Fantasia Daily for 17 July: Oblivion Island, Golden Slumber, Variola Vera, Alice Creed, Eve's Necklace,Fable

Saturday was a long, long day at the festival, not just because of the six movies, which stretched over fifteen hours when all was said and done, but because of there was a fair amount of just plain craziness to deal with as well.

It started early in the AM, before I went to sleep, when I got back from Friday's late show to discover that somewhere between the wall and the laptop, the internet just wasn't working. Sometimes that can be fixed with reboots, but nothing I did to the server or laptop made them get along. I was almost late getting to Oblivion Island because of it, and wound up using the time between it and Golden Slumber sitting in a coffee shop, having bought a cookie and a smoothie for the express purpose of using their WiFi, only to have to wait on the smoothie until the frozen-drink machine was repaired.

On the plus side, there was a short my Mamoru Oshii before Oblivion Island, and it appeared that several people in the audience came entirely to see that 12-minute piece, "Je t'aime". It was, for what it's worth, not bad at all, featuring a basset hound in a world without humans, trying to befriend a strange flying girl robot, who eventually flips out and starts laying waste to everything. In a sense, it was everything you need to know about Oshii compressed into handy short-film size.

Golden Slumbers turned out to be pretty good, but with ten minutes to go...



...someone pulled a fire alarm. This kept us outside for a good fifteen minutes, during much of which time it was raining pretty hard. It also threatened to throw big monkey wrenches into any plans to jump back and forth between theaters; I was okay with my pass, but I was talking to people in line who had tickets for both The Disappearance of Alice Creed in de Seve and Blades of Blood in Hall, which was going to be tight to begin with, but the fire alarm dropped it to zero room for error.

Just to make sure, there was another alarm midway through Variola Vera (this one a "security issue"). That one had some serious attrition during the fifteen minute wait for the building to be cleared; a number of folks wound up bailing because staying to the end, catching a cab, and getting to Nevermore on the other side of town on time just wouldn't be possible. For me, it just meant seeing Eve's Necklace instead of Blades of Blood that night, so I'm pretty sure I don't hate whoever's responsible quite as much as the folks who really seemed to be enjoying Variola Vera.

The introductions for the two last movies of the night each had bits that amused me a bit: For Eve's Necklace the filmmaker paused after saying he was form Austin as to wait for applause; sorry, buddy, that only happens when you're actually in Austin. Also, festival director King-wei Chu introduced the last movie of the night as "Fable: Teeth of Breasts", but that's an easy mistake to make, especially if you've just been waiting backstage with star Melantha Blackthorne.

I ducked out on the Q&A for that one, as all that was left in the theater were folks who were impressed with the movie, and things were surreal enough at 2:30am!

Hottarake no shima - Haruka to maho no kagami (Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Though digital production has all but taken over the American animation industry, Japan's has mostly remained dominated by hand-drawn images. Of course, as with Disney in the 1990s, digital tools have been used in many traditionally animated pictures, including those from Production I.G. Their first fully-digital feature, Oblivion Island, is a nice little movie but I do rather hope that it's not a sign of things to come.

It's a cute enough story. Haruka was given a pretty hand mirror by her dying mother when she was younger, and said she would always have it with her, but at some point it wound up in a closet, and now she can't find it. The reason why she can't find it is because fox-masked creatures take the things humans take for granted, only returning them if appeased with an egg left at a shrine. 16-year-old Haruka (voice of Haruka Ayase), though she thinks that this is just a fairy tale, nevertheless leaves an egg, hardly expecting to actually see one of the creatures! When it grabs her keys, she pursues it to try to get them back, getting sucked into their world. And while it's probably not difficult to get back, she might as well find her mother's mirror while she's there. Except that it happens to be in the hands of The Baron...

The creative team involved is surprising - co-writer/director Shinsuke Sato has mostly done live-action fare, and his next two films are an adaptation of the ultraviolent manga Gantz; co-writer Hirotaka Adachi is better known for the horror stories he writes under the nom de plume Otsuichi. Surprisingly, what they come up with isn't particularly subversive; instead, it's rather standard family fare, with but one truly scary moment. That's not a mark against this movie, wihch is straightforward, charming, and goes down pretty easy. Kids will seldom get confused, at the very least, although the writing does have a bad habit of creating new rules for its fantasy world at the exact second they become convenient.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Golden Slumber (Goruden Suranba)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Fish Story may not have set the Japanese box office on fire, but the folks who saw it loved it, so it's no wonder that director Yoshihiro Nakamura chose another Kotaro Isaka novel (with a musical title) as one of his next projects. And it's got another killer hook, one that it gets a lot more mileage out of than other thrillers.

Start with Masaharu Aoyagi (Masata Sakai); when he was in college, he and his friends Shingo Morita (Hidetaka Yoshioka), Kazuo Ono (Hitori Gekidan), and Haruko Higuchi (Yuka Takeuchi) hung out, critiqued fast food, and traded conspiracy theories. Ten years later, he's a deliveryman, although one who gained a certain amount of fame two years earlier for rescuing pop idol Rinka (Shihori Kanjiya) from a burglar. It looks like Morita is doing much better for himself, but when Aoyagi awakes after passing out in Mortia's car, his old friend tells him that he's up to his eyeballs in gambling debt, but it would be wiped clean if he makes sure Aoyagi is in this car at this time. Why? Well, the Prime Minister's motorcade is about to pass by; Morita thinks Aoyagi is being set up as a patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is ridiculous--

Bang!
Bang!

Nakamura and company set this situation up in a crisp, efficient opening that establishes Aoyagi's dorky, blue-collar charm, and then literally explodes into high gear. After that, the chase is on, and though Golden Slumbers hasn't really had a chance to build, it manages to sustain itself at a remarkably high energy and tension level for a long time. It's probably something like an hour after before that initial jolt starts to wane, and by then the story has started throwing not just twists but counter-twists, giving us a very well-played game of cat and mouse.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Variola Vera

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Wow... Looking at the IMDB page for this, I am shocked to see that Rade Serbedzija played the womanizing doctor in this movie. I had him completely pegged for the Albanian muslim who serves as patient zero, because his career lately has been variations on that sort of hirsute guy of Eastern European heritage. My mind is blown.

That mis-identification aside, I'm really fond of this Serbian (well, "Yugoslavian", as it was made in 1982) dramatization of a 1972 smallpox outbreak. It's tense and bleak, and has the sort of ground-level, unwavering stare most associated with the seventies in America. It's a very nice combination of a simple story and a large, excellent ensemble.

The Disappearance of Alice Creed

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I am somewhat surprised that the title of this film is not "The Kidnapping of Alice Creed". After all, everything else about this movie is precise, thought-out, and well-defined - it would be a shame if the very title proved to be a red herring or gave the end away.

Vic (Eddie Marsan) and Danny (Martin Compston) have a plan. We see them prepare, carefully making sure that they will go undetected and leave no forensic traces that will cause the law to pursue them after they have made their escape. The young woman they kidnap, Alice (Gemma Arterton), will have no chance of escape before the ransom is paid. It is a good plan. In fact, it appears to be a flawless plan. Except, of course, that there is no such thing: There's always something hasn't been taken into account.

What is the wrench in Vic's and Danny's plan? You don't really expect me to say, do you? It's not a bad little twist, which lets the audience look at the plot in a different way, allows the security of the hideout to be compromised (but not obviously so), and sets up for another revelation that, while it doesn't so much turn the plot on its head again, certainly does a fine job of making things more complicated. It is, in its way, a machine as perfectly well-oiled as the original kidnapping plot, designed to keep things up in the air until the last scene.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Eve's Necklace

* * (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I nodded off during this and the next film, and was actually going to go back and give it a second viewing on Monday, but opted against it because, as I was walking back from the office, I really couldn't figure how seeing it a second time would add much more than novelty value. And since I'd already gotten the novelty value, that was time that could be spent in a steakhouse.

It's cute, don't get me wrong, and lends a bit of interest to what would probably be a less-than-impressive thriller scripts, but I don't think the audience ever reacted to it much in a way beyond "ha! that looks kind of weird being done by a mannequin!" The voice acting also kind of got on my nerves; as much as the filmmakers tried to be playing their mannequin melodrama straight, the silly voices just didn't work for me.

Fable: Teeth of Beasts

* (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Every year at Fantasia, generally during the midnight program, I see at least one movie that really should spur me to make a film of my own, just because within five minutes I am absolutely sure I write a better script, and within fifteen I know that the actors and director I could pull in via nepotism and friends of friends would not be complete spazzes. This year, Fable was that movie.

I should have run, but I don't want to be that guy, and this movie was a deadly combination of overly earnest voice-over, ambitious but unimpressive visual effects, and bad acting. Oh, and the "action" sequences. Everything seemed to be moving at half-speed, like they were still practicing their blocking rather than running through so that it looked good on screen.

I feel bad for even mentioning it, but I want this placeholder here: If, in a couple years, an atrocious gender-bending sci-fi romantic comedy with my name on it plays an easily marginalized slot at Fantasia or BUFF, this is why it happened. And as bad as it will be, I'm pretty sure it will be better than this.

Fantasia: Fish Story and Golden Slumber

Yeah, I'll get back to "Fantasia Daily" tomorrow (okay, later today); I just figured that these two deserve to go together, since both are directed by Yoshihiro Nakamura from a novel by Kotaro Isoka. The programmers didn't put them together as a double feature, but spreading them out a bit is fine, as they managed to brighten two days.

One thing I can't help but notice about Isoka is that he seems to write novels that break up easily. Look at Fish Story and Accuracy of Death (aka Sweet Rain), which played Fantasia two years ago, and you see these very distinct substories. Looking at the description for the original novel of Golden Slumber (which will apparently get an English-language publication next year as Remote Control, a generic but appropriate name, I guess), it's described as being told in six parts.

This is, perhaps, just Isoka's style, but I've been reading a fair amount of Japanese sci-fi over the past year and I notice that a lot of these books have tables of contents which divide the book up into chunks. I suspect that it's still rather common for novels to be initially published as serials over there (whether in magazines or as a series of "light novels").

Fish Story

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Fish Story, if nothing else, lives up to its name. Not in that fish appear anywhere in it, but in the other definition. It's an unlikely story, which grows larger and stranger in the telling, but one that delights as well.

In 2012, Tokyo is more or less empty as most of the population has fled in a futile effort to avoid the tidal waves that will be caused by the comet about to hit Earth. Well, except for a few - a miserable, ailing fatalist (Kenjiro Ishimaru) finds a record store open, the people inside apparently unaware of the upcoming cataclysm. The customer proposes several unlikely ways the disaster could be averted, but the owner (Nao Omori) pulls out a record, Fish Story, on vinyl, never re-pressed or available on CD, and says that the title track will save the world. How? Well it involves three college students (Gaku Hamada, Takashi Yamanaka, and Kazuki Namioka) in 1982 who ponder the paranormal implications of a sixty-second silence in the track, a doomsday cult in 1999, the pastry chef (Mirai Moriyama) who befriends a girl (Mikako Tabe) who oversleeps on the ferry in 2009, and, of course, the two leaders (Atsushi Ito, Kengo Kora) of a band who recorded this punk song in 1975, a year before the Sex Pistols hit the scene.

It all connects, naturally, and it's not much of a spoiler to say that Fish Story eventually reveals itself to be a Rube Goldberg machine of a movie, although director Yoshihiro Nakamura hides some of the steps until absolutely necessary. Of course, by the time comes to reveal them, most of them are probably what you've deduced them to be, although not all. It's an extremely satisfying combination of the film zigging when one might expect it to zag and pulling together in a way that is cohesive despite how relatively peculiar and individual the various segments are.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Golden Slumber (Goruden Suranba)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 17 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Fish Story may not have set the Japanese box office on fire, but the folks who saw it loved it, so it's no wonder that director Yoshihiro Nakamura chose another Kotaro Isaka novel (with a musical title) as one of his next projects. And it's got another killer hook, one that it gets a lot more mileage out of than other thrillers.

Start with Masaharu Aoyagi (Masata Sakai); when he was in college, he and his friends Shingo Morita (Hidetaka Yoshioka), Kazuo Ono (Hitori Gekidan), and Haruko Higuchi (Yuka Takeuchi) hung out, critiqued fast food, and traded conspiracy theories. Ten years later, he's a deliveryman, although one who gained a certain amount of fame two years earlier for rescuing pop idol Rinka (Shihori Kanjiya) from a burglar. It looks like Morita is doing much better for himself, but when Aoyagi awakes after passing out in Mortia's car, his old friend tells him that he's up to his eyeballs in gambling debt, but it would be wiped clean if he makes sure Aoyagi is in this car at this time. Why? Well, the Prime Minister's motorcade is about to pass by; Morita thinks Aoyagi is being set up as a patsy, like Lee Harvey Oswald. Which is ridiculous--

Bang!
Bang!

Nakamura and company set this situation up in a crisp, efficient opening that establishes Aoyagi's dorky, blue-collar charm, and then literally explodes into high gear. After that, the chase is on, and though Golden Slumbers hasn't really had a chance to build, it manages to sustain itself at a remarkably high energy and tension level for a long time. It's probably something like an hour after before that initial jolt starts to wane, and by then the story has started throwing not just twists but counter-twists, giving us a very well-played game of cat and mouse.

Full review at eFilmCritic

Fantasia Daily for 16 July 2010: Phasma Ex Machina, Sell Out! ,Fish Story, Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy

Once again, I'm running late, so I'll just say that Friday was the best day I've had at Fantasia so far this year, starting from a pretty-good sci-fi/ghost story and all the way into a fun luchador flick at midnight. And boy, did I need it after a day chasing my own tail at work. I can't wait until Tuesday when vacation just becomes vacation.

Tonight's burger was enjoyed courtesy of Gourmet Burger, where I really should have asked them to hold the caramelized onions, because I think I scraped much of the bacon off with them. However, it's worth noting that they have floats, with the Coke involved coming from a glass bottle. Classic.

Phasma Ex Machina

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

A realistic ghost story is, if you ask a skeptic like me, ultimately a contradiction in terms, but that doesn't mean that storytellers shouldn't make the effort to get as close to one as possible. The moments in those stories that audiences find affecting, after all, are the ones where we at the very least believe in what the characters are doing. Phasma Ex Machina goes above and beyond by attempting to approach its paranormal elements scientifically.

That's the only way Cody (Sasha Andreev) can really think to do it. Though he dropped out of college to look after his younger brother James (Max Hauser) when their parents died in an automobile accident, he's been spending most of his time in his garage workshop and much of the insurance payout on electrical components. His theory is straightforward: Most modern ghost sightings correlate with powerful electrical activity, so by building a sort of modified Van der Graaf generator, he should be able to cause his parents to manifest. He doesn't seem to get much more than fried components and spooky noises, though - although not far away, Tom (Matthew Feeney), an engineer who sold him some custom pieces, is being visited by his late wife.

There's a bit of small-world syndrome going on here, in that Tom seems to be a rather convenient character: He not only makes the piece of equipment that Cody needs to complete the machine, but we get very little indication that anyone other than him is affected. Not zero, although we're left to infer that from the policeman who investigates intruders in the house being called away to another break-in. So it may just be selection bias; perhaps Tom seems to fit the plot too well because, even if many people are suddenly seeing ghosts, he's the one with the knowledge and personality to track what's going on back to the source.

Full review at EFC

Sell Out!

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

With a name like Sell Out!, you can probably guess what sort of satire Yeo Joon Han is going for in his movie, and a lot of it is absolutely going for easy targets. What makes it work - to the point of frequent laughing out loud - is how thorough he is and how on-target he stays.

Rafflesia Pong (Jerrica Lai) is the host of an interview show on Malaysia's Fony TV 11, "For Art's Sake", where she interviews various contemporary artists. It's often a trainwreck, and on the verge of cancellation, until a poet with cancer - her ex-boyfriend - expires on camera. That gets her a new show about interviewing ordinary people on their deathbeds, and fuels her rivalry with reality-show hostess Hannah Edwards Leong (Hannah Lo). The Fony execs have another troublesome employee to deal with, too - Eric Tan (Peter Davis) has invented a revolutionary cooking machine, which throws them for a loop. Creativity, after all, is highly discouraged and it doesn't even have a mechanism to cause it to fail when the warranty ends. Clearly, Eric needs to have the part that dreams about making the world better exorcised.

For the most part, Han isn't using anything close to a light touch; a lot of the jokes in this movie are ones that an editor at Mad Magazine might send back to the writer, saying that they were a little obvious. But, as always, it's less the joke itself than the way that it's told that's important, and the filmmakers attack their targets with rapid-fire precision. There's rarely more than thirty seconds between funny beats it the movie, and Han nimbly jumps back and forth between the absurd but all too real and the just plain strange, with fantastic bits and musical numbers (including one mean to be performed by the audience) living comfortably alongside complaints about familiar frustrations.

Full review at EFC

Fish Story

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I had genuine intentions of writing a review of this one, but the time in which I could be writing about it got sucked up in trying to find a site with cast and character names that is either in English or easy to translate (the official site looks useful, but you can't copy and past information into a translation website - if I were home, I'd probably be using my phone to take a screenshot and have Google Goggles translate it). I really wish Japanese movies had a site as useful as HanCinema.net or IMDB (which often contains very little on foregin films)

Anyway, when I do, it will be a very positive review. In some ways, Fish Story reminds me of a comedic 20th Century Boys, with its love of rock & roll, story that jumps back and forth in time, unfolding over decades, and bizarrely connected characters. Rather than being a thriller, though, it eventually reveals itself to be a Rube Goldberg device of a movie, somehow stitching together a story about young musicians, an action/adventure story on a boat, and a bunch of seemingly unrelated characters to show how a punk rock song recorded in 1975 Japan can save the world from a comet impact in 2012. It's a virtuoso performance, really, in how director Yoshihiro Nakamura and screenwriter Taio Hayashi adapt a Kotaro Isaka novel in a way that presents the stories in more or less individual fashion while holding the ways they tie together back just enough without it seeming like they're cheating.

Fish Story is just what I love about of modern popular Japanese cinema: Something that's incredibly high-energy and creative, full of surprising twists and winning performances.

Mil Mascaras vs. the Aztec Mummy

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I've never seen a luchadore movie before (no, Nacho Libre does not count), but I'll bet that most of them are something like this, although it likely says something that the production values on an American indie shot in Missouri are likely above the dozen or two movie Mil Mascaras made during his heyday in Mexico. And that's considering how there are times when it's difficult to tell whether the producers of Aztec Mummy were making a genuine homage or a parody.

No matter what their intentions were, though, the end result is surprisingly fun. The film gives us a hero who is both larger-than-life and down-to-earth, a hissable villain, and a pure innocent joy in its adventure story that's difficult to fake. It's also a pretty good-looking film; the folks involved opted to do their best rather than go for camp or kitsch, and it's a decision that serves them quite well; audiences can laugh with this one, rather than at it.

Fantasia Daily for 15 July 2010: Merantau, We Are What We Are

One of the things that generally makes Fantasia a low-stress festival is that it stretches its schedule in one direction (time) while minimizing the other (theaters) - well, low-stress so long as you have the time to spare. It occasionally leads to days where the schedule looks like Thursday, though - where after Menantau, I look at the schedule and grumble that the options appear to be Mexican blood 'n guts (We Are What We Are) or Serbian blood 'n guts (T.T. Syndrome), and then after that, a choice between a movie I saw a couple months earlier and liked by didn't quite love (Air Doll) and a movie that I never really considered putting on my schedule when it played IFFBoston (Lemmy).

Truth be told, I wasn't really in a blood 'n guts mood, but chose the Mexican movie because the program did a better job of selling it to me - the notes made a comparison to Let the Right One In versus showing a severed head - and I don't know whether that was a terribly good decision. I was fighting off sleep throughout the movie, and then when I walked out, and saw a bunch of Motorhead fans crowding the theater - well, nothing against them, but it highlighted that I was going to be surrounded by people who really wanted to see a movie about Lemmy, versus me not knowing that the band Motorhead had a lead singer named Lemmy before reading the IFFBoston program.

Plus, I didn't realize just how much the week of working 9-3:30 and then seeing movies until midnight had taken out of me before going back to the sublet and dropping to the bed. I feel kind of bad as a guy who figures that I was given a press pass so that I could see and raise awareness of as many festival movies as possible, but I kind of needed the break.

Merantau

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Before I started attending genre film festivals like Fantasia, I confess, I had no idea that there were so many distinct ways for people to beat each other up. It's probably unfortunate, from a perspective of how we relate to each other as human beings, that no matter where in the world you go, that land can likely boast its own distinct form of hand-to-hand combat, although it's great for those who like variety in their action movies. Merantau is from Indonesia, and thus features silat.

Merantau, the word, is defined for the audience as a journey young people take alone to show that they are self-sufficient prepared for adulthood. As the film begins, Yuda (Iko Uwais) is about to begin his, going from the tomato fields of Sumatra to the big city of Jakarta. He intends to teach silat, although a man he meets on the bus says he will likely wind up using those skills in other ways. And indeed, there are not many teaching opportunities, but when he sees Astri (Sisca Jessica) being manhandled by Johni (Alex Abbad), he can't help but step in. Naturally, it doesn't go over so well; if she can't dance in Johni's club, how will she support her little brother Adit (Yusuf Aulia)? However, when Yuda spots something similar happening the next day - only this time Astri is being kidnapped because Johni promised European gangster Ratger (Mads Koudal) five "fresh" girls... Well, objections to being rescued are dropped.

That's pretty much the plot; once Yuda is in the city, it is basically him chasing Johni's and Ratger's men, or vice versa, depending on whether Astri was last kidnapped or rescued. It's simple and straightforward, with the characters getting just enough depth for audience empathy and providing enough reasons to shuffle locations around so that the fight scenes take place in different environments.

Full review at EFC

Somos Lo Que Hay (We Are What We Are)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

We are What We Are benefits from a strong opening and a well-made finish, but an unfortunately unsatisfying transition between the two. That opening is just packed with wonderfully cynical symbolism, as a man flails about in an outdoor mall, causing people to shoo him until he collapses, dead, at which point cleaners quickly arrive on the scene, pull him out of the way, and mop the area as if practiced in the art of removing unwanted corpses. He's just unwanted trash. Then we meet a group we later learn is his family, see the friction between the brothers, and learn that the father has put them in dire straits.

The thing is, watching the group, they never seem like they are in dire straits. They're clean and healthy-looking, in a house that's not noticeably cramped. Yes, the mother is nuts, and the younger brother looks to be ready to pop off at any moment, but when we see them casually going out to get "food" (they are, you see, cannibals), there's something missing; what should be a family's desperation comes off as one woman's lunacy. There's also a rambling subplot about what is apparently Mexico City's one honest cop, and while the last act offers a tense standoff as members of this family wake up from their stupor just in time to be cornered by the police, I felt oddly uninvolved in the confrontation, aside from noting how well-shot and directed it was.

Fantasia Daily for 14 July 2010: Gintama, Heartless, Feast of the Assumption: BTK and the Ortero Family Murders

Aaaawww...

Of course, I passed up the Zappin Party this year, since it was opposite a documentary that looked promising but whose other screening was at a problematic time... Seeing as Feast of the Assumption made basically zero impression on me, it looks like that was a double fail on my part.

Gekijouban Gintama: Shin'yaku benizakura hen (Gintama)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Gintama opens and closes on some absolutely hilarious self-parody, the sort that could serve in some ways to warn first-timers away from the movie, pointing out that there are a bunch of characters who may or not be used in the film, or that there's no need to explain what's going on because only the hardcore fans are watching anyway. It's a beautiful job of breaking the fourth wall, self-deprecating but also showing some brilliant comic instincts, and getting me interested enough in the characters' personalities that I may just see what's been translated into English and made available.

After all, it's a fun world - an alternate Japan where aliens invaded during the samurai era and set up house, resulting in a world with twenty-first century technology but the dress and society of a bygone time. Thrown in the middle is a ronin and his assistants, tracking down a missing person and a missing sword. Naturally, these cases connect, leading to a great big showdown.

As much fun as the action is - and it is pretty nice, taking the TV animation up what I presume is a notch or two - the movie is at its best when it is sort of screwing around. I got big laughs from things like a guy pulling out a bazooka in response to a samurai sword, and the cut from two girls trying to get a good loogie to spit at each other (which, yeah, is kind of screwy itself) is one of the funniest I've seen in a while. It almost seems a shame to bury that in plot.

Heartless

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Between Death and the Devil)

Midway through Heartless, one may feel that it has lost its considerable edge; that a movie which starts out so grim and despairing has no business becoming quirky and even occasionally light-hearted. But deals with the devil must have some appeal; otherwise, would we believe that the deal would be made?

Jamie Morgan (Jim Sturgess) is a nice young man, although he tends to hide himself away in his mother's flat due to a number of unsightly birthmarks, including a heart-shaped one that covers half his face. He loves photography - something he inherited from his late father (Timothy Spall) - and works in a studio with his brother Raymond (Justin Salinger). He lives in a bad part of the city, but just as his world is rocked by a horrific act of violence, a mysterious phone call leads him to "Papa B" (Joseph Mawle), who offers him good looks in return for a few small acts of chaos. Jamie accepts, and is soon makes the acquaintance of two new people: Tia (Clémence Poésy), a pretty girl who had come to the studio for glamor shots but is far more comfortable dressed down, and "The Weapons Man" (Eddie Marsan), who will give him the unpleasant truth about just what he's agreed to.

The opening scenes of Heartless are an excellent mix of the tense and matter-of-fact, communicating both the fear generated in living in an area where violence is an all-too-frequent occurrence and the need to live an everyday life. The world seems to get darker and darker, slowly closing in on Jamie and the viewer audience until the outdoors feels more claustrophobic than the inside. Writer/director Philip Ridley wastes little time here: We are quickly able to understand the city's malaise in purely human terms, but a supernatural element is also introduced fairly quickly. It's a nifty combination of cinematography and effects work, too - I spent a few moments admiring how the filmmakers were making something conventional look demonic in the shadows before it jumped out as an actual demon.

Full review at EFC

Feast of the Assumption: BTK and the Otero Family Murders

N/A (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010: Documentaries from the Edge)

I'll probably be asking for a screener for this one (and then, as is traditional by now, looking at the looming pile of screeners on my coffee table and never getting around to watching any) because I can't remember anything about it. Well, it's not quite a complete blank, but I've just retained a smattering of facts but very little impressions of it as a movie. Sadly, one of the things I do remember is the subject, Charlie Otero, feeling that there was some sort of significance to his having watched In Cold Blood shortly before his family was murdered, and the film opting to end on the coincidence of the murderer having done so as well.

Fantasia Daily for 13 July 2010: Mai Mai Miracle, Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle, Tears for Sale

I'm sure my friend Laurel, who has occasionally suggested I make this a dinner and a movie blog, will be disappointed with me: I did not have kimchi or even Korean for dinner on an evening when I saw Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle, instead opting for a stop at m:brgr. They still make a great burger, although I was a little disappointed that the tall, delicious ice cream sodas I washed it down with last year were no longer on the menu.

I don't know whether this is a regular thing, but for Mai Mai Miracle, families with children got bumped to the front of the line. Very cool from a practicality purpose (those tend to be larger groups, so this gives them the chance to sit together without rearranging the rest of the audience) and reaching out to an audience that could probably be easily put off by how much of the programming is pretty violent and otherwise not kid-friendly. They're also offering free admission to kids under 18 for The Land Before Time with Don Bluth and Gary Goldman in person, and good for them.

In a somewhat interesting repeat of a couple nights earlier, the Q&A for Tears for Sale, there was another heated exchange between audience and filmmaker, once again with the unhappy audience member being shouted down somewhat. Again, a pity, because it demonstrated the tendency of people with strong opinions to presume that they are shared. Writer Aleksandar Radivojevic off-hand criticized the Serbian film industry constantly (along the lines of "the government only funds a certain type of film that stinks"), and what appeared to be a Serbian student in the audience took exception, both to the blanket assumption that nobody enjoys the movies being made in Serbia and how generally down on his home country he was.

I don't know that much useful could have come out of the argument, but as an amateur critic and hopefully open-minded fan of film in general, I'm really not comfortable with the "if you don't like it, why are you here?" that got shouted at the young woman. The way I figure it, the person who doesn't like the movie can probably potentially get more out of a Q&A and insight into the director's reasoning, and maybe has more interesting questions to ask. Those things get awfully dull when it's just "how difficult is it making such an awesome film?". Also, it's a good reminder that it's almost unavoidable one can get a very distorted image of the rest of the world; I'm sure that by the end of this festival, I'll get exposed to a lot of "Serbia is miserable", but there are other perspectives. Maybe this person is upper-class and has her own distorted view, but you always need an aggregate to get a complete impression.

Maimai Shinko to sennen no mahô (Mai Mai Miracle)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

Mai Mai Miracle is charming. It's a nostalgic memoir about growing up as free-range kids, but we can use all the good ones we can get before we run out of people who grew up that way. Nicely animated by Madhouse, the anecdotes should please audiences of all ages, and the storytelling is sophisticated enough to draw adults in without leaving the kids behind.

Shinko (voice of Mayuko Fukuda) is an energetic third-grader living in rural Japan. Her days are spent running through wheat fields, messing with her little sister, soaking in every word that her grandfather, a former schoolteacher, tells her about their town, and using it to fuel her very active imagination, which she claims is connected to her "mai mai", a cowlick that just won't lay flat no matter what she does. One day, a new girl joins her class; Kiiko (voice of Nako Mizusawa) is in many ways Shinko's opposite - the girl from Tokyo is shy and sad, and lives in a new western-style house - but they become fast friends. Soon there are other kids in their orbit. It's a good life, but not always a carefree one.

Like many films of its genre, Sunao Katabuchi's breaks up into smaller pieces. It's taken from a book by writer Noboku Takagi, who based it upon her life, and the various individual episodes toward the beginning are both amusing and true-to-life; Katabuchi almost never misses when depicting what's in a kid's head or what they'll do in a given situation, and there's never a situation the feels contrived beyond kids' natural abilities to get into mischief, usually with at least one big laugh to be found in each scenario. The filmmakers also do a fine job of getting into the kids' point of view, only briefly giving us the adults' perspective.

Full review at EFC

Sik-gaek : Kim-chi-jeon-jaeng (Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Looking at the cast list for Le Grand Chef 2: Kimchi Battle should raise some alarms; the main couple from the first film has been recast and a completely new character has first billing. Given that the plot is in large part a repeat of the first film, this looks like something that would normally go direct to video. And yet, it apparently not only played Korean theaters, but apparently got a small simultaneous release in America.

The basics of the story are the same: After a diplomatic incident with Japan, a nationwide tournament is instituted to celebrate kimchi as a uniquely Korean dish and find the best examples of it on the peninsula. One of the contestants, Jang-eun (Kim Jeong-eun), is returning to Korea from Japan after ten years, during which she had climbed to the level of the Prime Minister's Executive Chef. It's also a chance for her to reconnect with her mother, Soo-hyang (Lee Bo-hee), whose restaurant Chunyang-gak is likely closing in the face of its debts - which is fine with Jang-eun. It sits less well with Soo-hyang's foster son, Sung-chan (now played by Jin Goo), the greengrocer who won the competition in the first film. Prodded by his girlfriend Jin-soo (now played by Wang Ji-hye), he enters the competition, hoping to use the prize money to keep the restaurant open - although even when they were kids, he has never beat his sister in a cooking competition.

Kimchi Battle avoids doing a lot of things that other sequels might go for in the same situation: We don't see Sung-chan particularly changed by his success in the previous film, having to get back in touch with his working-class origins; he's pretty much the same guy he was before. When we first see Jin-soo, she's grumbling on the phone to her boss, asking why he thinks she always knows where Sung-chan is, raising fears that the filmmakers will pull the "they broke up off-screen and now must rediscover their love for each other thing. But, no, they're still together, if not terribly demonstrative, which is about right; romance was never" the thrust of the first one. And while it seems Sung-chan has gotten an entirely new family history in this film, it's okay, because it introduces us to Jang-eun.

Full review at EFC

Carlston za Ognjenku (Tears for Sale)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

The hackneyed phrase that will likely be used to describe this movie is "a Serbian Amélie", which I think does it a disservice because, well, I didn't like Amélie much at all. Gilliam might be a better comparison; after all, Jeunet hasn't had quite so bleak an outlook in some time.

Not to say that Tears for Sale is unpleasant; it's funny, sexy, and even sweet. Sonja Kolacaric and Katarina Radivojevic make for an entertaining comedy team as the sisters sent from their isolated village to bring back more men when the last one in the village dies (it's post-WWI, but the war never stops in Serbia; as the opening narration tells us, boys are sent off to war as soon as they are taller than their rifles, and the rifles get shorter all the time). It's unusual not just in Serbian cinema, but movies in general, to have a cast so full of women who are both unapologetically sexy but also funny, but Radivojevic especially is amazingly brash, playing her character broadly but often hilariously.

We were informed that this was the original Serbian cut; when Luc Besson's company cut big chunks out of the movie. I can't compare the two cuts, but I can see both sides, a bit - the cut described (mainly removing the ghost of the grandmother) sounds like it would be in many ways a more straightforward movie, especially since the thematic weight it added really wasn't there for me until the screenwriter explained it after the screening. But, this cut works very well, and certainly deserves to be seen.

Fantasia Daily for 12 July 2010: Crows Zero 2, At World's End, The Revenant

Full disclosure: I felt a little off yesterday. The late night after the I Spit on Your Grave Q&A, generally less-than-excellent fast food one eats when dedicated to seeing as much of a film festival as possible, et al, got to me, making it hard to work for money or for film, and perhaps fittingly for Fantasia, I was a bit of a zombie. A decent meal and switching from Pepsi to Pepsi Max had me in decent shape from 7pm or so, but I was pretty worn down for Crows Zero 2.

There were a pair of fairly entertaining Q&As later in the evening, as the directors of At World's End and The Revenant came to town. Tomas Villum Jensen's session was in some ways less question-and-answer than monologue, as he could hold forth on subjects and go on great digressions. For instance, much of At World's End was shot in Australia, so he had stories both of hiring stunt people and other behind-the-scenes folk who worked on Star Wars and The Matrix (so even though At World's End is a big project for Denmark...) and how it is not a good place to be if, like Jensen, you do not like non-domesticated animals.

Crows Zero 2 (Kurozu Zero II)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 12 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

I was tired and full of food during this one, so I drifted in and out, which is a bummer, as it was the only screening of the only Takashi Miike film playing during the festival. The man is slowing down, huh?

What I saw was well-done, although I was already a bit behind in not having seen any of the other Crows stories; the Crows Zero series is evidently a prequel to the stories of these characters as adults, detailing their high-school years. Which, apparently, were more or less non-stop fighting, a constant contest between rival gangs/schools. Some threads in the movie seemed to clearly be more connective tissue than anything, picking up on plots from the first Crows Zero and perhaps setting up for the original Crows manga and film, where I presume these characters are yakuza of some sort.

So, on the one hand, a whole lot of tough-guy posturing, which isn't really my thing, but Miike and his talented young cast do very well by it. There's a lot of characters to keep track of, but they've got personalities rather than just quirks or fighting styles. And Miike handles the fight scenes with enormous skill, whether it's individuals or huge mobs.

For me, though, this mostly came across as a brawl film, though I'm certain it's actually more.

(Also - is one of the characters supposed to look like Michael Jackson, or is it just me?)

Ved Verdens Ende (At World's End)

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

At World's End is a lot of things - comedy, action/adventure, fantasy - but underneath all that, there's an unlikely romance going on that keeps the movie grounded and basically upbeat, no matter how crazy on one hand and mean on the other it gets.

A bit of a surprise, maybe, considering that its description tells the audience about a flower in the middle of the jungle that may confer eternal life, according to its 129-year-old guardian. And it does work as an adventure movie, a Danish version of Romancing the Stone. The action is effective, the comedy is occasionally dark but almost always effective, and together they do a fine job of drawing the characters from one mad situation to another.

The cast is also really fantastic. Fans of short-lived TV series will probably be amused to see Niklaj Coster-Waldau playing another long-lived character (for the record, I always liked it when his accent came through a little on New Amsterdam). Niklaj Lie Kaas is a hilariously unlikely hero, playing Adrian as fussy and odd, but also a hilarious victim of circumstance. The real standout is Brigitte Hjort as Beate, the secretary who comes across as an unusually capable and likable ditz - she tromps through the jungle in a ridiculous dress, says overly-truthful and shallow things, but is also pointedly not stupid. She's a tremendous joy to watch, and with the accent-free English she displays at a few points, her native country is going to have a hard time holding on to her.

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.

The trouble I found was that writer/director Kerry Prior seems to have had a bunch of ideas, 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 also loses something as the number of characters contracts, and the violence becomes out-of-character slapstick. It doesn't quite feel like flailing around, but does feel like the movie was an aggregation of little bits that worked individually, and fit together from piece to piece, eventually wandering far from its main strengths.

Also worth noting: I may wind up not coming back to give this a full review, since I think it's bad form to do that with works in progress, and while the movie seemed pretty locked, Prior made the occasional comment in his Q&A about how certain cut scenes may wind up back in. I wonder if this might be part of negotiations with distributors.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia Daily for 11 July 2010: Alien vs Ninja, Technotise: Edit & I, A Frozen Flower, I Spit on Your Grave (2010)

Yep, this is about where I hit the wall trying to (1) see a bunch of movies, (2) write reviews of them to earn my media pass, and (3) put time in at my job which pays me the money necessary to travel to Montreal, sublet an apartment, and grab food between movies. I apologize, and will try and catch up with an all-capsule rundown of Monday; I will, of course, try to catch up after the end of the festival.

The big deal on Sunday was the world premiere of I Spit on Your Grave, 2010 version, which proved to be eventful not only for it being a pretty good movie (I didn't see a bad one all day), but for the the Q&A, which started off with a fan of the original saying the new version was BS, which led to him getting yelled down by many audience members who had stayed for the Q&A, him getting agitated and responding, calls for security to escort him from the room. Kudos on Mitch Davis for waving them off, and Meir Zarchi (director of the original Day of the Woman and producer of the remake) respectfully disagreeing and defusing the situation with a hug.

As much as Fantasia's audience is (justifiably) famous for its enthusiasm, I have to say, the gang-up there wasn't really cool. Yes, it's a bit rude, but the man was passionate about his feelings about the two movies, and one seldom gets an opportunity to get a direct conversation about that. The folks who would later preference their comments with how rude the first person had been to great applause seemed a bit hypocritical to me, jeering one person for giving an honest and negative opinion, but applauding others.

(In a second bit of "irony, what's that?", one of the producers actually said, when asking people to tell their friends to support the movie's October 2010 release, that it's a chance to support something different when Hollywood keeps pumping out adaptations and remakes. I get that this is a risky project, but, uh...)

Alien vs Ninja

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

There are some projects that one would figure cause movie studio lawyers to start twitching as soon as they are announced, but it seems that they have been slow to smite lately. If Fox ever gets around to crushing the likes of Alien vs Ninja, I hope they go easy on the Sushi Typhoon guys. It's not like anything about the movie indicates access to much cash, and the last act, at least, is demented sentai fun, which is more than can be said of the last few official Alien (vs Predator) films.

The title's pretty self-explanatory: An Iga clan raiding party - Yamata (Masanori Mimoto), Jinnai (Shuuji Kashiwabara), and Nezumi (Donpei Tsuchihira) - are returning from a missing when they see a fire in the sky. They're sent to investigate it with another party - including what is apparently the only girl in the clan, Rin (Mika Hijii), and a bunch of guys who mostly aren't going to live long enough to merit names - and find the expected: There is a boy whose entire village has been slaughtered, and a drooling seven-foot armor-plated killing machine. Since Yamata isn't exactly the type to back down from a fight, it's on.

AvN, as they even call it in the opening titles, is an entry in a series of low-budget action/gore movies created in large part for the export market, but even by those standards, it initially looks kind of half-baked. The CGI often crosses the line from "best we could afford" to "mock me, please". The palace Yamata and company are leaving as the film opens appears to be located next to a modern paved road, despite the film taking place in an earlier era. And no matter how many times Nezumi comments about being a senior/veteran/old, it doesn't make me believe Donpei Tsuchihira is anything but a guy in his mid-twenties with an anachronistic blond dye job - couldn't they at least shell out for a real middle-aged guy? All too often, the movie looks like it's nothing more than cheap and unambitious.

Full review at EFC

Technotise: Edit & I (Technotise - Edit i ja)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010: Subversive Serbia)

Early on in Technotise: Edit & I, the Edit of the title offhandedly mentions that one of her pet robots is named "Otomo", a reference that is apt for all that it is obvious: Like the famed Japanese director, Aleksa Gajic has adapted his own science fiction comic series into an animated film, and done so in a way that not only avoids Otomo's worse excesses, but also brings to mind another recent animator out of Japan, Makoto Shinkai, in that he has made a movie that belies its very small crew.

The year is 2074, the place is Belgrade, and student Edit (voice of Sanda Knezevic) is making another stab at passing her final exam in psychology. Though she's not qualified to practice, a research firm takes her on as an intern to baby-sit Abel (voice of Igor Bugarski), a mathematical savant who has been autistic ever since making a breakthrough about the nature of the universe. Things soon get very strange, though - just looking at Abel's work has an unexpectedly strong effect on her, and when she has a black-market chip implanted in her nervous system to help with memory retention, she has strange side effects - hallucinations, erratic behavior, and anemia that leads her to take an unusually high amount of iron supplements. By the time she starts to figure out what's going on with her, the company's head of security, Sergey (voice of Srdjan Miletic) is after her, and her group of friends - mainly boyfriend Bojan (voice of Nikola Djuricko) and best friend Broni (voice of Marija Karan) - may not be up to the challenge of facing down an international biotech company.

Gajic is Serbian, and the bulk of his work has been with French publishers (though the original Technotise story was first published in Serbia), and Technotise: Edit & I absolutely feels like a European sci-fi graphic album come to life: Plenty of detail but also a style that values cartooning over life-like visual realism, grand-scale concepts and action, and a good dollop of sex and comedy in even the most bloody or serious tales. The film lacks a bit of the sometimes quite crowded visual detail found in many bandes dessinées, but the look and tone is right on.

Full review at EFC

Ssang-hwa-jeom (A Frozen Flower)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

How things change; before King and the Clown, I don't think you ever saw gay characters in Korean cinema, and the casting of Thirst wound up being controversial and leading to relative unknown Kim Ok-bin landing the female lead because more established actresses wouldn't get near the nudity and sex the part demanded. 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.

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 (Jo In-seong) is trying to impregnate the Queen (Song Ji-hyo) while the King (Ju Jin-mo) 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 uncomforable-tense, as opposed to uncomfortable-funny.

One thing that I would like to praise that may get overlooked amidst the sex and the intrique is how great the action in this movie is. Director Yu Ha only has 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. It's an exclamation point on the story, and a fitting one.

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 (Day of the Woman), as I haven't seen it, but if this new version is toned down, as many horror remakes tend to be, I really don't want to see the original. 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.

About half of the movie is quite excellenly made, if unpleasant. After some time setting the stage that takes a while to get going, the rape scene is absolutely horrific, as it should be. It's not fun to watch, but it feels right; the sort of monsters who could do this sort of things are probably just like what we see. The cast, as a whole, is excellent.

And then the last act... Well, it's just four or five brutal murders in a row, and while they're well-executed and satisfying on a certain level, I do think that this section could be improved. Sarah Butler is very good as the avenging victim, but especially in the last two instances, especially, the movie becomes a bit of a grotesque cartoon. The most truly unnerving scenes in this section are the ones where Butler's Jenny visits the innocent family of one of her rapists; it's the one that gets us to wonder just what's left of her mind and what she's capable of.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia Daily for 10 July 2010: Mandrill, First Squad, Evil 2, Gallants, The Message, Mutant GirlsSquad

Top three things I forgot to bring with me to Montreal despite knowing that I was going to need them:

3. Shampoo
2. Business cards
1. More than one change of underpants.

... So, as you can imagine, Saturday morning was spent figuring out where the nearest Target-like store was and attending to #3 and #1. I actually tried looking at places in "The Underground City" between Peel and Guy, but I would have spent way too much finding enough to get me very far into a three-week vacation where I don't have much time for laundry. The Zeller's at Atwater it was.

After that, it was off to a full day of movies. I was hoping to run into a cool publicist from Anchor Bay Canada at First Squad; we met at the Thirst screening last year and she sent me an email saying she'd be around but maybe not at the start of the movie. I didn't see her after, which at least prevented a bit of awkwardness, as I wasn't that impressed. (I also was trying to make good time to Evil: In The Time of Heroes. Hopefully we'll meet up before I Spit On Your Grave tonight.

Some cool guests later in the evening, and since I'm running late, I'll just let the pictures tell the story:

Translator, Bruce Leung, and Clement Cheng before Gallants


Programmer King-Wei Chu presents Bruce Leung with a kung fu star award following Gallants

Director Yoshihiro Nishimura and producer Yoshinori Chiba before Mutant Girls Squad


Nishimura and a NYAFF programmer whose name I didn't catch after Mutant Girls Squad


Chiba rejoins the Q&A dressed as a ninja and swipes Nishimura's loincloth


So, we made a nice full circle where underwear is concerned tonight, which, let me tell you, is the sort of film festival coverage you just can not plan!


Mandrill

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

It is, perhaps, possible to tell just how well-done a parody is by how long it's able to convince you that it's the real thing. Mandrill presents an exceptionally straight face, to the extent that it can come across as simply adopting a style even after it's done some pretty crazy things, and not just because the action is for real.

Mandrill (Marko Zaror) is the number one hitman in Chile, although he seems to limit his targets to gangsters. He has finally landed his dream target, having been asked to eliminate the man who murdered his parents when he was a boy - "The Cyclops" - but the only person who knows where the man is located is his daughter Dominique (Celine Reymond). So it's time to break out the seduction playbook, although Dominique may prove to be a tough nut to crack, even without considering the bodyguards.

The "thanks" section of the credits makes it clear that James Bond was a major influence on Mandrill; not only is Ian Fleming listed, but so are all six actors to play the character in the United Artists/Eon film series. The tone of the film is certainly early Bond, with Zaror giving off the same sort of vibe as Connery, a tough guy stuffed into a good suit, but brimming with enough self-confidence to make him mostly irresistible to the ladies, and able to shrug off the dangerous madness of his life. Writer/director Ernesto Diaz Espinoza locates the line between loving homage and out outright parody and hugs it, occasionally making a quick hop to the other side just long enough for the audience to see him over there but brief enough for it to play as black comedy rather than spoofery.

Full review at EFC

Fâsuto sukuwaddo (First Squad: The Moment of Truth)

* * (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

First Squad seems like it would be a great idea: A secret occult battlefield between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, cleverly working in real historical details, told via animation done by one of the world's best production houses, Studio 4°C. Unfortunately, it seems as though nearly every time the writers had to make a decision about how to tell the story, they made the wrong one.

They at least picked a good story to start with - the German Ahnenerbe (an occult branch of the SS) intends to resurrect Baron Von Wolff (voice of Sergei Aisman) who attempted to conquer Russia in the 13th century, only to perish when the battle was fought on a frozen lake, which swallowed his army whole. To counter this army of ghosts, General Below of the 6th Division has Nadaya Ruslanova (voice of Elena Chebaturkina), a teenage psychic who has, unfortunately, lost her memory - and most of the rest of First Squad, so she must train to retrieve them from the other side.

There's the basis for a pretty good movie here, and Studio 4°C certainly holds up their end of the bargain; the animation is gorgeous. Nobody else outside of Disney does such a good job of augmenting cel-based visuals with CGI (they do some great POV camera shots, a killer with traditional animation), and they really hit the sweet spot between historical accuracy, somewhat exaggerated character design, and imaginative visuals. Director Yoshiharu Ashino and his team in Japan do just about all that can be asked of them.

Full review at EFC

To kako - Stin epohi ton iroon (Evil - In the Time of Heroes)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

There is, I suppose, the possibility that Evil - In the Time of Heroes makes a certain amount of sense if you have seen the first film (the Evil from Greece in 2006). I have my doubts, but I suppose I must be open to the possibility. It's not that In the Time of Heroes needs a great deal of background - fast zombie outbreaks are fast zombie outbreaks - but it would be nice to know if the characters really should be taking some of what we see for granted.

The basics are simple - a few days ago, there was a zombie outbreak of some sort in Athens, and a group of four people survived the first movie together: Family man Meletis (Meletis Georgiadis), his friend Marina (Pepi Moschovakou), young Jenny (Mary Tsoni), and soldier Lt. Vakirtzis (Andreas Kontopoulos). They lost at least one of their group, Argyris (Argiris Thanasoulas) on the way. They meet up with some new folks - Olga (Eftyhia Yakoumi), a Major in the army, Vicky (Ioanna Pappa), who had been stuck at the top of a Ferris Wheel during the initial outbreak, and Johnny (Thanos Tokakis), who helps them deal with a sniper that had them pinned down and brings them to a house where they can hide out. Jenny has been shot, though, so they need to find some medical supplies. Among the things that they don't know is that this has happened before, in the time of the great Greek city-states, and a strange messenger (Billy Zane) is coming with something for the reincarnation of the hero who drove the plague back the first time.

In the Time of Heroes is a strange mashup of tones; it jumps back in forth in time between the present and ancient times, and throws a lot of comedy into the both sections. Not just comic relief, either; there are times when it seems like the film intends to be a comedy first. Writer/director Yorgos Noussias is sometimes very haphazard in connecting the jokes with the tragic moments, to the point where the audience can find themselves scratching their heads, wondering just what sort of movie Noussias was trying to make. The characters also have an odd sort of ambivalence to the superhuman elements that show up.

Full review at EFC

Da Lui Toi (Gallants)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

According to the director, Gallants took about ten years to get financing, so one has to wonder - if it had been made then, would it have been giving late-career tributes to different old-school actors, or would Bruce Leung, Chen Kuan-tai, and Teddy Robin have just been playing slightly younger characters? It's a what-if we don't have to ponder, since they're the ones front and center in this movie, and it's lucky to have them.

We start, however, with Wong You-nam as a loser named Cheung. A screw-up at the real estate company he works for, he's been sent to a small village to help buy out tenants for a condo development. Naturally, this means working for Mang (Jin Auyeung), who still hates him from grade school. One of the tenants is a tea shop that used to be a martial arts club, still being run by two of its old students. Tiger ("Bruce" Leung Siu-lung) and Dragon (Chen Kuan-tai) are nearly sixty, but they keep faith with their old teacher, Master Law (Teddy Robin Kwan), who has been in a coma for thirty years after suffering an aneurysm during an epic duel. Cheung finds himself throwing in with the underdogs when Mang's attempts to have goons steal Law's favorable lease results in the master waking and thinking Cheung is both of his pupils - though Kwai (Jia Xiao-chen), the pretty girl helping out around the shop, is another incentive.

Gallants is the sort of comedy that jumps from bit to bit in the best possible way; directors Clement Cheng Sze-Kit and Derek Kwok Chi-kin (along with writer Frankie Tam) have a real knack for setting up funny situations, milking some good gags from them, and discretely casting them aside when they threaten to get too serious or worn-out. For instance, it's great to have a martial-arts tournament to inspire wacky training montages, but does anyone really want to see Cheung, Tiger, or Dragon suffer the inevitable humiliating beatdown that goes with it? Not really, so the script goes elsewhere, in a direction that's maybe not a laugh riot either, but has some earned sentiment that's not trite.

Full review at EFC

Feng Sheng (The Message)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

I can't really give The Message much of a review; as happened last night, I sort of hit the wall around 10pm and had I'm-awake-did-I-miss-anything moments all through the film. It's a gorgeous-looking piece, although it's the type of period film that maybe relies a little much on the effects to pretty things up. And a lot of times I think I would find myself really into a movie like this; the story is a World War II espionage thriller structured like a cozy mystery, all things I like.

But few cozy mysteries have this much torture. Not drawing things out to keep the audience on edge, literal "I will extract this information from you using all the methods of inflicting pain I can" torture. And that's a pretty unpleasant way to spend a couple of hours. It ennobles the heroes, sure, letting the audience see how they suffered, but it's not a lot of fun to watch.

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

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

So, aside from the insanity that surrounded the screening - see above - how is Mutant Girls Squad? Pretty good. That is, "pretty good" in terms of being a Sushi Typhoon sort of movie; it's cheap, tacky, ten different kinds of dumb, and its English credits give one the sinking feeling that it's the sort of movie manufactured almost entirely for export to the West (I think that's actually a huge part of Sushi Typhoon's business model), but it's one where the pure fun of it overrides how dumb it can be. Yes, Tak Sakaguchi, Noboru Iguchi, and Yoshihiro Nishimura are making this to sell to North Americans who love crazy Japanese movies, but it's not cynical on their part; they genuinely love this stuff.

And, while it's not exactly polished, it's fairly well-made. Yumi Sugimoto is a likable lead and a capable enough star, Sakaguchi does some good work choreographing the action, and Nishimura's monster and gore designs are creative and bizarre. I suspect that at least half of the Sushi Typhoon movies will be crud, but this is one of the good ones.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia Daily for 9 July 2010: Phobia 2, Secret Reunion, The Clash, Rubber

Ah, working from the road! At least the new offices in Montreal are nearby and nice; I actually got there early because I wasn't quite sure how far it was. Then I spent the whole day dealing with an unexpected side effect of the code that seemed so clever last week. At least I know what the problem was.

Then it was back down the road for a pretty good run of movies, hanging out with a few cool Canadian internet film writers, and my first film of the festival that had a star in attendance, the surprise darling of Cannes, "Robert" from Rubber:



Sadly, what both the host and the guest had to say was en français, and my understanding of the language isn't even what it was in high school. It sounds like Robert has a bit of an ego, though maybe he's earned it, as his first film was hilarious.

Haa Phrang (Phobia 2)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

The first Phobia (called "4bia" in festival programs) was a sort of sampler, offering up four short horror stories from four different directors, also tending toward different types of horror. The follow-up anthology brings the number of stories and directors up to five, and while the variety isn't quite what it was in the previous one, this group of Thai filmmakers still finds ways to make the audience jump.

In the first short, "Novice", Paween Purijitpanya gives us Pey, a surly teenager who has just been deposited in a remote Buddhist temple by his mother after a tragic accident. It's the start of the ritual of the hungry ghosts, and woe befalls the poor kid who disturbs the food left out for the spirits. Purijitpanya takes a basic horror story and executes it near-perfectly. The effects guys come up with a good monster, and the filmmakers hold it back enough to make its appearances jump-worthy while still cranking up the tension between. It builds to the ending it must have, but a good one.

In one of the more direct connections between shorts, Visute Poolvoralaks's "Ward" focuses on the kid Pey was with, Tee Arthit, who winds up in the hospital with casts on both his legs. Supposedly, his hospital room is effectively private, with an empty bed to one side and a brain-dead patient on the other - but the brain-dead patient has visitors, and when they leave, seems much more active than he should be. "Ward" is a pretty straightforward series of jump moments, set up and knocked down.

Full review at EFC

Uigyeongje (Secret Reunion)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2010 in Theatre Hall (Fantasia 2010)

Secret Reunion starts out like a spy movie, the sort they don't set in the present day anymore because the Cold War has ended everywhere but Korea and Cuba (although from the recent news about a busted Russian spy ring in New York, you wouldn't know it). It evolves strangely, though, becoming a sort of unique take on the buddy picture, much like Jang Hun's debut, Rough Cut, looking conventional but much more clever.

At the turn of the millennium, a group of three North Korean agents led by the brutal "Shadow" (Jeon Gook-hwan) made an assassination attempt on a defected cousin of Kim Jong-il. The South Korean National Intelligence Service had turned one, Son Tae-soon (Yun Hee-seok), so Agent Lee Han-kyu (Song Kang-ho) and his team are able to get to the scene. It's a bloodbath, and Han-kyu is fired in the wake of the debacle. The other spy, Song Ji-woon (Kang Dong-won) is disavowed, cut off from his pregnant wife in the north. Six years pass, and Han-kyu is now working as a sort of very low-rent private detective, retrieving foreign-born brides who walk out on their husbands. Relying on his pair of idiot assistants gets him poised for a beating on a construction site, when the fight is broken up by the foreman - Ji-woon, living incognito under the the name Park Ki-joon. The recognize each other immediately, though don't show it, and soon Han-kyu has recruited Ji-woon to work for him. Each thinks the other's low circumstances is a cover, and that learning what is really going on will get them rewarded by their old masters.

The opening sequence of Secret Reunion is as good as this sort of spy movie stuff gets, fusing slick tradecraft with over-the-top action in a way that manages to evoke both the realistic and fantasy modes of spy cinema, set Shadow up as a villain to be reckoned with, and establishes Ji-woon as a decent man without painting him as disloyal. Jang is so assured in this tense, violent territory that it's a bit of a surprise when the movie goes in a different direction.

Full review at EFC

Bay Rong (The Clash)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

It's probably unfair to compare this to The Rebel, the previous action movie to co-star Johnny Nguyen and Tranh Van Ngo, but it's inevitable - the two leads are back, and Nguyen once again writes and produces. This looks to be made on a much smaller budget, and is contemporary as opposed to being a period piece. Unfortunately, it just isn't at the same level; the action scenes are fewer and farther between, and the melodramatic story doesn't quite work.

Still, when the action scenes come, they are great fun to watch. Nguyen is a top-notch screen fighter, and Ngo isn't so bad herself, and their high-leverage style of mixed martial arts is shot in a way that there's no doubt that the actors and stuntmen are taking hits and doing some incredibly athletic action. Nguyen has come up with a good basic story, but aside from the action, there are precious few moments when the movie is really fun to watch; it could use a little more levity or character types beyond grim hardcases.

Full review at EFC.

Rubber

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2010 in Salle de Seve (Fantasia 2010: Camera Lucida)

Ah, curse the need to spend a little bit of time this morning seeing to certain essentials, as it leaves me without the time to write a full review of Rubber, the early leader in the contest for the most deranged, bizarre - and funny movie of the festival. The concept is screwy enough - a discarded tire comes to life, starts rolling, and kills whatever comes into its path with the power of its mind. On top of that, though, writer/director Quentin Dupieux presents it in a way that smashes at the fourth wall, presenting it as not quite a film-within-a-film, but having an audience all the same, one which interacts with the story in strange ways.

And yet, it all works. The crazy digressions, the deadpan comedy, the constant pointing out that this actually doesn't make a lick of sense. It's got a winning cast that all hit just the right note, and special effects that are handmade but not obviously cheesy. It may at times be a hard, weird movie to describe, but it's also a perfect midnight movie experience.

Full review at EFC.

Fantasia Daily for 8 July 2010: Higanjima

The lesson of the first day, as always, is to get stuff done early.

If I get my lodging for Fantasia settled early, I'm not running around at the last minute trying to get a draft in Canadian funds on Friday, which will be ready in "one business day" (Tuesday, because of the holiday). If I stop into the bank before work on Tuesday or Wednesday (which also involves being smart and checking the bank's hours), rather than after, I don't get there after the bank closes its doors at four o'freakin'clock and have to get in there first thing yesterday, which means I catch the 7:45am bus instead of the 10:00am one. Aside from the $15 they charged me to change my ticket, I'll bet that the 7:45am bus didn't spend an hour in White River Junction, VT, waiting for either other buses with people trying to make a connection or a driver for the one I was on (on top of the usual 30 minute layover there), and seeing the schedule slip further between there and Burlington... Well, it allowed me to finish my book, I guess, but it put seeing two movies yesterday out of reach, and likely annoyed and inconvenienced the guy I'm subletting the condo from.

Ah, well, the end result is that I missed Sorcerer's Apprentice (which I was never getting into) or Mandrill, and Mandrill plays again on Saturday. All that displaces from the schedule for me is Evangelion 2.0, and as one of the (apparently rare) folks who didn't much like Evangelion 1.0, I can deal with that.

Well, that and I had no time to get any supper, or even Canadian currency so I could buy some candy at the concession stand. I'm making sure I put plenty of time between working in the Montreal office and getting to Phobia 2 this afternoon so that that doesn't happen again!

Higanjima

* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2010 in Salle J.A. de Seve (Fantasia 2010)

It's tough not to get just a little excited during the opening sequence of Higanjima, because it makes a thoroughly enjoyable statement: That putting a stake through a vampire's heart is for people who aren't truly committed to getting the job done. No, if you truly want to be rid of a vampire, you do what Atsushi (Dai Watanabe) does after chasing a couple down: Back them against a wall and drive a battering ram into their face until their head explodes like... Well, a head that's just had a battering ram smashed into it. That's a badass opening, although it's also a set-up for the inverse ninja rule: Fighting two vampires turns out to be cooler than fighting an island full of vampires.

Before heading back to the island, though, we meet Akira (Hideo Ishiguro). He's Atsushi's younger and less-respected brother, and initially he and his friend Pon are just running from conventional high-school bullies. As he runs, we meet his other buddies: Chemistry whiz Nishiyama, archery-club member Yuki (Miori Takimoto), hefty Kato, and friendly delinquent Ken (Tomohisa Yuge). He's pulled aside by Rei (Asami Mizukawa), who tells him that Atsushi, missing for two years, is alive! Akira and his friends find out about the vampires when they follow her, and agree to come to her island - but does she mean to have them help Atsushi defeat master vampire Miyabi (Koji Yamamoto), or is she just helping him replenish the island's food supply?

I'm not sure how long the manga that Higanjima is based upon ran, but the movie bears some of the marks of being adapted from one that ran a while: It's simultaneously too big and too small, filled with more characters and backstory than it has a chance to really elaborate on, managing to cause a bit of fatigue while also seeming a bit shallow at points. You can tell which characters have giant targets on their backs by how much development they're given, and even the major characters' subplots are elaborated sketchily enough that something apparently mean to be important seems a bit like a non-sequitur in the end. Those long serials can also tolerate a little repetition over years; having two of Akira's friends get taken an need rescuing at different times sticks out in a movie just over two hours long.

Full review at EFC

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston (and beyond) 9 July - 15 July

BOSTON

I've got no reason to complain about not being able to get to all this over the next seven days; I will, after all, be in Montreal, where it promises to be slightly less like an oven, seeing a bunch of movies that may not make it to local theaters at all, about twenty of them. Still, what's playing back home looks to be pretty decent:

• Yet another Independent Film Festival Boston 2010 alumnus opens at Kendall Square, Perrier's Bounty. It's a snazzy-looking Irish thriller with a great cast, and one I skipped at IFFBoston because I figured that the nifty Irish movie would play Boston a bit sooner than this. It's got the one-week warning on it, though, so I hope that I can prevail on you fine people to go see it so that maybe its run can get extended a couple times, when I'm back on the 29th, I'll have a day to see it.
  
  (Seeing that it's only opening with two shows a day, I'm not holding my breath!)
  
  I'm less worried about missing The Girl Who Played with Fire. It's also opening at the Boston Common AMC and in West Newton (and Coolidge Corner next week). Seeing how The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo managed to hang around the Kendall for three months, right up to its home video release (and still continues at the Arlington Capitol!), I suspect this one will last at least three weeks somewhere. Interestingly, West Newton also has Dragon Tattoo hanging around for one show a day, but it's at 8:30pm, so you can't do an in-order double feature.



• Also opening at the Kendall and at the Coolidge is the 50th Anniversary re-release of Breathless; it's a one-week engagement at the Coolidge, and likely at the Kendall. If you want to see it, don't wait too long.
  
  Midnights at the Coolidge, another "The End Is Nigh" flick, the original Mad Max. Well, the first film, at any rate; the Coolidge website doesn't mention whether it's the original Australian soundtrack or the one dubbed with American accents that Warner released alongside The Road Warrior.
  
  Oh, and they're showing Raiders of the Lost Ark on the big screen Monday. I do believe that there's a sort of rule that you've not allowed to call yourself a movie lover if you're in town when this plays on the big screen and don't attend.



• It's good to see that the acquisition by Starz hasn't changed Anchor Bay too much. They've apparently looked at their records, seen that they haven't extracted twenty bucks from each of Sam Raimi's fans in a couple of years, and decided to remedy that by putting The Evil Dead out on Blu-ray next month. Of course, that means new prints have to be struck, and one of them plays the Brattle over the weekend: 10pm Friday, Satruday, and Sunday; 8pm Monday.
  
  Also at the Brattle this week: Inglorious Basterds, Friday through monday; a free double feature of Jean Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast and Orpheus at 11am Saturday morning, a preview of Winnebago Man on Tuesday, a panel discussion of Harper Lee's novel To Kill a Mockingbird (with a screening of the film) on Wednesday, and the annual Trailer Treats Party (with Trailer Smackdown Contest) on Thursday. That's a fun night, and just a good week's worth of stuff.



• The Somerville Theatre continues their rock & roll movie series with Madonna: Truth or Dare on Monday and Tuesday, and Stop Making Sense on Wednesday and Thursday.



• Movie at the Arlington Regent Theatre! One I'd really like to see, for that matter - Waking Sleeping Beauty is a documentary about Walt Disney Feature Animation's renaissance in the late 1980s and early 1990s, and by all accounts an honest and not-always-complimentary one, despite being distributed by Disney.



• And, of course, the bigger studio movies open all over the place: Despicable Me is the animated 3-D movie of the week, and Predators looks to bring the action. It actually looks like a pretty good weekend, especially by Summer '10 standards. The trailers for Despicable Me look like pretty good cartooning, at least in the clips I've seen, although I imagine that having a third 3-D movie come out within a month's time is going to strain the capacity in a lot of areas. At Boston Common, it looks to be added to the line-up at the expense of The Last Airbender, which is probably a good thing for both, in that Airbender was apparently hastily and half-heartedly converted to 3-D in post-production.
  
  I'm also hoping Predators sticks around until I make it back. I'm not a huge fan of the franchise, or even the first movie (despite it being Schwarzeneggar and McTiernan), but Nimrod Antal has made a couple better-than-expected movies in Vacancy and Armored, and I suspect that he can do something pretty darn impressive with the money Fox gave him and Robert Rodriguez.
  
  There is also a Grease sing-along playing AMC Boston Common. I would make some sort of snarky comment, but I haven't seen Grease, and for all I know, it's the best movie ever. I doubt this, and doubt that I'd enjoy a sing-along version of even, say, Disney's Beauty and the Beast (why, no, I haven't seen Rocky Horror Picutre Show, despite it playing Harvard Square every Saturday night).

NEW YORK

Racing Dreams opens at the IFC Center. It's a pretty good documentary, the best thing I saw at the Boston Film Festival last fall before bailing on it. I found out afterward that my friend Laurel did some behind the scenes work on it. Thus, it gets a few extra cool points and a little bit of a push from me. I'm sure that this could increase its box office by seven bucks or so.

FANTASIA

I'll try to be doing daily updates, but in case I don't, and you're curious about what I deem of interest (or, good heavens, want to meet up with the press-pass-wearing dork in the middle of the third row who speaks terrible French), here's the plan:

• Friday 9 July: Phobia 2 and Secret Reunion in Hall, then across the street for The Clash and Rubber in De Seve. Why? The first Phobia ("4bia") was pretty darn good, Secret Reunion matches the director of Rough Cut with the star of Thirst, Clash is from the makers of The Rebel, and Rubber looks demented. Plus, I'm not a huge fan of Herschell Gordon Lewis, so the tribute to him isn't a big deal to me.


• Saturday 10 July: Running back and forth across the street between Mandrill (DeSeve), First Squad (De Seve), Gallants (Hall), The Message (De Seve), and Mutant Girls Squad (Hall). Why? Well, I'll have seen many of the opposing films (Down Terrace, The Life and Death of a Porno Gang, and Ip Man 2), I want to see First Squad more than Evil: In the Time of Heroes (though Greece has yet to be stamped on my horror passport), and Mandrill more or less locks me into it.


• Sunday 11 July: Starting in Hall with Alien vs Ninja and Technotise: Edit & I, then we see whether I'm more in the mood for Irish horror in Outcast or Korean erotic drama in A Frozen Flower. After that, I'll see if I'm still up for the I Spit on Your Grave remake. Why? Technotise is one of the films I'm building my schedule around (Serbian animated sci-fi with a Eurocomics style), so everything else is working around that.


• Monday 12 July: After I get out of work, it's all Hall - Crows Zero 2, At World's End, and The Revenant. Why? Gotta see the festival's only Miike film, At World's End looks nifty, and I can see Golden Slumber later.


• Tuesday 13 July: Mai Mai Miracle in De Seve, then over to Hall for Le Grand Chef 2 and Tears for Sale. Why? I liked the first Le Grand Chef.


• Wednesday 14 July: Kuroneko in De Seve if I get out of work on time; Gintama andHeartless in Hall, and then likely Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders in De Seve. Why? Seen and loved Marwencol. Plus, the Zappin Party is a tough split between "awesome" and "not just too campy, but also in French" for me.


• Thursday 15 July: Possessed in De Seve, Merentau in Hall, either We Are What We Are or T.T. Syndrome, and then maybe Lemmy. Why? Because word on the Indonesian martial arts movie is that it's got spectacular action, I'm not yet sure whether I'm more down for Mexican cannibals or Serbian slashers, and despite having already seen Air Doll, Lemmy wasn't something I even considered seeing when it played at IFFBoston, just on a "I've never listened to Motorhead" basis.