Three...Extremes (2005, d. Fruit Chan, Chanwook Park, Takashi Miike)

The horror anthology film has been a guilty pleasure genre for me ever since I first saw Night Gallery on TV one rainy Saturday afternoon as a kid of nine or so. There are many entries in the genre, but surprisingly few good ones--one would think that short films would be well suited to horror stories, as some of the best written horror is in short story form. No, the horror anthology film is more often like the album you buy because you liked the single?a few good moments swimming in a sea of mediocrity.

Given the growing popularity of "J-horror" and "Asian Extreme" films, this tripartite pairing of three of the hottest directors from those genres was inevitable. And although, Three...Extremes (Why the ellipsis? I have no idea) offers more good moments than mediocrity, it doesn't completely buck the trend. As with most films of this kind, it's a decidedly uneven affair. The producers, thankfully, didn't see fit to impose a silly narrative framework, but if there are thematic resonances between the three, they were lost on me.

Part of the problem is the order of the stories. The DVD (I've read the order is different here than in the theatrical release) starts with a bang: Fruit Chan's "Dumplings," and moves through "Cut," a Chanwook Park moral puzzler, to Miike's surprisingly sedate and dreamlike "Box." "Dumplings" is easily the strongest of the three and is spiked with a sense of wicked black humor missing from the others--I would have placed it last for maximum impact.

"Dumplings" seems at first to be a satire of women's willing enslavement to the beauty industry (not to mention men's part in the equation), but also engages themes of class conflict, traditionalism vs. modernity, female empowerment, and probably a whole host of other issues not readily apparent to this western viewer. The gorgeous Bai Ling stars as Mei, an ageless woman from northern China who has a secret folk cure for aging which she serves to wealthy clients as a filling in dumplings. I'm not going to tell you what it is, though it's not a surprise reveal--the audience and characters know what's going on from the get-go. Suffice to say it is extremely transgressive and positively stomach-churning. A wealthy former actress (Meme Tian) whose husband has lost interest comes to Mei's apartment cafe to take the cure, but balks a bit when she's confronted with the ingredients. There's no arguing with results, however, and soon she's demanding more potent stuff for radical results. That's basically it, but despite its brevity, the film succeeds on every level. As a horror film, it takes appropriate delight in shocking us the right way. Though there are impressive gore effects, the true shocks come from things only glimpsed, the hyper-real sound effects, and our knowledge of what's going on. It works as black comedy, too, thanks to the strong performances by the female leads--they seem to be having a good deal of fun with this disturbing material, and Tian's transformation from reluctant customer to willing accomplice is a blast to behold. It doesn't hurt that the package comes wrapped in the beautiful cinematography of Hong Kong ace Christopher Doyle, either. "Dumplings" is the real deal, and will linger uncomfortably in your mind long after it's over, the hallmark of any good horror fiction.

Would that the other two films were as strong. Though both are pretty good, they suffer a bit in comparison. As with all of his recent works, Chanwook Park's "Cut" delightedly puts its characters in untenable moral quandaries and confounds our expectations for the protagonists when they are forced to act. Nobody puts their characters through the emotional wringer like Park, and this segment is no exception. A popular director comes home one night to find home has been invaded by an insane former extra who has bound and gagged his pianist wife. The invader's demands are simple: he cannot believe that such an all-around nice guy like the director can have achieved wealth and popularity without sacrificing his humanity, so the director must murder an innocent child with his bare hands, or he will cut off the wife's fingers one by one, every ten minutes. It's a suitably horrifying premise, and Park works it well, building the tension expertly. Park has a philosopher's love of exploring moral "what ifs," and the elaborate machinations he cooks up for his field tests are wonderfully baroque (see also: Oldboy) That doesn't seem to be enough for him here, though, as he pulls a series of bizarre and incomprehensible twists. For example, early on in the invasion, the director's house is revealed to be a movie set exactly like the one on which the director is shooting as the story begins. This doesn't really figure into the plot at all, so I was forced to conclude that either Park was trying to make a point that I missed, or was engaging in theatricality for theatricality's sake. Ditto other reveals regarding the young victim and the wife. It's all extremely disorienting, but to what end? As with many of the recent Asian horror films, I was left wondering if all the misdirection and disorientation was in service of a larger point, or if it was just empty aestheticism (or worse, laziness) on the part of the filmmaker.

Miike's "Box" seems to continue the dream logic style of much of his recent work. It's almost as if he's decided he has gone as far down the "shock cinema" road as he can (I'd probably agree), and is now more interested in crafting an aesthetic that is at once symbolic and impenetrable--as I noted in my review of Gozu elsewhere on this blog, he's like Samuel Beckett filtered through pomo Japanese culture. There is a dreamlike (and, indeed, much of the action is in dreams and flashbacks) lyricism to this story of incest, jealousy, and murder, and there's more than one moment where I wondered if I had missed something along the way, but at its core, this is the most traditional story of the three, a fairly simple ghost story where the shocks come from the backstory as it is gradually revealed. It's well done, but Miike can do this kind of thing in his sleep (and, to judge by his prolific output, probably does), and it doesn't really offer anything in the way of a lasting effect. Placed at the beginning of the anthology, it might have been a nice mood-setting piece, but at the end, it leaves the viewer with that ambivalent feeling Internet message board posters express with the one syllable review: "Meh."

Still, the beauty of DVD is that we can play producer and shuffle the order if we want. I'll recommend Three...Extremes to genre fans for "Dumplings" (there's also the feature length version on the bonus disc), with a less enthusiastic recommendation for the other two films. "Dumplings," though...I can still hear that over-the-top crunching sound and it's creeping me out...
Tags: movies, cinema, films, reviews, asian+horror, film+criticism, DVD

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And Now For Something Completely Different
Now Playing: A Shameless Plug
I know the 12 or so people that visit this blog each year are looking for incisive film criticism, not music suggestions, but this is my space, so tough. In addition to my day job and pecking out movie reviews, my other passion is music, and today I'm here to shill on behalf of my most recent project.

Last night, we put the finishing touches on "Kush and His Blues Meet Funk Mediocre," the new CD from Kush Griffith. Unless you're a hardcore funk fan, you probably don't know the name, but I'll bet you've heard of some of the bands and artists Kush has played with: James Brown, Parliament/Funkadelic, Bootsy's Rubber Band, Motown Horns, Maceo Parker, Fred Wesley's Horny Horns, to name just a few. Name a seminal funk/R&B outfit from the 60's and 70's, and there's a pretty good chance Kush was connected to it.

Like many musicians from that period, Kush didn't make anywhere near the money he should have, and after developing some pretty serious health problems, he moved out here to Colorado about six years ago. Not a guy to feel sorry for himself, Kush, who's now blind and in a wheelchair, decided to put out as many of the many songs he's written as possible. My band at the time was lucky enough to connect with Kush through mutual friends, and we backed him up on a number of gigs and contributed in a fairly small way to his first album ("Blues & Rhythm Vol. 1," available from Dutch-based Funk to the Max Records.

The new album contains a wide variety of songs and styles, from straight blues to what I can only describe as the future of the funk. They're all tied together by Kush's unique voice and vision, and to a lesser degree by the music and production by myself and Neal "Real Deal" Landauer. Recorded on a shoestring budget at our held-together-by-duct-tape-and-prayers studio, there's a rawness to it that you won't find on, say, Pink's latest album (although I'm pretty sure that if you like that album, this won't be your cup of tea anyway). That's not to say it sounds like it was recorded on a casette tape in a garage. We got horns, congas, strings--pretty lush arrangements. I'm really proud of the way it turned out, and I can pretty much guarantee that if you're a fan of The Funk, you will be tapping your feet if not out of your chair dancing.

"Kush and His Blues Meet Funk Mediocre" will be available at the end of April, and you can preorder it from Kush's website, or drop me an email and I'll reserve a copy for you. It's selling for the low low price of $15, and unless it goes mega-platinum (hey, a guy can dream), I'm not making any money off of it. Kush will make a much-deserved nominal amount, but it's not really about that. It's about getting this music into the ears of the people that want it--a slightly easier chore these days thanks to the magic of the Interweb. If you love funk, blues, R & B; if you support independent music; if you're at all curious after reading this entry, give this album a try. You won't be disappointed.

Vaunted Vendetta: Valedictory or Villainous?
Now Playing: V for Vendetta (2006, d. James McTeigue)
OK, you may now officially revoke my comic book geek credentials. I have only skimmed Alan Moore’s V for Vendetta. Not for lack of interest; it was just one of those books that I missed when it came out, and when I had time and means, I never got around to reading it because I already knew all the major plot points. I will read it now that I’ve seen the movie…but enough. The mea culpa is basically to explain why I won’t be assessing the movie as a translation of the book.

Or will I? Much has been made in the press over Moore’s removal of his name from the film’s credits, but that’s a standard practice for Moore, and probably a good one given the cinematic crimes that have been perpetrated in his name (From Hell, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen). Yet James McTeigue’s—-and, despite the rumors that it was ghost directed by the Wachowski Brothers, I’m going to refer to it as his movie because his name is on the credits—-V for Vendetta does a better job at nailing the vibe of Moore’s dystopian visions than any of the previous attempts. Much of Moore’s work is dedicated to examining and subverting the concept of the superhero, and the script (credited to the Wachowskis) gets that. The film adopts the vocabulary of the superhero action flick for its own ends, and does it more or less successfully. McTeigue nails the tone (somewhere between arch seriousness and mordant parody) and look of a Moore-penned graphic novel, and doesn’t feel the need to dumb the story down for the audience.

Of course, V for Vendetta’s plot is rather simple compared to Moore’s later works. In the not-too-distant future, America has collapsed under the strain of disease, war, and economic disaster. Britain has once again assumed the mantle of superpower, but at the price of freedom. Dictator Adam Sutler (John Hurt doing a Big Brother to complement his turn as Winston Smith in 1984) and his five “fingers” (ministers who control different aspects of the government: propaganda, secret police, etc.) keep the country in a constant state of fear and repression. A lone vigilante in a Guy Fawkes mask, known only as V (Hugo Weaving, though we never see his face) is wreaking havoc by exploding buildings and murdering members of the government. When he rescues a young girl, Evey (Natalie Portman, doing a pretty decent English accent), from an assault by government-sanctioned thugs, she gradually becomes involved in his plot to bring down the government. V’s motive for the murders is gradually revealed through a dogged police inspector’s (Stephen Rea) investigation.

Not surprisingly, the film is a bit of a mishmash of ideas, some of which work better than others. The notion that words both spoken and written have power beyond their literal meaning is nicely played up throughout. More problematic is the idea that blowing up buildings is an appropriate form of social protest. When asked by Evey what is to be gained by blowing up Parliament, V answers (I’m paraphrasing) that the act represents a way of bringing an idea forcefully into the public consciousness. Part of me thinks that this is tired radical polemic that should have been discarded after the rads blew up the University of Wisconsin’s Sterling Hall back in 1970. On the other hand, relatively recent events have demonstrated the power such acts can have on the psyche of a nation. V is intended to be a bit of a cipher: we are supposed to be conflicted about the fact that we’re rooting for a murderous terrorist. The film (and, of course, the story on which it’s based) engages in a moral cop-out, though, by creating a cartoonishly fascist opponent for V. It’s easy to root for a vigilante that’s taking out the equivalent of the Third Reich; less so when the government bears a closer resemblance to the ones we have in the west today. The terrorist sees things in black and white; everyone else has to view things in shades of gray.

Moral queasiness aside, there’s a lot to recommend about V. The film has a great visual style, made bittersweet by the fact that it was the last film that DP Adrian Biddle completed before his untimely death last year. The script, as I noted above, is a cut above the average Hollywood claptrap and doesn’t feel the need to explain every single thing right away. We get a very solid turn by Portman, who’s always an appealing presence (well, as long as George Lucas isn’t directing) but has had difficulty finding parts that allow her to live up to the promise of her first screen role in Besson’s Leon. Weaving does great voice work, and is excellent physically, though it’s impossible to know how much of that was provided by James Purefoy, who was originally cast as V but fired after filming began. Rea, so droopy it seems his cheeks are on the verge of melting right off his face, is sympathetic and projects enough competence to be believable as the Chief Inspector. The rest of the largely British cast, including Stephen Fry as a closeted TV host and Hurt, who seems to be channeling Ian MacKellan’s Richard III, are quite good as well.

But the million-pound question remains. Is the setting of the film meant to be an allegory for present-day America? Obviously, the original story was written in Thatcherite England, so that can’t have been Moore’s original intent. Yet it’s eerily resonant for a contemporary American audience. Is this because of the prescience of the source material, or does the Wachowskis’ script cleverly tilt us in that direction? I suspect a little of both, but I’ll have to read the graphic novel to know for sure.

Et tu, Netflix?
Now Playing: The Throttling Controversy
Ever since the piss-poor selection at my local video stores (which had long since stopped being Mom-and-Pop operations; I was dealing with the twin monsters Blockbuster and Hollywood) finally drove me to try Netflix about two years ago, I have been singing its praises to anyone who’ll listen. There’s a local distribution center, and there’s hardly ever more than a day’s wait between arrivals. The selection is excellent; they have had every title I’ve ever searched, with very few exceptions: foreign discs without official US releases (understandable), and Lukas Moodysson’s 2gether (I don’t get this, as I’ve seen the disc in Best Buy, but one out of thousands ain’t bad). Netflix’ policy of stocking discs that are uncensored and presented in widescreen set them apart from the lowest-common-Christian- right-denominator policies of Blockbuster, Wal-Mart, and others. Sure, I’ve had to wait for popular new releases, but these generally aren’t the ones at the top of my list anyway. I don’t buy a DVD unless I’m pretty sure it’s one I’m going to watch over and over. Netflix gives me the opportunity to preview before I buy. And, while I’d buy the entire Criterion Collection sight unseen if I could afford it, Netflix has made it easy for me to watch their beautifully transferred films at a reasonable cost (they don’t have Pasolini’s Salo, but I don’t think I really want to watch that one anyway).

Now we find out that they’ve been engaging in a process called throttling, slowing down the delivery times for those who rent frequently (a good discussion of the practice can be found at www.hackingnetflix.com. That explains why The 40 Year Old Virgin has been sitting atop my queue with “Very Long Wait” status since before it was released. On the one hand, it’s understandable why they engage in this practice. Their business model depends on most renters receiving movies less frequently—on the order of five a month or so. If everyone maxes out their movie rentals, Netflix will be hemorrhaging cash in the form of postage fees. In the past, this has worked fairly well—-the company has even reduced fees since I’ve been a member. However, they seem to have not counted on the advent of cheap DVD burners and geeks who continually request titles to burn them without watching them.

On the other hand, and this is why people are upset, this policy hurts the very people who made Netflix the undisputed champion of the rental-by-mail world. The rabid film buffs, those who want more than the latest big-budget claptrap to pop in on Saturday night, those who don’t live in a city with a bunch of revival houses and want to see the lesser known and foreign films they’ve been reading about—hell, even parents with kids, who have a lot more disposable time for watching DVDs since every late-model SUV now apparently comes equipped with convenient electronic pacifiers for the kiddos. Why not post a clearly-worded explanation of how throttling works and a list of things people can do to avoid being throttled? I wouldn’t even be averse to the idea of a subscription upgrade which would un-throttle your account. Maybe this is already in place, but there’s no way of knowing, because the legalese of the policies section of Netflix’ site is so vague it sounds like something crafted by a team of bureaucrats, which it probably was.

The real thing that sticks in the craw is, I suspect, something that has happened time and time again since the Internet boom of the ‘90’s—-we allow ourselves to buy into the myth that the Internet has somehow changed the nature of business. It hasn’t. It has revolutionized many aspects of business, to be sure, but the fundamental nature of business will never change. It’s about margins, profits, overhead, supply, and demand. We consumers can and do delude ourselves into thinking that companies really care about us, that successful companies can be built by doing business the way we would if we were tycoons in a perfect world, that there is more to business than the bottom line. We can do that, but we’re just setting ourselves up for disappointment. Ben and Jerry care more about making money more than they care about saving the planet with ice cream, and Netflix is a corporation, not a super-cool local video store that figured out how to fight back against Blockbuster on the Internet.

In the end, I figure that you can’t be angry at the scorpion for stinging you as you help it cross the river. Because my queue is mainly made up of old, unknown, and foreign films, throttling really hasn’t slowed down my movie watching noticeably. Hey, Netflix, I thought you were cool, but you’re really just a square in a grey flannel suit. It’s not your fault. But I have to wonder: this practice is obviously intended to ensure that copies of new releases are on hand for potential subscribers using free trial memberships. Once they sign up and their queues start getting throttled, how many will drop their subscriptions because, lacking a clear explanation of the policy, they figure they’re just getting bad service? And how many loyal subscribers will you have driven away because of your opaque policies and evasive responses to complaints? I shudder at the thought of a return to the dark days of the big-box rental behemoths or, even worse, a mail-based system dominated by Wal-Mart. But I can’t think about that too much. I have to get home and see if 40 Year Old Virgin is in my mailbox yet.

Bride of It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: Chopper
In the interest of keeping the blog (somewhat) current, I’m going to start posting capsule reviews of recent arrivals from my Netflix queue when I don’t have any big-screen reviews for this space. We kick off with:

Chopper (2000, Andrew Domanik) The film that launched Eric Bana’s career as an international star, this low-budget Australian production has style to spare and gives Bana a better role than any he’s had since (sorry, Ang Lee). Based on the “autobiography” by famous (to Australians, anyway) criminal Mark “Chopper” Read, the film does a nice job of showing us how this psychopath became something of a folk hero in his native country—through his personality, sheer audacity, and adherence to a (twisted though it may be) moral code. Perhaps Read’s best asset, though, is his skill as a storyteller, casting himself as the anti-hero in tall tales of prison and crime. Exactly how much of the story is fact and how much is embellished is left unexamined, though we do see reenactments of some of the events in the film spun by Chopper to his own advantage, casting doubt upon the veracity of some of Chopper’s other exploits. Other than the storytelling subtext, there’s really not much going on under the surface of the film, but it’s well made and well acted (especially by Bana), and provides a nice fat-free 90 minutes of entertainment. There’s some subtext here about the nature of our tendency to elevate criminals to celebrity status (a cultural trope shared by Australians and Americans), but in the end, the movie is simply seduced by Chopper--just like the reporter in the film’s framing narrative, it knows its subject is a monster, but chooses to look the other way. Domanik doesn’t shy away from depicting Chopper’s mindless brutality, but in the absence of deeper examination, we’re left with a vivid portrait of a somewhat likable thug and little else. I found it interesting that though the film clearly means to criticize Read’s hunger for celebrity, it ends up bolstering the self-spun legend perpetuated by the man himself.

Some of this may be due to the participation of Chopper himself on the project. According to the IMDb, Chopper himself picked Bana to play him after seeing him on an episode of the comedy show Full Frontal. The screenplay is attributed to Domanik and based on Read’s bestselling books, but a series of video segments in the Image DVD’s bonus features (collected under the heading “Weekend With Chopper” illuminate some of his contributions while putting to rest any dispute about the veracity of the scene in which Chopper has another inmate cut his ears off. These segments, which were apparently culled from the director’s home movies of interviews with Read, show Read at home, drinking beers and spinning tales, many of which appear verbatim in the film. Watching the real Chopper, it becomes apparent how well Bana nailed the character, an imposing physical presence who can switch between jovial raconteur and bloodthirsty hooligan in the blink of an eye. Whatever you think of Read, you have to give him his props as a casting agent. Other extras include a feature-length commentary with Domanik and Read, as well as deleted scenes and the film’s original trailer.

In the queue: The Ballad of Cable Hogue Casque d’Or Samurai Champloo, Vol. 5

What the World Needs: Another Best-of List!
Now Playing: The Best Films I Saw in 2005
OK—-the usual caveats apply: “Best of” lists suck, these are films shown theatrically in Denver this year—some are older, others haven’t been released yet, I didn’t see everything, they are not listed in any particular order. Also, since I listed my honorable mentions a couple of weeks ago, I have thought of some other ones, which are included here.

Why We Fight (d. Eugene Jarecki) Michael Moore’s Fahrenheit 911 was high on my list last year for its troublemaking sense of outrage, but Jarecki’s film is a better all-around analysis of the reasons we now find ourselves embroiled in a colossal misadventure halfway around the world. Not interested in propping up easy targets for our disgust (although neocon apologist William Kristol does a great job of being one all on his own), Jarecki presents interviews with people on all sides of the political spectrum, showing us the heretofore invisible lines connecting a retired New York City cop, a Vietnamese refugee, a young man considering enlisting, and the pilots who dropped the first bombs of the Iraq War. Using Eisenhower’s famous farewell speech as a framing device, Jarecki posits a thesis that the war is a result of something more insidious than partisan politics on either side of the aisle: the military-industrial complex, unchecked, quietly determining foreign policy. In this context, David Eisenhower’s memory of his father warning him, “God help this country when it has a president that doesn’t understand the military,” is more terrifying than anything Moore’s alarmist film could conjure.

Tsotsi (d. Gavin Hood) Hood’s adaptation of Athol Fugard’s novel (written in the 1960s, but not published until 1989) updates its action to the post-apartheid slums of Soweto. It is a testament to both Hood and Fugard (and, sadly, to the lack of progress in the world) that the material remains both relevant and utterly shattering. Anchored by a riveting performance by Presley Chweneyagae and some great supporting work by the ensemble cast, this story of a young gang leader who begins to question the senseless violence of his lifestyle when he accidentally abducts a baby in a stick-up gone wrong leaves an indelible mark on the viewer. Tsotsi’s subject matter and stylish camerawork will draw comparisons to City of God when Miramax releases it stateside next year; and although I loved that film as well, this film is an altogether different thing thanks to its heart and sense (though tiny) of hope. Kudos to Hood for presenting the film in Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans rather than pandering to American audiences by using English or, worse yet, dubbing it. I just hope Miramax has the good sense not to replace the incredible soundtrack, which features songs by Zola (who also has a role in the film), with the latest disposable rap act, as it has been known to do.

The Devil’s Rejects (d. Rob Zombie) There may be more of the titular deportees now that Hell has surely frozen over with my inclusion of a Rob Zombie joint on a best-of list. I guess I’d better get used to it, because the more I think of it, the more Zombie’s minor exploitation classic stands apart from the weak, intellectually bankrupt horror fare served up in unnecessary remakes of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Amityville Horror. From the rollicking, stylish credit sequence scored to the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider,” Zombie gets us to sympathize with his family of murderous hillbilly freaks on the run, and then indicts us by pulling no punches when it comes to presenting their acts of extreme violence and sadism. Here, Zombie has been able to synthesize his obviously vast knowledge of movies (and not just horror movies) into a stylish and cohesive film that’s more than just a collection of in-jokes and references for the horror geek crowd. Zombie also proves he’s a credible director, getting great performances from everyone from the gruesome leads to TV and B-movie mainstays such as PJ Soles, Priscilla Barnes, and Ken Foree. I may never watch this film again—it’s just too rough a trip—but it’s been a long time since a genre film had such a profound impact on me. Watch it alongside Oliver Stone’s reprehensible Natural Born Killers for an object lesson in how to do this kind of film the right way. Perhaps the film’s most amazing achievement can be found on the DVD release—a director’s commentary track that is actually engaging and informative, proving that beneath his heavy metal image lurks an intelligent, thoughtful guy who really knows his way around a film camera. I’ll be interested to see where Zombie goes next—having mastered the grindhouse aesthetic, can he turn his gifts on another genre, or will he end up repeating himself?

A History of Violence (d. David Cronenberg) Another film that indicts the audience for its enjoyment of screen violence, A History of Violence proved that even commercial Cronenberg is better than 90% of Hollywood’s output. The straightforward plot (adapted from a graphic novel) doesn’t prepare you for its abrupt tonal shifts into slapstick and graphic brutality. And what to make of the fact that its (extremely well-staged) sex scenes made the audience at the screening I attended more uncomfortable than the violence? Great lead performances from Viggo Mortensen and Maria Bello, with a great supporting turn by Ed Harris--who’s always better as a bad guy--and a totally bizarro cameo by William Hurt, who appears to be having more fun than should be allowed. When the final credits roll, you might be tempted to leave with a shrug, but the film gets under your skin and infects your consciousness like something out of a…Cronenberg movie…

Oldboy (d. Chanwook Park) A film from 2003 that finally got a release here so that those of us without all-region DVD players could find out what all the buzz was about. The middle film in Chanwook Park’s loosely related “Revenge Trilogy” starts with an ingenious premise that seems a bit contrived, then builds to a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions, complete with an almost unimaginably perverse (in terms of both the action onscreen and the violation of the relationship established between filmmaker and audience) denouement. Yet the film’s coda seeks to recover some shred of the humanity stripped from the main characters by the all-encompassing desire for revenge. Min-sik Choi gives a haunting and utterly convincing performance with very little dialogue, and director Park’s visual sense, already a strong point of his previous films, reaches new heights here with indelible images such as the brilliant single take dolly-shot of Choi fighting his way down a long corridor full of thugs. I don’t think it would be possible for this film to be remade for American audiences by Hollywood, and that’s an infinitely good thing; I just hope that the audience response was sufficient that we won’t have to wait another three years to see the just-completed third installment, Lady Vengeance.

King Kong (d. Peter Jackson) Yes, it’s too long. And overindulgent. A couple of subplots could have been shed without injuring the plot. It contains more cheese than a deep-dish pizza. Who freaking cares? Had Peter Jackson trimmed it down to 2 hours, it would have been a lean, CG-driven action spectacular…just like 10 other movies that come out this or any other year. In indulging his love of cinema and the 1933 original, Jackson produces a big-screen spectacle that’s both epic and personal, an incredible thrill ride, and (against all odds) a convincing love story between a giant ape and his human girl.

Grizzly Man (d. Werner Herzog) Werner Herzog’s oddly affecting portrait of Timothy Treadwell, the bear lover who was eventually killed and eaten in the Alaskan wilderness, is much more than a simple examination of the man, which would have been interesting enough. Herzog, with typical technical excellence, examines his view of the relationship between man and nature--which he sees as indifferent, chaotic, and brutal—by contrasting it with Treadwell’s, which enshrined nature as a paradise. Beyond that, Herzog explores the kinship he feels with Treadwell as a filmmaker, sharing a filmmaker’s appreciation of the construction of narrative as well as of the accidents that add unforeseen beauty to a film. In allowing Treadwell to speak largely for himself, Herzog creates empathy for a man who was at best misguided and at worst insane; but he also creates an ironic undercurrent which would have been lost on Treadwell: this man, who by all accounts wanted to shun human society and become a bear, earns our sympathy because we see his passion, along with his ignorance and self-centeredness—his essential humanity, in other words.

More Honorable Mentions:

Sin City (d. Robert Rodriguez & Frank Miller) – A stunning technical achievement, yes, but what made this film was the way it unapologetically rubbed our noses in the pulpy (notice I don’t say noir) sleaze of Miller’s graphic novels. Rodriguez could have avoided the DGA flap by inventing a new title for himself-—most of the film was already “directed” by Miller’s cinematic panels. Still, Rodriguez deserves credit for bringing them to bloody life onscreen--Lucas’ greenscreen epic seemed completely inert by comparison.

Save the Green Planet! (d. Jun-hwan Jeong) - Jeong’s remarkably assured debut provides another strong argument (as I’ve been saying for a couple of years now) that South Korea is producing the most consistently well made and entertaining films of any country today. Despite the ending, which lets the protagonist off the moral hook, this film is completely riveting from start to finish, carrying the viewer along through a rollercoaster ride of tonal shifts from horror to comedy to elegiac sadness, all told with a distinctive and confident visual sense. Truly a one-of-a kind film.

Munich (d. Steven Spielberg) – I’m not in the camp that would fault Spielberg for creating a slick, suspenseful thriller that makes the audience question its desire for bloodshed. Hell, A History of Violence did the same thing. Nor can I fault him for not creating a big emotional beat on which to end the film (which has been one of my problems with all of Spielberg’s “serious” films, save the excellent Catch Me If You Can.) No, the thing keeping this off my “best of” list was that, despite the fact that this was Spielberg’s most morally ambiguous film, he still has a tendency to paint with too broad a brush—all the Palestinian victims are depicted as intelligent, friendly family men, as if the shaky moral ground of murder for the sake of revenge isn’t quite enough. That, and the climactic baptismal sex scene/Munich flashback was simply preposterous and took me completely out of the movie. Still, the scene in which the team symbolically violates a female assassin with zip guns is one of the most discomforting things I’ve ever seen in an American movie—I didn’t think Spielberg had those kind of grapes, to be honest.

Good Night, And Good Luck (d. George Clooney) – A top-notch effort from Clooney and his very talented ensemble cast. Well done in just about every respect, the film fails only in that it can’t conjure up any real dramatic tension, a shortcoming tacitly acknowledged by the writers (Clooney and Grant Heslov) by their inclusion of a tangential bit of plot about a secretly married couple on Murrow’s staff. Still, a well-acted, well-made film that makes us long for the days when the news media actually cared about such trifles as journalistic integrity.

3-Iron (d. Ki-duk Kim) – Lo, another South Korean film, but one that has little in common with the others on this list save its excellent craftsmanship. 3-Iron is a haunting and lyrical tone poem more in the vein of Wong Kar-wai, this film never tips its hand as to “what it all means,” instead offering a meditation on themes of alienation, loss, and freedom. The ending can be taken both literally and metaphorically, and is absolutely beautiful.

Haven’t Seen But Maybe Could Have Made the List: Capote, Brokeback Mountain

Wish It Had Been Better: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (bring back Cuaron!)

What Was All the Fuss About? Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit

Really Wanted to Like, But Was Disappointed By: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

Son of It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: The Battle of Algiers (1965); Murderball (2005)
I finally got around to watching the Criterion release of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, and suffice it to say I was pretty much blown away. I’m not sure why I put off watching it since its DVD release several months ago; I suspect it had to do with not wanting to set my expectations too high from reading all the pieces touting its impact and relevance. Could a film from 1965 retain the visceral punch of the most powerful political filmmaking even for today’s war-weary audiences? And then some.

Raw, angry, and vital, not only does Pontecorvo’s masterpiece still hold the ability to shock, I wonder whether it would even be shown in the US today were the names of the players changed to the US Army and Iraqi insurgents. Right down to the minute details, viewers cannot help but be struck by the similarities between the efforts of the French military to suppress the uprising by the Muslim terrorist organization FLN in 1950’s Algeria and our own current imperialistic misadventure in Iraq. From the use of women as terrorist bomb delivery vehicles to the use of torture by the occupying forces, it’s astounding how analogous the situations are.

As angry as it is (and few films I’ve ever seen come close), the film stops just short of propaganda. The French are by and large portrayed not as bloodthirsty sadists, but as military men trying to carry out their orders in difficult, if not impossible circumstances. Pontecorvo is unflinching in depicting not just their brutality, but that of the revolutionaries as well. Even though he sides with the anti-colonial aims of the revolutionaries, Pontecorvo depicts the escalation of violence evenhandedly, with a sense of both its inevitability and its dehumanizing effect on everyone involved. He can, perhaps, be forgiven for ending the film with an epilogue celebrating the eventual victory of the Algerians—in 1965, revolution was in the air, and no one wanted to believe that they were fighting for transitory victories. Four decades later, however, the powerful sense of d?j? vu the film imparts is tempered with another, sadder sense: that humans, unable or unwilling to learn the lessons of history, may be forever doomed to keep repeating the mistakes of the past.

The trailer from Rialto’s 2004 re-release of the film, included on Disc 1, imparted two tidbits I found fascinating. One was that no documentary footage was used in the film. Some of the footage is so expertly shot (and some inconsistencies in the film stock throughout help the illusion) that I had assumed that it was in fact actual archival footage. The other was that the film had been recently screened at the Pentagon. How anyone can watch this film and come away with the notion that a war between superior military forces and entrenched guerillas is “winnable” in any sort of traditional sense is beyond me. Then again, the President’s gaggle of neoconservative yes men must have come away from the film with a different message than I did. Perhaps they felt that the French lost because they didn’t blow up enough civilians, or didn’t go far enough in torturing their captives.



The documentary Murderball, despite the stated intentions of its filmmakers, does drive home the fact that its quadriplegic rugby-playing subjects are pretty much just like normal folks. It does this not through its depiction of the players, but by resorting to the familiar tropes and plot movements of just about every sports-related documentary ever made. The narrative is shaped to set up a conflict between Mark Zupan, one of the most hardcore players of what no one who has seen the film will deny is a pretty hardcore sport, and Joe Soares, a fierce competitor who spitefully became the coach of the Canadian Olympic team after being cut from the US squad. We’re shown only the matches that set up the familiar sports-movie dramatic arc: underdog Canada beats confident US; US comes back to win in a pre-Olympics match; big grudge match looms large for the film’s climax. And even though actual events didn’t give the filmmakers the “one match for all the marbles” ending they clearly wanted (the US and Canada met in a semifinal at the ’04 Paralympics in Athens, not in the gold medal round), they shape the narrative so that it has that effect.

Having said that, the fact that Murderball is such an enjoyable film is largely due to the outsized personalities of the players. These guys are pretty much high-level jocks, and confinement to a wheelchair doesn’t change the personality traits necessary to achieve on that level. As one of Zupan’s friends puts it, “Mark was pretty much an asshole before the wheelchair, so I can’t say that had anything to do with it.” It may be eye-opening to see quadriplegics hitting each other, getting drunk, and having hot girlfriends (one of the film’s most hilarious sequences happens when one player details the lengthy conversational process whereby girls he picks up finally get around to asking if he is able to have sex), but it’s the personalities that keep the film enjoyable throughout. Tripartite named filmmakers Henry Alex Rubin and Dana Adam Shapiro include a couple of moving subplots about a recently injured young man coming to terms with his paralysis and Zupan’s troubled relationship with Christopher Igoe, the high school friend responsible for the accident that injured him; but the focus is mainly on the players themselves in the context of their sport, and that’s as it should be. Rubin and Shapiro let the personalities shine through, and by the end of the film, you do feel as if you know these guys a little. Soares complains in one of the DVD’s supplements that he’s portrayed somewhat inaccurately, and I agree that the narrative paints him as an antagonist. But it’s clear, despite his frequently obnoxious behavior, that he is a person who loves his family deeply, and whose considerable pride was wounded when he was rejected by his team.

Murderball is certainly enlightening for those of us who have not known a person with such a disability; and it’s uplifting, for those that crave that sort of sports movie. But mostly, it’s just fun to hang out with these guys a little bit. You get the sense that they’d be a fun group to have a beer with…as long as you didn’t take them on in any sort of competition. There’s no new ground being broken here, but it’s a solidly made, thoroughly entertaining film that stays true to the humanity (in all senses, positive and negative) of its subjects. And that’s definitely worth something.

Oh, Boy! It's Lists Time Again!
I'm waiting until I see Syriana and King Kong before publishing my best of 2005 list (you never know...), so to stem the overwhelming tide of requests, here are my honorable mentions, along with my choice of worst movie of the year:

Honorable Mentions: Serenity - A fun, well-written science fiction romp that didn’t pander to audiences or come with a multimillion dollar marketing strategy attached. Not quite the home run fans of the TV series (at least the relatively objective ones) were hoping for, nonetheless a good effort from a first-time director and an excellent ensemble cast.

Batman Begins - Featured a stellar cast and for once wasn’t a betrayal of its source material. Chris Nolan and David Goyer created a Batman for those of us who grew up with Neal Adams’ brooding crusader and hit our teens with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns.

Head On- For presenting an honest, moving love story that had nothing at all to do with the sappy pabulum foisted on the public by the Hollywood machine. Sexy, heartrending, and ultimately cautiously hopeful, this movie felt like the real thing. And if it didn’t necessarily encapsulate the Turkish immigrant experience, it did a great job capturing aspects of it for a foreign audience.

Layer Cake – Thank you, Matthew Vaughn, for rescuing the Cockney gangster genre from the flashy jokiness of your earlier Guy Ritchie-directed productions. A good Bond movie is probably too much to hope for--let’s just hope Daniel Craig’s career is more like Sean Connery’s than Roger Moore’s or George Lazenby’s now that he’s officially stepped into the tuxedo.

The Worst Movie I Saw in 2005: Since I couldn’t bring myself to watch The Dukes of Hazzard despite the presence of Broken Lizard and Jessica’s Daisy Dukes, I have to give out this year’s Zircon-Encrusted Turd Award (hey…ZETA Awards…I like that) to Tim Story’s Fantastic Four. Combining a fundamental ignorance about what made the original comic great (although it must be said that Chris Evans’ annoying Human Torch pretty much nailed the character, as did Michael Chiklis’ Thing, despite one of the worst makeup jobs in film history) with pedestrian direction, a lackluster script, a lack of cool action setpieces, and cinematography that was at times so dark one couldn’t tell exactly what was going on onscreen; Fantastic Four exemplified everything that’s bad about Marvel’s rush to squeeze every last dime out of their comic book properties before the comic movie craze dies. You know your movie’s a failure when comic book authorities (I refer you to moviepoopshoot.com’s Comics 101 professor, Scott Tipton) acknowledge that Roger Corman’s legendarily awful unreleased version had a better grasp of the characters and their world. Ioan Gruffudd and Julian MacMahon are pretty bad, but they look like Olivier and Brando next to Jessica Alba’s mindbendingly horrible performance, so bad it would give Galactus himself indigestion were he to consume a planet on which this film was being shown. Of course, the viewing public disagrees with me; this stinker did great box office and a Story-directed sequel has already been announced. Fool me once…

It Came From the Queue!
Now Playing: DVD Roundup
Prime Cut (1972, d. Michael Ritchie) From its extended title sequence, a long journey through a slaughterhouse and meat processing facility used by its owner, crooked Kansas City eminence Mary Ann (Gene Hackman) to rid himself of unwanted visitors, one can tell that the film is going to combine menace and offbeat humor in that deadpan way of the best American films of the early 1970’s. When semi-retired Irish mobster Nick Devlin (Lee Marvin) is dispatched from Chicago to bring Mary Ann back in line, he discovers the ranch is trafficking in human flesh as well as bovine. A gentleman’s gentleman, Devlin rescues a young girl (Sissy Spacek) from sexual enslavement and sets about bringing down the overly confident (and possibly insane) Mary Ann. There are some minor detours along the way, but the simple plot is not the point. It’s more about great individual moments, such as a scene in which Mary Ann and his sausage-chomping hulk of a brother (Gregory Walcott) engage in an impromptu wrestling match in his kitchen as a squadron of eyeshade-clad book cooking accountants looks on. Ritchie film doesn’t rank among his best work (The Candidate, The Bad News Bears), nor among the best of this (to my thinking, anyway) great era in American film, but if the mention of quirky tough guys, washed out color palettes, and vintage Lalo Schifrin scores gets your movie-watching juices flowing, Prime Cut is definitely worth checking out. The newly-issued DVD from Paramount features a nice transfer and good monaural sound, but is devoid of special features.

Head On [Gegen die Wand] (2004, d. Fatih Akin) Cahit Tomruk (Birol Űnel) is an immigrant Turk living in Hamburg, earning money for booze and drugs by picking up empty bottles in a club. He’s a shell of a man, lacking human connection, old enough to have attended the old school punk shows whose posters cover the walls of his tiny trash-strewn flat. When a drunken car crash lands Cahit in the hospital, he meets Sibel (Sibel Kekilli), a young woman whose repressively traditional Turkish family has driven her to attempt suicide. She wants to experience sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll—in other words, the life of a typical western girl. She offers Cahit a deal: if he will marry her so that she can escape her family, she will cook, clean, take care of him—be his wife in all respects except the conjugal. Perhaps recognizing a kindred lost soul, he grudgingly agrees, and what follows constitutes one of the most original and touching love stories I’ve seen in years.

Of course, nothing proceeds according to Hollywood template, which makes Head On unexpectedly moving, even as it careens between the comic and the tragic. Akin juxtaposes scenes of nearly unbearable brutality with those of surprising tenderness. Despite their often stupid behavior, he evinces a profound empathy with the characters; he understands that sometimes we surrender to self-destructive impulses because they’re the only way we can feel alive. With wonderful performances by Űnel and Kekilli and a distinctive (but never ostentatious) sense of style, Head On is a true punk rock “love story” that’s no less effective for its lack of conventionality. Highly recommended.

Exhuming McCarthy
Now Playing: Good Night, and Good Luck (2005, d. George Clooney)
The time has come, people, to forgive George Clooney for Batman & Robin, The Peacemaker, and, yes, even Return of the Killer Tomatoes. More than that, it’s time to recognize that his talents extend far beyond acting. For a long time now, I have felt that Clooney has been our greatest “movie star,” equally at home in comedy and drama, his handsome features and easy manner a throwback to an earlier archetype we haven’t really seen since Cary Grant. Since attaining superstardom, he has chosen interesting mainstream roles and contributed to the independent filmmaking world through his partnership with Stephen Soderbergh in Section 8 Films. But with his directorial efforts on Confessions of a Dangerous Mind and now Good Night, and Good Luck, (and with buzz building about his performance in the upcoming Syriana) it’s time to recognize Clooney as the guy who’s got it all and can pretty much do it all. He’s like Orson Welles without the creative genius—-but with the ability to finish a film on time.

Lest I get too carried away, let me say that Good Night, and Good Luck is not a masterpiece. It’s not the kind of film that’s going to have audiences standing up and cheering and it won’t win a bunch of awards (though I hope I’m wrong about that) come Oscar time. But it is a nearly perfect film in that it accomplishes everything it sets out to do with a style, economy, and mastery of technique that you just don’t expect from that good-looking doctor from ER. As in 2002’s Confessions, Clooney shows an admirable restraint, a great understanding of cinematography, and a sure hand with actors. Of course, his fame allows him access to some of the best people working in Hollywood today, but how often has a great cast and crew been brought together to become something altogether less than the sum of its parts? In the first of many good choices, Clooney and Grant Heslov’s script examines the escalation and denouement of Senator Joseph McCarthy’s infamous HUAC witch hunt solely through the frame of reference of the CBS newsroom at the time, and specifically Edward R. Murrow’s Face to Face program, which went on the attack at the height of the hearings, exposing McCarthy for the dangerous fraud he was at a time when doing so could have been tantamount to career suicide. We get no framing news reports, no backstory, no perspective of the “man on the street.” Instead, Clooney stays for the most part within the smoke-filled confines of the news department, presenting the film like an installment of "Playhouse 90" or one of the other TV dramas of the 1950’s. Robert Elswit’s superb camerawork perfectly captures the feel of black and white television from the 50’s, and Clooney wisely uses no background music—-though he does adopt the conceit of a jazz singer (Dianne Reeves) recording contemporary songs at CBS as a transition device. The 50’s aesthetic allows Clooney to seamlessly incorporate actual footage from the era, creating a perfectly self-contained world in which the viewer is immersed. It’s not a pseudo-documentary, but it does feel like a contemporary drama, and so has the air of authenticity.

David Strathairn, who may not have given a bad performance in his professional life, does great work here. His Murrow radiates an intelligence and integrity that befits the exalted newsman, but also the weariness and disillusionment of a man who has devoted his life to the news medium only to bear witness to the beginning of its downfall. He takes on McCarthy not because he’s a crusader or a true believer but because he has dedicated his life to the now-quaint concept that news should present the truth of any situation as objectively as possible—-an ideal he saw being thrown aside by the news media in fear of attracting the dangerous attentions of the Junior Senator from Wisconsin. The performances are uniformly excellent, especially Clooney as Murrow’s dedicated producer Fred Friendly (whom my father reminded me went on to do Monday Night Football—what a resume!) and Ray Wise as Murrow’s ill-fated colleague Don Hollenbeck. Frank Langella gives appropriate gravity to CBS eminence gris Bill Paley, making us long for that simpler time when network decisions were made by people rather than legions of committees and consultants. Langella’s performance is nicely nuanced; we can see his personal affection for Murrow through the veneer his patrician persona, yet we don’t doubt for a minute that he will send Murrow packing once he starts costing the network significant money. Also great are Robert Downey, Jr. and Patricia Clarkson as a husband and wife newsroom team who are forced to conceal their relationship because of company policy, but their characters represent the film’s most serious misstep. Their subplot is largely superfluous, and while it is a good device to convey the workplace tenor of the time, it could have been truncated and achieved the same effect. As it is, it reeks of filler to pad the film’s relatively brief running time.

Here’s the thing. Good Night, and Good Luck is a very good film. But more than that, it’s an important film. Not an Important Film (I’ll write about the difference one of these days), but an important film. The parallels between the McCarthy era and ours are evident everywhere, and Murrow’s speech about the deteriorating state of television that bookends the film is so prescient that it’s hard to believe they are his actual words (they are). Without resorting to cheap nostalgia, the tone and substance of Clooney’s film create an elegy for the high water mark of television news, the moment when the medium fulfilled its promise and almost immediately started its decline. It encapsulates the debate so relevant to the TV news medium today—what is its obligation to the truth? Is it merely to present a “fair and balanced” viewpoint, with all sides given “equal” time (as Fox News and others have amply demonstrated, equal time doesn’t always mean equal consideration), or is there sometimes a greater truth to be uncovered? I’m not sure, but then again these days I’m getting most of my news from the Internet and "The Daily Show."