3-D Rarities Volume II, including El corazón y la espada

Another bit of "let's not even let new stuff make it onto the shelf as the pre-order gets delivered a bit late, but it's no big deal. You are probably not buying this particular Blu-ray unless you already have a ton of stuff on the shelf that you can enjoy.

A part of me is a little curious about the format and contents of this disc, although I wonder if it's just a matter of what the 3-D Film Archive can do with its distributors. They and 3-D SPACE crowdfunded a restoration of El corazón y la espada last year, but I suspect that this Mexican adventure film might be a little too niche for either Kino or Flicker Alley, although a "rarities" disc with it and a couple other bits of content that didn't particularly make a lot of sense as special features on other discs might be better branding. Meanwhile, it seems like the didn't quite accumulate enough content for a second rarities disc without a feature (my review of Volume 1 from back in 2017 notes that a second disc was planned for 2018 at the time, but it came out in 2020 and there's only a few short films on it, all strung together, with 3D photo collections that are presented as slideshows with narration rather than as galleries as was the case on The Bubble, one of them part of the big compendium of shorts and one on its own. It's not the most straightforward way to do it.

The fun thing about the photos was how much the Kodak "Stereo-Realist" camera used to take most of them looks like the RETO camera I got from a different crowdfunding campaign which I've been playing with for the past few months:



Though I haven't been back to Hunt's to pick up the two or three rolls of film I shot in New Zealand, so I can't speak for those, I'm intensely jealous of the results shown. Part of it is just that the process - the Kodak camera these people (including silent film star Harold Lloyd) used was generally built for slide film and developed to slides, while I'm using regular film and having the lab scan it, then screwing around with software to put them together despite the RETO camera taking vertical photos while every viewing device I've got (aside from maybe making a wigglegram meant to be viewed on phones) is horizontal, meaning I lose resolution. They're also using Kodachrome film, which helps a lot.

The slide shows are kind of neat, but the narration is odd, and I imagine it would drive me nuts on the second or third time through, like when you're going through a museum and there's no way to turn the audio guide off. Also, Mr. Lloyd's granddaughter seemed a tiny bit uncomfortable talking about his fondness for photographing naked ladies (though I seem to remember there were many more pictures like that in the collection of 3D photos included with the box set New Line released.

It's still a very fun set for those of us that dig the format. I may wind up turning the sound off for some parts or wish there were a bit more of a direct path to the best bits the next time I put it on, but I still enjoyed seeing these oddities.

"A Day in the Country" (aka "Stereo Laffs")

* * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

Speaking of narration that fills every second and leads as much to cringe as actual laughs, let's talk about - or, at least, quickly and regretfully acknowledge - Joe Besser talking all over "A Day in the Country". I don't know whether it was shot silently with the idea of adding narration, the soundtrack was degraded in the ten years it took for the thing to get released after being shot, or if filmmaker Jack Rieger just looked at the footage and decided it needed a little something more because it was just a bunch of shots without a strong story (and both editing and reshooting would be tricky). However it got to this point, the result is not great.

It does come across as something of a weird beast, though, because the subject matter as well as the staging feels a lot like a 1910s/1920s silent short, although still somewhat off - it's like Rieger is trying to capture the sort of goofy comic pastoral Lloyd or Keaton might have made but isn't quite getting the impersonation right, and the camera angles used to enhance the 3D effect as well as the things thrown at the camera break the illusion. That they often hit the camera and send the picture to black feels a bit like a growing pain that other 3D filmmakers learned from - the flinch as something zips past works better than the head-on collision.

For an half-experimental short film at a time when this just wasn't something filmmakers and theaters were working with on a regular basis, a lot of the work is impressive, and there are some funny gags in it. Find a way to do it without the voiceover, and maybe it's more than an interesting curiosity, both at the time and years later.

"The Black Swan" '52

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

The previews for various opera, ballet, and stage presentations in movie theaters seldom show 3D shows any more, and that feels like a real missed opportunity. Dance is a natural for the medium with how it uses three-dimensional space, and two of the more interesting 3D movies to come out during the current wave, Pina and Cunningham, were dance documentaries. It's no surprise, then, that "The Black Swan" is probably the most impressive thing on the disc, feeling very much like the spiritual ancestor to Cunningham, taken off a stage that needs to be built for an audience and into a somewhat more complex environment that that a camera can move around in it. It's still not realistic, but it's not quite stagebound.

The music and dancing are quite good to my decidedly inexpert eyes, although at 13 minutes it feels like something of a long short. I suspect that, to a certain extent, the way stereoscopic advisor Raymond Spottiswoode frames the shoot contributes to that - though the effect of a window seemingly floating in front of the screen is undoubtedly nifty and apparently erases flat bits at the edges, it tends to encourage one to lean forward and strain even when one doesn't need to. That is something common with a lot of 3D formats, which don't quite work as well as they should until one learns to relax while focusing.

"Games in Depth"

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

The liner notes indicate that this was apparently created for Expo 1967 before being replaced with something else, which seems like a good call - it's a random-seeming montage of various play-related scenes melded with an often atonal soundtrack, but it never becomes hypnotic in the way this sort of installation can. There are nifty moments - shots of a high-school football game briefly give an idea of how 3D can be used in a sportscast - but by the time this was shot, its 3D effects weren't spectacular, and the imagery and music doesn't seem like something that will make people stop, put on glasses, and watch an entire loop as they walk through the American pavilion.

Prologue to La marca del Hombre Lobo

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

It's listed as a "prologue" but feels more like a pitch reel; I'd need to see the actual movie (either the original Spanish La marca del Hombre Lobo or the American Frankenstein's Bloody Terror) to have some idea of how it actually works at its intended function. You can at least get a sense of how this thing would have looked, enough that I'd be interested if the film itself were part of "3-D Rarities Volume III".

Preview for The 3-D Movie

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

Okay, I guess. The film, which never got made, would apparently have been a bunch of 3-D footage from various other films stitched together as a sort of documentary, and this is definitely a trailer for that. It's got that slow, early-1980s trailer feel where it goes on a bit too long,nothing ever seems the right length, and the voiceover sounds like it's over-promising but in actuality is just saying what you can see in front of you.

El corazón y la espada (Sword of Granada)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 April 2020 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 3D Blu-ray)

El corazón y la espada (aka Sword of Granada) is the first 3-D film to be produced in Mexico and there's no missing that the third dimension was near the fore of everybody's mind as they made it; the new restoration by the 3-D Film Archive highlights every way in which someone making such a movie can push into and out of the screen. There's no other single piece of it showing the same sort of ambition, but despite that, it's a surprisingly entertaining film. This film knows what it is and has all of its parts pulling in the same direction.

As it opens, Pedro (Cesar Romero) and Ponce (Tito Junco) are sneaking across a Moor-occupied castle's courtyard, aiming to kill the Khalifa within (Fernando Casanova) and bring forth a revolution. They, it turns out, are not the only ones with that idea - they run into swordswoman Lolita (Katy Jurado) in the chambers of a captured priest (Miguel Ángel Ferriz). Aside from the Khalifa, the castle is rumored to contain a rose that confers eternal life and an alchemist who knows how to transmute base elements into gold - but though Pedro has a map to the various secret passages that litter the castle, every path seems to lead through the chambers of Princesa Esme (Rebeca Iturbide).

Secret passages are the sort of adventure-story trope that lies precariously balanced between being tremendously fun and being a tacky cliché - it's kind of like quicksand or swinging on ropes and vines that way - and this film is so full of hidden doors and tunnels and secret spaces behind walls that it's almost impossible for it not to be overkill. And while there are certainly times when the amount of sneaking around stone passageways that seem a bit too well-illuminated seems like it would be overkill, that never quite happens. The filmmakers build fake-stone sets that look like the platonic ideal of hidden staircases, and they turn out to be fun things to shoot and project in stereo - it creates a box for the characters to occupy behind the screen, staircases lead up and back, and tight spaces are suggested by foreground pieces that are clearly not in the same plane. It's never busy enough that it wouldn't work in 2-D, and the crisp black-and-white photography looks very nice even as it highlights that this is obviously a film set.

It creates an atmosphere of larger-than-life, admittedly simplified legends, and though there are plenty of moments when the filmmakers are more than a bit heavy-handed in creating a sanitized fifteenth century suitable to an audience of all ages in the 1950s, they're pretty good at setting things up so that's the path of least resistance rather than something that's ever jarring. They mostly do a good job in having enough action going on that the pace never particularly flags even when the raiders are captured and Esme is figuring out where she stands. The sword-fighting will likely not make anybody's list of the most technically-proficient and well-choreographed screen duels - there's a lot of swinging wildly at two guards at a time - but it's energetic and makes good use of the three-dimensional stage (even if the attempt to have blades push out of the screen shows you really shouldn't shoot that sort of thing head-on).

The cast is willing to throw themselves into this with enthusiasm as well, and it's a fairly impressive group. Star Cesar Romero was imported from America and seems right at home as the confident aristocrat, blustery but charming and comfortably occupying the center of the movie without anyone else appearing slighted. Co-star Katy Jurado would also crossover to some Hollywood success and has probably played a lot of roles like Lolita - firey and not afraid to make the likes of Don Pedro come to her - but she can make that familiarity funny without making it a joke. The writers seem to do the least amount possible to make their inevitable pairing-off happen, but the two of them know how to turn on the charm to the point where they sell it. They've got a brace of good character actors behind them, with everyone knowing their job - Miguel Ángel Ferriz's priest is the wise advisor, Victor Alcocer's Khalifa is cruel but not quite scary, Rebeca Iturbide's princess is ignorant but basically good - and making sure they entertain rather than just fill slots.

It doesn't exactly make for a classic - it's not entirely unjust that this movie fell into obscurity and was restored for a "3-D Rarities" disc rather than something with a broader audience. It's still a trim, entertaining swashbuckler even in two dimensions, worth stumbling upon even for those who can't view it as intended.

Also on EFilmCritic

Fantasia 2010 Catch-up 02: Mutant Girls Squad, A Frozen Flower, I Spit on Your Grave, At World's End, The Revenant

Fantasia 2010 Catch-up 02: Mutant Girls Squad, A Frozen Flower, I Spit on Your Grave (2010), At World's End, The Revenant

A month after Fantasia ends, and I'm still trying to catch up writing the reviews of films I saw there. Makes you jealous, doesn't it? If so, you can at least have a mini-Fantasia experience this weekend with three films from this year's festival opening at least semi-wide: Centurion, Mesrine: Killer Instinct, and The Last Exorcism. The last is the only truly wide release, but the first two are likely showing up if you're in a fair-sized city.

Here are some exciting "filmmakers waiting to take questions pictures:

From the I Spit on Your Grave '10 screening, left to right: Programmer Mitch Davis, director Steven R. Monroe, Star Sarah Butler, original version writer/director Meir Zarachi, producer Lisa Hansen


From the At World's End screening, a couple with Mitch Davis and director Tomas Villum Jensen (very funny guy):




From the screening of The Revenant, writer/director Kerry Prior:


Anyway, here are the reviews of Fantasia films that I've posted to eFilmCritic in the past week or so; you can see them as they go up by either following their RSS feed, their Twitter feed, or my own tweets.

Sentô shôjo: Chi no tekkamen densetsu (Mutant Girls Squad)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Even more than most over-the-top Japanese movies of its ilk, Mutant Girls Squad exists in large part due to alcohol and the west: While of the time, one just suspects that the filmmakers had to be plastered to come up with this stuff and that the end result actually sells more to Americans looking crazy Asian imports than in its native land, that's pretty much the actual genesis for this project: The directors and producer went out drinking when they visited the New York Asian Film Festival as guests, and decided that they should do a movie together for the next festival. The funny thing is, it's allowed them to play to their strengths and make what is in fact a pretty good movie, as gory action-comedies go.

We start with Rin (Yumi Sugimoto), a pretty schoolgirl who, as her 16th birthday is approaching, starts to feel a pain in her arm. What she doesn't realize is that she, like her father (Kanji Tsuda), is a mutant, with her particular power a hand that becomes a razor-sharp claw. She has trouble controlling it at first, which leads to an incident or two and the government's anti-mutant squad hunting her down. But, there's an underground society of mutants, led by Kisaragi (Tak Sakaguchi). They take her in, have Rei (Yuko Takayama) teach her to control her power, and have "cosplay nurse" Yoshie (Suzuka Morita) look after her until she's ready to take part in the glorious war against the human race. The thing is, Rin kind of likes humans.

Directors Tak Sakaguchi, Noboru Iguchi, and Yoshihiro Nishimura each tackle a third of the movie, in that order, but each has his fingerprints on his colleagues' segments: Sakaguchi handles the action choroegraphy for the whole film, Nishimura covers all of the prosthetics and gore effects, while Iguchi is the credited writer. If you want to make the observation Iguchi seem to get off rather lightly, I won't necessarily disagree. I will say that he and co-writer Jun Tsugita turn in a screenplay that is surprisingly coherent and makes the three main mutant girls sympathetic and motivated without it feeling too ham-fisted. It's not something that transcends its genre and the section that Iguchi directs is, like a lot of his work, unusually obsessed with pretty young girls with mechanical parts, but it gets the job done.

That job is primarily to give the directors insane things to shoot, and, wow, is the film chock-full of them. Nishimura concocts strange and impractal but also pretty cool armor for the government, absolutely bizarre mutations for the (mostly) girls, and when it comes time for the characters to throw down, does a good job of making sure that there are plenty of severed limbs, fake blood, and other mayhem to gross us out. Sakaguchi makes the fights fun to watch, fast paced and not overwhelmed with CGI. He's pretty good at handling the strangeness that his compatriots throw at him, figuring out how to make the mutations work as opposed to finding them something to just shove aside. That's good, because with this trio in charge, the movie is inevitably going to have action scenes where schoolgirls sprout tentacles for arms, swords out of their breasts, and chainsaw blades from their butts.

It's where these guys' movies intersect, and as a result, the movie doesn't actually feel disjointed or gimmicky. The directors have worked together before, and it's clear that they all love this sort of material; though the movie is funny and over the top, it's honest camp, filmmakers making the best splatstick movie they can without mocking the genre. The cast buys into it, for the most part, playing big but mostly stopping short of mugging for the camera. Yumi Sugimoto is a likable lead and a capable enough performer in the action sequences. Suzuka Morita and Yuko Takayama do well enough as her good and bad angels, and Sakaguchi is amusingly nuts as the transvestite mutant villain.

Mutant Girls Squad is exactly the movie you'd expect three "extreme cinema" guys from Japan to make after seeing Americans eat the likes of Tokyo Gore Police, Be a Man! Samurai School, and Vampire Girl Versus Frankenstein Girl up. The good news is, it comes together much better than patchwork movies usually do, with all three filmmakers able to do do what they do best.

Full review at EFC.

Ssang-hwa-jeom (A Frozen Flower)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

How things change; before The King and the Clown, which was very careful about what it showed of its title characters' relationship, I don't think you ever saw gay characters in Korean cinema, and Park Chan-wook's Thirst wound up with relative unknown Kim Ok-bin landing the female lead because more established actresses wouldn't get near the nudity and sex the part demanded. Just a couple years later, both of those seem to be relative non-issues for A Frozen Flower, which puts a Goryeo king and one of his guards in the same bed with no doubt what's going on, and has a few eyebrow-raising scenes involving the queen, as well.

Toward the end of the Goryeo era, the King (Ju Jin-mo) creates the Kunryongwe, a group who enter the palace's service as children, with the palace as their home and family, and one boy, Hong-lim, catches the King's attention with his dedication and skill. Ten or fifteen years later, the adult Hong-lim (Jo In-seong) is now the captain of the guards as well as the King's lover. This presents a problem, politically; though the King is Korean, he must defer to the Yuan emperor, and has married a Yuan princess as part of that alliance. But since women do nothing for the King, not even his beautiful and loyal Queen (Song Ji-hyo), he has no heir, and is thus vulnerable. So, the Queen must conceive, and Hong-rim is the only man the King will trust with the job. But once you put two people in the same bed, things are bound to get complicated.

A Frozen Flower does a remarkably good job of balancing its erotic thriller and palace intrigue sides; even though those have always been two sides of the same coin. Writer/director Yu Ha does a good job of showing us the situation in the kingdom so that we may admire the King's strength as a leader even as we mayt start to harbor doubts about how he handles his personal life. At the same time, he makes sure that the King, Queen, and Hong-lim are interesting individuals so that the needs of the kingdom don't overwhelm what affection we develop for the characters. The triangle he sets up is interesting, not just for the homosexual nature of one of its legs, but for how we perhaps don't initially realize quite how unevenly the power is distributed in practice as well as in theory, so that by the end we have to wonder whether it was that way from the start - although Yu manages to make it much more ambiguous than he otherwise might have. He's also good at cranking up the heat in both senses of the term - the tension is thick as relationships disintegrate into mistrust and plotters tighten their nooses, and the sex scenes are equally exciting, not just for being titillating (if a studio released it in the U.S., it would be a very hard R), but for being in turns blissful, awkward, and passionate enough to leave an impression for when we see the characters later.

The cast is top-notch. Jo In-seong starts Hong-lim off as charming but a little insubstantial, gradually building him until his passion is what drives the movie. He is able to work well with both his other leading man and his leading lady, enough that the audience can not reduce the film's conflicts to just his sexual orientation. Ju Jin-mo is charismatic as the King, a strong and forceful personality able to make the audience keenly aware of his position without coming off as pompous or likely to be underestimated. And Song Ji-hyo is quite good as the Queen, both regal and able to convince the audience of her loneliness and humanity.

It's a pretty good movie, sexy and suspenseful, beautifully realized. My only real issue with it was that it may have been a little too funny at times: The scenes where Hong-lim is trying to impregnate the Queen while the King is in the next room, with literally paper-thin walls between them, got a lot of laughs, and I'm not quite sure how appropriate a response that was. It could have been played as uncomfortable-tense, as opposed to uncomfortable-funny. Similarly, the last scene is broadly sentimental in a way that the rest of the film pointedly is not, and although it's grown on me a bit, it's a bit much in the moment.

One thing that I would like to praise that may get overlooked amidst the sex and the intrigue is how great the action in this movie is. There are only two or three big action moments, but they are explosive - the first from how unexpected it is, and the one at the end for the sheer fury demonstrated, and how each swing of the sword and bit of destruction seems to have meaning. This is not just a person angry and looking for revenge, but an attempt to tear down everything that had once meant something, as much a bitter recrimination as a rousing finale.

It's an exclamation point on the story, and a fitting one. A Frozen Flower could have been just a costume drama where the costumes frequently come off, but instead plays as both an intriguing thriller and a surprisingly strong romance.

Full review at EFC.

I Spit on Your Grave

* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

I can't comment on the original version of this movie (which was properly titled Day of the Woman), as I haven't seen it; if this new version is toned down, as many horror remakes tend to be, I think I would rather not. This one is rough and brutal, to the point where Anchor Bay feels that it can't be cut down to an R rating for its planned October theatrical release, and they're probably right about that. The filmmakers are right not to pull their punches, although this version may not be quite so bitter a pill as they'd hoped and planned.

Jennifer (Sarah Butler), a young writer, has rented a small cabin on a lake in Louisiana, where she hopes to work on a novel in peace. Anything resembling that peace will be shattered after a few nights, when some of the local boys - Johnny (Jeff Branson) from the gas station, his buddy Andy (Rodney Eastman), camcorder-toting Stanley (Daniel Franzese), and slow handyman Matthew (Chad Lindberg) - fueled by liquor and perceived slights, knock down her door and attack her. She runs, finding the Sheriff (Andrew Howard) hunting in the woods, only to have him join in. They chase her into the woods; cornered, she drops from a bridge into a river. The rapists figure their tracks should now be easy to cover, especially once they find the body. But...

About half of the movie is quite excellenly made, if unpleasant. It takes some time to set the stage; director Steven R. Monroe at times risks boring the audience with details of ordinary life whose secondary purposes are a little too clear (Jennifer's workout clothes which shouldn't be seen as a provocation; the abandoned shed, etc.). It's supposed to numb the audience, though, so that when Johnny and company arrive at Jennifer's cabin, the audience is that much more ready to be jolted. And the rape scene is absolutely horrific; even though most of the audience is probably well aware of what they bought a ticket for, they're really not. It's violent and frightening and just will not cut away until the audience really understands that the oft-repeated axiom that rape is not about sex but power is dead on.

The cast acts the hell out of it, although the most impressive scene here may not be the crime itself, but the one leading up to it. Jeff Branson in particular does a great job of moving his character from kind of unpleasant to monstrous without a seam; even though there is a clear inciting point, it's a smooth transition. The same goes for the rest of the group; they make the attack feel like a feeding frenzy, their characters unable to resist the smell of blood in the water, but not because a switch has been flipped or a veil cast aside; these men have pushed each other past the level of what society allows as we watched. It contrasts very well with what Sarah Butler does, going from certain and falsely confident to helpless.

And then we come to the movie's second half, where it sometimes feels like Monroe and screenwriter Stuart Morse are trying to play both sides of the street. It's structured in a way that feels familiar, with gory and fitting punishments being doled out, but with the rush of satisfaction we usually get from a revenge thriller drained out of them. Which, I believe, is part of the point - Monroe and writer Stuart Morse are looking to deconstruct and deglamorize both rape and revenge fantasies. It's a fine line to walk, and I don't know if they always manage it - some bits are so elaborate and cartoonishly suited to their targets as to run counter to the brutal realism, and we don't quite get into Jennifer's head enough to see why she would take this route. And that's really too bad, because the best moments in this section - the ones where there is not just real suspense but where Butler potentially has a chance to do something special - are the ones where we're directly confronting the question of just how far gone and messed up she is. Those moments should be what everything else is leading to, but instead, the film cuts to another gruesome horror set-up.

And those set-ups often work; many will watch them and feel that Monroe has taken scenes that might play for cheers and even laughs in other movies and made them uncomfortable again. It won't work that way for everybody; some will find no difference between this I Spit on Your Grave and the exploitation films it means to invert. A little more emphasis on what's going through the character's head as opposed to just what she's doing could have made a world of difference.

Full review at EFC.

Ved Verdens Ende (At World's End)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

It's a little bit amazing, when you come to think of it, how quirky action/adventure films made outside the Hollywood system can be. Maybe it's just because I am used to the conservative thinking that is typical here in America, but I tend to think these unusually expensive pictures with many different groups involved in financing and production would play it safe. And maybe that's usually the case, and those films just don't get exported. Still, I have a bit of trouble imagining At World's End coming from a Hollywood studio; as much as it's a big, exciting adventure with the expected dash of romance, it's also more than a little eccentric.

For instance, Adrian Gabrielsen (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) isn't the typical action hero; he's a psychologist working for the Danish government. He lives in the shadow of his well-respected father (Ulf Pilgaard) and cancer-stricken mother (Birthe Neumann), and has just been given a truly bizarre assignment: Fly to Jakarta and evaluate Severin Geertsen (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) to determine if he is competent to stand trial for killing the crew of a British nature program in the movie's opening. At first glance, there seems to be no doubt that Geertsen is a loon; he claims to be 129 years old, well-preserved by eating the petals of an unusual plant he calls "Hedwig". The thing is, someone seems to believe him, which leads to Adrian being arrested for murder himself, escaping from jail with Geertsen, and the pair fleeing across the island with Adrian's secretary Beate (Brigitte Hjort Sørensen), trying to get to where Geertsen has hidden Hedwig and escape to Sri Lanka.

Even if At World's End had a more conventional action-comedy story, it would still have an unusual cast. Aside form Adrian's less-than-glamorous job, he's fussy and rather lacking in conventional charm. He's more than just a bit of a nerd or a nebbish; the thoroughly unconvincing way that he claims to have quit smoking goes beyond embarrassing to downright pathetic. It's impressive how likable Kaas makes this wimpy character, in large part by making him hilarious as a victim of circumstance who captures just how most of us would probably react in these sorts of unlikely situations. Meanwhile, even if Geertsen turns out not to be delusional, he's still kind of nuts. Coster-Waldau plays him as brave, charismatic, and assured, but also kind of psychotic from being out of touch with human society for a while. There's a hilarious bit at the end of an action scene where Adrian asks Severin why he did something terribly violent; Geertsen pauses, says he doesn't know, and then enthusiastically claps his new friend on the back like everything's okay. The pair make for a very amusing role-reversal, with the handsome Coster-Waldau in the supporting role and Kaas's sidekick-looking guy the star.

The real standout, though, may just be Brigitte Hjort Sørensen as Beate, the secretary who comes across as an unusually capable and charming ditz. She tromps through the jungle in a ridiculous dress, says overly-truthful and shallow things, but is also pointedly not stupid; she not only supplies Adrian with common sense, but often takes the initiative in getting them out of a sticky situation. Sørensen gives an immensely winning performance, letting us see that Beate has a bit of a crush on Adrian without having her make eyes or get flustered or give any of the other standard, obvious signals. She's gifted with great comic timing, and does is just generally fun to watch.

Anders Thomas Jensen's script is as funny as the cast. The movie opens with a sharp bit of black comedy, skewering nature shows by showing us both how we suspect they are behind the scenes and how we'd like some to end, and continues to up jokes both light and dark even as the adventure story picks up speed. He does a good job of supplying director Tomas Villum Jensen with enough comedy and action beats that those coming for either will feel satisfied. He also does well in not allowing the fantastical elements to take complete control of the movie without making them seem commonplace.

Director Tomas Villum Jensen (no relation to the writer, although they and Nikolaj Lie Kaas have frequently worked together in various capacities) takes all that and makes a handsome, exciting movie. Though not often afforded the chance to shoot big adventure movies in Denmark as either and actor or director, Jensen is up to the challenge of shooting an action-comedy on three continents (Australia frequently doubles for the Indonesian jungle), doing action well but keeping the movie a satiric comedy first and foremost, while also taking time to occasionally stop and just let the audience (and characters) enjoy the view. The only place where the Jensens ever really stumble is in the end, when they try to add a certain amount of pathos to the mix; it's a bit of a drag on a movie that had been pretty bouncy, even if occasionally dark.

Lots of adventures try to get serious in the end, though, and few of them can boast that they've done as well as a comedy, romance, and thrill ride beforehand. At World's End is decidedly offbeat, but also successfully so, a fun adventure all the better for its frequent odd choices.

Full review at EFC.

The Revenant)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

The Revenant is nearly two hours, long for a splatter-comedy, and if I could come up with a good suggestion for trimming it, I would probably offer it. The trouble is, the scenes which could probably survive a little tightening-up - the ones that are mostly David Anders and Chris Wylde talking - actually have a really nice rhythm to them. If the movie was mostly that, it would be a real low-budget delight.

Good news: Bart (David Anders) is finally home from Iraq. Bad news: He returned to Los Angeles in a pine box. Good news: He's able to climb out of his coffin and meet up with his best buddy Joey (Chris Wylde). Bad news: He's got no appetite for anything but human blood. Good news: There are a bunch of creeps in the bad parts of town that are probably most useful as revenant food. Bad news: The LAPD doesn't take kindly to vigilantes. And Bart hasn't told his girlfriend Janet (Louise Griffiths) that he's sort of alive, even though her friend Mathilda (Jacy King) is noticing something is amiss. That's small stuff, though; other than that, it's all upside.

When the movie focuses on Bart and Joey just hanging out, trying to make sense of Bart's undead state, it's a lot of fun. Anders and Wylde have great chemistry together, and they make Bart and Joey the sort of slackers that we can absolutely buy as being surprised by what's going on but also just sort of rolling with it. They play off of each other very well, working their banter around physical and gross-out comedy without skipping a beat. And as much as we meet them as goofy comedic types, the actors make their characters real and three-dimensional enough that we buy into what's going on as the situation becomes more serious in the second half of the movie.

Despite the good work by the cast, The Revenant does at times seem to lose its way as it goes on. Writer/director Kerry Prior seems to have had a bunch of ideas for what he could do with a sort-of-vampire popping up in modern-day L.A., and was determined to use them all, whether or not they drew the film out too long, gave it an uneven tone, or ultimately just didn't make sense. It doesn't quite feel like flailing around, but the movie does become something of an aggregation of little bits that worked individually, and fit together from piece to piece, eventually wandering far from its main strengths. It also loses something as the number of characters contracts, and the violence becomes out-of-character slapstick even while the characters' issues become more serious.

For a horror comedy with a minuscule budget, it is put together very well. Prior sets himself a bit of a challenge in that the vast majority of the film has to take place at night - revenants aren't quite vampires who burst into flames when the sun comes up, but they do lose their animating spark, whether they're in a building or outside - and while the footage is somewhat grainy, the audience always has a good idea of what's going on, and when the action goes from small but gory effects to a larger chase and standoff, Prior handles the change in scale well.

While the movie has been playing festivals for the better part of the year and seemed pretty locked, Prior made the occasional comment in his Q&A about how certain cut scenes may wind up back in at some point. Certain bits could be elaborated on, but I'm not sure making this movie longer would do the pacing and occasional disjointed feeling any favors, even though most of the movie is pretty good.

Full review at EFC.