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

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

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

Buried [2010] • USA, Spain, France

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

IMDb
Wikipedia

Taipei Exchanges 第36個故事 [2010] • Taiwan

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

IMDb

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

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

Breathless (Ddongpari) [2009] • South Korea

This little blurb will contain spoilers but it doesn't really need them because the film was rotten before I got here. I can't imagine how anyone could enjoy, let alone step away and appreciate, a film like this. It's ninety minutes of name calling punctuated by ass-kicking. It may not be fair to criticize subtitled translations of name calling but the word choices are terribly redundant and unimaginative. The ass-kicking was mostly just off camera so I give it points for that. The story, however, and character development, get zero points.

Breathless tells the story of the cycle of violence: that kids who grow up watching their fathers beat the crap out of their mothers grow up to beat the crap out of people too. Then somebody comes along and beats the crap out of them. In the first fifteen minutes of this film the main character spits on two women and hits them in the face. The second of the two women is a high school girl and she gets hit hard enough it knocks her unconscious. She wakes up and responds to the beating like some sort of pick-up line because, guess what? She's also grown up watching her father beat the crap out of her mother. So the two of them form a friendship.

The high school girl has a brother who, since he's also grown up watching his father beat the crap out of his mother, has to do some ass-kicking himself. He picks on his sister a bit and ultimately takes a job that leads to his kicking the ass of the main ass-kicker. Is it really going to spoil it to say that this ass-kicking of the ass-kicker is fatal? I mean, can't you see that coming a mile away?

In the end, the cycle continues. Yes, we all know this story, but we know the stories ahead of time of many of the movies we love. The trick is to create characters we care about and tell the story in some imaginative way. This film doesn't do that.

★

Director: Yang Ik-Joon
Starring: Yang Ik-Joon, Kot-bi Kim, Man-shik Jeong, Lee Hwan

IMDb

A Perfect Getaway [2009] • USA

Some day Timothy Olyphant will land a role in a good movie and the world will ask "Where has this guy been hiding?"

I don't enjoy writing negative reviews and generally reserve the endeavor for films that feel insulting rather than simply failing to excite. Generally these are either art-house films which are too arty or selfish for their own good, or more mainstream films that use standard formulas as if we've never seen them before. A Perfect Getaway falls in the latter category.

I'm going to get spoilery here because there is no way to talk about why I didn't like this film without telling what happens, how it gets there. I will also add that I went into this film knowing nothing about it except for the title which does give some notion of the genre it is aiming for.

In a nutshell we have three couples in this film, one of them a murderous one. The first couple is Steve Zahn and Milla Jovovich. They are presented, very clearly, as nerdy, naive, and wimpy. They embark on their honeymoon to some far off and secluded place in Hawaii. They hear about another newlywed couple that was murdered by another couple and so we are all set to weather the storm of how they will getaway from being murdered. The second couple is presented very early on, and very stereotypically, as most likely the killers. Right here we have the first insult. This couple, couple number 2, is insinuated into the plot in a lame attempt to take your eye off the ball. It's cheap. We know right away they are not going to turn out to be the killers, and yet we also know we are still going to have to sit through a handful of phony attempts to convince us that maybe we are wrong about that obvious conclusion.

The third couple is Timothy Olyphant. He's got a girlfriend but he is the only one important to the character development of the couple. He is mysterious. He has a badass history, carries a knife, kills an animal, and has a steel plate in his head. But he is also a nice, thoughtful guy. It's the back and forth of his mysterious goodness and badness that creates the only interesting tension in this film. And since Olyphant is a good actor his character makes for the only enjoyable aspect of the film—besides some beautiful photography of Hawaii.

To cut a long story short, it turns out that the first couple are the killers (or the first couple is the killer couple). It's a big twist! But it's completely unfeasible. So unfeasible that the film spends thirty minutes of inexplicably black and white night visioned flashback recreations to try and make the case anyway. I immediately called bullshit, stopped caring at all, and just wanted the film to be over because nothing about it mattered any more. Twists should be over with quickly. If a film has to spend an inordinate amount of time defending a twist, it's not a very good twist. I felt completely disrespected by the script. Insulted. Thrillers with twists are supposed to be somewhat mysterious throughout. This one deliberately misleads its audience in a patronizing manner, and only attempts such nonsense because it thinks its audience is gullible and stupid. Well ... right back at ya, Perfect. Getaway from me.

★

Cobalt Blue (Gunjô: Ai ga shizunda umi no iro) [2009] • Japan

There is Pop and Alternative; there's Mainstream and Art-house. A third wheel to each of those pairings might be New Age. That's what this film is: new age.

I liked the poster. I like Blue. And I liked the blurb I read somewhere:

a young woman ... is overwhelmed by despair and depression after her fiance’s sudden death. The film follows her touching emotional journey, revealing how her first love came to be and how she copes with the shocking loss.

But yikes! This film is bad. It seems more like a shot at giving some J-idols and starlets a chance at big screen time with integrity but just because they don't have to act stupid doesn't mean they act well. Maybe they do act well but the film is so overwrought with phony angst that it's hard to tell. The music, and there is lots of it, is boring new age dreck, and I don't mean just the soundtrack. There are several full on scenes of someone tinkling on the piano for endless minutes of boredom. The direction is of the style that lulls you to sleep by trying to force a pace of real life. In real life hours go by and nothing happens but I don't want to see a movie of that. If I see someone get into their car and drive off down a really long rode at 5 miles per hour it means I can watch them for a very long time but I don't think it makes for whoop dee doo cinéma verité. This is the John Tesh of movies. Stay away. Sadness in movies isn't compelling unless there is cruelty.

★

The Case of Itaewon Homicide (Itaewon Salinsageon) Burger King Murder [2009] • South Korea

South Korea has done pretty well with films based on real life killers: Memories of Murder (masterpiece); The Chaser (very good); Missing (good good). But the streak ends with this film about a kid who was apparently randomly stabbed to death in a Burger King bathroom. It's more of a courtroom drama than any kind of investigative thriller. The casting and the acting are pretty low-rent and the direction is glaringly bad. I'm not sure there is any direction, come think of it. The camera meanders around like someone's uncle videotaping a family get together. I'm not going to declare the spoken English as poorly executed, suffice to label it unpleasant. The two boys accusing one another of the murder were "americans", one of Korean heritage the other half Spanish, adding some international intrigue. Not really. This is one of the worst films I've seen in a long time. Makes Tidal Wave (Haeundae) Tsunami seem awesome.

★

Gran Torino (2009) • USA

I tried three times and couldn't get past the first twenty minutes, or so. The setup, the writing, is so immature and clichéd I couldn't take it. No creativity, no nuance, no respect for the audience. I was thinking ... if I get past the funeral opening, where a pierced belly button is used to set the stage for generational gap, and two sons have a discussion about their father in that way people never talk except when they're characters in movie providing background on another character ... I might be good to go. Sometimes directors shove too much down your throat at the beginning of a film so they can get on with telling the story. But the hits just kept on coming.

I'm not saying this is a bad movie. To be clear, I'm saying I found the first act so insulting I couldn't go on. So, technically, I can't say.

★

Blindness (2008) • USA • Fernando Meirelles

This is one of those high art films, like The Happening with its blatant comedic satire nobody got, that is bound to go over the heads of all but the more sophisticated moviegoers of "Brazil and other European countries." The logic behind its greatness is this:

Blindness, the film, is based on the 1995 book Ensaio sobre a Cegueira. The book’s author, José de Sousa Saramago, was awarded the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998.
Ergo #1: it is a good book.

Saramago was reluctant to sell the book’s movie rights, fearing a film would do an injustice to his work, but eventually acquiesced (not to the highest bidder, mind you) because he felt this group, with Brazilian director Fernando Meirelles at the helm, understood his vision, and their proposed treatment captured the essence of his book.
Ergo #2: it’s a good movie.

Many a defense of the film has shouted “If you don’t like this movie, read the book and you will!” Stunning and incisive, that. I haven’t read the book so my reaction to Blindness, the film, is based on the sub par experience of merely watching the movie. Little things like the fact that not one actor in this film acted in such a way as to convince me that they might be blind should matter.

Blindness is a story about a society where everyone except the star goes blind. It focuses on a group that is quarantined in a well-lit, ahem, but over-crowded asylum. Conditions degrade very quickly and chaos ensues. It's horrific.

I went to see this film knowing nothing about it. I had seen the director’s earlier film City of God and thought it was magnificent. I liked the movie poster and I’m a big Julianne Moore fan. She’s very good in the film. She's the only one who is not blind and at one point, while showering in a room full of blind people, she is the first and only one to hear the faint sounds of a radio being played in another room. That’s good acting! It would be wrong to object to the unlikelihood of this by invoking the prejudice that blind people develop a heightened sense of hearing, the same bigotry that doesn’t know blind people walk around naked and shit on the floor—like they do in this faithful filmic adaptation of a book.

The Blindness in this film, however, is a special Blindness. Everything doesn’t go black, it goes white. It’s an allegory. The director attempts to recreate this experience for the viewing audience by washing out the film to a milky white blur which is fine in concept but its execution seems entirely random—to the point of directorial conceit. Like when the husband and the hooker, who share a bond the husband can't enjoy with his wife (she's not blind), are having sex, we watch them through the milky white blur. Why? Because it’s the European thing to do. There will be gratuitous sex and the wife will understand.

Before the big gang rape scene, there is a scene where the really bad guy, the guy who conveniently found a loaded weapon and proclaimed himself “King”, is barking orders at everyone. Julianne’s character heckles him and he snaps “I will never forget your voice” while pointing the gun at her. Blind people have an acute sense of hearing and can do that. But just before Julianne sucks his dick in the big rape scene, she talks to him face to face and he seems to have forgotten the sound of her voice. If it seems confusing as to why Julianne’s character would go through the humiliation of all the women being raped, one fatally, before using her meager advantage of sight to kill this guy, remember, rape is the only reason a woman will kill. Anything less than that, up to and including the mere threat of rape at gunpoint, and she will just suffer.

And you should too. Pay no attention to the improbabilities, the bad acting, the cringe worthy dialog, the pompous and misogynist screenplay and direction, or the ridiculously campy 360 which results in a profound and happy ending. The film is an allegory based on a novel. It’s very trés trés. Fork out your ten bux and enjoy this piece of filth. It’s the sophisticated thing to do.

★

Forest of Death (Sum yuen) (2007) • Hong Kong • Danny Pang

It's no secret that the Pang Bothers aren't big on script talent, but good lord, this was embarrassing.

A rape/murder takes place in a forest that is infamous as a mecca for suicide. A botanist is researching the ability of plants to communicate with people. His girlfriend is a tabloid TV reporter sensationalizing the ghostly aspects of the forest. A detective, investigating the rape/murder case, believes that plants can act as witnesses so she gets the botanist to bring his equipment to the forest and sets up a re-enactment of the crime where the plants will act as lie detectors.

I'm not kidding.

I'm not necessarily against inadequate stories but the hilarity of this one infiltrates everything else to the point that it becomes impossible to take it seriously. The actors don't seem dedicated to their characters, nothing appears genuine here. I love the Pangs and think they often make engrossing films, sometimes despite the stories, but this one is just too in-your-face dumb.

★

Chaos (2005/I) • USA

Kevin Gage is good as the killer/rapist. He cuts a nipple off one of the girls, makes her eat it, kills her and then rapes her. He shoves a Crocodile Dundee sized knife up another girl's butt. Nice moves but but he's all alone here. Everyone else in this movie is an embarrassment. The acting is painfully bad.

This is another film that's supposed to be a message about torture porn instead of simply being torture porn; the film begins with a written message saying as much and hopes that by alerting parents and potential victims to the scaries out there it will save a life.

What a joke. What a wimp of a filmmaker. Who cares if Roger Ebert didn't like your film? I didn't like it either because it totally sucked.

★

1408 (2007) • USA

I've seen porno with better plot and better acting. I'm a fan of both John Cusack and Samuel L. Jackson but have no love for either of them in this film. There is too much terrible face-acting which is usually the result of actors reacting to, and trying to compensate for, a bad script. I know I'm in the minority but I say skip this one.

★

Shiri (1999) • South Korea

There is a scene in this movie where two good guys are sitting in a large empty auditorium facing the stage, their backs to the rear entrances. They aare there as bait, waiting for the bad guys. An entire SWAT team is positioned around the circumference of the auditorium, in the rafters, the bleachers, the high priced alcoves, ready to shoot the bad guys whwn they arrive. The tree bad guys, well, two bad guys and a bad girl, enter the auditorium and walk about half way down the aisle. The shooting begins. Chaos ensues. Nobody gets killed. Cut to a very long hallway that has a dozen or more of these SWAT commandos, presumably highly trained marksmen and women, chasing the bad girl, firing at her. Missing! She is able to return a few over the shoulder/behind the back shots and take out a few SWAT guys. Then she takes one in the shoulder. "Ouch" she says as she gets away.

There's another scene where an entire SWAT team bursts into a room where they know the bad guy is going to be, with their guns a-blazin'. The bad guy jumps up and starts to run away. He stops in a doorway and takes a few shots at the team.

I can't go on.

★