I don't necessarily complain about how a lot of the Chinese and Taiwanese movies hitting the United States are kind of similar in the review, but I really have seen enough of these nostalgic romances over the past few years to feel pretty much done. This and A Journey Through Time with Anthony are actually fairly different movies, but seeing them three days apart was a bit much.
Still, I was pretty happy where two of the three previews for Chinese movies before this one involved punching and kicking. Kind of interesting contrast in release strategies, though: Well Go is holding Ip Man 3 back until late January, presumably to take advantage of a weak schedule around that time versus being slammed at Christmas, especially if they figure Mike Tyson will draw a bigger crowd. Wanda, meanwhile, is going to be releasing Mojin - The Lost Legend on 18 December, making me very worried about local theaters giving it a screen that could go to Star Wars. But, hey, who knows?
Third trailer: Fall in Love Like a Star, which looked crazy generic.
Wo de shao nu shi dai (Our Times)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 November 2015 in AMC Boston Common #8 (first-run, DCP)
So, here's a weird coincidence - two Mandarin-language movies reaching American cinemas a mere two days apart, both nostalgic romances that, at different points, involve the young characters needing to meet up at McDonald's. They're from different countries (China and Taiwan) with very different focuses, and while I like this one a bit more, it seems like this part of the world is pumping out a lot of movies like this, and this one isn't one of the best.
This time, we're looking back on the late 1990s, when Lin Truly (Vivian Sung Yun-hua) was a high-school student with a celebrity crush on Andy Lau and a more close-at-hand eye on star basketball player Ouyang Extraordinary (Dino Lee Yu-hsi), though boys seldom seems to notice Truly with the beautiful Tao Minmin (Dewi Chien Ting-yui) living next door. That's why when Truly gets a chain letter promising misery if it's not passed on, she sends a copy to Minmin, one to a sadistic teacher, and one to Hsu Taiyu (Darren Wang Da-lu), the school's resident bad boy. When he discovers it, he proceeds to torment Truly, but he's got a crush on Minmin and discovering that Ouyang and Minmin are together transforms Truly and Taiyu to initially-reluctant allies.
This is, as is often par for the course, bookended by present-day bits with Joe Chen Qiao-en as the adult Truly, and it's one of the more peculiar uses of this over-used technique: After a fantasy sequence that isn't particularly well-delimited, it shows Truly as frustrated, self-doubting, and unrespected, and while she was certainly that way as a teenager, the 1990s material mostly has her on a trajectory that would seem to indicate her ending above that, which means that we spend much of the film waiting to see what's going to derail the happy ending, and that's not a whole lot of fun. It's a weird fit in other ways - neither the situation that inspires the flashback or her reaction afterwards really fits the story it tells, and the final present-day bits are a rickety story that seems primarily held together by Chen being extremely likable as the older Truly and Andy Lau being a really good sport.
Full review on EFC.
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Showing posts with label high school. Show all posts
Sunday, November 22, 2015
Thursday, May 01, 2014
Independent Film Festival Boston 2014.03: Big Significant Things, Palo Alto
As I look through Amazon to look at products to pair with the reviews to break the text up a little, it strikes me that the film industry as a whole will be missing a chance at genuine whimsy if Roadside Attractions does not pick Big Significant Things up for distribution.
Speaking of Big Significant Things, that's director Bryan Reisberg on the left and producer Andrew Corkin on the right. Corkin, it turned out, had another film he produced in the festival, the very funny Wild Canaries, so he's having a good year.
Reisberg, meanwhile, talked about how Harry Lloyd and Krista Kosonen were the only people who were not cast locally, with some of the cast coming together because one had his wife and daughter along at the audition, and pulling them in gave the convenience store that the main character stops in its vibe.
Not mentioned: That Harry Lloyd is English and of no relation to silent film star Harold Lloyd, although it made me wonder whether he would have had to choose a stage name had the two been around at the same time. I wonder if anyone else in the room liked silents enough for it to be disconcerting.
No guests for Palo Alto, just some in-jest "whose ready to meet James Franco? Tough, he's not here!" I must admit that I was kind of surprised at just how many second-generation Hollywood types were involved in this. I didn't recognize Emma Roberts at first - as I mentioned in the review, I spent much of the movie wanting to know just who she was before realizing she was something of a veteran at 22 when the credits rolled - but did recall that Jack Kilmer was Val's son. A little more digging through the IMDB revealed that one character was played by Michael Madsen's boy, and it made me really start to wonder if there was some sort of club, clique, or network that celebrity kids got together in that Gia Coppola could draw from.
Also: Val Kilmer has a small role as the stepfather of the girl that Jack Kilmer has a crush on. That's got to be right next to the line where this sort of casting is kind of gross, right? As in, if he had played April's birth father rather than stepfather, the audience would not have been cool with it.
Big Significant Things
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2014 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital)
There are many ways to have a good road trip; you can do it by sticking close to a map and itinerary, let your whims guide you, or do something in between. There are many ways to mess one up, too, and while looking down on the places you go and people you meet there doesn't exactly ruin things, it can make the experience kind of hollow in retrospect. Not having that attitude, I think, is what makes Big Significant Things a small gem; it's not about putting anybody in their place.
The fellow making the road trip is Craig Harrison (Harry Lloyd), a young man from New Jersey about to move to San Francisco with his fiancee Allison. She's already out there looking at houses, but he is driving through the South, on his own despite telling her he's chauffeuring people for work. And while he's kind of enjoying just looking at several World's Largest Things, what really winds up catching his eye is Ella (Krista Kosonen), a Finn playing guitar and singing at a bar's open mic night who seems just as put off place as he does.
Craig has a specific end point in mind, although it looks like his brother Joel (like Allison, heard on the phone but not seen) is not going to meet him there. That's important; it marks him as trying to get back to something as opposed to escaping while also highlighting that he's struggling with something that neither he nor his loved ones quite understand. Maybe his life just seems to be moving too fast; the graduation tassels hanging from his rear-view mirror are only three or four years old. Or maybe he's worried about how this move will make him a part of her life rather than the other way around, considering where their families live. Writer/director Bryan Reisberg never addresses Craig's primary issue directly, but he also doesn't do much to hint that Craig is running from something especially terrible, and making it easy to project ones own anxieties (present or remembered) onto the situation doesn't hurt.
Full review at EFC
Palo Alto
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2014 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital)
That James Franco always seems to have more ambition than one would think should have stopped surprising me a few of his less mainstream projects ago, but it hasn't. It should no longer shock to see another member of the Coppola clan making movies, either, but there seems to be a near-inexhaustible supply. So we probably shouldn't raise our eyebrows at Gia Coppola making a movie from Franco's Palo Alto Stories collection - although if you want to resent that it turned out pretty good, I imagine people will understand.
So what's going on in Palo Alto? Well, Teddy (Jack Kilmer) has a crush on April (Emma Roberts) that seems to be reciprocated at least a little. The thing is, Teddy hangs out with Fred (Nat Wolff), and while he doesn't need Fred's help to get in trouble as when he's involved in a fender-bender that gets him a hundred hours of community service, Fred certainly facilitates it. April, meanwhile, is babysitting for her soccer coach (Franco), whom the other girls say has designs on her besides making her the team's striker.
There are a fair number of second- and third-generation Hollywood folks in this movie: Gia is the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, while Jack Kilmer's father Val has a part as April's stepfather. And yet, despite their being relatively new to this, it might be the veteran of the legacies, Emma Roberts, who is the biggest surprise: This is probably the meatiest role she's had in a career that stretches back to when she was ten, but she plays it effervescently, easily charismatic enough to deflect other characters' cynicism and come off as down-to-earth despite being the prettiest girl in a competitive environment, but she's also good enough to impress with April's insecurities and implosions without coming across as simply neurotic. It's the sort of performance good enough to have me asking "who is that?" throughout the movie so that I could make a note for later only to be surprised by a name I'd seen associated with lesser parts.
Full review at EFC
Speaking of Big Significant Things, that's director Bryan Reisberg on the left and producer Andrew Corkin on the right. Corkin, it turned out, had another film he produced in the festival, the very funny Wild Canaries, so he's having a good year.
Reisberg, meanwhile, talked about how Harry Lloyd and Krista Kosonen were the only people who were not cast locally, with some of the cast coming together because one had his wife and daughter along at the audition, and pulling them in gave the convenience store that the main character stops in its vibe.
Not mentioned: That Harry Lloyd is English and of no relation to silent film star Harold Lloyd, although it made me wonder whether he would have had to choose a stage name had the two been around at the same time. I wonder if anyone else in the room liked silents enough for it to be disconcerting.
No guests for Palo Alto, just some in-jest "whose ready to meet James Franco? Tough, he's not here!" I must admit that I was kind of surprised at just how many second-generation Hollywood types were involved in this. I didn't recognize Emma Roberts at first - as I mentioned in the review, I spent much of the movie wanting to know just who she was before realizing she was something of a veteran at 22 when the credits rolled - but did recall that Jack Kilmer was Val's son. A little more digging through the IMDB revealed that one character was played by Michael Madsen's boy, and it made me really start to wonder if there was some sort of club, clique, or network that celebrity kids got together in that Gia Coppola could draw from.
Also: Val Kilmer has a small role as the stepfather of the girl that Jack Kilmer has a crush on. That's got to be right next to the line where this sort of casting is kind of gross, right? As in, if he had played April's birth father rather than stepfather, the audience would not have been cool with it.
Big Significant Things
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2014 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital)
There are many ways to have a good road trip; you can do it by sticking close to a map and itinerary, let your whims guide you, or do something in between. There are many ways to mess one up, too, and while looking down on the places you go and people you meet there doesn't exactly ruin things, it can make the experience kind of hollow in retrospect. Not having that attitude, I think, is what makes Big Significant Things a small gem; it's not about putting anybody in their place.
The fellow making the road trip is Craig Harrison (Harry Lloyd), a young man from New Jersey about to move to San Francisco with his fiancee Allison. She's already out there looking at houses, but he is driving through the South, on his own despite telling her he's chauffeuring people for work. And while he's kind of enjoying just looking at several World's Largest Things, what really winds up catching his eye is Ella (Krista Kosonen), a Finn playing guitar and singing at a bar's open mic night who seems just as put off place as he does.
Craig has a specific end point in mind, although it looks like his brother Joel (like Allison, heard on the phone but not seen) is not going to meet him there. That's important; it marks him as trying to get back to something as opposed to escaping while also highlighting that he's struggling with something that neither he nor his loved ones quite understand. Maybe his life just seems to be moving too fast; the graduation tassels hanging from his rear-view mirror are only three or four years old. Or maybe he's worried about how this move will make him a part of her life rather than the other way around, considering where their families live. Writer/director Bryan Reisberg never addresses Craig's primary issue directly, but he also doesn't do much to hint that Craig is running from something especially terrible, and making it easy to project ones own anxieties (present or remembered) onto the situation doesn't hurt.
Full review at EFC
Palo Alto
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 April 2014 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Independent Film Festival Boston, digital)
That James Franco always seems to have more ambition than one would think should have stopped surprising me a few of his less mainstream projects ago, but it hasn't. It should no longer shock to see another member of the Coppola clan making movies, either, but there seems to be a near-inexhaustible supply. So we probably shouldn't raise our eyebrows at Gia Coppola making a movie from Franco's Palo Alto Stories collection - although if you want to resent that it turned out pretty good, I imagine people will understand.
So what's going on in Palo Alto? Well, Teddy (Jack Kilmer) has a crush on April (Emma Roberts) that seems to be reciprocated at least a little. The thing is, Teddy hangs out with Fred (Nat Wolff), and while he doesn't need Fred's help to get in trouble as when he's involved in a fender-bender that gets him a hundred hours of community service, Fred certainly facilitates it. April, meanwhile, is babysitting for her soccer coach (Franco), whom the other girls say has designs on her besides making her the team's striker.
There are a fair number of second- and third-generation Hollywood folks in this movie: Gia is the granddaughter of Francis Ford Coppola, while Jack Kilmer's father Val has a part as April's stepfather. And yet, despite their being relatively new to this, it might be the veteran of the legacies, Emma Roberts, who is the biggest surprise: This is probably the meatiest role she's had in a career that stretches back to when she was ten, but she plays it effervescently, easily charismatic enough to deflect other characters' cynicism and come off as down-to-earth despite being the prettiest girl in a competitive environment, but she's also good enough to impress with April's insecurities and implosions without coming across as simply neurotic. It's the sort of performance good enough to have me asking "who is that?" throughout the movie so that I could make a note for later only to be surprised by a name I'd seen associated with lesser parts.
Full review at EFC
Sunday, July 24, 2011
The Fantasia Daily, 2011.09 (22 July): El Sanatorio, Clown, Detention and Ilsa: She Wolf of the SS
This is from Friday, I think. Friday was the annual trip to see what's new at Pointe-à-Callière, the awesome archaeological museum down by the old port. This year, it was a temporary exhibit on how wine evolved was introduced to Gallic France. A nifty bit of history, and it's always fun to stop and say, hey, that thing in the glass in front of me is thousands of years old.
In keeping with the same theme, I crossed the street to the Science Center where was an Indiana Jones Archaeology exhibit which will almost certainly have a stay at the Boston Museum of Science sometime in the next couple of years. And I will, naturally, hit it up again when it does, because there is in fact a whole bunch of neat old stuff in there which will likely be somewhat localized when it moves to other cities, as well as a bunch of extremely cool props from the Indiana Jones movies. I was good and didn't take pictures, but Ark of the Covenent and Shankara Stones right there, if behind glass.
I do kind of hope that when they do move it to other venues, they find ways to perhaps make it less dependent on the handheld device with the video screen and headphones that they have the visitors carrying around. It's a neat piece of tech with a fun-for-the-kids interactive game attached to it, but it also creates this weird scene of everybody, including families, listening to and watching the machine instead of discussing the exhibits with each other. The design of which clips go with which exhibits also created a certain amount of bottleneck at points.
So, that was neat, but took long enough that I wasn't able to stop in the most succinctly and temptingly named restaurant I've ever seen, "Le Steak Frites", where you bring your own wine and ordering consists of answering the question "how would you like your steak?" Maybe tomorrow.
And now, pictures!
King-wei Chu and El Sanatorio director Miguel Gomez.
Gomez was a guy truly excited to be at festivals in general and Fantasia in particular, with a bunch of fun stories to share, such as how he wound up doing some CGI wire-removal by himself when his effects house flaked on him, or how a character not meant to be someone in particular probably was mocking a real person, now that he thinks about it. One thing he mentioned that I've heard before was how in smaller countries like Costa Rica, getting a movie made often means working with the government's arts funding, and they can be pretty averse to funding horror movies - or really, just anything that works as mainstream entertainment first and a moral lesson somewhere lower on the totem pole. The tools get better and cheaper all the time, but we're not quite at the point where independent film can really explode yet.
Detention star Shanley Caswell, a Toronto rapper whose part isn't listed in IMDB, co-writer/director Joseph Kahn, co-writer Mark Palermo
Another fun Q&A session, although I don't know whether to feel like Kahn has the right attitude or is defeatist when talking about how, after this, he doesn't know about making another movie because the hassle isn't quite offset by the joy, and there are so many strings attached. He talks about how he is currently trying to make as many music videos as he can to pay off the money it took to make Detention, which has to be frustrating. Hopefully it will get a theatrical release and pay him enough that continuing to make movies feels worth it.
Also, Mark Palermo has a great deadpan sense of humor, and apparently got in touch with Kahn after being the only critic who like the director's previous movie, Torque. No, that doesn't give me a small amount of hope, not at all...
El Sanatorio
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2011 - Playback in Black: The Next Wave)
Here's how this goes: I tell you that El Sanatorio is a first-person horror movie about a group of young filmmakers who take their cameras inside a haunted building, you groan "what, another?" At this point, I'm expected to say "but this one's different!" And maybe it is; it's Costa Rica's first entry into the horror genre and manages to inject a fair amount of humor into the proceedings. Mostly, though, it's just good.
The haunted building is El Sanatorio Duran, built in 1919 for TB patients, but since used as a prison and an orphanage. Legends have it that the ghosts of orphans and a raped nun haunt the place, among others (it depends on who you ask). The filmmakers are director Luis (Luis Bogartes) and journalist Arturo (Pablo Masis). They recruit a motley crew of others - medium Lulu (Marisa Luisa Garita); techs Papillo (Kabek Gutierrez) and Gaston (Abelardo Vladich); megalomaniac producer Esteban (Olger Gonzalez); musician - and skeptic/atheist! - Kurt (Kurt Dyer); and Mariana (Maria Elena Oreamuno), the researcher that Arturo would like to get closer to. They spend some time learning the lore of the place, but before long, they're in.
That's when the scares start, but no the good times. From the very first scene, cast and crew seem to be having fun with the idea that the characters don't take this activity all that seriously. They snicker during interviews. Luis and Arturo get distracted by the old Nintendo system they find when looking for a tape deck with which to play back the cassettes from an earlier investigation. Arturo is clearly more worried about his crush on Mariana than anything else. Co-writer/director Miguel Alejandro Gomez isn't quite making a comedy, but the high joke density makes what could be the expositional slog portion of the movie entertaining on its own.
Full review at EFC.
Klovn: The Movie (Clown: The Movie)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2011)
After seeing Klovn: The Movie, I find myself both curious about and wary of the TV series it's spun off from. Curious because the movie is damn funny, and if its style of humor is typical of the series, they can get away with some stuff on Danish TV (or it's running on the Danish equivalent of HBO). Wary because I don't know if this sort of crudity would work on a regular basis, and this is potentially a generic sitcom if toned down.
Klovn centers around the adventures of Frank Hvam (Frank Hvam), a decent-enough-seeming fellow with a remarkable ability to screw things up. Somehow, though, he's managed to stumble into a good woman in Mia (Mia Lyhne), but gets a couple pieces of unexpected news at the wedding of Mia's sister: They're going to be watching Mia's nephew Bo (Marcuz Jess Petersen) during the honeymoon, and Mia is herself expecting. Initially, this interferes with Frank's plans to go on a canoeing trip with his friend Casper (Casper Christensen), but he decides to take the boy along to show he has potential as a father. Maybe not the best idea, as Casper is a hedonist who has taken to calling this trip the "tour de pussy".
And, yes, "tour de pussy" is generally indicative of the level of good taste to be found in the movie. Casper, in particular, doesn't seem to believe in restraint of any sort, and the various sex and drug jokes are amplified just by having a chubby 12-year-old hanging around. Similarly, it's generally not enough for Frank to get into strange predicaments; he's got to wind up in his underwear somehow. It's pretty close to a non-stop stream of crude jokes about middle-aged man-children.
Full review at EFC.
Detention
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2011)
So, have you ever wondered what would happen when the oroborus finished swallowing its own tail (well, besides the choiking at the bleeding out and all)? That is roughly what Detention is, a movie that spends a lot of time referencing other movies built on film references, but even when it's diving down that rabbit hole, it is doing so in the most fast-paced, energeting way possible, with director and co-writer Joseph Kahn always having one more bit of insanity up its sleeve. It's actually pretty amazing that a movie with the potential for being arch and smug that this one has instead manages to stay so energetic.
And, in fact, downright clever: Kahn takes the old quote from David Fincher that kids today don't just watch movies, they download them into their brains, and he isn't afraid to pack either his plot or comedy densely. What starts out as a cheap character tic turns into the throroughly bonkers springboard to the second half of the film, actually tying things together a heck of a lot better than most films that are sold on their intricate, labyrinthine plots.
Of course, it also means that the year I graduated from high school is now officially far enough in the rear-view mirror that you can straight up joke about it being nerdishly retro, as opposed to the usual "things move so fast these days that five minutes ago is passé" stuff. So I may have to dock a few points for demonstrating that I am, in fact, old.
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS
* (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2011 - Tribute to John Dunning & André Link)
I could get into this more, but let's face it - just the very idea of this movie should make everybody involved reconsider, from the writer all the way down to the guy with a media pass who could have seen Helldriver again.
In keeping with the same theme, I crossed the street to the Science Center where was an Indiana Jones Archaeology exhibit which will almost certainly have a stay at the Boston Museum of Science sometime in the next couple of years. And I will, naturally, hit it up again when it does, because there is in fact a whole bunch of neat old stuff in there which will likely be somewhat localized when it moves to other cities, as well as a bunch of extremely cool props from the Indiana Jones movies. I was good and didn't take pictures, but Ark of the Covenent and Shankara Stones right there, if behind glass.
I do kind of hope that when they do move it to other venues, they find ways to perhaps make it less dependent on the handheld device with the video screen and headphones that they have the visitors carrying around. It's a neat piece of tech with a fun-for-the-kids interactive game attached to it, but it also creates this weird scene of everybody, including families, listening to and watching the machine instead of discussing the exhibits with each other. The design of which clips go with which exhibits also created a certain amount of bottleneck at points.
So, that was neat, but took long enough that I wasn't able to stop in the most succinctly and temptingly named restaurant I've ever seen, "Le Steak Frites", where you bring your own wine and ordering consists of answering the question "how would you like your steak?" Maybe tomorrow.
And now, pictures!
King-wei Chu and El Sanatorio director Miguel Gomez.
Gomez was a guy truly excited to be at festivals in general and Fantasia in particular, with a bunch of fun stories to share, such as how he wound up doing some CGI wire-removal by himself when his effects house flaked on him, or how a character not meant to be someone in particular probably was mocking a real person, now that he thinks about it. One thing he mentioned that I've heard before was how in smaller countries like Costa Rica, getting a movie made often means working with the government's arts funding, and they can be pretty averse to funding horror movies - or really, just anything that works as mainstream entertainment first and a moral lesson somewhere lower on the totem pole. The tools get better and cheaper all the time, but we're not quite at the point where independent film can really explode yet.
Detention star Shanley Caswell, a Toronto rapper whose part isn't listed in IMDB, co-writer/director Joseph Kahn, co-writer Mark Palermo
Another fun Q&A session, although I don't know whether to feel like Kahn has the right attitude or is defeatist when talking about how, after this, he doesn't know about making another movie because the hassle isn't quite offset by the joy, and there are so many strings attached. He talks about how he is currently trying to make as many music videos as he can to pay off the money it took to make Detention, which has to be frustrating. Hopefully it will get a theatrical release and pay him enough that continuing to make movies feels worth it.
Also, Mark Palermo has a great deadpan sense of humor, and apparently got in touch with Kahn after being the only critic who like the director's previous movie, Torque. No, that doesn't give me a small amount of hope, not at all...
El Sanatorio
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2011 - Playback in Black: The Next Wave)
Here's how this goes: I tell you that El Sanatorio is a first-person horror movie about a group of young filmmakers who take their cameras inside a haunted building, you groan "what, another?" At this point, I'm expected to say "but this one's different!" And maybe it is; it's Costa Rica's first entry into the horror genre and manages to inject a fair amount of humor into the proceedings. Mostly, though, it's just good.
The haunted building is El Sanatorio Duran, built in 1919 for TB patients, but since used as a prison and an orphanage. Legends have it that the ghosts of orphans and a raped nun haunt the place, among others (it depends on who you ask). The filmmakers are director Luis (Luis Bogartes) and journalist Arturo (Pablo Masis). They recruit a motley crew of others - medium Lulu (Marisa Luisa Garita); techs Papillo (Kabek Gutierrez) and Gaston (Abelardo Vladich); megalomaniac producer Esteban (Olger Gonzalez); musician - and skeptic/atheist! - Kurt (Kurt Dyer); and Mariana (Maria Elena Oreamuno), the researcher that Arturo would like to get closer to. They spend some time learning the lore of the place, but before long, they're in.
That's when the scares start, but no the good times. From the very first scene, cast and crew seem to be having fun with the idea that the characters don't take this activity all that seriously. They snicker during interviews. Luis and Arturo get distracted by the old Nintendo system they find when looking for a tape deck with which to play back the cassettes from an earlier investigation. Arturo is clearly more worried about his crush on Mariana than anything else. Co-writer/director Miguel Alejandro Gomez isn't quite making a comedy, but the high joke density makes what could be the expositional slog portion of the movie entertaining on its own.
Full review at EFC.
Klovn: The Movie (Clown: The Movie)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2011)
After seeing Klovn: The Movie, I find myself both curious about and wary of the TV series it's spun off from. Curious because the movie is damn funny, and if its style of humor is typical of the series, they can get away with some stuff on Danish TV (or it's running on the Danish equivalent of HBO). Wary because I don't know if this sort of crudity would work on a regular basis, and this is potentially a generic sitcom if toned down.
Klovn centers around the adventures of Frank Hvam (Frank Hvam), a decent-enough-seeming fellow with a remarkable ability to screw things up. Somehow, though, he's managed to stumble into a good woman in Mia (Mia Lyhne), but gets a couple pieces of unexpected news at the wedding of Mia's sister: They're going to be watching Mia's nephew Bo (Marcuz Jess Petersen) during the honeymoon, and Mia is herself expecting. Initially, this interferes with Frank's plans to go on a canoeing trip with his friend Casper (Casper Christensen), but he decides to take the boy along to show he has potential as a father. Maybe not the best idea, as Casper is a hedonist who has taken to calling this trip the "tour de pussy".
And, yes, "tour de pussy" is generally indicative of the level of good taste to be found in the movie. Casper, in particular, doesn't seem to believe in restraint of any sort, and the various sex and drug jokes are amplified just by having a chubby 12-year-old hanging around. Similarly, it's generally not enough for Frank to get into strange predicaments; he's got to wind up in his underwear somehow. It's pretty close to a non-stop stream of crude jokes about middle-aged man-children.
Full review at EFC.
Detention
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2011)
So, have you ever wondered what would happen when the oroborus finished swallowing its own tail (well, besides the choiking at the bleeding out and all)? That is roughly what Detention is, a movie that spends a lot of time referencing other movies built on film references, but even when it's diving down that rabbit hole, it is doing so in the most fast-paced, energeting way possible, with director and co-writer Joseph Kahn always having one more bit of insanity up its sleeve. It's actually pretty amazing that a movie with the potential for being arch and smug that this one has instead manages to stay so energetic.
And, in fact, downright clever: Kahn takes the old quote from David Fincher that kids today don't just watch movies, they download them into their brains, and he isn't afraid to pack either his plot or comedy densely. What starts out as a cheap character tic turns into the throroughly bonkers springboard to the second half of the film, actually tying things together a heck of a lot better than most films that are sold on their intricate, labyrinthine plots.
Of course, it also means that the year I graduated from high school is now officially far enough in the rear-view mirror that you can straight up joke about it being nerdishly retro, as opposed to the usual "things move so fast these days that five minutes ago is passé" stuff. So I may have to dock a few points for demonstrating that I am, in fact, old.
Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS
* (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2011 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2011 - Tribute to John Dunning & André Link)
I could get into this more, but let's face it - just the very idea of this movie should make everybody involved reconsider, from the writer all the way down to the guy with a media pass who could have seen Helldriver again.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
Fantasia Day Three: Arch Angels, 200 Pounds Beauty, Dasepo Naughty Girls, The Banquet, The Rug Cop and zzzzzzzzzz..
Updated yesterday's post with Flight of the Living Dead.
Nothing but movies yesterday, and today looks similar. I kind of ran out of gas at around ten o'clock last night, so I dozed off a bit during The Rug Cop and a lot during Hell's Ground. It's a shame, because The Rug Cop was pretty funny. Hell's Ground I didn't quite enjoy so much; it seemed to go on forever even while I was drifting in and out of sleep, and it seemed like every time I woke up, the same kids were still in the car, one was still bleeding, and I had no idea what they were fighting. It probably didn't help that they showed a twenty minute montage of how goofy Pakistani exploitation has been in the past beforehand; I was not in a good spot for having my endurance tested.
If you're in Montreal today, I wouldn't talk you out of 200 Pounds Beauty or Dasepo Naughty Girls, though I might suggest that there's better ways to spend your time than Viva. My plan is Wolfhound, War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On and Spiral.
Arch Angels (Waru Mikearu)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Teen and tween girls in Japan get this, and in America they get Bratz. Something is just not fair.
All you pervs who reached this page by searching for "Japanese Catholic Schoolgirls" may leave now; this almost lighter-than air trifle isn't really for you. The young girls it's made for should get a kick out of it, though - it's a fun, upbeat little fantasy, equal parts Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Nancy Drew.
As with many such tales, it starts with a dead parent, in this case the mother of Fumio Shijo (Juri Ueno). This leads her to her wealthy brother Kazuomi (Yusuke Iseya), whom she didn't know existed before. "The Prince", as she calls him, enrolls her in St. Michael's Academy, a Catholic girls' school on a sort-of remote island (she takes the train over what appears to be a twenty-mile-long bridge every day). The formal students make her feel out of place, but she winds up finding a couple other girls who would rather sneak out to snack on chicken ramen than stay in the stuffy confines of the school all day: Class President Yuzuko Sarashina (Airi Taira) is faking the upper class thing herself, as her parents are new millionaires, while star athlete Kazune Saiki (Megumi Seki) associates it with her hunky tutor Shunsuke (Toshinobu Matsuo), who lets her eat it between bonks on the head while studying. They're hanging around together when a strange explosion gives them superpowers - which could come in useful, what with the recent series of teenaged asian girls from wealthy families being kidnapped.
The superpowers and the kidnappings are basically an excuse to give the movie a big action finale, while the rest is occupied with girl stuff - secret clubs, preparing for a big party/school festival, and Fumio fretting about how she really doesn't seem to fit into her brother's world. There is, of course, a potential suitor for Kazuomi with visions of sending Fumio off to Switzerland, but it's indicative of how good-natured Fumio and the film in general are that she rapidly embraces the idea, wanting to please this potential sister, feeling that she's screwed up her brother's life and that it is wrong for her to expect him to make changes to accommodate her.
Full review at EFC.
200 Pounds Beauty (Minyeo-neun Geoerowo)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
The thing about 200 Pounds Beauty is that there's no satisfying way to end it. The premise (fat girl becomes a beauty through extensive surgery) leads to the film either presenting radical, dangerous cosmetic surgery as a viable course of action, ending in tears, or trying to have things both ways. It's inevitable. So it's a real testament to Kim Ah-jung's performance that we spend the film hoping it will find some way to pull it off.
Ms. Kim plays Kan Han-na, an overweight, unattractive woman who nevertheless has a lovely voice. It serves her well both as a phone-sex operator and as the real singer behind pop tart Ammy (who's pretty and can dance, but can't carry a tune at all). Han-na has a crush on Ammy's manager Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), and he seems to like her... And then Han-na overhears them talking about her. Crushed, she goes to one of her phone-sex regulars, a plastic surgeon, and demands he change everything. He reluctantly agrees, and after a year of surgery and recovery, Han-na re-emerges at half her original weight, with a new face, new boobs, etc. Hearing that Ammy's second album has been delayed (while Sang-jun and Ammy tried to find Han-na), she auditions to be Ammy's replacement under another name. "Jenny" gets the gig, and the guy, but pretending to be someone else creates its own problems.
Kim Ah-jung is the reason to see this movie; she brings the same sort of innocent, kind of dorky charm to Han-na at both sizes, always at least a bit out of step with what people expect from someone who looks like she does. She always hits the right note to get the audience to believe in and like Han-na, whether it's squealing upon having her bandages cut off that she even cries pretty now, telling her doctor that the dangers of the surgery don't matter because she feels like she's already died, appearing genuinely tortured that she has to pretend not to know her senile father or risk exposing her deception, or imitating glamor poses as she walks. She's got great comic chops and a pretty darn good voice for the singing scenes; her face is expressive enough for silent comedy. She never loses sight of the fact that we're supposed to like Han-na, even when she's screwing up or not at her best.
Full review at EFC.
Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Dasepo Naughty Girls is based on an internet comic strip, and it's got that kind of manic energy: It starts out with a whole bunch of quick, raunchy gags that aren't much more than crude but don't really need to be. By the end, though, it's started to pull its punches a little, and stitched together more story than it really needs.
"No Use High" is a multi-religious high school whose students probably have names, but we don't hear them much. Poverty Girl (Kim Ok-bin) carries her poverty around on her back, and her attempts to sell her virtue for money tend to go bizarrely awry. She's got a huge crush on Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), who meanwhile has fallen hard for Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong), the beautiful sister of outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon). Only issue: She's actually a boy. Meanwhile, Anthony's friends are launching an investigation into why Class Monitor Girl (Park Hye-won) and Student Vice President Girl (Nam Oh-jeong) are suddenly more interested in studying and getting into college than putting out after trips to the principal's office.
Dasepo has a lot of the same feel as American Pie in how it's superficially very crude while at the same time celebrating its characters' youthful innocence. Sure, the movie opens with a bit where a substitute announces that their English teacher won't be coming in because he's being treated for syphilis. Oh, and Class Monitor Girl, you should get checked to. Which leads to another student saying he has to leave class early to visit the doctor. And then another, and so on until poor Cyclops is sitting there all alone. As much as the movie makes jokes about casual promiscuity, it doesn't go in much for actual titillation: The scene where Poverty Girl becomes an internet sensation is almost ridiculous in its tameness - it feels like more than it is because it's one of the only times we see her not weighed down by her mother's financial problems and ill health.
Full review on EFC.
The Banquet (Ye Yan)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Even in an age where period martial-arts epics have been made by the likes of Ang Lee, Kaige Chen, and Zhang Yimou, The Banquet stands out as high-gloss. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they've built the largest set ever used for a Chinese film. Executive producer Yuen Woo-ping handles fight choreography, and there are five featured soloists and singers on Tan Dun's score. Director Feng Xiaogang is going all out.
Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly tubulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship.
And it's a good one. Although it borders on sacrelige to suggest that Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular can be improved upon, there aren't many changes I'd want taken back. Wu Luan's fascination with actors and acrobats is now an integral part of his character - he has chosen to spend his time studying the arts, and it's made some think he is not cut out to be Emperor. Qing (Xun Zhou), the Ophelia character, is just as hopelessly linked to the prince, but it feels more like true love, at least from her end; she's strong and noble enough to do more than drown heartbroken offstage. Oddly, she's a stronger character in part because instead of feeling like she's there as an obligatory love interest until her death motivates Laertes, there's a little more depth to her relationship with Wu Luan because of Wan's presense.
Full review at EFC.
The Rug Cop (Zura Deka)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)
This would be a kick-ass pilot for a TV series, and nails the 70s/80s cop show clichés it spoofs with frequent hilarity. I may have to try and get a screener so I can see the whole thing and post a full review.
Nothing but movies yesterday, and today looks similar. I kind of ran out of gas at around ten o'clock last night, so I dozed off a bit during The Rug Cop and a lot during Hell's Ground. It's a shame, because The Rug Cop was pretty funny. Hell's Ground I didn't quite enjoy so much; it seemed to go on forever even while I was drifting in and out of sleep, and it seemed like every time I woke up, the same kids were still in the car, one was still bleeding, and I had no idea what they were fighting. It probably didn't help that they showed a twenty minute montage of how goofy Pakistani exploitation has been in the past beforehand; I was not in a good spot for having my endurance tested.
If you're in Montreal today, I wouldn't talk you out of 200 Pounds Beauty or Dasepo Naughty Girls, though I might suggest that there's better ways to spend your time than Viva. My plan is Wolfhound, War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On and Spiral.
Arch Angels (Waru Mikearu)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Teen and tween girls in Japan get this, and in America they get Bratz. Something is just not fair.
All you pervs who reached this page by searching for "Japanese Catholic Schoolgirls" may leave now; this almost lighter-than air trifle isn't really for you. The young girls it's made for should get a kick out of it, though - it's a fun, upbeat little fantasy, equal parts Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Nancy Drew.
As with many such tales, it starts with a dead parent, in this case the mother of Fumio Shijo (Juri Ueno). This leads her to her wealthy brother Kazuomi (Yusuke Iseya), whom she didn't know existed before. "The Prince", as she calls him, enrolls her in St. Michael's Academy, a Catholic girls' school on a sort-of remote island (she takes the train over what appears to be a twenty-mile-long bridge every day). The formal students make her feel out of place, but she winds up finding a couple other girls who would rather sneak out to snack on chicken ramen than stay in the stuffy confines of the school all day: Class President Yuzuko Sarashina (Airi Taira) is faking the upper class thing herself, as her parents are new millionaires, while star athlete Kazune Saiki (Megumi Seki) associates it with her hunky tutor Shunsuke (Toshinobu Matsuo), who lets her eat it between bonks on the head while studying. They're hanging around together when a strange explosion gives them superpowers - which could come in useful, what with the recent series of teenaged asian girls from wealthy families being kidnapped.
The superpowers and the kidnappings are basically an excuse to give the movie a big action finale, while the rest is occupied with girl stuff - secret clubs, preparing for a big party/school festival, and Fumio fretting about how she really doesn't seem to fit into her brother's world. There is, of course, a potential suitor for Kazuomi with visions of sending Fumio off to Switzerland, but it's indicative of how good-natured Fumio and the film in general are that she rapidly embraces the idea, wanting to please this potential sister, feeling that she's screwed up her brother's life and that it is wrong for her to expect him to make changes to accommodate her.
Full review at EFC.
200 Pounds Beauty (Minyeo-neun Geoerowo)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
The thing about 200 Pounds Beauty is that there's no satisfying way to end it. The premise (fat girl becomes a beauty through extensive surgery) leads to the film either presenting radical, dangerous cosmetic surgery as a viable course of action, ending in tears, or trying to have things both ways. It's inevitable. So it's a real testament to Kim Ah-jung's performance that we spend the film hoping it will find some way to pull it off.
Ms. Kim plays Kan Han-na, an overweight, unattractive woman who nevertheless has a lovely voice. It serves her well both as a phone-sex operator and as the real singer behind pop tart Ammy (who's pretty and can dance, but can't carry a tune at all). Han-na has a crush on Ammy's manager Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), and he seems to like her... And then Han-na overhears them talking about her. Crushed, she goes to one of her phone-sex regulars, a plastic surgeon, and demands he change everything. He reluctantly agrees, and after a year of surgery and recovery, Han-na re-emerges at half her original weight, with a new face, new boobs, etc. Hearing that Ammy's second album has been delayed (while Sang-jun and Ammy tried to find Han-na), she auditions to be Ammy's replacement under another name. "Jenny" gets the gig, and the guy, but pretending to be someone else creates its own problems.
Kim Ah-jung is the reason to see this movie; she brings the same sort of innocent, kind of dorky charm to Han-na at both sizes, always at least a bit out of step with what people expect from someone who looks like she does. She always hits the right note to get the audience to believe in and like Han-na, whether it's squealing upon having her bandages cut off that she even cries pretty now, telling her doctor that the dangers of the surgery don't matter because she feels like she's already died, appearing genuinely tortured that she has to pretend not to know her senile father or risk exposing her deception, or imitating glamor poses as she walks. She's got great comic chops and a pretty darn good voice for the singing scenes; her face is expressive enough for silent comedy. She never loses sight of the fact that we're supposed to like Han-na, even when she's screwing up or not at her best.
Full review at EFC.
Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Dasepo Naughty Girls is based on an internet comic strip, and it's got that kind of manic energy: It starts out with a whole bunch of quick, raunchy gags that aren't much more than crude but don't really need to be. By the end, though, it's started to pull its punches a little, and stitched together more story than it really needs.
"No Use High" is a multi-religious high school whose students probably have names, but we don't hear them much. Poverty Girl (Kim Ok-bin) carries her poverty around on her back, and her attempts to sell her virtue for money tend to go bizarrely awry. She's got a huge crush on Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), who meanwhile has fallen hard for Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong), the beautiful sister of outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon). Only issue: She's actually a boy. Meanwhile, Anthony's friends are launching an investigation into why Class Monitor Girl (Park Hye-won) and Student Vice President Girl (Nam Oh-jeong) are suddenly more interested in studying and getting into college than putting out after trips to the principal's office.
Dasepo has a lot of the same feel as American Pie in how it's superficially very crude while at the same time celebrating its characters' youthful innocence. Sure, the movie opens with a bit where a substitute announces that their English teacher won't be coming in because he's being treated for syphilis. Oh, and Class Monitor Girl, you should get checked to. Which leads to another student saying he has to leave class early to visit the doctor. And then another, and so on until poor Cyclops is sitting there all alone. As much as the movie makes jokes about casual promiscuity, it doesn't go in much for actual titillation: The scene where Poverty Girl becomes an internet sensation is almost ridiculous in its tameness - it feels like more than it is because it's one of the only times we see her not weighed down by her mother's financial problems and ill health.
Full review on EFC.
The Banquet (Ye Yan)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)
Even in an age where period martial-arts epics have been made by the likes of Ang Lee, Kaige Chen, and Zhang Yimou, The Banquet stands out as high-gloss. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they've built the largest set ever used for a Chinese film. Executive producer Yuen Woo-ping handles fight choreography, and there are five featured soloists and singers on Tan Dun's score. Director Feng Xiaogang is going all out.
Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly tubulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship.
And it's a good one. Although it borders on sacrelige to suggest that Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular can be improved upon, there aren't many changes I'd want taken back. Wu Luan's fascination with actors and acrobats is now an integral part of his character - he has chosen to spend his time studying the arts, and it's made some think he is not cut out to be Emperor. Qing (Xun Zhou), the Ophelia character, is just as hopelessly linked to the prince, but it feels more like true love, at least from her end; she's strong and noble enough to do more than drown heartbroken offstage. Oddly, she's a stronger character in part because instead of feeling like she's there as an obligatory love interest until her death motivates Laertes, there's a little more depth to her relationship with Wu Luan because of Wan's presense.
Full review at EFC.
The Rug Cop (Zura Deka)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)
This would be a kick-ass pilot for a TV series, and nails the 70s/80s cop show clichés it spoofs with frequent hilarity. I may have to try and get a screener so I can see the whole thing and post a full review.
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