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24 Mar
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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The King and the Clown bears a strong resemblance to the Hong Kong movie Farewell, My Concubine. Both feature a pair of performers, one of whom always plays female roles. Each of the more feminine men is gay and in love with his partner. In both films the performers are threatened with destruction by powers far beyond their control. But in Concubine the menace is the Communist government’s Cultural Revolution; in Clown it is a traumatized, maddened king.
Gong-gil and Jang-saeng are 15th-century street performers. Gong-gil’s feminine beauty dictates that he plays women’s roles, and the troupe’s manager often pimps him out to rich audience members. This infuriates Jang-saeng. Eventually things come to a head; in the resulting confrontation the manager is killed. Gong-gil and Jang-saeng flee to Seoul, where they join up with other street performers and create a new troupe. The ruler of Korea is the cruel, tyrannical Yeonsan, and when the troupe puts on a play mocking him and his favorite consort, Nok-su, they find themselves swiftly arrested. Jang-saeng manages to get the troupe an audience with the king; if their skit makes him laugh, he reasons, then they’ll be allowed to live. It works, and the performers become King Yeonsan’s personal entertainers, put up in the palace itself.
Yeonsan is especially interested in Gong-gil, and often calls him to his chambers, to the dismay of Jang-saeng. But Yeonsan seems almost as enamored the troupe’s art as he is in Gong-gil; instead of buggering him silly, as one (well, I, because my mind is filthy) might expect, instead he asks Gong-gil to teach him the art of puppetry. He inserts himself into the troupe’s plays, to the surprise of the performers who have to improvise around him. Finally he writes a play for the troupe to perform before an audience that includes the king’s grandmother and some of his father’s former concubines. The play details the story of his mother, who was forced to kill herself due to the machinations of the other jealous concubines and his grandmother. The play causes quite the uproar, and ends in bloodshed.
Things go rapidly downhill from there.
Nok-su decides she doesn’t like her man being more interested in a dude than her. She schemes to get Gong-gil tossed out- or better yet, executed- but her plans go awry when Jang-seang comes once again to his defense. Meanwhile, both the ministers and the citizens are getting tired of their crazy king, which means the joint is ripe for a revolution…in which Gong-gil and Jang-seang will inevitably be caught up.
The King and the Clown, despite being made a budget Hollywood would consider laughable, is a visually lavish historical film, rich with color. The costumes and sets are minutely detailed. The clothes and jewelry alone are enough to keep any girl’s attention, but it’s the acting and the subtle love triangle that really draw the viewer in. King Yeonsan (Jeong Jin-yeong) veers convincingly between brutal tyranny and an almost childlike vulnerability; his eagerness to be accepted into the troupe is almost pathetic. He’s a character that’s hard to like, but easy to pity despite his cruel acts. Jang-saeng (Kam Woo-seong of R-Point, reviewed previously by me) is easily angered, but his affection (love?) for Gong-gil is tender, and his brashness makes you like him whether you want to or not. Gong-gil (Lee Jun-gi) is hauntingly beautiful, a stark, quiet contrast to loud, personable Jang-saeng. But though the men around him variously want to own or protect him, Gong-gil has his own steel backbone, prominently displayed at the end of the film.
The King and the Clown is a movie that should make you cry, much as Farewell, My Concubine does. Yet the ending, while appropriate for the movie, doesn’t bring the tears. I think this is due to the relatively short amount of screen time given to the relationship between Gong-gil and Jang-saeng. Nothing is overt, and it doesn’t need to be. But the tense silences and angry words would be more deeply felt if we saw more scenes of them alone together. Once Yeonsan shows up, the film gives only short nods to the increasing frustration felt by Jang-saeng; Gong-gil’s feelings for him are shown only in tears and pleading. What the second part of the film needs is more of the quiet moments we see between the two in the beginning.
But despite these minor flaws, The King and the Clown will suck you right in and not let you go for two whole hours. It’s definitely a must-see for anyone with an interest in Korean cinema or history.
The Verdict: Not as good as it could be, but certainly worth your two hours.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: review, south korea, the king and the clown |
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1 May
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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POP! Goes the Dead Kid
I’ve seen nearly all the famous Asian horror films. And by ‘famous’, I mean the ones that Hollywood tried to remake: The Eye, The Ring, A Tale of Two Sisters, Pulse, Dark Water. There was just one I’d missed: Ju-on, aka The Grudge. That’s been rectified.
The movie begins, as all good movies do, with a murder. More than one murder, actually. We don’t know who or why, but you do know where- so it’s hardly a surprise when Social Welfare Office volunteer Rika shows up on the doorway of the House’o’Murders to check up on the joint’s inhabitant, a really old lady who has let the place go to hell. Like all the idiots in Pulse, when Rika finds a door that’s sealed shut with packing tape, she just has to open it. She finds a cat. Oh, and a little dead ghost kid.
The film then jumps to some unspecified time (but the same bat-location), when the old lady’s son and daughter-in-law are complaining to each other about the mess and ruckus the old lady’s making at night. The daughter-in-law, Kazumi, finally seems to get a clue when little-dead-ghost-kid handprints show up on the doors, and a random cat appears in the house. The son (who has a truly wretched haircut) comes home from work to find his wife all comatose with terror, just before she becomes an ex-parrot. Then Kazumi’s sister comes over for dinner, barges in without knocking, and is promptly treated to the son acting fucking crazy. He kicks her out.
Then we get the sister’s POV- she’s called Hitomi, and we also get our first clue toward placing these sections in some kind of chronological order. She sees some creepy shit in the big, weirdly depopulated building where she works. In her predictably deserted apartment complex, there’s elevator scariness, and her freak-ass brother shows up. So she logically hides under the covers, because if she can’t see him, he can’t see her, right? Then there’s creepy TV stuff and creepy dead people under the covers stuff.
And then it jumps to a Social Welfare Office employee, who goes to the Death House. He finds Rika, comatose with terror, and calls the cops. The old lady has kicked the bucket with the help of a blackish misty spirit ghost thing. The cops show up and find Kazumi and her husband, who have become living-challenged. Rika finds her voice and tells the cops all about the little dead ghost kid, only to learn that some time back this dude went nuts and got all stabby with his wife and their son disappeared, and since then all the people who lived in that house have turned into worm food Welfare Office guy buys the farm and the cops get the old detective who worked on the original murder case to help them. Toyama has some serious PTSD from that case, and it just gets worse.
Meanwhile, dead people keep dogging Hitomi. Toyama wisely decides to burn the haunted place to the ground, but the other cops stop him and are treated to some creepy long-haired dead chick action. Toyama joins the Choir Invisible, and then we’re off again, to the point of view of Izumi, Toyama’s daughter, four years after Toyama dies. She brilliantly goes into the house with some friends on a dare, and all her friends immediately go the way of all flesh like it’s some mass schoolgirl extinction event. Izumi loses her shit. Izumi then takes a dirt nap.
Finally the movie jumps to Kayoko, the perforated housewife, except even though the title says “Kayako” it actually just goes back to Rika, who’s awakened at night by a chorus of cats wailing (like I am, because my neighbors lets her damned felines roam around outside and use my yard for a litter box) and is generally all touchy and shit. Her friend (also a Welfare Office person) calls to say she is at some house where a kid hasn’t shown up to school, and the kid is there, but the parents aren’t, and three guesses as to which house it is and which kid it is and the first two don’t count. Though why the hell Rika’s friend doesn’t know where the Cursed House is and all about it is a mystery to me. Seems like information you might want to tell your friends/co-workers, you know? So Rika books it back to the Evil Abode to save her stupid friend, only to meet her maker when the ghost of the stabby husband pops in to murder her. The end.
In Ju-on, the curse given by the dead housewife is far-ranging and pretty damn random. Anyone associated with the dead ghost people or the house or people who know other people who were in the house, will die. You’ll probably die if you walk past the house or see it in a real estate ad, too. Apparently we’re just meant to assume that every single character in this movie will eventually die, and from there everyone in Japan, because this curse is like the bird flu. Because of this pervasiveness, there’s no resolution: Rika’s dead, along with about a hundred other people, and none of it matters a bit because the stabbed housewife is so incredibly pissed off that she will never be sated, at least not for several more movies.
Ju-on isn’t scary in the least, mainly because every horror convention it whips out has been done to death before and since. Dead kids in kabuki makeup. Dead women creeping down the stairs on all fours. Dead people in the mirror behind someone. Dead women with their faces hidden by hair, lurking in a bathroom, or under the covers, or under the stairs, or in the attic. TV reception going bonkers, creepy static voices on the phone. The horror bits are really just bloody housewife/little dead ghost kid’s oil-painted faces repetitively popping up into the frame like some kind of weirdo jack-in-the-box. Yawn.
The POV-hopping is interesting enough, but overdone- we never really feel like we get to know any of these characters enough to actually care what happens to them (I mean, they’re all going to die obviously, but I really didn’t give a shit). The way the movie plays with chronology is cool; the curse apparently even gets to time-travel, for poor old freaked-out Toyama gets to see his daughter Izumi in the house, in some kind of future vision, right before he croaks.
Now, I am a big baby. One time I watched a (totally, obviously fake) alien abduction video while my husband wasn’t home, and I didn’t turn off the lights for two days. I sit up nights because if I fall asleep, the Mothman might get me. If I ever actually saw a ghost, I’d run screaming like a little girl. So if I say Ju-on doesn’t do it for me, it honestly doesn’t do it for me, and It definitely won’t do it if you are more skeptical than me- and I believe in damn near everything.
The Verdict: I am holding a grudge against all the people who claim this is the “scariest horror film ever OMG”.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: horror, japan, ju-on, movies, review, takashi shimizu |
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24 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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So I decided to give the Pang Brothers a third chance. They’ve made so many movies, after all, they can’t all be as flawed as The Eye and Re:Cycle, right? But…three strikes and you’re out, boys. Sorry. Forest of Death is even worse than either of their other films I watched.
Somewhere unspecified in China, there is a vast, deep forest where people like to go to off themselves, for whatever reason. The number of suicides there is tabloid fodder, but it gets even more sensational when a woman turns up dead in the forest…only she didn’t kill himself (though not for lack of trying), she was raped and murdered. The cops are pretty sure they have the right guy in Patrick Wong, a slimy fellow who wears his Oxford shirt buttoned all the way up (a sure sign of a psycho killer if there ever was one; that should be evidence admissible in court), but there’s no physical evidence against him.
Detective CC Ha, the only female detective in her precinct, has been assigned to wrap up the case before her boss retires. She’s stumped, until she sees a botanist on TV explaining his pseudo-scientific BS theory about how plants are sentient and can communicate with humans through magnetic waves or some shit. Anyway, Detective CC Ha (I am going to use her full title and name because it looks funny typed out) calls up Dr. Shum Shu-Hoi (played by Ekin Cheng, who has grown from Pretty Boy to Foxy Man, although maturity has done nothing to improve his acting) and asks him to help a girl out. He eagerly takes off to the Forest of Death with all his equipment, and Detective CC Ha brings Patrick Wong out as well. The trees reveal to them what happened- he totally did it- and Shu-Hoi is suddenly sent from poor obscure fringe scientist to instant celebrity. It causes tension in his relationship with his girlfriend, May, a whiny, clingy little bitch who is also a TV reporter who has been reporting on the Forest of Death.
Even though the murder is solved in a spectacularly anticlimactic manner, Detective CC Ha isn’t satisfied; she wants to tackle all the missing persons and unidentified suicides lost and found in the forest. She’s helped by wise old park ranger Mr. Tin, whose daughter also killed herself in the forest. Mr. Tin warns them not to meddle because there are, of course, all sorts of supernatural things haunting the forest, from ghosts to fox spirits to whatever. They persist until May, after being yelled at by her big meanie producer, decides to kill herself and goes to the Forest of Death. Of course she runs off right as a big thunderstorm rolls in, gets kidnapped by the ghosts or foxes or whatever, and is rescued by Shu-hoi, which makes every problem in their relationship A-OK and saves the souls of all the dead people in the forest or something.
The main problem with Forest of Death is that it’s, well, boring, badly-acted, not scary in the least, and it doesn’t make sense. There are a couple intriguing ideas, but they never go anywhere, ditched in favor of the lame relationship crap- the fox spirits, and one scene where an elderly woman identifies one of the bodies found in the forest as her brother, who has been missing for forty years- though he only looks to be about twenty years old. The plant communication thing is too ridiculous even for the suspension of disbelief required by horror movies. The story arc should have ended with the discovery of the murderer; everything that comes after is disjointed and uninteresting, as if the writers thought they could change the characters’ goals halfway through the film, discovered they actually couldn’t, then decided they didn’t give a shit and tacked together a bunch of gibberish to pad the time to an hour and a half.
The acting is not great; no one seems to be trying very hard (though Rain Li, who plays May, does a pretty good pout…for the entire freaking movie). Luckily Shu-hoi and Detective CC Ha don’t do any flirting- thank God, because they have zero chemistry.
The special effects are decent; lots of fog and a few wispy specters floating around the forest. Much of the grand finale is shot in the dark, so it’s hard to tell what’s going on. Not like you care at this point, but it’s still annoying.
The movie ends with a text warning of sorts, that there are three other forests in the world just like the Forest of Death (meaning, presumably, that people like to commit suicide there), but doesn’t name any of them, just mentions vaguely which continents they’re on. It claims that the number of suicides in the Japanese version of the Forest of Death has risen incredibly in past few years (there actually is a forest like this in Japan, I remember reading an article about it some time ago), though it doesn’t bother attempting speculation on why- if the claim is ever true. I suppose we are meant to think the fox spirits or ghosts are out to get people who are already planning to die, for supernatural reasons of their own.
The Verdict: Living people cannot possibly fathom the logic of a fox spirit. Or the Pang Brothers.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: forest of death, Hong Kong, movie review, pang brothers |
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21 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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The Great Happiness Space takes its title from a bit of Engrish advertising for an Osaka host club, Stylish Club Rakkyo. Being a host at a Japanese host club seems like the easiest job ever; all you have to do is sweet talk some lonely chicks, get them to buy a ton of expensive champagne and make some cash. Simple, yes? Harmless, flirty fun.
No. The dynamics of a host club are complicated, emotional, and sometimes heartbreaking.
There’s no narration here; the film relies on interviews with Rakkyo’s hosts and their clients and footage of the club in action to tell its story. The first set of clips feature various hosts praising Rakkyo’s number one host, Issei, a painfully stylish young man in a sharp suit. Interviews with Issei’s regular clients introduce the first bit of discomfort; without exception they all declare themselves to be in love with him; one woman even says she broke off her engagement after falling for Issei. They then move on to the details of hosting, and what makes a good host; the concensus being that the most important skill is to lie, and lie well. Footage from the club shows their skills in action. The hosts are variously sensitive, kind, affectionate, big-brotherly, sweet, raucous, lecherous…whatever their particular client wants. Their chameleonic abilities are actually unnerving to watch, but not half as unnerving as the string of women declaring their love for a man who’s actively playing them.
Being a host is a complex job; in one scene the hosts are shown picking up business on the street, halfway between animals hunting and prostitute looking for johns. Issei points out that while he’s cleaning up financially, he’s screwed himself in other ways; working at night, in a host club, makes it impossible to meet women elsewhere, so he has no serious relationship. And his excessive drinking at the club is setting him up for health problems.
Several of the women say they love the host club because there, they are treated like princesses. It doesn’t seem like an unusual wish; most women want to be a princess at some point. But the kick in the teeth comes when they are asked about their jobs. Almost all the women interviewed are Soap Land employees (prostitutes), dancers, or even hostesses themselves. And the worst part is that, deep down, most of them seem to know it’s a sham. But they need it badly enough to pretend. And at the same time, they go to other host clubs and pay other hosts for their attention.
Issei is the voice of experience in this documentary. While some of the other hosts are flippant or even disgusted by their clients, Issei seems to have real sympathy for them. He’s very perceptive about clientele and matter-of-fact about the requirements of his job; some footage shows him giving tips to new hosts. It’s easy to see why the women fall for him.
Over the course of the documentary, Rakkyo hires some new hosts, and watching the new hosts learn their duties (and their first awkward attempts at luring clients) are funny and even touching. But none of it makes up for the depressing interviews with Issei, who details how to stretch out a relationship with a client to keep her around (and paying) as long as possible; once they snap out of it and realize he’ll never seriously date them, they –and their money- are gone to some other club, some other host.
It’s all depressing, every bit of it. The deception, the self-deception, the endless vicious cycle of nights where some facsimile of love can be bought. It’s emotional prostitution where everyone ends up more damaged than when they started. And where will the hosts go when they lose their looks, what happens to the clients when they age and have no real relationship? The documentary shies away from even contemplating these possibilities.
Host clubs are full of men who no longer know who they are, beneath their suave exteriors, and women whose dream of love destroys their chances at finding the real thing.
The Verdict: Pretty boys, cute girls, but they’re all too sad to enjoy the view. A penetrating documentary that will change everything you think about host and hostess clubs.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: documentary, host clubs, japan, review, the great happiness space |
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20 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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I am of the opinion that lesbians don’t get nearly enough screen time. Gay guys are pretty much completely mainstream at this point (remember that show with the gay dudes? Yeah, me too); they show up on CSI, and there was that one series that was all about this gay guy and his female roommate). But lesbians are still stuffed into the network TV closet.
Not so in anime and manga. There’s an entire genre called yuri, which focuses on lesbian relationships…and these titles are all kind of stuffed into the closet, at least in the U.S. The ones that do escape are unbelievably mild, because if we ever saw two chicks getting it on, all women might think it’s just too awesome and turn lesbian and the human race would die out. Or something.
Blue Drop is one of those barely-there yuri escapees. It’s a yuri, science fiction, boarding school story all rolled into one 13-episode series, and it’s honestly better than I thought it would be.
Mari has lived with her grandmother for six years, ever since her parents died in a bizarre incident- all the inhabitants of their small island died in one night, either killing each other in a frenzy or dying in the subsequent tidal wave. Mari was the only survivor, and she has no memory of her life before her rescue.
Mari’s grandma is getting up in years and feels she can’t take care of her anymore, so she ships Mari off to a swanky girls-only boarding school with a headmaster who looks just like Yanni, if Yanni was animated and had purple hair. Mari is understandably pissed off, and is even more pissed off when the class president tries to strangle her on their first meeting. Hagino is the golden girl: the best at everything and the focus of many girl crushes. She also has a secret: she’s really an alien (or from another dimension; differing explanations are offered on this point). Hagino herself isn’t sure why Mari freaks her out so much, so she gets herself assigned as Mari’s roommate to find out.
Hagino’s people came to earth years ago to scope it out for possible invasion; Hagino (aka Echoreal) is the captain of one of their recon ships. It was actually a terrible accident involving her ship that drove everyone on Mari’s island crazy. Hagino’s guilt has caused her to hide from her own people, taking on the persona of a schoolgirl while her ship waits in the ocean, tended by her loyal lieutenant, Subael.
As Mari begins to discover Hagino’s secrets, their relationship develops from antagonism to friendship to more (Hagino’s people are all female, so it’s no big whoop for her). Their feelings even survive Mari’s learning that Hagino was more or less responsible for her parents kicking the bucket. When the aliens commence with their invasion plans, Hagino decides to stop them- for Mari, and for the fragile human race she’s come to love.
Taken on their own, each of Blue Drop’s storylines is nothing new: alien invasion/ boarding school girl crushes. Blah. But tie them together, and you have something different, and fairly interesting.
Mari and Hagino’s relationship develops as naturally as you expect, considering that one of them is an alien who destroyed the other one’s early life. It’s tentative, and angsty, and often sweet and genuinely touching. But as this is mainstream yuri, they never do anything more risqué than holding hands. Mari is a fun sort of heroine; instead of the sickeningly good-hearted girls you see in so much anime, Mari is touchy, angry and fierce. Hagino appears to be the stereotypical perfect schoolmate, but her guilt and regret make her more interesting than the average alien girl. The other characters are generally likable, if not particularly fleshed out (except the morbidly obese RA in Mari’s dorm…haha). One teacher who seems flighty and uber-cheerful is actually a secret agent there to observe Mari in an attempt to find out what happened to her island’s population; as a flaky teacher she’s annoying as hell, but the secret agent bit balances it out nicely.
The show is relatively fast-paced, with a only a couple ‘time-out’ episodes where the girls hang out at the beach or whatever.
The character designs are pretty standard, though the alien ship designs are really neat. It’s Gonzo, so the animation is really slick and the backgrounds are detailed; there’s a lot of sun shimmering on the ocean waves and the like. The ship-on-ship action is rendered in 3D CGI, which is a bit jarring at first but quickly comes to look pretty decent.
I watched the show dubbed (thanks to Netflix’s Instant Stream, where much of the anime is only available dubbed). The voice acting is tolerable all around, though all the girls (save Hagino’s Monica Rial, who barely manages more than a shy whisper) can be strident and shrill when they’re excited. Kind of like real teenage girls, I guess.
The ending of Blue Drop, while not entirely unexpected, manages to be quite touching, especially as it ties into the framing story in the first episode.
The Verdict: Probably not very rewatchable, but definitely enjoyable the first time around.
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17 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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By the end of The Good, the Bad, the Weird, you’ll be thinking, “Damn! Did I really just see a Korean Western set in 1930’s Manchuria with crazy awesome chase scenes, train heists, and cowboys, with the Gobi Desert as a stand-in for the Mojave?” Why, yes, yes you did.
Chang-yi (the titular Bad) is a nasty, violent gang leader whose group of thugs has been hired to retrieve a treasure map from the head of a Japanese bank. Since this is a Western, he’s traveling by train across the desert. What the Bad doesn’t know is that small-time thief Tae-goo (the Weird) is also on this train, out to rob whoever looks good- and he robs the banker before the Bad and his gang can stop the train and climb on. There follows a long, gruesome scene involving murdered civilians, explosions, and a Mongol gang with spears, who seem to be a completely different faction and are also after…the map! Tae-goo realizes he has something valuable and takes off, just as poker-faced bounty hunter Do-won (the Good; he comes with a duster and cowboy hat) shows up to take down the Bad.
Tae-goo gets away and holes up to decide what he should do with the map. Meanwhile, Chang-yi goes back to his boss and takes care of his boss’ disappointment in him by killing the guy. Do-won follows the trail. What ensues are several more bloody gun battles, a couple torture killings, and a tentative alliance between Do-won and Tae-goo. While they’re making nice, the Japanese army gets wind of the map’s whereabouts, and decide they need it. For rumor has it that the treasure in question is a big chunk of the ex-ruling dynasty, the Qing, and getting their hands on it will cement Japan’s power in Manchuria (at the time, both Manchuria and Korea were under Japanese rule).
Predictably, Tae-goo double-crosses Do-won and takes off in search of the treasure alone, pursued by Chang-yi (who is pursued by Do-won), the Mongols, the Manchurian army, and the Japanese army. There’s a terrific extended chase sequence across the desert, involving Jeeps, horses, trucks, motorcycles, and some awesome post-traumatic wish fulfillment when Do-won singlehandedly decimates the Japanese army. It all ends with the Good, the Bad and the Weird at the spot marked by the X, in a tense Mexican standoff. And they do end up finding the treasure…it’s just not what anyone would ever have expected.
This movie is unrelentingly kinetic. Hardly have we had time to digest one ultra-violent battle than the next one begins. The action is well-filmed and well-played, but it gets confusing when three or four different factions are fighting each other in the rain. It’s also insanely violent and gory, with graphic beatings, severed limbs, shootings, and, in one memorable scene, a knife rammed into the back of a guy’s neck.
The Good, the Bad, the Weird is billed (at least on Netflix) as an action comedy. While it has its funny moments, they’re more funny-whoa (as in, “Holy shit, did they just ram a spear up a dude’s ass?”) than funny-haha. , as Tae-goo, is the most comedic of the characters, though his dopey exterior doesn’t totally conceal a slyness that’s unsettling.
The movie is obviously a nod to the spaghetti Westerns of the 1960’s and 70’s, from the title to the music, which is Ennio Morricone infected with techno. But it’s not a parody; The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a loving, detailed tribute to Sergio Leone and crew.
At a little over two hours, the film is about half an hour too long (the aforementioned confusing fight in the rain is part of the ‘too long’ bit), but even with that fault, The Good, the Bad the Weird is worth it for the final forty minutes: the extended chase scene involving everyone in the world hunting down Tae-goo, and the Mexican standoff between our three title characters. It’s amazing to watch.
The cameramen pull out all the stops; there are aerial shots, running shots, single-take shots. The Good, the Bad, the Weird is a good deal more stylish than the old Westerns it adores, both in how it’s shot and in the props and costumes. Do-won is the cleanest cowboy around, Tae-goo’s outfit is as quirky as he is, and Chang-yi is twenty-first century metrosexual, in a GQ suit and spiky mullet. Some of the bandits wear furs and skins, some of Chang-yi’s thigs have cornrows or dreads. It’s hardly historically accurate, but it sure looks good.
The Verdict: Fun and entertaining despite the slow middle, with a killer finale. A strong stomach is required.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: korea, movie review, the bad, the good, the weird |
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16 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Mak and Nak are an unbearably clean-cut young couple, about to be married, who are looking for their first house. They seem to find a perfect fit in a hundred-year-old starter home; it needs a little work, but the price is right. They fix it up and move in, unaware that their every move is being watched by a couple of thieves who are out to rob them when the time is right.
Immediately weird shit starts to happen. Mak hears a ghostly female voice beckoning him from inside the house, and the real estate agent who sold them the joint dies in a horrible subway accident. Mak sees a spectral female figure inside the house; oddly enough-or not- she’s identical to a creepy woman who’s been showing up in his nightmares. At the same time, an old boyfriend starts stalking Nak, trying to make her call off the wedding. Doesn’t work; they’re duly married (in a combination Thai/Western wedding), but on their wedding night Mak wakes up with another nightmare. Then the thieves strike, and Mak is hit by their getaway van. Mak is in a coma! But he wakes up long enough to tell Nak that she has to find Mae Nak, whoever she is…
Nak’s ancient grandma tells her the story of Mae Nak, a young bride who died while her husband was at war, but showed up as a ghost when he came back (a very convincing ghost, since he didn’t notice she was dead for a while). Mae Nak placed a curse on the villagers who’d told her husband the truth, but an exorcism laid her to rest. OR DID IT?!
Meanwhile, the thieves are killed by the same creepy woman from Mak’s dream. Nak finds out that their old house is…the place where Mae Nak used to live (da da DAAAA!). Nak then discovers that Mae Nak wasn’t exactly exorcised, but her spirit was trapped in a necklace made of bone taken from Mae Nak’s body…a necklace that has, coincidentally, fallen into Nak’s possession. The fortune teller’s assistant tries to swindle Nak out of the necklace, and promptly dies in a horrible manner.
Intuition or divine guidance or whatever tells Nak exactly where to go and what to do to set Mae Nak’s spirit free. Nak talks some friends into helping dig up Mae Nak so the piece of bone can be reunited with the rest of her skeleton. While she’s working on that, an operation is performed on Mak to keep his brain from exploding or something. Nak gets the necklace back with the skeleton, but Mak doesn’t come out of his coma. So his parents do the logical (well, it may really be logical for Buddhists) thing and ship him off to a monastery to be exorcised.
Nak’s ancient grandma hauls her off to a medium (and automatic writer, which is kind of cool), who says Mae Nak STILL isn’t at peace, the needy bitch, and the damned movie still isn’t over. So now Nak has to stop the exorcism, which the medium says is really bad for Mak, and figure out what’s up with Mae Nak. Which is totally predictable, so I’m not sure why she had to hit up a medium for advice. But this is an Asian horror movie, so it has to be one of the cool kids and have the The End…no, not really! twist.
If you thought that summary was long and boring, it’s nothing compared to actually watching Ghost of Mae Nak. Sure, newlyweds are going to be all googly-eyed all over each other, but it’s no fun to watch for long, long, loooooong minutes.
The way the thieves are killed is unintentionally hilarious; one is crushed into a cube when his van is scrapped, and the other falls into a vat of hot oil and, flailing in agony, crashes onto a grill, where he is barbequed to death. Also hilarious is the way a fortune teller goes into convulsions when he sees the necklace containing Mae Nak’s spirit, and the way his assistant is somehow sliced in half by a falling pane of glass…if Ghost of Mae Nak didn’t take itself so seriously, it would be a pretty decent horror/comedy. Horromedy.
Nothing about this movie is scary. Nothing. After your first look at Mae Nak, you get used to her, and since she’s the only ghost popping up, there’s nothing else to look forward to. It’s repetitive, what with her killing people over and over.
I will say, in sharp contrast to most Asian horror movies, the hospital is not completely dark and creepy and decrepit. It actually looks like a decent modern hospital, with no leaking water pipes or dark corridors. So that’s a nice change, I guess.
The Verdict: I’ve already seen it. But spare yourselves.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: ghost of mae nak, movie review, thailand |
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14 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Death Trance desperately wants to be a Ryuhei Kitamura movie. And it succeeds. Unfortunately, only about half of Kitamura’s movies are really entertaining; the other half are stupid and boring. Death Trance, as a Kitamura wannabe, falls into the latter category.
In a world similar to Edo-era Japan (but way weirder), a mysterious coffin has been kept at a temple for centuries, wrapped in chains. Only the monks know what it really contains, but rumor has it that whatever sleeps in the coffin can grant any wish. The temple’s courtyard is crammed with would-be coffin thieves, turned to stone by some monastic magic.
But in some kind of epic battle that is barely shown, a sword-wielding rogue named Grave (Kitamura favorite Tak Sakaguchi) manages to extract the coffin, and, instead of opening it right away, decides to drag it around by the chains for awhile. He’s trailed by a weird and adorable little girl, whose presence is never quite explained but who apparently comes with the coffin. Grave hauls the kid and coffin all over the damn place, including, bizarrely, to some kind of outdoor diner where people are apparently tortured and sold as lunch. Of course, once every thug in the place sees the coffin, they want a shot at it, wielding swords, guns, gun-swords and their bare fists. He flicks most of them aside like tiddlywinks, but one guy with some seriously impressive Flock of Seagulls hair (played by Kentaro Seagal, and if you knew Steven Seagal has a half-Japanese son, you knew more than I did). Flock of Seagulls keeps popping up to fight some more. All the while, the creepy kid just watches (and eats). There’s also a monk sent by the temple, not to retrieve the coffin- because he can’t fight for shit- but to tote around a sacred sword that can only be drawn from its scabbard by the Chosen One, who is supposed to beat down the thing in the coffin should it escape. He also helpfully explains what is really contained in the coffin, which is not going to grant any wishes. Unless your wish is for the world and everyone in it to be destroyed.
Three guesses as to whom the Chosen One ends up being, and the first two don’t count. Hint: it’s not Anakin Skywalker.
Death Trance pretty much fails at plot and character development. You could sail a cruise ship through the holes in the plot. Grave has absolutely zero personality or even a sliver a charm. The little girl’s role remains unclear; exactly what she is and why she accompanies the coffin is never explained. There is a weak attempt to give Flock of Seagulls a reason for our sympathy, but it falls flat.
As we all know, all of these things could be forgiven if only the movie has some kick-ass action; the only thing that saves many Kitamura film. Death Trance has loads of action (the onset of which is always signaled by heavy metal music from Japanese band Dir en Grey), but it’s less ‘kick-ass’ than ‘technically competent’. Frequent cuts, and the sheer number of combatants in most scenes, often make it hard to see what’s going on.
One thing- no, the only thing- Death Trance has going for it is style. The whole film is shot in moody gray and blue, the costumes are hardly historically accurate but look pretty cool, and there is the afore-mentioned Flock of Seagulls hair. There’s speeded-up action, slowed-down action, and people making elegant arcs with their elegant swords.
And to be honest, I would have sacrificed some of that style for just a teeny-tiny bit of substance.
The Verdict: Only if you’re really, really bored. And only if you can’t get your hands on a copy of Versus instead.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: death trance, japan, Movie, review |
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13 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Back in 2006, reporter Lisa Ling snuck into North Korea by posing as a medical assistant to a Nepalese eye surgeon. Of course, when she tried it again a few years later, she got caught and sent to a North Korean prison camp, where she was rescued by Bill Clinton. But the information she got in 2006 was made into a National Geographic documentary Inside North Korea.
The beginning of the documentary doesn’t tell us much we don’t know; small country (Mississippi-sized), no outside media influence, Kim Jong-Il is god etc.
The Nepalese doctor seems like a nice guy. He travels the world showing third-world country doctors how to treat cataracts. He planned to do one thousand surgeries in ten days in the hermit kingdom. Understandably, he’s nervous about the presence of the reporters.
North Korean minders monitor every movement the medical team makes, starting at the airport in Nepal. Ling and the cameramen surreptitiously take some footage from the car (they were allowed to shoot inside the hospital; as they were supposed to be documenting the surgeries). The streets of Pyongyang look oddly depopulated; images of Kim Jong-Il and his father Kim Il-Sung are literally everywhere.
Ling’s footage is intercut with scenes from a Dutch documentary approved by Dear Leader, which shows a Communist paradise. Artifice and deception is a staple of North Korean propaganda; Ling shows a town visible from the South Korean border, an idyllic little hamlet that is composed of empty buildings.
The danger Ling and her comrades are in is ever-present; at one point one of their minders threatens to throw them out of the country for taking a picture of a statue of Kim Il-Sung.
As the documentary proceeds, I did learn some things; at one point on the North/South Korean border, there is a spot where North Korean soldiers stand only feet from the joint South Korean/American forces who guard the DMZ. The tension in this place is palpable, even through the TV screen. The lengths that must be taken simply to pass a message between the countries- whose soldiers stand only feet apart- are nothing short of absurd.
The crew is allowed to visit the apartment of one of the patients, and is subjected to a farcical show of hero worship- the patient says the worst part of being blind is that she can’t look upon Dear Leader’s face. But the worst thing about these scenes is that everyone genuinely seems moved by the sheer awesomeness of Kim Jong-Il. While many people want to defect from North Korea’s oppressive regime, many others sincerely buy into the propaganda.
The documentary takes time out to explain the basics of cataract surgery and even what a cataract is, which is frustrating when the entire reason I (and most people) watch this is for more information on the notoriously reclusive North Korea.
There’s also an interview with a German doctor who worked in North Korea, and the medical conditions he describes are sickening; no running water, no anesthesia, an entire generation of children stunted by malnourishment. Another sequence on North Korea’s concentration camps shows that the situation there is worse than I ever realized; a single disparaging comment can land your entire family in a concentration for the rest of their lives. A priest who helps defectors flee describes the difficulty of escaping into China, the easiest route; not only do they fear North Korean soldiers, but also Chinese police.
The documentary ends with the cataract patients removing their bandages. A scene of a young woman seeing her father for the first time in years is moving…until her father tells her she must thank Dear Leader for her restored sight, at which point the lump in my throat changed to straight-up gagging. If these people are acting out of fear, they are damn good at it.
The Verdict: If you’re interested in North Korea, this documentary is a must-see; in fact, there’s almost nothing else to see. But no matter how much you know about North Korea, Inside North Korea will show you something new.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: documentary, inside north korea, national geographic, review |
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12 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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So, The Sky Crawlers might actually be the best Mamoru Oshii movie I’ve ever seen. There, I said it. I know, right? I feel like I don’t know who I am anymore.
I generally like Oshii, though I know all about his major fault: the endless philosophical bullshit that takes up approximately 60% of every movie he makes. But I always felt his pros outweighed his one giant con: his slow, dreamy pacing, rich character development, kickass action and of course his partnership with Production I.G. (it also helps that I love dogs, particularly hounds, extra-particularly basset hounds). The Sky Crawlers has all the pros and none of the con.
In the future, wars aren’t fought: they’re staged. Nations don’t go to battle anymore, and the world is at peace. But of course that’s not enough for mankind, which demands conflict, so companies are hired to wage war against each other. The soldiers in these wars are ‘kildren’- genetically engineered fighters who are kept in an artificial adolescence for their entire lives; because, as one character remarks, when your only purpose is to fight and die, why bother growing up?
As the film opens, Yuichi, a kildren pilot, arrives at a new military base. The commander of the base is the ice queen Kusanagi, and the mascot a basset hound (of course). There is some mystery concerning the fate of the pilot Yuichi is replacing, but he doesn’t have much time to consider that between battling the rival company’s pilots, including the mysterious Teacher, who is rumored to actually be…a grown up.
Over the course of the film, some of Yuichi’s fellow pilots are killed, the fragile truth behind Kusanagi’s cold shell is revealed, and the mystery surrounding the Teacher gets curiouser and curiouser. The history of the kildren is revealed, and turns out to be even more horrifying than we thought. Much more happens, and even more on the psychological plane, but I can’t reveal too much without spoiling the impact of this quietly powerful movie.
As with most Oshii movies, The Sky Crawlers is slow-moving. The action is interspersed with halting conversations, long shots of scenery and pauses so drawn out that a couple times I checked the DVD player to make sure the DVD wasn’t frozen. The action scenes- all aerial battles- are frenetic yet graceful. It all gives the movie a haunting, surreal atmosphere that is entirely typical of Oshii. The backgrounds are mostly windswept moors (this base is apparently in England); the open landscapes contrast startlingly with the trapped, claustrophobic situations of the most of the characters.
Production I.G.’s animation is always top-notch, and The Sky Crawlers is no exception. Their blending of 3D and 2D animation is always as close to seamless as you can get. The character designs might look a little simplistic to fans of I.G.’s Ghost in the Shell movies, but since the characters are perpetually young, I could accept the lack of lines in their skin. The planes are futuristic but not unrealistic, and the action scenes are amazing to watch; a couple times I had to remind myself I was actually watching animation.
The music, by Kenji Kawai, is compelling without being too noticeable. The voice actors are all fine (even the bits of English that are thrown around are clear!).
Are all the mysteries going to be cleared up, all the problems solved and put in a little box with a bow? Please. If you’re an Oshii fan, you already know the answer to that. Just like real life, The Sky Crawlers doesn’t answer everything. This isn’t a movie to watch late at night when you’re half-asleep. You might even have to watch it twice to catch all the brilliant, wrenching details, but it’s going to make you think (for instance, it’s shown that Kusanagi- in a youthful rebellion- once had a daughter, who is rapidly growing to the same age that her mother perpetually inhabits. Think about that for a while). And while initially the ending may leave you feeling a bit empty, further reflection tells you that it meant more than you ever realized at the time.
The Verdict: A must-see for any anime fan with a brain.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: Anime, mamori oshii, Movie, review, the sky crawlers |
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9 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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One night last week Shapiro Keats came home late to find me curled up on the couch, the living room lights blazing, clutching the cat like a feline shield. “Did you watch a scary movie?” He sighed.
Yes, yes I did. And I fully admit that Filipino horror movie The Maid probably wouldn’t have been half as scary if I had watched it, say, in the day time, when there was someone else in the house.
Rosa is a cute 18-year-old Filipino girl who arrives in Singapore to work as a maid for a Chinese family living there. Her employers are a retired Peking opera star and his wife. They seem like pretty cool people, except- oops!- they forgot to mention they have a mentally challenged adult son. But Ah Soon is a good guy, a grown man who acts like a toddler (a lot like my son, actually). Rosa doesn’t actually seem to do much work; she spends most of her time peeking into dark closets and opening and closing creaky doors. She finds a mysterious bag of clothes stuck under her bed, and does the only logical thing; she starts wearing them.
Rosa has had the bad luck to start work during the Chinese seventh month, when the gate to the afterlife is supposedly open. Her employers spend lots of time placating the ancestors by burning money and leaving food in front of the house. Her mistress even flips her shit when Rosa goes to the mailbox by herself; the ‘hungry ghost man’ is everywhere, just looking for some cute girl to terrorize. But Rosa doesn’t know all the superstitions: at an opera performance she sits in a seat reserved for the ancestors, and she nearly sweeps up a pile of ash from a burned offering. This pisses off the ancestors to no end, apparently, because immediately she starts seeing ghosts, all the usual Asian kinds- little kids, long-haired women, dead peeps in various stages of decomposition. But it’s cool, her mistress assures her. Once the seventh month is over, the ghosts will split and leave Rosa alone.
Then Ah Soon eats some of the food left out for the ancestors, and he starts seeing ghosts too. Rosa gets more and more freaked out, until it doesn’t look like she can wait until the end of the month to get rid of the dead people. Of course there’s a reason why Rosa’s employers are so hell-bent on keeping the ghosts at bay. Rosa’s not their first maid, after all. Esther ran off with some guy…or maybe she didn’t.
The plot of The Maid is pretty straightforward, and, in the end, predictable, except for one nice little twist that took me by surprise (but I tend to be rather dense about these things, too; Shapiro Keats would have figured it out in five minutes).
Most of the scares in The Maid are shock effects; quick cuts that flash a ghostly face at you, accompanied by a sudden burst of background music. None of the ghosts seems particularly menacing, besides being, well, ghosts; a dead child deliberately scares Rosa, but the ones who occupy the empty row at the opera house just wave cheerfully at her. There are hands popping out of laundry piles, ghosts showing up in the reflection in a cabinet door, translucent figures floating past doorways. There are nicely creepy dream/vision sequences, as when Rosa follows a trail of blood through a deserted apartment complex. In another, a Filipino girl Rosa has befriended is struck instantly mad when she is hit by the shadow of a coffin as a hearse passes by.
The dialogue is conducted in Cantonese and English. Alessandra de Rossi , who plays Rosa, speaks perfectly fine English, but the Asian actors are harder to understand, and there are no subtitles. I had to go back a couple times and listen to a couple conversations twice to figure it all out. The acting is decent; Benny Soh as Ah Soon is endearing if occasionally annoying. de Rossi is a little wooden, but it may simply be because English isn’t her first language.
One of the irritating things about The Maid is that the sound levels are uneven. I had to turn it up several times to hear the dialogue, and down when the music was overwhelming. Since I watched it on the Netflix Instant Stream and not a DVD, this is a problem with the sound mixing.
The Verdict: Watch it alone, and it will freak your shit out. Even if you watch it during the day, it’s interesting to learn the various superstitions associated with the Chinese seventh month.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Film Reviews, Reviews | Tag: horror, Movie, phlippines, review, the maid |
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8 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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I know what you guys have been thinking. “She’s already on Day 8, but she hasn’t reviewed a single kung fu movie? WTF?”. Well, here it is, in all its spoiler-ific glory.
8 Masters opens with a fight, as all good kung fu movies do. As credits fill the screen, two men meet for a duel. One of them asks for a temporary reprieve of three months, as he is sick. The other refuses and they fight. The sick guy, unsurprisingly, kicks the bucket just as the credits end.
In the next scene, a man shows up to his sister-in-law’s house with the news that her husband is dead, poisoned by the 8 Masters, a group of fighters who are pissed about being defeated by him. The uncle takes his dead brother’s son to a Shaolin monastery where he will be safe from the 8 Masters, but dies as soon as they get there. He makes young Chu Sao Chieh promise that after he grows up, he will leave the monastery and find his mother and his uncle’s daughter and take care of them.
Of course, it’s a Shaolin monastery, so next we’re treated to a bunch of scenes of the kid learning kung fu from the monks, including a scene that is apparently not related to anything, where a bunch of ninjas attack the monastery and get their asses kicked. After a while the kid wanders off screen, and when he comes back into camera range he has turned into a fully-grown, perpetually pissed-off looking Carter Wong.
Chieh wants to hang in the monastery and become a monk, but the abbot kicks him out with a long speech about repaying debts and remembering three principles: keep the peace, have patience, and forgive offense. Then he throws Chieh into a kung fu test that everyone has to pass in order to leave the monastery. Chieh has to fight his way through some Indiana Jones shit, like bridges swaying over huge wooden spikes, and then he has to fight a bunch of dudes painted gold and silver (this is apparently a reference to another film collaboration between Kuo and Wong), and then he has to move a really hot, heavy pot of fire. After that he is finally permitted to leave the monastery (which he didn’t actually want to leave in the first place) to find his mom and cousin.
As soon as he stops for lunch, he gets involved in a fight in a restaurant. A gang of ruffians is trying to make off with a woman, despite the protests of her husband, and Chieh steps in to keep the peace by kicking some ass (the proliferation of items like giant buckets of alcohol and bags of flour make for an incongruously comedic fight). Chieh continues on to his old home, where he finds his now-blind mother and his cousin, Ming Chu. It’s a happy family reunion until the 8 Masters show up. Even 18 years (or 10 years- there’s some disagreement on the time) after they killed his dad, the 8 Masters are still nursing a grudge. They want Chieh to fight them, but he refuses, remembering the last principle the abbot gave him. But the 8 Masters won’t take no for an answer, so Chieh ends up fleeing to the country with his mom and cousin to avoid them. When they hunt him down there, he takes his family to a cave. The 8 Masters and their minions continually beat him silly, but he won’t fight back. The 8 Masters are still intent on fighting him, so they eventually wise up and do what they should have done in the first place: kidnap his old blind mother and hold her hostage until he accepts the challenge.
Meanwhile, Ming Chu is meeting with some old guy in a conical hat that hides his face, who tells her she has to kill Chieh. When Chieh stumbles on a meeting, she confesses she’s not really his cousin, but some orphan that was passed off as the real Ming Chu 18 (or 10) years ago. The real Ming Chu is missing. The fake one was ordered by the mysterious hat guy to watch Chieh and kill him when she was told. But she can’t kill Chieh because he’s too hot and she’s fallen in love with him.
Chieh concocts a plan to sneak into the 8 Masters’ hangout (apparently they all live together) and rescue his mother. But it doesn’t go as planned, the 8 Masters catch them, and Chieh receives yet another ass-whooping courtesy of the 8 Masters. His hysterical mother decides to kill herself because she thinks that will somehow save her son. Conveniently, her suicide is the thing Chieh needs to get pissed enough to fight the 8 Masters.
Despite the fact that all the 8 Masters live in the same house, they somehow manage to teleport or something all over the damn place, so Chieh has to hop on a horse and fight each one in a different area, like by a rushing waterfall or in a field or a courtyard. Master Fight # 5 is where things start to get really fucking weird. Master # 5 has a weapon with an aluminum fist on one end and a nunchuck on the other. Chieh starts out fighting Master #6 in his courtyard, but then they leap out of the shot and suddenly they’re fighting in a forest, unless Master #6’s garden just seriously needed some attention. Master #7 is a woman who tells Chieh that his dad killed her dad, even though her dad was sick…bazinga! Chieh’s dad is the douchebag from the first scene! No wonder people wanted to poison him, if he was such a dick. Chieh feels bad about it, but I guess after you hand out 7 kung fu beatings you might as well go for #8 while you’re at it.
Master #8 is…surprise! The mysterious old dude in the conical hat, who is revealed to also be the same man whose wife was getting harassed in the restaurant. They fight a bit, then the mysterious hat man disappears into his house. Chieh follows and finds himself in some kind of screwed-up Chinese haunted house walkthrough. First he is attacked by four hopping Chinese vampires with knives for hands. Then has to fight four more vampires who have hands, but are holding knives in them. Then he has to fight mysterious hat man while darts and spears fly out of the walls at them. Finally he wins, but since he doesn’t want to kill hat man, hat man kills himself with his own kung fu. But not before revealing that Chieh’s real cousin, Ming Chu, is actually Master #7, who was told that Chieh’s dad killed her dad for some reason. So Chieh goes back to inform her of their kinship, but oh no! He’s been hit by one of the poison-tipped darts that were flying out of the walls. The real Ming Chu goes into the forest to find some random old healer woman, who explains everything we already know about the real and fake Ming Chus, and gives her medicine for Chieh.
Then it cuts to the next scene, and in the space of that split-second edit, Chieh apparently got better and went back to the monastery to become a monk, to the dismay of the fake Ming Chu. The last scene shows her wailing on the steps of the monastery as Chieh turns his back on her and goes inside.
It’s a feel-good movie.
Yeah, I just ruined the plot for you, but seriously: the plot is the least-important part of a kung fu movie.
I was excited to see 8 Masters after I realized it was directed by Joseph Kuo, who directed what is probably my favorite kung fu film of all time, 7 Grand Masters. But 8 Masters, despite the addition of an extra master, isn’t quite as good. The story is ridiculous and chock-full of holes, which usuall wouldn’t matter, but where 7 Grand Masters’ story was engineered to create 90 minutes of wall-to-wall combat, 8 Masters crams in a forced romance and a bunch of histrionics concerning Chieh’s mother. It’s tedious to get through all the yapping before you can see some fighting (which is what we’re really here for, after all). Besides, Chieh spends a good portion of the movie refusing to fight.
The fighting itself is excellent, at least on Carter Wong’s part. He has an intense style that is accentuated by his perpetual scowl, and he’s smooth and incredibly fast. His opponents aren’t quite as good, a couple of the so-called ‘masters’ don’t even present much of a challenge. Overall, though, the action is well-done, if not as pervasive as one could hope.
The acting is…well, who gives a shit? The English sub is actually pretty good; the mouths don’t match up to the voices, of course, but at least the actors don’t sound bored or attempt preposterous accents. They even sound like they care sometimes.
Is it worth an evening of your time (or an afternoon, if you are among the unemployed)? Well, yeah. Carter Wong alone makes this movie worth watching, and the crazy story is entertaining as Hell.
The Verdict: Watch it as a double feature with 7 Grand Masters, and it will be a perfect evening. Don’t forget the vodka and a friend who can MST3K it with you.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Film Reviews, Reviews | Tag: 8 masters, carter wong, kung fu movie, review |
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6 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Due to some weird shifting of the Earth’s crust, every continent and island in the world sinks beneath the ocean waves in full-color CGI. Every continent and island…except JAPAN. This wee island chain is promptly overrun with refugees from all over the world, and the famously insular Japanese must learn to live with the strange, aggravating foreigners.
Sounds like a potential goldmine of politically incorrect comedy, right? The World Sinks Except Japan starts out promising, but soon sinks into a morass of mean-spiritedness, boring fake science and jokes that just plain aren’t funny.
The World Sinks Except Japan follows the post-sinking situation by weaving together several storylines: there’s the refugee heads of other governments, who help us identify them by wearing ties printed with their (now pointless) national flags; a young Japanese man and his American wife, a glamorous pair of married actors from America, a Japanese journalist and his creepily perfect homemaking wife, and the scientist who predicted the sinking of the world (but not soon enough, apparently), who has become a celebrity.
At first things are okay; the Japanese are a bit baffled by the foreigners, but are also excited at the influx of foreign moviemakers, foreign foods and foreign ideas. But their disenchantment sets in as food supplies begin to run low, and foreigners are kept in line by special military forces, shipped to internment camps and sometimes deported (to the mountains of Tibet, the only other surviving land- giving a little lie to the title of the film- where, according to one character, they will be raped to death by barbarians). The Japanese man and his wife hit some seriously rocky spots in their marriage because of this, especially when he hires three foreign girls as maids (a status symbol), and she ends up leaving him for the glamorous actor, whom she’s always idolized. The actor’s wife becomes a prostitute to survive. The journalist and his creepy wife float through the plot with no change to their lives at all, providing commentary on the situation, such as that now they can eat all the whale meat they want because all the animal-rights activists are gone. The scientist provides long monologues of pseudoscience in between getting carried away by his newfound celebrity.
Meanwhile, the former heads of state fight to see who can suck up the most to the perpetually-smirking Japanese prime minister, and the head of the now-defunct U.N. tries to keep everyone in line. Things get steadily worse, but instead of actually proposing a solution to the foreigner problem, the story cops out by sinking Japan as well, killing the last of the human race.
There’s a lot about The World Sinks Except Japan that is funny, some of it is just tired, and some is actually a bit distasteful. When the American president flees his waterlogged country, he gives a moving speech to the survivors from Air Force One, while being served whiskey by a Playboy Bunny. Foreign actors with no other skills are force to perform scenes from their movies for change. The South Korean and Chinese PMs fawn like lap dogs over the Japanese PM (near the beginning, he asks if they liked their tour of ‘the shrine’- presumably Yasukuni Shrine- and they reply that they loved it); which, considering the amount of shit Japan has rained down on those two countries, seems highly unlikely. At one point, a character comments on mindless American consumers, which just seems like the pot calling the kettle black.
But, as I said, quite a bit of it is funny. The Japanese general who wants to expel the foreign barbarians, the nursing home residents who hire foreigners from countries they fought in World War II as ‘horses’ to race down the halls, and the fact that the American wife- supposedly from Texas- has a very noticeable Eastern European accent.
But in the end, The World Sinks Except Japan brings international unity by whipping out a world leader everyone can hate together (coughcough*DearLeader*coughcough) and turns unexpectedly maudlin, as the creepy wife explains the plot of Jan Brett’s children book The Mitten to her husband (bunch of animals of different species crawl inside a mitten and learn to live in harmony and all that crap), and everyone finds a moment of peace right before they all drown as Japan succumbs to the rising water.
The acting isn’t bad. The many foreigners in the film speak in good/tolerable/awful Japanese, depending on their characters (although, not speaking Japanese myself, I can’t really say for sure how good the good ones are, but even I can tell terrible Japanese when I hear it).
Shapiro Keats, who watched the movie with me, thought that The World Sinks Without Japan was less a satire on world relations than a Japanese power fantasy, but I have to disagree. It’s obviously meant to make fun of Japan’s legendary distrust of foreigners and its perceived superiority complex. But it doesn’t always work, simply because it’s often not funny.
The Verdict: Promising beginning, lackluster ending. Certainly not on my list of funniest movies ever, but maybe worth a watch to get a peek into the Japanese psyche.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: Movie, review, the world sinks except japan |
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3 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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Here’s your downer for the day: a documentary about the sex trade in Thailand. The worst part? It’s not even that good.
In 2005, Canadian filmmaker Jordan Clark returned to Bangkok to make a documentary about the sex tourism industry there. It might be the butt of many jokes (some of which I’ve repeated myself), but prostitution in Thailand, motivated by the hordes of Western tourists who come looking for the country’s exotically beautiful women, is a deadly serious (and seriously deadly) issue. The result in Bangkok Girl.
Clark (who narrates the documentary in singularly lackluster fashion) claims he had trouble finding a woman who would talk to him about the sex trade, but that he finally ran into Pla, a 19-year-old bar girl (bartender) in a joint called Checkpoint Charlie’s that catered to falang (a word denoting a foreigner, particularly a white tourist). Pla is beautiful and vivacious, with a sweet smile. She claims to have been working as a bartender since her compulsory schooling ended when she was 13, and that, while she’s never sold her body, she knows many others who have. Clark persuades her to tell her story, which is sadly common: her parents divorced when she was young, abuse by her stepmother resulted in the loss of part of one of her hands, and while she doesn’t want to work at the bar all her life, she doesn’t have the education or opportunity to find something better. In her interviews, Pla seems to hint that maybe she isn’t telling the entire truth about her lack of involvement in the sex trade, a suspicion that appears to be proven when she inexplicably disappears for two days. She returns, but Clark reports that only a week after he left Thailand, Pla was found dead (an unfortunately unsurprising twist). The Thai police apparently ruled her death a result of heart failure, which according to Clark is a convenient cop-out when they don’t want to investigate further (the corruption of Thai police comes up several times, including once when Clark claims his camera was confiscated because he didn’t have a filming permit, and only returned once he pays a hefty ‘fee’).
Interspersed with Pla’s interviews are clips of pimps and madams offering girls to Clark, shots of bustling Bangkok streets, footage of falang escorting young Thai women around, and several clips of a regular customer at Pla’s bar, a drunken English lout who invites a kick to the nuts as soon as he opens his vile mouth.
The problem with Bangkok Girl is that Clark provides little context for much of his footage. While one madam is pretty explicit in what she’s offering, many of the ‘pimps’ are merely men naming prices- for girls, or for mangos? One sequence showing man after man walking out of a bar with an endless stream of lovely Thai girls is edited, so we can’t tell if this is a continuous shot, or taken over several days. One night Clark goes out to film some ‘ladyboys’, transvestites or transsexuals who prowl for customers after the bars close. There is an ‘interview’ with a transsexual which consists mainly of the ‘ladyboy’ looking around impatiently for johns and making inane comments in (very good) English. There’s no further information about Pla’s death; which, admittedly, could be hard to access, but I have the feeling Clark maybe should have waited to finish Bangkok Girl until he knew more.
Bangkok Girl ignited a bit of a tempest in a teacup, at least on the IMDB forums, with posters variously claiming that Pla was killed due to her involvement in the documentary, that everyone Jordan Clark ‘interviewed’ were actually actors he hired, and that Pla is still alive, married (possibly to a falang) and living in Northern Thailand (or Europe). Is any of this true? Honestly, I have no idea. In a developing country like Thailand, misidentification and deception are relatively easy to pull off. It would be nice to think this was all a set-up, and Pla was not in fact the trapped little bar girl she portrayed, but a skilled actress. I will say this: the situation in Bangkok Girl is all too plausible; I don’t know if it was scripted or not, but if it was, it was very, very realistic.
The documentary footage is all definitely amateur, about the same quality I could take on my little digital Panasonic. The subtitles are tiny and hard to read. Clark’s narration is emotionless and boring. And at only 40 minutes, Bangkok Girl only skims the surface of a very deep problem.
Criticism aside, Bangkok Girl did get my attention. Pla’s story is unfortunately common among young women in Bangkok. It’s not a great documentary, but it will stir your curiosity.
The Verdict: Short enough to be interesting, not long enough to cover everything.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: bangkok girl, dosumentary, sex trade, thailand |
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1 Feb
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Posted by AnaKhouri
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For my first post of the February Review Blitz, I’ve chosen a truly great example of twenty-first century film making. I was having shitty day a couple weeks ago, so that night I watched 2009′s Black Dynamite, and suddenly everything was A-OK again.
There are some things in this world that shouldn’t be funny. Little kids going through heroin withdrawal. Pimps and their stables of prostitutes. Gang violence. Dismemberment. Racism. But when all these things are in a blaxploitation parody with some righteous kung fu, they’re super funny. In fact, they’re fucking hilarious.
Black Dynamite is a pillar of the community, a Vietnam veteran and ex-CIA agent who is out to stop drug activity in his neighborhood; a task made easier by his awesome kung fu skills. Everyone respects him and loves him, especially the ladies. Many, many ladies. Especially the hookers he protects, because even though Black Dynamite is anti-drug, he is pro-pimpin’.
But Black Dynamite has a secret shame. Despite a deathbed promise to his mom, he couldn’t stop his younger brother Jimmy from becoming a junkie. When his aunt calls to inform him that Jimmy has been murdered (interrupting a kung fu practice session), Black Dynamite vows to find the men who did it and exact his revenge.
Solving Jimmy’s murder isn’t as simple as it seems, though. Far from being a random drug killing, it’s only one incident in a conspiracy that reaches high, high up in the United States government- even to the White House itself, a plot to emasculate all black men and thus to nullify the threat they pose to white supremacy in America. Unfortunately for the government, they’ve pissed off the only man with the power to do something about it: Black Dynamite! He fights his way through the Mafia, the CIA, the Secret Service, a fiendish Chinese mad scientist, and the Oval Office. To reveal more would spoil the sheer awesome and win that is Black Dynamite.
Along the way we meet a motley assortment of Black Panthers, orphans, hookers, a community organizer, minor criminals, drug dealers, and a union of pimps led by Arsenio Hall. It’s a wild, politically incorrect, hysterical ride.
Black Dynamite is made to mimic 1970’s blaxploitation films in every way, from the badasssssss hero to the shag carpeting and slick leather jackets, to the slightly sepia filter on the camera lens, the retro titles, the hoopty cars and the spectacular Afros. The slang is correct for the time period, but vastly overused for comedic effect, and it sounds self-conscious in the mouths of these twenty-first century actors.
The acting itself is pretty good all around. People my age are going to do a double take when they see the aforementioned Arsenio Hall, In Living Color’s Tommy Davidson and Kym Whitley and Roger Yuan (some of those actors who are in everything…). Michael Jai White is perfect as the titular character: he’s got the looks, the deep voice and the fine *ahem* musculature that could make him a real blaxploitation hero, but he also has a nice sense of comic timing. He’s no Bruce Lee, but his kung fu isn’t too bad.
Black Dynamite is packed with action; kung fu action, gun action, shit-blowing-up action, helicopter action…one minor complaint I have is that one sequence is rushed. Black Dynamite’s quest for revenge against the mobster who ordered Jimmy’s murder is shown in a montage of action shots. I understand Black Dynamite has bigger fish to fry, but it was a little annoying.
One of the great things about blaxploitation movies is the music, and Black Dynamite is no exception. Smooth R&B background vocals extol the, um, virtues of Black Dynamite, but they also helpfully explain what is going on in each scene. It’s a brilliant way to use even the soundtrack for maximum comedic effect.
Even the end credits contribute to the awesome and win, with funny animation and deleted scenes playing over them.
So will you get Black Dynamite even if you’ve never seen a blaxploitation film (if you haven’t, get thee to Netflix and watch the beautiful Pam Grier in Foxy Brown)? Yeah, there’s been enough tribute films in recent years (thanks Quentin Tarantino) that everyone should get this.
The Verdict: I hate to say it, but Black Dynmaite may actually knock Airplane! out of the #1 spot on my list of funniest movies ever made. You will not like this movie if you have no sense of humor, are easily offended, or are The Man.
| Category: DVD Reviews, Reviews | Tag: black dynamite, comedy, movies, review |
