The Wild Angels

Roger Corman
1966

This Roger Corman exploitation biker picture has it's moments for sure, but doesn't add up to much more than some cheap shocks and cool fashions. Ostensibly made about, and with the participation of the Hell's Angels (a claim I find dubious), pretty boy Peter Fonda leads a mobile gang decked out with more Swastikas and Nazi imagery than you can "Heil" at. This profusion of visual rebellion leads to the picture's best line, when early on a cowering oil rig worker claims that he was "shooting guys wearing that stuff in the war." Fonda's performance is too shallow to really carry the picture (not so much his fault as it is the laconic writing's), but the colorfully played bit parts, bawdy women and bad dudes, spice up the picture. The highlight is a comrade's funeral that goes from somber to party in the blink of an eye as the revelers pose with the corpse, drink straight from the bottle, and rape the widow. There's no real rhyme or reason to Fonda's final impassioned stand other than to end the film, but "The Wild Angels" remains a generally entertaining cheapie.

Breaking News

Johnnie To
2004

I've yet to really understand what all the fuss is about Johnnie To. "Fulltime Killer" (2001) certainly had it's merits, but neither that film nor this one seems to achieve quite the same level of bravado that John Woo brought to the genre with his greatest efforts. This one pits cops against robbers in a media saturated battle, in which PR and up-to-the-minute sensationalist reporting are as important as clever getaway strategies and tactical procedures. This being Hong-Kong action there's some reliably cheesy conceits - in this case a pseudo romance brewing between the charismatic crook and the icy cop hell-bent on capturing him. With the criminals sequestered in a large apartment complex, the film's siege oriented plot provides plenty of opportunities for cool setpieces: security camera tricks, booby traps, and SWAT teams. The idea that media and public opinion can interfere with the process of carrying out justice is interesting, but unfortunatley To doesn't really do much with it once the action gets cooking. There's an undeniable amount of charm and refreshing quality to To's somewhat modestly budgeted films. I couldn't imagine a comparable picture being made in the states without millions more dollars pumped into over-the-top CGI infused sequences and pricey Hollywood stars.

Simon of the Desert

Luis Bunuel
1965

At 45 minutes of running time I wasn't sure if this Mexican Bunuel picture was made for television, or with some sort of weird festival funding. Amusingly, it turns out that "Simon of the Desert" was envisioned as a feature, but truncated simply because the producer ran out of money. While Bunuel didn't get the opportunity to complete his vision, the film's still got plenty of signature elements for fans of the surrealist director to sink their teeth into. Loosely inspired by the real St. Simeon, Simon is a holy ascetic who eats nothing but lettuce and contemplates God atop a pillar. Bunuel's sense of satire is apparent right from the get-go as we open on the filthy rag-clad Simon seated atop a new, ornate pillar, donated by a wealthy benefactor. Some absurdist moments with the clergy and a dwarf with a predilection for bestiality are pretty good, but the real icing on this cake is Silvia Pinal as temptress Satan. Simon's seemingly indomitable faith is put to the test by this buxom she-devil in kinky lingerie. While the picture's ending may not have been what was originally intended, the idea of simple Simon suffering a hedonistic NYC dance party in modern garb is a fitting image of the purgatory he dreads.

Suicide Club

Sion Sono
Second Viewing

This may have been the very first J-horror film I'd seen before the glut, and I always remembered it as being excellent. A return proves the picture to be just as good as memory serves, making it easily the best non-Kiyoshi Kurosawa J-horror picture I've seen. All the genre hallmarks are here: tone and atmosphere over outright scares, the dehumanizing and alienating effects of modern technology, and the sense that no character is safe or in control. However, the opening mass suicide via oncoming train adds plenty of splatter, and the rolled up skin wheels left at the crime scenes lend a bit of traditional gross-out as well. I had no recollection of the masterfully strange and eerie ending, or the wacky musical number by the flamboyant ne'er do well receiving credit for the so called "Suicide Club." Ryo Ishibashi (as detective Kuroda here) puts in a performance that is remarkably deep and nuanced for a genre role, lending credibility and real tragedy to the fantastic events. This one comes highly recommended.

Treeless Mountain

So Yong Kim
2008

After the first half of "Treeless Mountain" I began to cynically wonder how many more beautifully shot festival darlings with brilliant non-actor performances I could handle. Thankfully through it's unraveling, this one proves that it's more than a pretty face with some complex psychology and a heartstring-tugging depiction of adolescence in upheaval. The relocation of sisters Jin and Bin to their alcoholic aunt's house is handled with a great degree of sophistication - Auntie is no monster, but by no means a positive a parental figure, yet when the girls are once again relocated (this time to their grandparents' farm) they sob just as hard as when their mother abandoned them. Kim's direction of children is a treat, and she deserves credit for the most nonchalant inclusion of a child with downs syndrome I've ever seen in a film. Beautiful cinematography and lots of neat slice-o-life elements (toasting grasshoppers for after school snacks, the sights and smells of a fish market, Grandma's agrarian routine) round out a great picture by a promising director.

Tokyo Gore Police

Yoshihiro Nishimura
2008

A pretty decent gonzo Japanese flick that views like a manga and is not want for bizarre setpieces or creative visual effects. The Tokyo police force has been privatized and is defending polite society from a group of dissidents known as "Engineers," who have the reliably bizarre ability to turn their wounds and mutilations into bio-mechanical weapons. Based on the sheer amount of visual effects it's inevitable that not every setpiece is going to be a winner - scene after scene of severed limbs with watery red arterial spray gets old quick. Yet there are definitely some memorable moments as well - particularly the mutant fetish club in which one of the strippers is half woman-half-snail, a battle scene in which a woman's lower half turns into a fierce set of reptilian jaws, and a fight involving a quadruple amputee in bondage gear where all limbs have been outfitted with swords. The production values definitely waver due to the film's ambitions, but overall "Tokyo Gore Police" is a worthwhile viewing experience for any fan of practical visual effects.

JCVD

Mabrouk El Mechri
2008

"The Muscles From Brussels" participates in this self-reflexive quasi-comeback. Director El Mechri puts a playful spin on the notion of image and celebrity as the over-the-hill action-star essentially plays himself, winding up in a hostage situation straight from one of his films. For all the comic jabs at Van Damme's ego and his general adoration as a Belgian national treasure, the picture maintains a deep-seated serious streak. Van Damme is old and tired, lacking the money to pay his lawyer in an ongoing custody battle with one of his ex-wives. Most interesting is a lengthy monologue in which he directly addresses the camera and speaks of his real-life drug problems, marital issues, and waning celebrity. Despite Van Damme's excellently raw performance and it's clever intellectual merits "JCVD" is slightly marred by lousy cinematography. I'm sure El Mechri would argue that the dark, overly color-treated visuals mirror the cheap straight-to-VHS actioners Jean-Claude is known for, but the muddy greens and browns complemented by high contrast lighting doesn't do the picture any favors.

Howl's Moving Castle

Hayao Miyazaki
2004

I never caught this one in the theater because the preview made it look nearly identical to Miyazaki's prior "Spirited Away" (2001). Upon viewing this seems to be mostly true, but surprisingly the similarity does little to dampen one's enjoyment of the expectedly gorgeous animation and delightful story. Frumpy milliner Sofi is transformed from elegant young lady to withered hag thanks to a witch's curse, she soon finds herself in cahoots with Howl, a capricious man-child magician, and his entourage trucking around in the eponymous castle. Besides the stunning visuals the film's greatest strength is it's disinterest in over-explaining (or even explaining, in some cases) the unfolding events. Too much analysis would rob the picture of it's sense of complete unpredictability as Miyazki moves from lysergic setpiece to setpiece. Unfortunately I saw this one dubbed in English. I say unfortunately because Billy Crystal's voicing of Calcifer the fire demon becomes a touch grating after a while.

Obsessed

Steve Shill
2009

If you're willing to accept a few key suspensions of disbelief, Steve Shill's "Obsessed" could make for a tight little thriller. I for one was not. Idris Elba and Beyonce enjoy marital bliss in a new home bought with Elba's hefty salary (he works in investments), until nutty temp Ali Larter begins mucking up the works with her psychotic infatuation with La Knowles's husband. It's the toothless PG-13 "Fatal Attraction" (1987), avoiding the sticky (read satisfyingly complex) issue of male infidelity, and instead burying it's head in stylish camera moves, and ultra modern production design. Elba and Larter put in solid performances, the former a believable cocksure executive and the latter a hot mess of bonkers. Unfortunately there's little else here to enjoy besides eye candy. This reviewer noticed halfway through that Beyonce's not much of an actress despite her strong screen presence, and the supporting characters are straight from central casting (a homo secretary, boozy boss, and fucking Jerry O'Connell as the classic dickhead office-buddy. The script tries hard to hedge it's bets on difficult-to-swallow plot points, but the inability of Elba to come clean to his wife, the inability of Beyonce to calm down and trust her husband, and the initially legitimate but quickly ludicrous fear that Larter could legally harm Elba through lying becomes much to much. Throw in a weak girlfight finale and a weaker detective character, and you've got a flick so safe you could feed it to your infant.

Tokyo Sonata

Kiyoshi Kurosawa
2008

After earning a reputation as one of J-Horror's top directors with a steady output of pictures ranging from fair to excellent (most notably "Cure" (1997) and "Pulse" (2001)), Kurosawa blew my mind with the less genre-oriented but no less fantastic "Bright Future" in 2003. Though he would return to horror, "Bright Future" was a promising example of what Kurosawa could do outside generic confines. "Tokyo Sonata" is the most straightforward drama the director has made since his rise in popularity, and despite the change in subject matter, it's all Kurosawa. The Sasaki family is an apple with a rotten core. Patriarch Ryuhei avoids telling his family that he's recently lost his job, housewife Megumi coasts through her days on loveless autopilot, eldest son Takashi works crap jobs and looks for an out, while Kenji, the innocent youngest, simply tries to navigate an oppressive home/school atmosphere. The family's inevitable disintegration is monitored with a combined tone of sincere honesty and wink-and-smile irony. This duality is separated and expressed on a character by character basis: Ryuhei experiences an increasingly failed city with heaps of humiliation and comic injustices thrown his way. Unfortunately the inevitable outbursts caused by Ryuhei's suppressed rage makes him a far less sympathetic or even understandable character than Kurosawa would like, inevitably leading to a less appetizing redemption. Megumi and Takashi suffer society's decline with a profound melancholy. Takashi makes the alien proposal of joining the American military, and Megumi proves to be an all too-willing hostage for a knife wielding home invader. Kurosawa's trademark style of filming shocking or violent scenes with minimal cuts and a distant camera remains intact, as does his talent for entropic storytelling, but "Tokyo Sonata" remains rather rough around the edges. At times the dark humor seems to dip uncomfortably into sadism, yet there are plenty of other instances where Kurosawa doesn't go nearly far enough, leaving the viewer with an end that seems hasty and incomplete. The picture is a lesson in maturity for an already established director - I'd love to see what he's doing three pictures from now.

Pitfall

Hiroshi Teshigahara
1962

This is my least favorite of the Teshigahara films released by Criterion, but that's not much of a statement considering all three (I'm not counting the Antonio Gaudi doc) are top notch examples of Japanese avant-garde cinema, high on psychodrama and alienation. "Pitfall" follows an unemployed migrant miner both in life and the afterlife when his likeness to a local union leader causes his accidental(?) murder. Thrown into the mix are the aforementioned union leader and his rival, a woman selling candy in a ghost town, a white-gloved moped-riding assassin, and the miner's son who bears witness to it all. The film is nothing if not strange, with the world of ghosts existing freely alongside the living, and a near-martian landscape of slag heaps, sumps, and abandoned houses providing a stage for the drama. On the surface the events seem horribly grim with terrible accidents and twists of fate befalling decent folk, but while it's clear that Teshigaraha's is a Godless world there's also a subtly amusing element of capriciousness in the proceedings - dark humor for sure, but humor nonetheless. The sharp photography and minimalist score are also strongly reminiscent of Maya Deren's "Meshes of the Afternoon" (1942), with a similarity in style and tone that is quite striking. My favorite of the three Teshigahara films I've seen to date remains "Woman in the Dunes" (1964).

The Caine Mutiny

Edward Dmytryk
1954

This naval drama, complete with courtroom finale, seems to have paved the road for "A Few Good Men" (1992). Seen through the eyes of corn-pone all American Robert Francis, the good ship Caine is a rustbucket mine-sweeper, lose on naval decorum and high on mediocre complacency. All that changes when Commander Humphrey Bogart takes charge: soon sloppy shirt-tails and crooked hats don't look so bad in light of the Captain's compulsive obsession with keeping things "by the book," a cover for his dangerous predilection for incompetent leadership. You've seen Bogey as the bad guy, tough guy, and hero, but this depiction of a mentally unsound individual crushed by responsibility is unique in it's pathetic pathos. Like Francis, the cast sports a few other dull honkies, but Shaggy-Dog Fred MacMurray adds a little color with his monotone cynicism, and it's always a pleasure to watch Lee Marvin no matter how small the role. Jose Ferrer's drunken belligerence after the bittersweet verdict is a treat in and of itself, but the reasoning behind his anger and logic seem terribly misplaced - a grand gesture that the script could not back up. It would have been much more satisfying to seem him take it outside with MacMurray in a cathartic show of fisticuffs.

Hunger

Steve McQueen
2008

Amusingly named first-time director Steve McQueen's arthouse darling has garnered plenty of critical acclaim for it's viscerally poetic treatment of historical drama, and it's unapologetic fascination with corporeal degradation. "Hunger" keens it's electronic eye on an early 80's hunger strike by IRA prisoners. Focusing on leader Bobby Sands the picture first illustrates the prisoner's efforts to be recognized as combatants through fecal disobedience and then through the self negation of willful starvation. For all it's stark visual horror/beauty, and deft human touches (a shaken prison guard smoking uneasily in light snowfall) there's not enough credible recognition that the tribulations within the Maze Prison's walls are connected to the IRA's greater struggle, the sort of dismissal Maggie Thatcher had been pushing all along. McQueen does wonders with space and light, but his characterization of Sands is by turns overly pat or overly opaque. It's a shame that when we look into the dying man's eyes we're deprived of the image's fascinating mystery and imposed upon with cliched childhood flashback and longing. I am quite curious as to how lead actor Michael Fassbender (assuming it's him and not a double) achieved his ghoulish state of skeletal decline - unlike the ghastly bedsores which can easily be attributed to talented makeup, the physical lack on display is difficult to dismiss as smoke and mirrors.