Movie Reviews: Date Archives
October 2005
Naked
by Mike Leigh
When we first encounter Johnny, the “hero” of Mike Leigh’s caustic Naked, he’s raping a woman in a seamy Manchester back alley. Fearing retribution, he steals a car and makes a midnight journey to London, to shack up with an ex-girlfriend. From there, he launches into a series of nocturnal sorties through the city’s underbelly, leaving a swath of sexual, physical, intellectual, and spiritual devastation in his wake.
Why in the world do I find myself identifying with him as much as I do?
Crying Fist
by
Along with A Bittersweet Life, Crying Fist was one of the big Korean films this year. And unfortunately, like A Bittersweet Life, I found it rather underwhelming. And what makes it an even bigger disappointment is that it had so much going for it.
For starters, there are the two leads, Choi Min-Sik and Ryu Seung-Beom, who both give very solid performances. Of course, that should come as no surprise with Choi Min-Sik, who has delivered a string of solid performances (Shiri, Failan, Chihwaseon, and of course, OldBoy). His Gang Tae-shik, a washed up silver medalist boxer, is the complete antithesis of OldBoy‘s Oh Daesu, or rather, what Oh Daesu might have become had he not been imprisoned for 15 years. And as the vicious, directionless Yoo Sang-hwan, Ryu Seung-beom is nearly unidentifiable in his dreadlocks, and gives a performance that is very different from the hapless, bumbling hero he played in Arahan.
Visually, the film is solid as well. The cinematography has a sharp, visceral feel to it, sometimes even taking on a documentary air. And the camerawork is impressive as well, especially during the sparring sequences. Rather than use an assault of quick edits and jump cuts, director Ryu Seung-Wan (whose previous feature, Arahan, is way better than it has any right to be) uses long, unbroken takes, zooming in and out to highlight certain movements or placing the camera right there in the fight, dancing around the boxers as they dance around eachother.
Like the extended shot that captures hallway brawl in OldBoy, these extended takes become incredibly exhausting and tiring for the viewer, which allows them to empathize with the growing exhaustion of the fighters as they struggle against eachother.
The American Astronaut
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The American Astronaut has all of your typical sci-fi earmarks—spaceships, outposts on the rim of known space, bizarre creatures, totalitarian societies, rayguns, and, um, space barns. Come to think of it, it’s not your typical sci-fi movie. The spaceships look like railroad locomotives on the outside and prospector cabins on the inside. The distant outposts are more like honky-tonk saloons. And the barns are, well, floating through space.
But the raygun still vaporizes people, so there’s that.
And then there’s the whopper of a plot. Samuel Curtis, the titular American astronaut (he’s from Nevada, to be specific), has just completed his latest job—retrieving a cat for a third party that he’s meeting at the Ceres Crossroads, a gin joint located on a asteroid near Jupiter. After delivering the feline, he receives a new job from his friend, The Blueberry Pirate (so named because he’s made a career of hitting fruit shipments—quite the lucrative trade in this vision of the future).
The planet Venus has been colonized by beautiful women, and only one man lives there—Johnny R., whose one function in life is to be the sexual consort for every Venusian woman. Unfortunately, Johnny R. recently died, and his family on Earth wants his remains, and they’re willing to pay plenty. Unfortunately, the women of Venus are unwilling to part with the remains unless a new consort can be found for them.
So before he can get Johnny R.‘s remains, Curtis must go to Jupiter and retrieve “The Boy Who Actually Saw A Woman’s Breast”, a strapping young lad whose one claim to fame is that he did, indeed, see a boob. But Jupiter is a mining colony populated only by men, and Lee Vilensky, the controller of Jupiter, uses the The Boy and the tale of his legendary encounter to keep the workers under control. And so Curtis leaves on his madcap journey, with nothing but a suitcase containing a real, live girl in trade.
Crónicas
by
My first exposure to the world of tabloid and sensationalistic journalism came when I was in 5th or 6th grade, when shows like “A Current Affair” and “Entertainment Tonight”, and “journalists” like Geraldo Riviera began to rise to prominence. Even back then, at that young age, I knew these programs weren’t on the up and up, and yet I found them fascinating to watch, what with the lurid subject matter (it seemed like every episode of “A Current Affair” had at least one sex scandal), dramatic reenactments, and pleas to the viewer’s emotions and sense of outrage.
Of course, now we’re living with the repercussions of such programming. Even “respected” news outlets like CNN resort to outrageous tactics and “in your face” techniques—all of which are intended more for the boosting of ratings than the dissemination of truth. What does it say when “The Daily Show”—a satirical program if ever there was one—is trusted by many as a more legitimate news source than, say, anything on Fox.
All of this serves as the backdrop for Crónicas, the latest film from Latin America to garner attention and critical acclaim worldwide (it doesn’t hurt that the film boasts the talents of folks involved in Amores Perros, City Of God, and Y Tu Mamá También).
Serenity
by Joss Whedon
I initially ignored Joss Whedon’s Firefly series for two reasons; one, I had never been a fan of Whedon’s other titles (Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Angel) and two, everytime I heard the premise of Firefly—it’s essentially a western set in space—I couldn’t help but roll my eyes. I’d seen other series try to pull off something similar, with disasterous and cheesy results (I’m looking in your general direction, Space Rangers).
But when I finally did see Firefly‘s series premier several years ago during my first trek to the Toronto Film Festival, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I thought. In fact, I found it fairly engaging and enjoyable. But I just sort of filed it away, thinking that would probably be all I ever see of it. I liked it, but didn’t feel particularly compelled to track down the rest of the series. That changed when one of my co-workers asked if my wife and I would like to watch it with them. Something just clicked for me and suffice to say, I became hooked. As in obsessively.
The series felt like a breath of fresh air for me as someone who had basically given up on TV-based sci-fi (thanks, in large part, to that beating of the dead horse which is Star Trek). But Firefly had it all—a unique world that hinted at intriguing possibilities, a wonderful (and often twisted) sense of humor, witty dialog that was thankfully free of technobabble and cheesy inspirational moments, poignant moral explorations, plenty of genre-tweaking, and a cast of some of the most well-developed and thoroughly enjoyable characters I’ve ever encountered, period.
Of course, there was the slight problem that the boneheads at Fox had cancelled it several years ago after less than half a season (and that was after airing episodes out of order, waiting weeks between episodes, etc.). However, that only seemed to make Firefly stronger. The show became a massive cult phenomenon, with fans (who term themselves “Browncoats”) purchasing ads in support of the series, starting massive petitions, and making the series a huge hit when it came out on DVD. All of which brings us to Serenity, the big-screen adaptation of a plucky little show that somehow managed to survive all manner of efforts to derail it.