Much like there is no Year Zero in the Christian calendar, there is no Day 00 when talking about festivals. If you're watching stuff on screeners or otherwise in preparation, that's day minus one and so on back. My blog, my rules, even if I am a count-from-zero guy most of the time.
And why, pray tell, am I doing this? Because there's a new Ju-on sequel playing the festival, and while it will almost certainly ignore the two direct-to-video short features made in 2009, what if it doesn't? These things can be hard enough to keep track of without missing pieces, and the Blu-ray Well Go put out a few years back was on my shelf anyway, so I figured I might as well check them out.
Oddly, Well Go lists White Ghost and Black Ghost as separate movies on the back of the packaging, but they are encoded as one long feature, with the credits for both at the end. I'm not sure why they'd do that unless there's some weird licensing fee for the encoding involved or something.
Ju-on: Shiroi Rojo (Ju-on: White Ghost)
* * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2014 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival prep, Blu-ray)
The Ju-on/The Grudge series burned bright and fast in the 2000s, going from direct-to-video to theatrical features in Japan before jumping the Pacific, doing two American features before dropping to DTV status in the USA and then mostly disappearing, having already started to get self-referential in the second Japanese feature, right along the time it was becoming a general target of parody. As a last gasp, two short direct-to-video features were produced simultaneously in 2009. To see them is to understand why things have been quiet on the Ju-on front until this year's relaunch - as much as it seems like an open-ended plot ripe for extension, these flicks made the mine look pretty tapped out.
White Ghost opens with Fumiya Hagimoto (Hiroki Suzuki) delivering a Christmas cake to the Isobe family, only to have the mother say she is tied up like she was in a loop. When he investigates, he finds her and her entire family dead. That's not the only mystery; seven years ago, Hajime Kashiwagi (Ichirota Miyakawa) vanished after dropping his daughter Akane off at cram school; now the teenaged Akane (Akina Minami) seems to have some sort of psychic abilities which flare up big time when her friends produce a homemade spirit board.
Like the previous Ju-on: The Grudge movies written and directed by Takashi Shimizu (credited as a "supervising producer" here), this one written and directed by Ryuta Miyake a series of five or ten minute vignettes (there are eight in this sixty-minute movie), introduced with a character's name and telling the portion of the story from his or her perspective, jumping back and forth in time as necessary. It's not a bad trick for building mystery, as you can end as many segments as you like on bizarre cliffhangers with the implied promise of getting back to them later, but when you make your film into a puzzle, is expected that the solution be clever, and Miyake seldom really manages that. The movie gets its jumps, but rather than having the aha! moment where things come together in twisted fashion, White Ghost practically winds up running down a checklist, never really putting a twist on material that, while horrific, doesn't rise to the level of a rate-powered stain on the world.
Full review at EFC
Ju-on: Kuroi Rojo (Ju-on: Black Ghost)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2014 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Festival prep, Blu-ray)
The good news about Ju-on: Black Ghost is that it's better than the other short feature it was stitched to for American home video (Ju-on: White Ghost). Not by a huge margin, but by just enough that you can see where writer/director Mari Asato has the right idea of how to tell a story that fits the franchise but stands on its own as well.
Though Asato gets at the story via Tetsuya (Koji Seto) and Yuko (Ai Kago) - a young man and the nurse next door he has a crush on - the story truly centers on Fukie (Hana Matsumoto), a teenage girl not coping with her parents' divorce very well. It currently seems to be manifesting as seizures, but the doctors can't find anything physically wrong with her, and weird stuff is starting to happen around her - strange enough for mother Kiwako (Maria Takagi) to call her sister Mariko (Yuri Nakamura), a purported psychic, to help.
What's actually going on is a fairly neat subject for a ghost story on its own (one I think I've seen elsewhere although titles are not leaping to mind), although one that could be kickstarted by the idea of these metaphysical grudges. While there is a digression or two, Asato keeps it focused on Fukie's story. The puzzle-box format of these movies is not as prominent here as elsewhere, but there's a certain heft to it, a curiosity on the audience's part as to what sort of rage is hiding within the sweet-seeming Fukie to lead to the murdered family hinted at early on.
Full review at EFC
Showing posts with label direct-to-video. Show all posts
Showing posts with label direct-to-video. Show all posts
Friday, July 18, 2014
Thursday, February 11, 2010
That other Sherlock Holmes movie
Memo to The Asylum: If you are event thinking of doing a sequel to your Sherlock Holmes movie to come out around the same time that Warner Brothers releases their next one with Robert Downey Junior, give me a call. I'm pretty sure I can write a better screenplay than Paul Bales did here, if only because it will not involve me stating that Sherlock's full name is "Robert Sherlock Holmes", and having a character address him as "Robert" throughout the entire second half of the film.
And I'm cheap. This blog post? I'm writing it for nothing! I probably won't even try to to get you to reimburse me for the various Arthur Conan Doyle books I'd buy for research, which was clearly a hold-up for Mr. Bales and company. You'd get not just a steampunkish Sherlock Holmes story with dinosaurs and robots, but one which fans would praise for how it connects Holmes to Professor Challenger and other Doyle works.
That said, despite joking about expecting this movie to drive me mad, I rather enjoyed it. Between it and the previews for other films by The Asylum that preceded it, I get the impression that the folks at Asylum are the modern equivalent to Roger Corman: Making genre entertainment on a budget, taking their work seriously but still having a sense of fun. I laughed a lot at those previews, but felt oddly affectionate, too. "It can't be stopped... Unless she can stop it!" (MegaFault).... A John Carter of Mars movie with Anthony Sabato Jr. and Traci Lords... Using the same footage of L.A. getting destroyed in at least two of the previews.
These things are B-movie silliness, but they're honest, hard-working B-movie silliness, rather than weak parody. Well, okay, "honest" may not be the best way to describe a marketing campaign based around giving movies a similar title to something in theaters so that confused people pick them up, but you know what I mean.
Sherlock Holmes (2010)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
I don't entirely blame The Asylum for how disappointing their "mockbuster" Sherlock Holmes movie was. My slightly elevated expectations are the responsibility of the guy who entered the information that Dominic Keating was playing Spring-Heeled Jack on IMDB. A person sees that and thinks, okay, this is going to be a cheap B-movie, but if they're using a nineteenth-century English urban legend as the villain, then there's a chance that the result may at least be clever. Sadly, that information isn't accurate, and while what's left is kind of fun, it is decidedly not clever.
As an aged Dr. Watson relates to his nurse in 1940, the greatest and most painful adventure in Sherlock Holmes's career happened in 1882, and started with the sinking of a treasury ship filled with tax money from the West Indies - apparently by a kraken. Inspector Lestrade (William Huw) engages Holmes (Ben Syder) and Watson (Gareth David-Lloyd) to assist with solving the mystery. He also asks about Sherlock's brother, whom he hadn't heard from in years. While Watson and Lestrade dismiss the idea of a monster out of hand, Holmes thinks there's some connection to mysterious dinosaur attacks in Whitechapel. Meanwhile, a paralyzed veteran (Dominic Keating) comes to Watson to refill his pain medication, though Watson's attention is drawn to his lovely niece Anesidora (Elizabeth Arends).
Many will read that description, see "dinosaur attacks", and figure that fans of Sherlock Holmes will immediately hate the very concept. That doesn't necessarily have to be so, though - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous non-Holmes work is The Lost World, and there have been numerous pastiches which posited that Holmes and Professor Challenger were friends or even relations. Drop the right line, and everybody is eating your steampunk Sherlock Holmes adventure up. Unfortunately, writer Paul Bales often gives the impression that he's not terribly familiar with the character's history. When Lestrade mentions Holmes's brother, for instance, he's not referring to Mycroft, and the film doesn't see the need to clear it up. There are a few other choices made that suggest a lack of familiarity of with the character's world.
That's a shame, because the film has its good points as a steampunk adventure. The Asylum makes B movies, the sort of thing that Roger Corman used to do, but one seldom gets the sense (at least in Sherlock Holmes) that they are holding anything back. Some of the CGI is dodgy; intercoms visible on the doorways of Baker Street; and scenes that would logically take place in the middle of smoky, Dickensian London seem to take place in the country. But there's a sense of fun with the various crazy bits - the kraken and dinosaur lead to clockwork robots and hot air balloons outfitted for combat, and the filmmakers never use a low budget as an excuse; they try their best and don't wink at the audience. They even resist a joke about how the film's climax boils down to Sherlock Holmes fighting Iron Man.
Director Rachel Goldenberg is a big part of that. She could have gone for something self-parodying but doesn't, and she turns out to be pretty good with the action and pacing. There's not a lot of quick-cutting to cover for the effects work, for instance, although it could occasionally use covering. The movie is fast-paced without seeming frantic, or grinding to a halt for excessive exposition. She even manages the occasional moment when the audience might feel a little bit of awe.
The cast she's working with isn't bad, either. First billing, unusually, goes to Gareth David-Lloyd as Watson. He's a good fit for that part, catching Watson's eagerness for adventure and frequent impatience with Holmes, along with his weakness for the ladies. Dominic Keating is a fine, bombastic villain, chewing the requisite scenery and convincing us of both his genius and insanity. Unfortunately, that means they both overshadow apparent newcomer Ben Syder as Holmes. It's not just that he's physically too short for the role, especially when standing next to David-Lloyd, but he seems far too nice. There's none of the eccentricity, irritability, or arrogance that often makes Sherlock Holmes so memorable. Even when condescending to Lestrade, he sounds polite and apologetic, rather than prickly.
Maybe a better Holmes would have allowed this movie to more squarely hit the mark, as it otherwise does surprisingly well by playing its outlandish premise fairly straight. Just change the script a little and you'd actually have an Asylum Sherlock Holmes movie that could rise above the guilty pleasure that this one is.
Also at HBS
And I'm cheap. This blog post? I'm writing it for nothing! I probably won't even try to to get you to reimburse me for the various Arthur Conan Doyle books I'd buy for research, which was clearly a hold-up for Mr. Bales and company. You'd get not just a steampunkish Sherlock Holmes story with dinosaurs and robots, but one which fans would praise for how it connects Holmes to Professor Challenger and other Doyle works.
That said, despite joking about expecting this movie to drive me mad, I rather enjoyed it. Between it and the previews for other films by The Asylum that preceded it, I get the impression that the folks at Asylum are the modern equivalent to Roger Corman: Making genre entertainment on a budget, taking their work seriously but still having a sense of fun. I laughed a lot at those previews, but felt oddly affectionate, too. "It can't be stopped... Unless she can stop it!" (MegaFault).... A John Carter of Mars movie with Anthony Sabato Jr. and Traci Lords... Using the same footage of L.A. getting destroyed in at least two of the previews.
These things are B-movie silliness, but they're honest, hard-working B-movie silliness, rather than weak parody. Well, okay, "honest" may not be the best way to describe a marketing campaign based around giving movies a similar title to something in theaters so that confused people pick them up, but you know what I mean.
Sherlock Holmes (2010)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)
I don't entirely blame The Asylum for how disappointing their "mockbuster" Sherlock Holmes movie was. My slightly elevated expectations are the responsibility of the guy who entered the information that Dominic Keating was playing Spring-Heeled Jack on IMDB. A person sees that and thinks, okay, this is going to be a cheap B-movie, but if they're using a nineteenth-century English urban legend as the villain, then there's a chance that the result may at least be clever. Sadly, that information isn't accurate, and while what's left is kind of fun, it is decidedly not clever.
As an aged Dr. Watson relates to his nurse in 1940, the greatest and most painful adventure in Sherlock Holmes's career happened in 1882, and started with the sinking of a treasury ship filled with tax money from the West Indies - apparently by a kraken. Inspector Lestrade (William Huw) engages Holmes (Ben Syder) and Watson (Gareth David-Lloyd) to assist with solving the mystery. He also asks about Sherlock's brother, whom he hadn't heard from in years. While Watson and Lestrade dismiss the idea of a monster out of hand, Holmes thinks there's some connection to mysterious dinosaur attacks in Whitechapel. Meanwhile, a paralyzed veteran (Dominic Keating) comes to Watson to refill his pain medication, though Watson's attention is drawn to his lovely niece Anesidora (Elizabeth Arends).
Many will read that description, see "dinosaur attacks", and figure that fans of Sherlock Holmes will immediately hate the very concept. That doesn't necessarily have to be so, though - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's most famous non-Holmes work is The Lost World, and there have been numerous pastiches which posited that Holmes and Professor Challenger were friends or even relations. Drop the right line, and everybody is eating your steampunk Sherlock Holmes adventure up. Unfortunately, writer Paul Bales often gives the impression that he's not terribly familiar with the character's history. When Lestrade mentions Holmes's brother, for instance, he's not referring to Mycroft, and the film doesn't see the need to clear it up. There are a few other choices made that suggest a lack of familiarity of with the character's world.
That's a shame, because the film has its good points as a steampunk adventure. The Asylum makes B movies, the sort of thing that Roger Corman used to do, but one seldom gets the sense (at least in Sherlock Holmes) that they are holding anything back. Some of the CGI is dodgy; intercoms visible on the doorways of Baker Street; and scenes that would logically take place in the middle of smoky, Dickensian London seem to take place in the country. But there's a sense of fun with the various crazy bits - the kraken and dinosaur lead to clockwork robots and hot air balloons outfitted for combat, and the filmmakers never use a low budget as an excuse; they try their best and don't wink at the audience. They even resist a joke about how the film's climax boils down to Sherlock Holmes fighting Iron Man.
Director Rachel Goldenberg is a big part of that. She could have gone for something self-parodying but doesn't, and she turns out to be pretty good with the action and pacing. There's not a lot of quick-cutting to cover for the effects work, for instance, although it could occasionally use covering. The movie is fast-paced without seeming frantic, or grinding to a halt for excessive exposition. She even manages the occasional moment when the audience might feel a little bit of awe.
The cast she's working with isn't bad, either. First billing, unusually, goes to Gareth David-Lloyd as Watson. He's a good fit for that part, catching Watson's eagerness for adventure and frequent impatience with Holmes, along with his weakness for the ladies. Dominic Keating is a fine, bombastic villain, chewing the requisite scenery and convincing us of both his genius and insanity. Unfortunately, that means they both overshadow apparent newcomer Ben Syder as Holmes. It's not just that he's physically too short for the role, especially when standing next to David-Lloyd, but he seems far too nice. There's none of the eccentricity, irritability, or arrogance that often makes Sherlock Holmes so memorable. Even when condescending to Lestrade, he sounds polite and apologetic, rather than prickly.
Maybe a better Holmes would have allowed this movie to more squarely hit the mark, as it otherwise does surprisingly well by playing its outlandish premise fairly straight. Just change the script a little and you'd actually have an Asylum Sherlock Holmes movie that could rise above the guilty pleasure that this one is.
Also at HBS
Monday, March 31, 2008
Boston Underground Film Festival 2008: Otis
BUFF's closing feature is arguably not underground at all; it's made by a Hollywood insider, stars a bunch of recognizable names, and was produced for a major studio, which is even giving it a Blu-ray release, which isn't necessarily a given for films that wind up showing on a few hundred theater screens.
It was nifty to have that insider there for a Q&A afterward, as a contrast to the other filmmakers who visited. Most of them had been making their first movie and kind of learning as they went, while Krantz had done a lot of work behind the scenes in film and television before stepping into the director's chair. He talked about approaching it as filming it like two episodes of television rather than on a feature schedule. There's always a question about improvisation at this fest, and Krantz was pretty emphatic about saying no, they basically shot the script, because improvisation means that all the lighting and sound guys have to play catch-up and that's time and money they don't have. It's a very practical answer, one which the really indie guys maybe haven't yet got the experience to consider.
Looking at the video cover, I do have to wonder about the marketing of this. Aside from the above-the-title names not appearing on the cover (Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, and Kevin Pollack are named, but it's Bostin Christopher and Ashley Johnson who you actually see), it's advertised as "Otis: Uncut". The question is, of course, whether there was ever actually a cut version. As far as I know, Otis will have played about two festivals before showing up on video without a regular theatrical engagement, and I doubt BUFF showed a cut version. Also, to the guy at Bloody-Disgusting who name-drops Juno to describe this... Huh?
Otis
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)
I didn't think much of Otis when looking at its poster/box cover, but the trailer offers up more black comedy with Illeana Douglas than novelty serial killer stuff. Of course, neat trailers can be a trap; not many movies can keep the pace that such a preview promises.
Otis Broth (Bostin Christopher) is a serial killer. The press is calling him the "Kim" killer, from the name he uses for the young girls he kidnaps and holds prisoner for a mockery of high school dating when he calls their parents. He's just grabbed Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson), and the only thing driving father Will (Daniel Stern) and mother Kate (Illeana Douglas) more insane than his taunting is the apparent incompetence of FBI agent Hotchkiss (Jere Burns). Otis isn't counting on Riley being as smart as she is pretty, or Kate deciding that she's got nothing to gain by remaining timid.
Writers Erik Jendersen and Thomas Schanuz have come up with a pretty clever script. It starts out with what looks like a torture porn set-up - girls chained to a bed inside what looks like a massive toaster oven, watched by a creepy man who dispatches an escaping captive in the teaser - although the killer is a forty-year-old pizza deliveryman obsessed with taking his crush to the prom. The movie takes a couple of hard right turns, though, and the movie winds up being less about a lunatic killing girls than the Lawsons deciding to take the law into their own hands. It's to their credit that the story can change direction a couple of times without ever feeling disjointed.
The cast is pretty good, too - Illeana Douglas walks off with every scene she's in, whether she's called on to be impatient, frightened, or half-crazy with her thirst for revenge. You almost have to feel a little bad for Daniel Stern, whose Will is far more reasonable but often isn't nearly as much fun to watch as Douglas's Kate. The pair both work well with Jared Kusnitz, playing their trouble-making son Reed, especially when it comes down to Kusnitz and Douglas playing nuts and Stern trying unsuccessfully to be the voice of reason. Jere Burns does the sort of smarmy and not-so-bright character he's long since mastered, and always delivers the laugh asked of him. Bostin Christopher does a good job of making Otis a little more layered than this character otherwise might be, but Kevin Pollack is kind of under-used as his more openly abrasive brother.
Producer/director Tony Krantz does a pretty good job of tying everything together; the movie looks pretty good for a direct-to-video flick. The opening set piece, with Tarah Paige as the previous "Kim" trying to escape, is a really nice piece of work (it helps that half of Paige's credits are stunts, so he doesn't have to shoot around much). He does have a bit of trouble settling on just the right note for the black comedy at points in the middle, especially with one sequence that extends past the terrible mistake being funny (in a nasty way) without quite becoming horrifying.
That's part of the risk with a movie like Otis, though; switching directions like it does isn't always smooth. It makes up for much of its awkwardness by the end, and the dark comedy angle winds up being more entertaining than the serial killer movie this initially appears to be.
Also at HBS.
It was nifty to have that insider there for a Q&A afterward, as a contrast to the other filmmakers who visited. Most of them had been making their first movie and kind of learning as they went, while Krantz had done a lot of work behind the scenes in film and television before stepping into the director's chair. He talked about approaching it as filming it like two episodes of television rather than on a feature schedule. There's always a question about improvisation at this fest, and Krantz was pretty emphatic about saying no, they basically shot the script, because improvisation means that all the lighting and sound guys have to play catch-up and that's time and money they don't have. It's a very practical answer, one which the really indie guys maybe haven't yet got the experience to consider.
Looking at the video cover, I do have to wonder about the marketing of this. Aside from the above-the-title names not appearing on the cover (Daniel Stern, Illeana Douglas, and Kevin Pollack are named, but it's Bostin Christopher and Ashley Johnson who you actually see), it's advertised as "Otis: Uncut". The question is, of course, whether there was ever actually a cut version. As far as I know, Otis will have played about two festivals before showing up on video without a regular theatrical engagement, and I doubt BUFF showed a cut version. Also, to the guy at Bloody-Disgusting who name-drops Juno to describe this... Huh?
Otis
* * * (out of four)
Seen 23 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)
I didn't think much of Otis when looking at its poster/box cover, but the trailer offers up more black comedy with Illeana Douglas than novelty serial killer stuff. Of course, neat trailers can be a trap; not many movies can keep the pace that such a preview promises.
Otis Broth (Bostin Christopher) is a serial killer. The press is calling him the "Kim" killer, from the name he uses for the young girls he kidnaps and holds prisoner for a mockery of high school dating when he calls their parents. He's just grabbed Riley Lawson (Ashley Johnson), and the only thing driving father Will (Daniel Stern) and mother Kate (Illeana Douglas) more insane than his taunting is the apparent incompetence of FBI agent Hotchkiss (Jere Burns). Otis isn't counting on Riley being as smart as she is pretty, or Kate deciding that she's got nothing to gain by remaining timid.
Writers Erik Jendersen and Thomas Schanuz have come up with a pretty clever script. It starts out with what looks like a torture porn set-up - girls chained to a bed inside what looks like a massive toaster oven, watched by a creepy man who dispatches an escaping captive in the teaser - although the killer is a forty-year-old pizza deliveryman obsessed with taking his crush to the prom. The movie takes a couple of hard right turns, though, and the movie winds up being less about a lunatic killing girls than the Lawsons deciding to take the law into their own hands. It's to their credit that the story can change direction a couple of times without ever feeling disjointed.
The cast is pretty good, too - Illeana Douglas walks off with every scene she's in, whether she's called on to be impatient, frightened, or half-crazy with her thirst for revenge. You almost have to feel a little bad for Daniel Stern, whose Will is far more reasonable but often isn't nearly as much fun to watch as Douglas's Kate. The pair both work well with Jared Kusnitz, playing their trouble-making son Reed, especially when it comes down to Kusnitz and Douglas playing nuts and Stern trying unsuccessfully to be the voice of reason. Jere Burns does the sort of smarmy and not-so-bright character he's long since mastered, and always delivers the laugh asked of him. Bostin Christopher does a good job of making Otis a little more layered than this character otherwise might be, but Kevin Pollack is kind of under-used as his more openly abrasive brother.
Producer/director Tony Krantz does a pretty good job of tying everything together; the movie looks pretty good for a direct-to-video flick. The opening set piece, with Tarah Paige as the previous "Kim" trying to escape, is a really nice piece of work (it helps that half of Paige's credits are stunts, so he doesn't have to shoot around much). He does have a bit of trouble settling on just the right note for the black comedy at points in the middle, especially with one sequence that extends past the terrible mistake being funny (in a nasty way) without quite becoming horrifying.
That's part of the risk with a movie like Otis, though; switching directions like it does isn't always smooth. It makes up for much of its awkwardness by the end, and the dark comedy angle winds up being more entertaining than the serial killer movie this initially appears to be.
Also at HBS.
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