sitenoise at the movies

Buddha Mountain 观音山 (Guan Yin Shan) [2010] • China

2011-08-04T23:05:00.000-07:00

By-the-numbers indie. I didn't believe any of the actors made contact with the feelings the characters were supposed to be feeling because everything comes off as an impression, rather than being anything of substance. Li Yu, who directed 2007's wonderful Lost in Beijing, doesn't seem to have a story to tell here, as much as simply having a desire to make a film in this style, and feature disillusionment as a theme. The hand-held camera-work didn't bother me, but the framing and composition of shots did. They seemed forced and almost precious, and the actors merely vogued their way through scenes.

Fan Bingbing, who was so good in Lost in Beijing, her first film with director Li, seems to treat this one like it's automatic art-house street cred. The story is uninspired. Three young drifters meet a single mom who is still mourning the death of her only son, and they all have an angst competition. That should be indie grill; it's not in this case. It's just shots of people pensively staring off into space, and scenes of people pensively walking around aimlessly while the fog rolls by and the music meanders. Indie film school 101. It was very hard to finish this film because I didn't care about any of the characters. Caring about characters may not be necessary, although the director clearly hoped for it, so I'm going to make up a word to describe my experience and to differentiate it from simply not caring. I discared the characters.

★★

Director: Yu Li
Starring: Sylvia Chang, Bo-lin Chen, Bingbing Fan, Helong Wang

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Resurrection 黄泉がえり (Yomigaeri) [2002] • Japan

2011-03-10T13:59:00.000-08:00

It's better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Or something like that. It's hard to believe this is a Akihiko Shiota film. It's mainstream sentimental. Compared to the two very independent flavored films about lost teenagers he made just before and after this one—the brutal Harmful Insect and the ennui filled Canary, not to mention his twisted psycho-sexual drama debut Moonlight Whispers—Resurrection is mall fodder. It's not bad as far as these things go. It just surprised me. The film stars adults instead of teenagers, but in the end it is very much a teen film.

People start returning from the dead. Children to parents, husbands to wives, wives to husbands, and so on. Each of these resurrections gets its own postcard-style short story and they are all meant to pull the heartstrings, nothing more. They have almost nothing to do with one another and they don't build to any big party for the dead. The film is a loosely knit series of vignettes held together by a government bureaucrat who returns to the little town where the events are happening, which also happens to be the town where he was born, to investigate the occurrences. Of course there is a girl there whom he pined for but lost contact with when he moved away. She serves as a love interest and sceptic. There's a twist and then you're supposed to cry.

It's all good. The film is so harmless it's hard to object to anything about it, except maybe the government bureaucrat's haircut. Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, as the bureaucrat, is an odd looking fellow. He'd been a member of the pop group SMAP, which lends more to the mall fodder aspect of the film, and he approaches the role with a sincere earnestness. He has a few well done moments of emotional outburst but is overall pretty flat, although not disagreeable, as an actor. Yuko Takeuchi is wonderful as the tomboyish love interest.

There is, actually, a big party for the dead at the end, but not really. It's a concert, which at first seems to serve only to highlight a couple songs, in their entirety, by pop singer Kou Shibasaki. Then you remember, "oh yeah, that's the girl from the beginning of the movie". It's not that this film is hard to follow, it's just structured in a way which favors feeling over narrative. The vignettes don't come together Altman style. They are all pretty much self-contained units.

This movie was a big hit in Japan when it came out, back when SMAP and Shibasaki were at the top of the charts, and was probably a lot more fun than it is now. What's interesting to me about it is seeing it in the context of Akihiko Shiota's other work. I haven't seen his two most recent films, Dororo and A Heartful of Love, but if this one is any indication, it suggests he is fully capable of making mainstream commercial films if he wants to. I don't know if that is good or bad.

★★★

Director: Akihiko Shiota
Starring: Tsuyoshi Kusanagi, Yuko Takeuchi, Yuriko Ishida, Sho Aikawa, Keiichi Yamamoto

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Red Cliff 赤壁 (Chi bi) [2008+2009] • China

2011-03-08T21:49:00.000-08:00

A five hour holiday marathon. Period pieces, costume dramas, and films about fighting (physically or with weapons other than the heart) are a few of my least favorite film genres so I don't know how it happened but I loved every minute of this monster. If I had watched the condensed version I wouldn't have liked it. There are two 30 minute fight scenes, and since the cut version is aimed at Western audiences I doubt they would have suffered any loss, which would have then made them be half the movie and I would have been bored silly.

I love the Art of War, men of honor, tea ceremony languid pace of it which allows for fleshing out the characters and slowly developing the gravity of the situation. Sure, it's a little over-the-top at times—it's John Woo—but it's really easy to get into the film's depiction of historically important events and forgive a few personal excesses. The film is remarkably understated for the most part. All the performances are good. All the actors bring you into their world and make you care for them and their concerns. I even rooted for these guys when they went ONE against ONE THOUSAND ... something so silly I've never understood the prevalence nor appeal of it in film.

This film ignited an interest in Chinese historical epics I never thought I would develop. It prompted me to watch The Emperor and the Assassin, and that one is awesome. I've got a couple more in my queue. I think the key is picking the ones that are made for a Chinese rather than a Western audience. The long version of Red Cliff seems to be one of those films. It's slower and more poetic, which is what I like. If it's what you like and you've been keeping this one at bay for fear it's just another big, dumb Chinese historical videogame, give it a shot—and be sure to give it the long shot.

★★★★★

Director: John Woo
Starring: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Chen Chang, Wei Zhao, Fengyi Zhang, Shido Nakamura, Jun Hu, Yong You

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Moonlight Whispers 月光の囁き (Gekkô no sasayaki) [1999] • Japan

2011-03-08T20:42:00.000-08:00

One of those "only from Japan" psycho-sexual dramas which explores adult themes of desire, domination, and twisted mind-fuck games and perversion ... acted out by teenagers. No comment on this peculiar film tradition.

Boy with fetishes meets girl with Dom proclivities. At first the girl, played exquisitely by Tsugumi, thinks the boy's over-zealous displays of desire are perverted, but then she realizes his fetishistic personality gives her great power over him so she makes him do pretty much anything degrading she can think of, from licking her feet, nay, her entire leg clean, to locking him in a closet while she has sex with another guy. He goes along with all of it because he is also madly, sadly, and pathetically in love with her. It's a little harder to tell what her motivation is because, well, she's a girl. Depending on the viewer's orientation to things, the film might seem erotic, but no matter which way the wind blows there's no escaping the film's ominous, eerie, and sad emptiness (in an indie good way). This film just broods along beautifully.

This is Akihiko Shiota's directorial debut and probably his strongest film. The focus is clear and concise. The powerful but flawed Harmful Insect would have benefited from such focus. It was the first one of his films I had seen and it pissed me off for days. Then I saw Canary and wasn't sure what to think. There wasn't much new to it and it seemed less well done. Now that I've seen Moonlight Whispers I have to go back and watch those two films again, and I will be seeking out all of his films. Funny how that works.

★★★★★

Director: Akihiko Shiota
Starring: Kenji Mizuhashi, Tsugumi

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Hot Summer Days 全城熱戀 (Chuen sing yit luen - yit lat lat) [2010] • Hong Kong, China

2011-03-08T19:43:00.000-08:00

I laughed, I cried. Whatever. This is a very fun, good looking, popcorn/date flick. Beneath its light-hearted surface there are some teary eyed love happenings. If you like star-studded Hong Kong romantic comedies and sugar-coated sentimentality, look no further.

Hot Summer Days tries to be cross-cultural by setting two of its four main story lines on the mainland but it's more in the tradition of Hong Kong rom-coms than mainland fare. Most of the actors are native Cantonese speakers. I watched this twice, once with the Mandarin audio and once with the Cantonese audio. There is some dubbing in both versions but the Cantonese version has less of it.

The eye candy comes in both flavors: boy and girl. They perspire a lot which leads to some clingy clothing, glistening skin, and probably the PG (or its Chinese equivalent) rating. Vivian Hsu has never been more freakishly cute and Barbie Hsu has never been more tattooed. The most heartwarming and intricate tale is that between Jacky Cheung, as an out of work truck driver cum ice cream salesman, and Rene Liu, as a concert pianist doing foot massage (because it's a job requiring skilled hands), which gets its start from a text message sent to the wrong number. The one that anchors the film and produces the most tears is the one, not given top billing on the poster, between newcomer Xinbo Fu, as an innocent country boy and Angela Baby (that's right, her name is Angela Baby), as a factory worker assembling teddy bears. Daniel Wu, as Master Soy Sauce, and Vivian Hsu, as Wasabi, have the cutest nicknames. Nicholas Tse and Barbie Hsu's story is the most hip and tragic.

There are cameos galore, the highlight being a weepy-eyed monologue from Maggie Cheung spilling her guts to Master Soy Sauce. Blah blah blah. If this is your cup of tea, drink it. It's good (except for some well intentioned CGI maybe). I hope I got all the links right.

★★★★

Director: Tony Chan, Wing Shya
Starring: Nicholas Tse, Jacky Cheung, Rene Liu, Vivian Hsu, Barbie Hsu, Angela Baby, Daniel Wu

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A Blue Automobile (Aoi kuruma) [2004] • Japan

2011-03-08T16:08:00.000-08:00

This film has three things going for it: Aoi Miyazaki, Kumiko Aso, and a great soundtrack. Miyazaki and Aso are two of Japan's most talented and popular young actresses, and I'm always happy when a director shows good taste in music and uses it well—although the hip and evocative soundtrack used here sometimes seems a bit at odds with the slow paced art-house stylings of the film.

A Blue Automobile is a good looking film, very bleak, all stark and concrete, and there are a number of creative and interesting directorial choices made by Okuhara but the overall vision of the film left me wanting. That isn't always a problem but this film plays like it wants to be a film with a vision to talk about, an exploration of a heavy theme: pain, as a game changer. Indie actor cool dude Arata does a fine job as a young man who doesn't think much of living because of an accident as a child that has left him scarred around the eyes. He plays an introverted danger-punk guy, and we all know that fetching, young, good-hearted women are attracted to the type, so that's what plays out.

I was intrigued, fascinated even, by the characters as discreet units but wasn't able to engage or be moved by the exposition of the characters' motivations toward one another. It's basically another story about a guy who gets two women. And this time they are sisters, which adds to the oh-so-intense nature of the angst. That there's a big theme of immense suffering lurking in the background all the time doesn't make it much more than that, except it does make it "alternative".

The film has many bright moments and solid acting. It's not mainstream fare by a long shot, but fans of any of the three leads should enjoy watching them do their stuff. The film wants to be more than it is but it really doesn't matter. I enjoyed the experience of the film. It's one of those where you give more points to journey than goal.

★★★

Director: Hiroshi Okuhara
Starring: Arata, Aoi Miyazaki, Kumiko Aso, Tomorowo Taguchi, Kenji Mizuhashi

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Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森 (Noruwei no mori) [2010] • Japan

2011-03-07T16:17:00.000-08:00

I let myself get over-hyped about this one: Director Anh Hung Tran's The Vertical Ray of the Sun is one of the most beautiful films I've ever seen; Cinematographer Ping Bin Lee, one of my favorites; Jonny Greenwood doing the soundtrack. Almost every publicity blurb about this movie starts off with "Upon hearing the song "Norwegian Wood," Toru remembers back to his life in the 1960s ..."

Well ... that blurb may describe the book but it has nothing to do with this film. I'm not a Beatles fan but I do carry a bunch of love for that song and it does bring with it a great sense of nostalgia. Somebody paid somebody a bunch of money to play that song over the end credits, all for naught. There isn't any real sense of nostalgia in the film except for some of the fashion and the big telephones. I let myself be mislead.

Greenwood's soundtrack might be interesting to listen to by itself but in the film all the lilting strings manage to seem bombastic. I literally muted the film several times it annoyed me so much. I don't think this is Greenwood's issue, though. Tran has been known to over-saturate a film or two with torturing soundtracks (The Scent of Green Papaya). Ping Bin Lee did come through. There are many breathtakingly beautiful scenes in the film, a few of which played silently for me because of the aforementioned soundtrack's habit of shitting all over the film.

I do not like Rinko Kikuchi's acting. I've seen her in a handful of films and while she gets some moments right, she often brings too much of her blonding international star self to roles (even before she had it) and I struggle to see a character beyond her personality. She whispers a lot which is a phony way to be dramatic done by people, strangely, desirous of attention. If they have your attention a little bit they can force you to double it by whispering. Fortunately she is only half the focus of the film. Texas born Kiko Mizuhara is awesome as the main "other" girl, Midori, in Toru's life. She's cute, spunky, forward, sexually confident, and blunt, but comes off as merely an outline of a character. I wish the whole film were about her. Ken'ichi Matsuyama, as Toru, is serviceable as the supposedly nostalgic one but hardly awesome enough to be a guy that three different girls just have to fuck. Gorgeous Eriko Hatsune has a nearly film-stealing scene but that's about all we see of her.

The film contains some rather bold, and funny at the same time, sexual dialog, although it's a little sore-thumbish because the film is only punctuated with it. I loved it, and laughed, when Midori calls up Toru and says "My dad died. Will you take me to a porno film? The most perverse one." She also has a few moments describing to Toru how she'd like to be bedded by him which are entertaining. Kikuchi's Naoko, after letting Toru know that she's too crazy with despair to sleep with him asks him if it's torture to have an unserviced erection: "I can help with that", she then offers. There is a good bit of sadness and mixed up desire in the film but the characters and the story aren't developed enough to see it as more than immature angst.

I think this film will appeal to teenagers and twenty-somethings who've read the Haruki Murakami novel it's based upon because most of the holes in the film will be filled in and the sense of nostalgia might be there. Not that teenagers have a lot of nostalgia for the sixties but the film is about loss, and it is fairly good at presenting that—except the adolescent level of it is pretty thin. The film is NOT about the way things were—the last few wonderful lines of the film and a Beatles tune can't save it. It's just a young-love story which lacks the depth to appeal to those not feeling the same way, i.e., older folks. Young people experiencing the whirlwind of sexual awakening, and or those who've had a friend commit suicide, might love it.

Norwegian Wood is a great looking film but not well written or acted, and since it is also quite slow moving I don't think it will engage general audiences who haven't read the book. It's not sexy enough nor smart enough.

★★★

Director: Anh Hung Tran
Starring: Rinko Kikuchi, Ken'ichi Matsuyama, Tetsuji Tamayama, Kiko Mizuhara, Reika Kirishima, Eriko Hatsune

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Winter's Bone [2010] • USA

2011-02-26T17:55:00.000-08:00

"Here's a doobie for the road". Haven't heard that one in years. I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to sit comfortably through a couple hours of hillbilly meth heads mumbling through their problems, but Jennifer Lawrence's performance doesn't take long to latch onto. Then Uncle Teardrop shows up. John Hawkes, as Teardrop, nails the role of resident scary guy, and he almost steals the show. A young man of slight physical stature, he is nonetheless able to project frightening unpredictability and intimidation. His character is very well written with a broad development arc, from violent to thoughtful to playing the banjo. The film is worth seeing for Hawkes's performance alone, but it's got a lot more to offer.

Winter's Bone, on the surface, is a backwoods family drama about drug culture, but it's also a good mystery thriller. There are some obvious and unnatural "dialog as character development" moments, and a few scenes inserted to show a little down home familial love and bonding which are a slight cause for pause, but the overall pace is fairly swift and they are easily forgiven, especially when the it rolls out one of the saddest, most thought-provoking endings to a film I've seen in a long time ... well, at least since Confessions. And it's John Hawkes who delivers the death blow.

The ending is not ambiguous. The intended scenario seems fairly clear, but it is open to a number of possibilities. It allows the viewer to sidestep the tragedy if they want to. It's brilliantly written, not saying as much as it says, and it sort of retroactively creates another layer of emotional depth to the film as a whole. I might have been on the fence had the ending come with less of an impact. This is a film that could be a big downer, considering its subject matter, but as written and directed by Debra Granik it clings to the hopeful side of bleak, punctuated and allowed for in the end. Such is the nature of hope.

★★★★★

Director: Debra Granik
Starring: Jennifer Lawrence, John Hawkes, Isaiah Stone, Ashlee Thompson, Valerie Richards

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Dream Home 维多利亚一号 (Wai dor lei ah yut ho) [2010] • Hong Kong

2011-02-24T17:38:00.000-08:00

Gore-hounds and violence enthusiasts should enjoy this one a lot, except that all the horror plot points are interrupted by a lot of story and social commentary about rising home prices in Hong Kong. Dream Home is a serious and thoughtful drama with a lot of blood.

The flashback narrative technique doesn't serve the film very well except for the fact that it lets the blood start flowing from the opening scene. It feels like a cop out to me when a director doesn't have the confidence to let a film build to its climax, and feels the need to begin with the climax and then retrace the steps that lead up to it.

A few of the kills in this film are fantastic, in a "Really?!?! Holy Shit!" sort of way, especially the coitus interruptus one. The fact that mild-mannered Josie Ho is performing them adds to the effect. The only problem I had is that many of them start off as failures, to build phony tension the wrong way, become successes, and then someone who should have been dead dead dead pops up for another go at it. This produces more bang for the buck by getting, say, a dozen kills out of only seven characters.

There's plenty of nudity and some graphic fucking to round things out but the cognitive dissonance created by mixing deep dramatic story lines with over-the-top bloodletting is likely to leave most viewers sitting on the fence verdict-wise. I recommend the film more to gore hounds than to connoisseurs of fine Hong Kong cinema. The film looks great and the production values are top notch, so ....

★★★

Director: Ho-Cheung Pang
Starring: Josie Ho, Anthony Wong Chau-Sang, Eason Chan, Michelle Ye, Hee Ching Paw, Kwok Cheung Tsang

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LoveHK Film

Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂树之恋 (Shan zha shu zhi lian) The Love of the Hawthorn Tree [2010] • China

2011-02-24T16:41:00.000-08:00

Zhang Yimou reportedly auditioned 10,000 girls in search of untarnished, innocent (old school Chinese) beauty when looking to cast the lead in this film.

"These young folks are looking worse and worse with each generation. Pretty girls obviously aren't marrying handsome guys these days. They're hooking up with this sugar daddy and that old lonely bachelor with money. No wonder the kids are lacking in the looks department.

When you look at any picture of young Chinese women from the 60s and 70s period, you'll almost always have an eager face that radiates innocent beauty looking back at you. This is now a thing of the past, young folks rarely have that innocence about them any more."

I read that before seeing this film and it put an awful lot of pressure on the young actress who passed the audition. She's cute, but she's no Gong Li. She's hardly a Zhang Ziyi either, but that may have more to do with the way the film is assembled than anything else.

I'm a BIG fan of Zhang Yimou's common people films. I love his nostalgic looks at the past and his thinly veiled commentaries on the Cultural Revolution and cultural change in general, in China. But Zhang seems to have tossed this one off before finishing a proper script. Title cards are used to fill in narrative gaps (red flag) and to allow for fade-to-black wistful shots of the girl biting her lower lip, pouting, and looking like the innocent beauty Zhang craves. I think the need for fade-to-black wistful shots of the girl biting her lower lip and pouting suggests he didn't find it.

The film is adapted from a popular mainland novel which was based on a true story set during the Cultural Revolution. There's lots of good stuff and great attention to detail concerning the period, and it satisfied my desire for that. There's a pretty standard love story plopped on top of it all, complete with a terminal disease tuggin at your heart strings. But not just any old love story, it's a Japanese styled "pure love" love story. That part is fine as well. A little Korean style melodrama mixed with Japanese pure love stylings works for me most of the time. So why didn't I love this movie?

Honestly, the title cards bothered me. Not just because the girl bit her lip and pouted going into many of them (which got on my nerves as well), but because they gave the film an unfinished quality. It's difficult to remain completely faithful to a novel when adapting it for the big screen, and just as voiceover narration can be used successfully to fill in narrative gaps or it can stick out like a sore thumb, so go the title cards.

"Sun told Jing that he would be waiting for her upon her return"

Sticks out like a sore thumb.

To be fair, dancer and senior high school girl, Zhou Dongyu, from Shijiazhuang in Hebei Province, with “eyes that are clear like the mountain springs”, is pretty fetching as the young girl who is sent to re-education camp and falls in love with an upwardly mobile land prospector. The film's theme of with whom and when one falls in love being up to the discretion of Communist Party leaders is far more tragic than the terminal disease. Shawn Dou Xiao is outrageously handsome and appealing as the young man who falls in love with her.

Under the Hawthorn Tree is delicately shot and filled with wonderful period detail. My final waffling verdict is: It's a beautiful and tragic love story with some distracting blemishes. If Zhang Yimou had spent as much time fleshing out a proper screenplay as he did finding a girl to play the lead character he might have produced another masterpiece. I recommend the film to those who like pure love stories.

★★★

Director: Yimou Zhang
Starring: Dongyu Zhou, Shawn Dou, Taisheng Chen, Rina Sa, Xuejian Li

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Hear Me 听说 (Ting Shuo) [2009] • Taiwan

2011-02-22T22:14:00.000-08:00

Hear Me 听说

This light-hearted rom-com charmed its way into my top ten of the year. It's not a cinematic masterpiece by any stretch of the imagination. It's just a rom-com, delightful and enjoyable for the characters, if not the story. I like fluff as much as the next person, if it's done well.

Boy meets girl. Girl is preoccupied caring for her handicapped sister. Boy gets girl. Handicapped sister wins the Olympics. It's feel-good from head to toe, and it's beautiful that all the love is delivered in sign language.

Xiao Peng is a swimmer in training for the Deaflympics. Her sister, Yang Yang, does everything she can for her and wrestles between being over-protective and neglectful. Tian Kuo sees Yang Yang one day while delivering food to Xiao Peng's swim team facility. He sees Xiao Peng communicating with Yang Yang in sign language and makes an assumption. Take it from there.

Tian Kuo's parents must be a professional comedy team in real life because they have comic timing down pat and an assured sense of what comic relief is.

Hear Me was Taiwan's highest-grossing local movie of 2009. A good time was had by all in this house. I have no further defense.

★★★★★

Director: Fenfen Cheng
Starring: Ivy Chen, Eddie Peng, Michelle Chen, Lo Bei An, Lin Mei Xiu

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July 32nd (7월 32일) [2010] • South Korea

2011-02-22T21:21:00.000-08:00

I was fooled by the poster for this one. Haha. I like black with bluish-purple highlights, and I thought I detected depth in the young woman's eye(s). I thought it might be a dark independent razzle-dazzle where the filmmakers had discovered some no-name young actress with the charisma to carry a film. I thought it might be something like Shiki-Jitsu (Ritual). In some way, it is.

There are LOTS of marvelously colored and composed frames in the film. The cinematography is almost Ping Bin Lee/Christopher Doyle level awesome. This is how it's like Shiki-Jitsu, but it's also the only compelling thing the film has going for it.

July 32nd wears its character development and plot devices on its shirt sleeve. I can handle a little bit of that, but not a whole film. I don't know if it's the script or the acting, but everything comes off like a daytime soap opera with black and bluish-purple mood lighting.

Eun-Soo Park, as a man who spends his daughter's growing up years in jail and attempts to find her when he is let out, does the best Min-sik Choi he can. He even looks a bit like a softer, smaller-headed version of him. If you see the film, the irony of that will not be lost on you. (She's five when he goes to prison, about eighteen to twenty when he gets out (looking exactly the same), and the whole film is predicated on the two of them not recognizing one another, even when they get uncomfortably close to hanky panky.)

Hye-Rim Seong, as his daughter cum prostitute ... I was wrong.

July 32nd is an eye-roller but it's not offensively bad. The production values are top o' the line. Beyond the unremarkable performances of the father and daughter everyone else acts like the way most cops are portrayed in South Korean films: unattractive bumbling idiots. The film's sought after bleakness (and man, does it seek it) is ruined by all these obnoxious low-level Fredo Corleone wannabe (albeit Korean) character choices. I laughed out loud at the really bad guy who limps through the movie as if as soon as someone yells "Cut!" he's going to say "Is this really how you want me to do this?"

I don't know anything about anyone involved in making this film but if I find out who is responsible for the photography I will look for whatever they do next.

Beyond Hollywood seem to like the film.

★★

Director: Seung-Hyeon Jin
Starring: Hye-Rim Seong, Eun-Soo Park, Jeong-Gyun Kim

Sweet Little Lies スイートリトルライズ (Suîto ritoru raizu) [2010] • Japan

2011-02-22T19:59:00.000-08:00

There will be a lot of words written about how this film "makes you think"; how it makes you think about marriages which on the surface appear to be happy ones, and then how it (the film) proceeds to reveal the Sweet Little Lies that go on underneath in order to keep up that appearance. This will not be my approach. The idea has been Twin Peaksed to death. Nothing wrong with that. I'm just one who finds execution more engaging than idea.

Ruriko (Miki Nakatani) and Satoshi (Nao Omori) have been married for a few years and have been sexless for about the same. Satoshi, even though he's a little too grown up to be doing so, likes to sleep in and play video games. He doesn't appear to have any real love for his wife but also doesn't object to her much. It's Ruriko who demonstrates, though she may not necessarily have, all the love in the coupling. She's as dutiful as they come. She cooks breakfast, washes windows, and smiles sincerely. Both of them seem to float through life in a daze of WTF, sort of like the way folks taking a high daily dosage of Valium would. They are both stalked and then drawn into sexual affairs. Ruriko dives into hers the only way she knows how: with detached positivity. Satoshi remains lost in his cloud, but doesn't complain.

For a while I thought this film might fail. Miki Nakatani doesn't strike me as an actress with much range. She's good at contemplative WTF gazes off into space but not much more. Or so I thought. This role is perfect for her and she shines, and director Hitoshi Yazaki does a great job of capturing her in her strength. There are times when Nakatani brings the film into a surreal, Stepford Wives atmosphere with her robot-like gazing, and then she'll bust it wide open with a smile that makes you want to go crawling into her arms whimpering "mommy mommy", even though she exudes zero maternal aspects of personality.

Juichi Kobayashi, as Haruo, the man Ririko has an affair with, is a curiosity. He's a dancer, not an actor, so he's used to being adored but doesn't have any acting chops. Doesn't matter. He's a stalker so he's supposed to be creepy, if only mildly, and his role is to serve as an excuse for Nakatani to get emotional. There's great tension in sitting through the improbability of Ruriko actually falling in love with this guy, not just wanting to have sex with him, because, as unbelievable as it might seem, it's the only way Ruriko knows.

Nao Omori is a pleasure to behold as Satoshi. He's hard to figure out because he's so good at playing a man who doesn't have a clue. He's also lucky to have Chizuru Ikewaki cast as the young woman who innocently, but persistently pursues him. She elevates every film she's in and brings a controlled, mature naivete to her role that works wonderfully alongside Omori's clueless Satoshi. Both of these actors are great casting choices and in many ways, at least as a couple, they are more interesting than Haruo and Ruriko.

Sakura Ando rounds out the cast, in a small role, as Haruo's girlfriend. Yeah, Haruo is a cheater, too.

Hitoshi Yazaki directed one of my all-time favorite films, Strawberry Shortcakes, so I had pretty high hopes for this one. There were moments in the first act where I wasn't sure if things were going to work out but this is a much different film. It's slower paced and takes a while to bring you into its dreamlike world where appearances appear superficial. The brilliance of it is that when confronted with this obvious superficiality we assume it's masking a cauldron of repressed emotions, but there are no revealed emotions in this film. Nakatani's Ruriko appears to show some emotion, and she has a wonderfully teary-eyed "I Love You" scene, but it's not real. She's just executing the rituals she believes are associated with the set of circumstances. I was premature in thinking I would have to punt my suspension of disbelief at the idea of Ruriko falling in love with her stalker. It's not supposed to be believable. It's just another illusion Ruriko will play a role in.

If only Yazaki hadn't included the scene where Satoshi's sister stops Ruriko, as she attempts an abrupt exit from their afternoon tea to go meet Haruo, and says "Ruriko, you're glowing", my theories would make sense. As it stands, I am completely full of shit. Who cares?

Sweet Little Lies is shot in gorgeously austere and misty shades of gray. There are innumerable scenes in the film full of nuanced and subtle discomfort that will make you shiver. The script is smart, the performances are dazzling, and the film will make you think. Feel free to think about whatever you want.

★★★★★

Director: Hitoshi Yazaki
Starring: Miki Nakatani, Nao Omori, Chizuru Ikewaki, Sakura Andô, Juichi Kobayashi

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Japan Times

Shanghai [2010] • USA

2011-02-22T18:05:00.000-08:00

Solid cast, good production, engaging spy thriller with some illuminating historical context thrown in.

★★★★

Director: Mikael Håfström
Starring: John Cusack, Li Gong, Yun-Fat Chow, David Morse, Ken Watanabe, Rinko Kikuchi

IMDb
Wikipedia
Asianmediawiki

She, a Chinese [2009] • UK, France, Germany, China

2011-02-21T21:20:00.000-08:00

Frustrated with life in a rural village, she's slapped by her mom, groped by her boyfriend, raped by a truck driver, moves to Shenzhen. Fired from a factory job on her first day, she volunteers to work at a Love Salon. Her lover gets killed (good thing he had a pile of money underneath his mattress). She moves to London and gets a job but her first paycheck is taken back because she has no bank account. She goes to work in a massage parlor and marries a wrinkly old white guy with a bank account who reads the newspaper too often and his cat dies. She gets pregnant by an Indian whose cultural identity is calling him home rather than pushing him away, so he leaves her. The quantity of bummers in this film is so thick it skips along too rapidly and loses credibility.

Lu Huang as Mei (The 'She' of the title) does a fine job plowing her way through the endless misfortune (she did the same thing in Blind Mountain—a great film), so props to her. The story, however, which has a heart and good intentions, asks so much of its characters it stretches the limits of credulity creating distance instead of empathy. It begins to suggest that the circumstances "She" gets into are a result of personal selfishness, or stupidity, rather than exposing or exploring the difficult climb from rural Chinese village to downtown London.

I recommend this film because many of the realities and situations it points at are worth considering. I just wish it would have pointed at a few less and explored them more deeply, or with a whisper of hope. I've got nothing against bleak films, but She, A Chinese gives the impression that once the desire to break free of tradition and hopeless circumstances begins, a stream of unrelenting nausea is likely to follow. Which in turn begs the question of whether the scenarios depicted in the film are the result of the personal characteristics of this particular She, in a sense becoming a character study, or if they are some sort of warning siren or social commentary on what a bitch life is if you begin from a certain place, look a certain way, and have unrealistic expectations concerning what can be done about it.

Broken into discreet elements—the film is broken into discreet parts with the use of title cards that offer sometimes whimsical commentary on various events—the execution is pretty good, but the overall impact is diluted. The performances are solid and the director does a good job making things appear realistic so it might just be a case of truth being harder to get on board with than fiction.

★★★

Director: Xiaolu Guo
Starring: Huang Lu, Wei Yi Bo, Geoffrey Hutchings, Chris Ryman, Hsinyi Liu

IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Confessions 告白 (Kokuhaku) [2010] • Japan

2011-02-04T19:35:00.000-08:00

When I made my top ten list for 2010 I wrote I was confident that if I had seen this it would have made the list. It's a little late, but now I've seen it and added it to the list.

As par usual, I'm not going to go through a plot synopsis. Click on one of the links at the end of this entry if you want that.

Confessions is not perfect but it's pretty close. It's dark and gorgeous. It's unsettling. It's got Takako Matsu and Yoshino Kimura; Radiohead and Boris on the soundtrack. It gets crazy and goes by quickly at times (hard to catch all the subtitles), even though a good portion of the film is in slow motion. It's a testament to the skill of the director that everything makes an impression, even fluttering by. A few times, for a moment, it seems like it might lose steam and then whoosh! There it goes again. This is hands-on film making. An audio-visual package right up there with Myung-se Lee's M. It gets physical. And that's what I like about it. Nakashima gets how to manipulate sight, sound, and time moving through time that creates both a sense of being on a rollar coaster and being suspended in time. Like being in a dream or a car wreck.

It's creepy that most of the players in the film are 14 years old, talking about killing people and their mommy problems. The film gets most of its fuel from mommy problems. Shocking that it seems so believable that these kids understand what they are talking about. Tetsuya Nakashima makes these kids smart. It's very refreshing.

The first and last acts are both tours de force. I've seen three different English translations of the last line in the film. Don't google it until after you've seen it. What an ending! Some folks have written that Nakashima throws it all away with the last line but I think it depends on how you take it. I found it eerily ambiguous and evil.

Most commenters on the film will point out the film's "social commentary", i.e., that kids under fourteen years of age can't be punished by the law for anything. I'm not big on social commentary commentating but watching the film I couldn't help but think that any thirteen year old contemplating murder sort of gets a green lit idea. And the bit about the teacher giving the unpunishable kids HIV tainted milk, as part of her revenge, is chilling but it's more that she fills the kids with a fear of their own mortality than attempting murder of her own. You'll see what I mean when you watch the film. It's just one of the many questionable aspects of the script's believability that ....

If you over think this film it can fall apart. If you're the type that does that kind of thing you won't like it as much as I did. But unless you are also sensitive to slow motion or post rock emo soundtracks it's hard not to be overwhelmed by this masterfully crafted film.

★★★★★

Director: Tetsuya Nakashima
Starring: Takako Matsu, Masaki Okada, Yoshino Kimura, Masakazu Ato, Atsushi Ozawa

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Japan Times
Beyond Hollywood

The Emperor and the Assassin 荆轲刺秦王 (Jing ke ci qin wang) [1998] • China

2011-02-02T19:23:00.000-08:00

EPIC. Long, slow, a little melodramatically meandering but never boring. This is a great film to watch before Hero to get a more standard historical telling of the story of China's first Emperor. It's not stuffy and stilted the way many more formal Chinese historical films can be. Most of the characters are a little wacky. I put off watching this for a long time because I'm not a fan of what I thought it was going to be: wuxia with little plot and a lot of fighting. It's not that at all. It's got palace intrigue, battle plans, and real history behind it.

There is a well-written and very informative review of the film over at Illuminated Lantern. It discusses many of the scenes and compares them to historical document. It can be read without spoiling the film because this isn't a film built on surprises. We know the story for the most part but it helps, especially western viewers who aren't familiar with the source material, to have some grasp of the impact of what is portrayed in the film in terms of shaping Chinese history.

Gong Li is fabulous, but not really the star of the film. Xuejian Li, as the Emperor, balances unhinged with forthright and hits every note in between. Fengyi Zhang goes from badass assassin to homeless bum who's given up assassinating to badass assassin again and then to someone we're not sure of, all convincing. Zhiwen Wang almost steals the show as the eunuch lover of the queen who has a plan of his own. He seems almost a little too contemporary but Kaige has assembled a film that allows for him. This is more than a standard period piece costume drama. It's history done well and it's very entertaining. Most appealing to me is my perception that this film was made for a Chinese audience, not a western, festival-circuit one.

A recent Red Cliff marathon got me in the mood for EPIC so I indulged and was quite happy—not to mention it features Zhou Xun, unquestionably my favorite Chinese actress, in a small but significant role. It's hard not to see this as a parallel to state sanctioned historiography of Mao, but no matter. Chinese unity is paramount, there will be blood.

★★★★★

Director: Kaige Chen
Starring: Xuejian Li, Fengyi Zhang, Gong Li, Zhou Sun, Zhiwen Wang, Chen Kaige

IMDb
Wikipedia
Asianmediawiki
Official site
Variety
Illuminated Lantern

Kiss Me, Kill Me 킬미 (Kill Me) [2009] • South Korea

2011-02-02T17:19:00.000-08:00

This one's very funny, one of those films in which the director and the actors do a dance of comic timing. Hye-jeong Kang is always good but Shin Hyeon-Jun turns out to be a real comic treat. This is an action flick with lots of humor.

Jin-young (Kang) is devastated after a breakup with her long time partner and wants to kill herself, but she wants to do it with flair so she hires a hit man to take her out. Hyun-jun (Shin) thinks he is hired to kill someone else and is surprised to discover Jin-young has slipped herself into the place of his intended target. Yeah, it's an "assassin falls in love with his target" story but the performances of the two leads makes this one a winner. The script is a little chaotic at times, lots of coincidences that challenge a suspension of disbelief, but if you just go with the flow it's a fun ride.

The film's ending unravels instead of tying things up but it's not a deal breaker. In a way, the whole film can be seen as a series of sketches that just parade by instead of building upon one another to form a cohesive whole, and that may be a valid criticism depending on the angle of entry the viewer chooses. Thriller? Romantic Comedy? Action flick? It's all of those, and it's one of the things I like about South Korean cinema. They do mashups, and they do them well, always playing with expectations and throwing in surprises.

If you are a fan of either of the two leads you will enjoy Kiss Me, Kill Me. It's fun and entertaining precisely because it's full of not what you'd expect.

★★★★

Director: Jong-hyeon Yang
Starring: Hye-jeong Kang, Hyeon-jun Shin, Hyeon-a Kim, Do-bin Park

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema
Beyond Hollywood

Cafe Isobe 純喫茶磯辺 (Jun kissa Isobe) [2008] • Japan

2011-01-28T21:21:00.000-08:00

This is a funny film built on fine performances and skilled direction. Yujiro Isobe (Hiroyuki Miyasako) acts like a guy who has accidentally dropped his cards face-up on the poker table and thinks he can still bluff. Sometimes he's a little pitiful and some times a little creepy but he never goes over the edge—he just hints at it. He lives with his teenage daughter Sakiko (Riisa Naka). Mature beyond her years, Sakiko puts up with him but doesn't like him very much ... well, until the end when everything gets happy ... but she doesn't hate him. She treats him with the amount of respect he deserves, which is a cautious little. Sakiko's been abandoned by her mother but doesn't hate her either. Her mother didn't fight for her custody because, as she tells Sakiko, "It seemed like your father cared for you more than I did." Ouch!

Yujiro inherits some money and quits his job. After a bit of time doing nothing he decides to open a cafe. When he informs Sakiko of his plans she asks him if he has any service experience; or a business plan; or if he knows anything about food. He says he will work hard at it. Sakiko tells him, rightfully, that he doesn't even know what he's supposed to work hard at. His response is, "You're annoying. So annoying." He's going to bluff.

Yujiro opens the cafe and Sakiko agrees to help out part-time but she's so appalled by the decor her father has chosen she refuses to tell any of her friends where it is for fear they will come visit and laugh. Life at the cafe, and the father daughter relationship, gets complicated when an attractive young woman, Motoko (Kumiko Aso) begins working there. She wears a short-skirted uniform to attract customers, and Yujiro becomes attracted to her as well. Motoko is a strange character, with a lot of baggage. Sakiko is immediately suspicious and doesn't want her father to have anything to do with Motoko, professionally or personally. Yujiro begins dating Motoko and an emotional comedy of errors ensues.

Kumiko Aso is fabulous here. The three main characters are all good, really good actually, but Aso is a favorite actress of mine and she's wonderful in most everything she does, so I'm singling her out. She makes the film funny in a "funny-strange" way more than a "funny-haha" way, but there are many moments that will likely make you laugh out loud. A lot of the laughs are the result of the director's skill in editing for comic timing. This is a well put together film, and it has a heart, too. It's a comedy, and while it gets goofy from time to time, it brings itself together as a mildly touching, chuckle filled, human drama.

★★★★

Director: Keisuke Yoshida
Starring: Hiroyuki Miyasako, Riisa Naka, Kumiko Aso
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Girlfriend • Someone Please Stop the World [2004] • Japan

2011-01-28T20:32:00.000-08:00

More Ryuichi Hiroki. This one is love story between a young woman photographer, Kyoko, who gets an assignment to pick a woman off the street and take nude photos of her for a men's magazine, and the woman who turns up as the subject of that assignment, Miho. Kiyoko's professional ethos is one of getting to know her subject deeply, be it a fruit plate or a human being, and as she does this she finds her interest in this particular subject, Miho, turning into fondness. The feeling is mutual, but this isn't a gay-themed film per se. There are just no barriers in the way that might prevent these two wandering souls from exploring each other, trying to find a positive relationship in a world they feel disconnected from, saddened by. The two performances are good enough, but not great, while the underlying drama and psychological trauma seem less satisfying.

I'm never quite happy with films that explore a lesbian liaison by setting up one of the participants as frustrated by bad relationships with jerkball men. It doesn't have to be that way. In this case it's Kyoko, but she has the personality of being frustrated by more than her bad boyfriends. She's a bit frustrated with herself and is trying to find a comfortable compromise between photography as art and photography as commerce. She's idealistic and a bit peculiar. When she meets Miho, who is angry about her father who left her family years ago and hasn't been in contact since, she meets someone who's more bummed out with life than she is so she's able to feel a little bit better about herself, and seems genuinely interested in, listening to Miho's stories. It's not unusual to become attracted to someone that makes you feel better about yourself.

Miho agrees to pose nude for Kyoko partly, well, mostly, as a means of getting back at, and getting the attention of, her father. I'm not sure about that as a method or as a solution but she's hurt and angry and she wants her father's attention. Kyoko and Miho are both presented as empathetic outsiders. Following them is a reasonably enjoyable romp in indie ennui but it doesn't wrap itself up into a grand story.

Girlfriend is part of the Love Collection, a loose series of DV shot features from 2004 with the common theme of love. Other entries include Kihatsusei no onna (A Volatile Woman) by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri, OLDK by Masahiro Hara, Nejirin bou by Tadashi Tomioka, Moon and Cherry by Yuki Tanada and Kokoro to karada by Hiroshi Ando.

★★★

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Aoba Kawai, Tomorowo Taguchi, Kinuwo Yamada, Kazuhiro Suzuki, Jason Gray, Aya Sugimoto
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
cinephilia101

Jack Goes Boating [2010] • USA

2011-01-27T21:10:00.000-08:00

Phillip Seymour Hoffman fans should be happy with this, his directorial debut. Hoffman is the king of uncomfortable and he directs to his strength here. Beyond directing himself well, a couple other things struck me as far as the direction goes. He uses a lot of music and knows how to pick tunes. The soundtrack is full of Grizzly Bear with a little Evan Lurie sprinkled about. "Rivers of Babylon", by The Melodians serves as a sort of theme song, being played at the beginning, the end, and during a climatic scene in the middle. A couple songs that stand out as beautiful in and of themselves, and at really nailing the mood, are Goldfrapp's "Eat Yourself" and DeVotchKa's "Dearly Departed". You can listen to these tracks at IFC's web page for the film.

I don't want to give the impression that this film is some kind of music video collage, because it's not. Far from it. The other thing that strikes me about the direction is the tendency, reminiscent of John Cassavetes, to let scenes go on for just a little bit longer than you think they should, allowing for moments of tension or discomfort to linger and echo. And there are a lot of moments of tension and discomfort in the film. The silences contrast beautifully with the more musical moments.

The film is adapted from a play about the intermingling relationships of two couples. One is beginning, the other is established and endured, if not enduring. The established couple, Clyde and Lucy (John Ortiz and Daphne Rubin-Vega), set up their friend Jack (Hoffman) with Lucy's co-worker Connie (Amy Ryan). The use of contrast at work again. One relationship is about to bloom, while the other fights a season of wither. Hoffman, Ortiz, and Ruben-Vega starred in the stage version and reprise their respective roles here. Needless to say they know their parts inside and out. The film has a playful and slow pace and is filled with sharp dialog, a lot of which seems to jump in from out of nowhere. Half the stuff that comes out of Connie's mouth made me chuckle and think 'Where did that come from? Did she really just say that?' Amy Ryan is fabulous here, as are all the players.

The only weakness is that the climactic scene sort of fails, but it doesn't kill the film. It's just one scene you might wish had been done better or different. Or maybe not. Jack Goes Boating is a wonderful character play with a strong script, great acting, and a moving soundtrack. It's kind of brutal and it's pure Philip.

★★★★

Director: Philip Seymour Hoffman
Starring: Philip Seymour Hoffman, John Ortiz, Daphne Rubin-Vega, Amy Ryan

IMDb
IFC

I Am an S+M Writer 不貞の季節 (Futei no kisetsu) [2000] • Japan

2011-01-27T13:17:00.000-08:00

Ryuichi Hiroki released this film and Tokyo Trash Baby on the same weekend!

Kurosaki (Ren Osugi) is an erotic novelist who uses his editor and a hired model to act out scenarios in his living room he will use for inspiration in his writing. His wife Shizuko (Yôko Hoshi) calls him a pervert but we soon learn that what bothers her is that she feels her husband has intellectualized his carnal desires and she feels physically neglected. Shizuko tries to make him jealous, or simply goes after what she desires with someone else. At first she brings home an Caucasian English teacher but soon zeros in on her husband's editor after witnessing his accomplished S&M rope tying technique. Kurosaki's first response is anger, then forgiveness, then he decides to use the affair as inspiration for his current work in progress. He demands that his editor continue the affair and recount all the sordid details to him. He slaps his editor upside the head, then forgives him and offers him a drink each time before they get to work.

I don't think this would be funny if it were an English language film. Part of its charm is feeling like a foreigner watching a Japanese film. Much of the humor is surely lost in translation but some of the translations take on a humor of their own. Often it feels like the words are too blunt and some subtlety of language is being missed, while other times it seems words are forced together into strange combinations to try and convey different shades of something not literally translatable. "Go anal". It's all played very sincerely, if somewhat surreal.

Speaking of surreal, one thing that puzzled me throughout this film was the house where most of the action takes place. The layout seems inscrutable, a labyrinth of hallways and doors. A character will walk down a hall, turn down another, and then open a sliding door to apparently go into a room. Then the camera is in the supposedly entered room but the door has hinges and no relation to a hallway. Kurosaki will serve his assistant a beer from one direction and then deliver a second one from a different location. There's one scene that appears to have no plot value where the maid exits a door, removes her shoes and plunges off the porch a couple feet to the ground, as if she expected a step of some kind to be present. I assume this scene is meant to convey that even the characters are a bit befuddled by the structure and layout of the house. Maybe I just missed something but this kind of scene does fit in with the overall strangeness of the film.

While this comes off as a small and amusing film, I think it was a big film for Ryuichi Hiroki, somewhat autobiographical, incorporating way more Japanese history and culture than I am privy to, and most importantly served as a great transition for him from a director of pinku films to more mainstream fare, albeit a little arthousey.

★★★★

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Ren Osugi, Yôko Hoshi, Jun Murakami, Eri Yamazaki, Kiriko Shimizu

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Japan Times
Midnight Eye

Asako in Ruby Shoes 순애보 (Sunaebo) [2000] • South Korea, Japan

2011-01-26T13:40:00.000-08:00

This one seems a bit of an art-house diversion for director Je-yong Lee. A mildly bizarre, slow moving film that's half Japanese and half Korean. It aims at just the right level and ends up as a nice compromise between indie indulgence and commercial fare.

On the Korean side, Lee Jung-Jae stars as U-in, a bored, anti-social civil servant who passes time surfing porn on the Internet and silently stalking a young punkish girl with fiery red hair. While playing around on the Internet U-in clicks on a link that asks him to describe his ideal woman. He describes the punky girl.

On the Japanese side Misato Tachibana stars as Aya, a young woman who has decided to commit suicide with a twist: she wants to confuse the date of her impending death by holding her breath and suffocating as she crosses the International Date Line. She also desperately wants a pair of Ruby colored shoes. One thing leads to another and Aya is contracted by Internet porn purveyors to play the punkish girl, as described by their client U-in, on one of their webcam sites. Thus the persona of Asako is born.

The two disparate lives meet and wind the film up in a somewhat unbelievable fairy-tale style ending but it's been a strange ride getting there so no giant complaints. It's interesting to see a film that is half in Japanese and half in Korean. Much of the film deals with the theme of belonging and it allows for stretching that theme to something larger than just one culture.

The performances are all pretty solid. Fashionista superstar Kim Min-hee plays the punky girl. It's a small role, as she serves only as the inspiration for Asako, but it's catchy. Lee Jung-jae is spot on as the nerdball stalker. This is a better role for him than the studly type he played in Je-yong Lee's debut film An Affair. He's much better at nerdy innocence with a sense of creepy just below the surface than as a macho guy who is supposed to drive girls wild. Misato Tachibana brings just the right amount of cuteness and individual longing to Aya/Asako. She doesn't seem to have pursued her acting career ambitiously after this film but did well here.

The film has a slow pace and treats some of the edgier elements with a gentle touch. It never becomes darkly uncomfortable and that's it's charm. It's got quirky characters and a subtle, light sense of humor. Not completely art-house fair but certainly not mainstream. Recommended for those who like films slightly off the beaten path.

★★★★

Director: Je-yong Lee
Starring: Misato Tachibana, Jung-Jae Lee, Urara Awata, Min-hie Kim, Ju-bong Gi
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Glasses めがね (Megane) [2007] • Japan

2011-01-22T22:47:00.000-08:00

Serenity now. This lovely gem can be dismissed as a new-age tourist brochure for Okinawa (although the locale remains unnamed in the film) if one is feeling rambunctious, or it can be consumed like one of the many bowls of magical shaved ice presented in the film, a spoonful at a time without surprises, savoring the moments that celebrate the simple in life.

The story that will unfold is obvious from the beginning. A harried young city dweller, Taeko, takes a much needed vacation to a remote island inn, meets a few laid back and strange locals which she at first tries to keep her distance from but eventually succumbs to the rhythm of the place and its people. Happiness is attained.

For a film like this to work it needs to look nice, have engaging characters, and not take itself too seriously. It's filmed on Yoron Island, Okinawa, Japan, so director Naoko Ogigami has the aesthetics of location covered. There are plenty of shots of crystal clear waters washing up on pristine beaches that look nice and help set the slow rolling pace of the film. Ogigami has written a witty and sparse script, which drifts along alternating between surreal and a Zen koan, and assembled a wonderful and talented cast to deliver it. Ken Mitsuishi, who's been in 136 films, plays the inn-keeper Yuji with such calm assurance you might think you're watching his biography. Ogigami also brings along two actresses who made an impression in her previous film, Kamome Shokudo (Seagull Diner). Masako Motai plays a mysterious visiting matriarch of the island, Sakura, who makes magical kaki-gori, a dessert made of shaved ice and syrup, and leads the locals in weird morning calisthenic exercises on the beach. Satomi Kobayashi plays Taeko, the vacationing visitor to the island. She seems well suited to Ogigami's style, having played a similar fish-out-of-water character in Kamome Shokudo, a Japanese woman who opens a restaurant serving rice balls in Helsinki. Her performance here shows a slow and subtle transformation that reflects the pace of life on the island. The cast is rounded out with celebrated young actors Mikako Ichikawa and Ryo Kase.

If you enjoy slow, amusing, meditative films with quirky characters this is a winner. If you're looking for slapstick, this is a loser. It's whimsical and slightly bizarre but thoroughly understated. Moments that might seem a little new age tree-huggerish aren't annoying because the tone is not preachy or precious. It's very light-hearted and doesn't take itself seriously.

★★★★★

Director: Naoko Ogigami
Starring: Satomi Kobayashi, Mikako Ichikawa, Ryo Kase, Ken Mitsuishi, Masako Motai
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Japan Times
Time Out (an opposing view)

Top Ten Most Enjoyable Films of 2010

2011-01-22T07:56:00.000-08:00

A few of these had a 2009 festival (or local) release but were 2010 films for me. Mother, Air Doll, Be Sure to Share, and Night and Fog were on my Best of 2009 list.

The Social Network • USA
Confessions • Japan**
Aftershock • China
Scott Pilgrim vs the World • USA
Greenberg • USA
Catfish • USA
Season of Good Rain • China, South Korea
Hear Me • Taiwan
Closer to Heaven • South Korea
One Day • Taiwan

Two films I'm confident would be on this list if I had seen them are Sono Shion's Cold Fish and Nakashima Tetsuya's Confessions. Most surprising is that four USA films ranked so high, Taiwan has two spots, and there is nothing from Japan, yet.

**[UPDATE] Saw Confessions, and there it is at #2. Wow. What a film.

There are, of course, many films I haven't seen. A handful that I have seen, and that have shown up on many top tens around the Internet, that deserve mention, although not always honorable, are: True Grit, Black Swan, Inception, Shutter Island, Jack Goes Boating, Animal Kingdom, The Ghost Writer, The Fighter, The Town, The American, Please Give, Poetry, Never Let Me Go, I Saw the Devil, Dogtooth, and Enter the Void.

Bedevilled 김복남 살인사건의 전말 / 김복남 살인 사건의 전말 Kim Bok-nam Salinsageonui Jeonmal [2010] • South Korea

2011-01-19T21:19:00.000-08:00

This is the stupidest, most puerile piece of crap I think I've ever seen. Whoever made this film should be arrested for crimes against film making. There's nothing but infantile cliches piled up pretending to be character development. There's no acting, just people playing stupid. Nothing is the least bit believable, or stomach-able, at the suspension of disbelief level. There is no evil in this film, just assholes.

There are a few good kills and lots of messy blood at the end but I suggest fast-forwarding to get to them. There is nothing worthwhile at all to learn or enjoy before them. It's impossible to gather up anger at the bad people, in order to get on the revenge bandwagon, because the bad people are so bluntly impossible to take seriously the viewer reels in disgust at how badly they are drawn and how immaturely the film is conceived, instead of wanting them killed. It's not a question of moral outrage. This film doesn't push buttons by pushing any ethical envelopes. It's just low-rent, poorly done, unimaginative, middle-school-dropout-level acting and scripting. The director's vision is childish.

I'm dismayed that this is the kind of slop South Korea is going to pump out for the world stage. This film isn't even good enough for a straight-to-video release here in the USA. The problem is, it's got typically solid South Korean production values so some folks may be fooled.

If you want to see something recent in this genre from South Korea that's good, watch 2009's Missing. Heck, the first Death Bell is better than this sophomoric pile of fecal matter. Of course, so is I Saw the Devil (at least marginally) because it, along with Missing and to some extent Death Bell, employed professional actors, i.e., actors who would have turned down any chance at being part of this film.

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[UPDATE] To be clear, I'm not against what this film tried to do. I'm against the fact that it did it so poorly. To test my resolve, I watched the remake of I Spit on Your Grave after watching Bedevilled. It's not a good film either but it's a lot better than this. They are pretty much the same film: rape and abuse a woman and then watch her get revenge. The notion that this film has any social commentary value is bullshit. It's nothing but cheap exploitation cinema written and executed poorly.

★

Director: Some no-talent punk named Jang Cheol-so
Starring: Nobody

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Dread Central and Brutal as Hell (think it's a masterpiece)

Ex 前度 (Chin do) [2010] • Hong Kong

2011-01-18T09:54:00.000-08:00

This film is just way too over-directed for my taste. Young director Heiward Mak seems to possess an intelligent and observant mind, can write insightful snippets of dialog and show us that she gets a certain segment of contemporary Hong Kong youth culture, but those skills and ingredients don't mean a good film is going to emerge. She co-scripted last year's wonderfully biting Love in a Puff but that film was assembled by an experienced director, Pang Ho-Cheung.

I don't want to rain on this young director's parade too much. She's obviously smart, and a major talent (more so in some areas than others), and she's going to be a major player in Hong Kong's film industry. I like what I took to be the main theme of this film, we are our histories, but the story is interrupted by an over zealous directorial hand. I wanted to settle into the hearts and minds of the characters but the MTV generation style camerawork and editing (and I don't mean that as insult or insinuation, necessarily) wouldn't let me.

Gillian Chung does a fine job as the film's protagonist, Zhou Yi, a young woman who has just broken up with her boyfriend, or is about to break up with him as the film begins. An ex, Ping, is at the next table with his current girlfriend, Cee, and witnesses said breakup. A whole bunch of coincidental circumstances are packed together in the film's opening scenes so that we can get to the scenario where Zhou Yi moves in with Ping and Cee. Flashbacks and memories abound, infuse, and confuse, as a portrait of a young woman in the throes of a recent break-up collides with a portrait of a young man who happens to be an ex and whose life may or may not be anything more than his next break-up waiting to happen. It's got the makings of some juicy plot opportunities, some of which are realized, but it never relaxes enough into the story for an inviting overall picture to come to the surface and take over. Also, antagonism is too often demonstrated through volume in the film. I understand that this is a twenty-something reality but listening to a lot of fighting and whining in high decibel Cantonese isn't the most pleasant experience. I knew from the opening scene's musical soundtrack that my audible wavelength was not in tune with the director's. And things didn't change. The whole soundtrack sucks.

Honestly, if I had seen this film in a theater full of like-generational people to the film's players—in Hong Kong, no less—my watching energy might have ramped up to the director's style and I might have found myself swimming along joyously, but such was not the case. I'm going to keep an eye on Heiward Mak but Ex was not a fulfilling film experience. The director has brains and chops but maturity hasn't kicked in yet.

★★★

Director: Heiward Mak
Starring: Gillian Chung, William Chan Wai-Ting, Michelle Wai, Lawrence Chou, Jacky Heung

IMDb
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Timeout
LoveHKfilm

Catfish [2010] • USA

2011-01-10T23:35:00.000-08:00

The other Facebook movie. The most surprisingly thoughtful little film of the year. That's all I'm saying.

★★★★★

Directors: Henry Joost, Ariel Schulman
Starring: Megan Faccio, Melody C. Roscher, Ariel Schulman, Yaniv Schulman

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Twitchfilm (Ben Umstead)
Twitchfilm (Todd Brown and the reason that's all I'm saying.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [2010] • USA

2011-01-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

A total blast. This film has about a dozen principle players and they are all great. Michael Cera does his Michael Cera thing but since I've only seen him do it once before I'm not sick of it. This is a good film for him. He gets to rock out on bass guitar and do a lot of ninja fighting. It's all way over the top and executed very well. Whoever edited this film deserves an Oscar for it. It's amazing. This is easily the most fun I've had watching a movie all year. But it's not trash fun. It's witty. I was smiling from start to finish and LOL'd many times. Not a weak or bad character in the bunch.

I understand that this film had a hard time defining its target audience. Who cares? It is sort of a middle school level cartoon with subtlety more mature humor. I don't care that many of the video game references are dated and I don't think the film is "I'm so smugly and ironically hip." I wasn't interested in seeing this film until I noticed it showing up on a few year end top tens. Yes, the film's marketing escaped me too. I was immediately hooked. Try it. If you aren't smiling and laughing in the first ten minutes unplug it and move on. It's at Netflix.

★★★★★

Director: Edgar Wright
Starring: Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Jason Schwartzman, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Ellen Wong

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Twitchfilm (Todd Brown)
Twitchfilm (Jim Tudor)

Stolen Life 生死劫 (Sheng si jie) [2005] • China

2011-01-10T20:32:00.000-08:00

This is one of those films that exposes a segment of Chinese life that will likely make you recoil in despair—ever more when you know the particulars of the film are based on a true story. There's subtle and deep social commentary embracing this extremely sad tale of family, love, and one woman's struggle to survive in modern China. I was very surprised by the script, surprised by the brutality of its story.

Yan'ni (Zhou Xun) is a young woman whose parents, intellectuals from the previous generation, have abandoned her for the most part, shuffling her off to live in near poverty with her uncaring granny and aunt. She secretly gets accepted into university, raising her class status momentarily and giving her hope for a better life, but when she falls in love with a truck driver and gets pregnant, her life unravels.

It might seem like a giant spoiler to reveal that the man Yan'ni falls in love with, Muyu, isn't in love with her. He has a business plan in which Yan'ni has an important role. Muyu seduces young women, impregnates them, and then sells their babies. The film isn't structured in such a way that it leads up to this as a revelation. We are made aware early on of the impending doom Yan'ni will experience and our experience as a viewer is centered on how Yan'ni will deal with it. The film is not an expose as much as a character study.

Zhou Xun is one of the most compelling actresses working today and she delivers right from the start. I don't think a lesser actress could have made this film work as well as it does. It's powerful, frightening stuff.

★★★★

Director: Li Shaohong
Starring: Zhou Xun, Wu Jun, Cai Ming, Su Xiaoming, Zhao Chengshun

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
Austin Film Society
The Evening Class

Black Swan [2010] • USA

2011-01-10T16:55:00.000-08:00

Natalie Portman gives a career performance but I don't think it's good enough to make this a great film. The transformation scene near the end is a little too little too late. None of the actual ballet is that exciting or well-executed, and it's only slightly an edgy drama ... inner demons and all that. Nothing is that interesting or played out too intensely. Vincent Cassel is great, of course, but it's not about him. Mila Kunis is refreshing as a "dancer from San Francisco". I enjoyed that she seemed to get what that means.

Good but not great. Natalie Portman is no Mickey Rourke.

★★★★

Director: Darren Aronofsky
Starring: Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis, Winona Ryder, Vincent Cassel, Janet Montgomery, Barbara Hershey

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No Mercy 용서는 없다 (Yongseoneun Eupda) [2010] • South Korea

2011-01-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

Pretty standard cop versus killer thriller which is elevated quite a bit by a few good performances and a spectacular ending. It would be a tosser if it weren't for the ending. I didn't see it coming and it is SPECTACULAR (except for the missed opportunity of showing the girl sit there and not do anything when she could have been used to great effect instead of looking like an error).

This film plays out more like a pitch for a movie than a movie. Everything about it and all the characters are formulaic been there, done thats. The script is an eye-roller a lot of time. Bumbling cops and a rouge character on a singular mission who constantly does the impossible because his daughter is in danger. How many times has that been pitched to, and made, by a studio?

However, No Mercy is redeemed by some good performances. Kyung-gu Sol is a very fine actor. The guy who plays the funny pain-in-the-ass cop cliche is also good. Very appealing is Han Hye-Jin. She's one of those spunky young adorable Korean starlets, for sure. Reminded me of Gyu-ri Kim (aka Min-Sun Kim) in Rainbow Eyes.

So if you don't mind run of the mill cop versus killer thrillers, this one is totally worth it for the ending. There is a comparison to be made, to a very famous film with a very famous ending, but it would spoil this film to make that comparison. No Mercy also has some of the more graphic autopsy scenes I've seen in a film. If this is your genre give it a watch. I'm sure you will like it more than I did.

★★★

Director: Kim Hyeong-Jun
Starring: Hye-jin Han, Seung-beom Ryu, Kyung-gu Sol, Ji-ru Sung, Woo-hyung Kim

Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

May Story 순지 (Soon-ji) [2010] • South Korea

2011-01-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

This one is odd. Something of a cross between Kim Ki-duk's Seom (The Isle) and Lou Ye's Summer Palace, though not the caliber of either of those films, it's got several art-house styled sequences which are executed very well but they're undercut by exposition, character development, regular drama, and some poor acting while ambiguous, or unclear political essaying goes on in the background. It's a dense package.

In 2008, the city of Gwangju staged a re-enactment of the events of May 18, 1980 known as the Gwangju Uprising, a demonstration against South Korea's military dictatorship which is seen as a pivotal moment in the country's march to democracy. The re-enactment is used as a backdrop to a character study of a young woman, Soon-ji, and a twisted romance she gets involved in. At first I thought the title of the film referred to the May uprising but in a nice duality move it simply refers to the title character.

Ambiguous duality is a prime plot mover in the film. Soon-ji's object of affection has come to participate in the re-enactment but has a few screws loose and thinks it's the real thing. I think the guy is just supposed to be good looking but it's his passion for the cause that's attractive to Soon-ji who lost her father during the real uprising. Soon-ji is being courted by a police officer whom she uses to help her lover get some real weapons for the re-enactment. The director seems to be illuminating an essay on the different meanings and memories the uprising, and its re-enactment, might have for different people. I like that he simply explores the idea without insisting on making any definitive political or social declarations.

The film starts out developing Soon-ji's character as a loner, someone who was ridiculed and ostracized when she was younger. That part, and some of the standard drama of the ensuing romance are the weaker parts of the film from most angles—acting, storytelling, direction. I may give this film another chance. My initial reaction was that overall the film is weak. The vision is not fully realized or consistent. There's some standard drama, reaching almost melodramatic levels, and some standard storytelling that seem at odds with the more surreal elements that are introduced throughout. The latter are quite effective and a second viewing might flesh them out a little more. I'm happy to enjoy a film for it's stylistic methods as much as its content but the two things seem to fight one another here.

I can't begin to pronounce on how this film plays to a Korean audience, how much more would be gleaned from it. For example a couple characters in the film are wearing period costumes from 1980. I'm not sure many western audiences would recognize that. But for non-Koreans interested in Korean history and culture I do recommend this film, both for it's content and its style, though not as an introduction to Korean cinema. I also recommend a brief review of the events of the Gwangju Uprising before watching this if you are not familiar with them.

★★★

Director: Kwang-man Park
Starring: Se-yoon Jang, Yoon-seong Kim, Im-ho Yang, Dae-sung Choi, jeong-ho Yoo, Seol-goo Lee

Asianmediawiki
HanCinema
Mondo70

2/Duo (2/dyuo) 2 Duo [1997] • Japan

2011-01-09T16:12:00.000-08:00

This is a rare gem. The feature film debut of director Nobuhiro Suwa. It's a no-budget, mostly improvised slice of emotionally repressed life which observes a young couple for a short period of time as they struggle to communicate. I wouldn't say things are going badly for them at this particular point in their lives, they seem very much in love, but the relationship is uncomfortable.

Kei (Nishijima) is a struggling actor, freeloading off Yu (Eri Yu) which makes him impulsive and insecure resulting in unpredictable behavior, fits of anger, and a proposal of marriage. Yu works in a boutique as a shop assistant and seems to be playing the archetype of the abused and unappreciated Japanese woman who tackles her fate with a Zen determinism. Her habit of laughing during the most tense and awkward moments makes her appear a little unstable but also very real, almost surreal.

Even without a handful of scenes where the characters (the actors?) are interviewed about their feelings by an off-screen voice, the film has a fly-on-the-wall documentary feel. 2 Duo is a quietly disturbing character study and the blurring of fiction with documentary might serve to enhance the impact but I'm not interested in critiquing the film from that angle. This is a film which lets us observe the surface interactions of a couple characters that clearly have immense depth. With its crisp vision, assured direction, and most of all its fine acting we really don't need any meta-narrative in order to be fully engaged. I'll leave it to film school students to comment on the ramifications of the documentary style interviews if such a critical look is needed.

This is a small, quiet film with characters that seem overflowing with histories right when we meet them. It's a little sad and painful but it's executed so well there's an uplifting quality to it. This is mostly due to the performance of Eri Yu, who went on to make a few more films but then seems to have disappeared from the industry. Nishijima's performance isn't quite the caliber of Yu's, or perhaps his character isn't as interesting. Being a jerk isn't as complex as being someone who bes with that jerk with their head held high, slightly wobbling.

★★★★★

Director: Nobuhiro Suwa
Starring: Eri Yu, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Makiko Watanabe

IMDb

Tokyo Trash Baby 東京ゴミ女 (Tokyo gomi onna) [2000] • Japan

2011-01-07T17:42:00.000-08:00

Mami Nakamura's performance makes this one a big winner. She's engaging, endearing, amusing, and sympathetic from start to finish. That's what it takes for a small film like this to succeed, a film which says: "Here's an offbeat character, do you like her? Does she draw you into her life, entertain you, and invite you to wonder what will happen to her?" It takes a clever script and a good performance. Tokyo Trash Baby delivers on both accounts.

Miyuki (Nakamura) is a girl in love with her upstairs neighbor, a musician. Instead of trying to meet him she is content with stealing his garbage and foraging through it to find things that will give her insight into his personality. She collects many things, like empty cereal boxes, cigarette butts, love letters, discarded musical scores, and creates a shrine to her love in her apartment. She discards a used condom. The story falls a little flat after she does eventually meet him face to face, but Miyuki is still fun to spend time with. As are the few peripheral characters in the film.

Tomorowo Taguchi plays the manager at the cafe where Miyuki works and is typical Taguchi odd but doesn't have much impact on the story. Two other characters do, though: Kô Shibasaki plays co-worker, Kyoko, whose screen time is devoted almost exclusively to telling Miyuki stories of her sexual conquests, dreams, and dilemmas ... and bumming smokes. Masahiro Toda plays a customer trying desperately to get Miyuki to go out with him but he's too boring to make an impact on her. His attempts at realizing love are face to face but his loneliness prevents him from catching a clue. Both characters serve as juxtaposition to Miyuki and highlight my favorite theme of the film: loneliness. Kyoko has a very active social life but seems unfulfilled and lost. Miyuki (contrary to most observations on the film) doesn't seem lonely. She seems content and happy with her life. That's what makes her interesting. Director Hiroki gives her the respect she deserves.

Tokyo Trash Baby is part of the Love Cinema series of six straight-to-video releases which also includes Takashi Miike's Visitor Q. It's a low-budget affair shot on Digital Video. It's uses all natural lighting and sometimes the glare from an open window distracts but never gets in the way. It's testament to the strength of the story and performance that technical limitations do not derail the project at all.

★★★★★

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring: Mami Nakamura, Kazuma Suzuki, Kô Shibasaki, Sayuri Oyamada, Tomorowo Taguchi

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
MidnightEye

Buried [2010] • USA, Spain, France

2011-01-02T16:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd give this one a chance. I like Ryan Reynolds and figured anybody with the kohones to release a film which consists of 95 minutes of a man in a box, a coffin to be exact, might have something interesting to show. But alas, it didn't pan out. Nothing about the film is plausible or interesting.

Reynolds' character has been kidnapped and buried alive by ne'er-do-wells in Iraq. His backstory is revealed through a series of phone calls from within the coffin. There are no flashbacks, nothing to get viewers out of the box. We're in the box with him for the entire run time. His money and papers have been taken from him but he's got a cell phone and a Zippo lighter. He keeps the lighter lit for most of the film so that we can see him—maybe not a good idea when oxygen is in short supply but the thing that kept bugging me is that he hangs onto the lighter most of the time and it should have burnt his fingers. He looks around the coffin for a possible escape hatch but doesn't notice a bag with instructions for making a hostage video until one of his kidnappers calls him and tells him where it's located—"it's by your left foot".

Then a snake shows up. Reynolds lights a fire which causes the snake to make a hasty exit. He's been making phone calls the whole time and eventually gets a call back from the Head of Human Resources at the place which had contracted him to drive a truck in Iraq. The HR guy gives him an exit interview and has him agree that the company shall not be responsible for anything that happens to him, and will not honor his life insurance policy, because he was fired earlier that morning for being too friendly with another employee. The satire of that scene was so broad it bombed.

The film does have a tension filled sad ending which I liked. The director's kohones showed up then, but the rest of the film is ridiculous.

★

Director: Rodrigo Cortés
Starring: Ryan Reynolds

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Island of Light ゴーヤーちゃんぷるー (Goya-champuru) [2006] • Japan

2010-12-31T16:18:00.000-08:00

The least one can say about this film is that it won't hurt you. It's a bit thin, borderline trite, in it's I love the magic that is Okinawa message, but it's not offensive. There's this sixteen year old Tokyo girl whose mother abandoned her when she was two; her photographer father died mysteriously a month ago ("No body, so we prayed to his camera instead. That was quite weird to see"); she's bullied at school but jumps at the first chance to join the gang by targeting her best friend as the new scapegoat (she slaps her for no reason as an initiation rite); she quits school and secludes herself in her room because she can't relate to her guardian grandparents; she joins an online sort of hikikomori group, starts texting some guy (who befriends kids in the group because he feels superior to them) and tells him she wants to die. He says "might as well, it beats living ... but why don't you come visit me in Okinawa instead". All that's in the first ten minutes or so.

The girl isn't even off the ferry to the Island of Light before she is taken under the wing of a sweet old lady, the first of the fabulous Okinawans we'll meet as the film progresses. The old lady is a delivery driver which makes it convenient for quickly introducing the young girl to the community of wonderful people who will change her life. On one of their stops a man with terminal cancer has collapsed on his front porch so the girl gets a chance to be a hero by running to the clinic to fetch a doctor (on the way there she stops to ask directions of someone who is gardening and just happens to be the collapsed man's wife). She makes it to the clinic and delivers the message but collapses herself from all the running, and it just so happens that she collapses into the arms of a woman who, well ... if you haven't figured it out by now I won't spoil it.

Ordinarily a film like this would gross me out but this one gets a pass because it never gets melodramatic or histrionic. Most of the performers come off as non-actors (but most aren't) so maybe they lacked the chops to take it to that level. Even the coincidence heavy plot didn't roll my eyes too much because it unfolds in a "country" way, just like you'd expect on the Island of Light, not by building each scene to a crescendo, which is the "city" way. The scenery of Okinawa is soothing, too. In the end just remember: the film won't hurt you.

★★★

Director: Tetsuya Matsushima
Starring: Mikako Tabe, Jun Fubuki, Kôhei Takeda, Misako Ôshiro

IMDb
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Story of Qiu Ju 秋菊打官司 (Qiu Ju da guan si) Qiu Ju Goes to Court [1992] • China, Hong Kong

2010-12-10T17:31:00.000-08:00

If you have any interest in learning about or experiencing a foreign country (assuming China is a foreign country to you), you'll get a lot from this film. Roger Ebert, although not a great resource when it comes to East Asian cinema, wrote "we absorb more information about the lives of ordinary people in everyday China than in any other film I've seen". Ebert hasn't seen a lot of Chinese films but his observation is still to the point. The Story of Qiu Ju seems like it is utterly realistic and revealing and that's what is magical about it. Much of the film, most of it in fact, that involves people surrounding the main characters is captured with a hidden camera and is quite candid and authentic. The scenes focused on the main characters are also shot (and performed) in such a way as to suggest they aren't staged in any way. But don't be fooled. This is the genius trickery of director Zhang Yimou's sweet homage to the days of yore.

A very pregnant Qiu Ju and her young husband are chili farmers and want to build a storage shed for their over-productive crop. They go to the village chief to ask permission and are denied on the grounds that the land is for farming, and that if everyone built a building there would be nothing to eat. Qiu Ju's husband points out that the chief isn't a farmer, doesn't understand farming, and is only raising hens. The chief hears the final remark as a humiliating insult about the fact he has only four daughters—and no sons to carry on his family name—so he kicks Qiu Ju's husband in the balls.

Qiu Ju's story is a journey for justice as she perceives it. She is worried at first that her husband's injury may leave them condemned to the one child policy for good, but her husband soon recovers and the film then chronicles her efforts to get the village chief to apologise. That is the only justice she wants. The chief offers to let Qiu Ju's husband kick him in the balls but he won't apologise. Qiu Ju takes her case up the hierarchy to the district administrators, the county, the city, and the party, with the result always being the same: The village chief will pay for medical bills and loss of work and Qiu Ju and the chief are instructed to engage in some self-criticism in order to regain harmony. And by harmony they mean Qiu Ju should drop the case. Everyone, all the way to the top, is sympathetic to her but they won't ask the chief to apologise because he is the chief and he would lose face and his ability to keep chiefing would be compromised. It's a subtle but huge point in Chinese culture.

This film is so good on so many levels it's crazy. One of the head-scratching wonders of the film is it's portrait of harmonious village life while this minor conflict is going on. The first reaction most people will have to this film is "Are people really that nice and polite to one another"? It's almost a documentary capturing rural Chinese life in the 1990's in all its humble and honest simplicity. It's also an insightful observation on the changing bureaucracy in China, both vertically and horizontally over time. It's a parable which ponders whether the law, the wisdom of elders, or common courtesy offers the best solution to disputes. Zhang Yimou is fascinated, and maybe discouraged (maybe not), by the changing Chinese culture and weaves a grand metaphorical tale for viewers to consider from many angles.

Gong Li's performance is amazing. One of the most beautiful women in the world, she plays this role very down to earth and understated, not to mention pregnant, dressed in peasant clothing, and with a scarf wrapped around her neck and much of her face most of the time. It's not a glamorous role. She is one of only a few professional actors in the film and does a remarkable job melting in among all the real people.

The Story of Qiu Ju is a slow paced, somewhat repetitive film but it's all the better for it. Viewers are treated to a heart-warmimg world of relationships which are themselves slow-paced and repetitive. It would be a shame to rush through it.

★★★★★

Director: Zhang Yimou
Starring: Li Gong, Peiqi Liu, Liuchun Yang, Kesheng Lei, Zhijun Ge

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Viewfinder 경 (Kyung) [2010] • South Korea

2010-09-06T20:35:00.000-07:00

Hooray for the new wave of women directors coming up in South Korea. This film, the feature film debut of director Kim Jeong isn't quite the caliber of last year's A Blind River, directed by newcomer Ahn Seon-kyeon, but it's got some fine moments and the overall vision is pretty solid. It shares the same general theme of searching, of someone searching for a lost family member, and also shares the notion that the search is really for the self and that the person searched for isn't really lost as much as not being seen.

I watched both films not knowing anything about them, nor anything about who directed them, and felt pretty strongly that both of them were directed by a woman. These are not chick-flicks, though. Both films are propelled by an almost surreal emotional logic which makes them seem a little difficult at first. Not that men don't make films like this and not that all women do. There's just something peculiarly right-brained and double x-chromosoned at work. This kind of approach doesn't replace traditional linear narrative technique. It accompanies it, fuels it, and might require the viewer to relax their expectations and look at the film from a different perspective.

The two films are also quite different. Ahn Seon-kyeon is a musician and scriptwriter and A Blind River is a more artful film. Kim Jeong teaches at a University and Viewfinder is a bit academic. She has also directed several short films and a documentary trilogy on women's history. Not to slight Kim's artistic credentials, though. Viewfinder is a low budget film but it looks very good and is full of creative photography, capturing both the heavily industrialised and the naturally scenic character of South Korea. And it's got a fantastic soundtrack. I wish I could read Korean so I'd know who performs the songs that sound like Chet Baker meets Lhasa de Sela.

I'm going to cheat here and quote the synopsis from the web site for the International Women's Film Festival in Seoul where Viewfinder premiered:

Viewfinder showcases moments in the lives of several people who meet by accident at the Namgang Rest Stop off a highway in southern South Korea. Kyung is in search of her younger runaway sister. Chang is a computer whiz who had recently lost his job, Kim Vac is a reporter-photographer who frequents the place, and Ona is an orphan media artist who works there, dreaming of New Asia Highway. These four form a loose network of loss and negotiate that loss in the digital age.

That's all fine and good. The film does spend a good amount of time observing people using computers. What's remarkable about it, besides the quantity, or rather, what's remarkable about it in spite of the quantity, is that it all seems very natural. Yes, we live in a digital age but this film isn't about negotiating anything that's peculiar to it. The tools are different than they were a decade or two ago but I think it's a disservice to the film to make it sound like it might be nerdy, or SMS messaging trendy. It's more weird and poetic and the focus is on people and their emotions.

If only it weren't for this program note which follows the synopsis, I wouldn't be concerned:

[...] Following her previous documentary "Koryu", director Kim Jeong tries to catch the motions of people staying and leaving, or the space of constant motion. The camera often follows the people from behind rather than watching them from the front and looks around the scenes, passing outside from the driver’s seat, which gives the audience the feeling of being inside the film. Viewfinder is an independent film with a low production budget. It tells about the communication, loneliness, and the emptiness of people living in the digital environment. The traces of people’s views and the results of their motions are delivered through digital texts. The internal emotions are expressed not on the human faces but on the virtual space generated by a computer window. The camera seems to be attracted to the new scenes created by digital technology and concurrently dreams of the space it cannot reach. Viewfinder is a cinematic exploration about the primal scene in the digital age considerately brought by director Kim Jeong.

I like the bit about catching people in the space of constant motion but the rest of it sends my bullshit detector through the roof. I don't care if its a direct quote from the director's commentary track. "The camera ... dreams of the space it cannot reach". Help! I need a class in contemporary film deconstruction.

Viewfinder is a film about people, not the plague of the digital age. It's about people living their lives, dreaming their dreams, and doing their jobs ... and one of the characters is trying to figure out why everything got a little fucked-up. She gives the film its emotional center. Films have been doing this for a long time. All four characters are portrayed well and are engaging. Choi Hee-Jin, as the photographer is a blast. She's sweet and kind and thoughtful but often makes you wonder if she understands other people's personal space. Photographers are like that. Lee Ho-Young is also good as the guy who finds people without ever leaving his computer and he kind of explains the movie through his philosophical poetry. Newcomer and unknown Moon Ha-in, as the popular Internet blogger who works the night shift at the rest stop where most of the action takes place, is the most intriguing, and probably the most together. She also looks a lot like Lee Yeon-Hee. At first I felt like Yang Eun-Yong, who plays Kyung and is more or less the lead, gave a rather flat performance but her character is supposed to be a little flat. There is a moment near the end which fleshes things out.

This is a film about characters, not tools. It's slow-paced and low-key with a few quirky bits thrown in for spice. There's some surreal dialog, some animation, a breaking of the fourth wall, and a supernatural scene where the subject of a photograph doesn't appear in the picture. It's slightly bizarre but also very down home and it's got a great soundtrack. It's not going to play well at the mall but if you like art films with real emotion it's worth seeking out.

★★★★

Director: Jeong Kim
Starring: Eun-yong Yang, Hui-jin Choe, Ho-young Lee, Moon Ha-in

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12 International Film Festival in Seoul

The Most Distant Course 最遥远的距离 (Zui yao yuan de ju li) (2007) • Taiwan

2010-08-27T16:43:00.000-07:00

This is one of those slow and dreamy ones. The story of three different people, each on their own journey, whose lives overlap may be a familiar one but this version has its own unique angles and just enough depth of character to keep the viewer engaged. All three characters are wonderfully portrayed.

Tang (Tz-yi Mo) is on a road trip capturing sounds and recording them onto cassette tapes from all the places he had hoped to visit with his girlfriend before she broke up with him. He sends the tapes to the last known address he has for her but she has already moved on. Xiaoyun (Lunmei Kwai) now lives at the address and receives the mysterious and unidentified tapes. Unhappy with her present conditions in life, Xiaoyun sets out to find and visit all the places the sounds are coming from with the outside hope of maybe meeting the guy who is sending them.

Tang meets up on his travels with a psychiatrist, played charismatically, if a bit larger than the rest of the film's characters, by Siao-guo Jia, who is also suffering a broken heart and doing some soul searching of his own. The two of them share some odd experiences and some moments of sad humor while Xiaoyun's parallel journey is filled with many beautiful sights along the Taiwan countryside. Everything comes together in a very bittersweet ending that's neither happy nor sad but wide open to possibility.

★★★★

Director: Jing-Jie Lin
Starring: Tz-yi Mo, Siao-guo Jia, Lunmei Kwai

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Taipei Times

A Good Rain Knows 호우시절 (Ho woo shi jul) aka Season of Good Rain [2009] • South Korea, China

2010-08-27T13:58:00.000-07:00

It would be a spoiler if I were to state one of the main reasons I love this movie. I can say, however, that the film is very much about a Chinese experience, and the fact that it is directed by a Korean is what makes it interesting. There are other good things about the movie so I'll work with them and save the spoiler.

A Good Rain Knows is nice to look at. It's photographed in crisp and bright colors and makes great use of it's locale, Chengdu, the capital city of Sichuan Province. It's got dancing in a downtown square, bamboo groves, even a scene with a panda bear. Gao Yuanyuan as Mei, a tourist guide in a Chengdu park, has never looked more radiant. Jung Woo-sung is a South Korean heartthrob but his acting ability is curious. He always seems nervous. He plays an architect, Dongha, who travels to Chengdu on assignment and runs into Mei, an old and dear friend. There is no plot to speak of, just the unfolding of their past and present relationship that gives the film its purpose.

Dongha, a Korean, and Mei, a Chinese, communicate almost exclusively in English. Since their relationship is presented as fragile and tentative, and since Jung is a nervous actor anyway, having them communicate in broken but understandable English is a stroke of genius from director Hur. If you're bothered or unmoved by the stilted verbiage the film won't work.

In typical Hur fashion, and this film sees him in perfect stride, not much happens. We're presented with a couple characters testing the water to see if, when, and how love will factor into their relationship. The lens slowly gets closer, revealing inner layers, until a small explosion occurs. And in typical Hur fashion this explosion takes place far beneath the surface. We know it's a big one but all we see are the rippling aftershocks (hint) on the surface.

Hur is a fascinating director. In some ways his films are just cheesy romances with questionable soundtracks, but he possesses an emotional intelligence and an eye for subtle soul-searching details that make his films powerful when he gets it right. He gets it right this time. A good rain knows when to fall.

★★★★★

Director: Jin-ho Hur
Starring: Woo-sung Jung, Yuanyuan Gao, Byung-seo Kim

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Beyond Hollywood

Wanee and Junah 와니와 준하 (Wanee wa Junah) [2001] • Korea

2010-08-21T15:21:00.000-07:00

In an angsty romance there's got to be something in the way. Koreans usually toss in a terminal disease as roadblock. Wanee and Junah employs something different. Let me get the accolades out of the way before I spoil the hell out of the movie so you can stop reading when it's appropriate for your needs.

Hee-seon Kim, as Wanee, is fabulous. I'm not familiar with her work outside Wanee and Junah but apparently this "first beauty of South Korea" hadn't received many high marks in the thespian department before this. She is a natural and simple beauty but that's not important. She brings an incredible amount of restraint and depth to the role here, and when it comes time to cry she does it just right. Jin-mo Ju, also a looker, as Junah, is very sympathetic and brings more to his role than just being a kind and supportive puppy dog.

These two very genuine performances allow for Wanee and Junah to reach some peaks of emotional sadness on the level of One Fine Spring Day—one of the best films ever made about love evaporating for no reason (or for so many reasons it's too complicated to parse), just like it does in real life. This is the kind of sadness that doesn't make you cry, it makes you mad. It makes you want to rebel against it because it seems so unfair, so not right. So with all this goodness going for it why don't I love this film? Maybe I do. Maybe I'll come around to accepting it, warts and all. One thing I love about it is that it has stayed with me and scrambled my brain for days after watching it.

The director uses a handful of jump edits in the first act of the film. This technique is often utilized to let ten seconds of screen time signify a much greater span of real time. I thought they were unnecessary and gave it an amateurish feel. The film jumps back and forth in time, from the present day to Wanee's high school days, so there is an inherent non-linearity to it. Since the film is about Wanee coming to terms with her past, and Junah discovering it, this is necessary. All of the transitions between time zones are expertly and creatively done but the substance of them often feels oblique, like the director is toying with the viewer's ability to file each of them away for later explanation. This is the kind of thing film snobs champion, saying "The film makes you think!". But good films should make you think about their content not their structural deployment.

Here come the ***SPOILERS***

It ends happily. In a way it comes as relief because ten minutes before it ends you're likely to be coiled up in disbelief at the level of sadness. But something about a happy ending makes for a less powerful film. It becomes just a movie at that point. Wanee and Junah is not just another movie, though. The roadblock to romance is Wanee's first love. A love left unconsummated and full of prickly details, one of which is that it kills her mother's husband, who is the father of said first love, which makes the guy her half-brother, not to mention also her best friend's first true love. At first, all of this thorniness seemed cheap to me, especially the way it is not made clear from the beginning. I felt deliberately mislead even though I knew from the overall wholesome tone of the film it wasn't going to go very far into dark places. It could have. And it could have chopped off the happy ending and it would have been killer. And I would have criticized the film for being unrealistic and exploiting taboos for the sake of making me unnecessarily unhappy. End ***SPOILERS***

Wanee and Junah is a pretty remarkable film. Good performances, good cinematography and score compliment the ambitious, if not always successful, directorial choices in both structure and content. I was frustrated many times along the way but not too many films can tie your guts up into a knot the way this one does. Color me impressed with that.

I'm posting this one with four stars, which is a compromise between Your Mileage May Vary and A Great Success. I've given it three, four, and five stars in the tags because I really can't decide. Wanee and Junah, like the aforementioned One Fine Spring Day, is a film that depends a lot on what you bring to it, what your own experiences are, and where you sit with regards to some of the delicate circumstances it operates in.

★★★★

Director: Yong-gyun Kim
Starring: Hee-seon Kim, Jin-mo Ju, Seung-woo Cho, Kang-hee Choi

IMDb
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HanCinema
Love HK Film
Koreanfilm.org

One Day (You yi tian) [2010] aka As I Walked Out One Evening • Taiwan

2010-08-20T23:42:00.000-07:00

This is a strange one, in a good way, for the most part. It's a lovely and meditative story of blossoming and innocent young love that jumps back and forth in time and in and out of dreams. It gets a little weird, then a little confusing, and then almost shoots itself in the foot by hinting at some plot to get in the way of the story. I'm not sure that it happened but it seems to have, and it appears to relate to the melodramatic question a young woman asks her mother: "If you could go back to the past and meet dad again, would you still marry him ... but you know that he would have an accident later?"

Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh, looking a lot like Zhou Xun from certain angles, plays the young woman with the beautiful name, Singing. She works on a ferry that shuttles recruits between the port of Kaohsiung and the military base of Kinmen Island. One night during the trip all the lights go out on the ferry and Singing appears to be alone. Then an Indian man with an axe, screaming without subtitles, chases her. She's rescued by a young soldier and the loopy dream logic begins. The soldier tells her that they are not in the real world. A horse walks by. Singing's hair is shorter and she's in a study hall in Taipei sitting next to the soldier only now he's a student. They fall in love but keep waking up together, or falling asleep and dreaming together, on the ferry. The future, the past, what's a dream and what's reality blur to the point that it doesn't matter. Until that little plot point rears it's head. There's a little crying and some running, two things that suggest melodrama, but this is a mood piece much more than a drama. The dreamlike quality is emphasized by the fact that almost all the scenes take place on or near the water. The cinematography is often muted and the soundtrack mostly noodling piano.

I think it's a mistake to try and discover meaning in a film like this, as the director or as a viewer, even though it's filled with innumerable possible symbolisms. This is not a commercial love story. It's far too down tempo and poetic. But it is a love story and these kinds of films require a nice couple for us to love, and the two leads provide that here, with extra credit given to the ever watchable Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh in her film debut.

The beautiful theme song that plays as the end credits roll is sung by Tarcy Su, a singer and actress I just discovered in the remarkable film Blue Cha Cha.

★★★★

Director: Chi-Jan Hou
Starring: Bryan Shu-Hao Chang, Nikki Hsin-Ying Hsieh, Gwen Yao

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The Last Lioness [2009] • National Geographic

2010-08-13T07:58:00.000-07:00

I'm always suspicious about how much of the "story" is manufactured in some of these animal documentaries. This one focuses on a single lioness, Lady Liuwa, who is the sole survivor after massive poaching wiped out most of the wildlife in Zambia's Liuwa Plain, a 3,000 square mile reserve. Cameraman Herbert Brauer goes there to photograph hyenas and becomes the object of Lady Liuwa's affection. The lioness hangs out by his jeep and does playful ktty-rolls, sleeps close to his tent at night, follows him around like a well trained dog and rips the seat of his jeep to shreds trying to get at a little of his man smell (I guess).

Lady Liuwa has been alone for five years. The African Parks Conservation team hatches a plan to bring in a male lion to give Lady Liuwa some companionship and the possibility of mating and creating a new pride of lions in the park. The first male they bring in chokes to death on his own vomit after waking up from the ten hour sedation needed to transport him to Liuwa from wherever he used to live. They don't show that part, though, and don't really explain why it's so difficult to find and translocate some stud, or even some other girl lions, for Lady Liuwa to play with.

Eight months later the African Parks Conservation team finds a couple lion brothers and translocates them to Liuwa. Five days later they are hanging out with Lady Liuwa and she's doing kitty-rolls for them.

There better be a sequel.

★★★★

Starring: Lady Liuwa the Lioness

NatGeoTV site

Fine, Totally Fine 全然大丈夫 (完全没问题) (Zenzen daijobu) [2008] • Japan

2010-08-11T09:01:00.000-07:00

This is a subtle, almost surreal comedy that wanders along at a slow pace, punctuated with bits of low-brow humor to keep it alive. It's also an odd little romance and a root-for-the-losers character drama, but there's never any high drama, as the film never gets out of lazy Sunday afternoon mode. The comedy and romance are spices in the mix of everyday people turning thirty, going nowhere fast, who end up going from not so good to not so bad after all. When the humor is subtle or sad it's great, but not so good when it resorts to the juvenile, like when a booger flies across the room and lands in someone's eye. Comedy is tough and everyone has a style that suits them. I could have done without the more broad-based physical bits but they do serve a purpose as little alarms for those who don't appreciate two hours of deadpan, no matter how funny it is. The director demonstrates a good amount of skill in using editing for comic timing, and he was wise to cast YosiYosi Arakawa as the guy to do the heavy lifting when it comes to the “Life’s more fun when you’re an idiot” bits.

I recommend this film to those who like slow comedies, but also to those who like whatever you call these uplifting films about everyday people who don't become rock stars or win the Olympics but just get along and find happiness in everyday life. I love the way the film ends and anti-resolves a love triangle we weren't sure was going to turn out to be much of a plot point. I wanted to reach through my screen and hug the crap out of Yoshino Kimura. Her performance really surprised me. What a pleasure to see her do comedy, albeit of the low-key and clumsy kind.

And even though her part is very small, any film with Noriko Eguchi gets points just for having her.

★★★

Director: Yosuke Fujita
Starring: YosiYosi Arakawa, Yoshino Kimura, Yoshinori Okada, Noriko Eguchi, Shima Ise

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Be Sure to Share ちゃんと伝え (Chanto tsutaeru) [2009] • Japan

2010-08-11T06:44:00.000-07:00

"I love you, man".

Sion Sono has made some strange films. This is not one of them unless you consider it strange for him to make such a normal film. Be Sure to Share is a small, simple, and sentimental film, not typically Sono-esque. There's no blood and there's no running around with a handheld camera. There's plenty of emotional desperation but it's of the uplifting kind. The film is about a twenty-seven year old young man who wants to find a moment of bonding, a way of saying thank you, "I love you, man" to his dying father. The title says it all. It's not too mushy, though. The film works because of it's simplicity. There is the big scene that sort of stretches credulity but we could see it coming and Sono follows it up with one of the more hilarious uses of the line "didn't see that one coming" I've ever heard. It's off-camera and sort of eavesdropped upon and it made me laugh out loud.

The film is beautifully cast. Everyone is lovable. Idol-boy Akira does a very credible job playing a normal guy who all of a sudden must deal with mortality, in more ways than one. Ayumi Ito is adorable as his girlfriend and has one of the best crying scenes I've seen in a film. Keiko Takahash is pure mom incarnate, an immaculate performance. Eiji Okuda is good as the father when he's lovable and nice but he also has to play the predictably strict father who's tough to love, in flashbacks, so we get a sense of whatever it is that that film cliché gives us. That's the only weak part of the film but it's not enough to spoil it.

★★★★★

Director: Sion Sono
Starring: Akira, Eiji Okuda, Shogo Ueno, Ayumi Ito, Keiko Takahash

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Secret Reunion (Ui-hyeong-je) [2010] • South Korea

2010-08-09T08:18:00.000-07:00

This is a Hollywood style cat and mouse buddy flick with good action sequences, good acting, and a thick plot with international intrigue which ends happily ever after. It stars a couple of South Korea's top box office attractions in Kang-ho Song and Dong-won Kang. Song plays his usual bumbling yet lovable and competent self, and Kang ups his acting ante from stud muffin to scary good hit-man. They have great chemistry together. It's gritty and bloody and, because it seems to follow Song wherever he goes, it's sprinkled with bits of humor throughout.

So what went wrong? Nothing, really, until the deus ex machina at the end. It's probably never been more true than it is with Secret Reunion that a bad ending can ruin a film (for some people). It seems to have bothered critics more than audiences, as Secret Reunion is South Korea's highest grossing film of the year so far. But it also seems to have disappointed one of its actors. As Song put it in an interview "If I were the director, I would have chosen an ending for "Secret Reunion" in which the pain lasts longer". In other words, no living happily ever after. South Korea has a tradition of ending films a little differently than most Hollywood films. People usually die instead of flying off into the sunset. I say it's no big deal and there is a lot f fun to be had with Secret Reunion. Just close your eyes, stop the DVD Player, or walk out a few minutes early f you don't want any cheese in your omelet.

★★★★

Director: Hun Jang
Starring: Kang-ho Song, Dong-won Kang, Kyeong-min Go, Seung-do Han, Su-ho Ha

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Yuriko's Aroma ユリ子のアロマ (Yuriko no aroma) [2010] • Japan

2010-08-08T23:46:00.000-07:00

Oh, the expectations. Noriko Eguchi stars as aromatherapist Yuriko, who finds herself uncontrollably aroused by the sweaty scent of a seventeen year old boy. Oh, the possibilities. The boy happens to be the niece of the woman who owns the salon where Yuriko works. That's the story and pretty much the whole plot.

The film gives itself away early, letting on that it's going to be safe and good-humored. Oh, the let down. The moment things hint towards any tension, or that things might get sexy or erotic, the soundtrack rears its ugly head and plays goofy and light-hearted. And then the scene cuts away. The technique of cutting a scene before it finishes can be effective in moderation but here it's so overused it seems to reinforce a suspicion that the director doesn't know how to let a scene form its own conclusion. The film is sprinkled with innumerable scenes that have no beginning nor end, just a shallow, usually brief, middle period. Most of them add nothing and could have just been eliminated.

The film's runtime is only 79 minutes and it could have easily been shorter. It doesn't explore anything in any depth and there are a whole lot of scenes of "opening the door slowly, inch by inch" that could have been tightened up to make room for something else except there's nothing here. A couple off camera handjobs and an embarrassingly out of place scene with a topless air-head girl giving Yuriko a massage don't add any adult or erotic content.

I love Noriko Eguchi so I'm going to write off her Quaalude inspired performance as the result of bad direction. It's a gutsy role, in theory anyway, which calls for her to do a lot of aroused sniffing of a young boy's body and licking of his head. She does those parts very well. Few people could. Too bad they are the only interesting moments in the film.

★★

Director: Kôta Yoshida
Starring: Noriko Eguchi, Shota Sometani, Noriko Kijima, Jun Miho, Saori Hara

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Midnight Eye
Official Site

There are snippets in this official trailer (which probably won't last long on YouTube because of the boobage) that aren't in the movie and the dialog is cut up and mismatched to create something that doesn't exist in the final product.

Maborosi 幻の光 (Maboroshi no hikari) Illusion [1995] • Japan

2010-08-06T23:38:00.000-07:00

Continuing my exploration of Hirokazu Koreeda. This is another sad and gentle, lyrical film dealing with the themes of loss, death, and the soul. You have to be in the mood to let a film just float by, or wash over you in lilting waves to appreciate Maborosi. A couple of art house film techniques Koreeda employs might frustrate some viewers. One is the use of extremely long shots, in terms of time to a degree but mostly in terms of distance. His camera doesn't always foreground the focus of a scene but instead pulls back and observes it from afar. Sometimes very far. The second thing is that, with only a few exceptions, you never get a really good look at the faces of the actors, an aspect all the more remarkable given Koreeda's casting a fashion model in her film debut as the main protagonist. There is no vanity in this film. It's all bare naked emotion and gorgeous photography.

The film centers on Yumiko, played by Makiko Esumi the fashion model, whose husband apparently commits suicide by walking into an oncoming train three months after their first child is born. Koreeda establishes quickly, and beautifully, at the beginning of the film a very genuine and loving relationship between the couple so the viewer shares in Yumiko's confusion and pain in not knowing why he would kill himself. After a period of mourning Yumiko agrees to an arranged marriage and moves from Osaka with her son to a small fishing village where her new husband, a widower with a young daughter, has lived all his life. There are a few scenes which suggest Yumiko might have found happiness again but it doesn't last. The haunting inexplicability of her first husband's death is too strong for her to escape. The scene where Yumiko finally and completely breaks downs is framed and captured perfectly, but it's shot from about three hundred yards away.

The whole thing is more like a painting than a narrative film. The camera hardly ever moves. People don't say much and plot isn't really part of the equation. One thing I usually insist on when watching these slow-burn character studies with minimal dialog is access to the character's interior. What are they thinking and feeling? The most expressive entrance to someone's interior is their eyes, but as I've mentioned Koreeda shoots the film in such away we hardly know what the characters look like, let alone are we able to look into their eyes. Something else happens. We may not get a sense of what Yumiko is thinking or feeling but we have great sympathy for her. Her despair and inconsolable suffering are clearly shown.

Maborosi is the work of an artist, not someone with an interest in selling theater tickets. Koreeda's passion is exploring light and color and composition, and in exploring the themes of loss, death, and the nature of the soul. Yes, that's a polite way of saying a lot of people will find the film boring. So be warned. For those who like this kind of thing, and you know who you are, this is one of the good ones. It is so full of magnificently composed photography it will take your breath away.

Maboroshi is a Japanese term for illusion or mirage, and is often used in the tales of fishermen to describe a light that tempts them, without explanation, further out to sea. Maboroshi is the explanation given to Yumiko as to why her husband may have walked into the path of an oncoming train.

★★★★★

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring: Makiko Esumi, Takashi Naitô, Tadanobu Asano, Gohki Kashiyama, Naomi Watanabe

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Wikipedia
Asianmediawiki
Roger Ebert

Nowhere to Turn 여기보다 어딘가에 (Yeogiboda Eodingae) Somewhere Over Here [2007] • South Korea

2010-08-06T21:37:00.000-07:00

This is a film that went nowhere beyond a couple festival screenings. There's nothing earth shattering about it but it's not bad. Typical slacker-with-dream storyline about a girl who wants to go abroad and study music. What drew my attention to it was the lead actress Su-yeon Cha.

Cha made three films in 2007: Beautiful, For Eternal Hearts, and Nowhere to Turn. I had seen Beautiful, a film about a woman whose life is hell because of her incredible beauty. That's quite a role to fill. Cha is attractive in a sleepy, natural sort of way, but not typical of today's Korean starlets. Her performance in Beautiful showed promise, exuding poise and confidence, but the film was so scrambled script-wise it was hard to make much of her acting ability. Then I saw For Eternal Hearts, a supernatural thriller, and Cha performed reasonably well in a supporting role, so I took a chance on this one.

Nowhere to Turn follows Su-yeon (that's also her character's name) as she tries to earn enough money to go to England and study music. She has no support from her parents so she runs away from home in protest. She ends up at the flat of a male friend who has a big crush on her but she keeps the relationship platonic. She tries giving piano lessons to earn money but doesn't have the patience. She meets a successful musician and thinks he might be able to help her but all he wants to do is sleep with her. She returns to the puppy dog boyfriend and does something creepy. She discovers another woman is interested in her friend so she tells the woman that he has AIDS. One thing leads to another and she and her boy friend form a musical duo to perform in a contest that offers a cash prize big enough to send her to England. Bummer she didn't sleep with that other musician guy, as he turns up as one of the judges for the contest.

Cha's performance in the film is OK but, as mentioned she has a sleepy sort of beauty, and judging from this film she appears to also have a sleepy sort of acting style. Her role as a drifter we are supposed to root for requires a little more spunk than she brings to it. She does do a very good job of fitting in as a member of the local indie music scene, so there's that going for her. She seems quirky hip, if a little low-key.

All in all there's not a lot to recommend about Nowhere to Turn. It's not a bad film but it doesn't offer much that's new and the performances are only adequate. I liked it a bit more than I think most people will because I find Cha to be an intriguing young actress and I like films about people pursuing a musical dream. It's worth a rental if either of those things appeal to you.

★★★

Director: Seung-yeong Lee
Starring: Su-yeon Cha, Ha-joon Yoo, Jun-suk Bang, Oei Lee, Won-sang Park

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HanCinema
Soompi
LunaPark6

Trailer:

Out of the Wind 風の外側 (Kaze no sotogawa) (2007) • Japan

2010-08-06T16:41:00.000-07:00

This is Sakura Ando's feature film debut. It's written and directed by her father, Eiji Okuda. These are the facts. It's a confused film. It starts off being about a young girl, Mariko, who has a dream of becoming a diva in the world of opera. It's funny seeing Sakura Ando do that elongated mouth opera singing thing, but I digress. There has to be some conflict so a soft-spoken tough guy is introduced. He becomes Mariko's bodyguard and remains nameless for a while. This is a Japanese film. There are perverts targeting young girls in school uniforms.

The boy and girl enter into a typical movie relationship. It starts off distant and rocky but love slowly swirls. Then the focus of the film drifts to the guy who has a dream of becoming a big time Yakuza. Problem is, he's Korean, so he has to prove himself on his way up the ladder by doing all the icky jobs. One of which turns out to be killing a Korean businessman who ... drum-roll, please ... turns out to be Mariko's father. That would mean, you guessed it, Mariko is half Korean. Now the film drifts into an exploration of identity and we're given an excuse to up the ante in the love relationship between Mariko and her bodyguard. The life of Koreans and the discrimination they endure living in Japan is also explored.

It's not that a film can't grow and expand on the themes it explores but it has to be well-written and executed or it will fail. The amount of suspension of disbelief required to get from A to B to C in this film is huge. I didn't have the power to suspend my disbelief that a director would have his young daughter do a nude scene in her film debut, seems creepy, nor was I able to get through the scene where the bodyguard stumbles into the opera house and stabs Mariko's father while she watches the whole thing, albeit with a wrinkled forehead, but never stops singing.

This film is pretty awful, and it's too bad because Sakura Ando's performance is pretty good. It's a real sign of talent when you can be good in a bad film.

★★

Director: Eiji Okuda
Starring: Sakura Ando, Takao Sasaki, Kazu Andô, Yasuhiro Arai, Megumi Araki

IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Blue Cha Cha 深海 (Shen hai) [2005] • Taiwan

2010-08-06T15:53:00.000-07:00

It's a great pleasure when watching a film you're enjoying and knew nothing about to recognize that beyond being a good film you are also experiencing the work of a skilled director. The upside to this is that there's a good chance you'll have at least a few more good films in your future. Such is the case with Blue Cha Cha.

The film begins with Ah Yu, played by Taiwanese singer Tarcy Su, being released from prison. We aren't told why she was there or how long she was in for. She makes her way to the home of a weathered motherly woman named An-an, played by veteran actress Yi-Ching Lu, whom she had come to know in prison. An-an takes her in and gives her job at the hostess bar she operates. After an arranged date doesn't pan out the way Ah Yu expected it to, she quits the bar and takes a job at a computer factory. Her relationship with a young supervisor she meets there, along with her ongoing and anchoring relationship with An-an, is the meat of this film.

Blue Cha Cha requires patience, and yes, that's code for it being an art house type film that moves slowly and doesn't offer a lot of detail as to why things are happening. Beyond a somewhat ambiguous statement near the end of the film revealing why Ah Yu was in prison we never learn anything about her past, and throughout the film it is clear that she has no idea nor concrete desires for her future. She just drifts along, medicated, mentally unstable yet always trying to be nice, hoping each day will offer some measure of fulfillment. Blue Cha Cha isn't a low-budget indie film, though. It has excellent production values and looks very good. The direction is fluid and creative and the cinematography is great.

As I always say, these kinds of films need good characters and good performances in order to succeed. Blue Cha Cha delivers them. Yi-Ching Lu, who has been in a number of films by Ming-liang Tsai, is always reliable. She's tough and unafraid to do almost anything as an actress. But the real highlight here is Tarcy Su. She is able to make us care for a character we never learn much about. We're not always clear about what is going on inside her head but we're always sure she is experiencing something. It's very surprising to me how well she is able to articulate a confused yet committed mind without offering any insight as to the details of the matter. There's a scene where she is laying in bed with a man, staring at him face to face as he drifts in and out of sleep. There is a frightening authenticity to her gaze which offers no explanation as to its genesis.

The ending is peculiar, and depending on how you interpret a couple of things ambiguously discussed and stated it could actually result in a big blunder. I don't care. I'm not a fan of films which attempt an explanation for the mental instability of their characters. I appreciate that Cheng leaves it as a lingering issue until the very end of the film, and I doubly appreciate that he leaves it ambiguous enough to ignore if it is something we find questionable.

★★★★★

Director: Wen-Tang Cheng
Starring: Tarcy Su, Yi-Ching Lu, Leon Dai, Wei Lee, Cheung-Ying Lin

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My Dear Enemy 멋진 하루 (Meotjin haru) [2008] • South Korea

2010-08-05T23:15:00.000-07:00

This film belongs to Jung-woo Ha. He is engaging and funny playing one of those guys who can spin even the worst of interactions into something that makes him seem likable. Seen in isolation, his character's charms might seem to not add up but the film manages to paint a convincing portrait of a guy you just can't say no to.

Do-yeon Jeon, in heavy eye make-up, pretty much pouts her way through the film playing an old girlfriend of his who wants to collect some money he owes her. She tracks him down and demands he repay her by day's end. She knows him well enough to know that promises of repaying her later will never be kept. He's vulnerable and in the dog-house but he's still in charge of things as he sets out to borrow money from a series of other old girlfriends and lovers in order to repay her. She follows him around while he does it. It's an interesting scenario which produces many storied and funny moments.

With lesser actors this film probably wouldn't work. It's a Yoon-ki Lee film—which means it's low-key, slice of life, simple story stuff. Don't expect high drama or excitement. What you'll get are two fine performances and, in typical Lee fashion, two characters who reveal themselves to one another not through mutual interaction but by observing the subtle interactions they have with other people.

★★★★

Director: Yoon-ki Lee
Starring: Do-yeon Jeon, Jung-woo Ha, Il-hwa Choi, Ju-bong Gi, Hyo-ju Han

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Taipei Exchanges 第36個故事 [2010] • Taiwan

2010-08-05T22:40:00.000-07:00

Taipei Exchanges stars one of Taiwan's most promising and popular young actresses, Lunmei Kwai, who I like quite a bit, but it's disappointing to see her in such a manufactured and saccharin product. Taipei Exchanges has the narrative structure and impact of a pop music promotional video. Everything is so shiny and polished nothing sticks. Everything floats by meaninglessly, accompanied by what sounds like schmaltzy canned piano doodling from someone trained in writing jingles for laundry detergent commercials. In between doodles there will actually be a music video while we watch Lunmei Kwai think about an éclair or something equally fascinating.

Kwai plays Doris who's opened a café with her sister Josie, played by newcomer Zaizai Lin. Lin looks a lot like Kwai except with a curve to her nose, and she looks good in high-top sneakers and tights. We know the type: cute slacker with cool hair and hip t-shirts. Doris is all business and Josie is a dreamer. Josie wins in the end by turning Doris into a dreamer who learns there is more to value in life than making money selling a cup of coffee.

The title, Taipei Exchanges, plays on two aspects of the film. One has to do with the exchange of goods or services and the other is the exchange of stories that often accompany the goods or services exchanged. When Doris first opens the café a bunch of her friends bring her junk from their attics as housewarming gifts. Most of it is recognized as junk and thrown away but a few things that didn't even catch their attention enough to be thrown away turn out to be of interest to some of their customers. And thus begins the shtick. Since they didn't pay for any of the stuff they won't sell it but will take something in exchange for it. The bartering always follows the same routine. The first proposal is rejected as thoughtless and the comeback is appreciated for its sappy wonderfulness.

The film is narrated by an anonymous voice because the characters aren't thick enough to hang a story on. The café used in the film was built specifically for the film, reportedly backed by Taipei's tourism authorities, and is now open for business as a real coffee shop and tourist attraction. Taipei Exchanges is the feature film directing debut of television ad director Ya-chuan Hsiao. That about sums it up.

★

Director: Ya-chuan Hsiao
Starring: Lunmei Kwai, Zaizai Lin

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Topless トップ (Toppuresu) [2008] • Japan

2010-07-30T16:51:00.000-07:00

There's zero nudity in this very sweet film about being lesbian in contemporary Tokyo. Someone is going to argue that the title metaphorically refers to being emotionally topless, i.e., baring your soul, because the film takes the risky approach, like millions of films do, of being about being human. Even though the film focuses on the loves and lives of its central lesbian characters it really speaks a universal language that heterosexual viewers can relate to as well—like having to deny your identity for the sake of marrying a man for security. Uh-huh. No. This film is about being lesbian.

Topless is refreshing and all that. Its themes of love and fear and politics and sadness are universal. Some of its plot points are a little diversitiste though, like the young girl who comes to Tokyo with an anti-lesbian chip on her shoulder to look for her mother who abandoned her several years ago to be with a lesbian lover, meets the film's protagonist who helps her, comes to recognize that lesbians can be good people too. OK. Characters learn from other characters all the time in movies.

The film might appear a little fluffy when you stand back from it, but the journey through it is filled with a number of poignant moments. One is the film's only sex scene, a non-explicit one between the film's central lesbian character and her male roommate. She's lost her true love to a man, is full of turmoil and wants to see what sex with a man is like. The scene is done very well and handled delicately.

My take on the title and the poster depicting two young women about to engage in a passionate kiss is this: the opening moments of the film are a little warm. The two women, as depicted on the poster, are engaged in some very passionate kissing and roaming of hands. And then pop! The top, the attitude many viewers stereotypically enter with, and desire from, a film about lesbians—two chicks going at it will be hot—comes off. The scene makes an abrupt change in tone and direction. All of a sudden the film is about people with personalities and it never looks back. Yes, it keeps saying "my desire to love and be loved as a lesbian is just like yours (as a straight person) except it's a little complicated by all this societal buildup of crud." That's the point.

My biggest takeaway from the film is Mina Shimizu. She's one of those actresses like Noriko Eguchi, except she's very upbeat and not moody and darkish like Eguchi, who owns the screen and everyone else in it every time she appears. I predict big things ahead for her.

★★★★

Director: Eiji Uchida
Starring: Mina Shimizu, Ryûnosuke Kawai, Aya Ohyama, Erika Okuda, Aya Oomasa

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Still Walking 歩いても歩いても (Aruitemo aruitemo) Even If You Walk and Walk [2008] • Japan

2010-07-30T14:32:00.000-07:00

I liked Air Doll so much I decided to seek out more films made by its director Hirokazu Kore'eda. Imagine you have a new friend in life, someone you have a fondness and respect for, and they invite you along to meet the family of one of their best friends. You'll probably attend with an optimistic attitude, thinking the old adage "friends of yours are friends of mine." Such was my approach to seeing this film.

There is a rich tradition of the family drama in Japanese cinema and this is a worthy addition to it. Still Walking observes and reveals the humor, history, and hidden emotions of an extended family over the course of twenty-four hours. A brother and sister, their spouses and children, attend a yearly gathering at the home of their parents to commemorate the death of their older brother, the pride of the parents, who died accidentally fifteen years ago while attempting to save a young boy, a stranger, from drowning.

The film has a languid pace and a subtle sense of humor. There is a stereotypical grouchy and reserved father who has a stereotypically antagonistic relationship with his second son, a doting and good-humored mother, a loving and amiable sister. It seems like there may not be anything new here. There really isn't, and not much happens until another annual guest to the gathering shows up. He is the boy the older brother saved from drowning. He's an overweight, fidgety, perspiring loser. He is extremely uncomfortable and we can sense the parent's resentment that it was not him who died instead of their son.

There was something about Air Doll that bothered me. There is a scene where the Air Doll meets, literally, her maker. The man basically essays to her on the meaning of the film: aren't human beings just empty vessels too, desiring and needing to be filled up? I've come to think that Kore'eda didn't trust his audience, or perhaps himself, enough to let the film speak for itself. He felt the need to explain it. There is a similar scene in Still Walking. After the ill-at-ease boy leaves the family's home the son observes to his mother that it seems almost cruel to invite him as he seems so uncomfortable, almost tortured by it. The mother acknowledges this and says "That's why we invite him." The scene should have cut right there but Kore'eda has the mother discourse on the necessity of this sadism.

Even with that flaw, and the fact that Still Walking doesn't present an original scenario, I still loved it. I enjoyed meeting this family. Kore'eda and the cast bring a freshness to the family drama staple of Japanese cinema. The photography is beautiful, the direction is fluid and accomplished, the performances superb, and there is a surprisingly good amount of subtle humor throughout the film. Highly recommended to those who enjoy the slow-paced and thoughtful.

★★★★

Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Starring: Hiroshi Abe, Yui Natsukawa, You, Kazuya Takahashi, Shohei Tanaka, Kirin Kiki

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Aftershock 唐山大地震 (Tang Shan Da Di Zhen) [2010] • China

2010-07-29T07:14:00.000-07:00

This isn't a perfect film but its story is so moving that any shortcomings in the telling can easily be overlooked. When an earthquake hits Tangshan in the Hebei Province, China, in 1976 at about 3:30 in the morning, a married couple is ... well, they are having sex in the back of their truck, but that's not important. The couple rush home to rescue their sleeping children. When the mother attempts to run into the collapsing building the father throws her aside and rushes in and the building falls on him and kills him. The children are alive but buried beneath the rubble in such a way that saving one of them would crush the other. The mother has to make a choice. After much weeping and wringing of hands she chooses to save her son. Her daughter hears her mother make the choice. Ouch! The daughter is left for dead but miraculously survives. She's so hurt by her mother's decision she refuses to identify herself and is taken to an orphanage where she is eventually adopted by a young couple who were part of the People's Liberation Army's rescue team.

The first twenty minutes of the film are all about the earthquake and CGI. After that it becomes pure drama, spanning thirty two years, with some haphazard scenes cutting in from time to time. The young boy grows up to be a successful businessman and the young girl grows up to almost be a doctor but marries a foreigner and moves to Canada instead. The boy doesn't know his sister is alive and the girl, despite the urgings of her foster father, has no intention of reuniting with her brother, or her mother. But the film is less about them and more about the mother. She is the film's emotional centerpiece.

The mother suffers long and hard for the decision she made and for the loss of her husband. She refuses to leave Tangshan because she wants to be there when the deceased return to her. She lives in a tent for a while and moves into a modest apartment when the family home is not rebuilt. Every year she visits a ceremonial site of mourning and gives her husband and daughter directions to her new place of residence.

The film builds to a crescendo culminating in 2008 with the earthquake in Sichuan. The brother and sister both go there and join the Tangshan Rescue Team as volunteers. The film drops into a low gear and downplays the moments when they meet each other and the daughter goes home to see her mother. Then there's all this tension about who should be more sorry, the mother for her decision, or the daughter for condemning and causing her mother to suffer thirty two years for that decision.

All of the performances, except the guy who plays the daughter's foreigner husband, are top notch, especially Xu Fan (the director's real life wife) as the mother. There are all kinds of wonderful and heartbreaking scenarios touching on the nature and loyalties of family. The boy's paternal grandmother wants to take custody of him because now that her own son is dead he is her last bit of male family blood. When the boy becomes a successful businessman he wants to move his mother into a nice new apartment, partly for his own notion of her happiness and partly for not wanting to be perceived as someone who is not taking care of his mother. What loyalties and affections should the daughter have towards her foster parents when she becomes an adult? And, of course, what about the daughter's decision to not let her blood family know she survived the earthquake?

I was moved to tears several times during the film but more from just thinking about the material than from any melodramatic presentation of it. Aftershock has a disjointed narrative from time to time and could probably be improved with a second round of editing. Several scenes appear to be part of something larger that got cut out, and a few scenes seem irrelevant. The director's decision to downplay the climax as long as he can is a little disappointing but it fits with the repressed emotional level of the rest of the film after the initial earthquake sequence which, as we are reminded of in a slightly awkward memorial ending that closes the film, is supposed to be its heart.

Aftershock is the first iMax film produced in China and I have no response to that fact. It has structural weaknesses but it's a magnificent and heart-rending story with a lot of legs. Highly recommended to those who like that kind of thing.

★★★★★

Director: Xiaogang Feng
Starring: Jingchu Zhang, Fan Xu, Chen Li

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The Eel うなぎ (Unagi) [1997] • Japan

2010-07-29T06:35:00.000-07:00

I like films with a relaxed pace but this one is slow to the point of boring and its poetic undertones are silly. The story is trite: jealous man kills his wife, goes to prison, opens a barber shop in a small village when he gets out, saves a woman from suicide, she falls in love with him, people gossip, his affection remains towards his pet eel, her baggage causes him to defend her, he goes back to jail. We've seen it all before. Nothing wrong with that, per se. There are a handful of cinematically attractive moments but not enough to make the film worthwhile.

Misa Shimizu is fetching in her high-wasted slacks but never shines. Kôji Yakusho isn't given enough script or the proper direction to make his signature introspective style come alive. All of the acting seems very stilted, about the level of Tomorowo Taguchi.

And there's something very excuse-making and just plain wrong with a film that ends several times for about a half hour. Geez.

★★★

Director: Shohei Imamura
Starring: Kôji Yakusho, Misa Shimizu, Mitsuko Baisho, Akira Emoto, Fujio Tsuneta, Tomorowo Taguchi

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The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (Les Filles du botaniste) [2006] • France, China

2010-07-28T19:55:00.000-07:00

There has to be a million movies made which ask us to sit through watching some man be a complete asshole so that we can witness the long suffering of the women around him. Often there is a subtext or symbolic undercurrent that the characters and their relationships are meant to represent. This is one such movie.

The asshole in this film is the Chinese botanist and he represents a tyrannical and repressive society. He makes ancient herbal remedies in a botanical paradise he has constructed on an island that is supposed to be somewhere in Yunnan Province, China. The long suffering woman in the film is his twenty year old daughter. She waits on him hand and foot. She cuts his toenails. She represents all that is good and new and wonderful yet shackled in the modern world.

The film has good intentions and attempts to expose some of the lingering absurdities of Chinese traditional values in general and those of the Cultural Revolution in particular. One day another young woman arrives on the island to intern with the botanist. She brings a talking bird that squawks "Long live Chairman Mao" all the time. The two women fall in love, the father sees this forbidden love in the flesh and dies of a heart attack. Really. The two young women are put to death for the crime of the disease of homosexuality that caused the death of a prized botanist.

The director wants to make a point of how fucked up the situation is but he takes it to a ridiculous extreme, much like the film's soundtrack of crescendoing choruses and violins. It's too bad because the film has a strong and very sensual visual appeal. As mentioned, the film's location is supposed to be somewhere in Yunnan, one of the most beautiful places in the world, but because of the homosexual content Chinese authorities prohibited the director from filming there. The irony. So it's filmed in Vietnam where it's green and lush and dripping wet. If all the scenes of the father being an idiot were removed The Chinese Botanist's Daughters would be a gorgeous film.

Sijie Dai, the film's writer and director, was sent to a reeducation camp as a young man during the Cultural Revolution. He's clearly exorcising demons and I would like to applaud his efforts but while the theme of The Chinese Botanist's Daughters is worthwhile the particulars are schmaltzy, unpleasant, and far too melodramatic. Dai's earlier film Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress is a much better film dealing with the Cultural Revolution.

Mylène Jampanoï, who stars as the woman with the talking bird, went on to star in the French extreme horror film Martyrs.

★★

Director: Sijie Dai
Starring: Mylène Jampanoï, Xiao Ran Li, Ling Dong Fu, Wei-chang Wang

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The Isle 섬 (Seom) [2000] • South Korea

2010-07-27T20:59:00.000-07:00

Pain is the most sincere emotion. Kim Ki-duk likes pain. He likes showing us pain. We don't question the motivation when its genesis is pain. When people speak about pain there is always room for a misunderstanding made possible by the distracting literalness of the communication. The characters in many Kim Ki-duk films never speak at all, navigating and exposing their pain with silent clarity.

This is one of the films that got me interested in East Asian cinema. I had previously seen Kim's Bad Guy and thought it was interesting, if not a great film, but it sure made me want to see more from the guy who made it.

I've gone on to see most of Kim's films and this one still stands as my favorite. I think Jung Suh's performance as the caretaker of a remote fishing village who doesn't say a word in the entire film is the strongest performance in all of Kim's films, and I think her character is one of the strongest characters that Kim has given us. Of course it's a symbiotic relationship where a good actor can make a character come alive and where a well-written character allows a good actor a chance to shine. Suh (sometimes romanized as Seo) plays the caretaker Hee-jin with a frightening intensity, and is all the more enigmatic because she never speaks. I also think this is Kim's best looking film. His background as a painter is obvious in the color composition and framing. The misty lake with the little colored cottages floating about are beautifully photographed.

As for the pain quotient, it's a toss up between this and Address Unknown. I'm not sure why Kim abuses animals in his films. I don't like it but it's not enough for me to ignore his work. And it's not really where the pain comes from in this film. The infamous fishhook scenes are obviously a source of physical pain but there's also the emotional pain we witness between Hee-jin and the man who killed his girlfriend and has come to her fishing village to hide, or die if that doesn't work out. There's murder, rape, and multiple suicide attempts and I'm not sure that Kim's isn't presenting all of this with a little bit of tongue in his cheek. Kim is someone who works in the extreme, that's for sure.

The ending of the film, where the man swims into the weeds which in turn become the pubic hair of Hee-jin lying naked in the boat, suggesting a metaphorical attempt to return to the womb, is a little silly. Many see this as tacked on for some crazy reason and would have preferred the film end with the two of them floating downstream together. I don't think the extra, symbolic, ending is necessary but I also don't think it ruins the film. Great films succeed in spite of their weaknesses. The ending may be weak but this is a great film.

★★★★★

Director: Ki-duk Kim
Starring: Jung Suh, Yoosuk Kim, Sung-hee Park, Jae-hyeon Jo, Hang-Seon Jang

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Go Lala Go! (Du Lala sheng zhi ji) [2010] • China

2010-07-25T17:36:00.000-07:00

I enjoy Xu Jinglei as an actress and think her move to behind the camera has shown lots of promise. I wish I didn't have to report that her latest film is a disappointment. To be fair, it's a disappointment because it's not what I expected from her. Go Lala Go!, in which she stars and directs, has none of the depth or artistry of Letter From an Unknown Woman or My Father and I. Go Lala Go! is about promotion hungry corporate trash, and it's pure popcorn fluff, hyper-kinetic and full of fashionable costuming, hairstyles, and product placement.

But is it good popcorn fluff? I'm not sure but I'm inclined to say no. It did very well at the box office (in China, in case that's not clear) and there's probably a reason. First of all, it's solidly within the constraints of the Chinese Film Bureau's guidelines of what kinds of stories should be told and what kinds of messages are permitted. Specifically, with regards to rewarding foul play, there's none of that. Lala's rise up the corporate ladder is entirely the result of good honest hard work. Yes, she sleeps with a high level big shot Director of Sales but it's for love, not strategy, and the film shows it as problematic. In fact, inter-office relationships are a major theme in the movie. A blind eye is sometimes turned but for the most part they are considered not a good or acceptable idea.

Another reason for its success may be that it puts on display all the name brands and fashionable accessories many millions of Chinese feel they are fairly close to partying with. Even though us educated capitalists are hip to that myth, there's a younger generation of Chinese that is probably tired of, or uninterested in films that wallow in a prideful past and they want to dream about a possible future instead. That's all fine and good, and maybe I shouldn't rush to judgement. Xu Jinglei has given the masses what they want. Good for her. She made some money, hopefully.

There's some cultural interest for non-Chinese in Go Lala Go!, but as a film it's thin and a little too chaotic. The chaotic part seems intentional. It's almost as if Xu discovered downloadable iMovie Transitions and went nuts. The direction is strong, consistent, and assured, but it's a style I don't fancy even if it serves its content well. There are some decent comedic bits, Xu possessing a courageous inclination for the self-deprecating, and some of the love geometry is OK, but it's all stirred in very quickly, giving the sense that it's not important. Scenes just sort of smash into one another. Karen Mok is fun and she still has great legs but the American-Taiwanese pop star Stanley Huang as Lala's love interest didn't do much for me. There's some nice scenery when they all vacation on the beaches of Thailand, but not much to the story.

I still can't wait to see what she does next.

★★

Director: Jinglei Xu
Starring: Jinglei Xu, Stanley Huang, Karen Mok

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Woman of Water (Mizu no onna) [2002] • Japan

2010-07-24T23:25:00.000-07:00

A very nice looking indie art house film that seems like it might roll over and play dead at any minute but never does. It also never really gets up and goes anywhere either, which is fine because films that are nice to sit back and look at might as well move along at a leisurely pace. Woman of Water is a bunch of pretentious, metaphorical poetry about man and woman and fire and water fueling a story about a woman who runs a bath house and whose intense emotional states are always accompanied by rain and the arsonist whom she hires to stoke the fires that keep her bath water warm.

The film stars singer UA (pronounced "oowa") in her first movie role and gains a lot of art house credibility by pairing her with Japanese heartthrob Asano Tadanobu. They both get naked a bunch of times so it's a gawker's paradise as far as these things go. Even though UA is playing water her dark sensuality is more earthy than watery and her sex appeal is more ethereal than liquid. Born Kaori Shima, her stage name UA is Swahili for flower or kill. She's not idol-of-the-month beautiful by a long shot, more mysterious and a little worn looking with a well-grounded and tough charisma. She does fine in her acting debut even though her main responsibility lies in being photographed well more than exercising any major thespian chops.

Don't go into this one hoping for any strength of narrative. It's meandering and opaque. Both of the characters have baggage in their past meant to give the film some emotional appeal but it might as well be a silent movie with the freewheeling and oblique way the plot develops, mixing dreams, fantasies, deja vu, and visual metaphors in equal measure. This one is for fans of art house esoterica only.

★★★★

Director: Hidenori Sugimori
Starring: UA, Tadanobu Asano, Hikaru, Yutaka Enatsu, Ryûichi Ôura

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This Charming Girl 여자, 정혜 (Yeoja, Jeong-hye) [2004] • South Korea

2010-07-24T18:32:00.000-07:00

I sat for two hours loving this woman, and feeling sorry for her, hoping for her. That's what is supposed to happen when you watch a well-executed character study.

If you were to look up "boring art house film" in some film dictionary you might find the plot synopsis for This Charming Girl listed as the definition: The film follows Jung-hye’s quiet life and reveals the landscape of the character’s inner feelings.

Jung-hye has forged her own life out of simplicity and solitude as the result of some trauma earlier in her life. The film doesn't focus on what that trauma is or how Jung-hye may eventually resolve it. Instead, it focuses on the mundane life she has made for herself as a result. We watch her feed her cat, cook herself meals, go to a job at an uneventful workplace, go shopping for shoes. This is not an action movie. It's an extremely slow burn that leads to one very intense scene which involves a knife. It's an intense scene not because anything crazy happens but because we can see all of the repressed emotions inside this woman come boiling to the surface. And we can see this happening because Kim Ji-Su's performance is nothing short of phenomenal.

No use going into more detail about the events of the film. It's better to see them for yourself. If you like well-written, well-acted, meticulously directed character studies This Charming Girl is one of the best ones out there. Even though it is art house to the max, there isn't a pretentious moment in the film.

★★★★★

Director: Yoon-ki Lee
Starring: Jeong-min Hwang, Ji-su Kim, Mi-seong Kim

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M [2006] • Japan

2010-07-24T15:51:00.000-07:00

A whole lot of twisted psycho-sexual drama going on here. A young woman has this made up story in her head about when she was a kid and her neighbor's father shagged her mom inducing her to start dating the boy next door as an excuse to be close to the father, but when the boy finds out the truth of her motivation he kills his mom and dad and she feels complicit. To atone for this Freudian guilt over something that didn't happen she takes on a Yakuza pimp, in that fucked up way that people do, to mistreat and abuse her, in that fucked up way that people do. We are given the possibility that all of these things are just fantasies of the young woman's impotent but well-meaning husband, but so what? What if? Doesn't change much of the experience for the viewer.

Meanwhile, a young man who really did kill his own father, and participated in a gang rape of his mother, wants to save the young woman from the Yakuza pimp so a bunch of drama takes place amongst the three of them. The whole thing comes off less like an exploration of psycho-sexual weirdness or repressed and imagined memories, and more like a director's fantasy of seeing how far he can go in abusing a young actress. Kinda creepy, imo.

Single-name actress Miwon, undoubtedly a pseudonym, is quite fetching as the protagonist, exuding a screen presence that's both strong and vulnerable. This is her only screen credit so I'll wonder out loud if she has acted, or is acting, under a different name, or if the experience of making this film put a great big damper on any hopes she had of making it a career.

Director Ryuichi Hiroki's extensive filmography is all over the place. From soft-core pink films to highly regarded film festival winners like Vibrator and It's Only Talk to innocent young love stories like April Bride and the Love on Sunday films. He's pretty good at what he does but I think he goes a little far here in heaping on the abuse without enough consideration of real reasons for why it's happening.

★★★

Director: Ryuichi Hiroki
Starring:
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The Human Centipede (First Sequence) [2009] • Netherlands, UK

2010-07-24T14:43:00.000-07:00

My take on this beast. Kudos for the attempt to take horror to a place horror hasn't been before; props to Dieter Laser for being one of the creepier bad guys we've seen in a while; respect to director Tom six for employing some restraint, after the initial premise of course, in what he shows and how he shows it.

For those who don't already know, this is a film about a surgeon who stitches three human victims, a man and two women, together anus to mouth creating a human centipede, with a marketing kicker that this procedure is 100% medically accurate and possible. The film is fairly clean, not too explicit in its horror. Six could have had the three victims be naked instead of wearing diapers, and had the last one shit all over the place and have them wallow in it, but he didn't. The two women are topless but through the use of controlled camera angles there is very little boobage on display. One of the women is flat-chested, which says a lot about what Six wants to give his audience.

Dieter Laser is pretty menacing and spooky as the surgeon but he doesn't have a very good script to work with so half the time he comes off as over-acting and kind of dumb. The rest of the cast, including the centipede people (two of them with variations on the name Ashley, for crying out loud), is pretty weak. The cinematography is crisp but the rest of the mechanics of film making aren't that great, mostly having to do with weaknesses in the script and direction. Little things, like when the two girls show up soaking wet in a rain storm at the surgeon's big, beautiful, immaculately clean house they just traipse in with their muddy feet and plop down on his big, beautiful, immaculately clean sofa. How does the centipede get up and down from a table so easily some times and with extreme difficulty in others? And of course there are many standard B-movie bad decisions by the victims sprinkled throughout.

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) isn't a complete flop by any means but it's not a very good film as far as films go. I don't think it will really disgust anybody who knows what it's about and willingly goes to see it, but I also don't think it will satisfy many people who go in wanting a lot more than it delivers unless they are so hung up and in love with the concept of the film they forget to actually watch it. Most important, I don't think the film leaves a lasting impression ... any more than just the thought of the film initially does.

★★★

Director:Tom Six
Starring: Akihiro Kitamura, Dieter Laser, Andreas Leupold, Ashley C. Williams, Ashlynn Yennie
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Moon and Cherry 月とチェリー (Tsuki to Cherry) aka Electric Button [2004] • Japan

2010-07-24T13:33:00.000-07:00

Noriko Eguchi is one of my favorite actresses. She's had small parts in nearly fifty films in eight years. What's remarkable is that most of them have been reasonably high profile and critically well received, suggesting she has good intuition when it comes to selecting roles, and many of them are at the hands of Japan's best directors, suggesting they have good intuition when it comes to casting. She's not a box office draw, being much more a character actor than any idol-of-the-moment type, but she helps elevate every film she's in. Whenever she's onscreen she always appears smarter, stronger, deeper, and a little more enigmatic than everyone around her.

It's almost as if director Yuki Tanada wrote her first feature length film, Moon and Cherry, with Eguchi in mind. The film centers on the machinations of Mayama, played by Eguchi, as a member of a university erotic literature writing club. Mayama, its only female member, is the most talented and respected of the group because she's already been published, albeit under a male pseudonym. She's had sex with all but one of the other members of the group and uses the experiences as fodder for her writings. The film kicks into gear when a younger student, Tadokoro, joins the group. He immediately impresses the male members of the group with his knowledge of female anatomy, but just as he is swimming in their praise and accolades, Mayama walks in and says "Yeah, but you're a virgin." Experienced women can sense these things and Tadokoro is busted. Thus begins the intriguing gender role reversal story that is Moon and Cherry.

Mayama knows Tadokoro will make for good material so she takes him home to create some copy. The deflowering scene is controlled by Eguchi with aplomb, and in a moment of directorial panache, while Mayama is performing fellatio, we see Tadokoro biting his lip to the point of drawing blood. I don't need to spell out the brilliance of that metaphor. As soon as Mayama pops Tadokoro's cherry she jumps out of bed and starts writing. Tadokoro is befuddled but doesn't complain too much. As the relationship grows, Mayama sees Tadokoro's inexperience as an opportunity to try new things like sending an S&M dominatrix to his apartment and then demanding Tadokoro tell her all about it. She invites herself, followed by a pre-paid prostitute, to his place and then hides in his closet to watch the two of them go at it.

The only problem with completing this attempt at full on role reversal is the fact that Mayama is one of those women that men lose their minds over. There's no escaping that. Mayama has sex with Tadokoro in bed, on the floor, in the park, against a vending machine, but in between these events she disappears from his life. Tadokoro is torn but wants to make better use of his new found experience so he starts a relationship with a sweet and attractive co-worker, Akane, who serves as juxtaposition to Mayama. This sort of turns the film back on itself but I don't consider it a shortcoming at all.

Moon and Cherry is a very well-acted, creative and intelligent film that takes a different look at love, sex, and relationships. It's a low budget indie film shot on digital video as part of a Love Connections series of 2004 and it's a welcome opportunity to see the marvelous Noriko Eguchi star in a film. It's a smashing feature debut from writer/director Yuki Tanada who's gone on to script the female and visual extravaganza, Sakuran; write and direct Yû Aoi in One Million Yen and the Nigamushi Woman; and most recently write and direct the small masterpiece, Ain't No Tomorrows which I'll be reviewing soon.

A final shout out to newcomer Tasuku Nagaoka who plays Tadokoro with an awkwardly genuine sincerity. He's young and frail but never lets you think he won't make it, impressive in holding his own in scenes with the powerful Eguchi.

This could be a five star film but I don't think it wants to be. It wants to remain small and intimate. And independent. And even though it's one of the better films in recent memory, considered one of The Best of the Decade by a couple of the folks at Midnight Eye, I'm going to respect its wishes and give it four stars (with a stealth fifth star in the labels).

★★★★

Director: Yuki Tanada
Starring: Noriko Eguchi, Akira Emoto, Tasuku Nagaoka
Midnight Eye

Yoga Class 요가학원 (Yoga Hakwom) [2009] • South Korea

2010-07-23T21:04:00.000-07:00

The premise starts off well enough. Gather up a handful of South Korea's pretty, young starlets ... erm, actresses, seal them in a beautiful yet dark and creepy castle and have them do yoga. Film it. That might have been a decent watch if they'd left it at that. Problem is, films need a story, some plot, and at least a little character development. Yoga Class doesn't do very well in those departments. And there's not enough Yoga.

The story is: five women sign up for this secret yoga class which promises eternal youthful beauty to the one of them that does the best. The plot is: there are rules they must follow, some of them break the rules and they get killed. The character development is: make one a yuppie who is being pushed out of her job by a younger yuppier girl; one an attention whore bitch; one a previously fat person who still has crazy cravings; one a goofy twit for an attempt at comic relief; and one completely without personality. Then make the rules they must abide by fit perfectly to each of their weakness, like no mirrors, no contact with the outside world, no unauthorized food ... you get the screenplay 101 picture.

The castle is beautiful, the women are mostly good looking, and some of the kills are bloody enough, but it is not possible to care about anything that happens in the film because the characters are unpleasant cliches and their projects and concerns not worthwhile.

★★

Director: Jae-Yeon
Starring: Eugene, Cha Su-Yeon, Park Han-Byeol, Jo Eun-ji, Lee Young-Jin, Kim Hye-Na, Hwang Seung-Eon
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

Sakuran さくらん [2006] • Japan

2010-07-20T19:36:00.000-07:00

Sure is colorful. There's a lot to write about when discussing this film but very little of it has to do with the story: In eighteenth-century Japan, a young girl is sold to a brothel by her mother; she's rebellious and tries to escape all the time; she's more talented and beautiful than all the other girls (suspension of disbelief required); she becomes an oiran (in the hierarchy of prostitutes, sort of like a four-star general in the army).

It's not that the story is bad or unimportant, it's that everything else about the film screams "Look at me! Look at me!" The sets and costuming, the soundtrack, and the casting of a mixed-race Polish/Japanese version of Courtney Love in the lead role all go against type. And one cannot help but notice that this is not Memoirs of a Geisha. Insight from the nearly sixty second montage of naked female breasts near the beginning of the film might be missed if one doesn't notice that the director Mika Ninagawa, the art director Namiko Iwashiro, the music director Ringo Shiina, the producer Chikako Nakabayashi, the scriptwriter Yuki Tanada, and the artist of the original manga Moyoco Anno are all women.

The film is beautiful to look at, if a little over-indulgent at times. No attempt is made to be true to the period. I don't speak Japanese, and subtitles are always deficient in nuance, but I'm sure the dialog is straight off the streets of contemporary Tokyo and not in any Edo period parlance. I'm not generally a fan of costume dramas or period pieces so on the one hand I was interested in seeing this modernized production, but on the other hand I felt a sense of incongruity while watching it. The bold colors of the sets and costumes didn't bother me but the soundtrack is a little odd. Not so much in the style—which swims through many modern genres of pop, rock, and jazz—as in the reverb. The music often doesn't sound like it is in the same size room as the action that is taking place. I like Ringo Shiina's music, have a few of her solo CDs and those of Tokyo Jihen, the band she also plays in. It's not that I think the music is bad, or that it is too terribly out of place. I think the sound design could have been better, and I think that some of the folks who find the soundtrack a little jarring would be less put off by it if more attention had been paid to the overall sound design.

Finally, I was not won over by Anna Tsuchiya in the lead role. I'm sure casting her was a well-thought out conscious decision by the director and I also, in theory, think she fits the package the director was trying to deliver. It's not that she doesn't look 'traditionally' Japanese, whatever that is. And it's not that she lacks a certain elegance I've come to expect of these types of characters, although I'm not surprised by the omission of her doing any of the arty things these pre-geisha geisha types were supposed to be fluent in like music, poetry, dancing, or witty conversation. It might be that she just isn't a very good actress. These rock star cum actress types often possess great charisma that passes itself off as good acting in the right context. I'm not sure this is one of them. I hope I haven't spoiled it for potential viewers by bringing up Courtney Love, but that's what it felt like to me, a little vulgar and somewhere between disappointing and distracting. Tsuchiya is a lot more attractive in her own musical environment than she is in this film. I just didn't buy her as a sophisticated beauty who rises to the top. Maybe I'm just upset that Yoshino Kimura is given short-shrift in the fake eyelash department or that the truly beautiful and engaging Miho Kanno is dispatched with too early in the film.

★★★

Director: Mika Ninagawa
Starring: Anna Tsuchiya, Yoshino Kimura, Miho Kanno, Kippei Shiina, Hiroki Narimiya, Masanobu Ando, Renji Ishibashi
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

The Clone Returns Home クローンは故郷をめざす [2009] • Japan

2010-07-18T15:51:00.000-07:00

I'll start right off saying I'm not equipped to properly review this film but since my modus operandi here is not to review films as much as react to them, I'll indulge myself. I'm not much of a science fiction fan but I love Hiromi Nagasaku so I checked this one out. The Clone Returns Home (aka The Clone Returns to the Homeland) is a heady, metaphorical, poetic, extremely slow and beautiful film. There aren't a bunch of fancy gadgets or spaceships, nor aliens running around. The only reason to call this "sci-fi" is the photographic tweak to things that makes it feel like it's in the future (it is), and the fact that the main protagonist is an astronaut and his spacesuit plays a big role in the film. And, well ... there's the science.

The Clone Returns Home explores the notion of identity by way of cloning and it spends a good deal of expositional time discussing it and the ethical milieu it exists in. It also spends a good deal of non-expositional time observing some guy carry around a spacesuit.

Kohei is an astronaut who dies while on a mission in outer space. His company can legally clone him, complete with all his memories and feelings, as a sort of insurance reimbursement. His wife (Nagasaku) is a little freaked out by this notion, and thus begins the exploration of identity. Things get complicated when Kohei's memory bank seems to get filled back up only to a point in his childhood when his identical twin brother died while trying to rescue him from drowning at a fishing hole. At first I thought it was kind of cheap to use identical twins who, we learn through flashbacks, as children often tried to pass themselves off for one another, as the starting point in an exploration of identity. Even more so when this developmentally stunted clone goes missing and the company decides to clone him again, essentially making an identical twin clone. But then I realized the director wasn't trying to make a solid argument or theory about identity (or cloning) as much as trying to cook up a complex stew of ideas and invite the viewers in to sample all the spices. Just as it takes a connoisseur to fully appreciate the complexities of a fine wine, it will take a hardcore sci-fi fan to get her head around all that's being explored in this film. It's not for casual viewers. I couldn't begin to tell you who is in the spacesuit (which appears to be empty half the time), or who is carrying around whom. The film's glacially slow pace, meant to give the viewer time to savor the ingredients of the film as a whole and the spacesuit in particular, will not play well at the mall.

If I were a sci-fi junkie, especially one who enjoyed the heady and intellectual, I might give The Clone Returns Home five stars. But I'm not, so I give it three ... which means your mileage may vary.

★★★

Director:
Starring: Mitsuhiro Oikawa, Eri Ishida, Hiromi Nagasaku, Kyusaku Shimada, Ryô Tsukamoto
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

The Sea is Watching 海は見ていた (Umi wa miteita) [2002] • Japan

2010-07-18T14:41:00.000-07:00

The script for The Sea is Watching is one of the last screenplays Akira Kurosawa wrote (adapted from a novel). It starts off as an attractive film; rich colors, effective photography, nice framing, fetching prostitutes in a quaint little red light district. Then it goes melodrama, followed by silly, culminating in corny which brought a smile to my face before the surreal kicked in. It never really stops looking good, though. I give it high marks for that.

It's hard to imagine what this could have been had Kurosawa lived long enough to direct it. There's nothing particularly new or groundbreaking story-wise, but it is a charming, sometimes funny, bittersweet tale of the inhabitants of a samurai-era brothel whose entire district ends up under water. I guess there's a big metaphor going on there. Plot-wise it focuses on the love lives of two of the working girls: Kikuno (Misa Shimizu) plays an elder to the younger girls and enjoys being the object of pursuit, never giving in to the suitors who want to take care of her and take her for their very own; and Oshin (Nagiko Tono) who, against the advice of those around her, seems to fall in love with every one of her clients. One, a sweet samurai type, visits her often and convinces her that her "fallen soul" and "soiled body" can become pure again—just like a person's hair, nails, and teeth fall out and grow back. "A body can become pure again ... it would be too horrible for words if it weren't" true.

Oshin is main protagonist of the film and is meant to give it an emotional center as her heart breaks and yearns, but it never quite happens. Although Shimizu and Tono give reasonably good performances, overall the acting is not one of the film's high points. Everyone is attractive and polite enough so I ended up not minding it but can only wonder what this could have been with, perhaps, a stronger cast and a more accomplished director at the helm. I do recommend the film to those wanting a taste of historical Japanese culture and who enjoy quiet films about love, loss, and friendship. Yes, the ladies are prostitutes but they have feelings too. On the flip side there's a little samurai manly stuff, but no fighting to speak of.

★★★

Director: Kei Kumai
Starring: Misa Shimizu, Nagiko Tôno, Masatoshi Nagase, Hidetaka Yoshioka, Miho Tsumiki
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Love in a Puff 志明與春嬌 (Chi ming yu chun giu) [2010] • Hong Kong

2010-07-18T09:48:00.000-07:00

A foul-mouthed little romance here. Lots of f-bombs and dick or boob jokes tossed around to try and elevate this fairly standard rom-dramedy from the pack. It's not too offensive or juvenile and it's shame to have to get it through subtitles. I'm sure the original Cantonese is more subtle and euphemism based, and crude is always more palatable when it's subtle or funny. Love in a Puff has a CAT III rating and it's not for nudity or all the cigarette smoking.

The premise of Love in a Puff is one all cigarette smokers will be familiar with. The "smoke break" is a time to bond with co-workers or friends, to make plans and share stories, and, in this case, tell dirty jokes and gossip. It's also an opportunity to massage in baby steps a possibly romantic relationship. There's a lot less "Is this a date?" pressure than even just meeting for coffee. There's a pre-determined end time and it comes quickly. If things aren't going well the suffering is short-lived and if there is a spark you'll leave wanting more. Always a good thing.

Zoom out from the premise and Love in a Puff makes many observations on modern SMS-based relationships, budding and otherwise. Something I learned, and put to use, from this film is if you type "i n 55!W !" (without the quotes) into a text message your recipient might see it as some nonsense code, but if they turn their phone upside down it will read "i miss u !". How cute. And appropriately enough, that little tidbit is the catalyst for a couple of the larger emotional transitions in the film.

I like small films like this, the cinematic equivalent, if you will, of a smoke break. Without aiming too high it's easy to hit its mark. It's well acted, and well scripted for the most part, and doesn't veer from its target too often, which is following the seven day courtship of Cherie (Miriam Yeung) and Jimmy (Shawn Yue). Yeung is especially crisp in her performance. There's a wonderful little "no shit!" moment near the end of the film when the two of them are in a small battle about who they are and what kind of relationship they're in and Cherie declares "I'm simple and straightforward". She is.

My only quibble with the film is an unavoidable one. To go from "My name's Cherie", through moving out of the premises and bond of one relationship, to "I'm simple and straightforward" in seven days requires a brisk pace. Maybe that's the way it is these days. There is a time or two where it seems like a little exposition might have ended up on the cutting room floor but maybe things are clearer in the original language and subtitles short of an essay couldn't translate it. Most of the screen time is devoted to the main protagonists, garnished with a handful of side characters and set pieces that don't detract from the lit up screen chemistry required of all good Rom-Coms and provided by Yeung and Yue. All in all a fun time was had with Love in a Puff.

★★★★

Director:
Starring:
IMDb
Wikipedia
Asianmediawiki

Her Island, My Island (Fune o oritara kanojo no shima) 船を降りたら彼女の島 Getting Off the Boat at Her Island [2003] • Japan

2010-07-17T20:00:00.000-07:00

Lots of beautiful scenery of Matsuyama, Ehime, Japan but a few too many long scenes of people just standing there looking at it. There is also nothing particularly cinematic about the cinematography so it just spills across the screen at the level of an average tourist video.

For the sentimental nostalgic types the story might be a compelling one. Kuriko (Yoshino Kimura) grew up on the island but left for Tokyo as soon as she graduated high school. At twenty-five she's about to be married and returns to the island for the first time in two years to soak in and remember all that was wonderful about it before finally leaving it fully behind. Something I found a little strange is that her father doesn't recognize her when she shows up. It has only been two years since her last visit and her father is not losing his mind or anything. I think this bit of non-recognition is meant to be metaphorical, emphasizing the fact that Koriko is now a city girl more than an island girl.

Kimura plays the part well and there are a number of attempts in the script to create an emotional connection with the viewer but most of them come up short. Kuriko's father's character is the typical silent type so communication is difficult. Her mom is efficient and cheerful. There's a burly fisherman who still has a crush on Kuriko who Kuriko uses to take her to find her long lost friend whom she bonded deeply with as a teenager. He turns up dead. We've seen all these tropes before.

Finally, the english subtitles leave a lot to be desired, making things difficult to follow at times.

★★

Director: Itsumichi Isomura
Starring: Yoshino Kimura, Ren Ôsugi, Naoko Otani, Shouei, Kuranosuke Sasaki
IMDb
Japan Times

A Piece of Our Life カケラ (Kakera) [2010] • Japan

2010-07-16T17:40:00.000-07:00

In the "Making of" documentary on the Love Exposure DVD director Sono Sion says to Hikari Mitsushima, “You’re an actress. You’re supposed to move us. Move us, you idiot!” She must have taken it to heart. She was great in Love Exposure and she's the main reason I like this film. She doesn't have a lot of dialog in A Piece of Our Life but she is constantly communicating, through body language and projecting her internals. That's something good actors do.

A Piece of Our Life is a story about two very different young women who end up spending time together. It's not a lesbian love story. There are no make-out scenes or naked bodies entwined in soft focus. No politics. The two protagonists just happen to be women. That's a healthy notion and could have made for a much better movie if one of the women didn't actually discourse about it. "It's not about if you're a man or a woman. You should have someone who you think feels good" might sound like words of wisdom but to me they sound like words from a director who is afraid her audience won't get it unless she spells it out.

There are many subtle and wonderful details in A Piece of Our Life, such as when Riko (Eriko Nakamura), the aggressive and confident one, asks Haru (Hikari Mitsushima) if she liked their "kiss for friendship" and Haru says "No" and the scene cuts away. Haru's response isn't one of objection or disgust. It's simple and honest, even if born a bit from surprise. There are also a few details which are just plain wrong, such as why does the quiet woman, who's probably never imagined dating another woman before, have to start out being in a relationship with an asshole, a guy with terrible table manners who uses her only for sex while he openly has another girlfriend on the side? That seems like a cheap and lazy juxtaposition against Riko's declaration that she likes women because "they're soft and cuddly, and they smell nice". It snuggles up to close to the tired idea that women only choose other women after they've become thoroughly disgusted by disgusting men.

I also think Riko's character was a lot smarter than the way she acts every time the couple interacts with a third party: when Haru's (ex)boyfriend comes over; when a man approaches Haru in the nightclub; when Riko shows up at Haru's university party. Riko acts childish and jealous. This seems at odds with the maturity Riko shows when dealing with her other girlfriend: "I can't fulfill the hollow you have in your heart".

There are a lot of things to like about this film. It's got a simple, honest, and wonderful vision which it explores with some effectiveness, and the two lead performances are outstanding. But it could have been a really, really great film instead of a really good one if it would have practiced what it preaches and left out more of the stuff we've seen, heard, and grown tired of before.

Momoko Ando is a young director to keep an eye on. A Piece of Our Life is one of the best and brightest films I've seen recently. My criticisms are born of a frustration that the director came just short of making an other-worldly masterpiece by adding in elements she just wanted to make a point of rather than letting the world of the film dictate the boundaries.

Just shy of five:

★★★★

Director: Momoko Andô
Starring: Hikari Mitsushima, Eriko Nakamura, Ken Mitsuishi, Tasuku Nagaoka, Rino Katase

IMDb
Asianmediawiki

Millennium Mambo 千禧曼波 (Qianxi manbo) [2001] • Taiwan

2010-07-15T23:06:00.000-07:00

I can only imagine that at some point Hsiao-Hsien Hou found himself with a mad crush on Shu Qi and decided to make a film for her, or of her ... or to her ... or something. People can quibble all day long on whether Hou's anti-cinema springs from genius or pretention, but a film like this ought to be able to escape such discussion because it's really nothing more than a love poem to, or of, or for ... or something ... a beautiful actress. This is a Shu Qi vehicle from top to bottom and the film rests on her shoulders, in her hair, on her lips, in her eyes, on her hips, and everywhere else about her über-photogenic self. Marry that to the fact that one of the best cinematographers in the business, Mark "Ping Bing" Lee is shooting this film and you're going to end up with gorgeous. Add a contemporary throbbing techno soundtrack and you get a hypnotic, slow, empty, and depressing film that's pretty close to cool.

I happen to think Shu Qi is a fine and very intelligent actress. I also like slow, empty, and depressing arthouse films if the characters appeal to me so everything works out as far as I'm concerned. If you don't like Shu Qi you probably won't like this film. There's no real plot to speak of and only a thin story about a woman who likes to hang out in nightclubs, smokes a LOT, does drugs and has crummy sex with her loser boyfriend, meets a gangster, loses a gangster ... fade to black. Awesome.

★★★★

Director: Hsiao-Hsien Hou
Starring: Shu Qi, Jack Kao, Chun-hao Tuan, Yi-Hsuan Chen, Jun Takeuchi
IMDb
Beyond Hollywood

Nobody to Watch Over Me 誰も守ってくれない (Dare mo mamotte kurenai) [2008] • Japan

2010-07-15T18:52:00.000-07:00

This film starts with a title card message saying "In the event a minor commits a serious criminal offense police authorities may seek to shield the minor's family from excessive media scrutiny and public hostility. The protection is given to prevent members of the accused's family from taking their own lives in response to the trauma."

Some eighteen year boy is hauled off for allegedly killing two grade school children. The media is all over his house. The cops are too. One cop is assigned to protect the boy's fifteen year old sister. He made a mistake in the past and has a shaky hand. He's two days away from taking a vacation to save his marriage. Yawn. A reporter is gonna make his life hell. Stupid plot. Even stupider is when the reporter confronts the cop and tells him the fifteen year old girl should be killed as punishment for what her brother did. And then they show internet messages going around calling for the death of the little girl. Oh, and the mother kills herself in her bathroom while twenty cops sit around not protecting her. The cop protecting the little girl takes her to his shrink's house so we can get more scoop on his problems. He then goes back to the little girl's house to get her cell phone because she said she would be embarrassed if the cops read her email. Not like any of the twenty cops already there might have found it or thought it might be useful as evidence. The cop brings it back to the girl and one of her friends calls her up and says "Bummer your mom committed suicide, huh?"

This movie is so full of stupid I switched it off halfway through. People will claim that this is a side of Japanese culture westerners don't know about. I say prove it. The fact that everything else about this film is so dumb I have no reason to believe the part about the press and public calling for the death of the little girl to be representative of anything but nonsense and bad writing. The parents, maybe. But the little girl? I'm not buying it.

This was Japan's official entry to the Oscars. WTF?

★

IMDb

Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! 腑抜けども、悲しみの愛を見せろ (Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero) [2007] • Japan

2010-07-15T12:01:00.000-07:00

This is what Japanese cinema is all about: A good title, twisted family drama, black humor that hurts more than it tickles, a little sexual deviance, beautiful women. Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! has it all.

The films starts with a gruesome bus accident that kills the parents of siblings Shinji, Sumika, and Kiyomi. Kiyomi, an aspiring manga artist, witnesses it and decides the images would make good material for her next project. Four years ago, in their countryside home, elder sister Sumika (Eriko Sato) carved a checkerboard into her father's forehead because he wouldn't finance her dream of moving to Tokyo to become an actress. She turned to prostitution. Younger sister Kiyomi (Aimi Satsukawa) used her sister's actions as manga material and got it published. Sumika, in shame, left for Tokyo. The two sisters have not gotten along since. The death of the parents comes at a good time for Sumika who hasn't made it as an actress and is deeply in debt. She returns to her country homestead in the hopes of collecting some inheritance but finds out there isn't any. The rest of the story, although intricately woven, is not important here. Suffice to say the three siblings have deep dark secrets and rivalries that come boiling to the surface. It's the performances that make this film so good.

Robo-babe, pin-up girl, horror queen, and Cutie Honey: Live Action star Eriko Sato gives the performance of her career as the relentlessly cruel and self-absorbed Sumika. Sometimes a role is just made for someone, and Sato takes this one and runs with it. Aimi Satsukawa brings wonderful pathos to the asthmatic, innocent yet deeply disturbed, Kiyomi. Veteran actor Masatoshi Nagase is solid and creepy as the brother who's gone where brothers are not supposed to go with sister Sumika. Sato is the star of the film and the whole thing would be unbearably dark and cruel if it weren't for the hilarious and wholesome performance of Hiromi Nagasaku as Shinji's wife, Machiko. Shinji procured Machiko via a marriage agency and Machiko, wanting to escape the demands and false hopes of the city thinks she will settle nicely into the lives of some good ol' down home country folk. Oops. Nagasaku, deservedly, has won multiple awards for her performance. She elevates every film she is in and this one is no exception. She plays the straight man to all the morbid cruelty going on around her. Her Machiko is as much of a failure as everyone else but she hasn't learned to take it out on others. She just wants everyone to get along.

Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! takes the theme of dysfunctional family drama and wrings it dry. If you like your humor dark and cruel, punctuated with double-takes that are sweet, wholesome, and absurd, you'll love this movie.

★★★★★

Director: Daihachi Yoshida
Starring: Eriko Sato, Aimi Satsukawa, Hiromi Nagasaku, Masatoshi Nagase, Seiji Nozoe
IMDb
Asianmediawiki

sitenoise at the movies

Buddha Mountain 观音山 (Guan Yin Shan) [2010] • China

Resurrection 黄泉がえり (Yomigaeri) [2002] • Japan

Red Cliff 赤壁 (Chi bi) [2008+2009] • China

Moonlight Whispers 月光の囁き (Gekkô no sasayaki) [1999] • Japan

Hot Summer Days 全城熱戀 (Chuen sing yit luen - yit lat lat) [2010] • Hong Kong, China

A Blue Automobile (Aoi kuruma) [2004] • Japan

Norwegian Wood ノルウェイの森 (Noruwei no mori) [2010] • Japan

Winter's Bone [2010] • USA

Dream Home 维多利亚一号 (Wai dor lei ah yut ho) [2010] • Hong Kong

Under the Hawthorn Tree 山楂树之恋 (Shan zha shu zhi lian) The Love of the Hawthorn Tree [2010] • China

Hear Me 听说 (Ting Shuo) [2009] • Taiwan

July 32nd (7월 32일) [2010] • South Korea

Sweet Little Lies スイートリトルライズ (Suîto ritoru raizu) [2010] • Japan

Shanghai [2010] • USA

She, a Chinese [2009] • UK, France, Germany, China

Confessions 告白 (Kokuhaku) [2010] • Japan

The Emperor and the Assassin 荆轲刺秦王 (Jing ke ci qin wang) [1998] • China

Kiss Me, Kill Me 킬미 (Kill Me) [2009] • South Korea

Cafe Isobe 純喫茶磯辺 (Jun kissa Isobe) [2008] • Japan

Girlfriend • Someone Please Stop the World [2004] • Japan

Jack Goes Boating [2010] • USA

I Am an S+M Writer 不貞の季節 (Futei no kisetsu) [2000] • Japan

Asako in Ruby Shoes 순애보 (Sunaebo) [2000] • South Korea, Japan

Glasses めがね (Megane) [2007] • Japan

Top Ten Most Enjoyable Films of 2010

Bedevilled 김복남 살인사건의 전말 / 김복남 살인 사건의 전말 Kim Bok-nam Salinsageonui Jeonmal [2010] • South Korea

Ex 前度 (Chin do) [2010] • Hong Kong

Catfish [2010] • USA

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World [2010] • USA

Stolen Life 生死劫 (Sheng si jie) [2005] • China

Black Swan [2010] • USA

No Mercy 용서는 없다 (Yongseoneun Eupda) [2010] • South Korea

May Story 순지 (Soon-ji) [2010] • South Korea

2/Duo (2/dyuo) 2 Duo [1997] • Japan

Tokyo Trash Baby 東京ゴミ女 (Tokyo gomi onna) [2000] • Japan

Buried [2010] • USA, Spain, France

Island of Light ゴーヤーちゃんぷるー (Goya-champuru) [2006] • Japan

Story of Qiu Ju 秋菊打官司 (Qiu Ju da guan si) Qiu Ju Goes to Court [1992] • China, Hong Kong

Viewfinder 경 (Kyung) [2010] • South Korea

The Most Distant Course 最遥远的距离 (Zui yao yuan de ju li) (2007) • Taiwan

A Good Rain Knows 호우시절 (Ho woo shi jul) aka Season of Good Rain [2009] • South Korea, China

Wanee and Junah 와니와 준하 (Wanee wa Junah) [2001] • Korea

One Day (You yi tian) [2010] aka As I Walked Out One Evening • Taiwan

The Last Lioness [2009] • National Geographic

Fine, Totally Fine 全然大丈夫 (完全没问题) (Zenzen daijobu) [2008] • Japan

Be Sure to Share ちゃんと伝え (Chanto tsutaeru) [2009] • Japan

Secret Reunion (Ui-hyeong-je) [2010] • South Korea

Yuriko's Aroma ユリ子のアロマ (Yuriko no aroma) [2010] • Japan

Maborosi 幻の光 (Maboroshi no hikari) Illusion [1995] • Japan

Nowhere to Turn 여기보다 어딘가에 (Yeogiboda Eodingae) Somewhere Over Here [2007] • South Korea

Out of the Wind 風の外側 (Kaze no sotogawa) (2007) • Japan

Blue Cha Cha 深海 (Shen hai) [2005] • Taiwan

My Dear Enemy 멋진 하루 (Meotjin haru) [2008] • South Korea

Taipei Exchanges 第36個故事 [2010] • Taiwan

Topless トップ (Toppuresu) [2008] • Japan

Still Walking 歩いても 歩いても (Aruitemo aruitemo) Even If You Walk and Walk [2008] • Japan

Aftershock 唐山大地震 (Tang Shan Da Di Zhen) [2010] • China

The Eel うなぎ (Unagi) [1997] • Japan

The Chinese Botanist's Daughters (Les Filles du botaniste) [2006] • France, China

The Isle 섬 (Seom) [2000] • South Korea

Go Lala Go! (Du Lala sheng zhi ji) [2010] • China

Woman of Water (Mizu no onna) [2002] • Japan

This Charming Girl 여자, 정혜 (Yeoja, Jeong-hye) [2004] • South Korea

M [2006] • Japan

The Human Centipede (First Sequence) [2009] • Netherlands, UK

Moon and Cherry 月とチェリー (Tsuki to Cherry) aka Electric Button [2004] • Japan

Yoga Class 요가학원 (Yoga Hakwom) [2009] • South Korea

Sakuran さくらん [2006] • Japan

The Clone Returns Home クローンは故郷をめざす [2009] • Japan

The Sea is Watching 海は見ていた (Umi wa miteita) [2002] • Japan

Love in a Puff 志明與春嬌 (Chi ming yu chun giu) [2010] • Hong Kong

Her Island, My Island (Fune o oritara kanojo no shima) 船を降りたら彼女の島 Getting Off the Boat at Her Island [2003] • Japan

A Piece of Our Life カケラ (Kakera) [2010] • Japan

Millennium Mambo 千禧曼波 (Qianxi manbo) [2001] • Taiwan

Nobody to Watch Over Me 誰も守ってくれない (Dare mo mamotte kurenai) [2008] • Japan

Funuke Show Some Love, You Losers! 腑抜けども、悲しみの愛を見せろ (Funuke domo, kanashimi no ai wo misero) [2007] • Japan

Still Walking 歩いても歩いても (Aruitemo aruitemo) Even If You Walk and Walk [2008] • Japan