This is a romantic comedy of sorts, but not a light one. Park does dive into some serious subject matter. The film revolves around it’s lead actress Im Su-jeong (who you may recognize from the wonderful horror; Tale Of Two Sisters). She plays the part of a sad girl in a mental institution where most of the film is played out where she believes she is a cyborg and refuses to eat. As her health deteriorates, an interest is acquired by another patient played by pop star Bi (Rain). What ensues is a melancholic turned lovely tale of two characters dealing with their past finding each other in the most odd of circumstances.

This is not played out like a typical rom com; I.E. machine guns coming out of Im’s fingers blowing away all the nurses. This is a sad yet amusing love story told like nobody besides Park could tell it. The story is touching, sad and funny. The visuals, effects and set designs are simply beautiful. Again, if you’re looking for a blood filled, revenge story this is not for you. If you’re looking for a non typical romantic comedy with style to spare then give it a go!

I’ve recently reviewed this movie over on my site (short version - disappointing, on par with the second movie) but there were a couple of things I wanted to talk about here, namely the dreadful waste of talent cast in the movie.

I really really hope that Michelle Yeoh gets some decent scenes in the upcoming Babylon AD, coz she was wasted here, as was Jet Li for that matter. Other than the lacklustre fight scene between him and Yeoh, Jet was hardly in the picture, as a CGI character was in place.

Then there’s Anthony Wong, someone who’s been a favourite of mine ever since Hard Boiled, a classic actor who can play just about anything from police captain to murderous druglord to evil hunchbacked sidekick. However he’s not really reknowned for his screen-fighting ability, so I was left a bit perplexed when his character keeps getting into elaborate fight-scenes, utilising the ancient arts of wire-work and body doubles…

Do you know what tops all this though? The one bit of casting that I can’t really comprehend, and kind of hope that IMDB have got this wrong...?

JACKY WU IS IN THIS MOVIE! Which would be really cool if he actually got to do...anything! But instead he’s cast as Assassin #1 and appears during the prologue. He has less than 10 seconds screentime before being killed. In the name of all that is holy - why? One of the hottest screen fighters of the moment, wasted in a non-role, while poor old Tony Wong is suffering through mock fights?

I’m not saying Jacky Wu shouldn’t be in the movie - anything which raises his profile can only be good. I’m just a little flumoxed that the film-makers would go to the trouble of hiring him and not utilise his talents.

Anyone else with a view?

Cheers…

The Dark Knight just might put the nail in the coffin of Tim Burton’s German expressionism molded films as the chief first and foremost cinematic image of Batman, and boy, oh boy have we gone a long way from the neon-lit, side-kick heavy Schumacher entries (the latter of which is certainly bane of the fanboys existence, the mere mention is akin of bringing up Adolf Hitler in any kind of debate). While Christopher Nolan’s first entry into the new millennium incarnation of everyone’s favourite vigilante (well outside the Charles Bronson fan-club), aimed to ground the comic sensibility in a veneer of ‘realism’ to mixed success, his follow up brings that style and tone a step in a more interesting direction. One that can only be described as Fincher-esque.

While New York Times critic Manohla Dargis pointed out similarities between the actions of the Joker and the Zodiac killer (a heady cocktail of media-induced celebrity and media-induced fear as portrayed in the best film of 2007), I think the look and feel of The Dark Knight can be viewed through the prism of David Fincher’s entire career and how that career has influenced American movies in general. Take the Jokers elaborate schemes, which aim at driving the anarchy and nihilism factor of Gotham City to the breaking point. Now look at John Doe in Seven. If there was a box with Rachel Dawes head in it, I would not be too surprised. It is rather ludicrous at times, particularly how he get gets along with his ‘co-workers,’ that the Joker’s schemes seem to run like clockwork. For a bit of a nutter, his schemes have a built in awareness of where people are going to be, even in something as random as a chase or even incarceration. As in Finchers most over the top film, The Game. And the ‘laugh while the world burns’ and prisoners dilemma type games theory writ large on an urban canvas comes across like a wet dream from the Tyler Durden’s imagination. The old Batman comic saw of ‘Freak like Me’ also echoes the relationship of Fight Club’s narrator and his inner anarchist. The ‘green happy face’ of Project Mayhem may just as well be a Joker calling card. And what the hey, the temporary ‘bat cave’ which ends up being a super-surveillance network might as well be a form of Panic Room as the city is on fire. In fact, a party guest asks at one point during the Jokers big entrance into the Gotham elite asks Bruce Wayne if he’s got a panic room handy. Maybe a stretch, maybe not. The make your own island in the sea of chaos before the winds blow you down sentiment belongs in the Fincher ouvre well enough.

The Dark Knight is playing right alongside another unusual comic book sequel, Hellboy II: The Golden Army. At one point Hellboy director Guillermo del Toro was going to direct Seven, but turned it down because in his own words, “it was a very cynical view of the world. I loved it, I wanted to see it, but I’m a romantic, fat bastard and I don’t subscribe to that view.” Well, some of the moral quandaries thrown at the Bat Man and the citizens of Gotham have no clean solution. In that post 9/11 sort of way, heroes may have to burn half the place down to stop the terrorists, compromise their own ideals and likely cause just as many ripple-effect problems as the problem they are trying to eliminate. This is the ugliness of The Dark Knight, which makes it oh-so-different than cotton candy like Ironman. This is not to say that Christopher Nolan is simply stealing or copying from David Fincher. But rather the nihilistic Nolan of Memento and The Prestige is out in full force in this one, where it was curiously muted under the ‘realism-laced’ reinvention of Batman Begins, here it is unfettered as Batman gliding over Gotham wings out but nevertheless still dominated by the vastness of the city below. Gotham is the crucible for a bombastic morality play going on for every single one of those necessary 152 minutes, and Batman is dwarfed by the inferno.

Now imagine a triple bill of No Country For Old Men, Zodiac and The Dark Knight. Who says going to the multiplex is a wasteland of sugary emptiness? These are fascinating motion pictures that all evaluate violence from the American psychic journey of competent go-getter to the worn out and broken sighs of the best intentions leading to greater failure. It makes me love American cinema like I love those 1970s ‘movie brat’ pictures from Friedkin, Scorsese and Coppola. Throw in Michael Haneke’s remake of Funny Games (either version) for the angry European reaction to all of this. And what interesting timing for the Funny Games US DVD to act as a primer for on-screen mayhem of The Dark Knight and what it means for families to bring their children to such casual and brutal murder. The Dawes/Dent dilemma as well as the two ferries in the narrows are pretty brutal stuff for little Johnny and Sally.

I didn’t realize Cloverfield was a comedy!

Let’s take the good things first: Michael Giacchino composed a truly magnificent overture ("Roar!") that plays over the lengthy closing credits. The overture calls to mind all the great giant monster movies and blends into a seamless, toe-tapping whole. In short: loved it, would buy it.

But I have no desire to sit through the entire movie again, which is a shame because the basic premise sounded so compelling: “Godzilla attacks New York City in a post-9/11 environment, shot from the POV of a camcorder.” Indeed, two or three sequences hint at what might have been: confusion and panic as the monster invades the city; fleeing crowds on the Brooklyn Bridge; a terrifying surprise in a subway tunnel. Those few scenes are riveting in their intensity, and the handheld, wildly swaying photography actually adds to the unease.

Yet it only takes the opening 15 minutes to realize the premise itself has boxed the filmmakers into a dead end. The decision to tell the entire story from the POV of one camcorder sounds terrific, unless you’ve ever been subjected to your neighbor’s home movies—or watched much authentic YouTube footage. The camcorder is placed in the hands of someone who’s never used it before; the resulting footage is neither as horribly awful as you would expect from an untrained, first-time camera operator, but neither is it as good as a professional. Instead, it’s stuck somewhere in that nowhere land where highly skilled professional filmmakers pretend to be amateurs.

It only works in short bursts. Since the filmmakers appear to have been inspired by reality television shows, maybe they should have really studied a few instead of assuming that 90 minutes of jerky movements would suffice. The key on reality shows? Commercials and interview segments. They give the eye a break, and allow a wider range of perspective on what’s happening. Cloverfield simply mashes everything together. It’s carefully edited, of course, to cut out the “boring” parts, and that leads us to an even greater problem.

Everything has to happen in front of the camcorder.

Pardon the pun, but it’s a monstrous conceit that every key plot point is played out in front of the lens. Reality dictates that you can only put together a composite of an event from multiple cameras, but that would violate the “one camera, one POV” rule that the filmmakers set for themselves. Alas, that very conceit becomes an unstoppable force that undermines the entire movie.

The monster becomes some kind of media whore with an insane attraction to our amateur’s camera, which made me start to giggle near the end, especially as the very predictable coincidences piled up to, ultimately, truly ridiculous extremes. (I think someone gasped in horror behind me, so I had to restrain myself from laughing out loud. Always respect your fellow audience members.) Of course, of course, of course, I said to myself as each point was checked off the list.

In the end, Cloverfield is a gimmick. It’s a good, entertaining gimmick of a b-movie that will make a ton of money—the 5:05 pm first day screening was more filled than I’m accustomed to seeing at my neighborhood theater—but it’s still just a gimmick.

Still, it made me laugh, a few scenes were certifiably top-notch, and the overture was wonderful.

By day, Teruo works at his family’s used bookstore--by night, he works on creating the world’s scariest haunted house. When pretty but clumsy Akari begins working at the shop, both Teruo and his friend vow to capture her heart. Silly, jealous rivalry ensues in this hilarious, offbeat comedy.

Fine Totally Fine is a very very funny movie.  There are so many silly gags and funny instances to make anyone smile or laugh out loud (like my audience was constantly doing) Some of the jokes are so obviously set up you can see them coming but the thing is, you can’t wait till it does and the payoff still makes you chuckle.  To actually summarize the plot of the movie is kind of difficult.  From what the synopsis says on the website, Teruo works at his family’s bookstore and wants to create the world’s scariest haunted house.  This is true but actually he also works doing some sort of landscaping (maybe for parks?) and the whole haunted house idea is quickly abandoned after a very funny “ghost” encounter.  Akari doesn’t begin to work at the bookstore until half way through the film.  She actually begins working at the hospital where Teruo’s fried Hisanobu is working at.  Clumsy hardly describes Akari’s character.  It’s like this girl is trying to do anything in an earthquake and you just love when she goofs up.  I really enjoyed how the filmmaker chose how to show how awkward she is.  Whenever Akari attempts to try something the camera is always on for that situation and who don’t get any quick cuts or edits.  You can really feel how frustrated she is but you can’t help but laugh at how much of a clutz she is too!  You’ll have a new appreciation for opening a box of tissues after the movie is over.  The fight between Teruo and Hisanobu also doesn’t happen till towards the end and is quickly resolved.

The only thing I can say bad about this movie is that it feels long.  The pacing is very slow and some of the side characters are written off a little to easily. 

Like I mentioned before, Fine Totally Fine is a very funny movie and even though it’s kind of long and feels slow, by the end you just want to see more with these great characters and hope that we can see more of their goofy antics even after the credits.

I posted a few capsule reviews of films I watched on VHS in the previous forum in the DVD thread, maybe this is a better place to put these and this fresh start an excellent chance to make it so. I still collect VHS. now even more then ever actually, since I hear a lot of people just throwing away their tapes… especially those old ugly ones with the bad movies nobody has heard about… the horror the horror!
Maybe this thread can be about all things VHS… with nice cover pictures etc… I hope some of you will like that.

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some recent reviews:

Lady Karate (Onna Hissatsu Ken) - another video title for this film is sister street fighter. A campy Japanese wannabe kungfu film with an overused plot and characters who all try their best to imitate Bruce Lee. dumb entertainment, but entertaining enough. the Dutch ‘VML’ video is widescreen and in original language but the print is dark and the white subtitles are hard to read sometimes.

the wild team (I Cinque del Condor) - ooh a real stinker. it’s like the A-team but even dumber and not really suitable for children at the same time… who would want to see this badly written, badly acted, badly edited, badly… anything movie? ... well I did but only to tell you not to check this out. there is nothing even for exploitation fans here and it also fails to reach the ‘so bad it’s good’ category. the Dutch ‘Video for Pleasure’ video is widescreen and dubbed in English.

Don’t Torture a Duckling (Sunrise Tapes)
I like watching old movies like this on old VHS tapes With Sunrise Tapes the quality of the print is often not perfect. Here we get an English dubbed widescreen version (missing a bit of image on both sides) in a transfer that looks a little bit dark. The film itself is a good giallo. I haven’t seen much of this genre so I’m not sure how to rate it but I liked it and that’s what counts. There is one disturbing scene that stands out and really impressed me, in which four villagers brutally murder a girl they suspect is the killer. very chilling use of music in that scene and ‘in your face’ gore effects.

The Pyjama Girl Case (Sunrise Tapes)
another letterboxed, English dubbed video of an Italian murder mystery. I don’t think this falls completely within the giallo genre though. The print quality is good, but the film sadly isn’t. very badly scripted, stupid characters and nothing exciting happens.

Hell Commando’s (VPV)
a decent looking VHS from 1982, 4:3 and English dubbed, of the 1969 film Comando al Infierno. An Italian and Spanish co-production directed by José Luis Merino. Sadly nothing positive to note about the movie.
It’s WOII and a professor needs to be rescued from the SS before he develops a virus for Hitler. The commando team that is selected to do this gets wiped out by a squad of marines lost behind enemy lines who think they are Germans. And then they are forced to complete the mission. They are an unruly bunch who are mostly interested in girls though.
That all sounds better written down than it is to watch. There is no exciting action, no humor and, with all the girls there and the eurotrash credits, it’s surprisingly tame also.

They Call Me Trinity (Video for Pleasure)
They clearly used a very old and damaged film copy as master for this video. I got the full grindhouse experience For the very few VHS collectors that might still be out there this is a letterboxed and English dubbed version. The film is typical Bud Spencer and Terence Hill fare in a spaghetti western setting. I’ve read that it was very popular and ‘inspired’ Sergio Leone to make My Name is Nobody.

Naked Fist (Video Collection)
A Filipino karate movie. Reminded me somewhat of Bloodsport and Kickboxer, the two Jean-Claude van Damme karate classics. But this is an older movie with much much lower production values. And the main selling point of this movie is a fight in which karate champ Jillian Kessner gets naked and kicks a guys ass.

Angelfist (Video Look)
The same director, Cirio H. Santiago, did a sort of remake twelve years later. Ken Metcalfe who wrote Naked Fist and acted in at least fifteen of Santiago’s movies is the only actor to return from Naked Fist. There is again a girl who is out for revenge after her sister gets killed for photographing something she shouldn’t have, again she gets naked and kicks a guys ass, again there is some Filipino stick fighting. But the acting is even worse this time around (some of the worst ever) and the leading lady is pumped full of silicone which makes her real ugly.
I also think the fighting in Naked Fist is slightly better, certainly the final fight of that movie because it has a killer ending (with fightingsticks ending up in eyesockets!).

The principle characters are mainly in the dark as to what is actually going on, yet there are many cutaways to television news bits and incidental cellular phone conversations from background players. Many of these experiments fail, in a modern film it seems a bit silly for someone in a panic to put their phone on speaker (for the audience’s information). I would love to see M. Night and David Mamet argue over how to pass information along to an audience because they take decidedly opposite approaches. In the exposition department, The Happening is definitely not Spartan. Furthermore, a wholly unnecessary (and perhaps unintentionally) hilarious iPhone scene involving a lion tamer which looks like it is from either Peter Jackson’s Dead Alive, or Paul Verhoeven’s Starship Troopers undercuts horrific tension because it is just too darn goofy. A certain type of film-lover may like that scene, but really, why chop your film off at the knees for something so acutely unnecessary?

These over the top gore moments are combined with (intentionally?) oddball performances from the three leads. In perhaps the worst performance of his career Mark Wahlberg lays it on really thick as the much-suffering wounded puppy with maximum pout towards a wet-blanket Zooey Deschanel. But the cheese-cake award goes to a way-over-the-top Betty Buckley serving as a stand-in for Tim Robbins character in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds or Marcia Gay Harden in The Mist. In fact it seems like Shyamalan wants to play in the same sandbox as Spielberg or Darabont as modern takes on 1950’s B-Sci-fi filcks go. Yet The Happening has neither the delicious subtext of former or the full-on embrace of the style in the latter. Full disclosure, Wahlberg’s nutty performance by the end of the film had won me over.

Despite a laundry lists of flaws, The Happening succeeds as an edge-of-your-seat apocalypse flick even if you can’t take too much of it seriously. Even with this type of scenario tackled so often in the past 5 years or so, the unpredictable nuttiness from scene-to-scene makes (will it be serious, will it be funny, will the characters attempt to outrun the wind?) it a more engrossing than most. I’m tempted to label it a winner in a lackluster year for blockbusters.

Rgds,
1minutefilmreview

Regards,
1minutefilmreview

THE STRANGERS (2008)

For those looking to be entertained by low-key horror films, along the same lines of the 1970s in the United states, there are some small gems out there for those who peer between the cracks of over-hyped do-over slush. The Strangers is one of those films, and I walked away from it quite impressed insofar as the film aims to scare, and it is scary, the film aims to be mean and it is mean. Is it looking to be profound in its cruelty, perhaps not along the lines of early George Romero, Wes Craven or even Bobby Clark, but it is well within the ballpark in the year 2008 when it feels like it has all be done before, and ripe to be done again. In fact, there is a fair bit of confusion going around as to whether or not The Strangers is in fact a remake of the French nail-biter Ils. I do not think it is officially, but this ain’t baseball and there are no proper record-keepers of such things. For all intents and purposes, The Strangers is a spiritual remake of Ils and it goes so far as to raise the bar a little on its foreign counterpart, something Hollywood horror films have seldom been able to do (although one nice little exception is Gore Verbinski’s The Ring which does a number of this better than its Japanese counterpart, even if it doesn’t quite nail the climax quite like Ringu does) The Strangers may get a little over-reliant on sound cues, and in one clear instance telegraphs the outcome of a scene well in advance, but a few points have to be given to it cold, black, nasty little heart, not only for seeing things through to the end (and a gooseflesh nod to De Palma), but exposing children, evangelical innocents, to the horror of needless violence. Usually teenage marketed tempests-in-a-pablum-teacup along the lines of Prom Night remake generally leaves the young-uns out of it. While I’m no fan of the goofy introductory text (appallingly read aloud by Mr. Movie Voice), the terrified voice of a 911 call from a couple of 10 year olds is a nice way to open (and later, close) the picture.

The Strangers even acts a feather soft allegory of the impotence of culture-of-fear America. Scott Speedman and Liv Tyler, the main characters set-up as an unhappy and frustrated couple who are awkwardly stuck in the middle a marriage proposal gone wrong arrive in the wee hours of the fading night into a borrowed cottage estate scattered with the sad luxuries of a failed reach for the evenings joy. Despite the wash of the evening and confusion as to what happens next, they nevertheless exercise a fair amount of due-diligence to the threat, in the form of anonymous pranks, magnified by the isolation of the geography, as it develops. It is hard to talk back to the screen for either of them doing foolish things, because they are both reasonable enough not too (they don’t). Fear does lead to a fair bit of unsure action, and one tragic over-reaction, but the film stays well-grounded and confident in its pacing throughout. And when daylight comes, then where are they? The film wisely maximizes its punch by leaving the both of them still in the quagmire. The bag on the head of one of the antagonists certainly is the faintest echo of 21st century America damned by its own reactions to terrorism. I am not exactly sure what to make of the female majority in the slasher-trio other than to say, that in one way or another, the feminist movement has come along in its own strange way and would be serial murderers have Eileen Wuornos to guide them through the twilight of their bloody virginity. I could be just spinning my wheels here however. Gender issues certainly not being on this films mind.

That The Strangers is pretty lean and mean -serious even- enough that I’m willing to give it some allegorical due. It is a fair stretch ahead of over-produced dreck like 1408 to be sure (note the lack of any required computer trickery in this one). It is not as arch and distant (and angry) as Michael Haneke’s Funny Games US, in fact Haneke was in part attacking this kind of entertainment, but if there has to be a successor to Last House on the Left, we could do a lot worse than The Strangers. Evil, even of the senseless and unfathomable should lurk in the back of the brain during a good slasher film, and it is pulled off here with a fair bit of aplomb (albeit a kind that occasionally mugs for the camera over any sort of realism.

The iconography of the charming dollfaces and sneering scarecrow-esque masks at least lets The Strangers earn its place at the table with some of the slashers of the late 1970s, early 1980s. This one may not quite pack the emotional punch of Spain’s The Orphanage (which curiously shares the central image of the rucksack mask) or the immediacy and 9/11 gut-punch of [*REC], but how weird is it that a little horror film like this could beat the pants of Spielberg’s last film? Really, who saw that one coming?

On a final note, some of the top shelf international fare may have a slight edge on The Strangers, but if America can pump out a few studio horror pictures along the lines of this one as well as last years P2 and Vacancy, small entertainments that retain a measure of Hollywood slick, but still delivering the evil and anxiety, there is some hope for better things to come along in the genre.