Fantasia '06, Day 5: Eh

Spent the day down in the Old Port area, trying to figure out how to get to the public garden exhibit before realizing that admission was being charged. Then I was looking to make a return trip to the Archeology Museum only to see it fermé lundi. Bug-ger. The little 45 minute boat ride around the old port was nice; it delivered a lot of the same information as the jet boating last year, but with much less getting wet. Then it was back to Concordia for a back-and-forth across the street evening, with only the middle movie at the Hall Theater.

I would have done something violent for a steak tip sub last night. I ordered a steak & cheese sandwich and found it piled up with stuff that wasn't steak or cheese. I admit to being a picky eater who will probably have bad things happen to him down the line for never developing a taste for his vegetables, but also, I'm just used to a steak and cheese sandwich being steak, cheese, and bread. You want a salad, you order a side salad, or ask for onions and stuff. I don't know whether it's a Canada thing, an America thing, a New England thing, or a "places I patronize because they don't use valuable roll space for things other than steak and cheese" thing, but either way, expectations weren't meeting with reality.

Not really exceptional movies yesterday. I'd worn myself down before getting to Lost in Wu Song, so I don't know if I really appreciated it while I was watching it - it is very funny, but also smarter than I realized at the time. Murder, Take One has an interesting premise in its live, reality-show coverage of a homicide investigation, but stretches that premise thin and its last act does in a silly an annoying direction. Tape Number 31 was Blair Witch Project-style stuff in rural China, with all Blair Witch's problems (and third-act effectiveness in spite of them). Lost in Wu Song repeats tonight; Murder, Take One Wednesday evening.

Today's plan: Mont Royal, perhaps, before Azumi 2, Black Kiss, Bad Blood, and The Art of Fighting

Lost in Wu Song (Wu Song Da Wo)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

We're getting closer to being able to make the film we imagine independently, but we're not there yet, not by a long shot, at least not in any consistent way. As nice as it is to read stories about guys who make a great animated film on their home PCs, or of a cast and crew working for nothing but a share in the finished film, we hear about them because those situations are unusual. Most of the time, getting a movie made is very difficult, especially for someone who lacks experience.

Like, say, Men De Song. Like many boys in China, he idolized folk hero Wu Song, who slew a tiger with his bare hands and took fatal revenge on those who killed his brother (said brother's wife and her lover). He intends to make the definitive film of this legend and then, his life's work complete, retire to become a Buddhist Monk. But he's having trouble casting the lead part - nobody in the massive open audition that starts the film had what he was looking for. The major investor wants to cast pop star Li, but he becomes set on Wang Dachuan, the muscular but dimwitted cousin of one of his minor investors. As the film goes on, De Song and Zhang (the major investor) will clash over that and every other aspect of the filmmaking process. He also has to deal with the advances of young actress Mei Li, who would play the treacherous Pan Dailan.

Read the rest at HBS.

Murder, Take One (Baksuchilttae Tteonara)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

The first reaction to Murder, Take One is to dismiss its premise as ridiculous, a strawman created expressly for satirical purposes. But in a world with Cops, CourtTV, Dick Wolf's Crime & Punishment, and the like, is Jang Jin's idea of real-time, all-access coverage of a murder investigation all that far-fetched? Aside from the impossibility of finding a jury that could try the case - perhaps not a stumbling block in Korea, and some American cops and D.A.s would take their chances - what's stopping it?

A woman is found in a hotel room, stabbed nine times, dead only a couple hours. A suspicious-looking man is picked up twenty minutes later, and it looks like an open-and-shut case for Prosecutor Choi Yeon-gi (Cha Seung-Won). Things won't be quite so simple, though - the suspect, Kim Young-hun, refuses to confess, and forensic evidence reveals the case more complicated than the multiple stab wounds would imply. To make matters worse, a television network has obtained special dispensation to follow a murder investigation from discovery to resolution, with a panel of experts in-studio, opinion polls, and no hope of keeping developments under wraps.

Read the rest at HBS.

Tape Number 31

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

I liked The Blair Witch Project quite a bit, even after the inevitable backlash. This film is cut from the same cloth, with a predominately Chinese crew shooting a documentary for the Discovery Channel about "wild men" in rural China, only to find themselves running afoul of the mysterious, never-fully-glimpsed creatures. It's got all the same faults as Blair Witch - stop filming yourselves, especially when you should be running! - but also the same sort of downright effective final act.

The film opens with a shot of a man turning a camera on, polishing it, and then jumping off a cliff while letting the camera run down. So, how'd he get there? We flash back several weeks, when a 22-year-old filmmaker by the name of Helen is recruiting a crew for a cryptozoology documentary about the so-called "wild men" of rural China. She recruits two cameramen, Dou Yan and Zachary (the sole member of the group who's not ethnically Chinese); two sound operators, Yin Jie and Liu Yuen Yuen, and an archaeologist, Dr. Xia. They leave Shanghai, interview people who claim to have encountered the wild men (and receive conflicting descriptions), and recruit a native guide, Zhou Li Jun. They climb to an isolated plateau, where they find strange symbols carved into trees, and, one morning, into the ground around their tents. Members of the crew want to leave, but Helen's convinced they need to stay to make the trip worthwhile.

It's a familiar template if you've seen The Blair Witch Project, which is both good and bad. There's really not a whole lot cooler than having something nifty and unexpected appear at the edge of the frame so that the alert viewer can seize onto it a second before the characters to, and that's an effect that often seems contrived in a conventional narrative film. The trouble is that in order for that moment to arrive unannounced, the film has to first establish a certain baseline. That process is what's really tricky, since logically the camera would only be turned on when the filmmakers have some sort of expectation of something interesting happening. Too often, the first chunk of this film is either things that are rather dull or just wouldn't seem likely to be taped.

Read the rest at HBS.

Fantasia '06, Day 4: Four on four

A couple longish films make for an actual break during the weekend. I opted to see My Scary Girl instead of the first screening of Azumi 2, and since Feed would have made it awful close with A Chinese Tall Story (and just looked nasty), I instead headed to St. Catherine's street to see if Future Shop had a cheap digital camera (left mine at home) and to visit Mr. Steer's, where you can get a pretty darn good burger and a heaping helping of fries. It's a bit less busy than Bartley's back home, but it's still a good burger. The combo special - a burger with both a pattie and a chicken breast - is pretty good, too.

I was kind of surprised to see a lot of folks rooting for Italy in the World Cup. You'd think Montreal would be full of French partisans, but that wasn't the case.

The movies were pretty good. It's frustrating to see that The Woods is probably going straight to video; director Lucky McKee was there for the screening and he didn't even really seem interested in talking about a theatrical release - the "corporate bullshit" has just worn him down to the point where all he wants is to have a copy on his shelf.

It was a pretty good day for crowd reaction, especially in the main hall. The crowd cheering "stage manager" Daniel Walther's removal of microphones and turning off of lights is a kick, and I always know I'm with my type of people when Bruce Campbell's name in the credits gets a big ovation. Funky Forest: The First Contact got lots of audience participation and applause throughout; it's that kind of string of randomness. And some of the folks around me seriously loved A Chinese Tall Story. A Chinese Tall Story and Funky Forest both repeat on Thursday, if you're up here. As mentioned, Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon repeats today, and a review is up.

Today's plan: Something touristy, followed by Lost in Wu Song, Murder, Take One, and Tape No. 31

My Scary Girl (Dalkom Salbeolhan Yeon-in)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

It is, admittedly, uncool to identify too closely with Kim Dae-woo, the "me" in My Scary Girl (also known as "My Sweet Yet Brutal Girlfriend") - he's a thirty-year-old virgin who has never had a real girlfriend or even kissed a girl. But consider the alternative represented by the title character: She kills people, generally husbands and boyfriends.

Hwang Dae-woo (Park Yong-Woo) and Lee Mina (Choi Kang-hie) meet when she moves in to his building and he nearly throws out his back helping the mover with the refrigerator. He's been the type to make excuses for why he's not dating, but she seems different, and soon his friends are shoving him at her (literally). He gets uncomfortable when her ex-boyfriend shows up, but he soon disappears - and Mina starts shopping for a new kimchee refrigerator when her roommate Jang-mi (Jo Eun-ji) starts complaining about the corpse.

The film's main gag, of course, is that most of the time Dae-woo comes off as the weird one, completely ignorant of how to behave on a date, with his jokes and attempts to plan banter inevitably proving awkward and cringe-worthy. As smart as he is, he comes pretty close to making the wrong move at every point, while Mina is forgiving and, in general, sensible and practical. We wind up spending our time watching the film hoping Dae-woo can make things work out more because it would be a shame for him to lose a great girl like Mina over some sort of silly misunderstanding or by not going through the proper rituals. The idea that screwing up with her romantically might be a quick route to violent death is a sort of secondary consideration.

Read the rest at HBS.

A Chinese Tall Story (Ching din dai sing)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Dig deep into the archives here, and one of the first movie reviews you'll find will be for a piece of cheese called "Monkey War 2: New Pilgrims to the West". Neither the review nor the film is really worth looking at; I just bring it up as my first encounter with the Monkey King characters and one of my first encounters with Hong Kong cinema that wasn't art-house or standard martial arts action. I couldn't help but think of it while watching A Chinese Tall Story, if only because Jeff Lau's new film manages to trump that other movie in budget (by a long shot), craziness, and all-around fun.

Wukong, the Monkey King (Bo-lin Chen), doesn't isn't around for most of the film, as he and his imp companions are captured by an angry demon. He saves his master, the monk Tripitaka (Nicholas Tse), by strapping him to his magic staff and hurling him far, far away. Tripitaka is the second strange thing to fall out of the sky near the lizard imps that find him recently, after a strange coccoon. He eventually winds up paired with Mei-yan (Charlene Choi), an imp with an unsightly skin condition, on the run from attacking demons and looking for allies to rescue Wukong and the others. Their journey will take them to the heavens, and back, and the allies they'll encounter include Xiaoshan (Bingbing Fan), who was tucked away in the coccoon that the lizard imps had found. She's the princess of a technologically advanced group of humans who fled the earth for the stars before the Ice Age. On the way, Mei-yan and Tripitaka must learn to trust each other and Tripitaka must learn to fight, rather than simply try to subdue his enemies with kind words.

This group of characters has been the basis for movies and television many times - Jeff Lau himself made a couple Monkey King films with Stephen Chow ten or so years earlier - but probably never quite like this. Sure, despite having only watched that one old, cheap version, I can recognize a few elements: Wukong's magic staff, his servitude to the Tripitaka as penance for his crimes against the Celestial Court, the pig-imp sidekick, other imps wanting to eat the monk to gain his power are all present. I'm reasonably confident that the time traveling people in spaceships are new, though, and I doubt any earlier edition has had close to this kind of special effect budget.

The opening battle against a horde of demons that Tripitaka is tossed away from is massive enough for Stephen Sommers to feel a twinge of jealousy, and the film abounds with wire work, CGI characters, bright colors, and fanciful environments. The big final battle is absolutely crazy - demons, kaiju-sized plant monsters, kung fu, guys with machine guns, a massive spaceship control room, and what the magical staff transforms into dropped a few jaws in the audience. Lau's got a handle on what his effects crew are capable of, and what he asks of them is not [i]Star Wars[/i]-prequel perfection; he knows that the more stuff he puts on screen, the less likely it is to all integrate seemlessly. Many elements feel hollow and weightless. But each effects set piece has new sights that may be wholly different from the previous one, so if there are faults, they're not the same ones.

It reminded me of how, when I was a kid, I might have had a couple Transformers, Star Wars toys, and army men, so when playing with them I'd come up with a story that had them all together. Here, sci-fi brushes against animal spirits and monsters, and the staff becomes the same sort of cartoon character that the carpet was in Aladdin. Every new scene brings a surprise, which almost becomes disbelief by the end. And if you're still able to be floored after spaceships have held off a demon horde in ancient China, the film is doing something right. The only hitch I really found is that the last sequence in the Celestial Court is really kind of brutal compared to what had gone before; this is a movie where people say "oh, sugar!" (at least in the subtitles), and the nasty treatment the hero and heroine get is really not what I'm used to in a family movie. There's slapsticky violence involving knives earlier, but this feels different, there's no tongue in cheek.

I like the cast: Nicholas Tse opens the movie with a goofy, innocent charm as the ivory tower monk who really thinks he can solve all problems just by talking and getting people to see each others' point of view. He's kind of pulled through the movie, but handles each new crazy situation with aplomb. Charlene Choi is full of energy and enthusiasm, putting enough childlike glee into her role that kids won't get turned off by the buck-toothed, spotty face the make-up people put on her I'd like to see another movie with more of Bo-lin Chen's Monkey King, although maybe his cockiness is best enjoyed in small doses. Bingbing Fan gives a quirky quality to Xiaoshan that keeps her from being a serious romantic rival to Mei-yan, but that's OK. More knowledgable fans of Hong Kong cinema will likely spot a number of familiar spaces; I just noticed Gordon Liu as the King of Heaven.

There's an equal amount of talent behind the camera. Lau is a guy who hasn't really broken through in the West, either by effort or having his films picked up by a major studio (he was a producer on Kung Fu Hustle, wrote So Close, and worked with Wong Kar-Wai early in the careers), but he does a pretty darn good job here, keeping things moving while also giving us enough time to get to know and like the characters. He's got a pretty nice staff behind the camera, too, with beautiful production design and nice effects work making the film a colorful joy to look at. He gets a soundtrack from Joe Hisaishi, best known for scoring Hayao Miyazaki's animated films. Frequent collaborator Cory Yuen stages the action scenes.

This probably won't get much of a U.S. release; it just doesn't look as polished as domestic family adventure movies, so it's probably kind of a hard sell to parents. That's a pity; give this a good dub job and kids would probably eat this up with a spoon.

Funky Forest: The First Contact (Naisu no mori)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Man, every time I think I've got a handle on Japanese pop culture, they throw something like this at me.

This review is sort of useless. I can say, hey, you should watch Funky Forest: The First Contact, because it's funny and weird. But if I do that, and I do it really well, you'll probably have little option other than importing the DVD when it comes out, and I can totally see this being nothing but strange if it's not seen in a theater full of crazed people laughing, doing some audience participation, being just as confused as you but along for the ride. Unless you know someone who programs theaters and can talk him into a midnight show, you really just aren't going to get the experience we did in Montreal.

Which is cool. There's no particular reason (other than economical) why something must be built to work just as well as a shared theatrical experience and a solitary televised one. Of course, I may be full of crap here, just because this is how I first encountered it. After all, the first thought that went into my head about what this movie was like was not co-director Katsuhito Ishii's previous feature, The Taste of Tea, or another recent Japanese film that jumped between a series of bizarre intersecting stories, Survive Style 5+, but Monty Python's Flying Circus, and they did okay delivering surreal comedy into the living room.

Although Monty Python doesn't really describe Funky Forest, either. This movie is a two-and-a-half hour set of sketches, some recurring, some not but containing characters who show up in other contexts, and others apparently just being totally strange one-offs. We start with a pair of goofy-looking bickering stage comics, and we'll return to them often, though only for a few seconds at a time. Then there's little Hachiko (Maya Banno from The Taste of Tea), who daydreams about being in a weird spacescape when she should be doing her homework. We'll meet the "Unlucky With Women Brothers", featuring the ubiquitous Tadanobu Asano as "Guitar Brother", while another brother encounters the "Babbling Hot Springs Vixens". There's "Notti & Takefumi", a young girl kind-of-sort-of dating the guy who had been her English teacher two years before, who relate weird, musical dreams to each other. Then there's a "Home Room!!!!!!!" full of weird high school students (and Hachiko, and some grown men...). And just when you've figured out that, the movie hits you with a guy in a yellow costume with a long, tail-like thing coming out of his groin and a probe he needs a pretty schoolgirl to stick in her navel. Then there's a series of grotesque little creatures inhabiting the school.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Woods

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 9 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

I'll admit it; I've been waiting for The Woods because a favorite actor has a supporting role. I'd recognized director Lucky McKee's skill at building atmosphere and creeping out the audience in May, but it was just too much for me; there just didn't seem to be any particular reason to get to the end of that movie. Here, he's working from a script by another writer, and I think it helps make for a more mainstream, but still creepy, work of horror.

The year is 1965, and Heather Fasulo (Agnes Bruckner) is being sent to an exclusive girls' school after a few instances of acting out, including setting a fire in the front yard which nearly destroyed an old oak tree. The headmistress, Ms. Traverse (Patricia Clarkson) informs her that since her father (Bruce Campbell) isn't quite so well-off financially as he appears, she will be tested for a scholarship, which she receives. The school is isolated by trees in every direction, so there's no relief from the usual girls' school issues - she sticks up for a picked on classmate, Marcy (Lauren Birkell), thus earning the enmity of blonde queen bee Samantha (Rachel Nichols). Another girl, Ann (Kathleen Mackey) has just returned from the hospital. As with any old institution, the school has accumulated creepy stories, but Heather is starting to get the impression that they're much more than just stories.

Aside from being McKee's follow-up to May, which certainly got people's attention when it appeared four years ago, The Woods has gained the stigma for being stuck in a studio vault which is unfair. Almost every film on MGM/UA and Columbia's schedule has had its schedule messed with by Sony's purchase of MGM, though few have suffered as badly as The Woods - it's been in the can for at least two years; and just compare Rachel Nichols in this film to her recent work - no way she can play a teenager any more, and she probably wasn't well known enough (from two separate TV series) to have third billing (first under the title) when this was originally planned for release. Bruckner seemed like an up-and-comer back when the film was expected to be released in August 2004; now her star has faded a little. It's the sort of film a studio has issues with, too - it's centered around teenage characters but is set forty years ago and has an R rating, so they spend a lot of time trying to make it more salable. According to McKee, the version screened is his preferred cut and will probably be the one to come out if and when the studio ever releases it.

Read the rest at HBS.

Fantasia '06, Day 3: 6 freakin' films

Not much to say about the day - started seeing movies at 12:30pm, knocked off at 2am. The highlight is Citizen Dog, which plays again today and tomorrow, and The Maid, which has another show this afternoon, is also pretty good.

Today's plan: My Scary Girl, A Chinese Tall Story, Funky Forest, and The Woods.

Monarch of the Moon

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Monarch of the Moon shoots fish in a barrel, parodying World War II-era superhero serials as if they didn't do that just fine themselves. It's easier to spoof what makes such films ridiculous today than to do what, say, Sky Captain or the Indiana Jones films did and recapture the elements that make them fun without resorting to mockery. Monarch of the Moon does better than most, in that it doesn't completely exhaust its joke in the first half hour.

Meet Cal Crawford (Blane Wheatley), the Yellow Jacket, an American who gained the ability to call forth a swarm of his namesake insects as the result of Nazi experiments. Not the world's coolest superpower, but you take what you can get. Now he and his team - office girl Susan (Monica Himmelheber), Colonel Slate (Will MacMillan), heavy-drinking pilot Randy (Kyle Kaplan), Professor Montgomery Wright (Phil Van Tee), and young Bear Scout Benny (Brent Moss) attempt to foil the Axis's most depraved plans. Currently, beautiful but deadly Japanese agent Dragonfly (Kimberly Page) is working with Nazi scientists and the technologically advanced Moon People to pave the way for a lunar invasion.


Read the rest at HBS.

Tales from the Enchanted Kingdom: Exodus

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

At its start, Exodus may set a new standard in sponsorship and product placement, but by the end, I'm not really inclined to hold that against it too much. If a vanity card, being mentioned in the film's full title ("Tales from...") and a prologue where the Enchanted Kingdom amusement park's Dumbledore-like mascot urges kids to turn off their cell phones and introduces the story means that they shell out the money for the completely different sort of fantasy that follows, then that's just how big-budget family adventure movies get made in the Philippines, and those of us in the rest of the world should just be amused that a place several thousand miles away is advertising at us.

Once the movie proper starts, we're introduced to Exodus, a mighty mercenary warrior hired by the last surviving enclave of humanity to defend them from Bangulbol and his "dark men" before they snuff our species out and literally cover the land in darkness. The leadership recognizes that this isn't much of a long term strategy, though, and sends Exodus to gather the last four Fire, Water, Earth, and Air Elementals (or is it five; is there still a Spirit Elemental left?) and take the fight to Bangulbol before it's too late.

The elements of the story should be fairly familiar - the dark lord who is actually a sort of fallen angel, the four basic elements of the world, the son sent away at birth to be spared a massacre becoming a hero. A jaded audience member can sit back and spot where a bit was taken from Lord of the Rings, a bit from the story of Moses, etc., and declare that nothing new or interesting is going on. And we may be right, from our perspective; the story gets a lot of their parts second-hand, and though they are parts that frequently speak to something basic or primal, they're also familiar. The same may not be true for a Filipino kid, though, and it's possible that no-one there has seen something quite this grand or polished be home-grown rather than imported.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Maid

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Every once in a while, a successful movie ruins things for everybody else. I won't say which other movie has a plot twist that is so famous that it makes a similar twist in The Maid seem a little uninspired, but you've probably guessed it, or will as soon as ghosts are mentioned. It'd be unfair to judge The Maid by that similarity, since it's got more going on after that revelation and the different context makes for an interesting story.

That context is Singapore, where Rosa Dimaano (Alessandra de Rossi) has arrived to begin working as a maid for the Teo family, who stage Chinese operas and care for their developmentally disabled son, Ah Soon (Benny Soh). She has arrived at the beginning of China's seventh lunar month, during which time many Chinese burn paper offerings to the spirits of their ancestors, leave food out for wandering spirits, or leave the front row of chairs open for ghosts at performances. This is all pretty weird for Rosa, an eighteen-year-old Filipino who had seldom left her village before coming to Singapore; she's Christian, herself, and doesn't know these customs. When she sweeps away some ashes in the sidewalk, Mrs. Teo (Huifang Hong) scolds her, saying it's bad luck. It certainly seems to be - after doing so, Rosa can see ghosts, including one that is uncomfortably close at hand. She's already a little on edge, since her brother needs money for a kidney transplant and the maid across the street freaks out at the sight of her. But it's only thirty days, after which the gates of hell close and she'll be bothered by ghosts no more, right? She can handle that.

Read the rest at HBS.

Citizen Dog (Mah Nakorn)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

From the very first frames of Citizen Dog, the audience should know they're in for something special. Commercial director Wisit Sasanatieng, cinematographer Rewat Prelert, and production designer Suras Kardeeroj make it clear early on that they're making a film of exceptional visual beauty, with the only question being whether or not it can keep up emotionally. Happily, it does, winding up as sweet as it is eccentric.

The film mainly follows Pod (Mahasamut Boonyaruk), whom the narrator describes as a simple country bumpkin come to Bangkok to make his fortune. Working at a sardine factory, he meets best friend Yod (Sawatwong Palakawong Na Autthaya) after each cuts off their index finger (in this film's world, though, this doesn't cause any bleeding and they easily reattach). Not wanting to go through that again, they quit their jobs, and it's at Pod's next job as a security guard that he meets Jin (Saengthong Gate-Uthong) and falls madly in love. Jin is pretty, but weird - she works as a maid and is obsessed not only with cleaning and keeping things orderly, but with the characters in serialized romance magazines an a mysterious book with an all white cover that fell from the sky when she was living in the country; deciphering its contents is her mission in life. She likes Pod, as he's the only person who talks to her (everyone else thinks she's crazy), but is far from head-over-heels for him.

Read the rest at HBS.

Behind The Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

So let's say slasher movies were real. Spree killers targeted high-school students and then apparently came back from the dead to do it again. And again. If this was a common theme in American life as opposed to just in American movies, I imagine somebody would try to study the phenomenon, even if it meant going to unsafe lengths to do it.

Meet Taylor Gentry (Angela Goethals). This graduate student and aspiring documentary filmmaker has been contacted by Leslie Vernon (Nathan Baesel), who also has a dream - to be to Glen Echo, MD, what Jason Vorhees was to Crystal Lake, what Freddy Krueger was to Elm Street, what Michael Myers was to Haddonfield... You get the idea. It takes lots of preparation - choosing your "survivor girl", preparing the old scary house (nailing windows shut, ridding trees of limbs that can support a person's weight, sabotaging potential weapons), doing a lot of cardio (those kids are ten years younger than you and probably run track, and aren't trying to look slow), etc. As the anniversary of Leslie's supposed death approaches, though, Taylor starts getting cold feet. After all, this is standing back and watching while Leslie kills innocent people.

Read the rest at HBS.

Die You Zombie Bastards!

* * (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Look at that title. Doesn't it promise excitement? It's phrased as a command, it's got a curse word in it, and it's so important that those zombie bastards die that not only does it have an exclamation point, but it omits a comma. Sure, the implication is that it'll be tongue-in-cheek, but it'll be exciting tongue-in-cheek, right? This should, one way or another, be a movie that gets the audience going.

It is not. It may, in fact, be the most boring movie ever to feature zombies, serial killing cannibals, robots, mad scientists, ninjas, vampires, and gratuitous nudity. One of the characters within the movie even makes the point that she's not scared, because after a while repetition makes something that had been scary little more than boring, and you can only get away with that sort of self-deprecating meta-comment if what you're doing is, in fact, not a crashing bore. That's trying to be sly with the audience, and only really works when it reveals something non-obvious, that the movie is actually more clever than it appears. Here, it just goes to show that the film really has nothing beyond a bunch of half-baked ideas that co-writer/director Caleb Emerson can't stitch together.

The first, and most enjoyable, idea is a group of hot blonde scientists talking about their findings on Hell Island while getting naked and skinny-dipping. Alas, soon they are captured by Dr. Nefarious (Geoff Mosher) and his insta-zombie ray, but three smart, sexy blondes aren't enough (well, after the zombification, they're not so smart and not really sexy unless you're into green, but you get the idea). He wants his ideal woman to share in the triumph of his global zombification plan, and he's decided that that's Violet (Pippi Zornoza), the flesh-eating serial-killer wife of flesh-eating serial-killer Red (Tim Gerstmar). She's just made him a superhero costume complete with a cape made of human flesh when she's taken (he's evidently always wanted to be a superhero), and he sets out on a quest to find her.

Read the rest at HBS.

Fantasia '06, Day 2: Dirty Ho, Princess Aurora, A Bittersweet Life

The greatness of a place like Cocktail Hawaii when you visit a city likke Montreal really cannot be overstated. Say you've been up past midnight watching movies and the quick bits of drifting off during the bus ride and Seven Swords didn't help make up for the four hours of sleep you got the previous night. You don't wake up until eight or nine, spend another hour and a half assuring the family via IM that you made it to Canada safely while trying to finish writing your first reviews, and then walk to Concordia. It's noon. But that's okay; you can still order a "Sacramento" - a thick waffle topped with a banana and a half, strawberries and Nutella chocolate syrup - and a big ol' fresh-squeezed OJ without an issue. It's a breakfast place that doesn't even open until nine (and also serves wraps and ice cream). I would be there every Saturday and Sunday if somplace like this opened in Cambridge.

Next up on the day was the CCA (Centre Canadian d'Architecture), a spiffy little museum in the same area. I'm sorry I missed it last year; the nifty "sculpture garden" is a nice place to sit and relax.

After which, it was time to hit the movies, grabbing a snack because the options were "popcorn for supper" and missing the last film of the night in order to grab something. I went with the latter, skipping Art of the Devil 2 for a hot roast beef sandwhich at Ben's at 12.30.

Six films on the line-up today: Monarch of the Moon, Exodus, The Maid, Citizen Dog, Behind the Mask, and either Die You Zombie Bastards! or She-Demons of the Black Sun. A tough choice, those midnights are.

Dirty Ho (Lan tou He)

* * * (out of four) (incomplete)
Seen 7 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Since this film was originally released in 1979, the title probably didn't have quite the same idiomatic meaning it does now. Said title was actually meant to cash in on the popularity of Dirty Harry. And it's not as if the original title, "Rotten-Headed Ho", would be much better.

The Ho of the title is Ho Chen (Yue Wong), a small-time crook who has a brief competition with a travelling merchant, Mr. Wang (Gordon Liu), for the attentions of a pair of girls at a brothel (it's one of those kung fu movie brothels where people don't seem to come for sex). Ho loses his gold, attempts to get it back, and finds his kung fu doesn't compare to that of Wang, who is secretly a martial arts master. Ho sustains a nasty head wound that must be treated every three days with medicine only Wang has, and Wang insists Ho act as his disciple. Ho doesn't immediately see that Wang is being dogged by assassins, and is hiding more than just a mastery of the martial arts.

If you've seen a 1970s Shaw Brothers movie, you've got some idea of what you're in for - intrigues involving rogue generals and princes, groups of fighters united by a common theme and unorthodox fighting styles, fights with the sound effects cranked up and a tendency to fight one at a time. And, of course, training scenes. You've got to have the eccentric master putting his impatient disciple through some kind of improvised workout using unconventional equipment - Mr. Miyagi learned everything he knew from these guys. It's tradition, darn it, and fun until it reaches the level of self-parody.

Part of the reason that this movie isn't laughable is the genuine chemistry between Gordon Liu and Yue Wong as Wang and Ho. There's nothing particularly subtle going on - Wang is trying to get Ho to be a better man (and says as much), and rather envies Ho's lack of obligations. Ho, of course, responds to the genuine respect versus goodwill he purchases at the brothel. Their complimentary personalities, Ho crass and pretty much illiterate, Wang intellectual and absorbed by his beloved antiques and wine tastings. Both have strong screen presences, doing a much better job of selling us these characters as having individual personalities rather than a defining quirk or characteristic better than most Shaw Brothers characters. This is, I think, in part because Dirty Ho is a buddy film, rather than one which focuses on a large number of martial artists in identical haircuts - Liu and Wong actually have room to act, as well as fight.

Besides, without Dirty Ho, we might never see a martial-arts wine tasting. That sequence, and the similarly staged visit to the antique shop that follows it are two of the film's most delightful surprises, subtle martial arts tangos that go on beneath tables or just out of Ho's sight as Gordon Liu quickly counters his opponents' attacks with small movements of the hand or foot, all the while continuing to exchange pleasantries with his attackers who respond in kind because they just want Wang dead, not noticed. Many films from this period use big, screen-filling moves that are announced by name; these zippy little scenes almost succeed in convincing the audience that there's something else going on.

Of course, the bigger fights are fun too. Some are kind of silly - like the one featuring a guy known as "the biter" - but most are fast and athletic. Director Chia-Liang Liu also handled the martial arts instruction, and though this is relatively early in his career, he's the same guy that would later choreograph Drunken Master II and keep him working today, as the fight choreographer for Tsui Hark's recent Seven Swords. Yue Wong has much of the heavy lifting in those scenes, but he's more than capable. Wong and Liu also work great as a unit, so that the later scenes where Ho and Wang fight of assassins as if having one mind between them are smooth as can be.

The movie ends rather abruptly (another characteristic of the genre at the time), but what more does it need? They fight, we laugh, and that's how it should be. (Formerly at HBS/EFC)


Princess Aurora (Orora Gongju)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2006 at Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival 2006)

The name suggests a fun family adventure, and within the world of the movie, there is a TV show called "Princess Aurora" that's popular with young children. What the film actually delivers, though, is the hunt for a serial killer whose motives initially baffle the police and the audience, even as we follow her closely.

This film is a "howgetum" rather than a whodunit; we see who the killer is right off. It's Jung Soon-jung (Eom Jeong-hwa), an attractive Porsche salesperson in her early thirties who just seems to flip out when confronted by a pretty young trophy wife hitting her seven-year-old step-daughter, escorting the girl out of the ladies' room before brutally stabbing the woman to death. It's then we meet the detectives called to the scene, Jung (Gweon Oh-jung) and Oh Sung-soo (Mun Seong-Geun). Oh intends to leave the force to become a Christian pastor. This case will speed his exit from the force, though, once he pieces enough together to figure out that Soon-jung is involved; a scene that jumps from him making a phone call to her ignoring one suggests that they have a past connection. He's the one who recognizes the significance of the "Princess Aurora" stickers left at each crime scene.

As a standard-issue cops hunting a serial killer movie, this has a number of fun elements. Most of Soon-jung's victims are callous enough that we think she may be killing them just because they rubbed her the wrong way, and some of her murders are creative in a nasty way: There's a certain perverse delight to seeing a vain, bitchy woman suffocated during her spa treatment. The characters at the police station would be well-suited to a continuing series: The bespectacled, devout Oh is a skilled and observant detective, who works well with his younger, scruffy-but-capable partner. The captain (Choi Jong-weon) is a fun supporting character.

The trouble is that once things come together, things don't step up to the next level. The same incident set both Soon-jung and Sung-soo on their respective and opposite paths, but once what's going on becomes clear, the characters get less interesting: Oh really should be more troubled by what he's seeing from Soon-jung, but he's got no outlet with which to communicate that. Similarly, Soon-jung develops a somewhat standard crazy serial-killer tic which we've seen countless times before, and though it pays off nicely in the film's last sequence, the part of the film that stretches from Oh telling his colleagues what he knows about Soon-jung and that last part is disappointing - we've seen this sort of stuff before, and the film just seems to be going through the motions.

This doesn't reflect poorly on the cast; the two principles are very good individually, enough that we'd kind of like to see them play off each other more. Mun Seong-Geun is particularly strong in the procedural scenes, inhabiting his character to make us believe in his day-to-day life, and putting across that he's probably trying to use his newfound religion to dodge the uglier aspects of his life. Eom Jeong-hwa is apparently best known for light romantic comedies, and if so, the way she plays against type here is double effective - she makes Soon-jung able to turn her charm on easily, but also completely sells her shocking brutality and rage; she goes from two kinds of hot to cold without a hitch, which is why we might like to see a little more intensity when just how nuts her character is is revealed; it's a little flat compared to the rest. Gweon Oh-jung sort of recedes to the background as the movie goes on; he's a steady presence, but it's not his story.

The film is directed by Bang Eun-jin, who also worked on the screenplay. Ms. Bang makes her feature directing debut, and does fairly well with it; she's got a good eye for the camera. The pacing could use a little bit of work, but she does a great job with her actors. I'd like a little more attention paid the the procedural details, since having Oh remain on the case after a certain point is kind of ridiculous, but the snappiness of the dialogue manages to penetrate the subtitles, and she gets good performances out of her entire cast.

It is a relatively unique premise - comparing it to American films, I can't really imagine Ashley Judd in the villain role - and the film shows promise. For the work of a first-time director, it's pretty solid work, even if there's enough good genre movies coming out of Korea that this doesn't quite stand out that far from the crowd. (Formerly at HBS/EFC)


A Bittersweet Life (Dalkomhan Insaeng)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

A Bittersweet Life is big, hard-boiled action just like John Woo used to make. Kim Ji-woon isn't necessarily the guy I'd expect to see make this sort of film, but he proves darn good at it, delivering a shot of high-testosterone adrenaline from start to finish.

Kim Sun-woo (Lee Byung-hun) is an enforcer for "President" Kang (Kim Young-Chul), and he's good at it: When called down to handle a situation in a restaurant's back room, the staff jumps at his glance and the hoods are quickly dispatched. It's a situation created by Kang's lieutenant, Mun-suk (Kim Roe-ha), who lacks Sun-woo's icy professionalism and is quickly falling out of favor with Kang, at least relative to Sun-woo. While away in Shanghai on business, Kang gives Sun-woo an extra job - watch his young girlfriend Hee-soo (Shin Min-a), make sure she's not cheating on him, and if she is, kill her and her lover. When the time comes, though, Sun-woo has a twinge of conscience, earning him Kang's wrath. It doesn't help that Sun-woo's cocky attitude has offended another underworld kingpin, "President" Baek (Hwang Jeong-min), who's sending his own killer to take Sun-woo out.

Some guys just have movie star written all over them, and Lee Byung-hun is one of them. He's a good-looking guy who fills out a suit nicely, of course, but he's got the knack for carrying himself with authority and when he bursts into action, delivering his punches and kicks with savage authority. He earns his character's tendency to be a prick by projecting that much more cool than everyone else on screen, and similarly can sell the amount of punishment his body takes while other characters go down. He's good when the veneer of cool is peeled back a little, too, whether it be feeling something when he's around Hee-soo, betrayed and beaten later in the movie, or aware that he might, just this once, be in a situation he can't escape. If he looks familiar to North American audiences, it's probably from a couple of Park Chan-wook pictures: He played the South Korean NCO who made friends with his enemies in JSA, and was the film director victimized in Park's segment of Three...Extremes, "Cut".

Here, though, he's working with Kim Ji-woon, whose previous film was the stylish horror picture A Tale of Two Sisters. He retains his knack for creating dazzling visuals, from the slick interior of the restaurant Kang and company use as a front to the sleazy mess where some lowlife arms dealers do their work. Check out the difference between where Sun-woo and Hee-soo live: The girl's home is cluttered with colorful objects, particularly lamps, whereas Sun-woo sleeps on a couch in a spartan apartment only illuminated by a single lamp whose simple push-button switch rests in his hand while he sleeps. He and cinematographer Kim Ji-yong always seem to have the right angle and distance during the action scenes - far enough back to give us a clear view of what's going on and close enough to rub our noses in the destructive violence. And the man bursting out of a shallow grave has been done before, but seldom this well. They also know how to flatter Ms. Shin, although she doesn't need a lot of help in that department.

Kim's script is a blast, filled with bloody action, memorable supporting characters, and philosophical monologues that don't outlast their welcome. It refrains from giving us an obvious and unlikely romance, so I'll forgive it if it maybe piles a little too much gangland intrigue on us without much explanation. It's also fiercely funny without undercutting the tension or resorting to lame one-liners: A scene where two characters have their guns disassembled when they realize that they really need their weapons in one piece before the other guy has his together got a chuckle even while kick-starting the pulse, and the line from one of the guys digging a second, deeper grave as he sees Sun-woo escape brought the house down. Kim keeps this movie going relentlessly forward, making its two hours pass in a breeze.

As good as Lee Byung-hun is, the rest of the cast hold their own with him. Shin Min-a is a young beauty who invests her character with such spontaneity and warmth that the audience easily believes that she throws these killers' priorities all out of whack. Kim Roe-ha is great contrast to the lead, making Mun-suk as talkative and flamboyant as Sun-woo is cold and reserved. Kim Young-chul and Hwang Jeong-min are both prideful types as mob bosses whose feud doesn't quite go away as the focus on stomping out Sun-woo, and Lee Gi-yeong has a nice supporting role as a killer who may be Sun-woo's equal, if only because he's not burdened with Sun-woo's arrogance.

Many bullets are shot and punches are thrown over the course of this movie, in a way that reminded me that I haven't really seen a flat-out action movie this good in a while. Kim Ji-woon and Lee Byung-hun are the best pairing of actor and director for this kind of film since John Woo and Chow Yun-fat, and definitely worth checking out.

(Formerly at EFC/HBS)

Fantasia '06, Day 1: The Descent and Seven Swords

Well, in good news, I wasn't quite so worn out as I was last year, or at least I didn't think so. I think I walked my way into trouble - the hotel I'm staying at is about a mile or two from the screenings, and it's probably a good rule of thumb that if you pass more than two subway stations, you probably should have been taking the subway. The Descent was fantastic, but Seven Swords had me jerking my head forward as I realized I was drifting off. Not much of an indictment against the movie - hopefully I got the inevitable day where I overestimate my capabilities out of the way quickly.

The tentative plan for tonight is Dirty Ho and Princess Aurora in the J.A. de Sève theater, followed by A Bittersweet Life and Art of the Devil 2 in the main hall. The timing between the two is tight, though, so I may either knock off early and write the first two up or find some food and give Forest of the Dead a shot.

The Descent

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 6 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

The Descent doesn't mess around on its way to being the best action-horror movie to come down the pipe in a while. It tosses out a couple of nasty deaths early, gives us danger enough for two thrillers, never lets up, and never takes a break for arguments that can really wait until the characters have survived the next five seconds.

What you need to know: Six women - mostly from the U.K. - are using their vacation to explore a cave system that their American friend recently found in North Carolina. Sarah (Shauna Macdonald) lost her husband and daughter a year before; Beth (Alex Reid) is her best friend. Rebecca (Saskia Mulder) is a maternal-type English teacher taking the trip with her less-experienced sister Sam (MyAnna Buring), a med student. Organizing the trip is Juno (Natalie Mendoza), who hasn't told the group that the cave system is not the well-explored one she implied but in fact one that's not on any map, and Holly (Nora-Jane Noone), her daredevil protégé with an even more acute tendency to leap before she looks. So, things are bad enough when a cave-in seals off their entrance; when they realize that they may not be alone...

Writer/director Neil Marshall was last seen with Dog Soldiers, and while it's unfortunate that he apparently can't crank out one or two good genre films a year, the three-year wait for his follow-up is well worth it. Dog Soldiers could occasionally get a little scattered, but The Descent is tightly focused in its tension, not giving more than a few moments' respite when things start to go downhill, but also showing a great deal of skill in how it constructs its story and gets us involved in the characters. We know that Sarah's going to be the one we're spending the most time with - she, after all, has the personal tragedy in the prologue - but we're introduced to the others without a lot of expository dialogue or obvious "Hello, my name is _______, and my personality trait is..." situations. The relationships between the characters are simple, but have the feel of history behind them; we know it's going to hurt when they're picked off.

It's interesting (and will probably be a cliché in this film's reviews) to note that the main characters are all women - only one man has a speaking part and he's gone about ten minutes in, but I don't think there's any kind of statement being made other than "let's not waste any time on sexual tension". It is pretty cool to see an action/adventure movie entirely populated by capable women that doesn't treat their attractiveness as one of their main assets in getting the job done. You put men in this movie, and at some point it's going to be a question of male/female dynamics, and while there's a good movie to be made like that, this one does just fine without. Plus, men wouldn't stand a chance of getting through some of the passages the ladies have to crawl through, so they'd be dead anyway.

That it's these specific women is something of a plus, too. Shauna Macdonald merits a comparison to Linda Hamilton in the Terminator movies; she starts out untested but cranks up the intensity to the point of being a force not to be messed with in the end. She's a nice contrast to Natalie Mendoza, whose good looks and ability to sell her character's athleticism and skill provide good camouflage for how irresponsible Juno is, even if she can handle herself when it's time to throw down. Alex Reid brings warmth to Beth without making her excessively touchy-feely, and Nora-Jane Noone gets some good snark in her part. Sasika Mulder and MyAnna Buring kind of wind up in the position where their being less involved in the main dynamic makes them look like cannon fodder, but they're pleasant enough.

All this would be for naught if The Descent wasn't good at making the audience jump or scream, which it is. Things go wrong at just the right moments, and Marshall uses his setting's natural ability to induce claustrophobia well, while also managing to open things up a little more when he needs room to fight. It's nice to see caves that look natural, rather than sixties-sci-fi-show deals with flat floors that just look like a darkened sound stage. He's not shy with the blood, either, getting his cast involved in some brutal fights and dealing out at least one nasty "that really should stay inside" injury. The editing's got occasional "just show us what's going on" moments, but sorts itself out nicely by the end.

(Note: I gather the version I saw was the American version, which cuts one bit from the end, but I kind of think adding another shock would have been a little much.)

Hopefully The Descent gets a better shot in American theaters than Dog Soldiers did; I think the latter maybe had a blip in rep places before heading to cable. It certainly deserves that shot, and to become a hit; it's darn good from start to finish.

(Formerly at EFC)


Seven Swords (Chat Gim)

* * ¾ (out of four) (incomplete)
Seen 6 July 2006 at Théâtre Hall Concordia (Fantasia Festival 2006)

Tsui Hark's new martial arts epic is beautiful and action-packed, but also exhausting. It likely doesn't help that I was already drained from the bus ride and the hike from the hotel and all that, but you know how people will hear a thick book is being adapted for film and say "this should really be a TV mini-series; a two-hour film won't do it justice"? Seven Swords will be the test of that; the same sets and (I think) much of the same crew to make a mini-series (Seven Swordsmen) which will have much more room to breathe than the 2.5-hour feature.

And, don't get me wrong, if I could see the feature version again without bumping something else off my festival to-do list, I'd be happy to do so. It's got a pretty nice cast, a lot of action, and it really looks like no expense was spared in the making. It also seems to have a big fight scene roughly every ten minutes, too many characters for me to keep track of while regularly conking out, and perhaps over-stylized action.

There's a couple TBA slots still left on the Fantasia schedule; maybe Seven Swords will get one of them, in which case I'll give a more useful report.

Recent first-run stuff: The Da Vinci Code, Lady Vengeance, Nacho Libre

Very briefly: In Montreal now, about to go pick up my press pass so that I can see The Descent and Seven Swords tonight. The hotel looks nicer than the one I stayed in last year, but there only seems to be one working outlet, which is hugely annoying.

The Da Vinci Code

* * (out of four)
Seen 29 May 2006 at AMC Boston Common #11 (First-run)

The trouble with The Da Vinci Code, at least as a movie, isn't that it advances a theory that could rub the religious the wrong way. After all, if a person's faith can't handle a hypothetical scenario in a work of fiction, then it's probably not doing them a lot of good. The problem is that said idea is all the movie has, and the process of finding it out isn't terribly exciting.

It opens with Dr. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), an internationally renowned expert in the field of symbolic anthropology or something like that being called to a crime scene in the Louvre to help decode a set of cryptic markings found near a body. As he does so, though, Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a detective with the French equivalent of the FBI, informs him that he's not considered an expert, but a suspect. The murdered man was her grandfather, and she thinks the detective in charge, Bezu Fache (Jean Reno), is barking up the wrong tree, so she helps him escape and follow the clue to the real killer - Silas (Paul Bettany), an albino religious zealot. But who is he an agent for?

Read the rest at HBS.

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance (Chinjeolhan geumjassi)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 June 2006 at Landmark Kendall Square #2 (First-run)

Though the English-language title of Park Chan-wook's most recent feature most explicitly references the first entry in his so-called "revenge trilogy", Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, and it quotes an important line from that film, it's the parallels with Oldboy that may leap out the most vividly - the lengthy period of imprisonment, the elaborate plan, the pain of not knowing a lost child. Heck, when the time to inflict some pain comes, one character chooses the hammer as his weapon of choice. It's not quite as flashy as Oldboy, but that's to its benefit - there's nothing smirk-worthy in its ending to keep it from hitting like a ton of bricks.

Thirteen years ago, Lee Geum-ja (Lee Young-ae) didn't seem like the type to murder a six-year-old boy; indeed, one of her fellow prisoners would later say that she shined with the light of goodness. But she confessed, and was convicted. Inside, she earned the admiration of a Christian preacher (Kim Byeong-ok) for her devotion to God, a baker (Oh Dal-su) for her ability to make delicious pastries from substandard ingredients, and her fellow prisoners for taking unpleasant jobs like caring for an elderly North Korean spy. When she is released at the age of thirty-two, she takes a job at the baker's shop but turns her back on the church; she also tracks down the inmates released before her and presses them into service in her plan for revenge on Mr. Baek (Choi Min-sik), the man she holds responsible for losing everything that matters to her.

Read the rest at HBS

Nacho Libre

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 June 2006 at AMC Fenway #13 (First-run)

Nacho Libre has no use for subtlety. It stars Jack Black and is produced by Nickelodeon Pictures, and neither Black nor Nick is especially noted for forgoing the obvious joke for something more sophisticated when the obvious thing can be observed to work. In other words, people will occasionally pass some gas in this movie, but if you can get over thinking you're too good for a fart joke, you'll probably laugh at it.

Ignacio, nicknamed "Nacho" (Jack Black), has lived his entire life in an orphanage - first as a child following the death of his parents, then as the most lowly and least respected friar on staff. For nearly as long, he has been a fan of luchadors, the masked wrestlers who are immensely popular in his part of Mexico. After a new nun, Sister Encarnarcion (Ana de la Reguera) comes to the rectory and stirs dormant emotions within him, he forms a tag-team with Esqueleto (Hector Jiminez), the skinny pauper who had previously stolen the orphans' day-old tortilla chips. Soon, though, even if the money for being jobbers is good, they begin to hunger for respect, which can only be gained by defeating Ramses (Cesar Gonzales), the country's most popular and most feared competitor.

Read the rest at HBS.

Supermen

Two big superhero movies coming out within a week of each other, although their main audiences are on separate sides of the globe. Both are sequels of a sort, both are just a bit on the long side, and I wish I enjoyed both of them a little more than I did.

I liked Superman Returns more, but I really wish it wasn't so slavishly beholden to the Richard Donner version. It becomes a a tribute, rather than its own thing, even though I don't think I've ever met anybody who liked some of the things they kept - seriously, did anyone think Luthor needed another Miss Tessmacher? I'm also kind of disappointed that they kept the crystalline Fortress of Solitude. That design for the Fortress and Krypton was a nice budget-minded compromise in 1978, but today, the technology exists to make the Fortress what it has always been in the comics - a huge, fanciful mesuem of Superman's adventures, with something amazing tucked into every corner. Instead, we see every other version following the Donner film's lead - there's a new crystaline Fortress in the comics, and Smallville uses the same imagery.

And Luthor. Man, I loved the Luthor John Byrne created - having him be a corporate mogul made him modern, made him Superman's equal, just with a different kind of power. This Luthor annoys me, and the comics are following this lead. It's a bummer.

Krrish isn't quite as insane as its predecessor, Koi... Mil Gaya, but what is? I only knew that one existed because I was seeing the Weekly Wednesday Ass-Kicking at the new-demolished Allston Cinema, and I'm a sucker for anything with a spaceship on the poster. A superhero movie with action choreography out of Hong Kong is worth a look, too, and by the end I was kind of into it. It takes a while, though, and I don't know if I just had to get used to Bollywood or if the last half is just different from the first.

Superman Returns

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 June 2006 at AMC Fenway #10 (Preview Screening)

Superman returns; worthy adversary still missing.

Richard Donner's 1978 film of Superman is a great film, but not because it is perfect. It is great because it was the first time in a long time that superheroes were made majestic, something more than silly adolescent power fantasies. It is great because the parts that work are able to almost completely overpower the parts that don't. The trouble with Bryan Singer's 2006 follow-up is that it borrows indiscriminately from its predecessor, and what it adds is not compelling.

It's obvious from the start, where the opening credits are the same blue outlines whooshing toward the audience, although the background is jazzed up with modern CGI. We soon learn that Superman (Brandon Routh) left Earth five years ago to investigate the ruins of his home planet. During that time, archnemesis Lex Luthor (Kevin Spacey) has been released from prison upon a successful appeal (Superman, you see, could not be called as a witness) and Lois Lane (Kate Bosworth) has settled down some, with a son (Tristan Lake Leabu) and a long-standing engagement to Richard White (James Marsden), the son of her editor, Perry White (Frank Langella). Just as Superman returns to Earth, though, Luthor has found his Fortress of Solitude and stolen a set of crystals located there, which he intends to use for a new nefarious scheme, which like his old nefarious scheme, involves stealing missiles in order to wreak devastation that leaves him in control of the world's most valuable real estate. This time, instead of sinking California, he'll create a new continent, even if it floods huge parts of the ones we've already got.

Read the rest at HBS.

Krrish

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 26 June 2006 at Somerville Theater #5 (Bombay Cinema)

Krrish is one of a certain class of sequels that often annoys me - you know, the type that dispenses with the previous film's main characters early on, to focus on a previously unmentioned brother/friend/other substitute. "Happily ever after" may be short-lived in real life, but shouldn't musicals at least have the implication that it lasts? Here, there's not even the excuse that the producers couldn't retain the star; Hrithik Roshan, Koi... Mil Gaya's Rohit Mehra, headlines as that character's son, Krishna Mehra.

We don't learn the details of why Krishna is living with his grandmother Sonia (Rekha) until about halfway through this three-hour movie, but he is, and she packs up and moves to the country so that they can live in isolated anonymity when six-year-old Krishna shows signs of being a spectacularly gifted genius, complete with Thundering Music of Doom as he answers all his teacher's questions. There, she makes sure he hides his physical and mental gifts and never leaves the village, even though he 's entering creepy twenty-year-old (who looks thirty) hanging out with preteens territory, and doesn't even have the excuse of being retarded like his father was at the start of the previous movie. Soon, though, Priya (Priyanka Chopra) literally falls into his life, crashing her hang-glider into a tree while on an adventure vacation. When she and her friend Honey (Maaninee Mishra) return home to Singapore, they hatch a scheme to save their jobs at a local TV station by showing the "Indian Superboy". Still trying to hide his powers, Krishna dons a discarded mask while saving children at a circus fire, and Priya's new assignment is ferreting out the mysterious superhero "Krrish". They don't yet know about Dr. Arya (Naseeruddin Shah), the head of the electronics firm Krishna's father Rohat was working on at the time of his death, who is just now recreating Rohat's work for his own nefarious purposes.

Read the rest at HBS.

All CGI, All The Time

The first two of the movies in this post were seen the conventional way, while the last two were at this weekend's second Brattle Anime Festival. There were other film from that festival that I considered reviewing, but I felt even less qualified to talk about the Cardcaptor Sakura movie or the third Inu-Yasha one. Those suckers clearly have pre-requisites; they're for experienced fans, which I'm clearly not. I actually thought they were fun enough stories, but just don't know enough to talk about them.

Sadly, the two features I was most looking forward to were run during the wee hours of the night - I'll have to rent/buy Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro when the new edition comes out in August, and pull My Neighbors the Yamadas off my shelf.

Learned about some nifty anime - Fullmetal Alchemist is a fun adventure series, and I really should give Cowboy Bebop another chance. I'm sort of flattened by FLCL - it's just a whole bunch of crazy packed into six episodes, with a surprising amount of interesting character work. I'm not sure whether it's too much or not quite enough yet.

Over The Hedge

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2006 at Entertainment Cinemas Fresh Pond #10 (First-run)

There's something a tiny bit dishonest about advertising Over the Hedge as "from the producers of Shrek and Madagascar". PDI/DreamWorks certainly produced the film, but this thing's been a newspaper comic for years. Not that anyone reads those anymore, though.

Those who still read the papers know that it follows the lives of a group of forest critters whose natural habitat was leveled to make way for a suburban housing development, leaving only a small patch free. Though Verne (a turtle with the voice of Garry Shandling) had been the group's leader in the quest to forage enough food to last them through the winter, their usual hunting grounds are gone, and a recently arrived raccoon, RJ (voice of Bruce Willis) convinces them to start nicking the humans' junk food. What he fails to mention is that as soon as the crew has found enough to fill their hollow log, he intends to hand it off to a bear (voice of Nick Nolte) to whom he owes a previous debt.

Read the rest at HBS.

Cars

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 June 2006 at AMC Boston Common #7 (First-run)

If one was to imagine an Animation Hall of Fame to honor those who were involved with technical innovation and consistently excellent work, there'd be little argument over who the inner circle was: Windsor McCay, Walt Disney, Osamu Tezuka, Chuck Jones, Hayao Miyazaki, and I think it would be fair to include Pixar's John Lasseter. These names are held in such high regard that when the two who are still alive and active produce something new, the standard is not the other movies with the same genre or audience, but their own best work. This is why you can go to Cars, hear the audience laugh straight through, and then hear those same people on the way out talk about being disappointed.

So it's just an exceptionally good movie rather than a masterpiece. The film's biggest problem, I think, is that it's kind of self-indulgent. At nearly two hours, it's relatively long for an American animated movie, and though it doesn't quite feel bloated or flabby, Cars could probably do with having its aerodynamics studied a bit (as in, I don't know where that drag is coming from, but I can feel it). Sure, it may seem like that's a somewhat inappropriate complaint about a film whose message is to slow down a little and enjoy the journey, but this journey could use a few more roadside attractions to make up for its lengths. Also, some of the car-and-racing-related bits may be highly amusing to car people but less so to those who see the things as necessary transportation but no basis for a hobby. For instance, there's a racecar named "The King" that is voiced by Richard Petty. I was a bit amused to see his name in the credits, and figured that a certain uncle and cousins would have really liked that while watching his scenes. That bit's just going to be lost on many people; others might seem like active wastes of time.

Read the rest at HBS.

"Voices of a Distant Star" ("Hoshi no koe")

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 24 June 2006 at the Brattle Theater (The Brattle Anime Festival #2) (projected video)

I love that this short film exists. It's science fiction, the hard stuff, the kind that sees the laws of nature as the basis on which an emotional story can be built as opposed to things to be handwaved away because it's inconvenient. It's got action and adventure, joy and tragedy, and does it all without wasting any of its twenty-five minutes. And it looks pretty darn good for having been done, for the most part, by one guy on his home computer.

Mikako Nagamine and Noboru Terao are each other's first loves. Both gifted students, they are looking forward to going to the same high school, but that's before Mikako finds out she's been accepted by the United Nations space force's academy. There's a war on - a group of aliens called the Tarsians established a colony on Mars and our species don't get along - and Mikako will be piloting a combat mech. Basic training takes place on the moon, but while the mothership that takes Mikako from battle to battle can make hyperspace jumps, faster-than-light communication isn't possible. Mikako and Noboru communicate via cell phone text messages, and while ten minutes for a signal to get from the Earth to Mars isn't bad, the exponentially increasing distances as Mikako journeys to Jupiter, Pluto, the Oort Cloud and beyond will inevitably put a strain on their relationship.

I annoy people by criticizing the bad science in science fiction movies and television - why "it's called science fiction" is considered a valid argument but "it's called science fiction" isn't, I'll never know - so a story like this, which logically extrapolates a story from its premise, being found somewhere other than print is a special treat for me. I suspect that writer/director/editor Makoto Shinkai was able to tell this story at least in part because he didn't have to explain the relatively simple premise to a suit in Hollywood or Tokyo, but was able to just do it (originally, he also did the voice of Noboru and composed the music, but when distributor Mangazoo picked it up, those parts were given an upgrade).

Of course, if all the story had was good science, it would be clever and little more. Shinkai has strong storytelling skills, though - he sketches his characters out quickly and effectively, and knows how to build the world they live in without a whole lot of exposition. Having them communicate through text messages lets him give them their own articulate voices - they've able to believably say exactly what they mean, rather than engaging in awkward teenage conversation. He's good with the action sequences, too - not having a lot of runtime, he works their quick eruption and devastating speed into the story.

It's in the action scenes that he hits the limits of his tools; the three-dimensional mechs and spaceships don't have quite the same look as the two-dimensional characters piloting them. Those human characters are a little flatter and less mobile than some modern anime, but it fits the characters' introspection, but the mechanical things really do look like the best someone could do on his Mac. Still, even if the visuals aren't perfect, they are awe-inspiring - Olympus Mons on Mars, bolts of lightning that jump between Jupiter and one of its moons, a space battle near Pluto and Charon, virtual reality that lets the inside of Mikako's battle mech to fade away, leaving her letting her act as if she's floating in space.

That something like "Voices of a Distant Star" can be made more or less by one guy with some help from his friends is exciting, for film in general and science fiction in particular: It's a singular story told without compromise. Most people who make the attempt won't make something as good as "Voices" (they just won't have Shinkai's talent), but enough will, and they'll make the jump to bigger things like he did (his feature The Place Promised in Our Early Days came out a year later to much acclaim). Even if "Voices" isn't your thing, all film lovers benefit from having talented new voices able to tell their stories.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 June 2006 at the Brattle Theater (The Brattle Anime Festival #2) (projected video)

There's something almost admirable about a movie as focused and single-minded as Advent Children. It is unabashedly constructed with a niche audience in mind. A lot of folks will look at it on the shelf and wonder what the heck happened to Final Fantasy II, III, IV, V, and VI, or why it doesn't seem to share anything with Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within. It's focused on looking good above all else, and if you catch it at the right time, that may be reason enough to forgive its confusing, barely-accessible plot.

That plot is... uh... there was some kind of disaster two years ago where a group of heroes barely saved the world from a corporation that nearly caused a genocide by trying to tap the life forces that circle the planet like a halo for energy. The heroes have gone their separate ways, but now "the planet has struck back" with a plague, a terrorist type is kidnapping orphans to brainwash them, and the new president of the evil corporation is trying something shady. Cloud Strife, the hero of the game, is trying to forgive himself for the people who didn't make it, operating a delivery service out of friend Tifa Lockhart's bar while they keep an eye on several orphaned kids.

Read the rest at HBS.

Click

Matt picked up free passes to this last week. You get what you pay for.

Sometimes less. The Red Sox had a game where they took out the Hammer of Crushing and destroyed the Nationals, but did we see it? No, we were watching Adam Sandler fart in David Hasselhoff's face.

Click

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 June 2006 at AMC Boston Common #14 (Sneak Preview)

I imagine that there was alcohol or week or some other formulation that makes things seem funnier in use when the idea for Click was hatched, because that's the state where pointing a remote control at someone and thinking about the results of that working is hi-LAR-ious. And then you'll be reminded of something sad, and it will just be really sad, but you'll feel better for getting that out. Unfortunately, most of the audience is going to be watching this sober.

Which is unfortunate, because theaters could really benefit from selling alcohol to the over-21 portion of this film's audience. Put a bar in the back of the theater and suddenly obvious jokes involving the "Pause" and "Fast Forward" buttons might seem really clever. Maybe the last half hour or so of the movie feels poignant. And maybe the irony of spending the last two hours watching a drab, uninspiring movie with the theme of not living one's life on autopilot won't be quite so painful.

Read the rest at HBS.

Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell

Another fun series at the Brattle. I wish I could have gotten to the other double feature - The Music Lovers and Mahler - but I couldn't make the Monday show, and then the Tuesday one had something else subbed in for the 7pm part. Major bummer.

I wound up drawing parallels between Russell and Takashi Miike. Both, at least in their early careers, bounced between film and television (if Russell had had video to work with, he probably would). Both are known for outrageous and over-the-top visuals and plot twists, and both have done unexpected pictures - a couple family movies for Miike, a G-rated musical for Russell.

Will Miike have the career that Russell has - both in terms of it being long and kind of fizzling toward the end? Who knows? But from what I saw at the end of May/beginning of June, both almost invariably make interesting movies, even when they don't necessarily make good ones.

The Devils

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

There's a simple lesson to Ken Russell's The Devils: Don't place too much power into the hands of any one person. It not only makes them dangerous, but it gives your community an obvious point of vulnerability. Russell shows this truth being spectacularly exploited - so spectacularly, in fact, that the audience may become overwhelmed by the grotesqueries used to illustrate the situation.

In Paris, Cardinal Richlieu (Christopher Logue) is cementing his power, but cannot convince the king to allow him to seize Loudon, a walled city in the south which acts with disturbing autonomy, sheltering Protestants among other things. The local head priest is also not to the Cardinal's liking - aside from being liberal, Urbain Grandier (Oliver Reed) has very little use for his vows of chastity. The handsome Grandier is adored by the entire city, however, from the nuns in the convent to the man on the street. His behavior toward the fair sex is about to get him into trouble, though - he's just kicked a wealthy merchant's daughter out of his bed upon her becoming pregnant, secretly married the fair Madeline (Gemma Jones), and angered the convent's hunchbacked Sister Superior Jeanne (Vanessa Redgrave) by refusing to act as their spiritual advisor. Seeing an opportunity, the Cardinal dispatches a witchfinder, and while Grandier rides to Paris to confront the king about rumors the city will lose its autonomy, the visitors and everyone who bears any sort of a grudge against Grandier whip the city into a frenzy.

Read the rest at HBS.

Altered States

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Lots of horror or sci-fi stories take as their premise that there are things that humanity is "not supposed to know" or not ready for; it's usually just a way for the movie to not be very specific. Altered States seems different; it seems like director Ken Russell and author Paddy Chayefsky actually have some conception of what we're not supposed to understand.

You can tell by the conversations the characters have, filled with scholarly terms and academic hair-splitting. The film's science and philosophy haven't been simplified to the point of absurdity, but they're presented in language that anyone who is willing to let their brain keep working while sitting in the cinema can comprehend. This is not a film that will offer up a simple metaphor for the lazy audience member and then proceed to act as if that metaphor is a literal truth. Or at least, it doesn't appear to; at it's heart, it's still a scientist finding things at the edges of science that wind up literally being dangerous ideas.

Read the rest at HBS.

Lisztomania

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Some people will tell you that the 1970s were a golden age in film because of the gritty, character-based, challenging films that directors were able to produce during that period, and they wouldn't be completely wrong. However, when you talk about artistic freedom, you have to remember that it cuts both ways, and the same environment that got Taxi Driver made also meant that someone at Warner Brothers signed a check that gave Ken Russell the money to make something as gloriously insane as Lisztomania.

Russell's biographical picture of Franz Liszt starts off from a reasonable enough premise - that in the nineteenth century, composers and virtuoso pianists like Liszt were their day's equivalent of rock stars, So Russell gets an actual rock star (Roger Daltry) to play Liszt, and one of the first sequences is Liszt backstage at his recital, which is as full of topless groupies, drugs, alcohol, wannabes looking for Liszt to play their compositions, and other hangers-on as any modern-day rock concert. Now, Russell isn't actually saying that things happened just like what he's showing, but metaphorically, they're today's equivalent. If you can't get down with the idea that everything on-screen is an exaggerated metaphor for Liszt's real life, stop reading this review and don't bother seeing this if it ever shows up on video or some crazy rep house shows it. You won't like it.

Read the rest at HBS.

Tommy

* * * (out of four)
Seen 28 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Opera is generally thought of as grandiose, bigger-than-life art. Rock & roll has always been looking to top itself in terms of bringing passion to its performances, to the point of Pete Townshend smashing his guitar onstage in a sort of rock-induced frenzy. So "Tommy" a rock opera written by Townshend and recorded by his band, The Who, is starting out ahead of the game in terms of being a handful. With the film in the hands of Ken Russell, it's an open question as to whether Russell is the kind of showman that the form needs or the guy who will push it too far over the top.

The story, which folks who unlike me have actually heard the album probably already know, is that little Tommy Walker's father was thought killed in the war before he was born. Mother Nora (Ann-Margaret) later remarries a nice-enough seeming man, but when Tommy spots Nora and Frank (Oliver Reed) murdering his newly-returned father (Robert Powell), he takes their admonition that he saw and heard nothing too much to heart, becoming psychosomatically deaf, dumb, and blind. This condition persists until he's an adult (and played by Who frontman Roger Daltry), although he does show an affinity for playing pinball, and becomes famous for it. Eventually, his senses are restored, a miraculous-seeming event that, rather than making him appear a fraud, sees him treated as a sort of prophet or guru.

Read the rest at HBS.

Women in Love

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

The title of Russell's Academy Award-nominated 1969 adaptation of the D.H. Lawrence novel refers to sisters Ursula and Gudrun Brangwen, but they don't receive first billing and it likely won't be either of their courtships that makes the biggest impression on the audience For that, you've got to look to Alan Bates and Oliver Reed.

But first, the ladies. Ursula (Jennie Linden) is a sweet if insecure schoolteacher who finds herself smitten by the school inspector, Rupert Birkin (Alan Bates). Glenda Jackson's Gudrun is the younger sister (though I didn't realize that until watching The Rainbow), a more cosmopolitan artist who attracts the attention of Rupert's friend Gerald Crich (Oliver Reed). The Crich family owns the mine that serves as the early twentieth-century English town's major industry, and it is mainly at functions thrown by his family that the quartet meet. But even as opposites are busily attracting, the two male friends can't help but discuss how good it is for a man to have other important people in their lives, aside from their young ladies.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Rainbow

* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 May 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

Although Ken Russell is best known for his less restrained works in the 1970s and 1980s - things like Tommy, The Devils, and Altered States - he received his only Academy Award nomination for 1969's Women In Love. It would be twenty years before he revisited that territory with his 1989 adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's The Rainbow - long enough for Glenda Jackson to play the mother of the character she'd played in the earlier film!

Gudrun Brangwen, the character Jackson played in Women in Love, is barely a factor in The Rainbow anyway; she's just a baby in the opening scene. Of course, her older sister Ursula is only three at the time, trying to chase down rainbows and nearly falling into the river doing so until her beloved father (Christopher Gable) retrieves her. Fourteen years later, Will Brangwen is still trying to protect Ursula (Sammi Davis), urging her to remain at home and find a husband, while she wants to go to the city and earn her teaching certification. Her physical education teacher, Winifred Inger (Amanda Donohoe), invites her to spend time with her in private, but when Ursula invites Winifred to come with her to the estate of her Uncle Henry (David Hemmings), she feels tremendously jealous when the two of them hit it off - and Henry's guest, a handsome young soldier by the name of Anton Skrebensky (Paul McGann), is only partial consolation.

Read the rest at HBS.

The Boy Friend

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 June 2006 at the Brattle Theater (Altered States: The Films of Ken Russell)

As long as there's been stories, there's been stories about storytellers. It's a natural thing, and when done well, a joy to watch; after all, these people know of what they speak. Unfortunately, The Boy Friend is not quite one of those joys; while it features several small pleasures, it has trouble focusing on the right things. It's fun to watch, but by the end, I was pretty glad it was over.

Apparently, this wasn't originally a backstage comedy; the original Sandy Wilson stage musical is actually being performed by the characters in Ken Russell's film. In the film, the theater where The Boy Friend is running is struggling - the audiences are tiny, easily outnumbered by the performers; the whole thing seems like it could go bust, with the cast going through the motions because it beats being out on the street. But today, two things are going to be different: Mr. Cecil De Thrill (Vladek Sheybal), a big-name Hollywood producer, is in the audience, looking for talent and his next feature; backstage, word has come that their star has broken her foot and assistant stage manager Polly Browne (Twiggy) will have to step in. This sets her all atwitter, not just because she hasn't really understudied quite so well as she perhaps should have, but because she has such a crush on her leading man, Tony Brockhurst (Christopher Gale).

Read the rest at HBS.

Interkosmos

This movie made me miss the start of a quite frankly incredible baseball game, so I can't forgive it.

Aside from that, though, it does sort of get me thinking about the idea of film as art. The Brattle had "Celebrating Film as Art" as its slogan for a while - it still may - but it's not quite into the hardcore obscurity that places like the Harvard Film Archive and MFA's film program can be. Something like Interkosmos is pretty darn non-commercial; it costs, per IMDB, roughly $10,000 to make and requires people to come upon it kind of randomly. It might show up in an "underground film festival" or it might grab the attention of someone like me who will see absolutely any sci-fi film no matter what the budget, nation of origin, or obscurity (I own a copy of The Sticky Fingers of Time, for crying out loud). But that means that a ridiculously large portion of the population will pass it by. It's not just that it will only get one ten-thousandth of the audience of something like X-Men 3; it will probably only have one one hundred-thousandth of the actual awareness of its existence.

I'm not sure whether that's actually unfair or just me comparing apples and oranges. The idea of making money might just be a thoroughly secondary or tertiary concern for this movie. It might just be this thing that Jim Finn wanted to make, and eventually put together.

In which case, bully for him. He'll probably never get rich at this game, but he'll probably make some nteresting films.

Interkosmos

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 June 2006 at the Harvard Film Archive (New American Independent FIlm)

I have mixed feelings about films like Interkosmos. A new filmmaker like Jim Finn has to start somewhere, and this no-budget parody documentary constructed out of stock footage and what are basically home movies shows a knack for stylization and (very) offbeat humor. That humor is dry to the point of being arid, though, and if Finn wants more mainstream success, he's going to have to work on that.

Of course, maybe Jim Finn isn't interested in mainstream success. For all I know, this sort of of retro-weird movie is the sort of thing he wants to spend his life on, or he wants to do different but similarly artsy low-budget films. Which is cool; film needs its outsider artists just as much as any other medium. We're often just so used to looking at it as corporate-produced and made by committee that we forget that anybody can make a feature-length film.

Read the rest at HBS.

X-Men: The Last Stand

Got to see this one in the afternoon, after having jury duty in the morning. It was the best kind of jury duty - show up at eight in the morning, watch an instructional video, work on a book of cross sums until you're told at eleven that you won't be needed. And it's Friday! And you've got Monday off because it's a holiday! Awe. Sum!

I spent a good chunk of the afternoon filling out forms and trying to print out a picture so that I could go to the post office and drop money for a passport. The plan's to head back to Montreal for Fantasia this year, since last year was a ton of fun. Having a passport would have streamlined things.

Also: That was one of those days where the weather plays mean tricks on you. I was a sweaty mess by eight o'clock when I got to the courthouse (walking to the other end of Cambridge will do that), changed into shorts when I got back home, really needed the large soda by the time I'd crossed the river and made my way to Fenway... And walked out of the theater into the pouring rain. Real cute, weather gods. Real cute.

X-Men: The Last Stand

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 May 2006 at AMC Fenway #13 (first-run)

Considering the continued popularity of the series, I doubt that X-Men: The Last Stand really represents the last of anything, especially considering the rich library of characters filmmakers can choose from should they choose to jettison more expensive pieces. And give them credit for recognizing this - the third X-Men movie certainly plays like they could either walk away or at least play a very different team in #4.

Characters don't necessarily have to die, though. A San Francisco pharmaceutical company has just announced the development of a drug that permanently suppresses expression of the mutant "X-gene" - a cure, so to speak. Mutant terrorist Magneto (Ian McKellen) and his Brotherhood of Mutants consider this an abomination; telepathic Professor Charles Xavier (Patrick Stewart) doesn't like the idea, but recalls having to place mental blocks in a student to prevent her own powers from going out of control. That former student, Jean Grey (Famke Janssen) was presumed dead at the end of the last movie, but she's back, and her hold on sanity is slipping just as Xavier feared.

Read the rest at HBS.