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Side by Side: documentary explaining the different ways in which digital and film reel images make their way from the director’s lens and on to cinema screens. It’s a film made specifically for film nerds, about the technical aspects of the end-to-end process of film-making – yet it’s all very high-level, with simplistic explanations that only really cover the basics – parts remind you of school educational videos. Still, it’s a great excuse to sit down with the cream of Hollywood directors, editors, DPs & various industry names, and hear their professional opinions on it: cast list below. It’s also packed with some of the greatest shots from over 100 years of Cinema – starting with ‘Man with a Movie Camera’ through to Avatar. As an interviewer, Keanu is quite good (although we only ever see short sections) but he gets surprisingly blunt and animated with big Hollywood figures: he also pulls off every look imaginable from genuine tramp, through to rockstar and everything in between. The most interesting part was seeing how the digital switch moves the emphasis away from the DP (director of photography) and towards editors and colour timers. Side by Side is a good look at the Analogue Vs Digital debate; however, it’s a fight that’s been raging on for well over 15 years now, and one that digital has all but won – as the new shooting and projecting standards. Because of this, it doesn’t really shed much more light on the subject. Lucas and Cameron championing digital Vs Nolan and Pfister who are unsympathetically anti-digital – anyone interested in cinema will already know this. Still, it’s worth watching, if only to see your favourite directors with the gloves off, hammering into the format they don’t like.

Score: 5/10

Robert Rodriguez and Salma Hayek discussing Once Upon a Time…

Interviews include: Keanu Reeves, George Lucas, Steven Soderbergh, James Cameron, David Lynch, Richard Linklater, Robert Rodriguez, Martin Scorsese, Lana Wachowski, Andy Wachowski, Christopher Nolan, Walter Pfister, David Fincher, Lars von Trier, John Malkovich, Danny Boyle, Joel Schumacher, FULL CAST HERE

Battles Without Honor and Humanity

May 6, 2013

Battles Without Honour and Humanity (AKA The Yakuza Papers, Jingi naki tatakai, 仁義なき戦い): focuses on the inception, growth and brutal wars between various Yakuza clans in post WWII Japan (namely Hiroshima). This film starts at 200mph; limbs flying, fights, murders, rape, riots… not to mention that something dramatic happening at least every ten minutes. The energetic handheld style, fast cutting and brutal editing (there’s not one unnecessary frame in here) give the film an electricity, realism and urgency that grabs you for the duration – although paired with the sheer breadth of the story, you really need to pay attention. The acting does the expert direction justice, with several complex central characters – and many minor characters – but they’re all championed by Bunta Sugawara, with a magnetic intensity and stoic performance that is really something to marvel. For a 97 minute film, this feels like an epic saga: the story (set over thirteen years) is absolutely crammed full of more betrayal, deception, gang warfare, murders, and more drama / action than you could shake a katana at. Better still, it isn’t just about the gang stuff, boasting a strong social commentary on the power vacuum in post-WWII Japan, and how it eventually poisoned society. Based on memoirs from a Yakuza member, this film feels like the real deal, and was so well-received that is spawned 4 sequels, and the director – Kinji Fukasaku – would go on to direct some of Japans’s most domestically successful movies; ending his career with Battle Royale. Battles Without Honour and Humanity is a remarkable film, that is an absolute must-see for both world cinema and gangster fans alike.

Score: 9/10

Flight

May 3, 2013

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Flight: an alcoholic / coke-addict pilot saves almost everyone on board from certain death, but he can’t avoid the spotlight as the air crash investigation picks up on his habits. This is a great all-round movie: funny when it had to be (Goodman / cancer guy), dramatic at times (relationship / hearing) and for the most part, engaging and entertaining. The crash itself is one of the most intense and dramatic scenes I’ve seen in a cinema; slowly getting louder and shakier and an increasingly high-pitched whaling from the plane; it was like a screw turning tighter and tighter. The only time it felt a bit off were several overly-emphasised parts about religion & faith – act of god, miracles, praying – although I guess it’s more prevalent in America. There were a few nice little in-jokes that almost passed me by: the ShamWow tv advert, the elevator music version of ‘I’ll get high with a little help from my friends’, and most songs in the soundtrack were about boozing or drug abuse. The cast were stupendously good performances all round, Denzel in particular was on fire – achieving an almost impossible mix of sympathy and resentability – and Kelly Reilly (also great) must have had a cleavage-based contract – loved it. All in all, Flight is an entertaining, enjoyable, and very watchable movie with entertaining performances all round.

Score: 8/10

The Place Beyond the Pines

April 30, 2013

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The Place Beyond the Pines: a trilogy of stories surrounding a cop, a robber, and their kids. Firstly, the casting director should be put down; nobody here is doing anything new. Gosling (complete with gratuitous torso shot) is a lovable-but-flawed boyfriend, Cooper is a smart and ambitious over-achever, DeHaan as a creepy weirdo kid and Liotta as a bent cop, Mendelsohn as a petty low-life criminal – fuck me sideways, it’s like a cast made of characters from other films. While the three plot threads are connected, they are more akin to three completely separate stories. It has a painfully Indie/Arthouse slant to it; this means it’s OK to have excruciatingly long cuts of people riding bikes and cars down roads, and to casually drop in to the lives of ‘everyday people’. And once the ’15 years later’ title appears you know exactly where this is heading, so to take another 40 minutes feels rather greedy. More generally, it’s also hard keeping up with where you are on a timeline – sure, it’s chronological but one scene will jump a day, others weeks, some months with no indication. Over the 17 or so years all we as the audience get is all of the melodrama – in a film that is nothing like the bank-job / heist / action film the trailer suggests. I genuinely don’t understand the hype surrounding director Derek Cianfrance, but he got one thing right – calling this ‘The Place Beyond the Pines’ – which tells you everything you need to know about it – too long, very vague, and painstaikingly tedious. By the last act, it felt more like the NeverEnding Story.

Score: 3/10

The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

April 23, 2013

The Fast and The Furious
2 Fast 2 Furious

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The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift: a ‘teenager’ who’s always in trouble moves to Japan to dodge juvenile prison (is this a real thing?), but is soon back in the shit when he joins the underground drift/racing crew in Tokyo. For being a franchise film, the only thing connecting it to previous outings is a 20 second Vin Diesel cameo in the final frames – that’s stretching it. A brief list of the things that pissed me off about this film would be: the cheesy all-Americanism, particularly the leads honking redneck accent & attitude; why would anyone give a total stranger their high-spec supercar to race in!?; suspiciously old actors playing teenagers; and most worryingly, all of the girls in the film are there to be race trophies, one of whom actually states “The winner gets me” – what a skank! Also, what the fuck is martial artist legend Sony Chiba doing in this, and why does every street corner, garage, club and eatery in Tokyo have a DJ with decks and big headphones?!?! In the film’s defence, the stunt driving / drifting sections are pretty cool – and to an extent, that’s probably the biggest target it had to hit. The visuals are rich and for all the flaws, it’s well shot and directed on a technical level. Tokyo itself is represented through vending machines, gadgets, high-tech garages, neon signage, quaint bath-houses and gangster-punks. There’s a handful of obligatory ‘Culture Clash – LOL’ moments also put in for good measure. If the rest of the Fast/Furious movies were normal Jonas Brothers this one would be the talentless, embarrassing, tone-deaf one that the parents intentionally keep locked in the basement – hoping that the world forgets about him: unfortunately, Tokyo Jonas is still part of the family, so comes with the box-set, and thus has to be watched and reviewed. Tokyo Drift feels like a totally unrelated, knock-off, emotionless, empty-car-chassis of a film, that had the potential to kill off the franchise. This one definitely failed it’s M.O.T.

Score: 2/10

Event Cinema: The Room

April 22, 2013

Features, Film Reviews

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The Room: 10 years after it was released, this has become the greatest cult film of our time. In the UK there are currently two (very well-worn) 35mm prints that endlessly tour the country, hopping from one independent cinema to the next. These screenings however are like no cinematic experience you could ever imagine. Remember the established Cinema Code of Conduct that us hardened movie goers live by… bin it.

Aberdeen’s Belmont Cinema showed this for the first time in over a year, late last Friday night. Upon entering this screening, there was a very unusual atmosphere. Dozens of people were grasping handfuls of white plastic spoons, which rattled throughout the movie like background chatter, people dressed in over sized suits / tuxedos with shaggy black wigs and shades (inside a darkened theater), American footballs being thrown around – crashing against the odd unsuspecting head, and a whole lot of shouting, heckles and laughter. The cinema was absolutely buzzing and the lights hadn’t even gone down yet.

The origins of the movie are equally unique. It started off as a failed play, then an unpublishable book, before Tommy Wiseau (above) decided to turn it in to a film that he would star in, write, produce, direct, cast and distribute himself – to keep artistic control, of what is easily one of the worst vanity projects in human history. Initially flopping on its small release, it quickly built up momentum on the midnight movie circuit in America and has been screened all over the globe for the past ten years.

The film itself is absolutely god-awful: I’ve seen movies made from editing several separate films together to try to make a single narrative that have worked better (and made more sense) than this. The acting is absolutely tragic. The script feels like it was written by a nursery class. Characters just walk into a scene, spit some melodramatic lines, then walk off, often to never re-appear. There’s next to no continuity in any of the scenes. I genuinely don’t think anyone could make a film this bad, no matter how hard they tried. It’s a crashing car that flips for 99 minutes.

Yet it’s this level of previously uncharted terribility that makes the experience of seeing the room like no other. Nobody’s there to watch it, they’re all there to enjoy it. I’ve seen 1-2 films a week for the past fifteen years and can only remember a handful of standout cinema visits: James Bond opening nights, birthday trips, first-dates etc… All of these pale in comparison to the thrill of watching The Room in a sold-out theater with die-hard fans and wide-eyed first-timers.

As a movie-going experience The Room is fascinating, electrifying, unique, but above all else – stunningly entertaining. Everybody was grinning ear to ear for the duration. It got a King’s Speech style standing ovation at the end, more laughs than Anchorman, more whoops than Rocky and more audience participation than a sing-a-long Broadway show. To watch a download on your laptop, or a DVD in your front room would kill the very essence of the film. If you ever get the chance to see this in a cinema you have to cancel any weddings, funerals, graduations, anniversaries and buy yourself a ticket.

Film score: UNRATABLE

Experience: UNMISSABLE

Audience participation checklist for a screening of The Room.

Spoons: the main room in the movie has far too many framed pictures of spoons. Every time one of them hits the screen the audience loses their shit, yells “SPOOONS!!!” and a torrent of white plastic cutlery is thrown towards the screen. It’s like the arrow scenes from The 300… hundreds of white streaks flying overhead. Happens around a dozen times and never gets boring. Fact: it took 3 people +90 minutes to pick all the spoons up after the screening (remnants pictured left)

Hi / Bye!! when any central character enters of leaves a scene everyone hollers “Hi Denny / Bye Denny” in an eerily sincere manner, whilst waving at the screen. The exception being that when Lisa appears she’s greeted with Boooos, hissses and quick-fire bursts of the word ‘SLUT!’.

San Francisco: between most scenes there are establishing shots of San Francisco. Alcatraz, steep hills, trams, iconic houses and the Golden Gate bridge. Any time these appeared the audience yells “Meanwhile, in San Francisco”.

Go! Go! Go!: in any above mentioned establishing shots that are slow-pans the audience claps, stamps, and yells “go, go, go’ for the duration.

Chicken dance: there’s at least three times when a character is called out for being a chicken, and the people in the room burst in to an Arrested Development style ‘CHEEP CHEEP CHEEP’ with flappy arms. Naturally, everyone in the cinema does this too.

Sex Scenes: for a 99 minute movie, there’s at about five lengthy sex scenes – two of which are the exact same footage. Cue lighters in the air, yells of “bewbs!!!!”, and synchronised hand-clapping to the awful romance music. Of all the Men and Motors, Bravo and Babestation nudity you’ll have ever seen in your life, nothing compares to the cold, awkward, physically impossible, ass-bearing, petal-blowing ‘sex scenes’ of The Room.

American Football: about every 20 minutes, for no reason, characters start tossin’ a pig skin around. Guess what everyone in the theater starts doing…

General, infamous, dialogue: You know when these are coming because the die-hard fans will hush the screen in to silence in the run up to some of the best and worst delivered lines in cinematic history. “Oh hi Mark!“, “YOU’RE TEARING ME APART LISA!!!”, “I got the results of the test back – I definitely have breast cancer“, “anyway, how’s your sex life?“, “She’s showing everybody me underwears“, “Leave your stupid comments in your pocket”, “Well we’ll Seeee, Denny, don’t plan too much, it may not come out right”… Every line was followed by an uproar of laughter, yelling and cheering.

There’s nothing else left to say other than seek this out and see it as soon as you can.

The Princess Blade

April 21, 2013

As part of the JAPANORAMA feature I am inviting fellow movie sites to join in. This is another post from Andy at Fandango Groovers Movie Blog, who reviewed Azumi last week, and is back for more. Paragraph Review below, his extended review can be found here.

The Princess Blade (Shura Yukihime, 修羅雪姫) (2003), directed by: Shinsuke Sato is loosely based on the manga comic Lady Snowblood by Kazuo Koike. Set in near future Japan; imagine the Village crossed with a samurai movie. Yuki (Yumiko Shaku), The Princess Blade of the title is the last surviving royal of the House of Takemikazuchi. Living in isolation from the world, they use their skills developed as Mikado guards to become the most deadly assassins for hire. She discovers that the new leader of the house killed her mother when she was a child, and her own life is in danger. On leaving she encounters Takashi part of a rebel movement that gives her an opportunity for revenge and possibly a normal life. Filled with large scale set pieces, usually involving sword fights, punctuated by slower more thoughtful moments, the movie is at its heart an updating on the ideas and ideas of a samurai movie. It loses its way towards the end but on the whole it is well worth seeing. The action is great and the near future setting is handled well and is an inspired idea.

You can read Andy’s extended review here.

Olympus Has Fallen

April 21, 2013

Olympus Has Fallen: international terrorists have seized a building of importance, are holding the resident workers hostage, and issuing fake demands – meanwhile a wise-cracking, off-duty, security guy is taking them out one-by-one, communicating to a black guy outside. Wait, is that not identical to Die Hard?! Yes! Yes it is – there’s even a scene where a villain meets the hero and pretends to be a good guy – come awn Hollywood. Must. Try. Harder. The initial hostile takeover of the White House is a 15 minute onslaught of bullets, blood, brains, explosions, headshots, slumping bodies, flying limbs, and shaky-cam R-rated mayhem. It feels like an intense level of any FPS war game. Most of the remaining fights/deaths are gory enough to be from a Tarantino flick. The film is also ridiculously patriotic: deliberately baiting the audience by reveling in the Korean’s destruction of the Washington monument, white house, the stars and stripes, and more generally ‘freedom’. Could have saved time by simply having the Koreans piss on a M*A*S*H DVD box set. Most scenes feel like green-screen / GCI, especially when cheap-ass looking gun turrets, helicopters, explosions and the bullet-ridden american flag appear. Despite all of these downfalls the action is big, loud and above average. Butler is entertaining and there’s a lot more laughs than your typical disaster film. Given that the real North Korea are kicking up a fuss at the moment, it’s also far more relevant than the Ruskies / Chinese standard baddies. Overall, Olympus has Fallen is a fairly entertaining Red-invasion B-Movie with A-budget and A-cast, however it also happens to be wrought with scenes, characters and twists you’ve seen a hundred times before.

Score: 5/10

The Condemned

April 19, 2013

The Condemned: ten of the toughest death-row prisoners from around the world are dumped on a remote island for 30 hours – the last person standing wins their freedom. Sound familiar? The plot is essentially Battle Royale, right down to the explosive jewelry. Leading man “Stone Cold” Steve Austinis pretty stale, but as an ex-wrestler, expectations weren’t massive – I can’t believe there’s not a single stone cold stunner, fan-appeasement FAIL! Vinnie Jones (and most other people) are laughably typecast and/or wooden, 2D, flat characters. A few other things to mention: lots of bad RAWK / Nu Metal songs; a piss-weak attempt to add a morality angle to the story; and some forced lines about kewl stuff like the internetz, bloggerz, and gamerz!!! The only real positive is that because it’s a WWE and Lionsgate film, the bad taste / violence etc is more than you’d expect. As a brain off, mindless, plotless, characterless, action film, The Condemned is alright – but there’s absolutely nothing that stays with you after the fireworks.

Score: 2/10

The Duel Project: Aragami

April 18, 2013

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The Duel Project started out as a drunken bet, when Japanese movie producer Shinya Kawai challenged two up-and-coming directors to each make a film that had only two actors, who would fight to the death, in a single location – it also had to be shot in less than a week, and stick to a tiny budget. The results were Aragami and 2LDK (2LDK REVIEW HERE)

Aragami: two wounded soldiers collapse at the door of a monastery, but when one wakens up the hospitality doesn’t last long. This film couldn’t be more different to 2LDK. The dialogue feels slow and padded out. There’s continual talk of magic, immortality, demons, goblins and such fantasy staples – bit of a turn-off for me. The film’s soundtrack is OTT porno music / thrash metal, and the tone is equally unusual – slapstick/manga. All familiar territory for Ryuhei Kitamura who’s biggest film to date was Versus, and was using this as a ‘dry run’ for Azumi – unfortunately the film only finds its stride in the last 10 minutes. My favourite aspect was how much the film was steeped in a history of swordplay and swordfighting movies yesteryear – from intricate/complex katana flare, down to some lovely, old school, ‘Shing! Ching!’ metal-clashing sound effects. Aragami isn’t a bad film, but watching it after 2LDK really takes the sting out it’s tail: whereas you enjoy the pressure-cooker buildup in 2LDK, Aragami’s set-up feels flat and uninteresting, you just want to see these guys battle it out, and when it does roll round, it feels much shorter and less innovative/satisfying than the other movie. The Duel Project is definitely worth checking out, but I’d recommend watching this first, building up to the superior 2LDK.

Score: 5.5/10

Aragami 01 - Takao Osawa, Masaya Kato, Kanae Uotani, Tak Sakaguchi, Hideo Sakaki

“Ninja Stars are for losers”

The Godfather

April 17, 2013

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The Godfather: first of three movies based on Mario Puzo’s tale of the Sicilian Mafia in New York, circa 1945-1955. There’s no denying that certain aspects of the film are great: it’s littered with original, shocking, powerful, and iconic scenes; there’s page after page of beautifully written dialogue (monologues and large conversations); the cast is truly monumental, and almost everyone is outstanding in their character’s portrayal. My biggest problem with The Godfather is that the sound mix is atrocious and – worse still – some character’s accents are so thick and/or non-enunciated that I watched the entire film with subtitles, in order to make any sense of some characters. Another flaw in the movie is that it could have been edited down, a lot; there’s entire sections of the film that have minimal impact on the story, but drag on and refuse to end (wedding, Sicily…). The direction’s OK – although editing is fairly rough – and the score really adds a punch to the movie. Perhaps this suffers from the ‘Chinatown Effect’ in that a mixture of lifelong hype, and the movie’s impact being far greater when it was released, that modern audiences are left a little cold and short-changed after seeing it. The Godfather feels like a great film diluted down into a good film, but ‘best film of all time’… sit your guinea-wop ass down in front of the tube, put on Godfellas, and tell me this is better – if ya do, ya’ll be sleeping with the fishes, see?

Score: 6/10

The Duel Project: 2LDK

April 16, 2013

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Duel 2LDK 2LDK: two actresses – who are also flatmates – have auditioned for the same leading part: they’ll find out who got it tomorrow morning, if they haven’t killed each other by then. This is split into two distinctive parts; 30 minute setup and observational comedy about living with an annoying flatmate, the other 30 minutes is simply two girls beat the tar out of each other in the ultimate catfight. Hearing the inner-ramblings of two polar opposites (paired with their polite spoken dialogue) as they grate on each other is entertaining, although it takes a few moments tuning in to 4 quickfire word tracks. The two actresses are great, but the main star is Yukihiko Tsutsumi with direction that has urgency, impact, flare and style, all in abundance; the framing is also superb. Such great direction means that the tension and action are served up raw. For a one-week rush-job the make-up and FX really add to the brutality. 2LDK is a highly enjoyable, momentum building, entertaining movie, that’s strangely relatable for anyone that has ever shared a flat.

Score: 8/10

2LDK 01 Eiko Koike, Maho Nonami, Yukihiko Tsutsumi

Before

2LDK02 Eiko Koike, Maho Nonami, Yukihiko Tsutsumi

After

Starbuck

April 12, 2013

Starbuck: a middle-aged slacker gets the wake-up call of his life when a lawyer informs him that he has fathered 533 children through a series of sperm donations from 20 years ago. First off, this is one of the few genuinely feel-good, heartwarming, upbeat films I can remember watching – the majority of films in this genre suffer from being far too sickly or cheesy. Director Ken Scott gets the tone absolutely perfect, as it juggles ‘happy viewing’ with enough drama and comedy to keep it interesting and varied. The film looks fantastic for the duration, great use of colour, imagery, locations, that lead to a pop-art, borderline dreamy effect. It’s a ballsy and unique directorial style, but complements the film perfectly. Patrick Huard, as the lead, is a solid screen presence that – no matter what he’s doing – manages to stay entertaining. The film’s kept fairly safe in that it’s never portrayed as creepy that the guy is unknowingly interfering in the kid’s lives, and that ethical / acceptance issues are glossed over, it also gets a little sappy as the ending approaches. The vibe of the film reminds me of ‘Love Me if you Dare‘, both colourful, artistic, upbeat and undeniably French. Starbuck wasn’t much of a hit in the cinemas in the UK, but it is an absolutely top-drawer feel-good comedy film, and a European gem.

Score: 8.5/10

Note: naturally, with this being such a good film, Hollywood has decided to give this the Vince Vaughn treatment – renamed ‘The Delivery Man’. I’d love for him to prove me wrong, but I don’t think that Mr Vaughn has anywhere near the amount of charm or magnetism to match Patrick Huard’s performance.

Azumi

April 11, 2013

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As part of the JAPANORAMA feature I am inviting fellow movie sites to join in. This post is from Andy at Fandango Groovers Movie Blog, a very busy site full of reviews, features, monthly run-downs of all the latest movies… and plenty James Bond articles. You can also follow Andy on Twitter.

Azumi (あずみ): Set in seventieth century Feudal Japan and based on the Japanese manga series of the same name created by Yu Koyama, Azumi is the story of an orphaned girl who is raised along with nine other children by a master Samurai. After years of training they have to face one final test before going on their first mission. The test is nothing short of brutal. Their mission is to kill three warlords preventing a civil war that will be devastating for the country. The main reason the film works is the lead character Azumi (played by the impossibly cute Aya Ueto), as proved by Quentin Tarantino in Kill Bill and Ang Lee in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, you can’t go far wrong when you give a beautiful woman a sword and drop her into the middle of the male dominated action genre. Directed Ryûhei Kitamura who made his name in the totally bonkers (but brilliant) Versus, this possibly his most accessible movie.

Twilight

April 10, 2013

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Twilight: after moving to the sticks Bella discovers that her new boyfriend, and his entire family, are vampires – I hate when that happens!! What surprised me is how much this is just a bog-standard coming-of-age, high-school teen-drama, with a side serving of vampires. Most ‘classic vampire traits’ are there, but the film doesn’t really dwell on them, and quickly explains the ‘workarounds’ – like how they can go out in daylight. K-Stewart is actually pretty good as the dowdy girl-next-door ‘new kid’ at school; R-patz on the other hand seems to just scowl at other characters, ridiculously, and in an infinitely broodily manner – he’s embarrassing to watch at times. The rest of the characters are well-cast, and do what they have to. The picture is very drab, devoid of any life and colour – pretty depressing and glum to watch – at least until R-Patz started SPARKLING!! Added to the plain direction, and it feels very much like a TV movie. Other noteworthy points are the: easiest vampire family infiltration ever, Edward pretty much shows/tells Bella everything; ridiculous meet the family scene; superhero baseball, lots of emo / indie music; and who’d have thought that Volvo’s were COOL COOL COOL?!?! It’s not a fantastic movie, nor is it a particularly original one, but the first Twilight film is a run-of-the-mill high-school movie, with vampire cloak over it; but what bugs me most is that vampires aren’t monsters any more, but merely ridiculous teenage sexual fantasy-projections. It’s a franchise opener that ticks the boxes, and ends up being way more chick-lit-flick than vampire/action/thriller movie.

Emo Vampires 1 – Vampire Goths 0

Score: 6/10

Twilight 2 Kristen Stewart, Robert Pattinson, Peter Facinelli, Elizabeth Reaser, Ashley Greene, Kellan Lutz, Nikki Reed, Jackson Rathbone, Billy Burke, Cam Gigandet, Rachelle Lefèvre, Edi Gathegi

Could have done with way more Anna Kendrick

Metropolis

April 9, 2013

An old review from this site, back in 2009

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As part of the JAPANORAMA feature I am inviting fellow movie sites to join in. First up is Nathan from Flights, Tights and Movie Nights, who has taken on 2001 anime film Metropolis. If you want to see more from Nathan’s superhero centric site, please check out his review archive, and Twitter feed. Previous articles from this site are here and here.

Metropolis (メトロポリス, Metoroporisu): Osamu Tezuka was probably best known for his creation Astro Boy, but he also wrote a Manga back in 1949 inspired by the 1927 film Metropolis. 50 years later, his manga was turned into an anime written by the creator of Akira. It takes place in a future where robots are an every day fact of life, but they are merely servants of man. They live in a giant multi tiered city where the upper class live in the newly built Ziggurat and the lower class live underground, and the lowest class still are the robots which are even below the underground. There is a highly advanced robot created in the form of a young girl named Tima, but when the lab is destroyed she is found by the young Kenichi and his grandfather who are investigative reporters who end up discovering that much more is at stake than they could ever realize. The animation in this movie is absolutely gorgeous, the designs of Tima and the many varied robots are wonderful to look at and the music is a great collection that evokes the 20’s when the original Metropolis was released. The characters may fall into some typical categories, but they are still well developed and interesting, and the English dub that I listened to was very well done. It gets a little heavy handed towards the end, but it’s a beautiful ride all the way through.

Score: 8/10

Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl

April 4, 2013

Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl (吸血少女対少女フランケン): the new girl in school is a vampire, but she’s determined to steal the boyfriend of the resident bad girl. The picture above is a girl with steel from the Tokyo Tower extending her limbs, and legs spinning round her head (to fly), having a fight with a vampire, on the Tokyo Tower, with Mt Fiji in the background… in case it wasn’t clear! The bloodsoaked bloody bloodbath of an opening sets the tone for the movie – it’s fantasy gore, cranked up way past 11. Bad acting, short skirts, stockings, skimpy outfits… feels like it’s dangerously close to – at any moment – turning into a porn film. Every aspect of the most convoluted storyline ever is in there just to get some more blood on the screen, and the FX team go through gallons of the stuff. Acting-wise, it’s not meant to be serious but the expositional narration by the main guy is so lackluster – sounds like the most uninterested person in the world, despite all of the crazy shit happening around him. Vampire Girl vs Frankenstein Girl feels less like a movie, and more like an extreme SFX experiment – and in that respect, it’s alright but there’s not much else in there for people outside of the novelty gore crowd to enjoy.

Score: 3/10

03 Yukie Kawamura, Eri Otoguro, Takumi Saito, Eihi Shiina, Takashi Shimizu, Sayaka Kametani, Yoshihiro Nishimura, Naoyuki Tomomatsu, Vampire Girl vs. Frankenstein Girl, 吸血少女対少女フランケン

Porno-esque!

The Heist

April 3, 2013

The Heist (aka The Maiden Heist): three security guards plan to steal artworks that they’ve become too attached to over the years, before they’re shipped to a new museum in Denmark. The three lead actors are all great: Walken does his Walken thing in all of its Walken-glory, William H Macy does an ex-para caricature, and Freeman leads the pack as a flamboyant eccentric. The wife unfortunately feels like she’s in the wrong movie – played far too slapstick / old-timey, and really emphasising the play/theater direction and campy vibe of the movie. Famous and respected actors serving up some good acting, which is unfortunately counter balanced with weak script and pale direction. The story also feels quite familiar, and plays out exactly how you think it will. Although it’s a straight-to-DVD film, it’s still better than much of the mush that gets properly released, and with a cast like this, I’m surprised it never hit the big screens. The Heist is a perfectly fine, inoffensive, light-hearted, upbeat movie – but with Walken and Freeman on the box, the bar’s perhaps set a little higher than what the film delivers.

Score: 4/10

Love Exposure

March 31, 2013

Love Exposure (愛のむきだし): everything’s epic these days: a night out, food, car insurance, 99% of fails… how about this for a movie epic: a 4 hour film examining the relationships between religion, cults, family, perversion, sins, obscenity, love, erections, and upskirt photography. THAT’S EPIC! First-off, it feels a lot more like a TV series: technically (camerawork, budget, quality etc) and story-wise in the four, quite individual hour-long segments of the film. The acting however is fantastic; all three youngster are great to watch, but the two main adults are particularly engaging and believable – really adds to the drama. When one of the main story threads is the usage of ninja moves (and weapons) to take upskirt pictures in order to sin – it’s mental, it’s batshit mental, and when you throw in some schoolgirl karate lesbians it could really only be from Japan. In saying that, it’s all done very well and with lots of humour, much like the pervert’s motto the film is “Careful, Oblivious and Bold”. Staying true to it’s subject matter, there’s at least one – if not a montage – panty shot every 10 minutes – so if that’s your bag, this is an absolute must-own. For being as long as it is, the melodramatic final half hour is the only time the film feels like it’s truly stretched. Love Exposure is a lot of things, but at four hours (237 minutes!) long, and containing this subject matter – forgettable is definitely not one of them.

Score: 7/10

Tokyo Decadence

March 28, 2013

Tokyo Decadence (トパーズ, Topāzu): a specialist prostitute with a very particular set of skills is doing some very strange things with salarymen in the hotel rooms of Tokyo. The opening scene has a girl strapped to a chair, gagged, blindfolded then injected with heroin – if that makes you uncomfortable, this film’s probably not for you. It starts of feeling like an exploration piece/eye-opener focusing on an extreme (sub)culture. The film portrays some extremely ‘out-there’ acts, without appearing to be overly leery or vulgar. It keeps upping the ante scene by scene until there’s nowhere else left to go; then it implodes during an ending which, out of nowhere moves the film from a risqué/explicit/shock melodrama into plain old existential pompousity. It’s packed with rough cutting and hard editing; difficult to know if it’s intentional/stylistic or just budgetary constraints. If you like a bit of smut dressed as art or ‘world cinema’ then this is about as wild as you’ll probably get; and if you dig S&M, Bondage, BDSM, Dominatrices etc etc then it’s probably a must own. As a film however, Tokyo Decadence is fairly unremarkable, and if you took away the controversial/notorious S&M scenes it would be a completely unremarkable 2-hour instantly forgettable snooze-fest.

Score: 2/10

The Fly

March 27, 2013

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The Fly: when a teleporter accidentally fuses his DNA with that of a housefly, brilliant scientist Seth Brundle slowly begins a dramatic transformation into a man-fly! It’s a great testament to Cronenberg that he can have such an obvious directorial stamp on a film, yet keep it feeling like an old-fashioned monster movie; as the plot could have easily been an old Corman B-movie. The SFX department are on fire, with some of the greatest physical, in-camera effects that no amount of CGI could begin to replicate – the fingernails, puss, blood, guts, limbs, and transformations are all so visceral that it makes you feel sick in the pits of your stomach. There’s some other neat technical tricks such as the ‘how did they do that’ camera trickery for wall-crawling antics. Last, but not least, the small cast are all great, particularly Goldblum, who delivers a riotous performance as an increasingly peculiar and demented Brundlefly – but remains believable throughout. Top top it off, the telepods are a great feature for both extremes (fusion/blood/guts) and dramatics (noise, smoke, strobe), and there’s some classic ’80s programming’ going on. A bit of patience is required as the film takes its time to build toward a conclusion that – even after knowing the story – exceeds anything you could imagine. The Fly is one of those films where everything’s just right, and is easily still on of the best horror sci-fi movies around.

Score: 8.5/10

Seth Brundle Clothes Mr Bean Brundlefly Brundlebean

Seth Brundle’s nerdy clothes reminded me of someone… MR BEAN!!! (at least when it wasn’t one of the 200 shirtless scenes)

Chanbara Beauty

March 22, 2013

Chanbara Beauty (a.k.a. OneChanbara, Bikini Zombie Slayers, Bikini Samurai Squad, お姉チャンバラ): straight to DVD zombie-fest based on a hack-and-slash video game centered around action-girls. The four titles and heartbreakingly dubious synopsis say more about the film than any review could, but if you still want to find out if this is any good… It’s always refreshing seeing headstrong, empowered, female action leads unleashing industrial-sized cans of whoopass, grabbing here gender by the balls and proving to everyone that women in modern cinema are no longer… oh, wait… is she wearing a fluffy bikini? Never mind!! Rule one of making a live-action adaptation of any game/manga is instantly broken: don’t do it with shit CGI and no physical effects!!! Made in 2008, looks like something cheap from 1988. Stylistically, it’s topped off with a shitty grey-washed out filter – rendering the movie devoid of almost any colour. The action direction is confusing: too dark, too shaky – and the non-action scenes are long, frequent and boring filler / padding. To cut this review short, I can’t remember the last time that hacking up zombies last felt so boring and arduous. I doubt that even fanboys of the computer games (which I’ve never played) could find any redeeming features in this stinker.

Score: 1.5/10

Searching for Sugar Man

March 20, 2013

1 Comment

Searching for Sugarman: two South African super-fans document their search for information on their illusive musical hero – Rodriguez. As a narrative, the documentary plays it’s hand perfectly – the first half is low-key, indie, explaining (and perhaps slightly exaggerating) the legend: second half is uplifting and fascinating. Rumours of Sugar Man’s on-stage suicide: self-immolation, gunshot, overdose… quite the bizarre list. Naturally, the film is crammed with the music of Rodriguez, which has a timeless quality – no references, all universal themes, feelings and descriptions – also helps that they’re decent tunes. Up until the halfway point I was having some suspicions as it mainly consisted of a few fans and label bigwigs talking about his talent; name-dropping comparisons of popularity and talent with Dylan, Hendrix, Rolling Stones, Elvis etc etc. In the second-half however, you can’t help but smile when you see the footage of his ‘Anvil Moment‘ and realise that he’s a genuine star in S Africa, it’s electrifying. The majority of the footage is well-shot, with some lovely animations and city-scape footage – although there’s several strange shots of him struggling through Detroit weather while the crew film him from a car crawling alongside. Where the film falls down, and prevents it being great (like the aforementioned Anvil) is that it focuses far more on the legend and backstory of Rodriguez, rather than spending quality on-screen time with him. Searching for Sugar Man is a very good documentary: especially as an eye-opening look at the music industry before the digital age, Wikipedia and so forth.

Score: 7.5/10

Searching for Sugar Man Stephen 'Sugar' Segerman, Dennis Coffey, Mike Theodore, Dan DiMaggio, Steve Rowland, Willem Möller, Ilse Assmann, Clarence Avant, Rodriguez, Sixto Rodriguez

Found him, LOL!!!

The Street Fighter

March 19, 2013

2 Comments

01 - The Streetfighter Street Fighter 1974 Sonny Chiba, Shinichi Chiba, Yutaka Nakajima, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Jirō Chiba, Etsuko Shihomi, Masafumi Suzuki, Nobuo Kawai, Ken Kazama, Fumio Watanabe

The Street Fighter (激突！殺人拳): a highly skilled martial-artist is betrayed by mobsters, so he offers up his protection to their next target. What knocked me out is that the centre of this exploitative, ultra-violent, B-movie there’s a layered, intricate, badass, mercenary anti-hero – a great performance from Chiba, who does his complex character justice. There’s a whole lot of playing on the mystique of Karate (techniques, block breaking showboating, large-scale training etc), and more generally the exotic east. The fights and clever stunts are all mighty-fine from the opening through to the ‘boss fights’, and knockout ending: although most are accompanied by some peculiar primal/pneumatic sounds and facial expressions on Chiba’s part. The story’s simple but effective and contains some surprisingly dark and seedy aspects – assassins, mafia, firing squads, prostitution – pretty hard stuff for this era. The direction is also top-rate: stylish and flashy when it needs to be, and no-nonsense handling of the action scenes. Put it all together and this is quite simple a masterpiece in Kung-Fu cinema – blood, guts and tons of action that still feels both shocking and brutal 40 years on. The Street Fighter is an absolute must-see for all fans of action cinema.

Score: 9/10

02 - The Streetfighter Street Fighter 1974 Sonny Chiba, Shinichi Chiba, Yutaka Nakajima, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Jirō Chiba, Etsuko Shihomi, Masafumi Suzuki, Nobuo Kawai, Ken Kazama, Fumio Watanabe

Just ripped off another guy’s junk (in hand)

03 - The Streetfighter Street Fighter 1974 Sonny Chiba, Shinichi Chiba, Yutaka Nakajima, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Jirō Chiba, Etsuko Shihomi, Masafumi Suzuki, Nobuo Kawai, Ken Kazama, Fumio Watanabe

Sttandard reaction to a skull-spliitting punch

04 - The Streetfighter Street Fighter 1974 Sonny Chiba, Shinichi Chiba, Yutaka Nakajima, Goichi Yamada, Masashi Ishibashi, Jirō Chiba, Etsuko Shihomi, Masafumi Suzuki, Nobuo Kawai, Ken Kazama, Fumio Watanabe

Not all sensational: there’s plenty, bold & striking imagery on display too.

2 Fast 2 Furious

March 18, 2013

1 Comment

2 Fast 2 Furious: the LAPD finally catches up with the rogue detective from Fast and the Furious – and immediately put him on an identical car-based infiltration mission. So to keep it true to the first film there’s loads of amazing cars being trashed all over the shop, lots of cool ‘threading through traffic’ race scenes, and lots of close-ups of drivers shouting “AH HAAAA!” having just rammed / overtaken / out-driven someone. Again, some parts feel like techno music videos, other like they’re about to become 2-hot for TV spring-break videos. The story however feels quite vapid and familiar when held up against the first movie: very light on plot and dangerously close to ‘remake’ territory. There’s some bad ‘scarface’/’miami’ accents, and a couple of comically bad Bond-esque henchmen. Whereas the first film was more of a heist-thriller, this feels more like the overly-familiar cop/buddy films. There’s definitely a magic ingredient missing from the first film, perhaps it’s that without Vin Diesel ( who was doing xXx), this film feels like it’s running on an unleaded engine.

Score: 3/10

Audition

March 15, 2013

1 Comment

Audition (オーディション, Ōdishon): a TV producer and widower stage a fake TV audition in order to find the latter a new wife, but the best candidate seems too good to be true. The opening half hour feels a little too rom-com-y for a ‘horror’ film (upbeat music, cheesy jokes etc). The film trudges on and after 1hr 15m of setup it gradually becomes weirder and more interesting until the payoff semi-ending finally kicks in. Knowing that there’s something not quite right with the ‘perfect girl’ is a tad unsettling, but you couldn’t have predicted an ending as extreme as this – the sound of bone being sawed is vomit-inducing! There’s a small, but obvious social critique about the time in lines like “The whole of japan’s lonely”, and “Japan is Finished” – not-so-subtle! What makes this worthwhile is that it is a unique horror film in that is doesn’t pander to conventions, or give you what you expect. It also beat the wave of late 2000s movies that kick-started ‘torture porn’/’Splatter’ craze again. As original and unique as Audition is, it’s essentially a psychological drama for this most part with 10 minutes of gore capping off a lot of humdrum!

Score: 5.5/10

Ted

March 14, 2013

Ted: a young boy who wished that his teddy bear could come to life and be his best friend gets just that, but 25 years later their friendship is tested by a smelly girl! With Wahlberg, McFarlane and Kunis as the leads you know that this one should be funny, and it is. They’re also aided by some ace casting of the smaller roles; Giovanni Ribisi, Joel McHale, Ryan Reynolds, Sam Jones etc. The film’s pretty much gag-o-rama, with the funniest ones being the ‘shouldn’t be laughing’ moments – the Airplane / Saturday Night Fever homage to a spoof was brilliantly used too. The downside is that the direction is fairly plain, and story is weak, and although it’s funny, it’s not end-to-end-side-splittingly-good. The bottom line is that as a (live action) extension of family guy – cast, voices, music – the Ted does alright, but as a ‘film’, it doesn’t quite cut the mustard. It’s definitely funny, but most of it is forgettable.

Score: 6/10

Paprika

March 12, 2013

3 Comments

JAPANORAMA Paprika Header Satoshi Kon, Yasutaka Tsutsui, Doctor Atsuko Chiba, Detective Toshimi Konakawa, Doctor Kōsaku Tokita, Doctor Toratarō Shima, Megumi Hayashibara, Tōru Furuya, Tōru Emori, Katsunosuke Hori,

Paprika (パプリカ, Papurika): a machine that lets others participate in your dreams has been stolen and hijacked; Paprika is the best shot at getting it back. It’s interesting that in Hollywood, any form of animation is almost exclusively reserved for kid’s films, whereas in Japan you get this: a fearless sci-fi film that explores technology, mythology, reality, iconography, dreams, reality and the psyche. As mind-meltingly complex as it gets, the film always remains interesting, engaging and entertaining – probably down to the super-stylized mix of animation techniques – the blu-ray is extremely vibrant. With a mix of luscious visuals and an abundance of ‘thinking’ material, you have the luxury of being able to tune out of the story and still be dazzled. However, both elements combine to create a screen-bursting, visual and mental extravaganza. “This is your brain on Anime” – great marketing line.

Score: 8/10

Sunshine Cleaning

March 7, 2013