youth of the beast (by seijun suzuki, 1963) - a lot’s made of suzuki’s coloring and flashes of style, the moments being sparing variations on the kinds of things which stand out in takashi miike movies, but it’s with the fantasticly vibrant sense of life within the film - plus it’s clear, shifting and twisting story - that suzuki stands out. yes, it’s a yakuza movie, but it’s not too tied to difficult plots and odd general issues as much as it’s got a couple of decent leads and supporting characters from which stems a great tale that’s short, sweet and very memorable. quite devastating at times too.

logboy - August 5, 2007, 9:33am

youth of the beast (by seijun suzuki, 1963) - a lot’s made of suzuki’s coloring and flashes of style, the moments being sparing variations on the kinds of things which stand out in takashi miike movies, but it’s with the fantasticly vibrant sense of life within the film - plus it’s clear, shifting and twisting story - that suzuki stands out. yes, it’s a yakuza movie, but it’s not too tied to difficult plots and odd general issues as much as it’s got a couple of decent leads and supporting characters from which stems a great tale that’s short, sweet and very memorable. quite devastating at times too.

Is that the one with the night club scene involving one way windows? (There’s a scene where they are in an office looking out into the club). Recently watched Fighting Elegy which didn’t quite bowl me over as much as his otehr films I still enjoyed watching.

Watched SWEET MOVIE last night - wow…...

Sleaze - August 7, 2007, 4:39am

logboy - August 5, 2007, 9:33am

youth of the beast (by seijun suzuki, 1963)

Is that the one with the night club scene involving one way windows? (There’s a scene where they are in an office looking out into the club). Recently watched Fighting Elegy which didn’t quite bowl me over as much as his otehr films I still enjoyed watching.

yes it is.

You’re going to laugh, but…

I saw “Hardboiled” yesterday for the first time. The best Woo I have yet seen, can’t wait to check it out again.
Years ago I had seen bits of it, but the funny thing for me was that I now recognized most of the actors! Seeing an impossibly young Tony Leung acting opposite an even more impossibly young Anthony Wong was definitely weird.

After I saw Anthony Wong in “Exiled”, I was like: “I want to see more movies with that guy!”. Then I checked his resume and noticed he was also in “The Ebola Syndrome” (which, ahum, differs a bit from “Exiled”) and “Hardboiled”, both of which I owned but hadn’t seen yet. Amazing actor…

the show must go on (han jae-rim, 2007). this is one of those films that doesn’t necessarily openly declare it’s direct intentions as the story progresses. it’s not a non-story or non-narrative film, it’s instead taking the approach of spending some time with some characters which are familiar enough from films but not particularly common in real life. song kang-ho is kang in-gu (?), a gangster who always seems to fall flat in achieving his ambitions, and having gone between a couple of local gangs over the course of his career, finds himself gradually edging towards total collapse in his life. his family, wife and youngish daughter, are tired of how his choice of career has limited their ambitions, and either want him out of the picture or to shift away towards something legit. his gang, and those around him, show a familiar ineptness as seen in korean films (though not as strongly portrayed and often is the case - neither is the connected comedy) as they try their hands at a very large and ambitious project that’s probably far too much for them. in-gu sets his sights on getting out of his tiny apartment (with no water pressure!) and into a fantastically large modern house. as time goes on, the spiral of in-gu’s descent gathers pace, and it’s central idea is greadually revealed - life continues on without you, however well or not it may be going, unless it ends it’s still happening. not entirely engaging necessarily, at first glance, but memorable and lingers in the mind. more to discover in this one, i think. superb song kang-ho performance too.

retribution (sakebi, by kiyoshi kurosawa, 2006) - within the first 30 minutes there are some set-ups to be done for the overall tone of the story and the narrative of the film which are none too elegant, in fact they later feel as though they might have preempted some opportunities for a more unusual atmosphere. that said, the hour which comes later actually manages to both retrieve the story into more abstract and unusual territory, as well as managing to step perhaps intentionally (but not necessarily acceptable to many, in terms of how conventions are shattered) towards crossing the boundary between what constitutes the behaviour of a ghost and the behaviour of a living person. what kurosawa ultimately has is a film which is as easy to take as compromising his own vision by adding in more familiar or easily digested elements as found in commercial crossovers like ‘rinne’ and ‘nightmare detective’ - it’s familiar, it’s also not entirely his work, as it wasn’t for shimizu or tsukamoto - but this also means he needed the odder, wrongfooting narrative elements of the early set-ups, perhaps. initially then, it doesn’t work, it disappoints, later it manages to save the day and turn itself on its head for something which isn’t as ambitious or original as you might expect kurosawa to leap towards, but it does offer something of his style into a film that’s got the familiar grainy look, and some stunningly effective music too.

Thirty Lies Or So - As best as memory serves me all the recent swindle flicks (save for perhaps Confidence) have been bound to the error of the heist in motion while hanging the possibility of likeable characters out to dry. Thirty Lies sullies along with less lofty ideas concerning the sting…so much so that we don’t even get to see Takarada’s scheme play out. Instead what’s on offer is a view of the strands of trust unwinding between the six team members when the loot vanishes on their getaway midnight express run. The tight framing and confines of the train accentuate the measure of the stagey performances, most of which are low key enough to compliment rather than snap off one another as many caper films with quirky characters do. The degree of seriousness is taken rather lightly, with a good portion of the dynamic meandering into subtle rom-com territory…it’s neither distracting nor fully engaging which is quite typical of the often submissive Japanese style. The counterpoint to this is clearly Miki Nakatani in her role as the brains behind the caper…doesn’t quite fit in at all but this is not to say she edges out completely - in fact she’s really the most interesting character here. Not the best you’ll see in the Widemedia Japanese Indie set but it’s certainly a cut above most modern score movies.

eye in the sky (by yau nai hoi, 2007) - another milkyway production, shows many of the same problems and successes as recent films such as election and exiled. the cinematography, direction, structuring, editing and music are all in place and working on a much more solid and professional level than maybe many expect from HK. the scripting, the story, the dialogue, and some of the more basic elements are a bit naff, predictable and melodramatic… not as much as in SPL, but moreso than either the other two examples i’ve named. overall, nai hoi has managed a key thing here - he’s taken what would be one rudimentary bog-standard element of most action films, the chase sequence, and decided to use it as the basis for the whole film. now, rather than a stretch, it’s a stripped-down approach which leads to a full exploration of the central idea of a chase. no really massively technical stuff going on here in terms of what they’re using as the central tool of the chase, not as much as there’s a use of the brain, experience, and technical wizardry as a result of observation. both teams - the gang robbing jewels and the SU chasing after them manage to play off their interesting use of observation and social manipulation in order to create teams working on relatively equal terms, albeit shifting around over the films. it all runs at an impressive pace, maintains (despite the typical errors of HK films) tension and interest without much, if any, let up. the camera work, a little kinetic for my tastes, works and feels appropriate, but the more static stuff comes off better for me - the angular scenery within which the chases take place are as impressive as anything from To and milkyway that i’ve seen until now. overall, if they can get past the melodrama and general typical errors, there’s classics to be had that go beyond the expectations of HK film fans and would lead to a potential major crossover hit - if only in influence. nice work, very much a director to be excited about future projects from, i think.

sakuran (by mika ninagawa, 2006) - well, if your eyes cope with the color, which is initially something that’s quite a barrier to focusing on the story, then you’ll find a story that intends to explore as many aspects of the life of a prostitute. now, there’s a couple of odd things - firstly, there’s no mention of the word geisha, or clarification (i still need it) between the relationship and confusion caused surrounding both open employment of prostitutes and geisha; are they one in the same? are geisha’s living artists? are prostitutes using the term geisha as a cover up? anyway, it’s a knocking shop, clear and simple, but there’s no hiding under the covers as much as there’s parading and displaying of young ladies who’s services are for sale. taking a you girl, selling her to the house, and watching as she shows the initial stages to the cycle of life that is the attempts to survive within a world that could offer a glorious escape via marriage to a rich customer or a gradual fall into feeling trapped in the lifestyle forever. initially, the lack of conviction and central story idea does the film no favors, with the overall story yet to be revealed and explored, it’s a dissatisfying first half which eventually feels fully justified and necessary once everything sets into place. central story, which is useful in showing another aspect of a prostitutes life, is (of course) love - and the potential suitors are many, the potential true loves are several in numbers. the supporting cast, mostly relatively small scale and faceless, include a couple of notables in the shape of renji ishibashi (as the owner of the house) and and kenichi endo (as a customer, a lord) and it does include some surprisingly frank moments of nudity and sex, especially around young girls in training - and they do start very young - which helps to add to the many elements which make this a potential gem for many, a potential bit of lightness of the majority. for me, as i really like anna tsuchiya, it’s a superbly effective film overall, no matter how light or disjointed, incomplete.

logboy - August 16, 2007, 12:13am

sakuran (by mika ninagawa, 2006)

Thanks for the heads-up, sounds definitely like my cup of tea.
How’s the disc?
  (meaning: English-friendly extra’s? Other versions available soon?)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers remastered DVD

“There are so many great visuals (and sound cues) in the 1978 version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. My favorite is that Donald Sutherland’s character drives around in a car with half the windshield glass smashed in a spiderweb of stress lines so dense that it is actually quite difficult to see properly what lies ahead. At a certain point he sees a character from the original version of the film run down in the street and mobbed by the poddies. How perfect is that?”

KBT Blog Post

Ardvark - August 16, 2007, 3:39am

logboy - August 16, 2007, 12:13am

sakuran (by mika ninagawa, 2006)

Thanks for the heads-up, sounds definitely like my cup of tea.
How’s the disc?
  (meaning: English-friendly extra’s? Other versions available soon?)

as usual for japanese discs, nicely mastered but no subs on the extras. too early to know about another appearance elsewhere, i feel - it might, i suspect more likely in HK or korean than america though…

Recent viewings:

“Heartstopper”

Oh why bother! The most dire decade for American mainstream horror was by far the 90’s.
So why does a 21st century horror film want to pretend its some 90’s cheap-ass horror flick?

An electrocuted psycho pops back to kill a few people and do something with some girl he has a link with or something and oh….who cares?

Crap gore (in a film about a psycho who rips out hearts - how does he manage to do that anyway? - it’s a big mistake to have rubbish rubber hearts for the FX) , tired direction, bored actors, dull characters and just…oh….deathly, heartless stodge.

Who the hell would want to almost re-make something as truly dire as “Shocker” anyway?
Do we need more moronic, dull-fest , 90’s type horror dross along the lines of “Dr Giggles”?

The late 80’s/90’s was a dire time for straight-forward horror film making with lame sequels, already dead in the water attempts to start new horror franchises, endless smart-ass one-liner spouting psychos designed to sell t-shirts to mall rats who shout “dude” at each other and all round boredom!

“Heartstopper” tries to be such a film (here the psycho spouts pretentious garbage instead of jokes) and only a smallish turn by Robert Englund as a could have been interesting character makes the film even remotely watchable.
In a very rare event for me I gave up after 40 minutes, skipped to the (just as I thought, dire) ending with it’s obvious, nonsense ‘shock’ ending, removed the disc and got on with my life.

“The Mummy’s Shroud”- Hammer’s highly effective, probably their best, Mummy film. Well worth a look and with a wonderful performance by Michael Ripper.
http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvshroud.php

“Sickle” - aka “Slaughterhouse Massacre”.

Truly, TRULY awful.
Avoid like a pox-ridden whore collecting her pension in a nappy.

The rather excellent “The Flesh and the Fiends” with a stunning performance by Peter Cushing, who’s given some magnificent dialogue and some barnstorming chances to use it.
Good and grissly too.
http://www.beardyfreak.com/rvfiends.php

“The Damned” - Visconte’s lush expose of a German industrial Family as the Nazis come to power.

Wonderful sets and costumes and great cinematograohy enhance a rather overly melodramatic soap opera plot about the world’s most disfunctional, warped, twisted and self-destructive family tearing each other to pieces against the backdrop of Hitler’s power play, the slaughter of the SA during the “Night of the Long Knives” and the push to war.

A top cast includes the debut of Euro fave Helmut Berger who steals the show as the peadarist, mother loving dandy who goes from a twisted, frightened, pitiful man-child to ruthless Nazi powermonger.
Berger looks absolutely fantastic and dangerously erotic in his Nazi uniform and the film is chock full of striking images of bloodshed, shadowed perversion and fascist decadence.

Indeed anyone with a fetish for Nazi uniforms (say what you want about their beliefs, but they sure knew how to dress!) will cream at the hordes of black and silver decorated SS men adorning the screen, and those that appreciate stunningly well made, expertly acted, 70’s, Euro arthouse cinema will find much to enjoy and appreciate here.

“Until Death”.

Another return to form for Van Damme following his dip after the excellent “Wake of Death”.

It falters during the second half, but the first half is superb and gives us a really ballsy turn by Van Damme that is a million years away from his heyday hero roles.

This is a down and out, scuzzy, drug addicted, whore banging, brute of a Van Damme and he’s complimented by some w=well staged, violent and bloody action scenes.
Not perfect, thanks to the 2nd half being a bit of a mess, Stephen Rea’s bad acting and a dip into normality, but well worth seeing just for the brilliant first half and to see Van Damme pulling out all the unflattering acting stops.

Samaritan Girl - Could be Kim’s most under-appreciated film though it remains my favourite. It’s a real middle of the road mosaic for KKD, sullying between the meditative strokes of Spring Summer and the arcane rebuke of Bad Guy…most of which saturates any kind of precise intent and seemingly causes many viewers to switch off. Between the three acts - Vasumitra, Samaria and Sonata - it’s Samaria that provides all the portentive goods which help to gear up the strength of themes explored. How far Yeo-jin and her Father are set apart and built up again is one for the individual to fathom… how much emphasis you consider to be placed on the castigation of their choices will either leave you feeling refreshed or flat out numb. Admittedly the redemptive qualities are bereftly hollowed out to a sticking point and Sonata may be a hard sell, but anything cosier would have surely surrendered the power that the film desires to hold and indeed does so for the full length.

“American Ninja” -
Some good cheesy 80’s moments here…but it’s very flat, sometimes very slow, and lacks bloodshed.
At least Steve James is in full cheese-mode though! His arrival at the end on the back of the jeep, firing the mounted machine gun, was wonderfully hysterical!

“Revenge of the Ninja” is more fun and delivers the bloody violence and “Avenging Force” is better Dudikoff.

“Proof of Life”
Another film unjustly slagged off.

it’s a very underrated thriller that very carefully mixes drama, thriller, action and mature melodrama.
A nice cast (with some very cool David Caruso support) do superb jobs, great location filming, well paced and with a very well written central triangle of characters.
Damn good stuff.