that festival and at one point expected to see this there as well, but apparently Magnet had not only purchased it but made it available on VOD by then (Magnolia's usually pretty good about letting its films play festivals as previews)... Or maybe someone else is distributing it in Canada. Either way, it was an odd omission, kind of like how there was nothing from Johnnie To's Milkyway company at all.
Anyway, [REC] 3 is a lot of fun, even though you'll likely be disappointed with it if you go in just expecting more of the first two movies; it goes off in its own direction but does pretty well by that; it's fast-paced, often funny, and just generally a good time for those who like their gore delivered with a wink as much as with gritted teeth. And if you can go to the Coolidge's second midnight screening of it tonight (8 September 2012), I think you'll have a good time. However, I think that in doing so, it chose the wrong ending.
There are four basic ending types for horror movies in particular: The victorious ending, where the monsters are slain; the ambiguous ending, where the hero has apparently beated them back but it's a victory that may be illusory or short-lived; the tragic ending, where the hero falls, never really having had a chance; and the gotcha ending, where it looks like you've got the victorious ending, but ha-ha, the moster wasn't totally dead or something else appears out of nowhere and screw you!
SPOILERS! Seriously, about to talk about the end of [REC] 3 here, jump to the catch-up stuff if you don't want to read it!
As you may gather, I'm no fan of the gotcha ending. I get that part of what horror looks to do is shock the audience, so hitting them with a finale that doesn't quite fit the narrative arc that came before is a bit more acceptable here than in general, but it's become so common that it's not surprising any more. A horror movie that plays things straight and actually has the finale that complements its story would be the shocker.
[REC 3] ends on a gotcha, but it's drawn out enough and ties into the previous movies enough that it may seem to qualify as tragic. I think it's a very bad call; the movie up until then had been bloody and killed every other character (often too casually; I think Adrian deserved a chance to go down fighting rather than being apparently killed off-screen), but it had Koldo and Clara at its heart, and if they didn't get out and start a new family, the exercise seems kind of hollow, especially if the agent of their demise is faceless government thugs we first saw a couple minutes ago.
(Besides, if they die, what's the point of having the wedding video/album that the movie starts with? Who's it for?)
Even if you don't give them the victory ending, I think an ambiguous one would work - end the movie with them in the plastic tunnel. The audience knows from [REC] and [REC] 2 that the government thugs on the other side will probably do them in, but maybe not; maybe they show up in [REC] 4 and Clara has a cool robot arm, just to add to the Evil Dead 2-ness of the atmosphere. Both of those endings would play up wedding themes - starting new lives of your own (which plays to the "this isn't our family any more" line Koldo has a bit earlier) or the uncertainty of the adulthood it represents. But, no, instead, one last bit of gore and faceless, boring kills of characters the audience really liked.
Soemtimes, I think horror filmmakers just choose which ending type to go with at random, no matter what the movie called for.
!SRELIOPS
Anyway, that's [REC] 3; I've also done 11 Fantasia reviews since the last update: The Warped Forest, Schoolgirl Apocalypse, Robo-G, White: The Melody of the Curse, Asura, Black's Game, You Are the Apple of My Eye, Replicas, Ace Attorney, Isn't Anyone Alive?, and Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves).
[REC]³ Génesis
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 September 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (@fter Midnite: Fresh Blood, Blu-ray)
[REC] 3: Genesis breaks with the previous films in the series enough that one almost wonders if director Paco Plaza had the idea for the movie and then figured that the benefits of folding it into [REC] continuity outweighed the pitfalls - after all, a pretty-good Spanish-language zombie movie would be much less likely to get even a meager theatrical release in America today if it didn't have the brand name, even if it will in some ways come up short in comparison.
This movie takes place well away from the apartment block of the first two films, instead focusing on the wedding of Clara (Leticia Dolera) and Koldo (Diego Martin), a happy affair being recorded by Koldo's teenage cousin Adrian (Alex Monner), Clara's little sister Tita (Jana Soler), and official videographer Atun (Borja Gonzalez Santaolalla, aka Sr. B). Early on, Adrian notices Uncle Victor's hand is bandaged; Victor (Emilio Mencheta) explains he was bitten by an animal. However, once the reception is in full swing, things seem to get much worse, and before long a zombie outbreak has separated the newlyweds, although Koldo is certain Clara is alive and intends to find her somewhere on the grounds.
The movie starts out as the same kind of first-person horror as the previous installments, though varyinig its technique by offering up three cameras with different-enough looks that the audience can soon identify the point-of-view character from the cinematography, but once the outbreak really begins, one camera is smashed and the film is in third-person scope after that (annoyingly, that image is actually smaller than the camcorder footage on the Blu-ray used to screen this movie, though I imagine anamorphic 35mm prints make it bigger). At times, there are hints that Plaza at one point intended to go with much more found footage; the picture will linger on things like CCTV cameras or monitors as if to suggest they would be used as sources. There's a shot of a news broadcast that indicates we're in the same timeframe as the first two movies, but Plaza and his co-writers only do the smallest bit to expand the mythology of the series or develop new twists on the first-person horror movie, especially compared to [REC] 2.
Full review at EFC.
The Warped Forest
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Understand this: The Warped Forest isn't a sequel to Funky Forest: The First Contact (the famously trippy film director/co-writer Shunichiro Miki made with Katsuhito Ishii and Hajime Ishimine); it's a movie Miki made out of the ideas that were too weird to fit into even such a surreal picture. Funny thing, though; even though this thing is weird down to its very bone marrow, it's actually more linear and character-based than its antecedent, while still being very funny.
Though the action starts in a world much like ours - except that a few guests at a host springs resort find themselves randomly displaced in time and/or space - action soon shifts to a sort of parallel universe, where alternate versions of the same three trios are followed: Three middle-aged male friends, three sisters, and three young men in a dance club. Their lives intersect in various ways, and despite the peculiarity of their world, the way they talk about "dream-tinkering" suggests that our more logical universe is the one that's unreal.
Just how odd is this place? Well, let's consider the activities of the sisters. Peach works in a shop scaled for Lilliputians and must deal with a tiny pregnant woman looking for the manager. Apli is using an amazingly phallic gun to hunt the elusive Pinky-Panky, and Au Lait collects Kitaka fruits, which one initially thinks kind of look a bit like different reproductive organs... Then Miki shows us the trees they grow on and oh good lord! That doesn't touch upon the obelisks, the use of acorns as currency, or the really weird (and occasionally kinky) stuff. It may not all be top-ten strangest things the audience has ever seen in a movie, but it happily offers up plenty of time when the viewer may find he or she needs to pick his or her jaw up off the floor to properly ask "What. The. Hell?"
Full review at EFC.
Sera-fuku mokushiroku (Schoolgirl Apocalypse)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
Believe it or not, Schoolgirl Apocalypse is not the third Nobboru Iguchi film on the festival's program, or a similarly cheery exploitation picture from a filmmaker of like sensibilities. No, it's an often impressive bit of stripped-down sci-fi/horror that stumbles a bit when it tries to get fancy, but otherwise acquits itself very well.
Sakura (Higarino) is an average but hard-working high school student in a small Japanese village whose biggest worries are her English class and archery practice. Little does she know that the latter, at least, will soon come in handy, as something causes all the men in the area (in Japan? the world?) to become inarticulate and homicidal. Seeing her parents die after the madness takes hold in her father, she flees into the woods with little but her school uniform, English textbook, and kyudo bow, she attempts to lay low, though she encounters other survivors, including a mother in apparent denial about her son and ruthless teen Aoi (Mai Tsujimoto). And then there's the injured nurse with an oddly placid western boy (Max MacKenzie)...
Writer/director John Cairns is working on a tight enough budget that he can't really afford to do much that is terribly elaborate, but he handles the basics very well indeed: Though the movie's set pieces are generally small, they're vicious and tend to culminate in the sort of violence that looks more like a crime scene than a slain monster, and the tight focus on Sakura helps Cairns avoid any shortcomings that might come with depicting scale: It doesn't matter how widespread the mania is; so long as nothing within Sakura's reach is normal, it feels as if the whole world has turned against her.
Full review at EFC.
Robo Ji (Robo-G)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 July 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
There are certain comedies where the viewer might realize that what's going on really make no sense even as the absurdity unfolds on screen, but will consciously forgive it because this particular joke is worth that particular bit of bad writing. Robo-G is one of those movies; its approach is good-natured without being saccharine, and it works much more often than not.
Japan loves robots, and Kimura Electronics, a small appliance company, is looking to get into the market. They're much further along than you might expect from a three-person project, but they suddenly find themselves without a robot. Elsewhere, Shigemitsu Suzuki (Shinjiro Isarashi) is not taking retirement well; acting in plays at the senior center just isn't cutting it. He answers an ad posted by the desperate robot designers (Gaku Hamada, Chan Kawai & Junya Kawashima) looking for an actor, and not only does his old-man shuffle match a robot's gait, but his scrawny old-man limbs mean he fits inside the shell of the smashed robot! It's originally meant to be a one-off thing, but when Suzuki saves Yoko Sasaki (Yuriko Yashitaka) from a falling support while in costume, "Robo-G" becomes famous.
Robo-G has a plot hole that you could drive a rather large vehicle through - if the robot designers we see for most of the movie are so incapable of actually building robots, how are they even able to get to the film's starting point? The proper answer, of course is "hey, look, something shiny over there!", because both the opening gag and the later contradictory jokes are too good to lose. Once writer/director Shinobu Yaguchi has decided that Kobayashi, Oota, and Nagai don't really know that much about robotics, the script is fairly predictable, although peppered with gags. It would be nice if there were a little more to this movie - while it does touch on the desire of the elderly to feel useful and needed, there's a bit of an opportunity missed later on to touch on how Suzuki-san feels when he discovers he will be replaced by a real machine and face retirement again.
Full review at EFC.
Hwa-i-teu: Jeo-woo-eui Mel-lo-di (White: The Melody of the Curse)
* * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
A girl-group horror movie isn't really a bad idea at all: You've got pretty girls, who are highly competitive by nature to fuel any issues between them, and a bunch of settings and situations where people could be killed or maimed that haven't really been mined that much. The cyclical nature of the business makes something coming from the past a potentially nifty hook. Hopefully someone else will give it a go, because it can be done much better than White.
Pink Dolls isn't a bad girl group, but in the competitive Korean pop music scene, it's too consciously cute compared to the more overtly sexy likes of Pure et al. Still, one agent (Pyeon Jung-su) sees something in them, moving them into a house to practice together in preparation for upcoming talent competitions and TV spotlights. It's there that Eun-ju (Ham Eun-jung), the oldest of the group in her mid/late twenties, discovers an old VHS tape that features an unknown group performing "White", a catchy tune that could still work today. So they appropriate it, with energy-drink-addicted Jenny (Jin Se-yeon), pretty face A-rang (Choi Ah-ra), and bitchy former Pure back-up Shin-ji (Kim May Doni) vying to be lead vocal. Ah, but it appears the song is cursed, with Eun-ju and best friend/voice coach Sun-ye (Hwang Woo Seul-hye) discovering that the group that recording it died in a fire... In this. Very. House!
The twenty-first century music industry and manufactured groups like Pink Dolls are perhaps easy targets, but that doesn't mean they aren't still ripe ones. To a certain extent, I must plead ignorance; I didn't pay much attention to the likes of MTV and pop music when I was young enough for it to be targeted to me, and that's American pop. Modern Korean pop seems like a different, even more regimented beast, and for all I know, things like the "Survival Challenge" reality TV show mean a lot more to White's native audience than a guy pushing 40 on the other side of the planet. Filmmaker brothers Kim Sun and Kim Gok still score a few points even I can catch, though, with somewhat pointed observations on just what a machine pop music is and how cutthroat things are even within a single group, while also showing enough of the commitment and hard work necessary to make the characters sympathetic.
Full review at EFC.
Asura
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012: AXIS, HD)
These days, there aren't a whole lot of movies being made using animation because they wouldn't work any other way; digital capture and effects have come too far, so even ambitious manga are done live-action now. There are still occasionally throwbacks like Asura, though, where animation doesn't just allow it to be amazing to look at, but means you don't have to put a child actor in the title role.
Because, man, who would want to subject a kid to being a part of this? Born in the middle of war to a mother who died when he was very young, Asura (voice of Masako Nozawa) is raised by wolves until, at the age of nine, he is an accomplished hunter of animals and killer of men, eating the meat of both. A Buddhist monk (voice of Kinya Kitaoji) encounters him and teaches him a sutra to try and civilize him; later, he is sheltered by Wakasa (voice of Megumi Hayashibara), who is beautiful but as poor as everybody else in the drought-ridden Japan of the time.
Asura is a stunning movie visually; the animators at Toei (who usually tackle much more kid-friendly material) combine CGI and hand-drawn animation in surprising ways and get a unique, clean result. I'm not familiar with original creator George Akiyama's work - even the American publishers willing to touch the work of such a controversial creator have shied away from his work - but it's pretty amazing how the visuals look like they could have jumped right off the page but still feel unquestionably like a movie, even as it goes from static imagery to spectacular sequences with swooping cameras and devastation. The film uses a mix of had-drawn and digital imagery, and it's surprising how malleable and expressive the latter are, especially Asura himself.
Full review at EFC.
Svartur á leik (Black's Game)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Is it weird to call Black's Game kind of fun? It is, after all, a movie about gangs and the cocaine trade that doesn't exactly go the hip black comedy route or make its characters cool through their disdain for authority or hyper-capability. But there it is, grabbing my interest and making its characters worth a little affection despite otherwise being a fairly typical crime movie.
Not that "psycho" Stebbi (Thor Kristjansson) starts out as a gangster, though he does get in some legal trouble. An encounter with old acquaintance Toti (Johannes Hakur Johannesson) yields the promise of a great lawyer if Stebbi will retrieve something hidden from a crime scene. When Stebbi does so even after having to deal with a thug after the same loot, Toti brings him into the inner circle with partner Sævar K (Egill Einarsson) and girlfriend Dagny (Maria Birta). They're joining forces with Bruno (Damon Younger) to take over Rekjavik's cocaine business, which in 1999 is about to explode.
Black's Game is a slick piece of work, with screenwriter/director Oskar Thor Axelsson seemingly taking as many cues from executive producer Nicolas Winding Refn as original novelist Stefan Mani. The cast is young and good-looking without being pretty-boy criminals; the soundtrack contains a fair amount of electronica, and it uses a combination of on-screen titles, narration, and quick-cutting to move the story forward very quickly, though it still manages to avoid seeming rushed.
Full review at EFC.
Na xie nian, wo men yi qi zhui de nu hai (You Are the Apple of My Eye)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
After watching You Are the Apple of My Eye, I learned that it was even more autobiographical than most coming-of-age movies; read a rumor that it was among the most elaborate attempts gestures ever made to declare one's love for a former girlfriend in order to lure her back; and saw another, more serious, Taiwanese movie about high school friends and lovers whose story carried on into adulthood (Girlfriend Boyfriend). How does that affect my opinion of the movie? Not a whit; it's still a very funny, very charming coming of age film.
Our narrator for this process is Ko Ching-teng (Ke Zhendong), whose parents are paying for him to attend a private academy in 1994 Taipei, though he doesn't do much but screw around with his friends: Hsu Bo-chung (Yen Sheng-yu), who is aptly nicknamed "Boner"; "Cock" Tsao Kuo-sheng (Owodog), basketball fiend; Liao Ying-hung (Tsai Chang-hsien), aka "Scratch"; and A-he (Hao Shao-wen), because every story like this has a fat kid. All but Ko are harboring crushes on pretty honor student Shen Chia-yi (Michelle Chen), so of course Ko is the one that the teacher sits next to Shen in order to keep him out of trouble - and, of course, they soon find that they like each other quite a bit.
Ko and Chen are the enjoyable sort of romance that sneaks up on the characters and even the audience; they clash, gain respect for the other, try to prove each other wrong, and wind up walking down dark streets together because it might not be safe for a girl to be out and about by herself without the climactic kiss. Heck, at first the main thing that seems to be happening is that Chen and her comics-loving friend Hu Chia-wei (Wan Wan) find themselves absorbed into Ko's circle of friends, and it's not until Ko and Chen start doing stuff with just them that they start to feel like they are now and have been a couple, although the two seem amusingly unsure about when and whether they've crossed that line.
Full review at EFC.
Replicas
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
It strikes me as extremely unlikely that anybody else will go into Replicas with the same expectations I had - not having reached the "R" section of the program, I had somehow got it in my head that this was a science-fiction thing, with robots or clones or something ("In Their Skin", the other title its listed under online, gives the same impression). I was way off, but not in any way disappointed; it's a tense, well-honed thriller that puts a nifty twist on a creaky set-up.
Mark (co-writer Joshua Close), Mary (Selma Blair), and their son Brendon (Quinn Lord) are heading to their vacation home, but without a great deal of joy: They're bundled up because it's the off-season; the wound of Brendon's sister's death is still raw; and the family is ready to fall apart. And they're not as alone as they might expect - new neighbors Bobby (James D'Arcy), Jane (Rachel Miner), and their own son Jared (Alex Ferris) are eager to make friends, despite the grieving family really being in no mood.
What this evolves into is, in the broad strokes, predictable enough that it qualifies as a sub-genre of its own, although "home invasion thriller" is both a dryly technical term and implies that a specific sort of underlying tension is going to be driving the story. And while, sure, there is a fair amount of "presumed safety revealed as an illusion" here, it seems decidedly secondary to other elements, and it's the motivations beyond the usual simple greed and revenge that make this one interesting.
Full review at EFC.
Gyakuten saiban (Ace Attorney)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, 35mm)
I've never played the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video game, but I gather it's just as deeply silly as Takashi Miike's adaptation, which I submit must be a good thing. I also suggest that it's quite possible that by adapting something that is all plot and self-awarely silly, Miike has made the best video game adaptation yet, without undermining what makes the game popular, even if it is on the long side.
In the future, there is so much crime that giving everyone a full trial would be impossible, so the new system is "bench trials" - three-day rapid-fire exchanges of evidence and procedural moves at which point verdicts of "GUILTY!" or "NOT GUILTY!" will be rendered. Rookie defender Phoenix Wright (Hiroki Narimiya) is working with veteran lawyer Mia Fey (Rei Dan) - until she is murdered and he must defend her clairvoyant sister Maya (Mirei Kiritani). His next case will be an even greater test, though, as he's the only man willing to defend prosecutor (and one-time friend) Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saito), who is accused of murder with his mentor Manfred Von Karma (Ryo Ishibashi) prosecuting.
One can only hope that the names these characters have in the Japanese dialogue are as joyously goofy as the ones in the English subtitles. Seriously, because I only know a little bit of Japanese, is "Keisuke Itokogiri" as funny a cop name as "Dick Gumshoe"? Even if those names are just preserving the whimsical way that someone translated the original Nintendo DS games, the rest of the movie is (as can be Miike's wont when someone gives him a bit of a budget to spend) a direct translation of the game's visuals, from the wild hairstyles originally meant to make characters distinct on a two-inch screen to the mish-mash of futuristic, contemporary, and period styles mashed together in every scene. Somehow, the knowing absurdity of the setting stitches it all together, and while it's not the relentless cartooniness of Speed Racer or Yatterman, it's worthy of a chuckle.
Full review at EFC.
Ikiterumono wa inainoka (Isn't Anybody Alive?)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
It is, I suppose, unfair to judge this picture for not being conventional enough; it's meant to be unusual and relatively plot-free. The question is, if you strip the basic building block of story away, what's left? Isn't Anyone Alive? becomes an end-of-the-world movie whose detachment isn't shocking or philosophical or even that interesting, despite a strong start.
The entire movie takes place on a college campus and the research hospital attached to it, where we meet several small groups: Pregnant student Kaori (Hakka Shiraishi) and her baby's father Katsufumi (Asato Iida) are meeting his fiancée Ryoko (Rin Takanashi) in a café to figure out what to do. Nana (Mai Takahashi) is killing time with friends Andre (Kota Fudauchi), Enari (Yumika Tajima), and Eiko (Ami Ikenaga) before they go to rehearse a song & dance for Ryoko's wedding; she's joined by "Match" (Keisuke Hasebe) and Katsuo (Hiroaki Morooka), fellow members of the Urban Myth Club. Koyuichi (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) is looking for his half-sister Maki (Eri Aoki), an orderly at the hospital. There's more, but after a report of a mysterious incident at the subway station, people start dropping dead.
In another movie, the presence of clever students who know a great deal about urban legends and a research hospital might point to the source of the outbreak and a way to stop it, but let's be very clear: Isn't Anyone Alive? is not that movie. Director Gakuryu "Sogo" Ishii and co-writer Shiro Maeda (who wrote the original play) make sure to raise the possibility and shoot it down early, re-iterating that this is not how things are going to go every time it looks like some sort of plot might develop. The idea, perhaps, is to highlight how cosmically unimportant human concerns are - the characters' dramas and concerns are snuffed out, and what of it?
Full review at EFC.
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
First, forget that stupid English-language title; writer/director Juan Martínez Moreno hates it (there's no game involved) and hopes whoever picks it up in English-speaking territories just goes with Lobos de Arga. Instead, focus on what a really great horror-comedy this is - so good that including "comedy" in the description really seems to discount how well Moreno recaptures the feel of classic monster movies, with tons of atmosphere, horrible curses, and practical effects that may not always be seamless, but certainly get the point across.
Tomás Mariño (Gorka Otxoa) was praised for his first book, but writer's block has hit something fierce, and when he is invited to the small town where he was born for a ceremony honoring him, he figures some time in the country might be good for his muse. It's nice to see old friend Calisto (Carlos Areces) again, too, although his agent Mario (Secun de la Rosa) arriving isn't quite so great. Except it turns out that it's less a "ceremony" than a "rite" - a werewolf has been lurking in the woods for decades, and only the blood of a male Mariño on the hundredth anniversary of his turning will reverse the curse.
It's a rare horror-comedy that works well on both sides of the hyphen, but Lobos de Agra does better than most. First, it is genuinely funny; "Vito" is an early nominee for "best supporting canine" and the banter between the guys feels just right. There's no obligatory and rote love story to drag the movie along a predictable route - in fact, Mabel Rivera is the most prominent woman in the cast, and she plays Tomás's grandmother Rosa - but writer/director Juan Martinez Moreno doesn't drag the movie into crude and sexist areas either. Once the stuff with the wolfmen starts, Moreno adds a good deal of twisted comedy to the banter, and generally does a good job of playing against genre tropes and cultural prejudices.
Full review at EFC.
Anyway, [REC] 3 is a lot of fun, even though you'll likely be disappointed with it if you go in just expecting more of the first two movies; it goes off in its own direction but does pretty well by that; it's fast-paced, often funny, and just generally a good time for those who like their gore delivered with a wink as much as with gritted teeth. And if you can go to the Coolidge's second midnight screening of it tonight (8 September 2012), I think you'll have a good time. However, I think that in doing so, it chose the wrong ending.
There are four basic ending types for horror movies in particular: The victorious ending, where the monsters are slain; the ambiguous ending, where the hero has apparently beated them back but it's a victory that may be illusory or short-lived; the tragic ending, where the hero falls, never really having had a chance; and the gotcha ending, where it looks like you've got the victorious ending, but ha-ha, the moster wasn't totally dead or something else appears out of nowhere and screw you!
SPOILERS! Seriously, about to talk about the end of [REC] 3 here, jump to the catch-up stuff if you don't want to read it!
As you may gather, I'm no fan of the gotcha ending. I get that part of what horror looks to do is shock the audience, so hitting them with a finale that doesn't quite fit the narrative arc that came before is a bit more acceptable here than in general, but it's become so common that it's not surprising any more. A horror movie that plays things straight and actually has the finale that complements its story would be the shocker.
[REC 3] ends on a gotcha, but it's drawn out enough and ties into the previous movies enough that it may seem to qualify as tragic. I think it's a very bad call; the movie up until then had been bloody and killed every other character (often too casually; I think Adrian deserved a chance to go down fighting rather than being apparently killed off-screen), but it had Koldo and Clara at its heart, and if they didn't get out and start a new family, the exercise seems kind of hollow, especially if the agent of their demise is faceless government thugs we first saw a couple minutes ago.
(Besides, if they die, what's the point of having the wedding video/album that the movie starts with? Who's it for?)
Even if you don't give them the victory ending, I think an ambiguous one would work - end the movie with them in the plastic tunnel. The audience knows from [REC] and [REC] 2 that the government thugs on the other side will probably do them in, but maybe not; maybe they show up in [REC] 4 and Clara has a cool robot arm, just to add to the Evil Dead 2-ness of the atmosphere. Both of those endings would play up wedding themes - starting new lives of your own (which plays to the "this isn't our family any more" line Koldo has a bit earlier) or the uncertainty of the adulthood it represents. But, no, instead, one last bit of gore and faceless, boring kills of characters the audience really liked.
Soemtimes, I think horror filmmakers just choose which ending type to go with at random, no matter what the movie called for.
!SRELIOPS
Anyway, that's [REC] 3; I've also done 11 Fantasia reviews since the last update: The Warped Forest, Schoolgirl Apocalypse, Robo-G, White: The Melody of the Curse, Asura, Black's Game, You Are the Apple of My Eye, Replicas, Ace Attorney, Isn't Anyone Alive?, and Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves).
[REC]³ Génesis
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 September 2012 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (@fter Midnite: Fresh Blood, Blu-ray)
[REC] 3: Genesis breaks with the previous films in the series enough that one almost wonders if director Paco Plaza had the idea for the movie and then figured that the benefits of folding it into [REC] continuity outweighed the pitfalls - after all, a pretty-good Spanish-language zombie movie would be much less likely to get even a meager theatrical release in America today if it didn't have the brand name, even if it will in some ways come up short in comparison.
This movie takes place well away from the apartment block of the first two films, instead focusing on the wedding of Clara (Leticia Dolera) and Koldo (Diego Martin), a happy affair being recorded by Koldo's teenage cousin Adrian (Alex Monner), Clara's little sister Tita (Jana Soler), and official videographer Atun (Borja Gonzalez Santaolalla, aka Sr. B). Early on, Adrian notices Uncle Victor's hand is bandaged; Victor (Emilio Mencheta) explains he was bitten by an animal. However, once the reception is in full swing, things seem to get much worse, and before long a zombie outbreak has separated the newlyweds, although Koldo is certain Clara is alive and intends to find her somewhere on the grounds.
The movie starts out as the same kind of first-person horror as the previous installments, though varyinig its technique by offering up three cameras with different-enough looks that the audience can soon identify the point-of-view character from the cinematography, but once the outbreak really begins, one camera is smashed and the film is in third-person scope after that (annoyingly, that image is actually smaller than the camcorder footage on the Blu-ray used to screen this movie, though I imagine anamorphic 35mm prints make it bigger). At times, there are hints that Plaza at one point intended to go with much more found footage; the picture will linger on things like CCTV cameras or monitors as if to suggest they would be used as sources. There's a shot of a news broadcast that indicates we're in the same timeframe as the first two movies, but Plaza and his co-writers only do the smallest bit to expand the mythology of the series or develop new twists on the first-person horror movie, especially compared to [REC] 2.
Full review at EFC.
The Warped Forest
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Understand this: The Warped Forest isn't a sequel to Funky Forest: The First Contact (the famously trippy film director/co-writer Shunichiro Miki made with Katsuhito Ishii and Hajime Ishimine); it's a movie Miki made out of the ideas that were too weird to fit into even such a surreal picture. Funny thing, though; even though this thing is weird down to its very bone marrow, it's actually more linear and character-based than its antecedent, while still being very funny.
Though the action starts in a world much like ours - except that a few guests at a host springs resort find themselves randomly displaced in time and/or space - action soon shifts to a sort of parallel universe, where alternate versions of the same three trios are followed: Three middle-aged male friends, three sisters, and three young men in a dance club. Their lives intersect in various ways, and despite the peculiarity of their world, the way they talk about "dream-tinkering" suggests that our more logical universe is the one that's unreal.
Just how odd is this place? Well, let's consider the activities of the sisters. Peach works in a shop scaled for Lilliputians and must deal with a tiny pregnant woman looking for the manager. Apli is using an amazingly phallic gun to hunt the elusive Pinky-Panky, and Au Lait collects Kitaka fruits, which one initially thinks kind of look a bit like different reproductive organs... Then Miki shows us the trees they grow on and oh good lord! That doesn't touch upon the obelisks, the use of acorns as currency, or the really weird (and occasionally kinky) stuff. It may not all be top-ten strangest things the audience has ever seen in a movie, but it happily offers up plenty of time when the viewer may find he or she needs to pick his or her jaw up off the floor to properly ask "What. The. Hell?"
Full review at EFC.
Sera-fuku mokushiroku (Schoolgirl Apocalypse)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
Believe it or not, Schoolgirl Apocalypse is not the third Nobboru Iguchi film on the festival's program, or a similarly cheery exploitation picture from a filmmaker of like sensibilities. No, it's an often impressive bit of stripped-down sci-fi/horror that stumbles a bit when it tries to get fancy, but otherwise acquits itself very well.
Sakura (Higarino) is an average but hard-working high school student in a small Japanese village whose biggest worries are her English class and archery practice. Little does she know that the latter, at least, will soon come in handy, as something causes all the men in the area (in Japan? the world?) to become inarticulate and homicidal. Seeing her parents die after the madness takes hold in her father, she flees into the woods with little but her school uniform, English textbook, and kyudo bow, she attempts to lay low, though she encounters other survivors, including a mother in apparent denial about her son and ruthless teen Aoi (Mai Tsujimoto). And then there's the injured nurse with an oddly placid western boy (Max MacKenzie)...
Writer/director John Cairns is working on a tight enough budget that he can't really afford to do much that is terribly elaborate, but he handles the basics very well indeed: Though the movie's set pieces are generally small, they're vicious and tend to culminate in the sort of violence that looks more like a crime scene than a slain monster, and the tight focus on Sakura helps Cairns avoid any shortcomings that might come with depicting scale: It doesn't matter how widespread the mania is; so long as nothing within Sakura's reach is normal, it feels as if the whole world has turned against her.
Full review at EFC.
Robo Ji (Robo-G)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 July 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
There are certain comedies where the viewer might realize that what's going on really make no sense even as the absurdity unfolds on screen, but will consciously forgive it because this particular joke is worth that particular bit of bad writing. Robo-G is one of those movies; its approach is good-natured without being saccharine, and it works much more often than not.
Japan loves robots, and Kimura Electronics, a small appliance company, is looking to get into the market. They're much further along than you might expect from a three-person project, but they suddenly find themselves without a robot. Elsewhere, Shigemitsu Suzuki (Shinjiro Isarashi) is not taking retirement well; acting in plays at the senior center just isn't cutting it. He answers an ad posted by the desperate robot designers (Gaku Hamada, Chan Kawai & Junya Kawashima) looking for an actor, and not only does his old-man shuffle match a robot's gait, but his scrawny old-man limbs mean he fits inside the shell of the smashed robot! It's originally meant to be a one-off thing, but when Suzuki saves Yoko Sasaki (Yuriko Yashitaka) from a falling support while in costume, "Robo-G" becomes famous.
Robo-G has a plot hole that you could drive a rather large vehicle through - if the robot designers we see for most of the movie are so incapable of actually building robots, how are they even able to get to the film's starting point? The proper answer, of course is "hey, look, something shiny over there!", because both the opening gag and the later contradictory jokes are too good to lose. Once writer/director Shinobu Yaguchi has decided that Kobayashi, Oota, and Nagai don't really know that much about robotics, the script is fairly predictable, although peppered with gags. It would be nice if there were a little more to this movie - while it does touch on the desire of the elderly to feel useful and needed, there's a bit of an opportunity missed later on to touch on how Suzuki-san feels when he discovers he will be replaced by a real machine and face retirement again.
Full review at EFC.
Hwa-i-teu: Jeo-woo-eui Mel-lo-di (White: The Melody of the Curse)
* * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
A girl-group horror movie isn't really a bad idea at all: You've got pretty girls, who are highly competitive by nature to fuel any issues between them, and a bunch of settings and situations where people could be killed or maimed that haven't really been mined that much. The cyclical nature of the business makes something coming from the past a potentially nifty hook. Hopefully someone else will give it a go, because it can be done much better than White.
Pink Dolls isn't a bad girl group, but in the competitive Korean pop music scene, it's too consciously cute compared to the more overtly sexy likes of Pure et al. Still, one agent (Pyeon Jung-su) sees something in them, moving them into a house to practice together in preparation for upcoming talent competitions and TV spotlights. It's there that Eun-ju (Ham Eun-jung), the oldest of the group in her mid/late twenties, discovers an old VHS tape that features an unknown group performing "White", a catchy tune that could still work today. So they appropriate it, with energy-drink-addicted Jenny (Jin Se-yeon), pretty face A-rang (Choi Ah-ra), and bitchy former Pure back-up Shin-ji (Kim May Doni) vying to be lead vocal. Ah, but it appears the song is cursed, with Eun-ju and best friend/voice coach Sun-ye (Hwang Woo Seul-hye) discovering that the group that recording it died in a fire... In this. Very. House!
The twenty-first century music industry and manufactured groups like Pink Dolls are perhaps easy targets, but that doesn't mean they aren't still ripe ones. To a certain extent, I must plead ignorance; I didn't pay much attention to the likes of MTV and pop music when I was young enough for it to be targeted to me, and that's American pop. Modern Korean pop seems like a different, even more regimented beast, and for all I know, things like the "Survival Challenge" reality TV show mean a lot more to White's native audience than a guy pushing 40 on the other side of the planet. Filmmaker brothers Kim Sun and Kim Gok still score a few points even I can catch, though, with somewhat pointed observations on just what a machine pop music is and how cutthroat things are even within a single group, while also showing enough of the commitment and hard work necessary to make the characters sympathetic.
Full review at EFC.
Asura
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012: AXIS, HD)
These days, there aren't a whole lot of movies being made using animation because they wouldn't work any other way; digital capture and effects have come too far, so even ambitious manga are done live-action now. There are still occasionally throwbacks like Asura, though, where animation doesn't just allow it to be amazing to look at, but means you don't have to put a child actor in the title role.
Because, man, who would want to subject a kid to being a part of this? Born in the middle of war to a mother who died when he was very young, Asura (voice of Masako Nozawa) is raised by wolves until, at the age of nine, he is an accomplished hunter of animals and killer of men, eating the meat of both. A Buddhist monk (voice of Kinya Kitaoji) encounters him and teaches him a sutra to try and civilize him; later, he is sheltered by Wakasa (voice of Megumi Hayashibara), who is beautiful but as poor as everybody else in the drought-ridden Japan of the time.
Asura is a stunning movie visually; the animators at Toei (who usually tackle much more kid-friendly material) combine CGI and hand-drawn animation in surprising ways and get a unique, clean result. I'm not familiar with original creator George Akiyama's work - even the American publishers willing to touch the work of such a controversial creator have shied away from his work - but it's pretty amazing how the visuals look like they could have jumped right off the page but still feel unquestionably like a movie, even as it goes from static imagery to spectacular sequences with swooping cameras and devastation. The film uses a mix of had-drawn and digital imagery, and it's surprising how malleable and expressive the latter are, especially Asura himself.
Full review at EFC.
Svartur á leik (Black's Game)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Is it weird to call Black's Game kind of fun? It is, after all, a movie about gangs and the cocaine trade that doesn't exactly go the hip black comedy route or make its characters cool through their disdain for authority or hyper-capability. But there it is, grabbing my interest and making its characters worth a little affection despite otherwise being a fairly typical crime movie.
Not that "psycho" Stebbi (Thor Kristjansson) starts out as a gangster, though he does get in some legal trouble. An encounter with old acquaintance Toti (Johannes Hakur Johannesson) yields the promise of a great lawyer if Stebbi will retrieve something hidden from a crime scene. When Stebbi does so even after having to deal with a thug after the same loot, Toti brings him into the inner circle with partner Sævar K (Egill Einarsson) and girlfriend Dagny (Maria Birta). They're joining forces with Bruno (Damon Younger) to take over Rekjavik's cocaine business, which in 1999 is about to explode.
Black's Game is a slick piece of work, with screenwriter/director Oskar Thor Axelsson seemingly taking as many cues from executive producer Nicolas Winding Refn as original novelist Stefan Mani. The cast is young and good-looking without being pretty-boy criminals; the soundtrack contains a fair amount of electronica, and it uses a combination of on-screen titles, narration, and quick-cutting to move the story forward very quickly, though it still manages to avoid seeming rushed.
Full review at EFC.
Na xie nian, wo men yi qi zhui de nu hai (You Are the Apple of My Eye)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
After watching You Are the Apple of My Eye, I learned that it was even more autobiographical than most coming-of-age movies; read a rumor that it was among the most elaborate attempts gestures ever made to declare one's love for a former girlfriend in order to lure her back; and saw another, more serious, Taiwanese movie about high school friends and lovers whose story carried on into adulthood (Girlfriend Boyfriend). How does that affect my opinion of the movie? Not a whit; it's still a very funny, very charming coming of age film.
Our narrator for this process is Ko Ching-teng (Ke Zhendong), whose parents are paying for him to attend a private academy in 1994 Taipei, though he doesn't do much but screw around with his friends: Hsu Bo-chung (Yen Sheng-yu), who is aptly nicknamed "Boner"; "Cock" Tsao Kuo-sheng (Owodog), basketball fiend; Liao Ying-hung (Tsai Chang-hsien), aka "Scratch"; and A-he (Hao Shao-wen), because every story like this has a fat kid. All but Ko are harboring crushes on pretty honor student Shen Chia-yi (Michelle Chen), so of course Ko is the one that the teacher sits next to Shen in order to keep him out of trouble - and, of course, they soon find that they like each other quite a bit.
Ko and Chen are the enjoyable sort of romance that sneaks up on the characters and even the audience; they clash, gain respect for the other, try to prove each other wrong, and wind up walking down dark streets together because it might not be safe for a girl to be out and about by herself without the climactic kiss. Heck, at first the main thing that seems to be happening is that Chen and her comics-loving friend Hu Chia-wei (Wan Wan) find themselves absorbed into Ko's circle of friends, and it's not until Ko and Chen start doing stuff with just them that they start to feel like they are now and have been a couple, although the two seem amusingly unsure about when and whether they've crossed that line.
Full review at EFC.
Replicas
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
It strikes me as extremely unlikely that anybody else will go into Replicas with the same expectations I had - not having reached the "R" section of the program, I had somehow got it in my head that this was a science-fiction thing, with robots or clones or something ("In Their Skin", the other title its listed under online, gives the same impression). I was way off, but not in any way disappointed; it's a tense, well-honed thriller that puts a nifty twist on a creaky set-up.
Mark (co-writer Joshua Close), Mary (Selma Blair), and their son Brendon (Quinn Lord) are heading to their vacation home, but without a great deal of joy: They're bundled up because it's the off-season; the wound of Brendon's sister's death is still raw; and the family is ready to fall apart. And they're not as alone as they might expect - new neighbors Bobby (James D'Arcy), Jane (Rachel Miner), and their own son Jared (Alex Ferris) are eager to make friends, despite the grieving family really being in no mood.
What this evolves into is, in the broad strokes, predictable enough that it qualifies as a sub-genre of its own, although "home invasion thriller" is both a dryly technical term and implies that a specific sort of underlying tension is going to be driving the story. And while, sure, there is a fair amount of "presumed safety revealed as an illusion" here, it seems decidedly secondary to other elements, and it's the motivations beyond the usual simple greed and revenge that make this one interesting.
Full review at EFC.
Gyakuten saiban (Ace Attorney)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, 35mm)
I've never played the Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney video game, but I gather it's just as deeply silly as Takashi Miike's adaptation, which I submit must be a good thing. I also suggest that it's quite possible that by adapting something that is all plot and self-awarely silly, Miike has made the best video game adaptation yet, without undermining what makes the game popular, even if it is on the long side.
In the future, there is so much crime that giving everyone a full trial would be impossible, so the new system is "bench trials" - three-day rapid-fire exchanges of evidence and procedural moves at which point verdicts of "GUILTY!" or "NOT GUILTY!" will be rendered. Rookie defender Phoenix Wright (Hiroki Narimiya) is working with veteran lawyer Mia Fey (Rei Dan) - until she is murdered and he must defend her clairvoyant sister Maya (Mirei Kiritani). His next case will be an even greater test, though, as he's the only man willing to defend prosecutor (and one-time friend) Miles Edgeworth (Takumi Saito), who is accused of murder with his mentor Manfred Von Karma (Ryo Ishibashi) prosecuting.
One can only hope that the names these characters have in the Japanese dialogue are as joyously goofy as the ones in the English subtitles. Seriously, because I only know a little bit of Japanese, is "Keisuke Itokogiri" as funny a cop name as "Dick Gumshoe"? Even if those names are just preserving the whimsical way that someone translated the original Nintendo DS games, the rest of the movie is (as can be Miike's wont when someone gives him a bit of a budget to spend) a direct translation of the game's visuals, from the wild hairstyles originally meant to make characters distinct on a two-inch screen to the mish-mash of futuristic, contemporary, and period styles mashed together in every scene. Somehow, the knowing absurdity of the setting stitches it all together, and while it's not the relentless cartooniness of Speed Racer or Yatterman, it's worthy of a chuckle.
Full review at EFC.
Ikiterumono wa inainoka (Isn't Anybody Alive?)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
It is, I suppose, unfair to judge this picture for not being conventional enough; it's meant to be unusual and relatively plot-free. The question is, if you strip the basic building block of story away, what's left? Isn't Anyone Alive? becomes an end-of-the-world movie whose detachment isn't shocking or philosophical or even that interesting, despite a strong start.
The entire movie takes place on a college campus and the research hospital attached to it, where we meet several small groups: Pregnant student Kaori (Hakka Shiraishi) and her baby's father Katsufumi (Asato Iida) are meeting his fiancée Ryoko (Rin Takanashi) in a café to figure out what to do. Nana (Mai Takahashi) is killing time with friends Andre (Kota Fudauchi), Enari (Yumika Tajima), and Eiko (Ami Ikenaga) before they go to rehearse a song & dance for Ryoko's wedding; she's joined by "Match" (Keisuke Hasebe) and Katsuo (Hiroaki Morooka), fellow members of the Urban Myth Club. Koyuichi (Kiyohiko Shibukawa) is looking for his half-sister Maki (Eri Aoki), an orderly at the hospital. There's more, but after a report of a mysterious incident at the subway station, people start dropping dead.
In another movie, the presence of clever students who know a great deal about urban legends and a research hospital might point to the source of the outbreak and a way to stop it, but let's be very clear: Isn't Anyone Alive? is not that movie. Director Gakuryu "Sogo" Ishii and co-writer Shiro Maeda (who wrote the original play) make sure to raise the possibility and shoot it down early, re-iterating that this is not how things are going to go every time it looks like some sort of plot might develop. The idea, perhaps, is to highlight how cosmically unimportant human concerns are - the characters' dramas and concerns are snuffed out, and what of it?
Full review at EFC.
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
First, forget that stupid English-language title; writer/director Juan Martínez Moreno hates it (there's no game involved) and hopes whoever picks it up in English-speaking territories just goes with Lobos de Arga. Instead, focus on what a really great horror-comedy this is - so good that including "comedy" in the description really seems to discount how well Moreno recaptures the feel of classic monster movies, with tons of atmosphere, horrible curses, and practical effects that may not always be seamless, but certainly get the point across.
Tomás Mariño (Gorka Otxoa) was praised for his first book, but writer's block has hit something fierce, and when he is invited to the small town where he was born for a ceremony honoring him, he figures some time in the country might be good for his muse. It's nice to see old friend Calisto (Carlos Areces) again, too, although his agent Mario (Secun de la Rosa) arriving isn't quite so great. Except it turns out that it's less a "ceremony" than a "rite" - a werewolf has been lurking in the woods for decades, and only the blood of a male Mariño on the hundredth anniversary of his turning will reverse the curse.
It's a rare horror-comedy that works well on both sides of the hyphen, but Lobos de Agra does better than most. First, it is genuinely funny; "Vito" is an early nominee for "best supporting canine" and the banter between the guys feels just right. There's no obligatory and rote love story to drag the movie along a predictable route - in fact, Mabel Rivera is the most prominent woman in the cast, and she plays Tomás's grandmother Rosa - but writer/director Juan Martinez Moreno doesn't drag the movie into crude and sexist areas either. Once the stuff with the wolfmen starts, Moreno adds a good deal of twisted comedy to the banter, and generally does a good job of playing against genre tropes and cultural prejudices.
Full review at EFC.
Tuesday, August 07, 2012
The Fantasia Daily, 2012.19 (6 August 2012): Sunny, Despite the Gods, Love Fiction, Vulgaria, Hidden in the Woods
Just one short today, and that was "Petite Mort" again in front of Vulgaria (and it's hard to think of a more suitable home for it!). Some filmmakers in attendence for horrible photography, though.
That's Despite the Gods director Penny Vozniak doing Q&A with the festival's Mitch Davis; sadly, Jennifer Lynch wasn't there for this screening, having left for home after introducing Chained on Sunday, although the Q&A from the Despite the Gods screening she did attend should be up on the festival's YouTube channel soon. Vozniak still had a number of interesting stories to tell, including how she knew from the start that she was going to want the opportunity to do more than just a standard EPK and made sure she had a chance. She also said that part of what she was hired for was babysitting Lynch's daughter Sydney, who was with her mother through the bulk of the eight-month shoot and whose presence would be a major issue between Lynch and producer Govind Menon. Which I can see in theory, but from the way the film was cut, it seems like most film sets would be cooler places for having a precocious 12-year-old hanging around.
I had to duck out of this Q&A a little early to head across the street for the next movie, so it may have gotten good afterward, once the audience had a chance to open up.
The day ended back in de Seve, this time with a Q&A for Hidden in the Woods writer/director Patricio Valladares. In some ways, the Q&A focused less on the movie itself than a couple of things surrounding it. First, there was amazement that such a brutal exploitation-style picture had been made in part with government funds; the story appears to be that Valladares submitted a more palatable proposal before actually filming this movie. I did get the impression that some of the details were being lost in translation and that the scale of both the Chilean exhibition business and the film's release was being misinterpreted. Or, at least, that everyone involved recognized the value of a good story even if the truth was a bit more prosaic.
Second, jury member Michael Biehn saw the picture and flipped for it, purchasing the remake rights with the intention of starring as the father. Which should be interesting; it's certiainly a role Biehn can play, and according to Valladares (who will also write and direct the new version in Chile), that part will be expanded. Not sure what I think about that; there's a part of me that kind of wanted less of him, and I don't know that he needs to be explained. It is kind of interesting how Biehn, who has done some very mainstream, very big-budget stuff in his career, really seems to be showing a real fondness for downright nasty grindhouse material now.
Well, that was my last really full day; I'll be spending most of today doing touristy stuff before getting back for The Fourth Dimension, Sunflower Hour, and Painted Skin: The Resurrection
Seeoni (Sunny)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
Sunny is flagrant nostalgia bait, but don't count that against it - it's genuinely funny, heartfelt nostalgia bait, and while that might seem odd to world cinema fans - few films that reach North America set in 1980s South Korea suggest people would miss it - it's actually got the wit to make that work when it needs to.
Lim Na-mi (Yu Ho-jeong) is in her early forties, a good wife and mother, and a dutiful daughter as well, making sure to visit her ailing mother in the hospital every day. It's after one of those visits that she notes the patient name on the door of the next room, "Ha Chun-hwa" - and is shocked to discover that the woman in that room with two months to live (Jin Hee-kyung) is her best friend from high school. Back then, Chun-hwa (Kang So-ra) befriended Na-mi (Sim Eung-kyeong) when she was the new kid after moving to Seoul from the rural Jeolla-do region, including her in "Sunny", her group of friends that included upbeat Jang-mi (Kim Min-yeong), foul-mouthed Jin-hee (Park Jin-joo), model-pretty Su-ji (Min Hyo-rin), pugnatious Geum-ok (Nam Bo-ra), and Miss Korea hopeful Bok-hee (Kim Bo-mi). Chun-hwa would like to get the group back together one last time before dying, and while Jang-mi (Ko Su-hee) and Jin-hee (Hong Jin-hee) prove easy enough to find, the rest will take a little more effort.
There's also stuff going on with Na-mi's teenage daughter Yae-bin (Ha Seung-ri) in the present and 1985 subplots involving a boy Na-mi has a crush on and a similarly composed group of girls from another school. It's a busy movie that splits its time roughly equally between 1985 and 2010, throwing a lot of period pop - both western and Korean - onto the soundtrack. Plenty of garish 1980s fashions make it on-screen too, making the flashback scenes especially colorful, especially when you consider that the girls aren't wearing school uniforms like Yae-bin and her classmates. That's likely a pretty deliberate sop to nostalgia; kids then were colorful and individual even when buying the same brands, while the next generation are missing that sort of variety.
Full review at EFC.
Despite the Gods
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Documentaries From the Edge, HD)
It takes a special kind of movie for a "making-of" piece to morph into really interesting documentaries, and it certainly appears that Hisss was that sort of movie. It was always going to be odd but had the sort of calamitous production that leads to plain disaster.
The interesting thing about Despite the Gods is that it doesn't necessarily feel calamitous, but rather more like something that just got stretched out for no definitive reason until so much had been invested in it that it could neither stop nor possibly be a commercial success. Director Jennifer Lynch mostly seems to get along with her cast and crew until right up to the end, even if she does clash with producer Govind Menon. They're a pair of strong personalities, with Lynch often appearing more tortured because of her being out of her natural element.
Director Penny Vozniak does a nice job of putting the movie together, and it's a good look at making a movie in general as opposed to making one which went awry.
Full review at EFC.
Leobeu Pikseon (Love Fiction)
* * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
A romantic comedy that never quite gels, despite a pair of fairly likable leads and Jeon Kye-soo's script having a quirky, individual voice. The trouble is that said voice is often using unusual words to say the same old thing: Guy meets girl, they fall in love despite their own baggage, guy selfishly does something she has specifically asked him not to do, and then must try to pick up the pieces.
There's ways to make that feel fresh, but Jeon doesn't find them; instead, the quirks seem to be very obvious ornamentation on a too-familiar skeleton. Just as frustrating was the occasional impression that Jeon had backstories and lives laid out for both main characters but didn't include them beyond the superficial; it could have been more interesting than it was.
Full review at EFC.
Vulgaria
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
Funny, funny stuff, and Pang Ho-Cheung is just crazy prolific right now - a couple years ago, he made Love in a Puff in the middle of post-production on Dream Home, and now he has Vulgaria come out just a few months after Love in the Buff, supposedly with just a 12-day shooting schedule. Which seems exaggerated, because while there's no one hugely elaborate scene, it's got a fair number of locations and characters.
However quickly he cranked it out, it's hilarious, with Pang and company pouring a ton of raunchy jokes into ninety minutes and Chapman To delivering a marvelously flustered performance as a B-movie producer facing hard times and a project that began under dubious circumstances and gets weirder by the minute. Few jokes are repeatable, but most are among the funniest of the year.
Full review at EFC.
En las afueras de la ciudad (Hidden in the Woods)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Yep, this certainly does live up to its introduction as an envelope-pushing bit of cinema; it sets out a ghastly premise and doesn't hesitate to make each segment more horrific than what came before. Director Patricio Valladares is also good enough to not just throw more blood, guts, and sex on-screen, but to really connect it to the audience emotionally.
So why, when it is all said and done, did it leave me relatively cold? I'm not sure. I think part of it was that I found myself confusing the two sister characters; as Valladeres cranked through a lot of backstory in the opening minutes, I found myself unsure whether Anny or Ana was supposed to be older (and the names didn't help much!), which one was Manuel's mother, which one was doing A while the other was doing B... Making them feel so interchangeable took what seemed like horrifyingly personal stories and made them a little dehumanized. And once you've done that, the impression is less a horror story that strikes to the bone and more blood & guts exploitation.
Full review at EFC.
That's Despite the Gods director Penny Vozniak doing Q&A with the festival's Mitch Davis; sadly, Jennifer Lynch wasn't there for this screening, having left for home after introducing Chained on Sunday, although the Q&A from the Despite the Gods screening she did attend should be up on the festival's YouTube channel soon. Vozniak still had a number of interesting stories to tell, including how she knew from the start that she was going to want the opportunity to do more than just a standard EPK and made sure she had a chance. She also said that part of what she was hired for was babysitting Lynch's daughter Sydney, who was with her mother through the bulk of the eight-month shoot and whose presence would be a major issue between Lynch and producer Govind Menon. Which I can see in theory, but from the way the film was cut, it seems like most film sets would be cooler places for having a precocious 12-year-old hanging around.
I had to duck out of this Q&A a little early to head across the street for the next movie, so it may have gotten good afterward, once the audience had a chance to open up.
The day ended back in de Seve, this time with a Q&A for Hidden in the Woods writer/director Patricio Valladares. In some ways, the Q&A focused less on the movie itself than a couple of things surrounding it. First, there was amazement that such a brutal exploitation-style picture had been made in part with government funds; the story appears to be that Valladares submitted a more palatable proposal before actually filming this movie. I did get the impression that some of the details were being lost in translation and that the scale of both the Chilean exhibition business and the film's release was being misinterpreted. Or, at least, that everyone involved recognized the value of a good story even if the truth was a bit more prosaic.
Second, jury member Michael Biehn saw the picture and flipped for it, purchasing the remake rights with the intention of starring as the father. Which should be interesting; it's certiainly a role Biehn can play, and according to Valladares (who will also write and direct the new version in Chile), that part will be expanded. Not sure what I think about that; there's a part of me that kind of wanted less of him, and I don't know that he needs to be explained. It is kind of interesting how Biehn, who has done some very mainstream, very big-budget stuff in his career, really seems to be showing a real fondness for downright nasty grindhouse material now.
Well, that was my last really full day; I'll be spending most of today doing touristy stuff before getting back for The Fourth Dimension, Sunflower Hour, and Painted Skin: The Resurrection
Seeoni (Sunny)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
Sunny is flagrant nostalgia bait, but don't count that against it - it's genuinely funny, heartfelt nostalgia bait, and while that might seem odd to world cinema fans - few films that reach North America set in 1980s South Korea suggest people would miss it - it's actually got the wit to make that work when it needs to.
Lim Na-mi (Yu Ho-jeong) is in her early forties, a good wife and mother, and a dutiful daughter as well, making sure to visit her ailing mother in the hospital every day. It's after one of those visits that she notes the patient name on the door of the next room, "Ha Chun-hwa" - and is shocked to discover that the woman in that room with two months to live (Jin Hee-kyung) is her best friend from high school. Back then, Chun-hwa (Kang So-ra) befriended Na-mi (Sim Eung-kyeong) when she was the new kid after moving to Seoul from the rural Jeolla-do region, including her in "Sunny", her group of friends that included upbeat Jang-mi (Kim Min-yeong), foul-mouthed Jin-hee (Park Jin-joo), model-pretty Su-ji (Min Hyo-rin), pugnatious Geum-ok (Nam Bo-ra), and Miss Korea hopeful Bok-hee (Kim Bo-mi). Chun-hwa would like to get the group back together one last time before dying, and while Jang-mi (Ko Su-hee) and Jin-hee (Hong Jin-hee) prove easy enough to find, the rest will take a little more effort.
There's also stuff going on with Na-mi's teenage daughter Yae-bin (Ha Seung-ri) in the present and 1985 subplots involving a boy Na-mi has a crush on and a similarly composed group of girls from another school. It's a busy movie that splits its time roughly equally between 1985 and 2010, throwing a lot of period pop - both western and Korean - onto the soundtrack. Plenty of garish 1980s fashions make it on-screen too, making the flashback scenes especially colorful, especially when you consider that the girls aren't wearing school uniforms like Yae-bin and her classmates. That's likely a pretty deliberate sop to nostalgia; kids then were colorful and individual even when buying the same brands, while the next generation are missing that sort of variety.
Full review at EFC.
Despite the Gods
* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Documentaries From the Edge, HD)
It takes a special kind of movie for a "making-of" piece to morph into really interesting documentaries, and it certainly appears that Hisss was that sort of movie. It was always going to be odd but had the sort of calamitous production that leads to plain disaster.
The interesting thing about Despite the Gods is that it doesn't necessarily feel calamitous, but rather more like something that just got stretched out for no definitive reason until so much had been invested in it that it could neither stop nor possibly be a commercial success. Director Jennifer Lynch mostly seems to get along with her cast and crew until right up to the end, even if she does clash with producer Govind Menon. They're a pair of strong personalities, with Lynch often appearing more tortured because of her being out of her natural element.
Director Penny Vozniak does a nice job of putting the movie together, and it's a good look at making a movie in general as opposed to making one which went awry.
Full review at EFC.
Leobeu Pikseon (Love Fiction)
* * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
A romantic comedy that never quite gels, despite a pair of fairly likable leads and Jeon Kye-soo's script having a quirky, individual voice. The trouble is that said voice is often using unusual words to say the same old thing: Guy meets girl, they fall in love despite their own baggage, guy selfishly does something she has specifically asked him not to do, and then must try to pick up the pieces.
There's ways to make that feel fresh, but Jeon doesn't find them; instead, the quirks seem to be very obvious ornamentation on a too-familiar skeleton. Just as frustrating was the occasional impression that Jeon had backstories and lives laid out for both main characters but didn't include them beyond the superficial; it could have been more interesting than it was.
Full review at EFC.
Vulgaria
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
Funny, funny stuff, and Pang Ho-Cheung is just crazy prolific right now - a couple years ago, he made Love in a Puff in the middle of post-production on Dream Home, and now he has Vulgaria come out just a few months after Love in the Buff, supposedly with just a 12-day shooting schedule. Which seems exaggerated, because while there's no one hugely elaborate scene, it's got a fair number of locations and characters.
However quickly he cranked it out, it's hilarious, with Pang and company pouring a ton of raunchy jokes into ninety minutes and Chapman To delivering a marvelously flustered performance as a B-movie producer facing hard times and a project that began under dubious circumstances and gets weirder by the minute. Few jokes are repeatable, but most are among the funniest of the year.
Full review at EFC.
En las afueras de la ciudad (Hidden in the Woods)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012, HD)
Yep, this certainly does live up to its introduction as an envelope-pushing bit of cinema; it sets out a ghastly premise and doesn't hesitate to make each segment more horrific than what came before. Director Patricio Valladares is also good enough to not just throw more blood, guts, and sex on-screen, but to really connect it to the audience emotionally.
So why, when it is all said and done, did it leave me relatively cold? I'm not sure. I think part of it was that I found myself confusing the two sister characters; as Valladeres cranked through a lot of backstory in the opening minutes, I found myself unsure whether Anny or Ana was supposed to be older (and the names didn't help much!), which one was Manuel's mother, which one was doing A while the other was doing B... Making them feel so interchangeable took what seemed like horrifyingly personal stories and made them a little dehumanized. And once you've done that, the impression is less a horror story that strikes to the bone and more blood & guts exploitation.
Full review at EFC.
Saturday, August 04, 2012
The Fantasia Daily, 2012.16 (3 August 2012): Isn't Anybody Alive, Carré Blanc, Lobos de Arga, New Kids Turbo, etc.
Horrible photography? Sure! Both come from the Game of Werewolves screening.
First up - "The Local's Bite" director Scott Upshur, who made a nifty litte short based on a unique setting - the lifts that locals use to get up and down the mountain in Telluride, CO. Pretty well shot (although the compression here didn't do its dark scenes many favors), although I think it kind of has one big problem - it SPOILERS! works on the basis of a potential victim turning the tables on her attacker, but blows right past misdirection to having that character act in a way that's blatantly contrary to her eventual actions. !SRELIOPS Nice try.
There were a couple other shots. I didn't arrive at Carré Blanc in time to get shots of the guys made "Elko", which is just as well. I didn't really like it; it struck me as all darkness with no real point to it - or, at least, being too preoccupied with the darkness to really build on its idea of how the victim is rediscovering joy in life as the bad fate she signed up for approaches. A little too much for me, perhaps, especially as it left practically zero time to unwind between Isn't Anybody Alive? and Carré Blanc.
Dead Bite, meanwhile, was preceded by "Petit Mort", and let me tell you, if you've never seen a mime going through the motions of buying a porno magazine and reading it, man, you should hunt Louise Archambault's short down.
Gotta love Juan Martinez Moreno here; he made a good movie in a genre he loves, and his enthusiasm was very clear, especially when talking to Mitch about the Spanish werewolf movies that were his movie's forefathers. I also love that he hates his film's English-language title (hopefully whoever picks it up will change it or just stick with the Spanish "Lobos de Arga"), and that while he loves dogs, working with the one who played Vito in this movie was a pain in the neck. Lots of stories about how if the dog did his thing in a shot, the actors better hope they got it right, and how after about a week or shooting, the dog learned the word "Action!" and would run away when he heard it, necessitating a new code word to start every day of filming. Apparently the dog was smart about being trouble.
Okay, quick shower and then downtown for brunch, Space Battleship Yamamoto, Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Grabbers, and then maybe Revenge: A Love Story if I don't call it an early night because I don't want to see Excision again.
Ikiterumono wa inainoka (Isn't Anybody Alive?)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
It is, I suppose, unfair to judge Isn't Anybody Alive? for not being conventional enough; it's meant to be unusual and relatively plot-free. The question is, if you strip the basic building blocks away, what's left? Isn't Anybody Alive? becomes an end-of-the-world movie whose detachment isn't shocking or philosophical or even that interesting.
But it could have been something beautiful and tragic. It does a really spectacular job of building characters worth following in the opening acts, getting a large young cast to give everybody distinctive personalities and relationships, so that when the first death happens out of nowhere, it's shocking and horrifying. By the end, though, it's become a perfunctory joke that doesn't work. It's just more, with the actors having to work much harder to get the same reaction. Maybe that's the conceptual point, I guess - showing how audiences can go from empathy to disinterest, but it gets tiresome.
And it kind of undermines all the good work done throughout the movie. The cast is, in large part, terrific, there's a crisp look to Yoshiyuki Matsumoto's cinematography, and what director Gakuryu Ishii and writer Shiro Maeda do is frequently strong. The music is unusual and good in all the right ways. It just feels empty, and while maybe that's the point, why do that?
Full review at EFC.
Carré Blanc
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
So you've created a dystopic future based on existing brutalist architecture and creative cruelty. Now what? That's a question that one can easily spend a lot of time asking during Carré Blanc before it ultimately offers an answer. It's a good-enough answer, although many viewers may want more.
Sometime in the future, the human race is dwindling, with one of the sad statistics being Philippe's mother (Fejria Deliba), whose suicide sends him to a corporate orphanage of sorts. Though his making it to adulthood is in some ways a near thing, he (Sami Bouajila) winds up working for the company that raised him. In many ways, he's become just as heartless as the rest of the world around him, in marked contrast to his wife Marie (Julie Gayet), who is just about ready to leave him.
There are hints of a world interesting both for being satiric and speculative scattered throughout the movie, mostly in the form of radio snippets that suggest the world population is dropping precipitously and that croquet is the most popular form of entertainment. Humanity seems to be consuming itself, quite literally, faster than it can reproduce, with an increasing callousness and dehumanization of what should be one-to-one interactions.
Full review at EFC.
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
First, forget that stupid title. Juan Martínez Moreno hates it, there's no game involved, etc. Instead, focus on what a really great horror-comedy this is - so good that including the "comedy" after the hyphen really seems to discount how well Moreno recaptures the feel of classic monster movies, with tons of atmosphere, horrible curses, and practical effects that may not always be seamless, but certainly get the point across.
It is funny - it's got an early nominee for "best supporting canine" and friendly banter that gives way to twisted comedy. It does a charmingly good job of playing against genre tropes and cultural prejudices. And it's particularly cool that the heroes, for all their goofiness, want to do the right thing as opposed to just go through the motions. Add that to some pretty darn good action, and you've got yourself a heck of a werewolf movie.
Full review at EFC.
New Kids Turbo
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 Action!, DCP)
New Kids Turbo is a movie about not just one boorish asshole, but five, and I won't lie - those are sort of hard for me to get behind as protagonists. Part of it's snobbery - I have met too many people who wouldn't fully get the joke and see something appealing about these characters - but isn't snobbery sort of what their creators are appealing to, that the audience will laugh at these morons?
And, don't get me wrong, I surely did laugh on occasion - throw 200 jokes out there in an 84-minute movie, and some are going to work - and it's hard not to admire the sheer energy these comedians and filmmakers bring to the table. But there's laziness, too - the film's supporters seem to talk a good game about this movie's social commentary, but it's all broad swipes at low-hanging fruit that only seems clever in comparison to idiots calling people they don't like "homo".
Full review at EFC.
Gancore Gud (Dead Bite)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
There's actually a pretty fun movie inside Dead Bite doing all it can to get out, and it could be just as happily trashy as the one we got. After all, it's got a charismatic-enough lead in Thai rapper JoeyBoy, a potentially fun ensemble in his group Gancore Club, and all the other ingredients for B-movie fun: Pretty/busty girls, gleefully bloody mayhem, and fun monsters. The beautiful Thailand scenery doesn't hurt at all.
But, wow, does it get away from him. There's bloodbaths that happen too fast to process broken up by long stretches of people sitting in the woods, doing not very much, not even bickering in a way that increases tension. There's savages and sea-zombies and mermaids and more and they don't really fit together. New characters and plotlines are introduced midway through because they killed too many off early, and there's a framing sequence that is returned to an awful lot for one final gag.
Dead Bite is a fun midnight movie, no question. It's probably just a little too much writer/director/producer/star JoeyBoy pouring the disorganized images of "stuff that would make a cool movie" onto film in raw form.
Full review at EFC.
First up - "The Local's Bite" director Scott Upshur, who made a nifty litte short based on a unique setting - the lifts that locals use to get up and down the mountain in Telluride, CO. Pretty well shot (although the compression here didn't do its dark scenes many favors), although I think it kind of has one big problem - it SPOILERS! works on the basis of a potential victim turning the tables on her attacker, but blows right past misdirection to having that character act in a way that's blatantly contrary to her eventual actions. !SRELIOPS Nice try.
There were a couple other shots. I didn't arrive at Carré Blanc in time to get shots of the guys made "Elko", which is just as well. I didn't really like it; it struck me as all darkness with no real point to it - or, at least, being too preoccupied with the darkness to really build on its idea of how the victim is rediscovering joy in life as the bad fate she signed up for approaches. A little too much for me, perhaps, especially as it left practically zero time to unwind between Isn't Anybody Alive? and Carré Blanc.
Dead Bite, meanwhile, was preceded by "Petit Mort", and let me tell you, if you've never seen a mime going through the motions of buying a porno magazine and reading it, man, you should hunt Louise Archambault's short down.
Gotta love Juan Martinez Moreno here; he made a good movie in a genre he loves, and his enthusiasm was very clear, especially when talking to Mitch about the Spanish werewolf movies that were his movie's forefathers. I also love that he hates his film's English-language title (hopefully whoever picks it up will change it or just stick with the Spanish "Lobos de Arga"), and that while he loves dogs, working with the one who played Vito in this movie was a pain in the neck. Lots of stories about how if the dog did his thing in a shot, the actors better hope they got it right, and how after about a week or shooting, the dog learned the word "Action!" and would run away when he heard it, necessitating a new code word to start every day of filming. Apparently the dog was smart about being trouble.
Okay, quick shower and then downtown for brunch, Space Battleship Yamamoto, Eddie: The Sleepwalking Cannibal, Grabbers, and then maybe Revenge: A Love Story if I don't call it an early night because I don't want to see Excision again.
Ikiterumono wa inainoka (Isn't Anybody Alive?)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Cinema de Seve (Fantasia 2012 Camera Lucida, HD)
It is, I suppose, unfair to judge Isn't Anybody Alive? for not being conventional enough; it's meant to be unusual and relatively plot-free. The question is, if you strip the basic building blocks away, what's left? Isn't Anybody Alive? becomes an end-of-the-world movie whose detachment isn't shocking or philosophical or even that interesting.
But it could have been something beautiful and tragic. It does a really spectacular job of building characters worth following in the opening acts, getting a large young cast to give everybody distinctive personalities and relationships, so that when the first death happens out of nowhere, it's shocking and horrifying. By the end, though, it's become a perfunctory joke that doesn't work. It's just more, with the actors having to work much harder to get the same reaction. Maybe that's the conceptual point, I guess - showing how audiences can go from empathy to disinterest, but it gets tiresome.
And it kind of undermines all the good work done throughout the movie. The cast is, in large part, terrific, there's a crisp look to Yoshiyuki Matsumoto's cinematography, and what director Gakuryu Ishii and writer Shiro Maeda do is frequently strong. The music is unusual and good in all the right ways. It just feels empty, and while maybe that's the point, why do that?
Full review at EFC.
Carré Blanc
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, DCP)
So you've created a dystopic future based on existing brutalist architecture and creative cruelty. Now what? That's a question that one can easily spend a lot of time asking during Carré Blanc before it ultimately offers an answer. It's a good-enough answer, although many viewers may want more.
Sometime in the future, the human race is dwindling, with one of the sad statistics being Philippe's mother (Fejria Deliba), whose suicide sends him to a corporate orphanage of sorts. Though his making it to adulthood is in some ways a near thing, he (Sami Bouajila) winds up working for the company that raised him. In many ways, he's become just as heartless as the rest of the world around him, in marked contrast to his wife Marie (Julie Gayet), who is just about ready to leave him.
There are hints of a world interesting both for being satiric and speculative scattered throughout the movie, mostly in the form of radio snippets that suggest the world population is dropping precipitously and that croquet is the most popular form of entertainment. Humanity seems to be consuming itself, quite literally, faster than it can reproduce, with an increasing callousness and dehumanization of what should be one-to-one interactions.
Full review at EFC.
Lobos de Arga (Game of Werewolves)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
First, forget that stupid title. Juan Martínez Moreno hates it, there's no game involved, etc. Instead, focus on what a really great horror-comedy this is - so good that including the "comedy" after the hyphen really seems to discount how well Moreno recaptures the feel of classic monster movies, with tons of atmosphere, horrible curses, and practical effects that may not always be seamless, but certainly get the point across.
It is funny - it's got an early nominee for "best supporting canine" and friendly banter that gives way to twisted comedy. It does a charmingly good job of playing against genre tropes and cultural prejudices. And it's particularly cool that the heroes, for all their goofiness, want to do the right thing as opposed to just go through the motions. Add that to some pretty darn good action, and you've got yourself a heck of a werewolf movie.
Full review at EFC.
New Kids Turbo
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012 Action!, DCP)
New Kids Turbo is a movie about not just one boorish asshole, but five, and I won't lie - those are sort of hard for me to get behind as protagonists. Part of it's snobbery - I have met too many people who wouldn't fully get the joke and see something appealing about these characters - but isn't snobbery sort of what their creators are appealing to, that the audience will laugh at these morons?
And, don't get me wrong, I surely did laugh on occasion - throw 200 jokes out there in an 84-minute movie, and some are going to work - and it's hard not to admire the sheer energy these comedians and filmmakers bring to the table. But there's laziness, too - the film's supporters seem to talk a good game about this movie's social commentary, but it's all broad swipes at low-hanging fruit that only seems clever in comparison to idiots calling people they don't like "homo".
Full review at EFC.
Gancore Gud (Dead Bite)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2012 in Concordia University Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2012, HD)
There's actually a pretty fun movie inside Dead Bite doing all it can to get out, and it could be just as happily trashy as the one we got. After all, it's got a charismatic-enough lead in Thai rapper JoeyBoy, a potentially fun ensemble in his group Gancore Club, and all the other ingredients for B-movie fun: Pretty/busty girls, gleefully bloody mayhem, and fun monsters. The beautiful Thailand scenery doesn't hurt at all.
But, wow, does it get away from him. There's bloodbaths that happen too fast to process broken up by long stretches of people sitting in the woods, doing not very much, not even bickering in a way that increases tension. There's savages and sea-zombies and mermaids and more and they don't really fit together. New characters and plotlines are introduced midway through because they killed too many off early, and there's a framing sequence that is returned to an awful lot for one final gag.
Dead Bite is a fun midnight movie, no question. It's probably just a little too much writer/director/producer/star JoeyBoy pouring the disorganized images of "stuff that would make a cool movie" onto film in raw form.
Full review at EFC.
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