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

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 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, to differentiate it from not caring. I discared  the characters.

★★

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

IMDb
Asianmediawiki

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

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

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

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

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
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.

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

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

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

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

IMDb
Wikipedia
Japan Times

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

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

IMDb

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

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

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

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 

Ardor 밀애 (Milae) The Deep Love [2002] • South Korea

This started out very promising with a scene where a husband's lover visits the married couple's home and announces her position with frightening authority—on Christmas day, no less. After that it just rolls along with violins, heavy sighs and a plot that takes too long to unfold. The couple move to a small town to try and start over. The wife is too broken to go along and begins an affair with a local womanizer. It's all about sex and forgetting what happened, but there's not enough substance to get the viewer caught up in the emotional goings on. Everything is predictable and thinly plotted. Kim Yun-jin (from Lost) gives a decent performance but the direction of the film is very weak.

★★

Director: Byun Young-Ju
Starring: Yunjin Kim, Jong-won Lee, Seung-Ri Ha, Min-kyeong Kim, Seong-Yong Kye
IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

Crossing Hennessy (Yue man xuan ni shi) [2010] • Hong Kong

A gigantic disappointment for Lust, Caution star Tang Wei's return to the big screen. She's woefully under-used, pouting a little bit here and there or acting obviously phony as her character tries to pretend that Jacky Cheung's character is interesting or funny. I've seen 5th graders act better than Cheung does in this film. It's almost as if he mistakenly wandered onto the set of the wrong movie. He's out of sync and irritating the whole way through. And not funny at all. The suspension of disbelief factor has to be in full force to accept that Tang Wei's character might fall for this guy. Of the many supporting characters in the film, his extended family verges on being likable but they whined so much it became annoying. Cantonese is not a pleasant sounding language for that kind of communication. The film does show a seldom seen side of everyday Hong Kong which is refreshing but beyond that the film's pretty much a train wreck without chemistry, comedy, or cuteness.

★★

Director: Ivy Ho
Starring: Jacky Cheung, Wei Tang, Maggie Cheung, Danny Lee, Lowell Lo
IMDb
Wikipedia

An Affair (Jung sa) [1998] • South Korea

So-Hyun is a thirty-eight year old woman unhappy with her life. We can see it in her eyes but nowhere else. The only clue we get is that her husband fails to notice that the electrical wiring in her kitchen needs a complete overhaul. Never underestimate the bond between woman and kitchen, I guess. When her more than a decade younger sister's fiancé shows up things get tense. Her sister and the fiancé had been living in the States but the sister has not returned to Korea just yet. This gives So-Hyun the opportunity to have sex with the fiancé.

So-Hyun is portrayed wonderfully introspectively middle-aging by veteran actress Lee Mi-Suk, but the burden falls upon her to play the whole scenario out inside her head and inform us through her eyes. The film itself doesn't help. Directed with the rugged determination and overbearing woe-is-me of a bad stage play the film does a reasonable job suggesting that reasons for the affair might well exist outside its universe but fails to put them on screen.

The fiancé, miscast by a mile and played woodenly by Lee Jung-Jae, has about as much charm as a turnip. He has a typical guy job, which we see him engaged in once, of telling other people what to do. Beyond that he just stands around with his hands in the pockets of his high-waisted pants, brooding. Javier Bardem, he's not. It's impossible to fathom why So-Hyun would hurt so many people who are more important to her than this guy, by not only having sex with him, but also falling in love with him. A lot of the responsibility for the failure of this film is due to this casting error.

I suppose we're to come away with the notion that it wasn't him she fell in love with as much as the idea of falling in love, of falling in love with someone before she gets any older and the possibility of requited love eludes her. In a scene harrowing for its gross out factor the fiancé pretty much lays out this argument for her: "You'll get old. No one will pay you any mind. You'll be sick with no one to tell you they love you. And you won't have any more chances to love. Tell me you love me ." Eew.

★★

Director: Je-yong Lee
Starring: Lee Jung-Jae, Lee Mi-Suk

IMDb
HanCinema

Why Did You Come to My House (Woo-ri-jib-e wae-wass-ni) [2009] • South Korea

This is an ugly film. Yes, it's about a suicidal man and a homeless lunatic woman who invades his life but that doesn't mean the photography has to suck. It could just be a poor DVD transfer but many parts of the film are too dark to make out what's going on. There's a fine line between making actors unattractive and making them unappealing. The script for this film helped land its actors on the unappealing side of that line.

The film starts off with the suicidal main character being interrogated by the police. Right away we know this isn't going to be an active story but a passive one that is revealed through the telling of various stories. This kind of technique isn't that uncommon and it can result in effective engagement, but that didn't happen here. As the man tells his story, the homeless woman is introduced. She in turn, within the story that the man is telling, has to tell her story so we understand who she is and why she's in his story. Her story introduces us to another character who has to have a story and the net effect of this is that the film never gets out of background mode until the very end where the cliché of love that arrives after death has intervened to make it impossible, and consequently tragic, attempts to tickle our heartstrings and make us forget that we really don't care.

Kang Hye-jeong is a wonderful actress and is almost able to make something of her character but she isn't given enough raw material to get completely there. This film relies on background stories for its grill so she is required to be a twenty-something hobo for most of the film and then a high school kid for some of the background. I don't know what it is about her face but she is able to believably portray a realistic looking teenager. This film is only for devoted fans of hers who must see every minute they can of her on the big screen. It is not recommended for anyone looking to see a good movie.

★★

Director: Soo-ah Hwang
Starring: Kang Hye-jeong, Park Hie-Sun

IMDb
HanCinema
Asianmediawiki

Lost in Love (Sarang-eul nochida) [2006] • South Korea

This is one of the strangest, silliest romantic melodramas I think I've ever seen. It must be approached like a train wreck. It's not that it's bad in a sickening or cheap way ... it's just wrong at most every turn because it tries too hard to be controlling.

There are two fine actors in the lead roles: Sol Kyung-Gu as the guy, he's from Oasis and such, a great film. I think he's one of the best Korean actors behind Song Kang-ho, from The Host and Thirst and such. The girl is his real life wife, Song Yun-Ah. I haven't seen her before but she's very attractive and and has a genuine quality as an actress. I look forward to seeing more of her.

But gee whiz, this film plays the most sentimental music at all the right times ... which means all the wrong times. It's unabashedly blatant and tries but fails to be manipulative. It's basic blunder of a story seems ill-conceived and executed haphazardly. It will make you laugh at times when you're not supposed to.

I guess the characters are meant to be proletariat types because they use foul language when it's not called for and the guy has bad table manners. The girl's mom doesn't wear a bra and has sex with an unattractive yet sweet man, and she rides a motor bike scooter thing. She's hip. We like her. She might die.

No tears but it's good for a gawk.

★★

Director: Chang-min Chu
Starring: Sol Kyung-Gu, Song Yun-Ah

IMDb
Asianmediawiki
HanCinema

Nightmare (Gawi) Horror Game Movie [2000] • South Korea

Ha Ji-won is fabulous here, playing a Korean JHGC (J-Horror Goth Chick) with bangs and neatly combed hair. Just a little black around the eyes and she's as creepy as they come. And quite beautiful too. In fact, the only redeeming quality of this attempt to jump on the I Know What You Did Last Summer style of horror bandwagon is that all the female players are gorgeous. And they do a fine job acting. Beyond that, compliments are hard to muster.

I hesitate to single out someone for deep ridicule but the guy who plays the lawyer in this flick, his acting is so bad it's painful. He ruins the film. Well, a script that is convoluted beyond repair doesn't help but if it was the script alone it wouldn't be painful. There's an inverse relationship between the film's cohesion and the level of badness to this guy's acting. As the film falls apart, making suspension of disbelief nearly unattainable, this guy gets more screen time and becomes more obnoxious. By the time the third act rolls around it's a chore not to hit the eject button.

There are buckets and buckets of blood spilled and some of the kills are pretty good, and, much to my surprise as it's unusual in Korean cinema featuring young starlets, there's brief nudity, Ha Ji-won included. So it's got the ingredients. They're just not stirred very well. A group of friends, boys and girls, belong to an organization called "A Few Good Men". They (accidentally?) kill one of their members and try to cover it up by faking it as a suicide. The one who got killed is bummed out by it so she comes back and starts killing the members of the club, one by one. Good thing one of the members is a videographer and gets all of it on tape. Also a good thing that no one else in the community seems aware of all the bloodshed ... but I digress. The hilarious thing about this videotape is that it is magically done in third-person, if you will. Several times all of the characters are actually in the video. And the guy with the camera, just after assisting with pushing the deceased off a rooftop in the attempted fake suicide, flies out into mid-air, and even does a pull back, so we get a good view of the body going down and eventually landing on the roof of a car. I know this can be explained by security cameras, editing, and artistic license to splice in other people's points of view, but it's still hilarious when you watch it.

All in all there is some enjoyment to be had from watching a handful of attractive young Koreans go through the horror motions, but I can pretty much guarantee you will be groaning and moaning and pointing fingers and poking fun at this flick before it's over.

★★

Director: Byeong-ki Ahn
Starring: Gyu-ri Kim, Ji-won Ha, Jeong-yun Choi, Ji-tae Yu, Hyeon-suk Yun, Jun-Sang Yu, Jun Jeong, Hye-yeong Jo

IMDb

Gu Gu, the Cat (Gou-Gou datte neko de aru) [2008] • Japan

Major misfire. What on earth is Marty Friedman doing in this movie? First of all, this flick has very little to do with, and gives very little screen time to, cats. When the little felines do get a moment in the spotlight it is usually accompanied by some silly video game sound effects. To what end, I cannot fathom. Just like Marty Friedman. The ex-Megadeath guitarist plays an English teacher who has nothing to do with anything except looking like a cross between Kenny G and a beardless Harry Shearer as Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap. He acts as a narrator of sorts in the film and breaks the fourth wall when acting as a guide to various hot spots around the trendy Kichijoji neighborhood. Why he is doing any of this in the film, I don't know. Perhaps it is some sleight of hand trying to take our attention away from the three fat girls in the movie who serve no purpose except being the brunt of fat jokes. How lame is that?

There is one sort of take-your-breath-away moment in the film when Suzuka Ohgo, who played the blue-eyed little girl in Memoirs of a Geisha, shows up as the human incarnation of the main character's dead cat. She is sitting in the shadows at a table for quite some time as if, since she is playing a dead cat, we are not going to ever see who she is or what she looks like. When the camera finally acknowledges her face ... oh my, the girl is maturing nicely. Beautiful smile.

I like Kyôko Koizumi quite a bit, and she does her best, although sullenly so, as the main character who gets depressed when her cat Ca Va (the one later played by Suzuka Ohgo) dies. Juri Ueno's character is much more appealing. She actually gives the film hope as she tries to cheer up Koizumi and the movie. Koizumi finally gets a new cat, Gu Gu, but then she gets cancer and blah blah blah.

This film is a real dud. It felt like the only people who might remotely enjoy the silly set piece antics would be the people who made the film. It comes off as an inside joke we are on the outside of. I'm a cat person and had high hopes for this film after absolutely loving the director's Josee, the Tiger and the Fish. But, nope. There's nothing here.

★★

Director: Isshin Inudou
Starring: Kyôko Koizumi, Denden, Juri Ueno, Marty Friedman, Naojirô Hayashi, Tatsuya Isaka, Ryo Kase, Suzuka Ohgo

IMDb

Pandorum [2009] • USA, Germany

I watched this movie because Ben Foster is a major talent. It's hard to recommend any of the movies he's been in but his performances have always been great. Most notable is his role in 3:10 to Yuma where he plays a cold-blooded killer like an effeminate Klaus Kinski on horseback. It's creepy and unnerving in its understatedness. He's one of those actors that scares you, like Vera Farmiga. Pandorum is another film I don't recommend except for Foster's performance. It's a bad movie but you can enjoy Foster improvising his way through it, trying to make something of the nonsense he's given to work with. He adds humor to the film by mocking his own dialog. He whispers a lot too, hoping no one will hear some of the lines he's tasked to deliver. So it is entertaining on that level. The rest of it is problematic.

The film starts with a couple guys aboard a gigantic spaceship waking from hypersleep with mild amnesia. One of them puts on a walkie-talkie headset and goes off in search of the reactor room. From that point on we're treated to dialog that consists of endless variations on the theme of "Can you hear me now?" And then the creatures show up. These creatures, reminiscent of those from The Descent (2005), can "run faster than you" and are "stronger than you know", but the humans outrun them throughout the movie, sort of like Mark Wahlberg outrunning the wind in The Happening, and they lose in some of their fights with humans. That's weird. The director uses silly camera tricks to cover up ridiculously written and choreographed scenes—and not very well. You often see characters just standing there on the sidelines, twiddling their thumbs waiting for their cue to start acting. There is, of course, a big holy shit twist at the end which segues peacefully to a happy ending, but who cares? Movie bad, Ben Foster good.

★★

Hurt Locker [2008] • USA

I don't understand all the love for this film. Kathryn Bigelow is a fine director and all, but the script for this is terrible. It's cliché from top to bottom. There's nothing here that isn't predictable macho nonsense. Given that it is purported to be written by someone embedded with real access to these army guys, I couldn't believe how unbelievable it all is. Team players don't turn off radio contact and do things the other players don't know about unless they're dumb movie characters. Generals don't then praise them for doing it, either. Of course butch boy befriends Iraqi boy for cheap shot at character depth and I call bullshit. This film is insufferably boring unless you get a rush from fantasy testosterone games. The narrative barely rises above the limits of a Powerpoint presentation.

★ ★

Paranormal Activity [2007] • USA

Don't fall for the stories of people walking out of this movie because it's too scary. It doesn't even pretend to be scary until at least an hour into it. Somebody's leg is being pulled. And speaking of pulled legs ... that is the only scary scene in the movie.

There are allegedly three different endings to the film. I saw the original one ... and it's not scary or satisfying at all. There's a little bit of off-screen screaming that abruptly turns into silence. OK, that can be unnerving but it's just a technique. It doesn't move the story to anywhere that matters. The ending being shown in theaters now might be better--a whole bunch more technique with a frightening image or two that is over with quickly. The original peters out to nothingness for far too long and has no meaning.

Even if we grant that either or both of the endings I didn't see kick total ass, that doesn't make it a good film. It makes it three minutes of coolness that requires ninety minutes of suffering to get to.

The guy in this film is a completely unlikeable moron. The girl is OK but I never really thought she was scared, more just annoyed by her idiotic day-trader boyfriend. I think everyone acknowledges that this film is mostly, for at least an hour, nothing but set up before anything happens, and that's too much time spent with bad actors working without a script. There's nothing subtle about it.

★★

Tidal Wave (Haeundae) Tsunami [2009] • South Korea

Tsunami, or Tidal Wave, or whatever, is a great big huge gigantic disaster. The first ten minutes introduces about a dozen characters all of whom you'll hope are dead in the next ten minutes. It's the strangest character development I've ever seen. There's no subtlety or differentiation to them. They're all loud, extremely loud, obnoxious idiots. And they all hit one another, a lot. There are three things at play here: stupid, godawful, and annoying as hell. The director of the film, in a pre-emptive strike sort of way, has acknowledged that the special effects aren't very good (i.e., very expensive) so he's going to treat us to some good ol' Korean charm. FAIL. I hope this film never sees the light of day outside Korea because it could set back by decades the good reputation of that country's cinematic output. The acting is bad (WTF Sol Kyung-gu & Ha Ji-won), the myriad plot lines are predictable and groan out loud unpleasant, the special effects are cheesy, and, well .... you get the point. If you ever get roped into seeing this movie I promise that you won't believe how bad it is.

I watched the international version that cuts 13 minutes from the Korean domestic release. Thank gosh for small favors.

★★

A West Lake Moment (Yuan yang hu die) [2004] • China

This is a ONE STAR film without Zhou Xun. She is a joy to watch even with a co-star (Kun Chen) who is frighteningly bad here. He doesn't act as much as mug his way through the film like his appearance is a gift. The direction is silly at times with meaningless repetitive jump cuts and other random shenanigans. The script is immature and, frankly, stupid. The story sets up a charming and beautiful woman with an adorable best (male) friend (Yim Linq) who desires her and is good to her but she won't reciprocate because he's a few years younger than she is and she's got the hots for some pig of a selfish man (Chen). That's what his character is supposed to be, though, I'm not just dumping on the guy. This film not only resolves with the woman and the jerk getting together--without redeeming the jerkball at all--it also kills off the good guy! This is one gross male fantasy. Whoever wrote this movie is not someone I would like to meet.

The cinematography is beautiful at times and the location of the tea house is somewhere I'd like to sit and have tea but it's difficult to get behind such a disrespectful script.

★★