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Shanghai Knights (2003)
If you liked the first...
A few minor spoilers follow.
The thing with movies like SHANGHAI NOON is that they're difficult to critique. Really, there's only one question you can ask: is it a good one?
Yup. Even though many of the bits are recycled, even though it has its share of rough patches, even though the producers inexplicably decided to include a Short Round-esque kid into the equation (well, he's more of an Artful Dodger, really,) it all tips over to the plus side. If you liked the first one, you'll like this one.
The plot is.what the Hell do you care what the plot is? Jackie and Owen kick ass in England (mostly Jackie, natch.) End plot summary.
Jackie's fight scenes are some of the best he's had in YEARS. You can't explain a Jackie Chan fight sequence, you just have to watch it, and here they're every bit as energetic, ridiculous, and slapstick as any of his past glories. They do, however, have the added dimension of someone (whether it was the producers or Jackie, I don't know) deciding to just pull out all the stops and go ahead and let Jackie be Buster Keaton. There's a silent film feel to many of the kinetic sequences here (none more so than a Keystone Cops-esque fight with a handful of cops and a revolving door.) I can't honestly think of a more seamless blend of Jackie style stunts and silent era slapstick (check the fight scene in the marketplace for reference: straight outta Keaton.) A blatant reference to Harold Lloyd in the Big Ben sequence at the end doesn't hurt, either.
Owen Wilson still plays Owen Wilson, just snottier. There's an speech he gives a street urchin that borders on the outright cruel, but it works just because Wilson's such a willing doofus. The bad guy, played by Adian Gillen, looks like the bastard child of Alec Baldwin and Gary Oldman, and he plays it with the appropriate moustache-twirling menace. The film gleefully ignores feasibility, or even historical accuracy, although it dips into history more than a few times.
Flaws? Yes. Many glaring. Why, why, why do filmmakers feel the need to insert a wisecracking kid into a perfectly good buddy film? And for God sakes, I know we're in England, but did the wisecracking kid have to be a cockney street urchin by the name of Charles Chaplin? (And yes, that means exactly what you think it does, right down to the kid sporting a little fake moustache.) The music is jarring and obvious, and underscores with gigantic capital letters what everyone with a pulse was picking up on anyway. There's a pillow fight in the middle that's just wrong. I can't break it down, but it just plain feels wrong. It's also too long, but that's neither here nor there.
Many of the geek persuasion will undoubtedly pick up on the fact that many of these stunts have been done before, as well (they even use the revolving fireplace gimmick from RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.or was it THE LAST CRUSADE?) But like those same three chords that bands have been using for about half a century, they still work: if the repetition bugs you, you're thinking too much. That said, some of the repeats are in the bloopers (some of which simply HAVE to be staged.) Remember Chris Tucker's cell phone going off in the RUSH HOUR II outtakes? It's Jackie's turn this time. Remember how Chris Tucker called him Jackie in one flubbed scene? Now Owen Wilson gives it a shot. Certainly, these kinds of things must happen in the process of making the film, but do you have to stick 'em in the blooper reel AGAIN?
None of this drags too much, however, and frankly, if you're not willing to get in the spirit of the proceedings, you shouldn't have bothered seeing the film in the first place. SHANGHAI NOON ain't gonna redefine cinema, but it's a good one of its kind.
Yôkai hantâ: Hiruko (1991)
A Somewhat Atypical Film For Tsukamoto
Unlike every other Tsukamoto film I've been able to hunt down (the two TETSUOs, GEMINI, and ROD BOY,) this film seems to be nothing more than a silly popcorn film. Nothing wrong with that, certainly, although it does raise some interesting questions about Tsukamoto's style as a director. The sped up POV running towards a character thing he did in both TETSUOs, for example, looks like an EVIL DEAD rip off here, despite the device having a completely different effect in the Tetsuo films.
This feels less like a Tsukamoto work than anything else he's done, even the slowly paced art film GEMINI. Beyond that, it's basically a straight horror flick: characters find themselves in a bad situation, and spend the entire film's running time trying to get out of it and/or fix it. The elements aren't original by any stretch of the imagination (there's even a crusty, crazy old man who knows more than he's telling,) but Tsukamoto's handling of them still feels new. When someone is attacked by a goblin, the victim flashes to a peaceful, serene, but nonetheless threatening dreamworld, which (as we discover) more often than not leads to suicide.
Much, much fluffier than anything else the man's done, and curious for his fans, although the uninitiated will just see a straight horror flick, albeit one better done than most. Fun stuff.
Pâfekuto burû (1997)
Methinks people are easily impressed...
...because it's anime. I admit the middle is fascinating, but even that goes away once it's all "explained," or rather, not explained at all. Not thought-provoking type no explanation, but plot-hole type no explanation. (SPOILERS: why can the double Mina fly? If it was just another person, how did that happen? Why did the real Mina see herself, and not the imposter? All this makes the viewer think there's more going on here than there really is. The ultimate resolution is far too pat to allow ambiguity to be an excuse. This isn't artistic license, this is just a bad script. END SPOILERS.) The ending is generic, and the only reason one might not see it coming a mile away, is because the middle is so distracting that the viewer is led to believe there is more going on than there actually is. The film as a whole is a decent enough time, but I think that a lot of people are so used to watching Anime with absolutely wretched scripts (METROPOLIS, etc.) that when one comes by that's simply "not too bad," it blows them away. Look at it this way: if this were a live action film, it would be made for TV, or a failed Hollywood project that typically gets dumped in February.
Ghost Ship (2002)
Not absolutely horrible, but not great, either...
Much as I hate to pre-judge something, from the moment I saw the poster, I thought of GHOST SHIP as a pile of crap. Is that fair? No. Is it understandable? Hell, yes. Hollywood horror films have been either not very good to ass-kickingly Gawdawful for quite a while now, and this showed no signs of bucking the trend. Add to that the fact that director Steve Beck's only other film was THIR13EN GHOSTS, and, well...what would YOU think? So the film starts, and... ...hey. The opening's not half bad. Chock full of clichés, certainly, but not without a sense of sophistication. The setting is a luxury cruise liner sometime in the past (turns out it's in the early 60s.) Beck allows the scene to flow, and you actually get a sense of what it might be like on the ship until THWACK, the horrible thing we all knew was gonna happen happens. And, bizarrely enough, it's actually unsettling. And gory as all Hell, of course. But unlike pretty much every other recent horror film, it's handled with some sense of what to show and what not to show. There's still loads of blood, but it's not excessive. Just disturbing.
Now, I'm not gonna give you a blow by blow of the film's narrative, but one thing GHOST SHIP deserves credit for is its attempt to actually tell a story. This is not simply a situation film, where the characters find themselves in a tight spot and spend all 5 reels getting killed while trying to get out of it. No, there's actually something going on under the hood. It ends up getting fumbled, but the fact that they tried it at all raises eyebrows.
In a nutshell: a Coast Guard pilot alerts our intrepid crew that there is a big ass ship, just floating out there in international waters, waiting to be claimed. Loads of cash for the salvage crew that can snag it. They get there, it turns out to be a legendary ghost ship. They get on board, and of course, things are not what they seem. Although the ship has been missing for four decades, they find a digital watch. Then they find some bodies less than a month old. Julianna Marguiles starts talking to a little girl who seems to appear only for her. And they find gold. Turns out there's more to the situation as a whole than we first believe...
Unfortunately, director Beck is not a storyteller. The clues are dropped, the situation is set up, but all is ultimately explained in a hasty, extended flashback that seems more concerned with tying up loose ends than with adding anything to the movie. Actually, the flashback itself isn't half bad, except for the ridiculously stupid faux-rock song they glued on top of it. Considering the fact that what we're seeing happened forty years ago on a luxury liner, the last thing I want to hear is some suburban poser eunuch screaming over regurgitated corporate "rock."
The resolution to all this is really stupid. Poorly conceived, poorly handled. There have been enough holes in the narrative and situations at this point that this isn't surprising (and wow, I could've sworn gold was a lot heavier than it appears to be here.) It is, however, disheartening, since there are a small handful of genuinely well-done sequences. The opening, as mentioned above, as well as a jump out at you scare involving the little girl that is actually, well, scary. And there is a scene of spirits escaping that is, dare I say it, beautiful.
So, ultimately, is GHOST SHIP good? No. Whenever the crew has to interact with itself, which is quite a bit during the sluggish middle third, it's pure pain. Generic pain, at that. Note to future filmmakers: if you're going to populate your movie with stock characters, don't try to get them to carry the story. They can't. Also, too much of what is good-to-OK about this is lifted from THE SHINING, ALIEN, and other stuff you've seen. Not to mention all but one of the character deaths are anti-climactic, seemingly unimportant. Isn't this what's supposed to be the scary part, the fear of death thing? Hell, one even happens off camera. The one death that IS somewhat unsettling is too contrived to be impressive.
But, all in all, I can't say that there weren't a few unexpected moments of creepiness, even if they were too few and way too far between. It's just a baby step away from the pile of suck out there, but a step is a step. GHOST SHIP isn't very good, but it does, in some small way, give me hope.
Demons of the Mind (1972)
An art film masquerading as a Hammer period piece
One of the previous reviews said that this film was for Hammer
completists, and that others should stay away. Frankly, I couldn't disagree
more, although if you're looking for a simple, straightforward, unambiguous
shocker, that's not what you'll get here. No, this will probably not satisfy anyone looking for a simple creep out, but for those who think that Horror
can produce some genuine examples of serious, provocative filmmaking,
this one is a must. Yes, the storyline is fractured, but only to mirror the
insanity going on in possibly every participant of the plot. The basic story has been elucidated elsewhere: father thinks he has passed his insanity to
his children, and holds them prisoner, trying to "cure" them. Yet, murders
continue. What I found so satisfying about this film is it's unblinking
realism (although, admittedly, the idea is fanciful, if real people were
somehow put in this situation, I have no idea that this is exactly how they
would act.) Although sensational things happen, they're handled evenly
and soberly: the act is shocking enough to stand on its own. Add to this
some genuinely disturbing moments: the "medicinal" bleeding, the
reenactment of the mother's suicide (don't worry, that's not a spoiler,) and
the general sense of society and the world tilting dangerously on its axis.
Reminded me of Mario Bava's outstanding "Lisa And The Devil," and the
brainy gothic trappings of such films as "The Wicker Man" and the original
"Haunting." May well fly over the heads of casual horror buffs, but an
outstanding example of what can happen when a skilled director trusts his
audience and treats his material with great respect. Out-of-left-field good.
The Powerpuff Girls Movie (2002)
Kids will love it, but it's REALLY for grownups...
Minor, creampuff spoilers:
Powerpuff Girls: The Movie
where to begin? Well, I'm a fan, so I was admittedly pretty primed to see this, and seeing what they did with the geek reference fest of `Meet The Beat Alls,' it's anyone's guess what kind of in joke Hell McCracken and Co. have cooked up for us
Speaking of in jokes, you could watch the thing for those alone (two characters talk entirely in Van Halen references, Mojo's first big scene reminds me of GHOST DOG and
God help us
there's even a quick scene that I swear they took from TETSUO II: THE BODY HAMMER.) All of which is well and good, but how does the thing hang together?
The film actually drug a bit for me in the first reel or so, although `drug' in this context is extremely relative (I love slow, formalist work, but in a Powerpuff Girls movie, even a fairly brisk pace for the exposition seems a bit slow.) Fortunately, that doesn't last long, although the film doesn't truly kick into high gear until Mojo Jojo enacts his evil plan
and when that happens, all bets are off. There are moments here that are so lightning fast that I was reminded of the Pokemon epilepsy syndrome: watching it unprepared in a theatre with a big screen might give some a serious headache. For the rest of us, this is probably the most energetic, spastic, and generally high octane thing that American animation has produced. So much so, in fact, that when the film takes a bit of a breather (the girls strand themselves on an asteroid
don't ask) it takes the duration of the scene for the ringing in your head to go away.
So, um
is it any GOOD? Yeah. Very. I was actually reminded of the last 20 minutes of SHAOLIN SOCCER, in that sheer, unadulterated, uncut kickass simply flew from the screen in seemingly random (but very, very energetic) directions. The animation isn't particularly more detailed or deeper than the show, but the visual concepts, as well as the flow of the action, are considerably more ambitious (the `Tag' sequence, wherein Blossom does that Tetsuo run-on-the-side-of-the-building thing, among others, is as kinetic as anything I've witnessed in my 33 years on this planet.) Dear God.
Throw a big borderline Armageddon (the actual thing, not the movie) ending on top of this, and
well
I was EXHAUSTED. It seems odd in the extreme to be emotionally drained by something this tongue in cheek, but I was seriously as dazed after PPG: THE MOVIE as I was after the first time I saw AKIRA. I wouldn't draw too many conceptual parallels between the two works (in fact, I wouldn't draw any at all,) but the feeling of having pulled an entire, catacalysmic universe into your skull via your eyeballs is the same.
Which leads me to: this thing way well scare the living snot out of younger kids. Mojo looks downright unsettling in the last 20 minutes, and the sheer, hardcore intensity of the goings on might be too much for some kids under the age of, I dunno, eight (this is a guess: I have no kids I know well enough to give a real estimate.) There's nothing OBJECTIONABLE in it, but the overall whirlwind may get the panic juices flowing in the wee ones. And an extended crying sequence, courtesy of the freakishly high-pitched Bubbles, might not help matters either (I swear, I thought I heard some digital feedback emanating from the speakers during one wail.)
So
use your judgment as to whether or not to take the kids (although really, it's only the YOUNG young ones I'd be concerned about,) but, IMHO, all good geeks need to see this.
Minority Report (2002)
BIG disappointment...
Okay, "Minority Report." Everyone seems to think this is utterly brilliant, and I can kind of see why: it's certainly the riskiest film Spielberg has made in, well, ever. The visuals are amazingly cool, and the plot is rock solid. So it's a great movie, right?
Good God, no. It's a visually impressive, admittedly challenging motion picture, and is certainly grittier than anything else coming out of Hollywoodland. But it's got some pacing issues, it glosses over subtext that needs more breathing room, and...well...
Let me just say this flat out: there is a chunk in the middle of the movie (I'd guess it's about 30 minutes or so) that was so jarring, hamfisted, incongruous, and thoroughly irritating that I nearly walked out (no mean feat, since I'm paid to watch the whole thing for flaws in the film stock.) I can't really elucidate without some minor spoilers, so consider yourself warned.
The first 30 minutes or so are fantastic, and I was really a little giddy with the prospect of seeing a fully realized, big-budget Sci-Fi mind f*ck. The ideas come fast and thick, the characters may be somewhat clichéd, but not annoyingly so. The film LOOKS great, and the idea is fascinating: why is John Anderton going to kill a man he doesn't even know? Solid, serious, great stuff.
Then the chase sequence kicks in. It's actually a great chase sequence as far as these things go, but, thematically and tonally, this is where Spielberg not only started to lose me, but started to actively annoy me.
It starts, as these things so often do, with vomit. In order to create a distraction to get away from the cops around him, Anderton hits one in the neck with a stun gun, causing the poor guy to vomit. And vomit he does: copiously. Twice. A WHOLE lot of vomit. It's a very quick scene (we're talking less than two seconds,) but it's so VIVID it's jarring. It wasn't until a few seconds after that something occurred to me: was, um...was that supposed to be FUNNY?
I pushed the idea away as ridiculous, but the next 30 to 45 minutes forced me to reconsider. Beginning with the projectile hurl, Spielberg tries what looks to me to be a blend of serious, disturbing, and, er, slapstick. It fails. Spectacularly. At one point we're in a second rate "Blade Runner," with blatantly gratuitous art design (who watches TV on a bedsheet on the wall? Especially in the middle of a fly-by-night operating room?) Why is there a hideously ugly Nazi-esque female nurse humming idiotic tunes and grabbing Tom Cruise's butt? Why do we need to see some guy graphically clear what looks to be a pound and a half of snot from his nose? Why would Spielberg take what was a taut, fascinating action/Sci-Fi blend and stick in a scene of a blinded Tom Cruise gagging on spoiled food, then washing it down with spoiled milk? You can almost hear the trumpet going "wah-wah-wah-waaaaahhh." And what's with making us think that the guy who is operating on Cruise is gong to exact some revenge on him, just to have the whole thing vanish completely 30 seconds later, never to return?
And all this happens after a long, long scene with an old woman tending her plants in a hothouse that has to be the single most hamfisted thing I've seen outside of MST3K. It's a necessary scene, thematically: enormous amounts of information are imparted by a character I'd call "Mrs. Exposition." At first I thought she was simply a horrible actress, but then...she KISSES him. Full on the mouth. It is neither explained, justified, humorous, daring, or anything else coherent I can attribute to it. When she kissed him, I stopped thinking she was a horrible actress: no, her character is just exaggeratedly, needlessly, self-consciously bizarre.
Now, don't get me wrong: weird can quite often be good (I'm an Alexandro Jodorowsky fan, for God sakes.) But this is rootless cinematic masturbation, Spielberg "taking chances" by indiscriminately going outside the realm of what he's good at. Mindless, directionless energy generally doesn't work if your movie's not called "Tetsuo."
As if all of the above weren't off putting enough, at a certain point (right after Cruise saves one of his eyes from rolling away...don't ask) all this "humor" just STOPS. Cold. Suddenly, we're back to the first movie, and if it weren't for the fact that some changes that happened to the character are still present, we might be forgiven for thinking someone at Dreamworks accidentally put some reels from some other film in the cans. At this point, things continue where they left off: plot intricacies winding around each other, and what's with that thing about Anderton killing someone? Y'know, the movie we were so immersed in before?
This is where the pacing and subtext start to dissolve. While the plot has not wrapped itself up yet, things feel like they should end long before they actually do (shades of AI, anyone?) The moral and political implications of the Precrime system are glossed over and all but discarded in favor of making the film a fairly pedestrian, twisty murder mystery (we sat through nearly three hours for that?) It's a long run for a short slide, and the generic God-Is-In-His-Heaven-And-All-Is-Well ending is about the only place it can really go. Yippee. Like we needed another one of these.
Now, I should mention that many of the people present in the theatre loved this. The LOOK of the film is great, and it does have the otherworldly feel that some geeks could immerse themselves in, irregardless of plot (and believe me, I'd have to disregard the plot to lose myself in this.) I'm sure many will disagree with me. Vehemently. I don't really care. I was seriously disappointed, and what's worse, in some ways I was disappointed in EXACTLY the was I afraid I might be. Self-conscious weirdness is not daring or challenging, and I can't help but think that, if Hollywood's output wasn't so uniformly pathetic, people would see through this kind of thing with greater frequency.
The Scorpion King (2002)
Decent big dumb movie where everything goes boom
A bit more slapstick than I might have thought, but other than that, The Scorpion King is pretty much what you think it is. The question is not whether it is "good" in the movie geek sense (read: no. Of course not.) But is it a good popcorn flick? Yup. The Rock says all the right words in the correct order. Actualy, I kinda like him, although I can't really say why. The middle-eastern guy from "True Lies" is the cornball sidekick...I like this actor, but the character he was given to play is annoying. The bad guy is suitably bad, the heroine provides the requisite hootage. If this seems a little generic, well, it is...but that's the point. The film has the necessary momentum that distinguishes a good movie like this from a bad one. It's fun. All the violence is A Team style: everyone dies, no one bleeds. Exactly what you think it is, and well done at that.
Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation 1998 (1998)
If you're gonna cross the line, you should probably have a reason to do it.
Wow. Now I know what it must be like to work at an X-rated theater. Sorta titillating at first, then vaguely annoying, then that which you always thought you'd wanna see becomes anthema to your existence. Sick and Twisted, yes. I wasn't prepared for banal. This has to be the limpest, most toothless "outrageous" thing I've ever made myself sit through. Lines are crossed, no doubt, and if you want to see just how far into disgusting things can go, you might as well see this. Just don't expect anything else. Outrage works when there's a reason to be outrageous. "South Park" is funny because there's a trace of childish innocence to contrast with the obscenity. This makes no such pretension.
This strikes me as what the writers of "Full House" might come up with if they decided to be "sick." Yes, it's that putrid. Come on guys: if you're gonna fly the flag of disgust and outrage as entertainment, give us a reason to back you up. Note: it's not ALL a wash, of course. "Beyond Grandpa" is brilliant, a piece whos title escapes me that involves a cat and a bird is great, and, of course, "The Spirit Of Christmas,"
Happiness (1998)
More disturbing than it probably should be
Rather than tripping out superlatives, I'd just have to say that this movie affected me in ways I didn't think movies could affect me anymore (I consider myself pretty jaded.) Like a sitcom gone hideously wrong, apparently normal characters take exceedingly odd twists and turns, kind of like "Naked," but much lighter.
Lighter, but as a result, infinitely more distressing. "Naked" could be dealt with on the level of "This is just a depressing movie." "Happiness" gives you no such out...putting mainstream people like Louise Lasser and Jon Lovitz in was a masterstroke: it just drives home how utterly sick the situations are. One moment you're watching "Mary Hartman" in a nice scene then...wham...pedophila.
The most amazing thing about this movie, for me anyway, was the director's refusal to condemn the pedophile in question (although it would take some ridiculously off track reasoning to think the film approves of him in any way, shape, or form.) Solndz lets you think what you want, which takes cojones of steel. Brilliant, but very, very, VERY warped.
Velvet Goldmine (1998)
With a bit more planning, could have been amazing...
Hmm. Admittedly, I'm a hard sell on this. As a long time Eno/Roxy Music/T Rex/Bowie/Iggy geek, this is my turf: better watch yourself, guys.
My problem with this isn't so much that they took liberties with the people the characters are so blatantly based on: it's that there was no reason to. Artistic license might dictate some liberties, but when the liberties taken go ABSOLUTELY NOWHERE WHATSOEVER, it's highly frustrating.
It doesn't help that the film begins with an orgy of in jokes: the "Play at maximum volume" Ziggy reference, the young kid finding the greenish eye during a schoolyard fight (Bowie's pupil was paralyzed during just such a scene,) etc. Great fun, but sets you up for a ride that just doesn't happen. Cliches galore follow (the disgusted parents, drugs, sex, etc.) I know the period, artists, and music this is based on like the back of my hand: therefore, I should not be saying "I have no idea what's going on" about halfway through the film.
No focus, no point, no follow-through. What's up with Jack Fairy? Why not just make him Brian Eno, like they did with the rest of the characters? Why invent this convoluted Jarvis Cocker lookalike? And why does Kurt Wild start out as Iggy Pop and end up as Kurt Cobain? To show that it will happen again? I'm not buying it.
This film is the one thing it should absolutely not have been: tedious.