The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

So here I am, back in Montreal to just have some vacation time that feels like vacation rather than work of any sort, and what am I doing? Trying to get a movie review written and posted before eating breakfast, just like during Fantasia. What is wrong with me? Well, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is fantastic and I want people to see it. It's playing at the Brattle through Monday, and I encourage everyone to give it a look.

Beneath that review, the dozen Fantasia reviews for EFC that I've completed since coming home. The scary part is that there are still at least that many more I'd like to finish before they fall out the back of my head completely.

Anyway - to touristy stuff!

Toki o kakeru shôjo (The Girl Who Leapt Through Time)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 22 August 2008 at the Brattle Theatre (Special Engagements)

Yasutaka Tsutsui's novel The Girl Who Leapt Through Time has been made into a movie twice before, and I must admit that I'm curious to see at least one of them - there are apparently connections with the 1983 version that position this animated film from 2006 something in between new adaptation, remake, and sequel. Not that it's necessary at all; it's just nice to know that a movie as good as this version has something else connected to it.

We start with Makoto Konno, an average high-school girl who is having a bad day: She sleeps through her alarm, arrives at school to a pop quiz, somehow makes her tempura blow up in home ec, etc., etc. The worst is when the brakes on her bike fail, causing her to flip over a barricade, into the path of an oncoming train. Somehow, just before it hits her, she somehow finds that it's a couple minutes in the past. Her aunt Kazuko says she's "time leapt", and it's not uncommon. Makoto is skeptical, but that doesn't prevent her from trying to repeat the phenomenon. When she does, she finds she's able to undo much of her bad day, although doing so introduces many complications, especially in regards to her best friends - handsome Kousuke, baseball-loving Chiaki (whom everyone but Makoto realizes has a huge crush on her), and soft spoken Yuri (who is fond of Chiaki herself).

I'm sure there are people out there capable of disliking Makoto, even though I have a hard time imagining doing less than adoring her. She tends to extremes as much as any real teenager - brash at times, but with paralyzing self-doubts at others. She's kind of tomboyish (playing baseball with Kousuke and Chiaki is her favorite thing to do), scatterbrained and intimidated as heck at the idea of choosing her future academic track, which could determine the rest of her life. She's also brave enough to take the lead when she sees something that needs doing and generous enough to try and help her friends as well as herself. I love her character design, all awkward skinny legs and arms, and a short haircut that still seems to be out of her control, like she never has time to tend to it properly. She can go from gleeful cackling to frozen stunned silence in an instant and always look right, and Riisa Naka's voice is absolutely perfect for her.

Indeed, it's not often that an animated character comes together quite so perfectly as she does, considering that what is often the work of one performer in a live-action film must be accomplished by many people working months apart with just the director to tie them together. It probably works best this way, though: Some of the slapstick, like Makoto's uncanny knack for crashing into things when she leaps, would look too painful in live action. She's got a bit of Wile E. Coyote in her, as well as a bit of Charles Schulz - she cries in a big, open-mouthed way, just like Sally Brown, for instance. Director Mamoru Hosoda doesn't overdo it on the cartooniness or other visual overload - after Mokoto's first, mind-blasting encounter with non-linear time, he's rather restrained in terms of not using a lot of "effects"; we don't even ever actually see Mokoto disappear or reappear.

What I like most about this movie, perhaps, is that although it's about teenagers, it's about them in a way that maybe you have to be an adult to fully understand. There's a point in the middle of the movie where bits of the sci-fi plot device become clear, and we realize that even though her newfound ability allows her to double back, she's also allowing opportunities to fly by her in the way that people her age do but don't realize they're doing until much later. It's a clever little observation that the movie doesn't quite make explicit, but allows to stay somewhat hidden behind the more teen-friendly "go for it!" message. Also impressive is how screenwriter Satoko Okudera is able to wring clever time-travel plot twists from the same device afterward without undercutting the metaphor, as even the most gifted writers are wont to do.

It's not quite a perfect script - some of the bits about time travel and the future don't quite mesh as well as one might hope, or imply things that run counter to the movie's mood. Those bumps are more than countered by how fleshed-out all the characters are, how funny the action is and how poignant its thoughts on young love are - especially as it doesn't try to make the teen years some idealized thing they aren't. It's a story about time travel, sure, and even one that gets a bit caught up in its own mythology by the end, but in a world that is both hilariously and achingly familiar.

(Note: The print shown was subtitled, although there is apparently also a dubbed print making its way around. I'm sure the English-language version is perfectly nice, but I have a hard time imagining it improving on Riisa Naka's voice acting.)

Also at EFC.

Pi li shi jie (Disciples of the 36th Chamber)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Part of the reason the Shaw Brothers studio was able to turn out so many enjoyable martial arts flicks was that they ran their studio like a factory: They were the very epitome of not messing with success. Take Disciples of the 36th Chamber, part of a series of Shaolin martial arts stories. I happened to see the first in the series, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, as part of a Shaw Brothers retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive about a month earlier. It was a ton of fun, but you can't help but notice this second sequel follows the same template.

This time around, Gordon Liu's San-te is the monk rather than the rebellious student; for that role, we have Hsiao Ho playing a young Fong Sai-yuk. Sai-yuk is arrogant, and like San-te before him, offends the ruling Manchus, eventually escaping to the Shaolin temple where he is taken in as a secular student (the "36th chamber" of the title). Unlike San-te, who found enlightenment studying with the monks, Sai-yuk merely becomes impatient, and begins to sneak out of the temple in order to test himself against the Manchu fighters. The governor (Jason Pai) befriends him, and invites him and the other 36th chamber students to a state wedding. It's an obvious trap, but Sai-yuk may be too proud to recognize it.

If you've seen The 36th Chamber of Shaolin (and, likely, the first sequel, Return to the 36th Chamber), that story is very familiar; it's almost exactly the plot of the first, down to the main character being mocked as a student by the children in the opening scenes. If you've seen almost any Shaw Brothers martial arts film, the film will look familiar; the studio had a number of standing sets and didn't vary their production design much. The main thing that sticks out about this movie is the humor; while the original movie was a fairly serious affair, Hsiao Ho's Fong Sai-yuk is a class-clown type, always ready with a wisecrack and bit of slapstick whenever there's someone stuffy in the area.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Someday, I'd like to run a controlled experiment with a movie like Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer. Group A, the control group, sees it more or less cold. Group B sees with the filmmakers in attendance, talking about how they love horror movies, especially from the eighties, so this was a labor of love, working with Robert Englund was awesome, and talks up how they did as much as they could with practical effects rather than CGI. Group C also sees it with the filmmakers in attendance, but they talk about how they really want to make classier stuff, but a kitschy horror movie is a relatively cheap way to make a film that will likely get some sort of distribution on video in part because of a B-movie star with name recognition. Oh, and they used CGI for everything, but because of their budget it wound up just looking like crappy-ass puppets. All three see the same movie, but which group do you think rates it highest and lowest?

We can guess at the answer based on human nature. The point of this thought experiment is not that Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer is a bad movie and the people who say they like it are horror fanatics who want to like it because the filmmakers have sold it as coming from like-minded fans, and they're being taken for a ride. That's not the case at all - Jack Brooks isn't a bad movie, and I don't think there's anything less than genuine about the enthusiasm that went into it. It's that even more than most films, what the audience gets from the likes of this is what they bring to it.

What's the film itself bring? Jack Brooks (Trevor Matthews), who as a kid saw his family killed by some sort of bigfoot troll. Now he's got major anger management issues - the kind that make his shrink (Daniel Kash) reluctant to see him - and a girlfriend, Eve (Rachel Skarsten) that really doesn't seem compatible with a low tolerance for aggravation. He and she are taking night classes at the local high school, including a science class taught by Professor Crowley (Robert Englund). One night Jack goes out to Crowley's secluded home to do some work on the pipes, which are filled with something nasty - something nasty which soon possesses Crowley.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Punchlady

* * (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

I'm not one to say that there are certain subjects that are untouchable, or can't be made to fit into a certain genre, in part because I've seen too many counterexamples. Still, there are some where filmmakers would be well-advised to think long and hard about what they're doing, domestic violence being pretty high on the list. Punch Lady may get points for doing something more interesting than the standard melodrama, it quickly loses them for a constant stream of incredibly questionable decisions.

Ha-eun (Do Ji-won) is the woman being beaten as the film opens, and if that's not bad enough, husband Ju-chang (Park Sang-wuk) does this for a living: He's a mixed martial arts champion. This time, he doesn't just focus his rage on Ha-eun, but their daughter (Choi Seol-ri), which finally gives Ha-eun the impetus to clock him with some furniture and get out of there. She moves in with a friend, and is soon approached by her high-school boyfriend, now also an MMA hopeful, who invites her to watch his fight against her husband. This is disastrous, as Ju-chang beats him so badly that he dies in the hospital later on, leading to Ha-eun making a scene at Ju-chang's press conference that results in her challenging him to a fight three months down the line. No gym wants to take her on until she wanders into one run by Soo-hyeon (Son Hyeon-joo). In actuality, Soo-hyeon is her daughter's math teacher, and was intending to turn the gym into a day-care center until Ha-eun showed up offering a not-insubstantial amount of money. Of course, Soo-hyeon knows nothing about martial arts.

Many movies have some shaky elements, but it's hard to remember any as thoroughly and willfully stupid as Punch Lady. Consider the premise: Ju-chang kills Ha-eun's old/new boyfriend in the ring, and he wasn't giving up nearly as much size, strength, and skill as Ha-eun would be. The idea that this fight could be anything but a slaughter is, thus, patently absurd. Heck, the very idea that the MMA governing body would touch it with a ten-foot pole is ridiculous, as there are basically two potential outcomes: They either televise a man pummeling (and likely killing) his wife, which can't possibly be good publicity, or by some miracle their champion is beaten by a petite fifty-kilo woman. Both of these are outcomes any reasonably competent business man can foresee and want no part of, but this bit of logic is passed right by.

Full review at eFilmCritic.


Negatibu happi chenso ejji (Negative Happy Chainsaw Edge)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Funny thing about fantasy entertainment - we get so caught up in the forms and mythologies and visuals of them, that we often seem to forget just why fantasy exists. "Escapism" is a word we throw around, but it's generally meant to refer to the audience, rather than the characters, even though they're likely the ones who need an escape.

Start with Yosuke (Hayato Ichihara). He's a fairly ordinary high school student who has been sneaking out of his dormitory more ever since his buddy Noto (Haruma Miura) died. One night, he comes across Eri (Megumi Seki), a beautiful but morose girl who engages in a nightly battle with a giant chainsaw-wielding maniac; it's a good thing she has a fuku filled with throwing knives to go along with preternatural strength, reflexes, and fighting skills. Yosuke is immediately taken with her, and starts trying to help. Naturally, he's in the way more than he's actually useful, but after a while she seems to be glad to have him around.

I admit it - I was there for the pretty girl fighting a gigantic marauder that fell from the sky with a chainsaw. I imagine most of the audience was, and I doubt many of us were wondering why Eri was fighting this guy aside from how he might be putting the citizens of Tokyo in peril and what arcane agency had bestowed powers upon her; the smitten but ineffective sidekick just seemed like comic relief. So it wound up being kind of a surprise - though a pleasant one - that these wound up being mere details that would eventually fade into the background. Negative Happy Chain Saw Edge has monsters and action scenes, yes, but it's not about them; it's about how Yosuke and Eri cope with loss, and the feelings of being powerless and lonely that accompany it.

Full review at eFilmCritic.


What We Do Is Secret

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Music doesn't interest me nearly as much as movies do, and I grew up on the East Coast besides, so it's not exactly surprising that I'd never heard of short-lived (but apparently influential) Los Angeles punk band The Germs and their leader Darby Crash. So perhaps it's a bit of an indictment that, after seeing What We Do Is Secret, I have no interest of hearing of them again. The fans seemed to enjoy it, though, so it's doing something right.

The Germs were a late-seventies band started by "Darby Crash" (Shane West) in high school. He started it with his friend George (Rick Gonzalez), who would take the stage name "Pat Smear". They advertised for bandmates, eventually meeting "Lorna Doom" (Bijou Phillips) and what would become a revolving door of drummers, notably including Don Bolles (Noah Segan). There's something there, but with Darby's charisma comes an incredible tendency toward self-destruction. There's the usual drugs, but also cutting himself on stage, inciting the audience to riot, and playing the band and the fans against each other. It's no wonder that at one point they're considered the hottest band in L.A. but have to book their gigs under a different name because no club will touch them.

There are, it seems, two basic rock and roll biopic templates; both of them involve a talented young musician whose emotional fragility is exacerbated by drugs, the only question being whether or not he beats the habit in the end. Fans know and the rest will quickly deduce that Crash is, as one might expect from the name he chose for himself, on the path of Icarus. There is something fascinating about seeing an otherwise intelligent, capable person seemingly committed to making things worse for himself and everyone around him, and this story certainly delivers plenty of downward-spiraling.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Idiots and Angels

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Animated Auteur Visions)

Idiots and Angels is Bill Plympton's new film. For fans of the artist and many animation enthusiasts, this bit of information is all that really needs to be said when it comes down to deciding whether or not to give the movie a look. For those who are less devoted, it's good Bill Plympton. For those who are less familiar with the man, well, there's the rest of the review.

Plympton's style should be familiar, even if his name isn't necessarily so: It is most definitely cartooning, with caricatured body types in two dimensions. Though at least partially created with digital tools, it still retains the look of being drawn with colored pencils, with a frequently low frame rate and a fondness for gags that are a little on the gross side. It's about as far from what Chuck Jones used to call "animated radio" as can be, with dialog frequently either absent or deliberately garbled. His last feature, 2004's Hair High, was something of a departure from this, with narration and several speaking parts. Idiots and Angels pretty much dispenses with words, so it's something of a return to form in that sense.

It follows a patently unpleasant man who smashes his alarm clock and throws things at chirping birds in the morning, and will happily threaten lethal force to take a favored parking space; he sells black market guns from in a local bar. One morning, though, he awakens to find bony stubs growing out of his back, and despite his attempts to cut them off, they eventually grow to become a pair of angel's wings. Soon everybody he meets is trying to exploit his unwelcome additions, which he would just like to be rid of, as they seem to have a disturbingly altruistic mind of their own.

Full review at EFC.


Sekai de Ichiban Utsukushii Your (The Most Beautiful Night in the World)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

It's probably not wise to expect a movie to be both provocative and wise. The idea that Daisuke Tengan proposes in The Most Beautiful Night in the World is crude and simplistic, and he drives it home with some anything-but-subtle imagery; my initial reaction was that it was horrible and would be a disaster. That doesn't make the basic idea unworthy of consideration, though.

In the present day, junior-high student Midori (Haruki Ichikawa) is preparing, along with much of her village, for a trip to Tokyo to be honored by the Prime Minister for the village having the highest birth rate in Japan. She is writing a letter to a famous reporter on the surprising story of how this came to pass. Fifteen years earlier, a big-city reporter by the name of Kazaya Mizimu (Tomorowo Taguchi) arrived in town, exiled from Tokyo for a scandal. The local editor (Shiro Sano) despairs of anything interesting ever happening there, though Mizimu figures something must eventually happen with the colorful cast of characters he finds: There's Shineko (Michie Ito), a child-like woman who people treat like a moron; she's secretly a genius but allergic to stupidity; she assists her father Gonzo (Akira Emoto), a fisherman and would-be musician. There's Nihei (Ryo Ishibashi), a former Marxist terrorist whose interests now run to archeology, particular the ancient Jomon people, famed for their unusually strong sex drive. Local Shinto priest Pontus (Takeshi Wakamatsu) operates an island brothel; the local bar is owned by Teruko (Sarara Tsukifune), who lived in the city for a time and is reputed to have psychic powers and/or belong to a cult.

It's an interesting group, and Kaname Village is a nice place to have them bouncing off each other. It's one of those small movie towns with bicycles and bridges, where even the residents who only briefly interact with the main characters have some sort of memorable quirk. It takes on a bit of the appearance of a fairy tale, something that can be partially attributed to the young narrator. Everyone and everything is very distinctive - Mizimu is very earnest, Teruko is sexy but sophisticated relative to the locals; her bar is dumpy, noirish, and spooky depending on the needs of the moment.

Full review at EFC.

Gidam (Epitaph)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Epitaph is one of the busiest horror films I've seen lately, starting in 1979 before flashing back to 1942, offering up ghosts and serial killers and obsessions that may or may not be connected in ways other than happening in close proximity to each other. It's got its moments, some of them excellent, but not enough to forgive a somewhat weak story.

Or three stories, as the case may be. Though the film starts with an elderly Dr. Park Jung-nam (Jeon Mu-song) delivering a lecture about a WWII-era surgery, he only figures prominently in one of the stories that unfolded at Anseng Hospital in 1942: As a young intern (Jin Goo) betrothed to a Japanese girl he only vaguely remembers from childhood, he's assigned to assist Dr. Kim In-young (Kim Bo-kyeong) in the morgue, where he becomes obsessed with a beautiful Jane Doe found drowned in a nearby river. Elsewhere in the hospital, Dr. Lee Soo-in (Lee Don-kyu) finds himself bonding with Asako (Ko Joo-yeon), a silent five-year-old girl who is the sole survivor of an automobile accident that claimed both her parents (and who may be haunted literally as well as figuratively). As if that's not enough, In-young - who aside from being a coroner is also the wife of Dr. Kim Dong-won (Kim Tae-woo), Asia's most brilliant neurosurgeon - is also being consulted on what appears to be a serial killer attacking officials of the occupying Japanese forces.

Much of the trouble with Epitaph is its structure. It's sort of an anthology film, with the three stories mostly told in self-contained chunks, although there is a fair amount of overlap between them - too much for them to be cleverly linked but basically separate, but not enough for the three to merge into one story. It's a structure that works fine for a lot of more conventional dramas, but fantasies require the audience to consider rules other than those of human interaction, which don't always line up here: What we learn about ghosts in story A doesn't necessarily apply to story B, even though they're otherwise tied too closely for that.

Full review at EFC.

Tenten (Adrift In Tokyo)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Every time I see a new one, I wonder why there aren't more movies made using the same template as Adrift in Tokyo. It's a deceptively straightforward one - two people walking through city streets, talking and getting to know each other - for every beautiful Before Sunrise or Quiet City, there's probably a dozen that are numbing story-free torture. Just because what Satoshi Miki and his cast do here is simple doesn't make it easy.

Here we have Fumiya Takemura (Jo Odagiri) and Aiichiro Fukuhara (Tomokazu Miura). Takemura is an aimless college student with gambling debts; Fukuhara is the man sent to collect them. Surprisingly, Fukuhara offers Fumiya another option; he'll forget about the money if the younger man will accompany him on a walk across the city. At the end, when they arrive at what Fukuhara says is the best police station in the city, Fukuhara will confess to the accidental death of his wife.

I love movies shot like Adrift In Tokyo, on authentic city streets that have something in common with city streets everywhere but still give a feeling of being unique to that neighborhood. They aren't necessarily the places tourists take pictures, and we probably haven't seen them in other films. It's fun to play tourist that way, and when the unexpected happens - as it often does in Satoshi Miki's film - it seems both more surprising and more believable, because those scenes seldom look staged to start.

Full review at EFC.

Wicked Lake

* (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I grew up in Maine, where comedians can build entire routines out of how we use the word "wicked". For us, it's usually an adverb that means "very", as in "wicked cool". In some spots, you can drop the "cool" part and have something that means "awesome". It is more properly used to mean "evil" or "improper/sinful but enticing". Sadly, the movie Wicked Lake is none of those things. It probably intends to be the last one, but is more often closer to "evil". That's not fair to it, though - making an awful movie isn't actually monstrous, after all.

It is calculated, of course, in much the same way as the other movies Media Blasters/Fever Dreams was promoting at the festival. It's a Frankenstein's monster of a movie, based on what's been shown to correlate with high sales for non-sequel direct-to-video horror: More blood and guts than a movie that cares about an R rating can use and naked girls (even better if they're making out!), I imagine, are the first things on the list. Quality writing and acting are much lower. A couple names with horror movie credentials will help, too, but Frankenstein is on a budget, so figure out the point below which crappiness hurts sales and stay a few bucks above that.

Giving the creation a soul is a difficult thing, though those other movies had a little more success. With Machine Girl, they had a filmmaker with a track record of making giddy exploitation at the helm; I haven't seen Tokyo Gore Police, but the description promises something new and creatively gross every few minutes and some talented people involved. Wicked Lake, on the other hand, has a thoroughly generic screenplay by the director of I Know Who Killed Me: Four hot lesbian witches (though only two actually contribute to the story) take a road trip to a mountain cabin to perform some sort of ritual only to have to deal with the nasty redneck family of Caleb (Mark Senter), the dork who has a crush on Ilene (Robin Sydney), some more jerks they meet at a gas station on the way, and a pair of perhaps overzealous cops investigating some nasty murders.

The story plays out in painfully predictable and lame ways: Just about every man is a pig and a thug; the ones that aren't are cowardly and ineffectual at standing up to the rest. There's not a character in the movie that isn't made out of purest cardboard, and the witches don't come off as much better than the guys. Ilene's girlfriend Helen (Eryn Joslyn), the leader of the group, manages to be enough of a bitch to taint the entire group, so that when the white trash shows up and starts tying people up and threatening sexual assault, it results on the audience not having sympathy for anyone, especially since the other two are vicious like they've had practice when an opportunity arises to turn the tables.

Full review at EFC.


Chanbara Beauty (Oneechanbara)

* * (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I've spoken to people who claim that the story is the most important part of a video game, which strikes me as silly, mainly because it makes them less like games. When you play basketball, are you acting out a plot? Besides, the storyline that is considered a strength within a game is often exposed as pretty weak when transplanted to a medium like film.

To be fair, it's not as if the action movies always offer that much more. In both, we're often brought up to speed fairly quickly: The world in general and Japan in particular have been overrun with zombies. One of the survivors is Aya (Eri Otoguro), the last member of a secret ninja clan, who is on a quest to find Dr. Sugita (Taro Suwa); Sugita is the cause of zombie plague and has Aya's teenaged sister Saki (Chise Nakamura) as an ally. Aya has a chubby sidekick, Katsuji (Tomohiro Waki), who is also looking for his little sister Asami; they meets up with Reiko (Manami Hashimoto), who is looking for her daughter.

For either a videogame or a b-movie, that's probably just enough plot to glue together a few zombie attacks and lead up to a "boss" stage where Aya finally confronts her sister and Sugita. The thing is, in a really good video game or action movie, the action scenes would be much more exciting because you're either the player controlling the main character or watching folks who are really good at action go to work. Neither is the case here; the zombie effects and CGI are fairly unimpressive, and Eri Otoguro is not Michelle Yeoh: I'm guessing that looking good in the costume was a much larger factor in her casting than the ability to sell a good fight.

Full review at EFC.

Red

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

One of the few things I miss about living in the suburbs versus the city is that it's difficult for me to keep a dog. My family had them while I was growing up, and I envy my brothers with their dachshunds and labs. Pets do become a part of one's family, and that simple fact is what makes Red compelling; most of us can sympathize with a man defending their family, even when it comes down to wanting justice for the four-legged members.

Red is an old dog belonging to Avery Ludlow (Brian Cox), the mostly-retired owner of the local general store. One morning, he and Red are out fishing when three teenagers come upon him, carrying a gun and looking for money. Avery doesn't have much on him, which displeases the boys; the ringleader, Danny McCormack (Noel Fisher) takes his anger out on Red, shooting the old dog dead. When Avery gets back to town, he's looking for justice, but his attorney friend Sam (Richard Riehle) has bad news - according to the law, Red was merely property, with destruction of property being a misdemeanor, and Danny's father Michael (Tom Sizemore) is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in town. Avery is undeterred, so Sam decides to bring in Carrie Donnel (Kim Dickens), a reporter for a nearby TV station, in the hopes that shaming the McCormacks will lead to Danny admitting his responsibility. Instead, things begin to escalate.

That the audience will get more angry at a dog's death than a person's is a cliché in movies, of course, to the point where even the rebelling against it has become tiresome - the audiences applauding a dog's killing in a horror movie is by now a merely (ironically?) Pavlovian reaction, rather than delighted shock that a filmmaker is willing to do something others shy from. It's a cliché that comes from a real place, though, and this movie earns its use: It shows us Red as Avery's constant companion, and peppers the rest of the film with other dog lovers, casually or forcefully reminding the audience of the bond a person and his dog share whenever the audience might think Avery should just let it go.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia 2008, Day Nineteen: The Moss, Going by the Book, Dance of the Dead

Aaaaand... Done. Mostly; I came away with five screeners to catch up with over the next month, as I try and catch up on the roughly thirty movies I didn't get to fully write up during the festival. One is Before the Fall, the other four are stuff that I couldn't make time for with everything else playing.

Fantasia is huge, although one thing that surprised me is that 19 days doesn't seem that much more overwhelming that 11. In previous years, I found myself feeling crushed by the end, with one film blending into another, but even though I was there nearly twice as long, the festival experience itself didn't leave me feeling fatigued by the end, just the writing about it. I think the festival's programmers did a great job of putting together a more varied festival, in terms of genres, styles, and cultures represented. I get the folks who say it's too big and too specialized, but if it were to contract, it would likely either become more specialized or lose some of the gems.

Will I try to do the entire festival again in eleven months' time? I don't know yet. It uses a huge chunk of my vacation time, so I'll want to figure out a better way to manage that, and maybe find a better place to stay (the apartment I found did the job, but drove me nuts at points). It's still an event I can't recommend highly enough to fans of this sort of movie.

Ching Toi (The Moss)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The Moss opens with a little girl narrating a fairy tale, about a princess with a green gemstone who is abducted by a demon the be saved by a knight. By the time it's finished, the time for such stories will have passed. After all, Derek Kwok's second feature doesn't take place in some fairy kingdom, but in one of Hong Kong's slums.

There is a green gemstone, which fat Kei has purchased for his mother, the crime boss of a local neighborhood. On the way home, he stops for a few minutes with a prostitute, which turns out to be a really bad idea - there's a police raid, during which the gem flies away, he hits the girl, and though she doesn't start that fight, she sure finishes it. The gem lands at the feet of Fa (Si Suet-yee), an 11-year-old girl who has come to live with her big sister, a fellow hooker named Lulu (Bonnie Xian), and join the business if it will make her money. When Kei doesn't make it home, "Chong mom" (Susan Shaw) takes action - first calling in a favor from former undercover cop Jan (Shawn Yue), then dispatching a homeless assassin (Fan Siu-wong) to take out the rival she thinks is responsible, "Four-Eye" Tong (Liu Kai-chi). All hell breaks loose, and Jan winds up in the middle of all of it.

There's actually even more than that going on; Kwok and his co-writers have a group of Pakistani armed robbers lurking in the background, too. The Moss is a busy film, especially in the beginning, as the filmmakers throw out a great many characters without tipping their hands too much about which ones will be important and/or active as things get going. Sure, we're likely going to see a certain amount of focus on Fa - she narrates the opening scene and a kid in the middle of a brothel is (hopefully) too unusual and delicate a storyline to consign to the background - but some characters make strong first impressions only to be knocked off minutes later.

Full review at EFC.

Bareuge Salja (Going by the Book)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Going by the Book works on a wonderfully simple comedy principle: As long as you don't repeat gags, a clever underdog getting the best of overconfident people in authority will make people laugh and want more. Once you've got that sort of situation and enough good jokes, it's just a matter of setting them up and knocking them down. At least, a movie as funny as Going by the Book can make it look that easy.

Jung Do-man (Jeong Jae-yeong) is our underdog; a former detective demoted to traffic cop after failing to make a corruption case against the governor stick, he still takes his job seriously, going to work every morning with his uniform spotless and enforcing the law to the letter, including giving he new Sampo chief of police Lee Seung-woo (Son Byung-ho) a ticket for a illegal left turn on an empty street. Sam-po has been hit with a rash of bank robberies, and Seung-woo proposes a special training exercise: They simulate a robbery, allowing the police to publicly demonstrate their effectiveness and hone their skills a little. Everyone has their assigned roles, and the chief personally assigns Do-man the part of the robber. And, remember, Do-man takes his job seriously.

To his credit, he does worry that the chief may regret his decision.

Jung Do-man is a familiar enough character; Simon Pegg played a variation on the type in Hot Fuzz. Jeong Jae-yeong is careful not to make Do-man insufferable; he looks apologetic when the clerk at the video store mentions that since they make their money off late fees, Do-man always returning his movies on time doesn't really help the business. Indeed, part of the reason that the audience can laugh so heartily at Do-man making the entire police department look like fools is that he seems to be taking very little pleasure in it; he wants to be caught but is unable to give less than a full effort. If he was a jerk about it, we might not enjoy the other cops getting their comeuppance quite so much.

Full review at EFC.

Dance of the Dead

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Sometimes writers (and the companies that deliver their works to you) have a devil of a time with finding a title for something, and it will undergo many changes and permutations before they decide that, yes, this is the one that will grab people's interest. And then there are movies like Dance of the Dead, where the title (apparently) comes in a fit of inspiration and the filmmakers seemingly work backwards from that. It doesn't usually work nearly this well.

The situations of the title are laid out pretty straightforwardly in the start: Some sludge from the nearby nuclear power plant (right next to the cemetery) seems to be causing outbreaks of the dead suddenly showing signs of life, much to the annoyance of the gravedigger (James Jarett), while across town the local high schoolers are getting ready for the prom. Organizer Lindsay (Greyson Chadwick) is annoyed that her slacker boyfriend Jimmy (Jared Kusnitz) doesn't seem to take it (or anything) seriously, and opts to go with student council president Mitch (Jeff Adelman) instead; Jimmy's friend Steven (Chandler Darby) is trying to ask his lab partner Gwen (Carissa Capobianco), but the cheerleader has her eyes on Nash (Blair Redford). No girl would want to go with backyard wrestling-loving thug Kyle (Justin Welborn) in the first place. It's a good thing all of them wind up late or not going, though - when the living dead attack the prom, it's up to them to come to the rescue!

Why, exactly, the school dance should wind up the focal point of the zombie outbreak is left somewhat fuzzy; we're to take it somewhat on faith that teenager is a zombie delicacy to the point where they will all naturally converge upon the gym rather than just shamble about randomly. Of course, these zombies aren't quite the Romero standard-issue variety; they're articulate enough to express their desire for brains and a few of them are tool-users. Heck, they've got enough energy to burst out of their graves like their coffins have ejection seats.

Full review at EFC, along with one other review.

Fantasia 2008, Day Eighteen: 1968 Tunnel Rats, Muay Thai Chaiya, Voice of a Murderer, Alone, and Pig Hunt

Today's my last day in Montreal - I leave on the 8am bus tomorrow - and it has been a blast. My only regret is that between trying to get two or three reviews up a day and doing some work for the day job, I wound up not getting to go out and about nearly as much as I would have liked. I'm not sure what the "right" way to do a festival is - I kind of feel obligated to see as many movies as I can and spread the word on them if they're going to give me a media pass, but I have spent way too much time in this apartment typing on a computer.

Ah, well. I've got the place rented through next month, so I'll probably take an unclaimed weekend and just see the city with no obligations at some point.

Today's plan: The Moss, Going by the Book, Dance of the Dead, and probably Tokyo Gore Police, though I might decide I want to end the fest on Dance of the Dead and make sure I get enough sleep to wake up early tomorrow. If you're in town, Alone and La Tueur are good today and The Midnight Meat Train is good tomorrow.

1968 Tunnel Rats

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

So, has this whole "Uwe Boll is quite possibly the worst filmmaker ever!" been an elaborate hoax? I haven't seen any of his videogame-derived movies, which are apparenty unbearably awful, but Tunnel Rats is a pretty solid piece of work. It has a little trouble getting started - the scenes in the camp where we try to get to know a dozen or so characters in very little time wiht not-always-fitting music aren't great - but once it gets down into the tunnels, it's a pretty tense bit of work.

Of course, it seems to still be a bit of a work in progress, as there was just a black placeholder screen for the end credits, so perhaps there's time for him to screw it up yet.

Chaiya (Muay Thai Chaiya)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm not generally a fan of boxing films; even so-called classics of the genre leave me cold. Because, let's face it - boxing is about violence and fighting as an end unto itself, and while it's one thing to engage in it for physical fitness or self defense, it's hardly surprising when boxers wind up entangled in crime and thuggery. At that point, it's a question of how compelling the filmmakers make the details and how much style they bring to the story. While Chaiya doesn't stand out too much on the first front, it is exceptional on the second.

We start with three friends in rural Thailand, training under the tutelage of a master at his camp. Samor (Sonthaya Chitmanee), our narrator, suffers from an early leg injury, and misses his chance to perform in the ring himself, and so winds up supporting the other two. Pao (Thawatchai Phanpakdee), is the son of coach Thew (Samart Payakarun) and brother of a champion, and is considered to have the most potential, although he is somewhat timid, being in their shadow. Piak (Akara Amarttayakul), is more aggressive, both as a fighter and in life, as he woos pretty nurse Sriprai (Phreeta Kongpetch) before Pao can make his move. After a time, the four make their way to Bangkok so that Pao and Piak can try to break in as professional boxers. Though Piak has more early success, a false accusation soon has him reduced to underground cage matches - and soon doing "favors" for the man who runs them.

The movie takes place over the course of years during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and as a result feels a bit like a mauy thai version of Boogie Nights. The cinematography takes on a retro feel as well, with lots of grain and the occasional split screen during montage sequences to have Pao's and Piak's paths run literally in parallel. Director Kongkiat Khomsiri and his editors do a very nice job with those sequences, which are both filled with muay thai action and pretty good storytelling. Having this sort of narrative sweep does mean that he has to fit a lot of information into the film's two hours, and that's often accomplished by literally stopping the film and giving the audience names and vital statistics on new figures entering the friends' world.

Full review at EFC.

Geunom Moksori (Voice of a Murderer)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

That title threatens to give the game away, but then again, the outcome won't exactly be in doubt for the film's target audience - the 1991 kidnapping of Lee Hyong-ho is one of Korea's most famous true-crime stories. That's worth remembering when one sits down to watch this movie: For us, this looks like a thriller, but it is perhaps best appreciated as a character study of two parents trapped in their worst nightmare. There's a great scene that sums up the entire movie, as the parents rush to a cable car that slowly makes its way to the top of a tower, watching the kidnapper take their car and ransom while they helplessly wait to reach the top and hope they will find their son there.

Seen that way, it's a pretty strong movie; Sol Kyung-gu's breakdown in the final scene is a thing of terrible beauty.

Faet (Alone)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

When I saw the original Thai version of Shutter at Fantasia a few years back, I told friends that the only way it seemed Thai horror could get less subtle would be to have the ushers actually throwing cats at the audience. That turns out to be an unfair stereotype, but the makers of that movie are back and looking to get the audience to jump again. They manage it, too, throwing in a story that's actually fairly clever besides.

When we first meet elegant Pim (Masha Wattanapanich) and scruffy Wee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan), they are living in Soeul, South Korea, and seem happy enough - they have friends, a dog, and live comfortably. Bad news comes from their native Thailand when they find out that Pim's mother (Ratchanoo Bunchootwong) has just had a stroke. They fly back to be at her side, but returning home dredges up a lot of bad memories for Pim. She was born a conjoined twin, and her sister Ploy did not survive the separation that she insisted upon. Now, Ploy appears to be appearing in every mirror and any other place she can. Wee and his psychiatrist friend Donai try to convince Pim that it's all in her head... but is it?

Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom made a pretty decent horror movie in Shutter, and though the story here is different, they spend much of the movie keeping to the same template: Introduce the situation, punctuate the film with lots of flashes of a dead girl accompanied by loud crashes in the score, and flesh out the characters' backstory in flashback, including how the twins' first meetings with Wee when they were hospitalized teenagers (Wee for complications from diabetes) set in motion both Pim's desire to separate and Ploy's increasingly hostile nature. (The latter is nice; a haunting makes more sense if the ghost was ornery even before death) The first half of Alone is an unapologetic jump movie, but Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom are really, really good at making the audience jump.

Full review at EFC.

Pig Hunt

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

Perhaps the funniest moment during last night's screening of Pig Hunt was the director and executive producer trying to push it as an allegory for America today and the war in Iraq. Sure, they make good connections, and I don't doubt that was in their mind. Of course, with their next breath they try to claim they were being subtle about their politics, but I don't know if a hunting cabin full of newspaper clippings with "LIES!" scribbled on them qualifies as subtle.

In the end, it's a decent monster movie featuring a giant pig and all the bloody violence they could cram into it. Not bad at all, and it will do you all right if you're looking for some monster-fighting hillbilly action.

Fantasia 2008, Day Seventeen: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and The Midnight Meat Train

Almost got shut out of The Midnight Meat Train last night, which would have bummed me out because I wouldn't have been able to see Ryuhei Kitamura's entertaining Q&A. Hopefully someone will have a transcript up soon, because he was entertainingly honest about his adventures in Hollywood thus far - it sounds like he passed on The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift and wound up directing this picture in large part because of a chance encounter with Samuel L. Jackson (who, by being a Kitamura fan, just adds more cred to him being the coolest guy in Hollywood). He mentioned working on an American version of Versus along with some other big, crazy action movies, and the latter part at least makes me happy (although I wonder about the former, considering his comments earlier in the talk about not being interested in sequels, remakes, or otherwise revisiting material).

That wound up letting out at 2:30am. It is probably just a matter of time until I wind up taking some kind of nap in a theater. Hopefully it'll be one of the disposable-looking movies at the ends of my day rather than the nifty-looking stuff in the middle. My plan is Tunnel Rats (will my first exposure to Uwe Boll actually be the one that doesn't suck?), Muay Thai Chaiya, Voice of a Murderer, Alone, and Pig Hunt. If you're in town, Island of Lost Souls is fun, Punch Lady... less so.

De Fortabte sjæles ø (Island of Lost Souls)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I hate to bring up Harry Potter when describing Island of Lost Souls, but there wouldn't be so many movies of this type - kids fighting supernatural threats - if it wasn't such a phenomenon, and it is an easy point of reference. Nikolaj Arcel's taken on the idea is maybe not so grandiose as the most well-known, but it is still a ton of fun, and better in some ways.

14-year-old Lulu (Sara Langebæk Gaarmann) and her little brother Sylvester (Lucas Munk Billing) have just moved to the quiet seaside town of Broby with their mother Beate (Anette Støvelbæk) after her divorce. Lulu's got a keen interest in magic and the occult, and one of the first thing she does is pull out her Ouija board and see if the new house contains any spirits who would like to talk to her. It doesn't seem to have much effect, but later that night a glowing light comes out of their closet and is absorbed into Sylvester. It turns out to be the soul of Herman Hartmann, who in 1871 was part of a secret lodge dedicated to fighting supernatural evil. And while Herman mainly wants to return to the sweet oblivion of death, he's stuck in Sylvester's body unless some sort of mystic can be found to release him. 13-year-old neighbor Oliver (Lasse Borg) suggests his mother's "psychic physical therapist", Ricard (Nicolaj Kopernikus), who turns out to be surprisingly helpful.

There are a lot of things I like about Island of Lost Souls that other juvenile fantasies don't do, to their detriment by my way of thinking. One of them is that Lulu is not any sort of Chosen One, descendant of the mystics from the prologue, or prophesied savior; she's just a brave and smart girl who steps up when stepping up is called for. Sure, it's a nice fantasy that you're secretly more special and important than the other kids around you, but the fact that these kids do cool things on their own makes them even more impressive.

Full review at EFC.

Seven Days

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Is it petty for me to be pleased that the screening of Seven Days was not packed with Lost fans coming to see that program's Yunjin Kim, though they would not otherwise go near a Korean film? Probably. I'm a little surprised that didn't happen, although maybe Lost isn't as big a deal in Quebec as it is elsewhere.

The movie itself is a decent enough thriller, although it's the sort that would have me questioning the legal processes like mad if it were set in the United States, and I still wonder about it even though I know next to nothing about South Korea's justice system. Within that ridiculously accelerated context, though, it's an enjoyable enough mystery.

See Prang (4bia)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I must admit, I wasn't expecting this to be such a complete delight, but it winds up being one of the more enjoyable horror flicks at Fantasia. It's a sort of Thai-horror sampler, in turns creepy, gory, funny, and just plain scary, with the four loosely connected stories each entertaining in their own way. Well worth checking out if you get the chance.

Sasori

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

This one is kind of a mess, but it's a slick mess. The mix of Hong Kong and Japanese style action is interesting, but I think it suffers a bit from seeming to compress a long-running manga, cramming a whole bunch of wild characters and ideas into a bit over an hour and a half without much time to really get into them.

The Midnight Meat Train

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival - Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

Assigning a star rating to The Midnight Meat Train puts me in a quandary. On the one hand, I think that something like 90% or more of this is fantastic, some of the best recent horror filmmaking you will see. On the other, I really like endings, especially ones where the end feels like the logical culmination of what had come before, and my reaction to the movie's ending was, well, that it was something else. And yet, I'm told that most of the original short story is contained in that ending, and it's handled faithfully, which is generally a good thing on principle. So, you see, there it is: A quandary.

We start with Leon Kauffman (Bradley Cooper), a young photographer making ends meet with crime-scene work while hoping to put together better things. His girlfriend Maya (Leslie Bibb) and friend/agent Jurgis (Roger Bart) have finally gotten noted gallery owner Susan Hoff (Brooke Shields) to look at some of his work, which elicits a comment about how he's not really capturing the city the way he wants to. What he does wind up capturing is the last shot of a model before she disappears on the subway. He connects it with another picture, this one of Mahogany (Vinnie Jones), a silent, imposing butcher whom we've seen ambushing people on the late night trains, brutally murdering them. Soon, Leon becomes obsessed with proving that this man is behind a rash of disappearances.

Clive Barker's short story is apparently a popular one among horror fans, though I've never read it. For me, the big drawing card was Ryuhei Kitamura's English-language debut, and Barker's fans should be pleased to see that the story is in good hands. Often described (or accused, depending on who is making the statement) of having a Hollywood sensibility in Japan, and he doesn't make The Midnight Meat Train into a J-horror-styled picture at all. He and director of photography Jonathan Sela do shot the heck out of the film, though, finding all the nifty angles and great compositions that a movie about a photographer really should have. He does a lot of nifty things with the camera, from the continuous static shot of Mahogany's first kill to the way the point of view whips around the subway car in the big climactic fight, emphasizing the cold brutality in the first and the increasing frenzy in the latter.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia 2008, Day Sixteen: Handle Me With Care, Cryptozoologie, Le Tueur, and Special Magnum

Sometimes, having a media pass works against you - if I had bought a ticket, I would have gotten into Repo! The Genetic Opera, but it was so sold out and popular with the media/VIPs that about half of us were left out. Not that I think it's unfair - I got the email about the press screening, which I passed on of my own free will in order to see An Empress and the Warriors and May 18, and it would be downright churlish to act like I haven't made out like a bandit seeing dozens of movies over the past few weeks and often being first in line to get seats. Besides, it gave me time to have a late dinner, and that was a pretty good steak and baked potato.

Also, it helps to speak French. I sat through the La Bête du Lac Q&A hoping in vain for someone to either ask a question in English of for my 15-years-dormant high school french to suddenly kick in, but to no avail.

Today's plan is to camp at the Hall theater, where the movies are somewhat spread out: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and Midnight Meat Train (with Ryuhei Kitamura present). If you're here, I can recommend The Rebel highly, Le Grand Chef with reservations, and wish I could make Triangle work for me.

Kod (Handle Me With Care)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

When you're born with a third arm, losing your tailor is far more traumatic than losing your girlfriend.

At least, that's the impression one gets from Kwan Traithep (Kiatkamol Latha) at the start of Handle Me With Care. His high-school girlfriend Lin is getting married, and his current girl Ann has just broken up with him, but it's the sudden death of "Uncle" Tawee, the tailor who makes his special three-sleeved shirts, that apparently pushes him to take a Bangkok clinic up on their offer to amputate his extra left arm. Getting there from rural Lampang will be something of an adventure - his car is busted, so he winds up hitching a ride with his friend Lorlee, who is delivering a bus there. On the way, they meet up with Na (Supaksorn Chaimongkol), also on her way to Bangkok to find the husband who she hasn't seen for a year.

Take away the whole third arm thing, and what's left is still quite the entertaining road movie. Writer/director Kongdej Jaturanrasamee plagues Kwan, Na, and Lorlee with a series of disasters that are more challenging than dangerous, and shuffles Lorlee off the stage once he starts just being an interruption to the scenes with Kwan and Na (and it becomes clear that the bus would make things too easy). They meet up with some interesting people, but the emphasis never shifts too much from them getting to know each other.

They're a nice pair to meet for the audience as well. Both of them tend to draw looks for their appearance (many comments are made about the size of Na's breasts, although she seems more generally curvy than notably busty), leaving them more alienated as they feel nobody pays attention to them as whole people. Latha plays Kwan as having a chip on his shoulder for much of the movie, although he's charmingly awkward at other times. Chaimongkol tends to present Na as more extroverted and likely to joke around, but shifts gears to lonely and sad well enough to make it abundantly clear that being seen as sexy isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. The simple and heartfelt way she pays off a sort of annoying series of comments about having a great ringtone is kind of wonderful.

Full review at EFC.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I missed this one at IFFB, so I was glad to catch up with it here. It doesn't quite clock in at feature length at a mere 62 minutes, but does fill that time with an intriguing portrayal of two men trying to do something extraordinary amid their ordinary lives. Director Jay Delaney walks a nice tightrope here, looking at their claims in a way that's not quite skeptical but lets the evidence (or lack thereof) speak for itself, without being too harsh on his subjects.

La Bête du Lac

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I couldn't find myself nearly as intrigued by Nicolas Renaud's half of the Cryptozoology double bill, though. It drew plenty of local interest by taking part in a Quebec community near the Maine border, but despite being even shorter than Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, sometimes felt very stretched out. There are some nice bits of underwater photography, and a couple of interesting storytellers, but when you get right down to it, it's kind of repetitive: People say they've seen the lake's monster fish, but can't offer any evidence other than "if you've seen it, you know", even though, as one resident says, when one person says they've seen a monster, everybody starts looking for them.

Le Tueur (The Killer)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Le Tueur is the very image of what the phrase "French film" often brings to mind. It's alternatively talkative and quiet, casually sexual, and deals with matters of life and death with what seems like emotionless detachment. What makes it notable is that it manages to scratch beneath that surface without seeming arch or self-satisfied about it.

We start out with Leo Zimmerman (Gilbert Melki), a reasonably successful financier, doing some shopping with his beautiful daughter Alana. He seems nervous, as if he can sense the man following and filming him. That footage winds up in the hands of Dimitri Kopas (Gregoire Colin), an assassin who has been hired to kill Leo. When Kopas visits Leo in his office, he knows his number is up, so he confronts him and asks a favor - let him live until Saturday, so he can pull off one last big deal and make sure Alana is taken care of. He knows his wife Sylvia (Sophie Cattani) is having an affair with his partner Xavier Franzen (Xavier Beauvois), and the idea of Franzen raising his daughter makes him blind with rage. Kopas agrees - why not? - using the free time to strike something up with Stella (Melanie Laurent), a model he meets in the hotel lobby.

There have been hundreds of cinematic hitmen, so often played as cool to the point where it's become almost impossible to avoid self-parody. Gregoire Colin doesn't quite sidestep that, but he handles it. He's got the cool exterior (and interior, for that matter), but there's something awkward about his isolation from regular people. He trips over his own tongue when hitting on Sylvia, and seems to become keenly aware that he doesn't have much of an existence outside of his job. He is so conditioned to leave no trace of his presence that he sometimes seems likely to disappear entirely.

Full review at EFC.

Special Magnum (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Damn, I wish I hadn't nodded off during this one. Not just because it's apparently not available on DVD, and was only issued cut on VHS, but just because it is a really crazy action movie. The big car chase in the middle of the movie really needs to be seen to be believed (especially since it was apparently filmed without permits of any kind), and even on the 16mm print the Montreal locations looked gorgeous. I really hope this comes out on DVD or Blu-ray soon; I want to catch up.

Fantasia 2008, Day Fifteen: The Detective, Dark Floors, The Echo, Babysitter Wanted

Again, no time to actually write a whole lot up before getting to today's movies. The object lesson for yesterday seems to be that a 20oz soda with no calories will fill you up, leading to not actually feeling like supper despite having one of the few two hour blocks to eat an actual meal during the course of the festival. I really wanted to visit that steakhouse again, and have a grilled steak rather than (very good, mind you) roast beef. Maybe Monday.

Today's plan: Handle Me With Care, the cryptozoology min-doc double feature, Le Tueur, Repo! The Genetic Opera, and Special Magnum. If you're in town, Our Town isn't bad, and [REC] is pretty darn good.

C+ jing taam (The Detective)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The funny thing about most memorable film noir detective movies is that they don't actually involve a lot of detection - the private investigator just sort of ping-pongs from one strange situation to another, often winding up in a spot where the whole mess seems contradictory. Why should Oxide Pang mess with tradition?

His Tam (Aaron Kwok) is a P.I. working out of Bangkok's Chinatown, and not a great one. One day, Lung the butcher (Shing Fui-On) knocks on his door, saying that some girl is following him, trying to kill him. Tam looks at the picture, surmises that there's no way this pretty girl has much interest in Lung, and figures it's about stalking by proxy. He's sending Lung home when Lung drops a large wad of bills on the table. Well, it can't hurt to look...

Famous last words, of course - a lead on her apartment brings Tam face-to-face with a dead body, and it won't be the last. Longtime friend Inspector Chak (Liu Kai-Chi) will inclined to call Tam the angel of death by the time it's over.

Full review at EFC.

Dark Floors

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

There are times when I feel guilty about being part of the American audience, which is simultaneously so big that international productions above a certain scale feel they need it to make back their budget, yet so fiercely parochial and well-served by what is made here that it's almost impossible to crack. This leads to things like Dark Floors, a movie conceived by Finnish heavy-metal act Lordi and their music video director, opting to shoot in English and then having the cast they import from the UK affect American accents. I don't know that this movie would have better in Finnish, but it's hard not to watch all the way to the end and wonder if maybe something got lost in translation.

We open with Sarah (Skye Bennett), an autistic girl who finds her MRI frightening even before the machine malfunctions, almost setting on fire. That's the tipping point for her father Ben (Noah Huntley), who decides that this hospital isn't going to do her much good and she might as well be comfortable at home, despite the warnings of nurse Emily (Dominique McElligott). The power goes out while they're in the elevator - shared with impatient businessman Jon (William Hope), mentally unstable Tobias (Ronald Pickup), and security guard Rick (Leon Herbert) - and when it finally comes back on, something is definitely not right: The sixth floor of the hospital seems to be completely empty, for starters, and that's before the ghosts and monsters start showing up.

Hospitals are scary places to begin with, and not necessarily because of the sickness. There's something unnatural about how cleanly-designed and sterile those places can be, and emptying them out makes them even more disconcerting - it increases the feeling of helplessness most non-medical professionals feel there. Dark Floors plays into all that, and then, just at the point where audiences might start taking that for granted, starts messing things up - the lower floors are dirtier and no longer unoccupied - ghosts, monsters, and corpses start appearing, bringing the atmosphere from unnerving-but-safe to outright dangerous.

Full review at EFC.

The Echo

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Apparently the quest to find Asian horror to remake has now expanded its eye to the Philippines, where Yam Laranas's Sigaw was a hit and did fairly well on the festival circuit. The good news about this one is that Laranas transplanted it to New York himself, and appears to have done a pretty good job of making this second version worth the effort.

Meet Bobby (Jesse Bradford); he's just been paroled from prison after serving three years for involuntary manslaughter, and he's not looking for any trouble. When his parole officer asks where he's planning to stay, he says his mother's apartment, though his mother died while he was in prison. It's still full of her things, still bearing all the signs of the mental breakdown that preceded her death. Bobby is able to find a job, working for Hector (Carlos Leon) as a mechanic, though he's on a short leash there. He's isolated most of the time, though - none of his old friends talk to him other than his ex Alyssa (Amelia Warner), and she's as wary as you might expect. And his neighbors aren't helping him get a good night's sleep - Walter (Kevin Durand) makes life hell for his wife (Iza Calzado) and daughter (Jamie Bloch), but what can Bobby do, since he's an ex-con and Walter's a cop?

Laranas plays up how the culture of the big city is all about being careful: Friends tell Alyssa to stay away from Bobby, Hector certainly doesn't trust him to begin with, and while the manager of the apartment building tells Bobby that he and one other person (Pruitt Taylor Vince) are the only ones complaining about some of the sounds on their floor, Bobby is standoffish when the other man wants to talk. It may be the natural response to seal oneself up in a bubble with so much humanity on all sides, but it's not healthy, and it's no surprise when Bobby starts to crack.

Full review at EFC.

Babysitter Wanted

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

And just like yesterday, I find myself running out of time to write even a mini-review if I want to get myself some food before starting the festival. Well, I'll catch up later. In brief: Pretty darn good, even if it does make its plot twist fairly obvious even if you're not looking for one.

Still, it gets the job done, and is legitimately thrilling even while it works a lot of comedy into the mix. During the Q&A, the director mentioned that even though it does a great job of making the audience queasy, there's actually only something like three minutes of gore to it.

Fantasia 2008, Day Fourteen: An Empress and the Warriors, May 18, The Rebel, and From Within

It's probably good that I don't have time to write up my story about sitting next to the same annoying people in consecutive screenings, as that could go on forever and I'd just sound like a crank rather than somebody who was enjoying films. Maybe tomorrow.

Today's plan: The Detective, Dark Floors, either The Echo or Handle Me With Care, late dinner, Babysitter Wanted. If you're in town, neither Who Is KK Downey? nor L: Change the World is a bad choice.

Kwong saan mei yan (An Empress and the Warriors

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

An Empress and the Warriors has ambitions of being a full-on action romance date movie, which makes it sound like more of a mess than it actually is. At any given moment, it is absolutely certain of what it wants to be, and gives that audience all it has.

It is the time of China's ten kingdoms, and the Yan are fighting the Zhao. The Yan king is, like all of his line, a fierce warrior, and his daughter Feier (Kelly Chan) is less the cloistered-in-the-palace-wearing-fine-silks princess than the one who straps on some armor to help out on the front lines. When the King dies in battle, there are three candidates to rule - Wu Ba (Guo Xiaodong), the king's ambitious nephew; Muyong "Hu" Xuehu (Donnie Yen), an orphan who has risen to the position of Lord; and Feier, though women do not traditionally rule. Wu Ba plots to kill Feier before her coronation, thus disgracing Hu, but she is rescued by Duan Lan-Quan (Leon Lai), a doctor who lives in seclusion. Outside the royal circle for the first time in her life, she falls in love with the handsome pacifist, but once her injuries are healed, she must return to the Hall of Swords to deal with Wu Ba and the Zhaos.

Director "Tony" Ching Siu Tung isn't messing around, no matter what part of the movie he's working on: The battle scenes are big and loud, as are the training scenes, the palace scenes, and the... Well, not the romantic stuff; those are extraordinarily earnest, with the music suddenly going from martial to lilting, the costumes going from leather to simple cloth, and combat chick Feier gets fairly girly fairly fast. It's not exactly uncommon for the romantic subplot of a Hong Kong action film to be a sharp detour from the rest of the movie, but the effect is somewhat magnified here: There is a lot of testosterone in the first act without any form of comic relief, so going from Feier sparring with Muyong to getting cute with Lan-Quan is a major tonal shift.

Full review at EFC.

Hwaryeohan hyooga (May 18

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

This one was fairly sparsely attended, which is too bad. It shades a little too much toward romantic comedy goofiness in the beginning, trying a little hard to set the mood as placid with little to worry about, but once it gets going, it is pretty engrossing. Most films about Korea's recent history good enough to make it onto the international festival circuit tend to be that way: The material itself is pretty astonishing, especially as it's the sort of thing that Cold War stereotyping often reserved to the Communist Nations. The combination of that material with a suddenly very strong Korean film industry (as much talk as there is of a slump, it's worth remembering that Korea was barely on the map as a place where great film is found a dozen years ago) creates amazing results.

This one tells of a 1980 protest that became a massacre that became a riot that became a siege. The object lesson for military dictatorships is that the competent soldiers your compulsory military service creates today are tomorrow's unhappy civilians, and look out if they get hold of some guns - as much as the government will have superior firepower, there exists the potential for an incredible mess.

Dong Mau anh Hung (The Rebel

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I don't know how busy a local film industry Vietnam has, although I'm guessing it's small and relatively young - following IMDB links from The Rebel soon leads back to many of the same people and to foreign productions. That's not wholly a bad thing for an action-adventure flick like The Rebel, though - it means limited screwing around with things like wires, padding, stunt doubles, or deceptive camera angles when the fighting starts.

The scene is 1922 Vietnam. The French have established a secret intelligence force to work against the rebels, and while their top team of Cuong (Johnny Nguyen) and Sy (Dustin Nguyen) isn't quite able to prevent the assassination of a French official, they do manage to capture a valuable prisoner - Vo Tranh Thuy (Thanh Van Ngo), daughter of a resistance leader and a fierce fighter in her own right. Though Sy mainly has his eye on career advancement, Cuong is increasingly uneasy with the violence necessary to maintain a system that doesn't seem to be bringing much to the Vietnamese people. This time, he snaps, breaking the girl out of prison. Sy, blamed for his subordinate's rebellion, decides to use this as an opportunity to track them back to the rebel leader.

Johnny Nguyen is a producer and writer as well as the lead actor, and along with Truc "Charlie" Nguyen (writer, director, executive producer, editor), he's built himself a pretty decent star vehicle. He's maybe not the greatest actor, but he and the filmmakers know how to work his brooding good looks in between action scenes. He's also smart enough to surround himself with good people: The actor playing Cuong's opium-addicted father, Chanh Tin Nguyen, is a local legend; Dustin Nguyen balances Sy's role as the villain nicely with his tension at how the French treat him; and Thanh Van Ngo is good whether asked to serve as the love interest or kick some butt.

Full review at EFC.

From Within

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm down to zero time before heading out, so From Within gets the short shrift until I start catching up next week. In short: Not bad, I'd really like to see it on film as opposed to HD projection, and I kind of felt a little cheated by what was going on as the credits rolled.

Fantasia 2008, Day Thirteen: Our Town, The End, Stuck, and Red

Spent the day working on SQL scripts for work, so I can afford to see movies. I'm very tempted just to say I'm using the extra vacation days, though - not only have the expected T-storms not appeared, but trying to work for any period of time here is an absolute back-killer.

Anyway, off to the movies. Today's plan is An Empress and the Warriors, May 18, The Rebel, and From Within. If you're in town, I really dug Akanbo Shojo.

Uri Dongne (Our Town)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The trailer and description for Our Town had me expecting something a little different - a little more cat and mouse, a little less "it's all connected". It's unfair to be disappointed by that (judge the movie one what it is, rather than what you expect it to be), but the idea of two serial killers becoming aware of each other and looking to take each other out is so good that I hope someone else picks up on it.

This mid-sized Korean town does have a serial killer - four dead girls in as many months, strung up and displayed in public places. Jae-shin (Lee Sun-kyun) is investigating, but the killer is much too careful and meticulous. Meanwhile, Jae-shin's longtime friend Gyeong-joo (Oh Man-suk) is writing a novel about a serial killer, which his editor dismisses as unrealistic despite it being based on true events. As a result, he's having a hard time paying the rent, which leads to a situation where he kills his landlady in a fit of rage. He hits on the idea of staging a scene to look like another killing in the series, putting the cops on the wrong track. Of course, there's an obvious flaw in his plan - when Hyoi (Ryou Duck-hwan) at the general store sees the news about a fifth body, he's more than a little curious about what's going on.

So, it's not exactly dueling serial killers, but there's still an interesting thriller to be had here. The potential trouble comes from writer Mo Hong-jin taking that situation and weighing it down with prior events. It makes a certain level of sense to have it be the chief investigator's best friend be the copycat killer; he's the one with reason to believe that he might get away with it. Then, okay, maybe Gyeong-joo walks into Hyoi's store while the news breaks. Soon, though, there comes a point where the mounting connections between the three leads becomes too much. Each of them is interesting in and of themselves, but at a certain point the cumulative effect becomes just too much.

Full review at EFC.

The End

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

It is a bit worrisome when, prior to a festival screening, the director is offering what can seem like excuses or explanations - they had less money than the short film that precedes it, but it is long for a zero-budget indie, there's a big plot twist in the middle, etc., etc. If you believe in your movie, let it stand, I figure. I'm pretty sure I still would have enjoyed The End without my expectations being managed.

I admit, it may have helped a little. The opening is kind of clunky; we seem to hear about what high school teacher Joseph Rickman (Jeremy Thomas) did sixteen years ago in every other line of dialog before finally getting into details. Back then, as a teenager, he found a missing girl on sheer intuition, and he's starting to get weird hunches again, seeing a strange robed, limping man in a tragedy mask who may be responsible for a rash of recent kidnappings. Joseph's long-time friend, Det. Clara Wilkie (Ella May) worries about him, but is willing to take whatever help she can get with the case - even after Joseph recognizes and shares the unorthodox source of his intuition.

To let that cat out of the bag would be a shame, and I'm not going to do it, but it is one of the rare mid-thriller twists that makes the movie funnier rather than more grim. It's clever and relatively unexpected based upon what had come before, but does make the things that might have seemed irritating earlier on go down easier in retrospect. That doesn't mean the film completely transforms into a comedy; the characters still take the mystery story seriously, and what is funny to the audience is in fact disturbing to the people within the film.

Full review at EFC.

Stuck

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Stuck is based on a true story that made headlines a few years back, although much-beloved cult filmmaker Stuart Gordon has changed almost all the details to make a feature-length film out of it. That's fine, though; the real story was likely not nearly as much fun.

We're introduced to Brandi (Mena Suvari) and Tom (Stephen Rea). Tom is unemployed and his landlord intends to change the locks on his apartment as soon as he's out the door for a job interview, rendering him homeless; Brandi has just been informed she's up for a supervisor's position, but that might just be a ploy to get her to work a second Saturday in a row. While Brandi is unwinding at a club with friend Tanya (Rukiya Bernard) and (drug-dealing) boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby), Tom is learning the ins and outs of homelessness. As Tom is making his way to a shelter, he's hit by Brandi's car. Rather than call the police, she drives back home - with Tom still lodged in her windshield.

To this point, the movie has followed the actual events reasonably closely, although with many of the details changed. Things start to diverge at this point, but the core of what Gordon found appealing in this story is crystal-clear throughout - and despite Gordon's history of gory horror flicks, it's not Tom's broken and bloodied body. Gordon and screenwriter John Strysik see a parable about the inability of people to look outside their own immediate interests - not just Brandi, but nearly every other person in the film. Just about the only exception to this is a homeless man who shares a drink with Tom and sets the new guy up with a shopping cart of his own. Tom is on the receiving end of the callousness most of the time, but even he will look at a waiting room full of people who likely also had appointments at specific times and ask why he can't have his interview right away.

Full review at EFC.

Red

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Ah, I should have written this one up instead of Stuck; there seems to be much more going on to talk about.

I liked it, in large part because it's got a cast absolutely packed with people I enjoy, and I like dogs. It's also the sort of story that could have easily become a violent revenge thriller (and it arguably does), but there's a lack of sadism too it - Brian Cox's character is determined to go about things the right way, and the filmmakers don't choose to use that as justification for throwing up a ton of hollow violence.

I'm kind of curious about the two directors working on it - I remember Lucky McKee talking about this project either at Fantasia or BUFF a couple years ago, and I'm left wondering how it wound up in Trygve Allister Diesen's hands - did McKee abandon it, run out of money, cause trouble, or what? There are scenes toward the end where it seems Diesen could only get a couple of the cast on set at a time, necessitating weird silhouette shots.

Oh, and I'm kind of amused by the small-town newspaper being the Portland Press-Herald, the actual name of the paper in Portland, ME. I don't think it was supposed to be set in Maine, but what are the odds of that sort of coincidence?

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia 2008, Day Twelve: From Inside, Shadow Spirit, and Gangster VIP

I'll admit, my lack of enthusiasm for From Inside may have come from having worn myself out a little beforehand; the walk up and down Mont Royal can leave a person a bit worn out. The best way to follow that up is not necessarily an hour and a half in a chair having to look up because you arrived just as the movie was scheduled to start, at least not if staying alert and engaged is the goal. Still, blah, doom and gloom nastiness. Not really my thing.

I think I chose fairly wisely with the rest of the evening's films - Shadow Spirits and Gangster VIP were enjoyable, and I got to have supper at a supper-like hour. Hopefully I'll be able to catch up with No Mercy for the Rude and Flick down the road.

Note to self: Apparently, the first Kyogokudo book is coming out in English... next year. I enjoyed Shadow Spirits enough that it's worth looking out for.

Today's plan: Hitting a couple tourist spots (I'll probably wind up telecommuting the rest of the week), followed by Our Town, The End, Stuck (I guess), and Red. If you're in town, Chasing World isn't bad.

From Inside

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Animated Auteur Visions)

On the one hand, I'm glad something like From Inside can get made: A feature-length (if just barely) animated feature that represents one man's unique vision, with no interest whatsoever in the family audience. On the other hand... Good lord, this is grim, to the point where even the folks who like their darkness might wonder why they're putting themselves through it.

The world has ended, our narrator Cee (voice of Corryn Cummins) tells us; she and other survivors are on a train, and have been so long that she can't remember getting on. Cee has been given her own cabin, as she is the only pregnant woman on the train. The landscape is hellish, and the conditions on the train are bad enough that she sometimes has difficulty telling the difference between her life and her nightmares. She considers the question of whether or not it is right to bring a child into the world quite a bit.

Filmmaker John Bergin goes to dark imagery right away, with engineers using pitchforks to feed babies into the burner. He gives us actual seas of blood, for instance, which is kind of over the top but serves to point up just how continually unpleasant things are. While Cee is drawn pretty, most of the other passengers and engineers are stylized and grotesque. It's a pretty constant stream of unpleasantness, and maybe could have used a little leavening, especially considering how beautiful the sequence where Bergin allows a little joy to enter the film is - enough so that there was a combination of laughs and groans when the pendulum swings the other way.

Full review at EFC.

Moryo no hako (The Shadow Spirit)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Modern genres and their rules have been fairly rigidly codified for a while now, but it wasn't always thus; the original pulps and serials would mix them up with abandon. The novels of Natsuhiko Kyogoku appear to be throwbacks to that kind of audaciousness, if The Shadow Spirit is any indication.

It starts out looking like a classic detective story, the sort that might show up on PBS's Mystery! series, albeit with an unusual detective: Reijiro Enokizu (Hiroshi Abe) can see a person's memories. After a brief prologue where we see him demonstrate this ability to Shunko Kubo (Kankuro Kudo) during their WWII service, the film picks up in the early 1950s, where Enokizu's uncle, a movie studio executive, wants the private detective to find the missing daughter of one of his stars, Yoko "Minami" Yuzuki (Hitomi Kuroki), who is potentially the heir to a vast fortune. It is not a good time to be a missing young girl, as across Tokyo, a group of writers - Tatsumi Sekiguchi (Kippei Shiina), Atsuko Chuzenji (Rena Tanaka), and Morihiko Toriguchi (Magi) - and cops Aoki (Keisuke Horibe) and Kiba (Hiroyuki Miyasako) are investigating gruesome murders where only mismatched limbs have been found. To get to the bottom of their cases, both groups will have to consult with Atsuko's brother, Akihiko "Kyogokudo" Chuzenji (Shin'ichi Tsutsumi), a rare book dealer whose encyclopedic knowledge of spirituality and the occult serves him well in his avocation of exorcist. Boxes of one sort or another will play a role in the investigation - Kubo, now a pulp fiction writer, finds them comforting, having the opposite of claustrophobia; a strange Shinto sect called the "Purifiers of the Sacred Box" claims they can remove people's ills; and there's a strange box-like building high on a mountaintop where Dr. Koshiro Mimakasa (Akira Emoto) did research during the war.

The Shadow Spirit is actually the second movie adapted from a novel series, so what comes across to foreign audiences as a surprising leaps from one genre to another will likely seem just like how these stories work to the Japanese. It is an interesting marriage of forms, though: The sleuths are a group of charming characters that it's quite easy to grow comfortable with, a fairly perfect fit for the mystery novel feel of the early film - even though set in post-war Tokyo, there is something very Agatha Christie about the movie's first act. They remain that way as the film goes on, even though the crimes have gotten much nastier, and they're now surrounded by the nasty pulp dismemberments and mad scientists out of old serials. The movie takes on the feel of a serial by the end, especially in how they could be quite far afield from how they started by the time they finished.

Full review at EFC.

Burai yori daikanbu (Gangster V.I.P.)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Nikkatsu Action!)

I'll catch up on this review when I'm back in Boston and have No Borders, No Limits for reference; after all, despite the success of the touring program, it looks like this won't be available on English-subtitled DVD any time soon (in part because it's the start of a six-film series that the rights-holders would like to package as a box set), and there are only a couple more stops for the tour (Seattle, Vancouver, enjoy!).

It is the most conventional of the movies included, a yakuza film starring Tetsuya Watari as a young gangster with a sense of honor, looking to do the right thing even as everything around him goes to hell. The director describes it as a youth film taking place against a yakuza background, and I see that.

It may not be quite so different as the other Nikkatsu Action films that showed up in the tour, but it is a pretty darn good movie; I'd be interested to see the others in the series.