Unseen Films

Killer Shrews (1959)

2012-02-01T07:37:00.000-05:00

What is it about mad scientists and deserted islands? Apparently it’s a prerequisite to not only be not only mad but also antisocial- or maybe that should be considerate since if you stay on a deserted island you’re less likely to have your stupid experiment injure someone... As a safety warning I’m going to tell you why you shouldn’t get off any boat that lands on a desert island inhabited by collies with fangs.

The Killer Shrews is a drive in classic. Its an utterly preposterous film (it was on MST3K) about scientists who take tiny shrews and grow them to the size of large dogs (they are played by collies with fright masks) which then get loose and then try to eat everyone and everything that gets in their way.

It’s a film that is stupid as a stick and a great deal of fun.

The reason the film works is that the cast plays it painfully straight. There is no hint that they are finding it anything other then deadly serious which somehow manages to make the proceedings work.

As I frequently say this ain’t high art- which means we are oh so much better for it.

What I like is that the serious tone mixes with some moody black and photography in order to make a slightly creepy, tense on it’s own terms film. There is no denying that the film generates a certain amount of suspense since the filmmakers kind of plot themselves into a corner which they some how manage to get themselves out of.

A neat little movie perfect for a Saturday night on the couch with popcorn, soda and stack of Drive In movie sort of titles.

New York International Children's Film Festival tickets are on sale

2012-01-31T17:30:00.005-05:00

Go here now.

Thats the link to the schedule for this years NYICFF. It will also allow you to buy tickets. I know the website says in some places February 1 but it says on sale now on the top of the front page. I also just got the schedule in the mail, so I'm guessing the big reveal has come early.

This is great news and you really want to get tickets.

DO NOT LET THE CHILDREN IN THE TITLE FOOL YOU, THIS IS A GREAT FILM FESTIVAL FOR ADULTS. I mean that with all sincerity and seriousness. Randi and I have had tickets for every festival since they started, so if there is one thing I know, without a doubt, the festival is all about good films, not kids films. Yes, the films are geared for families, but at the same time that doesn't mean they are just for kids. How else do you explain films like 5 Centimeters a Second from a couple years back, which works as both a kids film and as an aching look back at paths not chosen that rocks a adults.

This year the selections are killer. Its full of great films across the board so you really need to make an effort to see as much of the good stuff as possible. Take a look at the schedule and I'm sure you'll find something you want to see since it's the best programmed festival yet.

You want highlights? Here are some of the films that I'm looking forward to:

The Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Below, the newest film from Makoto Shinkai the director of the masterpiece films 5 Centimeters a Second and Voices From a Distant Star. A chance to see any film by this director is a treat.

The Beatles in both Yellow Submarine (sadly only one showing) and Hard Days Night. Yellow Submarine has always been a huge favorite of mine and the chance to see it big is a treat.

They are running Toys in the Attic, the English dubbed version of In the Attic or Who Has A Birthday which was one of the first films reviewed here at Unseen. It blew me away and is proof that sometimes treasures lie in unexpected places. My original review is here, Simply put this is one of the best animated films you'll ever see, and three years on the film is still with me. The chance to see it again is an absolute unexpected pleasure. Believe me you DO want to see this, even if you think you don't.

They are running Ninja Kids!!! which played last years NYAFF. Mondocurry and myself both reviewed it. Mondocurry's review can be found here, while my review (which was buried in a review of 22 NYAFF films) can be read below:

Takashi Miike's adaptation of the anime series is one of the best anime to live action films as you'll ever see. Keeping the weird designs of characters (many have distorted facial features) the film has the feeling of a cartoon come to life. The film follows Rantaro, the son of an ex-ninja now farmer as he goes to the ninja academy.

Its a kids film for real kids since it's full of jokes about farts, snot and dog poop...

Not only one of the best film of the festival it is easily one of my favorites of the whole year. Mondocurry said to me after the screening that if I said anything other than I loved the film he would have called me a liar. I loved the film. If you can, score tickets to see this.

As I said in the NYAFF review, I'm trying to figure out how I can see both of the screenings and still have time to eat.

Again don't take my word for it read Mondocurry's piece as well.

The opening night film is A Monster in Paris. I've heard the film is good, and I'll be there simply because it's the opening night and those are always a blast.

The special events are not to be missed especially the chance to see Aardman's The Pirates!Band of Misfits in 3D as well as Michael Ocelot's Tales of the Night.

Frequently and very mistakenly overlooked are the short film collections. GO SEE THESE. Oscar winners come out of them, not only that there are great films hidden in them that you might never get to see. The shorts are always fantastic.

As always get your tickets sooner than later- the screenings almost always sell out WAY in advance.

Lastly don't get upset if you can't see everything. Its not physically possible. Not only do some screenings over lap, the locations are all over Manhattan so you may very well end up not being able to get from one place to another. (The geographical diversity of the festival is the one thing that makes me crazy)

Look, choose, go and see.

Going in this seems like it's going to be the best year yet.

Club Paradise

2012-01-31T07:22:00.001-05:00

Robin Williams and Jimmy Cliff star in a film is another one of those films I stop to watch when I run across it on TV.

The plot has injured Chicago fire fighter Robin Williams heading off to the islands to recover. Finding he likes the warm weather and the location he along with buddy Cliff decide to open a resort. As the tourists arrive and try to deal with the misleading accommodations, developers wanting to take over the island arrive and begin to bribe the local officials to get there way.

Ruckus but gentle comedy kind of went nowhere when it played in theaters. However on home video, where I first discovered this gem of a film, it was a hit Back in my video store days this was a perennial renter with the film going in and out even when the film hit cable and went into it’s time on eternal rotation.

For me the film works not so much because the script is good, it’s only okay, rather the film works because the cast lead by Williams and Cliff and including Rick Moranis, Peter O’Toole, Twiggy, Adolph Cesar, Brian Doyle Murray,Eugene Levy, Robin Duke and Andrea Martin sell the nonsense. Its clear that the cast is having a blast so it translates into we the audience having a similar good time.

As I will say about many of the films this week, they aren’t high art, but they are good fun. Actually the best thing I can say about this film is that its so non-taxing that it makes you forget your worries like a great vacation will…however unlike a trip to the islands this vacation can be repeated as often as you want just by hitting the start button to replay the film.

High Risk (1981)

2012-01-30T07:27:00.000-05:00

We begin this week of atypical vacation films with one of the first films I ever recorded when I got a VCR. I discovered this neat little film thanks to it being a Siskel and Ebert pick of the week way back when they were first doing their TV show.

The plot of this film has James Brolin and his friends deciding to go on a little hunting trip down to South America where they will rob a drug lord of his money and then go home. The idea is that it’s going to be a quick in and out. As you might expect things go sideways from the get go and they are soon running for their lives from everyone who wants the money for themselves.

Played for some laughs as well as suspense the film is a grand romp that will leave you smiling when it finishes running out its breezy 90 minutes. One of the huge pluses in the film is that the film doesn’t have a nasty edge that many other directors would have used. The film is light and bright and not what you think of when you think of an action film.

Also helping the film immensely is the cast- Brolin, Clevon Little, Lindsey Wagner, Bruce Davidson, Anthony Quinn, James Coburn, Ernest Borgnine, and Chick Vennera who sell every minute of the film and make you feel that they were doing this for more than a pay check.

High art it’s not. It is a great little film that is perfect for a rainy Saturday on the couch with a bowl of popcorn and a soda

Sunday Nightcap 1/29/12 Joann Sfar, Adele Blanc-sec, Patton Oswalt and gushing on things I love

2012-01-29T23:04:00.018-05:00

Time for our typical Sunday night ramble...

Wednesday night Randi and I attended the penultimate night of the New York Jewish Film Festival and their screening of Joann Sfar Draws From Memory (it was paired with the Silent Historian but because of car problems I had to bail before that or else miss my train home). The film is 49 minutes of artist and film director Sfar talking about drawing. Its Sfar in cafes, cabs and at home talking about what he draws and why.

I’m very mixed on the film.

The problems with the film are both technical and organizational.

Organizationally the film tells you very little about Sfar and his work other than how he does it and in a few cases what he’s drawn. We only know what he tells up and outside of some of his work it’s eye droppered out. There is no context, there is no attempt at organizing anything it’s Sfar just talking. Yes its interesting, but since I only learned of him from his film Gainsbourg I have no context to his life and art. Worse he mentions that he’s done 150 books, and we only see a few of his stories, and only those that are tied to his life and heritage.

But even his heritage isn't really explained. Outside of being from Algerian father, an Eastern European Mother, and a coquettish grandmother his life and family, which influences his work, isn't really explained. There is a comment that the Rabbi’s Cat is him poking fun at his father's religion but then it doesn’t explain his feelings or what that entails. Ultimately if you don’t know him you’re SOL. (In it's defense since looking on line I find that Sfar's background is not well explained anywhere in at least in English).

Technically the film suffers from horrible subtitling. Randi and I don’t speak French and we could tell some of what was subtitled wasn’t what was said. Worse the subtitling is incomplete with Sfar talking talking talking and only part of it being subtitled.

Carrying that theme further the film is full of Sfar’s comics, all of it in French, but only a few lines are translated. How can we understand what people see in Sfar’s work when we don’t know what he’s written? As with the translation of Sfars words, the written text frequently caused laughter and a reaction in some members of the audience who understood French, but blank stares from those of use who had to rely on the subtitles.

To me the film is a draft. It needs a good going over by someone who isn’t so close to its subject.

Onward and upward...

For those looking for another reason to track down The Adventures of Adele Blanc Sec which I reviewed back in January of last year, sans subtitles, Eden has reviewed the film at her own blog, Comicsgirl. The piece can be found here.

I was going write up the Oscar nominations but for the most part there wasn’t anything too exciting. Outside of Chico and Rita and the Cat in Paris getting nominations I really not that that excited by any of them.

There are however two things that I do want to mention.

First off Steven Spielberg’s War Horse should, must… win for best cinematography. This is one of the best looking films you’ll ever see. It raises it all to a high art. England, Europe and World War One never looked so lovely. I just wish the rest of the film was as good as it looks.

The other bit of business is that Patton Oswalt got robbed by not getting at least an Oscar nom for Young Adult. I’m not a fan of Oswalt’s but he hits it out of the box and then some with one of the best performances of the last five years. He is the reason I stayed with the film to the end.

Don’t get me wrong Charlize Theron is equally wonderful but her ex-girlfriend from hell is the sort of unpleasant person you don’t want to spend a minute with let alone 100. On some level. While the fact that she doesn’t learn and stays the same jerk through out the film may strike some as a brilliant move on the part of the filmmakers, to me it made the film an exercise in diminishing returns- except for Patton Oswalt who kept me watching despite wanting to abandon ship. (hopefully the revenge will be a long career that doesn’t end in the obscurity that many supporting actors and actresses end up with)

I’ll say it again, it’s one of the best, most heart breaking performances from the last five years.

Its been remarked that I get gushy when I talk about certain film festivals and film events, and I can’t lie, I do. We all have our passions and I wear my heart on my sleeve.

Despite what some people may think I am not trying to butter anyone up or to get anything from anyone, I’m simply trying to spread the love. I genuinely love The New York Asian Film Festival, The New York International Children’s Film Festival, The New York Film Festival and Tribeca, and the others I talk about here.

How do you know?

You know because I go to many of the the screenings on my dime. Yes, I do get invited to some press screenings but I also go to as many screenings as I can afford and that I can attend. I go to the events and the films that I want to see and not what have been picked out for me.

Do I gush? Hell yea, because things like the chance to see Yellow Submarine on a big screen gets me all fired up.

Trust me, if I say I like or love something, I do.

Speaking of which tickets for the New York International Children's Film Festival go on sale Wednesday. I don't want to say too much right now, but this looks like the best year yet, which is saying a great deal.

Before I go I want to share a quick film watching story.

I saw a Korean film Monday night. It had no English on the cover, but it had a picture of a man shooting, so figured what the hell, I'll find out what it was once the film started. The trouble while it was subtitled in English, nothing written was so I had no idea what the film was. All was fine until I realized that the subtitles, which seemed quite good, were in fact for some other film entirely. The film seemed to be about the Japanese occupation and an effort to hide children. The subtitles sometimes were about that, but mostly seemed to be from some sort of gangster film or perhaps a supernatural one... Talk about surreal...

That's it for this tonight.

(This week we spotlight a few films where people try to get away from it all...)

I Love Hong Kong (2011) - Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-29T16:48:00.003-05:00

Director: Eric Tsang
Producer: Eric Tsang/Shaw Brothers Studio
Stars: Eric Tsang, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Sandra Ng, Aarif Lee, Stanley Fung, Fala Chen, Mag Lam, Anita Yuen, & more!!
Genre: Comedy-lunar new year

Watching I Love Hong Kong the 2nd time around brought back some great memories! My first go around with this film was last year in February while on vacation in Hong Kong during chinese new year. This film was one of a few that was slated specifically to help RING in the new year at the theater box offices. If I can remember correctly, I watched this film at the Grand Cinema in the swanky Elements shopping mall in Kowloon! The Grand Cinema housed 12 screens with very comfortable seats & a monster sound system! For all that don’t know, when you buy movie tickets in HK, you have to pick a specific seat in the theater prior to purchase. It sounded very formal at first but it does create order & an advanced shot to choose the best seats to your liking without last second bum rushes.

Lunar New Year films usually boasts an all star cast and this movie was no different. Led by the very talented, diminutive, & lovable Eric Tsang who acted in, directed, & produced I Love HK!

The focal point of the film centered around the close knit relationships that were developed in the past as well as ongoing in the present tense between tenants of a typical low income housing complex in hong kong. Financial hardships and fate would bring some of these friends & families back together again to live in this tight community! Ng Shun (Tony Leung Ka Fei), his wife (Sandra Ng), and their two kids played by Aarif Lee, & Mag Lam will move back into Ng Shun’s father’s apartment where he grew up unbeknownst to the grandfather until the surprise visit. Ng Shun & his wife were doing quite well on their own until their Toy manufacturing company filed for bankruptcy. A reality check for the Ng family would ensue when they discover that the living style & comforts of this housing complex is not quite as endearing to what they were used to. One by one, old childhood friends from the past including ‘water dragon’ (Eric Tsang) & Ng Shun’s 1st girlfriend (Anita Yuen) would resurface back into their lives making for a sticky, uncomfortable, but hilarious situations! The character that stole the show with her performance in my opinion was Ng Shun’s wife played by Sandra Ng. She had the hardest adjustments to make dealing with her new employment, the low income housing, husband’s ex-girlfriend, & fitting in socially amongst the working class! The 2nd major character that peeks its ‘Chiao Chow’ head back into the Ng family was childhood friend ‘water dragon’ who has become a successful real estate/renovations mogul in the United States. Misunderstandings, flashbacks, and a before & after look of twin sisters will definitely be in order!

No doubt, I Love Hong Kong is filled with off the wall silly skits that manages to play homage to Hong Kong lifestyle and/or poke fun at it. Mentions of the iconic fast food eats like “Cafe de Coral” seen as Cafe de Oral in the movie, as well as some rumblings from the high end gourmet supermarket, "C!tysuper" seen as CCsuper in the movie is either adored or hated by the locals depending on their financial situation, I would guess. The evil in the story will reap its ugly head when the Tung Wah housing project intends to wipe out the mom & pop shops located in their complex in favor of opening up international chain stores.

The dialogue in the film is full of wit and play on words--all the way down to the Ng families first names such as Ng Shun (can’t trust), Ng Tung (can’t connect), Ng Ming (don’t understand), & Ng Chi (don’t know). Some funny scenes in the movie include Sandra Ng trying to imitate being a working class country mom trying to get the deals at the grocery stand and the slow motion gangster leans in the lobby. I also can’t leave out the beautiful twins!?

In the end, I Love Hong Kong took us onto a family journey of hardships & bad luck that turned into good fortune & prosperity with a little patience, trust, humor, & unity!

This film is definitely worth your time! You will get a insightful glimpse of the day in the life of a Hongkie!

0506HK (2007) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-29T06:54:00.002-05:00

Filmmaker Quentin Lee explores whether he wants to move back to Hong Kong or whether he should stay in the US.

Lee and his family moved to Canada when he was 12, during the period where Hong Kong was a tizzy about what was going to happen in in 1997 when the city was returned to China. About the time that he went to Berkley his parents split up and his mother moved back to the city. The result was that he ended up splitting his time between his Dad in Canada and his mom in Hong Kong.

Framed as a trip to see his mom for Christmas the film is an examination of what it means to leave the place you're born and return. Its a search for culture, and how the people who stay in a place all their life (as some of Lee's friends had) and how others who left and return see the same place. Over the course of the the hour long film Lee talks to friends, family and a few people he meets along along the way to get their view of Hong Kong, culture and where they belong.

As some one who knows Hong Kong from the movies and from the stories of friends this is a kick in the head. Its a look at what it means to live in the city. It's so nice to see the city as more than just a movie location, now it's a place that people really live and work.

More interesting it's a film about what it means to be strung between places and cultures. Lee's heart is very much in China...but it's also very much in Los Angeles, the first place he ever chose to call home after growing up in places chosen for him by his family. It's a choice I've never had to make myself.

It was great to see many of people like Kam, Teddy Chan,Raman Hui and other people who are only names in film credits as people.

I really liked this film. Its a great little film that raises some interesting questions and manages to make a mythic place and and some of the people who live there something more real.

Available on DVD and on You Tube.

Wind Blast (2010) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-28T17:45:00.001-05:00

From Qunshu Gao, the director of The Message and Old Fish, comes a film that almost no one has seen or knows exists...at least with in my small cadre of Asian film loving friends. Whats worse is that if you look at IMDB the rating is around 4 out of 10. What film did they see?

This is an impossible to classify homage, satire, action, crime, western, form over content film. This is a film that you're either going to accept for it's off base self or hate for it's eclectic nature.

The plot has some cops chasing a hit man and his girlfriend into the desert. The pair are also being chased by people sent by a former employer who is unhappy with how a previous job turned out. Everyone chases and fights each other over and over again.

I don't think it makes a great deal of sense. I'm sure it does to the characters on screen but something has gotten lost on the cutting room floor. With the result we in the audience have to take things on faith since things are only half heartedly explained. I've seen the film one and half times now and quite frankly I still don't completely understand it.

What I do understand is that this film is a series of stunning set pieces. These are all high octane action sequences involving guns and fists and horses and cars and dump trucks. Its a mixture of realistic action and your typical "over the top" Hong Kong style action. You know some of this couldn't happen, some of the moves would kill the people involved or could only happen if you have wires and special effects. Its all so well done that you simply accept it. Believe me the dump truck chase and the final ghost town sequences are going to get your blood pumping (and the other ones aren't bad either)

In a weird way this is one of the most action packed westerns you'll ever see.

Make no mistake, despite being set now as evidenced by GPS, computers, land rovers and automatic weapons this film is a western. If you stripped away all of the modern trappings this film would easily work as a gritty film from Europe.(I say Europe because American Westerns are rarely this cynical). It also has a good many of the Western cliches worked in (cowboy hats, chases on horse back, ghost town, stampede, the desert setting...) that you'd have to be blind not to catch what it's striving to be.

The problem with the film is that the story is so slender and the details are so off-handedly given that it's kind of hard to fully give yourself over to it. It can be tough going outside of the motion simply because we're essentially flying blind or watching a slice of violent life. It's a flaw, if you want to call it that, that I find in many martial arts films from the 1970's and 80's where they simply want give us a slender plot because they need to have something to hang the action sequences from. The most extreme notion of this are some the recent Thai action films such a BKO Bangkok Knockout which dispenses with plot after the first 15 minutes for a 90 minute fight scene.

I really do like the film, but I'll be the first to admit that the film made better sense the second time since I could rely on having all the plot in my head already. This is a film I can easily recommend to anyone who likes action films because this film is full of it.

Currently out on DVD around the world but not officially in the US.

Old FIsh (2007) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-28T06:00:00.005-05:00

Hailed by the few who saw it at the 2009 NYAFF as the best of the festival that year (every screening I attended had at least one person who saw the film who was trying to connect with one of the few few others who saw the film) this is best described as a true life CSI: China or more accurately CSI:OHMY since what you see on screen is the true story of a police bomb disposal crew in China.

Actually the story is that of the local bomb disposal expert who nearing retirement and how he stumbles upon the work of a serial bomber. The trouble is he really doesn't know what he's doing, as is abundantly clear at the start. What he does is defuse things through trial and error based on experience. The experience has been gained in the constant defusing of bombs and landmines left over from the Japanese Occupation some fifty years before.

Without a doubt this is one of the most amazing and decidedly unique films you're ever likely to see. To be certain the film takes your typical good buy vs bad guy story and turns it into something else entirely (we never really see any bad guy just the bombs). Its almost like taking a candy bar and whipping up a ten course meal out of it complete with soup and porterhouse steaks. You shouldn't be able to do what this film does but somehow it manges to do the impossible.

Based upon the actual work of a bomb squad and starring Ma Gaowei, a former bomb squad member this is the sort of film that seems too fantastical to be real, except that as you watch it, every bit of the film, every moment, every location and action feels real. Rarely has any film ever had such a great sense of place. You know that what we are seeing is real simply because you couldn't make up a location or an action such as what we see.

Whats annoying about this film is that it has no English release that I can find. None. While I do have a copy of the film on DVD there are no English subtitles. Which means I had to troll the Internet to find reviews, summaries and other material relating to the film so that I would have the fullest possible understanding of the film (short of seeing it with subtitles or learning Chinese). Yet again we have a case of some small gem of a film getting lost to the ages out side of it's country of origin simply because it hasn't been translated, or rather hasn't had a translation been made available.

Lets not put too fine a point on it subtitles or no this is one of the best films I've seen in 2011.

Find and see this film.

(FYI: Director Gao Shuqun also directed The Message which I reviewed back in May and Wind Blast which will be reviewed later today)

Under the Hawthorne Tree (2010) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-27T17:56:00.001-05:00

Yimou Zhang's intensely romantic and intensely beautiful story of love across class during the days of Mao.

Mao said that classrooms were to be built in the fields and to that end people were sent from the city into the country for re-education. Jing, a high school senior with a father in a political prison, is sent to a village were the Tree of Heroes grows. It was the site, according to local legend, where many people were martyred during the seSino Japanese War. Jing stays with a family with three sons and is smitten with one of them.

Its all in the eyes and the looks and the knowing glances....rarely has young love been so wonderfully explored.

One of the things that I love about the film is that it is very retro- in its feel. The look of the film is often like black and white post cards that had been colored by hand. Things look like revolutionary photographs at times. Through most of it it has the feeling of being a something we remember rather than what we are seeing.

The film also takes the form of a novel by bridging sections of the story and filling in plot points with simple intertitles. Actually I won't call them simple since they manage to not only move the plot along but they also add a depth to things that may not have been easily translated from the source novel without long exposition. Its a brillant move that will allows the story to grow naturally without getting needlessly complicated- after all this film is nothing more than a simple love story of star crossed lovers.

There is a simplicity to it all that is refreshing, an an innocence that manages to over come pretty much any flaws you may find. I for one was finding a late in the game scene playing out rather silly, and I was feeling that the film was letting me down in the stretch until a simple shot or two had me going from pondering a giggle to fighting back tears (what can I say I'm a hopeless romantic at heart).

If you like weepie romances this is one to search out. Its a a damn fine film, the work of a great director telling a simple story and nailing it perfectly.

What Women Want (2011) Celebrating Chinese New Year

2012-01-27T06:16:00.004-05:00

A remake of the Mel Gibson film from a few years back, this is the story of a, charming, but piggish man who through an accident finds he can suddenly hear what women are thinking. The story follows how he uses the gift and begins to change as a result, all the while butting heads with his daughter, his ex-wife and a high powered executive in his company.

In reading on the film I found reaction very mixed. Some people found it a weak remake made worse by the leads, Andy Lau and Gong Li. Others were like me, who found the leads to be utterly charming and the film to be damn funny.

I should probably state at this point that I am not fan of the Mel Gibson original. I find that film entertaining but very forced and extremely manufactured. For me watching Mel and his co-stars go through the paces is like watching a well oiled machine go through its very preprogrammed paces.

I didn’t have that problem with this version of the story. I simply let the film unwind. I kind of knew where it was going, after all I had seen the earlier film, but I didn’t care. I was more interested in watching where Lau and Li took things.

When you see this film you’ll understand that the film’s success rests purely on the stars if you’re like some who’ve written on the film and you don’t like the stars or feel they don’t have a chemistry then you’re doomed. On the other hand if you’re like me you’ll find that the Lau and Li are absolutely wonderful together.

Actually to be honest to me the joy of the film is Lau. There is something about his devil care attitude toward women that is completely charming. He is clearly chatting up every woman he runs across in the hope of bedding them but he does it so sweetly that they manage not to be offended-except when they catch him doing it to every other woman.

Lau is a charmer and there is a scene early in the film in his apartment where he takes a shower to the music on his daughter's I-pod. The scene is so wonderfully wacky and utterly charming that it's at this point you're either completely hooked or you're lost. I was hooked and smiling from ear to ear.

Equally good is Gong Li as Lau's romantic sparring partner. She is stunningly beautiful and carries herself with an aire of confidence that makes her a wonderful match for Lau. She's so good that I quickly thought back to early in her career when she was the object of lust for a whole bunch of my friends.

For my money this is the superior version of the tale. If you want proof that sometime remakes are better`than the original see this film.

Currently out on import DVD.

The Viral Factor (2012) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-26T18:37:00.004-05:00

The first film from 2012 at Unseen Films is also the China Lion Chinese New Year Release. China Lion is a distributor which releases Chinese films around the world on the same day. This means that a film that opens in Hong Kong opens the same day every where in the world. Most New Years films are comedies and family films, this one is a bloody soap opera.

First rule to enjoying this film throw any hope of a real plot that makes sense out the window. Frankly none of this makes any sense. Its got great action sequences, but little sense outside of that.

The plot has Jay Chou playing a cop escorting a bio-weapons engineer and his family to safety. The trip goes horribly wrong and pretty much everyone dies and Jay is left with a bullet in his head which will completely paralyze him with in a short period. Going home to see his mother, who is in a wheel chair, he finds out that she knows where his father and older brother are. He thought they were dead. Wanting to fulfil his mother's wish to see them again he goes to Malaysia to find them. However when he arrives he instantly gets into trouble when a group of bad guys, who are working for the bad guy who took the bio engineer, try to kidnap a doctor to take over for the bio engineer who was killed while escaping. A fight ensues and Chou realizes that the bad guy who almost killed him is in fact his lost brother, Nicholas Tse.

I'll leave it there since there is way too many twists and turns in this film to relate. Basically it's enough material for at least five years of six soap operas.

I'm very torn about the film. Yes the action is often spectacular, with a jail break and car crash sequences that make you sit up and go "hello". Actually most of this film's action makes you sit up and go Wow....the trouble is the rest of the film is all over the place.

The CGI is wildly uneven with some of the effects of some of the explosions looking terrible. Those metal cylinders are not real nor are the cars that go off the cliffs

The English and Arabic dialog is poorly handled by the non-English/Arabic speakers.

Most damaging is the fact that the plot just does what it wants to. If they need something to happen it does. Need a character to be in the bad guys hands, he is. Need a character to be able to remove a bullet with tweezers? He does. Need a character who is all shot up to be fine after having a bullet removed? He is...instantly.The plot doesn't evolve, things just happen, much like a story by a charming five year old. Through most of the film I was constantly feeling that I was missing something, nope. They were just farting around and moving things along.

I'll be kind and not get into the stupid lapses in real world logic that allows the bad guys to have a body count around ten thousand with out anyone noticing, or to have one character survive being sealed in plastic then tossed off a ship in a sack weighted with chains only to float...

Stupid doesn't begin to address it (actually the third line of my notes is This film is stupid as a stick.)

On the other hand the film weirdly works. Sure you want to riff the film to death with smart ass comments, but you also want to see how it comes out. You really do like the action and the characters, and you watch, no matter how stupid the film, because you do get invested in what happens.

How invested? You may get genuinely misty at some of the more over wrought emotional moments such as when the father smiles at being reunited with his son, or some of the late in the game blood is thicker than water or this is how I want to remember things moments.

Its a stupid as a stick movie but it is emotional. Its also a movie action fans will like even though they will find it troublesome even on its own terms.

Currently in theatrical release around the world, its worth seeing if you are a dyed in the wool action fan.

Legend of the Dragon (1990) - Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-26T06:10:00.002-05:00

Director: Danny Lee
Stars: Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Teresa Mo, Leung Ka Yan
Fight choreographer: Corey Yuen Kwai, Yuen Wah
Genre: action comedy

It would not be quite right to celebrate the Year of the Dragon without soaking in a Stephen Chow film in my opinion! His silly, green, & self depracating-good old country boy demeanor almost always lends to a character with high morals, filial piety, and righteousness! His homages to Bruce Lee, kung fu, & chinese culture are always apparent in his films. Legend of the Dragon is one of Chow’s earlier films that got me hooked into his world of kung fu and over the top, cornball comedy! This time, his bumbling love for a woman, kung fu, & shooting pool would dominate the scene!

Chow Siu Lung (Stephen Chow) and Mo (Teresa Mo) would grow up together practicing the kung fu art of Wing Chun from Lung’s father -- Master Chow Fei Hung (Yuen Wah) in Tai-O, a remote fishing village on LanTau Island about 25 miles away from Hong Kong Island. Master Chow would own a substantial part of land in Tai-O. Lung & Mo would no nothing else but the love of practicing wing chun. Their ways of showing affection towards one another was punching, kicking, & fighting! Lung’s other secret love was playing billiards.

Yan (Leung Ka Yan), the kung fu brother of Master Chow from big city pimping - Hong Kong comes to visit the countryside. The traditional, hard nosed Master Chow has a request for Yan to bring his son back with him to live in HK so he can do bigger & better things! Here begins a tale of where a naive rural side peasant boy would meet the hustle and bustle of city life! Yan finds himself trying to extort money from businesses going door to door but soon discovers that his nephew, ah lung would have extraordinary talent in playing billiards! Lung would be an accessory to gambling against his knowledge, a successful wager at that...until he plays for big stakes against the snooker champion, Jimmy White!! Nobody told Ah Lung that he was gambling against the deed of his father’s Tai O property!! Ah Lung & Master Chow would have to come up with a plan to win back their land! A tell tale quote from the movie reveals some patriotic feelings at the time of filming.

“The prosperity of Hong Kong after 1997 relies on you.”

The fighting in the film when they did square off, was fast, furious, & comedic!! Corey Yuen Kwai & Yuen Wah, both members of the famous “7 Little Fortunes” Peking Opera crew which includes Sammo, Jackie Chan, & Yuen Biao were the fight & action choreographers so you know the bar would be set pretty high! Leung Ka Yan who plays the crazy uncle in the film was a Shaw Brother studio veteran and a very capable martial art badass on the screen as well. Stephen Chow showed off his multi-talented TVB self as he layed down the signature for what he would be known for in the near future -- kung fu blended with benny hill style comedy!

Some fun scenes in the movie included::

* Ah lung’s encounter with Amy Yip
* Family dinner scene
* Father vs Son (Yuen Wah vs Stephen Chow) to test out if the son was ready to handle himself in HK!
* The fight scene with Ah Lung vs the lead henchmen with the gun!
* Awesome display of billiards from Jimmy White & Stephen Chow?
* Father & son demonstrating kung fu on the streets of tsim tsa chui for money.
* homage to bruce lee at the end!

Legend of the Dragon is definitely worth some play time especially if you are a fan of Stephen Chow! The movie contains a whole host of lighthearted-disposable fun and will be sure to drop that sky high blood pressure of yours! Be sure to stick around for the conclusion of the film as Stephen Chow, Yuen Wah, Leung Ka Yan, & Teresa Mo wishes the viewers a happy lunar new year! And don’t forget to watch those outtakes!

Gung Hei Fat Choy from Unseen Films!

1911 (2011) Celebrating Chinese New Year

2012-01-25T17:30:00.006-05:00

Billed as Jackie Chan's 100th film (depending upon how you count it might be his 109th),this is a story of the Chinese revolution that brought down the Qing Dynasty.

As the populace begins open revolt and falling in behind Sun YatSen and his allies, the Qing government takes steps to stop them using their "modern" army. Through direct engagement with the Qing military and the behind the scenes political and financial maneuvers across the globe the rebels seek to bring down their hated oppressors.

Jackie Chan plays Huang Xing, one of the leaders of the rebel forces. Having been trained in modern war in Japan, he seeks to turn his rag tag soldiers into a fighting force. He's a man haunted by the losses his men are suffering (the opening failed assault drives him to the brink of suicide). Still he fights on with a intensity that all those around him responds to. The performance is one of Jackie's best, which considering his recent performances in film like Little Big Soldier , Karate Kid, or Shinjuku Incident is saying a great deal.

This is one of the best from the recent crop of films that came out for the anniversary of the 1911 revolution. Where many of the films seemed concerned with the large scale picture and seemed to be full of propaganda, at the loss of the people involved, here is a film that is very much concerned with the people. Here we have characters and not just actors getting a pay check for walk ons.

The film isn't perfect. The film has too many side characters and covers a great deal of time to the point that some events are reduced to being explained via titles on the screen. But at the same time it's no where near as bad as some of the founding of the Communist party films like Beginning of the Great Revival where most of the story was conveyed by titles.

Despite it's flaws the film is amazing. It all carries a strong emotional weight, especially the battle sequences. To me the failed opening attack which is intercut with the young men frolicking in the ocean is one of the most powerful indictments of war and it's loss that you're likely to fine. Its a perfectly contained little sequence...

Unfortunately I only just discovered that the US DVD version is missing about 25 minutes from the Asian Theatrical version. Not only are the minutes missing but you can feel the loss. I originally saw this in an unsubtitled version from China last year and was deeply moved. I was so moved that I wanted to write the film up for the Chinese New Year series. However since the US DVD was coming out 2 weeks before New Year I decided to hold off until I got a subtitled DVD. Watching the US release I was shocked. The pacing was off. Things moved too fast. The opening sequences seemed to be missing something, basically the poetry. The film was only a shadow of itself. (Something confirmed by picking up a subtitled version in Chinatown)

Why did they cut the film? I don't know. I really don't. I'm sure someone thought it was a good idea, but how it was done, cutting sequences apart severely weakens the film.

I like the film, but I love the original version. If you can get a version from a source like Yes Asia, I especially recommend you give the film a try. (Addendum it appears the version playing on pay per view on cable is the full version. I'm confused but still recommend the full film)

The Eagle Shooting Heroes (1993) - Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-25T07:00:00.001-05:00

Director: Jeffrey Lau
Producer: Wong Kar Wai
Action Choreographer: Sammo Hung
Stars: Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Tony Leung Ka Fai, Maggie Cheung, Brigitte Lin
Leslie Cheung, Jackie Cheung, Carina Lau, Kenny B, Joey Wong
Veronica Yip
Genre: parody, wuxia comedy, fantasy

This movie was released in 1993 to celebrate lunar chinese new year! I figured it was so festive, so off the wall, so wicked, and chock full of heavy hitting movie stars that I would bring it back one more time for our unseen minds!

Just a little background information on this film, The Eagle Shooting Heroes is a parody of a novel called The Legend of the Condor Heroes. This novel is such a classic that many a TV series in Hong Kong & China have developed an adaptation to the story as early as 1976. Shaw Brother’s studio film fans might recognize The Brave Archer movie series which was also based on the Legend of the Condor Heroes.

Now back to 1993, Wong Kar Wai was the producer of this film with Jeffrey Lau as the director. At the same time, Wong Kar Wai was also directing Ashes of Time which was a serious adaptation of Legend of the Condor Heroes and believe it or not, he used the same cast in Ashes of Time to star in The Eagle Shooting Heroes! The only difference was that the actors were shuffled around to play different characters in the movie!

The story of the Legend of the Condor Heroes is set in the Song & Jin Dynasties as the Jin (Tribal Manchuria) look to destroy the Song (China). Meanwhile, the Mongols lurk in the background and would eventually conquer both of these regimes to unify China. Two heroes from the Song Dynasty would be killed leaving their sons to be the fore-bearers of their family name. One son would be raised by the Mongols, while the other would be raised by the Jins! Talk about conflicts of interest! The story would basically be about the trials & tribulations of both of these warriors and their decisions to fight for their true ancestry or not. Would power, greed, & women get in the way?

Now with that background story in mind, throw it all out the window! The Eagle Shooting Heroes would poke fun and pull the persian rug from under the whole premise! Think in the direction of “Kung Fu Hustle”. Total buffoonery and fun! The action though, was off the scale & was certainly not a joke as Sammo Hung threw down some elbow grease to direct the awesome fight sequences! My only beef was that the fight scenes seemed to be sped up quite a bit. But, in hindsight it might of been intentional to add some more slapstick to the story! The characters played by Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Leslie Cheung (R.I.P.), Jackie Cheung, Carina Lau, Tony Leung Ka fai, & Brigitte Lin were standouts in the film!

Some of the senseless, but fun plots involved Ouyang Feng (Tony Leung Chui Wai), a shady kung fu villain & a close relative to the persian king. Feng has an affair with his cousin (Veronica Yip) and this evil duo would team up to try and take the throne. The persian couple would battle the Princess (Brigitte Lin) but her Tsunami punch is no match for the rancid Toad style of Ouyang Feng. The princess then goes on the road to look for a secret book of martial arts located in the white bone cave known as the Book of Yin. The sorceress (Maggie Cheung) provides assistance to feng by predicting actions on her crystal ball of the whereabouts of the princess as well as give secret weapons to Tony Leung Chiu Wai like the deadly flying boot & the invincible bees! Ouyang Feng would ultimately meet his match when he encounters Hong Quigong, the Beggar (Jackie Cheung). Even with thoughts of suicide, the Beggar lays a nice beatdown to the Persian wanna be prince! Hong Quigong contemplates suicide because his cousin, Suiqui (Joey Wang) rejects his advances. Fortunately, he never succeeds in taking his own life because he is too busy bruising up Feng while still in hot pursuit of his cousin!

The rest of the story would entangle the theme of searching for love. Yaoshi Huang (Leslie Cheung) can’t decide who he wants as Suqui and the Princess would be on his tasting menu! Zhou Botong (Carina Lau) plays a role as a man in the QuangZhen Clan out to seek revenge for the death of his kung fu brother! Yes, Botong had homosexual feelings towards the brother. How wacky was that, Carina Lau playing a gay man?! Duan (Tony Leung Ka Fai) is an Indian prince who seeks true love in order to reach immortality. Mind you, his true love will have a “666” tattoed on his body!

Some funny sequences from the movie include encounters with 3 kaiju’s (monsters) that would not be too enthralled with humans looking for this Book of Jin in their White Bone cave! There were many funny scenes in the movie but when Duan finally finds his true love with the “666” engraved in HIM it would make for nice laughs! Floating heads, killer boots to the head, gay love, crossdressing, weird musical numbers, tantalizing kung fu action in wuxia glory, & ballet dancing would be a few appetizing things to look forward to in this lunar new year special!

The Eagle Shooting Heroes generated 2 hours full of fun, wacky, & wild--mass hysteria! Jeffrey Lau & Wong Kar Wai sure didn’t hold back with addressing issues on homophobia & sexuality! In real life, Leslie Cheung (r.i.p.) was a homosexual. I wonder how he really felt about filming this movie. In contrast, this same cast also went on to film Ashes of Time, a serious rendition of the story of the Legend of the Condor Heroes.

Happy Year of the Dragon folks!

Legend of the Sacred Stone (2000) Celebrating Chinese New Year !

2012-01-24T06:42:00.002-05:00

A true martial arts epic done completely with puppets.

Yes, that's right its a dead nuts on target xuxia epic that's all puppets and it will blow your mind.

The film begins with a voice over saying that 400 years ago when a sage sends the three heirs of the sects and the six Representatives of the major sects (that's what my translation says) to fight a demon who has escaped and is seeking to take over the martial arts world.

Basically the film starts with a bunch of heroes and armies battling a demon in the mountains. The heroes beat the demon and lock up his mortal remains. They then send it off to be entombed for eternity. Unfortunately the Unfriendlies arrive and release the demon and then set off looking for the pieces of the Heaven Stone. (that's about the first 20 minutes.) After that things calm down as some of the heroes try to stop the The Unfriendlies and help a young woman and her father.

If you think any of this makes any real sense you're seriously mistaken and you've never seen some of the classic wu xia films like the Zu films, The Storm Riders films, many Bruce Lee films or even the "classic" The Blade. You have to remember the details of the stories don't really matter in many of the classic films, it's motion, and ideas and feelings, three things that this film has in abundance.

Each time I'm watching the puppets go through their battles I've always been struck by how the moves are perfectly executed. Here is everything you've seen in many of the martial arts films of the 1970's and 80's but done in such away that you really forgive the wire work and over done special effects. Watching real people go through the motions I'm always slightly distanced by the fantastic (and ultimately silly) moves. The fact that its a movie is always front and center. However watching these puppets I get lost. The unreality of the characters meshes perfectly with the overly theatrical moves and effects.

Ultimately this is everything you've ever seen in a wuxia film, but real.

I really like this film a great deal and it's been a film that I've loaned a lot over the years to friends and family who love "kung fu" films. Every time I talk someone into seeing it, generally it's something people to do reluctantly. They don't think they'll ever get past it being puppets. Amazingly in all but one or two cases people do. More amazingly everyone seems to be stymied at how some of it was done. Yes it's all tricks and wires and angles, but it all blends together into something...well amazing.

Now I want to be completely honest.

In deciding to write this film up I pulled the film out and watched it, really watched it again, for the first time in several years. Seeing it again from start to finish for the first time I found that I was not as in love with the film as I had been. Don't get me wrong, I still think it's a great film, but I think I've seen it way too many times...

...however that doesn't make me recommend the film any less. This is still a spectacular film that anyone who loves the movies and what movies can do should see.

This is a treasure.

The New York International Children's Film Festival has announced it's first films for 2012

2012-01-23T17:35:00.005-05:00

The NYICFF has announced the first crop of films for the festival which starts March 2. I think the best way to describe it is as : ITS ALL GOOD.

I’m impressed as hell, more so since it appears that they will be running Takashi Miike’s Ninja Kids!!!, which I had been told might not happen. This is such great news I officially take back anything bad I may have ever said about them.

For details on what they have officially announced the press release follows:

New York, New York, Jan 19, 2012 – The critically acclaimed New York Int’l Children’s Film Festival has announced the 2012 jury and slate preview for its 15th anniversary event, which runs March 2-25 at New York’s DGA Theater, Walter Reade Theater, IFC Center, Peter Norton Symphony Space, Asia Society, Scholastic Theater, and Cantor Film Center. The 2012 jury includes actors Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Wright, and Susan Sarandon and filmmakers and animators James Schamus, Gus Van Sant, Michel Ocelot, Tomm Moore, and John Canemaker (complete jury below). As an Oscar®-qualifying festival, NYICFF jury winners qualify for consideration for the 2012 Academy Awards® in the Live Action and Animated Short Film categories. The complete festival lineup will be announced on February 1, and tickets for the festival will go on sale at www.gkids.com.

Now in its 15th year, NYICFF is the nation’s largest festival for children and teens and will present four weeks of groundbreaking and thought-provoking films for ages 3-18, with 100 new animated, live action, documentary, and experimental shorts and features, opening and closing night galas, studio showcases, retrospectives, filmmaker Q&As, filmmaking workshops, and the NYICFF Awards Ceremony. NYICFF has grown into an especially important showcase for independent and international animation, having premiered new works by Hayao Miyazaki, Nick Park, Katsuhiro Otomo, Tomm Moore, Mamoru Hosoda, Konstantin Bronzit among many others.

SLATE PREVIEW:
A Monster in Paris, Opening Night Film – US Premiere, France, Bibo Bergeron. NYICFF 2012 opens with a classic misunderstood-monster tale set in Paris 1910, a warm-hearted animated musical about the power of song featuring Django Reinhardt-style gypsy guitar and honey-toned vocals courtesy of Sean Lennon.

Le Tableau – North American Premiere, France, Jean-François Laguionie. One of the most stunningly beautiful films in years, with swirls of vibrant color that burst from the screen and nearly every frame a breathtaking wonder, Le Tableau is a captivating, enormously enjoyable parable set within the frame of an unfinished painting. Presented in partnership with Rendez-Vous with French Cinema.

Cinderella Moon – US Premiere, China/USA, Richard Bowen. A gorgeous and enchanting fairytale based on the earliest known version of Cinderella (the Chinese tale “Ye Xian” from 768 A.D.) filled with exquisitely ornate costumes and dazzling scenery shot in Yunnan Province.

Chimpanzee – Showcase Screening, USA, Alastair Fothergill/Mark Linfield. From the award-winning directors of Earth and sumptuously shot in the rain forests of Africa, Chimpanzee tells the true-life story of an adorable young chimp named Oscar, whose playful curiosity and zest for discovery showcase the intelligence and ingenuity of some of the most extraordinary personalities in the animal kingdom.

The Pirates! A Band of Misfits – Showcase Screening, UK, Peter Lord. An epic new claymation adventure from four-time Academy Award®-winning stop-motion masters Aardman Animations. Directed by Aardman founder (and former NYICFF juror) Peter Lord, Pirates is a high seas saga of a hapless pirate captain and his crew of extremely silly and witless pirate fools.

Yellow Submarine – Special Event, UK, George Dunning. First NYC Screening in Over 10 Years! An icon of psychedelic pop culture, Yellow Submarine is a colorful musical spectacle and an exhilaratingly joyful cinematic experience – filled with visual invention, optical illusions, word play, and glorious, glorious music.

So save your money since tickets on sale next Thursday, February 1

The Sorcerer and the White Snake (2011) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-23T06:14:00.003-05:00

If you want to see the beautiful things that the Chinese film industry is turning out, look no further than this film. Although the effects aren't quite up to the HUGE bloated Hollywood epics they are nicely representative of an industry churning out spectacular images.

This film also marks the return of Jet Li to wu xia films after saying that Fearless and Forbidden Kingdom would be his last go round in the genre. He insists that he was tricked into taking the part by a promise of having little in the way of fight scenes, whether that's true or not I don't know, but I'm glad to see him in action once more.

The story is a well used one in Chinese cinema about a young man who falls in, love with a snake spirit that saves him from drowning. As their romance becomes a marriage and a deeply felt love affair, a Buddhist monk (here played by Jet Li) is traveling around the country side exorcising all of the demons and locking them away. How the course of religious mission collides with true love is the film.

I really like this film a great deal. I'm kind of taken aback that the some people don't particularly like the film. I'm guessing that the fact that the film is more a romance than an action film has turned them off. I also suspect that the fact that Li is a more the second lead makes them unhappy as well.

For me this film is a wonderful touching exercise in romance and action. The central love story is compelling and continues a streak of good romances that I've seen recently (I'm writing this up in November, days after seeing Extraterrestrial, Every Song Talks About Me and Dancing Zoo in a two day stretch which means it certainly stands up to some stiff competition.)

What I like about the film is that every character arcs. We have the demons turning out to be less evil and the monks finding out that things are not always black and white nor as we have been lead to believe. There is something about the arc of Jet Li's character that is nicely warming.

The action sequences are plentiful to keep the film from becoming totally mushy. They are truly spectacular and magnificent enough to make me wish I had been able to see this when this played as the opening night film of a Chinese Film Festival at Avery Fisher Hall. As I said at the start this is a great looking film that is a great introduction to what the Chinese visual effects wizards have been turning out lately.

There is a great deal of comedy in the film that helps to liven things up. Sequences such as the animal demons trying to hold human form so that our heroine can pretend to have a nice human family for her beau is both clever and laugh out loud funny. We also have the joys of the silliness of the novice monk turning into a bat demon.

As I said I really liked this film a great deal.

And yes it's derivative at times with bits cribbed from elsewhere, A bit of in the Hall of the Mountain King in some of the music, A fall into hell with a bat demon that mimics Gandalf's fall with the Balrog in the Two Towers, but the film still is it's own unique animal, the battle on the canal is marvelous as the fake demons prove real and Jet Li chases the king demon by running across the boats it kicks up into the air.

Definitely worth seeing. I know the film is available on DVD as an import. I'm not too sure what US release is going to be.

Sunday Night Cap 1/22/12 - A question of on screen violence

2012-01-22T22:06:00.008-05:00

Sunday night late- time for a nightcap….

I'll get to the usual Sunday night nonsense, but first I have to get my two cents in concerning an important subject that came up earlier this week.

Drew McWeeny, the former Moriarty at Ain’t it Cool, posted an non-review the other night when a rape scene in the film The Divide made him pause and ponder was it really necessary… which lead him to a bigger question of how much of the terrible things we see on screen equally necessary?

(If you haven’t read the piece yet do so. It can be found by following this link)

Drew’s piece is a challenge. The question is where do we draw the line at on screen violence? The question posed in the piece is specifically aimed at violence toward women but to my mind we should actually ask the question about ALL violence, since ultimately all violence ultimately bad no matter who its against. It’s a question that I’ve been battling with for a long time, especially since my taste in film brings me in contact with a wide range of on and off screen violence.

To me the problem is always what is the director’s intent? Do we need to see what we are seeing?

The problem seems to be that there is a need in most mainstream films the violence is there for shock value or to get the director/film noticed. I will show this terrible thing because it will get noticed or have an (easy) effect.

Most of the time I don’t think it matters to the film makers if the effect produced is good or bad so long as they are noticed. I find troubling that more and more filmmakers are trying to get noticed through nastiness rather than through talent. I do think that many filmmakers feel that in order to get attention they’ll rape one of characters, which is akin to the literary cliché of having an important novel turn black in the final third or quarter in order to have a point.

Drew’s piece deals primarily with rape and he is rightly troubled by the increase of graphic rape on screen, but for me the problem is that as filmmakers push the envelope all violence is being amped up and we are getting more and more bloody, violent or even disgusting sequences in all levels films (and if you want to push things further look at the growth of gross out comedy)

However at the same time as I am troubled by the violence I have to take a step back and realize that within myself the type of film I am seeing will shape any outrage. To be perfectly honest I am more forgiving of a low budget exploitation film with no pretext of being anything other than trash, than I am of a big budget or mainstream film (on any level). Frankly the difference is simply that the exploitation producers know their limits, know what the audience is there for and stays with in certain confines (or at least we know what we are getting going in). The mainstream producers only know shock and awe brings big bucks or big publicity so they bring out the rapes and the violence in ways and at times that are unexpected and un called for to get their desired knee jerk reactions.

I can’t in good conscious compare the violence of say Girl with the Dragon Tattoo with the violence in many Women in Prison films. What the makers are shooting for, what the target audience is, are very different. That doesn’t mean that I can justify or accept the rape in Dragon Tattoo as something better than say the nastiness in Bare Behind Bars (yes it’s a real film and yes I’m going to run a review) or vice versa. All I’m saying is that there are levels, you may not want to accept that, but there are. It doesn’t make it any better, but its something we have to acknowledge exists.

Personally I have to look at what sort of film I’m looking at. Is it a balls to the wall exploitation film? If so then I’ll view it as something different. I’m way more forgiving of an exploitation film that is simply aiming to push buttons of a certain group than I am of a big budget film which is trying to be thrill ride for a general audience.

In a few weeks Unseen is going to do a week of Women in Prison films. As a rule I don’t particularly like the films. I find them stupid and badly done. They can be pretty misogynistic. However at the same time I won’t deny that some of them are good in their own twisted sort of away. Do I like the violence in them? No, but with in context it’s a form of acceptable. Of course that’s my own opinion.

On the other hand if you take a big budget film with big pretensions and you add a rape the act becomes more shocking and more out of place. In thinking about Drew’s dismantling of the rape in Dragon Tattoo I find he’s on to something. The act is there more to get a rise out of the audience the film would never otherwise get. I would also argue that the trouble with the film is not the rape- its that the filmmaker requires that we see it….and see it as graphically as possible. I do think that seeing the rape intensifies the horror and later elation at the revenge, but at the same time its a lazy cheap shot since, ultimately we didn't need to see it.

Is there any time we really need to see a rape (or other tortuous act)? I'm sure there is but I think that it all depends on contexts and intents that are way above simple button pushing or base money grabs.

If you want to see a rape in context that is both exploitative and troubling in the right way,see the one in the exploitation film Thriller: A Cruel Picture aka They Call Her One Eye. In the uncut film the rape is graphically (as in hardcore) shown.In stead of being titillating its like a punch in the gut with each thrust. In its way it out does Lisbeth’s rape as an on screen act because it upends everything we’ve seen- and we can see there is no faking. Yes this is an exploitation film where the act sets the heroine on a trail of violence, but at the same time the graphic unpleasant nature of it makes us question everything we feel after that: Yes, we understand what she's doing but we don't really need to be there. In all honesty I think the film isn't "liked" more is that the graphic act changes the game.

I understand Drew's rage at the amping up, and I understand his pledge to walk out,and frankly in thinking about myself and my film going I kind of agree with. I've been turning off and walking out of films for a while that I thought were too much. I've been doing it on all ends of the spectrum, from stopping several Women in Prison films I was wading through for the up coming week to the heartfelt and arty Don't Be Afraid which ran as part of Lincoln Center's Spanish Film Now series. Both crossed lines that didn't need to be crossed, and both did so with out any real context (in my mind) other than to dwell in the depravity which they held out to be bad. While I am resigning the bad prison films to silence I did call the filmmakers out in my review of the Spanish film.

Should filmmakers knock it off?

Yes, if only because they will cause all sorts of hellish problems for themselves down the line, when they have a project that requires the shock and awe. The problems will arise because audiences will, ultimately get bored with the gratuitous crap and tune out. The world is not full misogynists and people will grow tired and they will complain.

Okay I'm off my soapbox. On to our regular Sunday night nonsense....

As you may have seen on the Twitter verse the Japan Society has posted the films in their Love Will Tear Us Apart series in March. The film series is a mix of films that cover the subject of love in all its weird forms. Trust me on this there are a whole bunch of really good films in this series. While some are better than others, I don’t think there is a real clunker in the bunch. If that isn’t enough a good number of the films are NOT on DVD, and a few more while on DVD are not available in English and only in super expensive Japanese editions. I’ll let you know when the tickets go on sale, but for right now you should check out the listing for the series which can be found here. (A few recommendations Snake of June, In the Realm of the Senses,Vegetarian, Villain,Dream, and Time)

Details are up for the Raquel Welch series at Lincoln Center. No joke this is a super series with some great films in the line up. The ability to see them on a big screen is a real treat. Best of all the lady herself will be doing several Q&As and introductions. The selection of films runs the gamut from her great films like Three Musketeers to her more culty ones like Myra Brenkenridge details can be found here.

The Museum of Modern Art has announced the first 7 titles screening at New Directors New Films. Co-presented with the Film Society of Lincoln Center, this is one of the highlights of the film year with many “hit films” later in the year showing up here first. Last year Margin Call started here last march and ended up a big sleeper hit this past fall. Details can be found here.

Lastly some links:
Raymond Chandler's scathing letter to Alfred Hitchcock about Strangers on a Train.

Cartoon Brew on a trailer for Nick Cross' Black Sunrise

What happens in a bookstore after hours? Find out here. (I don't want to know what it took to do this) and thanks A.L.L.

Oscar announces the Foreign Language short list. Don't get too excited the award will most certainly go to A Separation (I'll deal with the actual nominations, which come out Tuesday, next weekend)

The House of 72 Tenants (1973) - Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-22T07:00:00.001-05:00

Director: Chor Yuen
Stars: Yueh Hua, Tin Ching, Ching Li, Hu Chin, Lydia Shum Din-Ha, Hoh Sau-San, Lau Yat-Fan, Guk Fung, Cheng Hong-Yip, Lee Sau-Kei, Cheng Miu, Leung Tin, Law Lan, Nam Hung, Danny Lee Sau-Yin, Ouyang Shafei, Lau Dan, Chan Mei-Hua, Wong Ching-Ho, Karen Yip Leng-Chi, Si Si, Wong Hon, Lau Ng-Ke, Lee Ho, Wong Kwong-Yue, Do Ping, Adam Cheng Siu-Chow, Yeung Chak-Lam, Ricky Hui Koon-Ying, Chan Goon Tai
Genre: comedy

When I thought about the films that I wanted to shine the spotlight on to celebrate chinese lunar new year, I didn’t think too long about throwing in The House of 72 Tenants to the Unseen films menu! I would never call this a festive movie by any stretch of the imagination but I think this chinese centric comedy piece joined with an enormous cast of up and coming HK stars with an underlying message of unity is celebratory enough!

This movie chronicles the day in the life of the struggle of 72 tenants living in a run down tenement home under the evil supervision of a slum-lord landlady played by the character of Pat Koo & her husband Ah-Bing. These slum-parents have an adopted child now 19 years old - Ah Heung (Ching Li) that they verbally & mentally abuse and deprive of basic necessities...like food. Everyday chores like fetching a bucket of running water from one pipe shared by the tenement home proves to be a project when Pat Koo flexes her selfish weight just in spite. Her tenants come from all different backgrounds which includes a laundry lady from Shanghai (Lydia shum), a Dr. from Shantung, an Olive Peddler, a shoe cobbler-Fat Chai (Yueh Hua), an unemployed college graduate with a wife working as a prostitute to make ends meet, seamstresses, and a cigarette vendor just to name a few characters.

The landlady is a nasty ass, foul mouthed, condescending piece of work that tries to intimidate the house of 72 tenants by turning off the electricity, restricting water supply, inciting and setting up her tenants as thieves, & even kicking out a grand pa when the rent payment is late. Her husband acts as an accomplice. The comedy of this movie begins when all the residents ban together and play off one another when Pat Koo flexes her muscle! Fat Chai - the shoe cobbler takes the role as the ring leader for the tenants as his mojo, his wit, & his righteousness would be a shoe in (intentional pun) to take the bull by the horns! The scary thing is that the worst of the harassing done by the slum-lord is directed at her daughter, Ah Heung. What kind of parent would sell their daughter to a travel company to work as a “tour guide” aka prostitution?! What kind of stepfather would make sexual advances towards their own stepdaughter?! Oops, sorry Woody Allen, I wasn’t trying to catch you crossing the Delancey!

A corrupt policeman named 3-6-9 and a crooked fire department will show their true colors in a cash rules everything around me mentality in hong kong. Jabs at society would come in the form of comedy delivered with the harsh and witty linguistics of cantonese. This film would prove to be a nice refresher course for me in cursing in canto-slang! In the end, the cohesiveness from all the tenants in this slum hole would morph into a jury of killer bee-hives for the wicked witch from the east to contend with!

For the Stephen Chow--Kung Fu Hustle fans, after watching the House of 72 Tenants, you will see where the inspiration from Pig Sty Alley would come from!

As I stated earlier, this is a chinese centric type of movie and some of the dialogue might get lost in translation when only reading from the subtitles. The comedy comes mostly from conversation relying less on body language. However, I think with an open mind and some creative thinking along with some translations from a native speaking cantonese friend, you might be able to fill in some of the holes with spackle! All in all, I believe this film is worth seeking out and spending the time to unwind with! It tells a tale of unity and friendship under the grip of hard times.

I have a challenge for all you Hong Kong film fiends!! It’s easy to spot Lydia Shum, Yuen Hua, & even the cameo appearance of Chan Goon Tai/Chen Kuan Tai in the film, but can you find Adam Cheng, Ricky Hui, & Danny Lee, & director-Chor Yuen??

Peace, prosperity, & much health!

Peking Opera Blues (1986) Celebrating Chinese New Year!

2012-01-21T07:41:00.004-05:00

For the next 9 days, we at Unseen Films are going to celebrate Chinese New Year by shining a spotlight on some films that we feel should be given the red carpet - lunar new year treatment! Lookout for some wild & epic wuxia pieces including the latest from Jet Li and a period piece from Taiwan filmed with puppets! It will blow your mind-guaranteed! Some other can’t misses include a Tsui Hark classic, a Stephen Chow comedy, a Wong Kar Wai parody, an Andy Lau romance, a beautiful & romantic work of art by Zhang Yimou, & some more surprises from the overlord wizard of Unseen Films! Thanks to DB for allowing me to maestro this movie theme and by all means, tell us what some of your favorite movies are to celebrate 2012: the Year of the Dragon! The chinese lunar new year actually starts on January 23rd -- but we figured we’d start a few days earlier to get you all punch drunk before the dragon whips its tail! Enjoy!
-mr c

One of the best films from director Tsui Hark, and one of my favorite films that he's directed.

For me Tsui Hark has always been a better producer than a director. Sure he's directed some wonderful films (Butterfly Murders, Detective Dee and the Mystery of the Phantom Flame, All About Women) and when he's on he's one of the best directors out there but he's also directed some real stinkers (You can't seriously tell me that Seven Swords isn't one of the dullest most long winded films around)

With Peking Opera Blues Hark manages to make a film that really works on it's own terms even when those terms are utter nonsense.

The film concerns three women, a box of jewels, a warlord and a theater where Peking Opera is performed by men. It is by turns a grand adventure, farce and the story concerning the empowerment of women.

The plot, very roughly explained, has a General needing money to stay in power. His mistress is actually working with the revolutionaries and is conspiring to steal his money. When a box of jewels goes missing, it ends up in a theater where Peking Opera is performed. The owner's daughter wishes to perform but law forbids it. As everyone tries to find out where the jewels are people are also forced to try and work out who is really a man and who is a woman.

Its grand farce expertly done.

I'm not going to lie and say that it all makes sense, it doesn't. The point of the film is to make you smile and feel good and that's something this film manges to in spades. Every time I watch this film I smile from ear to ear from start to finish. Not only that I'm constantly say "oh Wow!!" out loud. Never mind that I've seen this film at least a dozen or so times over the years, I still am impressed by the action.

I know several women who love this film. They love that this film has three kick ass women in the lead. They are woman who manage to both fight better than most of the men on screen, but also manage to have a deeply feminine side. The women who love the film love that it allows the heroines to have it both ways. They don't need to choose one way or another, indeed they only seem to come out on top when they manage to be both things.

Not to put too fine a point on it this is one of the best films to come out of China in the 1980's and it's probably one of the top wu xia films ever made.

If you love action films, hell if you love movies you really need to see this film. It's some of the best work by one of the best directors working today.

Tuesday at the KCS: Rough Cut (2009)

2012-01-20T21:17:00.007-05:00

Tuesday is the second of the Korean Cultural Service screenings for 2012. This time out the film is the NYAFF audience favorite Rough Cut.

Rough Cut is the story of an actor who can’t get anyone to work with him because he beats up his co-stars in the fight scenes. When he beats up the last man who’ll work with him, he ends up recruiting the gangster who beat him up in a bar fight the night before. It seems the gangster used to be an actor…

This is less the advertised action film than a buddy film about lost souls trying to find a life in filmmaking. Don’t let that description put you off, it’s a great film. I’ve seen it several times since I saw it at the NYAFF in 2009 and not thinking of it as an action film makes it play way better. I originally wrote the film up for Unseen in April 2010 (the review is here) and I’ve seen it a couple of times since and I find it's better than even what I thought then, improving with each viewing.

Go see the film. As with all the films in the first quartet very much worth the time to go down to Tribeca.

As always doors are at 630 and the film is at 7.

Buster Keaton in "The General" (1926)

2012-01-20T09:34:00.001-05:00

Director: Buster Keaton and Clyde Bruckman
Stars: Buster Keaton, Marion Mack
Genre: Silent film, comedy

Buster Keaton’s fascination with trains is clearly evident in this tale of American civil unrest! He is a man in complete harmony with his train as karma on the tracks would reign supreme for this engineer-conductor of The General. Johnnie Gray (Buster Keaton) is passionate about only two things in his life, his locomotive & girlfriend, Annabelle (Marion Mack). The call for duty comes knocking in the south when the Union Army wages an attack on the confederates. This would invoke all emotions of patriotism as Annabelle’s brother & father enlists with the confederate army. To impress his girlfriend, Johnnie would try to enlist as well but unfortunately, he is denied entry because he would be of more value to the cause as a train engineer with The General as stated by the recruiters. This would cause a strain in the relationship as Annabelle misintreprets this the wrong way. Some time has passed and the day would come when the Union army hijacks The General train during a routine break at the Marietta, Georgia stop. All the passengers, the union spies, and Johnnie Gray the engineer would exit the train for a brief lunch break and reststop. Meanwhile, the sly Union army spies would hop back on and steal the General, heading north bound! They kidnap Annabelle out of convenience because she was still on the General. The union thieves would destroy the railroad tracks along the way in order to cripple the south's pursuit & transportation outlets as well as disrupt all forms of communication via the railways by destroying the telephone poles.

This would start the motions of the great Buster Keaton enroute to getting back The General and his girl in which he would not even know she was kidnapped until later on. Some really subtle but cool stunts nonetheless will be executed by Buster such as sitting on the push-pull connecting rod of the locomotive while it was moving, and chasing the stolen General with a railway handcar with a see-saw like pump action by hand to move the car along the tracks! After taking a tumble on the handcar, he would run and jump onto a bicycle in hot pursuit which would not last very long riding alongside the tracks. Johnnie would borrow another confederate train to chase after The union pirates! An amazing sequence of trying to load and fire a cannon, hopping out and back into the locomotive, and then trying to dodge the cannon balls that he loaded waiting to be fired was real suspenseful! Other acts of incredible feats by Buster in the movie include scaling the locomotive while it was moving to remove debris from the tracks left by the union, chopping up wood to fuel the engine while in hot pursuit, and putting out a fire created by the north in a tunnel are just a few examples of his multitasking physical genious! He manhandles the train with brawn & grace! Another amazing scene was when Johnnie sets a bridge on fire so when the enemy train rolled on the tracks the bridge would collapse sending everyone into the water! A 2nd half of adventures would continue on the locomotive when Johnnie comes to the rescue of Annabelle in enemy territories! They both will have slapstick moments together on the locomotive while dodging enemy fire! The confederate flag would flap in the wind again!

After watching The General, you can clearly see where Jackie Chan got some of his ideas for the brand of off the wall action sequences that he would impart in his creations! For example, Buster Keaton’s use of the hand car on the railroad tracks would surface in Jackie’s SUPERCOP. The bicycle sequence would also be of influence in PROJECT A. The stuntwork with Buster navigating, scaling, jumping on/off of the locomotive can be paralleled to Jackie in fight form with his battle vs Ken Lo on the moving train in Supercop/Police Story 3. Buster’s use of taking the short cut down the mountain on foot to intercept the moving train has been used in many Jackie movies such as Police Story when Chan is chasing after the crooks in the hijacked bus! There are definitely many little nuances and quirks of similiarity that you will notice when comparing the great Buster Keaton and Jackie Chan. One of the big differences between these two freaks of nature is that Buster always has that stoic look when executing his physical comedy while Jackie is often filled with exaggerated emotion when showcasing his! Whatever the case may be, both of these legends bring inanimate objects to life whether it be a train, a helicopter, a table, or a 2x4 piece of lumber!

The General is a definite must see on Buster Keaton’s movie queue! Who else would be daring enough to make an American Civil war parody especially siding with the Confederate southern slave states which was a war that was only 60 years removed before the film was conceived!

Doughboys (1930)

2012-01-19T12:01:00.001-05:00

Buster Keaton proves handily that given the right material he was adapt at sound comedy as he was at silent. While the fact that Keaton survived in film until his death in the late 1960's says that he could earn a living, seeing a film like Doughboys, where he handles both the physical and verbal humor, shows how badly chosen scripts derailed his later career. Honestly had Keaton been able to get better material, he might have remained a huge comedy name until he died.

Doughboys is the story of rich lay about Elmer. He desperately tries to woo the working girl Mary but she'll have none of it. When the president calls for volunteers his chauffeur runs off. Looking to hire another one, Elmer goes in the wrong door and finds he's signed up with the army. Struggling to get along, Elmer finds that Mary has signed up as part of the USO and is proud of what Elmer has done. Complications arise when Elmer's Sargent, who doesn't like Elmer much, takes a shine to Mary.

I laughed a great deal at this bit of nonsense.

I really think this film works. Actually to me it works better than many other comedies from the period. Take for example some of the Wheeler and Woolsey films. Sure the word play is funny with W&W, but the films themselves feel creaky and stilted because of how they were filmed. There isn't much motion. People stand around and talk as if they are in a play. They are static to the point that they don't hold up as well as Doughboys does.

Doughboys has a sense of place, of motion. We are not on a set but in a place. You have characters beyond Keaton.

It also has some really good sequences. I love the musical interlude on the ship to France; Keaton leading his men between the tent ropes; the Sargent describing in grizzly detail how to kill a man; the sequence of Keaton trudging through the mud, and the dance number with Keaton in drag... and on and on. Sure we've seen variations on many of the jokes, but damn if they don't work well here.

I had always been curious as to what Keaton might have done ala Chaplin's Soldier Arms, and here was my opportunity.

To me the only real flaw of the film is how the film winds down to a conclusion. I don't think it really works. To me it's more the result of having to end it rather than having an ending.

Recently released by the Warner Archive Collection, I think its worth tracking down.

Four Clowns (1970)

2012-01-18T17:12:00.003-05:00

Robert Youngson made a career out of repackaging old silent movie clips into feature films. It was a talent that managed to keep interest in the films alive as we moved into widescreen color films with stereophonic sound.It was a talent that also won Youngson two Oscars for his short films.

I am a fan of several of the Youngson films. I love Days of Thrills and Laughter, a wonderful look back at silent films which fueled my passion for silents. I also love his When Comedy was King and The Golden Age of Comedy which showed me how funny silent comedy could be. (All three films will be reviewed here at Unseen)

The final feature film from Youngson is a mixed bag. The problem with Youngson's films is that in trying to cover the same artists, say Laurel and Hardy, who appear in numerous of his films, each new film had less material to work with since Youngson rarely if ever repeated clips.

This film takes a look at four of the screens great silent clowns, Laurel and Hardy (both separately and together), the criminally under appreciated Charley Chase and Buster Keaton (Its the inclusion of Keaton that is the reason for this film being placed at the midpoint of a week of Keaton films). Its a funny film but it suffers from some unevenness in clip choice, in particular at the start.

The film opens with a look at the early work of Laurel and Hardy. We get some clips of Hardy working in a couple of different films with out Laurel, including working as a Fatty Arbuckle/Eric Campbell style foil for Billie West one of the most successful Charlie Chaplin impersonators. Hardy is merely okay, and the clips are nothing special other than to show how good and how bad Billie West could Chaplin.

The Stan Laurel clips are worse. The set pieces are fine, but Laurel has no screen presence of his own. While it's true that he was in many ways the equal of Chaplin in working out gags and performing them (He was after all Chaplin's stand in in the Fred Karno troupe, where he was so good you couldn't tell them apart), he never really manged to establish any screen personality or presence until he hooked up with Hardy.

Once we get the clips of the two of them together we do get some good sequences, including a funny bit with a gum ball machine from Two Tars (which is a funny film that ends with a traffic jam that turns in to a mass auto wrecking) as well as hysterical clip of Hardy trying to get pants for the kilt clad, and very ticklish Laurel. These final clips are the real treat of the first third of the film and show you how good the pair could be in set pieces.

From there we about half an hour of clips from the films of Charley Chase. Chase was a dapper sort of fellow who played a sort of everyman. He was the guy we all aspired to be but with the faults we can never shake.

The highlights of the sequence is a bit involving two people in separate rooms with an adjoining bathroom. He is planning on using it to shave and wash up, she is going to shower. As each wanders n and out unaware of the other person they are confused by changes in the bathroom. Who took my towel? Didn't I leave the water on sort of things. Its a masterpiece of comic timing.

The other bit that is wonderful is a long piece about how a naked woman ends up in Charley's car on the way to his wedding. Complications ensue with a passerby and the appearance of a cop. Its classic and damn funny.

The film concludes with the work of Buster Keaton. Instead of getting any sort of greatest hit clip job, we get a condensed version of Keaton's classic Seven Chances. The plot of Seven Chances, about a bachelor who must get married or be disinherited, may seem familiar since it's based on a classic play which was used as the basis for dozens of films including the Bachelor with Chris O'Donnell.

Youngson's scissor work isn't bad and it manages to cut down the 56 feature to about 37 minutes without losing anything. All of the jokes are here, at least all of the ones I remember including the huge army of pissed off potential brides chasing Keaton across the city. If you want to see a classic Keaton feature but don't have a lot of time this is the best way to do it. (yes I know it's sacrilege to say it but it's true.)

Steamboat Bill Jr. (1928)

2012-01-18T08:00:00.000-05:00

Director: Charles Reisner & Buster Keaton
Stars: Buster Keaton, Tom McGuire, Ernest Torrence
Genre: Silent film, comedy

The Film Forum in NYC ran all day screenings of Buster Keaton silent films on labor day monday so you know I had to get out to see at least a few of his gems! What really added to the appeal of this event was the live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner on all of the films! It was a real treat to hear Sterner set the mood scene by scene upon his tempo and style of play! The experience of watching a silent film with live music definitely gave it a retro vibe. I’ve been a Buster Keaton fan since the 1980’s when Jackie Chan mentioned that Keaton’s physical comedy is what really influenced him to incorporate self deprecating slapstick with unbelievable stunts to his own peking opera-kung fu background! From then on, I hopped on the B-Train as I began to discover what a genious, Buster Keaton was as an artist, performer, & director!

Steamboat Bill Jr. was one of the features that I saw at the Film Forum and it can easily be marked as one of my favorites! There were plenty of scenes in that movie that still amazes me to this day! Buster plays a college kid on school break enroute to meet his father (Ernest Torrence), a captain of a paddle wheel boat known as the Stonewall Jackson which makes its daily rounds on the Mississippi river. The problem is that he hasn’t seen his boy since he was a baby so he has no clue what he looks like. All Bill Sr. knows when he picks up Jr (Buster Keaton) at the train station is that he is wearing a white carnation. Unfortunately, every young lad seemed to be donning a white carnation at the station! This will lead to a whole host of chuckles! They would eventually cross paths, though! The diminuitive Bill Jr tugs along his ukelele while sporting a french style hat as opposed to the usual ‘pork pie’ look that we all are accustomed to seeing him in. This is not exactly the son that the big rough & tough man of the mississipi pictured his son to be. Jr also has a fancy for a young lady that happens to be the daughter of the owner of a competing luxury boat targeting to put the Stonewall out of business! The two fathers will most certainly have conflicts! Sr goes berzerk and soon finds himself behind bars! The events that follow will prove that Bill Jr is not just any ordinary clumsy fool. He’s a fool with integrity who possesses great luck & skill defying newton’s laws of gravity! Some outstanding stunts/scenes from the movie includes the crazy storm sequence that teared down houses like they were toys as Buster was swept away! The scene that everyone links to Keaton is when the whole front side of a building falls down on him but fortunately the glass-less window frame lands exactly where he was standing! Classic! The jailhouse skit was also insane! The hat and more hats scene was hilarious as well.

This was the 1st time that I’ve actually seen a Buster Keaton film on the big screen and with the added live piano accompaniment, it really made for a great way to appreciate the master at work! The balls of laughter coming from the audience including children and senior citizens really proves that his movies are timeless! I was bummed that THE GENERAL screening was sold out that day as that also has some amazing stunts of Buster on a train! He seemed to have this uncanny ability to bring inanimate objects to life! It was a pleasure to watch one of Jackie Chan’s mentors resurface on the screen again! Thank you Buster!

War of the Arrows (2011) (aka Arrow:The Ultimate Weapon)

2012-01-17T17:52:00.007-05:00

There has been a great deal of chatter across the Internet, at least around my tiny corner, with people getting excited about the trailer for the film War of the Arrows (aka Arrows the Ultimate Weapon). I figured that a release was coming soon, only to discover the film played here in New York back in October.

Looking for something to watch after Saturday's round of football games I discovered that on one of my last trips into Manhattan to check the shops in Chinatown I picked up a copy on DVD.

The film has a young boy and a girl fleeing from their home when Korean officials come to kill their father for being a traitor. Taking their fathers bow they head off to a father's friend who takes them in and adopts them.

13 years later the Qing Dynasty invades Korea which just happens to be on the young girl's wedding day. Most of the revelers are killed and the girl is taken and hauled off to become a slave. Her brother grabs his fathers bow and a good number of arrows and heads off after her.

A just okay first 45 minutes or so, transforms into a super action packed chase as our hero heads off to rescue his sister. Its a series of tense battles as he battles his way first into enemy territory and then out again. I don't want to say too much but there are some truly great sequences here that will have to talking out loud, including one that spans two sides of a river. Trust me, this film will exhaust you.

If there is any real problem once the film has kickwed into high gear, its that some of the use of CGI isn't all that great. For example a late in the game appearance by a tiger doesn't seem to be in the same place as the actors.Its not fatal to the film, but it does weaken the sense of reality that had built up through all the non-stop fighting.

I really liked this movie a great deal. I can completely understand why the trailer has been making its rounds on websites and via Twitter. All I can say is that the promise of the trailer is borne out by the film itself. If you love action films you need to see this.

For a great review of the film which puts the story into historical perspective you should read this piece from Korean Film.org

The Railrodder (1965)

2012-01-17T07:08:00.000-05:00

Final directorial effort by Buster Keaton (though he wasn’t credited) has Keaton in London reading a paper where he sees an ad saying “See Canada”. Deciding it’s the thing to do he steps off a bridge and heads to Canada, where not long after walking out of the ocean he climbs on a motorized rail car and heads across the continent.

Amazing short film fills its 24 minutes with some great views of the Canadian wilderness, but also with some truly funny gags that harken back to Keaton’s prime.

To be honest watching the scenery whiz past at a good clip its hard to imagine anyone but Keaton being able to wander around the speeding car with anything other than a look of abject terror. That car really tools along and through most of it Keaton is doing something on top of it, from reading a paper, to eating or even cleaning it. It is inconceivable that anyone other than Keaton could have managed it, especially without the aid of tricks. A couple of things I read on the film said that Keaton frightened his co directors by insisting it was okay for him to do some of the stunts and gags in the film. His co-directors thought he was too old to pull them off but he was fine.

Truth be told I would love to know how they filmed this short since for much of the film the camera seems to be floating next to the rail car in areas where there doesn’t seem to be a second track for the camera to travel down. If any film needed a making of this is it since how it was done often seems to defy logical explanation. (Addendum- Since writing the film up I have found out that one of the more expensive versions of this film does indeed have a making of which runs twice as long as this film)

In a weird way this is one of my favorite Keaton films. Its atypical when you think of a Keaton film, color, sound, with an aging star, but at the same time it’s a beautiful distillation down of the finest Keaton shorts, a simple premise, some amazing stunts and numerous belly laughs. I don’t think there is a wasted moment anywhere in it. (Its only real Flaw is the obvious rear screen projection of London at the start of the film.) I have always said that while Chaplin was the king of the silent comedy set piece, I always thoughtKeaton was the master of the silent movie comedy in toto, meaning that Chaplin has great pieces and moments but Keaton made complete films. The Railrodder is a complete film that is also the perfect set piece.

If you can track down this film I suggest you do so, this is simply great filmmaking.

Highly recommended.

The film is currently available in several public domain comedy and train film collections not to mention some non public domain ones as well.

Sherlock Jr. (1924)

2012-01-16T09:59:00.001-05:00

DB here

Today we start a week of films by the great comedian Buster Keaton. I know you’re thinking, why devote a week of reviews to someone we already know? Simple odds are most of you haven’t seen any of his films. Seriously, have you seen any of his films, or if you have have you seen more than one or two? I didn’t think so.

Keaton was prolific, and while he is best known as a silent comic his career stretched all the way to his death some 35 after the end of silents.

Even if you think you know his work, odds are you haven’t really seen all there is to Keaton. I know in putting what is now the first of several weeks together we here at Unseen realized that there were gaps in all our knowledge. There simply are too many films from silent shorts and features, sound features and shorts, TV appearances, commercials and Samuel Beckett projects for any of us to have taken it all in.

The plan is that this week we’re going to give you several of his better known films and one or two that aren’t. These are largely the classics. These are some of the films you should give a try to get yourself acclimated to the joys of Keaton. Then some time in the early spring we’ll be diving in to some of his other work, some of the lesser known films and TV appearances. We’d have done them in rapid succession except that we didn’t realize how much we had to cover until we were putting the finishing touches on this week and found we had all these other films we wanted to talk about. A second, and maybe third, week was an absolute necessity.

Those additional films are coming down the road as soon as we map those out. For now sit back, relax and give yourself over to Mr C, John, Bully and myself as we begin to look at all things Buster Keaton.

Director: Buster Keaton
Stars: Buster Keaton, Kathryn Mcguire, Joe Keaton
Genre: silent films, comedy

This film is another fine example of Buster Keaton’s brilliance with combining really neat special effects, stunts, comedy, mystery, & romance all rolled into one entertaining juggernaut of a story!

Keaton plays a “boy” who is a movie projectionist and is studying on the finer points of “how to be a detective”. He also fancies a young lady as he tries to woo her with a box of candy and a ring. He is not alone as his rival also fancies the same girl and has the same idea of getting her an even bigger box of confectionery by stealing a watch & pawning it for cash to buy it. Keaton gets framed by the rival for the theft of the watch and gets abolished from the woman’s home.This will begin the tales of Sherlock Jr! When he’s not running away from his adversaries, Keaton “shadows his man closely”! This will include an amazing stunt of him getting bumped between two ends of a train when one of the railroad cars tries to hitch on to the other. Buster also walked on top of the moving train as he grabbed onto a spout of a water tank but unfortunately he would get flushed down furiously onto the tracks by the force of the water flowing out. Keaton got KO’d performing this stunt and supposedly broke some bones in his neck which he didn’t find out till much later.

Dejected and defeated, the boy heads back to work at the theater to show a film called "Hearts & Pearls, or The Lounge Lizard's Lost Love--in Five Acts". As he dozes off after projecting the movie, the 2nd half of the SHERLOCK JR adventures would begin as a dream. Keaton would walk onto the stage and hops into the realm of the film that he is showing which boasts a similar story to his but with stolen pearls. The special effects of him literally jumping into the film with the scenes ever changing and then getting thrown back into the audience by the antagonist was amazing! Still in a dream and in the story of another story, Buster Keaton the “Crime crushing criminologist” will solve the stolen pearl mystery and save the kidnapped girl before waking up to realize his own situation in the projection booth.

Some other really cool special effects executed by Keaton was him jumping through an open window into a thin cylindrical shaped paper drum containing a female shawl and instantly changing to this outfit upon rolling onto the ground outside to disguise himself! Another camera trick included him jumping through a clown selling suit ties allowing him to escape to the other side of a revolving wooden fence behind the mock salesman! Buster also had this stunning sequence while on the roof of a building, he grabbed onto one of those crossing guard rails/arms that you would see at the railroad tracks to help him gracefully descend right into a moving convertible car from the roof using it like a seesaw/teeter-totter! A combination of crazy stunt with special effects involved Keaton riding on the handlebars of a motorcycle with a supposed rider handling the bike to eventually finding out towards the end that he got thrown off the bike some time ago! He would ride through a sea of cars, through a stream, across dirt paths, over a disconnected wooden bridge with 2 moving box trucks conveniently connecting to the other side, through a stag party, over railroad tracks with a running train to eventually crashing through a house, executing a Jackie Chan like heel kick vs the bad guy by accident! It was a real funny and epic scene! You can see Jackie Chan's version of this stunt in bicycle form in his 1983 movie, 'Project A' paying homage to the great Buster Keaton!

The billiards sequence was just as hilarious! I didn’t know that Buster can play a mean game of pool even with the chance of an exploding #13 ball!

When said and done, Sherlock Jr contained a pretty neat story supported with ball breaking stunts by the master himself, special effects that still amazes, signature self deprecating Buster Keaton stone face-stoic comedy, & in the end, he still gets the girl! Thumbs up! What are you waiting for?! Go see the works of the greatest entertainer of all time!

DB's Sunday Night Cap 1/15/12- including a look at Shoah The Unseen Interviews

2012-01-15T21:53:00.001-05:00

DB here.

It's Sunday which means its time for my weekly nightcap, a round up of thoughts, links, and updates from the world of film.

I spent the afternoon at Lincoln Center at The Jewish Film Festival. I was seeing Shoah the Unseen Interviews. This was excerpts from three interviews that didn't make it into Shoah. Running about an hour (not including the Q&A) the interviews were a mixed bag.

The problem was that the pieces were not particularly good as stand alone. Abraham Bomba, a barber in Treblinka bit only serves to explain that no one really understood what was going on in the camps, as he tells of escaping the camp and going home where his friends don't believe him. Its good but it's unconnected.

Peter Bergson's piece about trying to mobilize information in the US is okay, but its clearly rightly belongs in another movie. Actually the material here, about 20 minutes from several hours needs more of a context to add up to something. It's nice but The Karski Report at last years Film Comment Selects series said it better.

Ruth Elias's piece was way too short. As one person in the audience said, why can't we see her whole story? Her tale of survival both inside and outside of the camps is as raw and real as they come. Its amazing. This needs to come out as a whole.

Truthfully seeing the clips made me want to see more. In all honesty the choices were hindered by being limited by not being able to show what was in Shoah and trying to keep things to English interviews. Why they felt to need to do that is beyond me since the Jewish Film Festival and Lincoln Center has audiences who will read subtitles.

I liked it but in all honesty I could have stayed home and not braved the cold.

This need to make this acceptable to American audiences is something that has been much on my mind of late. At some point I'm going to have to address this fully owing to this weekends multiple translations of both Night Watch and Day Watch. It also reared it's ugly head last year with the trimming of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins which is great in the international version but one of the best films I've ever seen in the original theatrical version. I also was disappointed this week to find that Jackie Chan's film 1911, which will be reviewed next week for Chinese New Year, was chopped down by about 25 minutes for US release, making a very good film, an okay one. We need to see films as the directors intended and not chopped up.

I need to respond to the poster who said that The Miracle of Marcelino is a beautiful film. I need to do this here because the web page won't let me load it any time I try to respond to the comment(talk about eerie). I do think that on some level it is a beautiful film, and I wholly agree with it being less frightening than the news, however I find that for a kid who doesn't have the ability to read into the film the Christian symbology, its a frightening film, especially in it's moody black and white photography which makes it almost like a thriller. Maybe it's me but the taking Marcelino to mommy through death is creepy. (addendum I'm now having problems with all posts and their comments)

It looks like Unseen won’t be attending the BAMKids Fest February 4 and 5. There are a couple of reasons behind this, first the fest is really aimed at the under 10 set. This is normally fine, but the films this year seemed really aimed at that age group instead of being all age appropriate. The other reason is that in looking into the short films that interested us, Randi, Bully John and myself found that most of them can be seen on line. We ended up trading links to the various titles on You Tube and elsewhere. Don’t get me wrong the titles are great but not enough to go see them on the big screen.

Tomorrow we’re starting our first week of Buster Keaton films. There’ll be an introduction before Mr C’s first piece, but I just wanted to say that if you don’t know Keaton’s work you need to start tracking down his films. Keaton was a master of comedy, both physical and verbal. The verbal part kind of took me by surprise since everyone always thinks about his silent films. I have been looking at some of his sound films and I was amazed at how pitch perfect his verbal timing was. Long agp I had the misfortune at seeing a couple of his lesser sound films and I was of the opinion that he wasn’t all that good. Then I started seeing some of his sound shorts and some of the recently released films from the Warner Archive and my opinion changed. It was clear that given the right material Keaton was simply a genius of all types of humor.

As I say in tomorrows introduction this week coming up will concentrate mostly on some of his best known silents but there will be further reviews of Keaton’s films down the line. In working with John, MrC and Bully picking out the films to do, we had the pleasure to keep running into a film here or there that we hadn’t seen before. It became this conversation where we kept going “what about this or that” to the point where we potentially had too much material. I know we have at least another week of films, maybe more, we just have to figure out how best to present it. This additional week(s) is a bit of a way off. Right now we to concentrate on the weeks we have scheduled after this week of Keaton, namely the Chinese New Year, Vacation Getaways, Tarzan and a other surprises. We'll let you know when Buster returns.

Some of you may be interested to know that Lincoln Center will be running every film that Bela Tarr ever made as part of The Last Modernist: The Complete Works of Béla Tarr from February 3-8, 2012. The series ties in with the theatrical release of Tarr's "final" film the Turin Horse.I saw Turin Horse at the New York FIlm Festival and I mostly liked it. What I didn't care for was it's two and a half hour running time because at a certain point the film stops doing anything new but simply repeats itself. My thoughts on that film can be found here. For my money any of Tarr's films except The Man From London is worth trying, with Damnation being a particular favorite of mine.

Speaking of things from this past New York Film Festival. I finally saw Paradise Lost 3:Purgatory on HBO. Those playing the home game may remember that I had tickets for the first public screening but passed it up to see the secret sneak preview of what turned out to be Hugo. You may also remember that I was going to watch the first hour of the film, but found that some rude press people were being pains in the butt in the lobby of Alice Tully Hall and I simply turned around and went to see Hugo.

My reaction to the film is very mixed. Even though I think it has a shot at an Oscar, I don't think it deserves it. Yes, what it, and its makers did is amazing, however I don't think it's a particularly good film on it's own terms. Yes it hits all of the right notes and it updates everything, but the film is too long at 2 hours since it recaps too much. Its caught between the problem of having to update people who have been on board from the start, but also recap everything for those just coming it. The result is a film that isn't fully satisfying.

And now some links

Yul Brenner's Photos

A Magical Tour of Scary Chinese People or Grady Hendrix looks at a terrible racial stereotype.

Cartoon Brew has the skinny on a possible animated version of The Prophetfeaturing all of the best directors around. Details are here.

Cartoon Brew has a 12 minute animated version of The Hobbit.

An amusing film that is being screened at the BAMKids Fest- Cosmic Avenger

Day Watch (2006)

2012-01-15T09:39:00.000-05:00

Before I talk about this sequel to yesterday's Nightwatch, let me say first and foremost do not even think of viewing this movie unless you've seen the that film first. Simply put this movie just starts and goes, assuming that you've seen the first film. There are no reintroductions, just forward motion so be prepared, see Nightwatch.

Picking up some time after Nightwatch ends this film concerns two parallel stories Anton's search for a means of righting all that has gone wrong since he joined the Watch, and his framing for the murder of one of the Day Watch. The two things are not, of course, that far apart as everyone soon finds out.

This is epic story telling and it covers a great deal of ground. Do not blink or go to the bathroom with out being able to pause this since this moves like the wind. Unfortunately even with close attention a good deal of the plot is going to be clouded. There are lots of characters, lots of plot points many carried over from the first film (which in retrospect I should have re-watched before I dove into this film). You can fee the film's origins as a novel bleeding off the screen giving this version of Moscow a very real sense of place.

The action and craftsmanship of this film is almost without equal. The set pieces are spectacular, there are things in this movie to make your jaw drop open (the influx of American money can be seen on the screen in sequences that top the first film). The cast is amazing, creating some really good guys and some vile bad ones. Its first rate all around.

I really did like this film a great deal, though I am a tad disappointed. I don't know whether its the fact that the story is too big for its two and a half running time, or if its the fact that it doesn't go where I expected it to go. I know I'm going to have to see it again, preferably when I can see this not long after the first film (something I haven't done yet despite seeing this film a couple of times).

If you saw and liked the first film see this. If you weren't crazy about the first film you still may want to try it. But if you haven't seen the first film see that first.

(I should also point out that like the first film there are differences between versions. I have not explored them enough to tell you what they are, only beware that what every English version you see is going to play slightly different than any other one)

Night Watch (2004)

2012-01-14T11:12:00.004-05:00

This is the very dense story of the battle of the forces of light and dark for control of the world. Actually its the story of the Night Watch members of the side of light that patrol the night looking for law breakers from the side of darkness. Members of the watch have to deal with several intersecting stories, one concerning vampires after a little boy, in another a woman is so cursed terrible things happen around her, and in another the coming of The Other, one neither dark nor light and who's choice of a side would tip the battle in the stalemated war.

Its a film that you have to really really watch to follow, though probably multiple viewings are in order. There is a great deal going on and it takes a great deal of concentration just to follow the movie forward, never mind the references to earlier events. I'd like to be so bold as to call it a Russian novel of a movie (which is actually fair since it is based on the first novel is a Russian trilogy). That may sound off putting, but its not, this is a movie worth the extra effort.

Not to put too fine a point on it: this is a masterpiece of film making. The world it creates is very real even though its never fully explained (Thank you for not feeling need to explain it all to us, allowing so much of the mystery to survive). It lives and breathes on the screen in ways that few films ever achieve. Its a film that engages you and draws you in and shows you a world you've never seen. I desperately want to compare this to films like Neil Gaiman and Lenny Henry's Neverwhere and Underworld but those films are lacking in creation and execution when compared to this film so its not fair. Simply put this film is the real deal.

I want to tell you more but its too hard to briefly explain without telling too much, besides this is a film that's better to see than read about.

No its not perfect. It is rather dense and will probably lose many viewers for that reason, after all going to the bathroom at the wrong time will leave you lost upon your return. It's the sort of film that needs several viewings to catch all of the things going on.It's also a film that changes depending on which version you see.(more on that in a second)

If you're ready for a really great film about the forces of light and dark see this movie, just remember to keep yourself open to a unique experience.

A word about versions: There is about a four minute difference between the Russian release version and the International version released by Fox Searchlight. I haven't worked out what the differences are but they are there. I need to also point out that the subtitling of the Russian version I originally saw is different from the US release, changing the phrasing and thereby the meaning of the film. Additionally the English dub is different than either of the subtitled films. This essentially makes three different versions of the film. The differences do matter with anyone I know having seen the dub liking it less than the subtitled ones. The Russian version seems to be better than the Fox one as well. (Then again I do like some turns of phrase in the dub and the Fox sub). Do keep in mind the difference between loving and liking the film could be the English translation.

Norwegian Wood (2010)

2012-01-13T18:37:00.002-05:00

Currently playing in theaters in the US, this film is an adaption of a novel by Haruki Murakami. When Murakami published the book, it hit a nerve with the Japanese public and turned him into a superstar on a scale usually reserved for rock stars or movie stars.

The story of the film is related to us by Toru, a young man who spent his high school days hanging out with his best friend Kizuki, and Kizuki's girlfriend Naoko. Kizuki commits suicide leaving the pair shaken. Toru goes to Tokyo for college, leaving Naoko behind. One day while studying, Toru finds that Naoko has turned up on the campus. They begin to spend time together. After they sleep together on her 20th birthday she runs off to sanatorium to try and deal with her feelings. Left on his own Toru meets Midori and begins to fall in love with her.

(There are other levels to the film thanks to a womanizing friend of Toru's and the student upheavals of the late 1960's and early 1970's, but that description should give you enough to get started)

Going into the film this was high on my must see list. I was sure that this was going to be a great film. My plan was to see this film and write it up .... and then I saw it and my plans got derailed. The film looks great, it has a good score, but the film just didn't click with me on an emotional level. I couldn't see spending the time writing the film up.

At this point you're asking yourself, if he didn't like it why is he writing it up? That's a good question. The reason is simple, I can't shake the film. There is something about the film that has seized my consciousness and won't let it go. I don't really care for the film, but I can't stop thinking about it.

Shot in a style that is best described as arty, the shots are perfect, the lighting exquisite(complete with color codes), the dialog meaningful. This is film that is the definition of art film. The trouble is that it doesn't seem real, even as a memory. It looks great but its kind of artificial.

Part of the problem is the dialog, when it happens, seems too contrived. Every line seems to have meaning. There is an exchange when Toru and Naoko meet at his school where they talk about how they both don't like to talk. This then leads into sections of the film where we just see them traveling around not talking. I know that may have worked in the novel where Toru's telling of the story would have bridged the nonverbal gaps but here it doesn't work since it leaves only meaningful dialog and lots of meaningful looks.I didn't wholly buy into it. (And yes we get some voice over but not enough)

For me the lack of real dialog resulted in a further complication, a one noteness to some of the character. Toru's womanizing friend is one thing,a womanizer. Naoko's friend at the sanatorium is one thing, a kind of sage. There is nothing wrong with the performances (except for Kiko Mizuhara as Midori who seems miscast), its simply the actors aren't given any room to do anything with the characters.

As you can see I don't really care for the film and yet I can't shake it. There is something about it, about the struggle of holding on to the past when standing on the threshold of the future that haunts me.

I'm not going to say don't see the film. It is a film with some great things in it, and it's a film that has some huge fans. There is enough going for it that I can honestly say that if you want to try the film do so. For me, it simply wasn't my cup of tea.

Out in theaters in the US. Out on DVD elsewhere in the world.

Battle of Neretva (1969)

2012-01-13T05:02:00.008-05:00

This is one of the films that I learned about from the documentary Cinema Komunisto about the Yugoslavian film industry, which screened at last years Tribeca Film Festival.

It's an epic retelling of the final battle for Yugoslavia where the partisans counter attacked against German, Italian and Chetnik forces.

It's old school epic film making with huge crowds of actors and real tanks and explosions without any computer enhancement. It also has an international cast that includes Orson Welles, Yul Brenner, Hardy Kruger, Curt Jergans, Franco Nero, Sergei Bondarchuck, and Anthony Dawson. Its a film that could only have been made in a country like Yugoslavia where it's leader loved movies.

Sadly because of the lack of watchdog for Yugoslavian films (no one really cares about them now that the country has been split up) this film is very difficult to find in anyhing resembling it's complete form. The full version runs about 175 minutes (according to IMDB) but it's near impossible tofind. Only recently did a 160 minute version become available as an import from the UK, but it's in a print that has burned in subtitles and is wildly uneven in picture quality. The upside is that its has a reasonable price if you have a regionless DVD player. (There is a supposedly better version available I think from Germany, however any copy of that film I've run across is a relative small fortune.)

Truthfully most versions I've run across, run much shorter than even the 160 minutes. Indeed the first version I picked up was an Hungarian import that lists as the full film but in actuality runs 100 minutes, thus cutting out over an hour (Its starts what would be 13 minutes into the "complete" version I now have). The one advantage is that it has an English dub track. There is now a US release, which is available from Amazon on demand but it's only 105 or so minutes long, which is still a good 70 minutes short of the full run time.

Somehow this film was nominated for both the Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Foreign film losing out to Costa Gavras' wonderful Z. I say somehow, not because it's a bad film, rather because it's a very un-Oscar like film.

In the 160 minute version this is a very long (probably over long) epic battle film which alternates action with propaganda, though not so much propaganda as to be truly annoying. The film follows several characters on all sides of the battle as they plan the attack and then try to counter the enemy moves. One of the high points is the part where they actually blew up a bridge for the film (though the smoke from the explosion obscured things and it had to be done in part, in miniature). Its just men and women in battle and little else...

...which makes for a very tiring film. A half an hour in I was exhausted. So much is going on, the constant fighting, the constant motion and dozens of characters was taking its toll. While I was enjoying what I was seeing, I was feeling like I was being over whelmed.

Don't get me wrong this is a truly spectacular, truly one of a kind film (the most expensive ever produced in Yugoslavia) but it's also a kind of an endurance test. You have to really like war films to make it through this film in one sitting, which fortunately I do.

I like this film. Its an amazing feat of film making. If you want to see one of the films you'll find in the dictionary under the term EPIC see this film. If you love war films see this film.

If on the other hand you don't like war films or need a long movie to take a breather stay away.

If you can't get the full or almost full version do try the shorter version, just be aware that you're missing well over an hour of material. While not ideal it will give you a sense of the scope of the film.

Flowers of War (2011)

2012-01-12T18:39:00.004-05:00

Let me get a few things out of the way at the top: If Flowers of War didn’t have both Christian Bale in it and the controversy he generated by pissing off the Chinese government, this film would have remained invisible to Oscar voters. It’s an often beautiful looking film that is wildly too long and has one of the weakest performances by Christian Bale you are likely to see. If it makes the short list of films there really is something wrong with the way the Oscar nominations are picked.

I should say it’s not a bad film, but on the other hand it’s not a particularly good one either. As representation of Chinese cinema from the year it’s in the middle of the pack and as for stacking up with other films that the Chinese have offered up to the great god Oscar it’s toward the bottom. Honestly I think the film was picked not because it was a good film, rather because the fact it has Bale and has a large amount of English dialog which gives it a shot at the winning over people who don’t like subtitles.

To put it another way it’s director Yimou Zhang’s weakest film of late. In all honesty the film pales in comparison to Yimou’s previous film, Under the Hawthorne Tree, which is an unashamed tear jerker (A review is coming in two weeks as part of out Chinese New Year series).

The film is structured as a memory tale. Told in flashback the film follows Christian Bale’s con man as he is fleeing from the Japanese who have descended upon Nanking. Hooking up with three young girls (one of whom is telling the story) in hiding, he makes his way to a church where the priest has died. Through circumstance he takes on the role of priest and has to defend the girls, and some women of questionable morals from the Japanese, and find a way out of the beleaguered city.

I was bored.

Worse, I didn’t care.

Despite the spectacle of the battle scenes the film looked as if it was done on the cheap. The sets didn’t feel like a real place, rather it seemed as if we were on soundstages or on street sets. I never felt as if I was in a real place. (You want to feel like you’re in a real place and real emotion see City of Life and Death)

But that’s not fatal, what was fatal was the story telling. The tale is split oddly in four different ways. We are kind of following the girls Bale meets early on, however they don’t seem to be given much to do other than observe or be afraid. We also follow the older women, who get more screen time (I’m guessing because they are sexier). Then there is Bale and his shift from man out for himself into a man of the cloth. Then added to all of this are the various fighting men, both Chinese and Japanese, we get odd side bar battle sequences which show how great the Chinese were and how bad the Japanese could be. The problem with the fragmentation is that the film feels kind of unfocused. Who is this about really?

For me the fragmentation results in a story that seems like they are trying to be a preachy soap opera. Its see the pretty images or See all of the bad things that happened? The film is too into dwelling in some of the depravity. A perfect case in point is when one of the girls is pitched over a balcony to her death. The camera seems to linger a bit too much (and too many times) on her smashed skull on the floor. I’ve seen many better films on Nanking and their stories had worse depictions of violence, but I never felt as though they were extraneous or done for effect. The crimes that were committed in those films curled my hair, these annoyed me.

To me Christian Bale is a very up and down actor. Oscar or no, he is either perfect or terribly miscast. I vote for him being miscast here. There is something about his demeanor that fails to sell the role. Sure he does the right things for his character, but he never seemed to be selling what he is doing. He seemed to be walking through things and not being there in the moment with the character.

The result of all of this is the films biggest flaw, the wild over length. Why is this film two and a half hours long? I don’t know. Sequences go on and on often pausing for a gloriously framed image or two, but rarely to add anything that is absolutely vital to the story. Give me a pair of scissors and I think I could trim this down by at least a half an hour with out losing anything.

Despite ripping the film apart I kind of do like it, I just wish it wasn’t being put forward as an Oscar contender, its not deserving of it. Give me a few minutes and I’ll give you five better Chinese films from 2011 (Better yet look at the 2011 films we’ll have for Chinese New Year). In fairness had the film not been touted, had it not been the source of controversy I might have liked it better. Honestly, give me six months and I’ll see it again. If it plays better I’ll report back.

For now it’s an okay film. It’s just okay. It’s nothing special. Worth a shot when it hits DVD but I can’t see paying the big bucks to see it in a theater.

Adjustment Bureau (2011)

2012-01-12T06:33:00.000-05:00

Philip K Dick based romance about a man running for Senate who has a chance encounter with a woman and who's life changes as a result...more so since he finds the courage not to take the path that life has laid out for him and instead takes on all that "heaven" throws at him in order to find the one thing that matters most to him.

Knowing the work of Philip K Dick I'm guessing this not so dark romantic film has been greatly changed from it's source story. I would guess that the film probably simply retains the adjustment bureau and the conflict with some one who sees them. I could be wrong, but I don't think that Dick wrote such a wonderfully sappy love story.

The plot has Matt Damon as a young buck New York politician running into the beautiful Emily Blunt in a men's room on the night he loses an election. Instantly smitten he wants to spend his life with her, but he finds duty pulls him away and in conceding he gives one of the best speeches of his life. Several days later he meets her again on a bus and they really connect this time...only they were never suppose to meet again...whats worse is that Damon walks in as the Adjustment Bureau are correcting things at his office. Dragged off to some place between worlds Damon is told to forget the girl and not to try and find her. His destiny lies elsewhere. Three years pass and wouldn't you know it he meet her again, only the Adjustment Bureau won't stand for it and they take action to try and keep them apart.

One of my favorite films of 2011, this is a wonderful story about the course of the human heart and finding your own way. I was smiling from ear to ear and having a grand old time as I watched the film at home on DVD.

I know the film did some business at the box office but I don't think it did super spectacular. I know several people I've talked to about it didn't see it because they didn't know what it was. They all thought it was a super sinister film instead of a wonderful romance. I know the problem is that the trailers were all cut from from the chase scenes in the latter part of the film which gives a false impression about what the film is all about. I know I was confused since I put on the film hoping for a nice science fiction action film only to be blind sided by something else.

Sometimes it's good to be blind sided,especially when you have a film as thrilling and affirming as this one is.

I really liked it.

I also love the use of New York Locations. I could recognize a good number of them and their extensive use makes the film a wonderful time capsule of New York in 2010/1.

Highly recommended

I can recommend this film highly enough. It's a wonderful and charming romance that just made me feel good.

Out on DVD.

High Voltage (1929)

2012-01-11T16:22:00.000-05:00

Carol Lombard's* first sound film has her starring up against William Boyd who was best known as Hopalong Cassidey but was in fact one of the least appreciated actors of his time.

The plot of the film has a bus load of people getting snow bound in the middle of nowhere. Fearing that there is nowhere to go to they spot a "house" in the distance and the small group makes their way there. The house turns out to be an abandoned church. As the group crowds around the stove- the only source of heat they discover that sleeping on one of the pews is a hobo. How the characters interact over the days that are trapped together is the film.

A surprisingly good early sound film that doesn't feel static or stage bound the way that many other films of the period do. Many sequences, such as the one where they go out on to a frozen lake and one of them falls in appears to have been filmed on location.

The plot of the film, cliched as it is in the set up, never feels that way once things start moving. To be certain there is only a certain number of ways that this can play out, but the film some how finds a different way to handle the material...though thinking about it perhaps what happens is more or less typical of Pre-Code Hollywood, however how the cast, especially Boyd and Lombard play it manage to make it into something special.

Don't kid yourself, if Boyd and Lombard didn't have chemistry and didn't manage to sell what was going on this never would have worked. Boyd is in full on leading man mode and he really sells the role of a hobo with a secret extremely well. Lombard, looking radiant and more sexy then I've ever seen her, is a sight to behold. Watching her be the wanted woman with a heart of gold is a revelation that her roles in all of the later comedies never prepared me for. The scene where she pulls Boyd aside to stop him putting the make on a younger girl has an intensity and rawness that should have at least gotten her an Oscar nomination.

The film itself probably isn't up to the standards of the performances of the two leads however it's a damn fine way to lose an hour. I should know I started the film and suddenly found myself being yelled at for being late for supper.

Definitely recommended.

*- No I didn't misspell her first name, that's how she was billed in this film.

Map of the Human Heart (1993)

2012-01-11T06:52:00.000-05:00

This is one of the best movies I've ever seen....

I never want to see it again.

Why don't I want to see it? Its simply depressing. I can't watch it with out becoming suicidal. Its a true love story where it doesn't really end happily.

This is the story of two ill fated lovers, he is an Eskimo, she is a white Canadian girl. The story follows their lives over the early and mid part of the 20th century including a terrifying trip into the horrors of the Second World War. It's told in flashback in a fishing village in Canada as John Cusack's Mapmaker talks to Jason Scott Lee.

What can I say? This is a film of great performances and moments, the firestorm in Dresden gives me nightmares Simply put its one of the greatest tragic romances you'll ever run across.

I would love to recommend the film, but its ultimately so bleak I don't know many people who would want to see it.

Still I give it 10 out of 10 simply because it provokes such a deep reaction in me.

Flying Swords of the Dragon Gate (2011) - a pre-review review

2012-01-10T18:26:00.004-05:00

WOW.

They said that after Tsui Hark and Jet Li fell out after Once Upon a Time In China 3 that the pair would never work together again. However things change and Jet Li agreed to work with Hark again because the film he was making was going to be "the first martial arts film shot in 3D by the people responsible for Avatar" (or something like that).

The film opened in December in China and I've read its doing big business. I've also read that the film is being prepped for a US release some time soon. That last bit put the film high on my must see list with both Hark and Li doing some of their best work recently (Hark with All About Women and Detective Dee; Li with Ocean Heaven and Sorcerer and the White Snake).

Not being one to wait for something potentially amazing, I picked up an unsubtitled DVD in Chinatown over the weekend. Needing a pick me up Sunday afternoon, I popped the DVD in the machine and I gave it ago.

Wow and wow.

When this film comes to a theater near you, run to see it. Based on what I saw on the DVD this is going to look fantastic in 3D and it's possibly going to be one of the few 3D films worth seeing that way.The action sequences in this film are amazing. I was floored. Its a return to old school wu xia films but done on a modern scale and enhanced with computers. Normally I hate that sort of thing but here it seems to work.

Simply put Tsui Hark is working the magic he did in films like the Zu Warriors of the Magic Mountain and The Blade.

Jet Li is Jet Li. He's kicking butts and taking names. If there is anything wrong with him in the film, its the sections where he's not in the film.

The film is a remake of sorts of Dragon Inn (1967) which was remade in 1992 by Hark and which starred Donnie Yen who was first offered the role played by Jet Li. Yen turned it down because he won't remake his old films, and I think the film works better for it. The plot has to do with a power hungry eunuch's grab for all of China and the people who try and stop him. I can't give you the details here just know that the film has lots of fantastic action sequences.

I have to fess up here, I got to s certain point in the film and I simply started scanning mywy through the film. I did this not because it was bad, rather since I couldn't understand what was being said I simply wanted to get to the next action sequence to see how it was going to look when I saw it on the big screen in 3D...the answer was AWESOME.

Having seen the film, more or less, all I can say is that I can't wait to see this film on the big screen. This is the sort of thing that 3D was made for...

Put this film on your list action fans because I'm guessing this is going to blow all our minds.

Mr Brooks (2007)

2012-01-10T07:49:00.000-05:00

Kevin Costner is a great guy and man of the year sort of fellow who has a dark side-he's a serial killer. On one of the biggest nights of his life Brooks gives in to the voice in his head (played by William Hurt) and begins to kill again. Unfortunately he's spotted by Dane Cook who wants to go out with him on the next kill. Costner hopes there's no next time however circumstance reawakens the old urge and... well thats the movie.

Good little thriller is given a great shot in the arm by the interplay of Costner and Hurt.They are the whole movie and are the reason (a really good reason) to watch this movie.

Though to be fair the film also works because you get a couple of actors, Costner and Dane Cook working against type.

Costner, perennial nice guy, was not and is not the sort of guy you'd expect to be a serial killer. It's the sort of thing that many audiences couldn't accept. I know I've loaned the film to several people who refused to watch it for that reason until I pressed a copy into their hands and told them to watch it.

The same thing goes for Dane Cook, who is best known as a comedian. Almost no one I know could buy him in a serious role. They thought he would be horrible and yet he's not. Actually between this and Dan in Real Life he has proven to be an excellent dramatic actor.

Of course this shouldn't distract from the fact that this is just a really good little thriller.

Worth a look but you may end up like me and wish that Costner and Hurt would link up again in a movie better suited to let them let go. (Actually the film was conceived to be the start of a series- maybe, maybe we'll get another one belatedly.)

A Separartion (2011)

2012-01-09T18:21:00.004-05:00

The first time I heard of A Separation was on the list of films for the New York Film Festival this year. The description of a domestic drama that turns into a court room thriller piqued my interest. I had it on my list of films to see. Unfortunately in both the public screenings and press screenings I couldn't find a slot to see it.

My desire to see the film increased when very positive talk at other press screenings was matched by orgasmic talk outside the public screenings. Talk about the film outside the second screening was so intense and so involving that not only was the lobby of Alice Tully Hall full of groups of people talking to each other about the film, but they were sucking in those of us going into the next screening. Rarely have I ever seen so many people taking about a film so animatedly - and so positively. Honestly, this was the best received film of the year as far as I was concerned.

The film opened elsewhere in the world earlier in the year and it's just opened in the US, where it's the front runner for a Best Foreign Language Oscar, and where it may get more nominations.

I am happy to report that A Separation is a film that is rightly being touted highly across the board. This is one of the few times where I'm on board with the uber-love for a film.

The plot of the film has a husband and wife asking for a divorce. She wants to take their daughter and leave the country, while he doesn't want to leave his father who is suffering with Alzheimer's. The divorce isn't granted but they separate. In order to help with the father the husband hires a woman to come in and watch the father while he works. Complications arise and soon the film becomes a court room thriller with hints of murder.

I really liked this film a great deal. Its a gripping domestic drama that, naturally drifts into court room thriller. Nothing that happens feel wrong or contrived. Every twist, every turn feels right, feels plausible. It feels like it could happen.

Beautifully acted, it would be an injustice if the Oscars didn't nominate someone from the cast for an acting award. These aren't characters, they are people.

Go see this movie. This really is one of the times when you should believe the hype and see the film.

(FYI: The title on the film itself is Nader and Simin A Separation which is why I picked the image I did)

Lightship (1985)

2012-01-09T07:46:00.000-05:00

Jerzy Skolimoski, darling of the art house crowd with films like Moonlighting (with Jeremy Irons) and The Shout confused more than a few critics by turning in this neat little thriller that owes more to film noir than to any art house sensibilities. Never mind that Skolimoski never stayed with in the narrow confines of what many critics consider good subjects, they didn’t like his newest film and panned it…or if not panned it dismissed it as beneath him (especially since the lead villain was played by Robert Duvall hot off his Oscar win for Tender Mercies).

The plot of the film has a teenage son going to spend some time with his father (Klaus Maria Brandauer) on the lightship he captains. The lightship is a floating lighthouse put in place to mark dangerous waters where a regular lighthouse can’t be placed. As father and son deal with more than the usual father son tension (including questions of what did you do in the war daddy) the ship is invaded by three criminals who want to cut the ship loose from the moorings and use it for their own evil purposes.

Is the film deep and meaningful?

Hell no.

Is it a good little crime story?

Hell yea.

Forget any sort of pretentions and just take it as a memory play crime story about a son battling his father in the middle of a hijack. It’s a potboiler pure and simple and any attempt to read anything else into it will only confuse things needlessly.

Is the film beneath director Skolimoski? It depends why your asking it. Are you looking for simply a good little film that is worth a bowl of popcorn? Then it’s not. This is good little entertainment. If you’re looking for a look into the deeper meaning of existence then it probably is. On the other hand one can’t eat the same thing over and over again without it turning into something bland. As you can tell from the wide swings this blog takes sometimes you need to watch something less deep than War and Peace…hell if you don’t you’ll never know how good the better films really are.

I really like this film. It’s a neat little thriller that had it been made in black and white when the film is set it would have been hailed as a classic…while its not quite that today it is worth a bowl of popcorn and a soda.

DB's Sunday Nightcap 1/8/12

2012-01-08T22:09:00.005-05:00

DB here.

It's late on Sunday, and I've been under the weather all day. As I get ready to head off its time to prattle on a few things.

First up a few reminders of things here in the New York.

The Jewish Film Festival starts Wednesday at Lincoln Center. It has a good number of good looking films. I'll be going to a couple of screenings over the two weeks it runs. Reports will follow. Details can be found here.

This is the final few days of the Ghibli retrospective at The IFC Center. It all ends Thursday. Details can be found here.

(And I won't go into details of the KCS screenings because I know you're sick of it)

I've been busy seeing some films some of which will be getting some write ups here and some which won't.

Yesterday I went to the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan to see The Prince of the Himalayas. It's a version of Hamlet set in ancient Tibet. It was filmed in Tibet and stars all Tibetan actors.

The pre-film talk said that the film got lost when it was released in 2006 because there were two Chinese versions of Hamlet released at the same time. I say the film got lost because outside of the music and photography it isn't very good.

The two major problems with the film come first from an editing style that is similar to Hong Kong action film. I was reminded of John Woo films or some of the fluid Johnnie To directed sequences. It seemed out of place here. The other more serious problem is that the film plays like an extended trailer for the story. Almost half way in I was kind of at a loss as to what I was seeing. Who was who and what was what? I couldn't tell from the film, rather I had to keep thinking back to Shakespeare to know which way was up.

Halfway in I walked out. Sorry, but it wasn't worth the effort. There was nothing to keep my interest, even the sex scene was making me giggle. I started to watch the lady sitting two tables over fighting to stay awake and not hit her head on the table.

The film looks great, I want the music, but its a crappy movie otherwise.

As an addendum, outside of the theater is the Tibet in Comics display. Not to mice words it's possibly one of the most useless exhibitions I've ever seen.Unless you know nothing about comics, it's utterly useless (and even then it's still not worth the effort).

Basically it's some displays of books like The Third Eye,Lost Horizon, The Secret Doctrine and the Morning of the Magicians, which are some fiction and non-fiction books which are tied to Tibet on one side of the room where the displays say they really didn't. One the other side of the room are some comic character figures in boxes (Yeti, Bugs Bunny,Donald Duck, Mickey Mouse, Doctor Strange, Tin Tin)with a note saying that these characters were in comics set in Tibet. Then there are some comics in bound books where the stories are in Tibet. There is little in the way of explanation, just the comics with a most cursory blurb at the front.

Its a waste. It told me nothing I didn't know. Odds are it wouldn't tell you anything either.

After walking out I saw, as did several other Unseen Film friends and writers, the Madhouse produced anime Redline. Its a wild and weird science fiction race film,that is just so wonderfully over the top I can't recommend it enough. At some point the film will be getting a write up.

Also getting a write up will be the Oscar front runner A Separation. This is a wonderful domestic drama that turns into a court room drama. It is the front runner for the Best Foreign Language film and while I may not think it's the best, I won't be unhappy if it wins. Truthfully it's so nice to have a film that everyone tells me is great actually turn out to be. A fuller review is coming tomorrow night.

Not likely to get a write up, by me at least, is The Descendants. This is the George Clooney film by Alexander Payne the director of About Schmidt and Sideways. The short review is that if you liked those films, you'll like this and if not you won't. I didn't and didn't.

Up coming here at Unseen will be a week of random films. I'm guessing that The week will be supplemented by reports on several other films such as A Separation, Flowers of War (The Chinese Oscar entry),the new Jet Li/Tsui Hark film, and a few others which I have lined up for viewing.

After that we have a week of Buster Keaton films, our Chinese New Year piece, a look a cinematic getaways and then who knows. I am working on a series of posts for March I'm calling Spaghetti West Weekends,which is the result of getting two sets of Spaghetti Westerns that had 64 films between them.

Keep reading 'cause we'll keep posting.

And remember we are on Twitter and we do take requests- just email me.

Neutron vs the Maniac (1964)

2012-01-08T10:59:00.004-05:00

Fourth Neutron film moves away from the battles from the Dr Caronte films and is far less special.

The plot has a young woman killed while in th company of a blind pianist. Just prior to being murdered (by a man in a black hood) she had tried to hit up her singer sister for cash but was refused because of past lies for money. The woman's sister ends up with Neutron helping her track down her sisters killer. It's a trail that leads to a psychiatric hospital.

A dull follow up to an off the wall but rather exciting series of films. Here the bigger than life nonsense of a real super villain is replaced by a rather bland by the numbers mystery cum super hero story. There is nothing wrong with the film as such, simply that it's not unique or special. This is a story that we've seen before any number of times before in other places, just not with a masked wrestler running around.

You've seen better.

Watch the first three films again and skip this nonsense.

The Front Line (2011) reviewed (It's screening Tuesday)

2012-01-07T18:18:00.007-05:00

Korea's submission to the Oscar's is also the first film in the Korean Cultural Service free screening of 2012.

Lets cut to the chase and get a few things out of the way:

First- If you live in the New York City area go see this film Tuesday when it plays at Tribeca. This is a solid little film that is not what you expect but is definitely worth your time.

Second- I'm not going to lie, this film doesn't have snowballs chance in hell of getting an Oscar nomination. Not because it's a bad movie, it's not, rather because it is so completely unlike what the Academy nominates that it doesn't stand a chance.

Third- I have to see the film again because the film truly confounded me and my expectations.

As the film opens it's 1953. The Korean Conflict is winding down. As the officials are negotiating the border between North and South Korea, a sticking point is the fact that one hill keeps changing sides. Day in and day out the will changes from North to South control and then back again. The line can't be drawn until they know who really has control of the hill.

Of course things aren't that easy, it seems that the company commander was shot in the back by a South Korean gun, and there are other things that aren't right. Attached to the new Commander is another soldier who is tasked with finding out what happened to the previous commander and what is really going on there.

I should add that as with several recent films from Korea (say the wonderful Moss) the events of today seem to be very much connected in what happened in the past;which in this case is 1950 and the early days of the war.

Everything I read except a piece on the Asian Oscar nominees from the New York Times has made this out to be largely a war film. Going into the film I was convinced that this was going to be a balls to the wall film on the order of Brotherhood of War. What I got, and what I should have expected is a film that mixes a war film, with mystery and social drama. Yes, there are some killer battle scenes, but there is a hell of a lot more going on than just fighting the enemy.

As I said at the top I don't expect those picking the Foreign Language Films for the Oscar will choose this for the final five. Say what you will I don't think they are going to know what to make of it. Here's a film that is by turns, funny, serious, mysterious, action packed, heart breaking, and thoughtful. Ultimately its a typical mix of genres that you'll find wonderfully bound up in many Korean films which delight those that are ready for their wonderful gumbo quality, but which confuse the hell out of people who don't know how to handle the many flavors.

To be honest I'm not sure I could handle all of the films flavors on the first viewing. I truly do like this film a great deal, but its a film that I fought with for a good chunk of the way. I fought with it so much because it wasn't doing what I thought it would that I really need to see it again. I need to see the film and be able to take it on it's own terms. I say this not as a criticism rather as warning. If you go see this film on Tuesday, and I think you should, I need you to go into the film open and receptive. Don't expect the film to be anything at any point other than what it is. Don't expect it to do anything other than what it does. If you can do this then I think you'll have a good time.

Forgive me I know I should say more but I don't know how to really explain this film. Its a mystery set on a battle field. It has political implications for those in the divided country and a decided strong anti-war stance. Its a film with some great large scale action set pieces and a humanity that seems odd in a big film like this. Its a film that is kind of like several different Hollywood films mashed together but ultimately is uniquely Korean.

To be fair, I probably should have made a second trip through the film before writing it up, but to do it I would have had to delay telling you to go see the film until after the free screening.

If you want to know what I really think of it, I think it's a good film. After careful consideration I don't think it's great, it has some greatness in it but the fact that it's trying to do too much almost defeats it. I also think that it because it's trying to do too much you should make an effort to see it (Its a rare film that is trying to do too much intelligently)

Go try it. And if you do see it Tuesday (or after that) let me know what you think.

Neutron and the Amazing Dr Caronte (1963)

2012-01-07T09:34:00.004-05:00

Third in the series picks up more or less right where the second one left off. Caronte is dead (or so the world thinks). The three friends are still jockeying for position in the heart of their lady love, Nora. Added to the mix is the addition of a foreign agent who is looking for the neutron bomb formula. As Neutron thwarts the foreign agents, Caronte comes back again from the dead...and has his identity discovered... only to commit suicide....

And if you think that's the ends you're sadly mistaken....

More Neutron madness that continues the story from the first two films and bends the tale further and further in more fantastic directions. As with the first two films the film is largely plot driven, though to be perfectly honest this film only has a minimum of fight scenes with much of the time actually taken up by plot twists.

Assuming you've been watching the series from the beginning you'll have a great time continuing onward. The trouble is that if you are watching this out of order you're going to be hopelessly lost. This film simply doesn't work as a stand alone film since so much of what is going on is a reference back to the earlier films.

More in keeping with the second film, this film completes a trilogy concerning Neutron's Battles with Caronte. After this there were two more stand alone films before Neutron was retired as a character.

Not out officially in the US, I know it can be had on the collectors market.

Meet the Feebles (1989)

2012-01-06T07:44:00.000-05:00

Words kind of fail me…

For almost any other director a movie like Meet the Feebles would be the skeleton in their closet but for Oscar Winner Peter Jackson it’s just one stop on his way to the gold statue.

Feebles is a huge WTF film by anyone’s standards. Essentially a backstage show biz story told with absolutely no good taste and very little decorum, this is what would the Muppet Show would have been like if it was aimed at adults in Times Square in the bad old days. Filled with graphic sex drugs and rock and roll (not to mention some other things that will curl your hair) this is walk in the gutter with puppets.

It’s a film that is going to either make you laugh or make you cringe…and sometimes both at the same time. This ain’t for the kiddies nor for almost anyone else for that matter. Well, anyone with any modicum of good taste. If you like bathroom humor tinged with a great deal of cleverness- this film is for you. If you don’t like jokes from the toilet (literally) stay away.

I’m a fan of the film. I’ve been a fan since Jackson’s first film Bad Taste and was an early adopter of this film simply because he had directed it. Admittedly the film isn’t perfect (some of the humor is a bit too base), but it hits more than it misses thanks to the ability of Jackson and crew to sell what could have and should been a one joke idea into something more.

As I said I’m a fan of Peter Jackson. I’ve liked everything he’s done on some level and think that everything he’s done is worth trying—so long as you know what you’re getting into (since the poop jokes here may make you gag). If you want to see how one of the best film makers in the world developed you should give this film a shot. You should also give it a shot if you like really low brow humor done very cleverly

The Frontline (2011) is the first Korean Cultural Service film of 2012

2012-01-05T17:59:00.006-05:00

Tuesday is the first Korean Cultural Service Screening of 2012 and it’s a good one.

The Frontline is the Korean entry for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. It’s a war movie set in the closing days of the Korean War. The Korean Cultural Service describes it as follow:

One of the biggest hits of 2011, The Frontline is the simple story of a hill: Aerok Hill, a small rise on the Eastern Front of the Korean War that changed hands 30 times over 18 months of fighting. A military investigator is dispatched to see if allegations that the South Korean soldiers tasked with taking the hill are collaborating with their North Korean enemies to deliver letters to their families. It turns out that they are, and that’s the least of it. A movie about men (and some women) trying to hold onto their humanity in the midst of war, Frontline is Korea’s official submission to the Academy Awards.

I call it a really good movie that’s more than just a war film but also a mystery and a few other things. Its a film that is going to confuse Oscar voters (its not their type of film), but going to please anyone who likes films that aren't your typical entertainment. If you want to see something good go see the film.

I also beg for your indulgence since I have a half written review that was suppose to run here but which I’ve been unable to finish because of circumstances beyond my control. I should be able to get the review up by Saturday, but until then if you live in the New York City area you should make plans to be at the Tribeca Cinema on Tuesday night at 7.

As always doors are at 630 and the movie is FREE.

Kubrick's Odyssey:Hidden Secrets in the films of Stanley Kubrick. Part One Kubrick and Apollo (2011)

2012-01-05T07:04:00.007-05:00

DB here. One of the films getting the big buzz going into Sundance is a feature documentary called Room 237. From what I read it covers the same material as this film. Where Room 237 is getting all the buzz, Kubrick's Odyessy was there first.

Off the deep end documentary that speculates that Stanley Kubrick sold his soul to the devil in a deal that had him faking the video of the moon landing (though we did go to the moon) and then revealing the con in various films he made after 2001.

The story told says that after people in the Pentagon saw Dr Strangelove they hired Kubrick to shoot footage of the moon landings so that the Soviets wouldn't see the technology that we were really using on the moon. This allowed Kubrick to make any movie he ever wanted, but it also troubled him deeply and that he started to hide clues as to what was really going on in his later films.

Its an insane story that seems to be based purely on the fact that Kubrick had help in making 2001 from NASA and various corporations involved in the moon shots. There is no hard evidence for any of it, just speculation. Any real evidence is a comparison of shots from 2001 where front projection was used (and genuinely visible) with photographs and video footage from the moon flights where director Jay Weidner says a similar technique was used (which it clearly wasn't).

The problem with the story during the first half of the film is that the evidence isn't there. Director Weidner shows footage of the moon landing where he's drawn in a line in the sand and said that past this line nothing is real. He said it's because the ground is different (often smooth compared to where the ground where the astronauts walked is full of footprints) and because he used techniques similar to those of Richard Hogaland who says that there are hidden buildings on the moon. It doesn't hold up especially since the real differences in the back and fore grounds in2001 are not in the moon photos, and you really have to be deluding yourself to believe otherwise.

Even more damning is that there is no other physical evidence for the theory, not a suggestion of where it was done or when or how, nor is there any explanation of where this idea came from, Its simply something that came from from the ether based on a too close reading of the films of Kubrick.

Okay you're wondering if the physical evidence isn't there, why am I bothering to write this film up?

Because once you get pass the BS attempt at physical evidence and you look at films it becomes an over intellectual, absolutely not provable, but damn interesting tale.

The main thrust of the second half of the film is that chomping on the bit that Kubrick was chaffing at keeping his secret from everyone and he started to reveal the real story,that the world is actually controlled by a secret organization who paid him to shoot fake footage and that the one person he actually told about this was killed, and that there is a chance that Kubrick's death may have been in response to revelations in Eyes Wide Shut.

While the film hints at great revelation the majority of this film is about how The Shining is a code key to understanding what the deal is with America and the moon flights. I'm assuming that since this film is Part One, that later films will go on about the secret organization and death stories in greater detail.

Frankly how Weidner reads The Shining is absolutely fascinating. He sees it as a look at America and at revealing some big secret. Weidner sells his theory so well that many of the doubts that I had at the start of the film were disappearing during the second. Basically not bothered by reality or science or any real facts the story is wonderful.

Of course the clues that he uses to unlock these secrets are often so esoteric as to be laughable. I mean how many people would actually know what a certain launch site looked like from above? Other bits about numbers are possibly better known but there is no context that we'd ever catch them.

It gets so esoteric that Weidner says that a change in Jack Torrence's car was a signal sent to Stephen King that he had to change the novel, a fact reinforced by the fact we see right color car under a tractor trailer later in the film.

I don't buy any of it...on the other hand it is a damn good intellectual exercise that is fun to noodle around...assuming you don't actually let the mind stretching of the blind tunnels become you're reality.

I am looking forward to the second part. I am dying to find out about how a friend of Kubrick's may have been killed for knowing too much or how even Kubrick may have been silenced for making Eyes Wide Shut.

If you can go with the illogical logic of it all and see it as a goof and not real then I highly recommend you give this film a go; though rent it since the whole long section on the photographs is wrong headed and dull as dirt (the evidence isn't there).

Capsule Reviews 1/4/12- Crime

2012-01-04T17:20:00.002-05:00

A MAN NAMED ROCCA (1961)
At some point I'm going to have to sit down and watch this again because it does nothing I expected. Rocca is asked by a friend to get a mutual friend out of jail. He's been framed by a business associate. Jean Paul Belmondo is Rocca, a no nonsense guy who seems to be forever in control. Its a crime drama that meanders all over the place and keeps you interested simply because you don't know where it's going to end up. I got to the end and realized I had to see it once more because I wasn't sure how it all fit together. Worth a look.

MERCILESS TRAP (1961)
The version I have from Sinister Cinema and it's badly dubbed (which is not Sinister's fault it's simply what they have). The plot has a cop asking a truck driver, once a bad guy but now clean, about what he did the night before. It seems that his girl may have been murdered and evidence points his way. The dead girl isn't his girlfriend. However she's gone missing and she maybe mixed up with the murder so he and the cop begin investigating. Good film noir probably will play better in the original Japanese because the dubbing makes it seem like a comedy...which it's really not. If you can manage to either take the English dub on it's own terms or get a subtitled version this is worth a look.

STAKEOUT (1962)
Ex-con reunites with his son and they travel the country looking for work. All he wants is to be able to take care of his son. However circumstance is against him and he is unable to find or hold a job, so he is drawn in to a kidnap scheme which goes off the rails... Low budget drama is okay entertainment. Its a nice time killer which I suspect you've probably never seen. Quality wise its the sort of film I'm on the fence about mentioning here at Unseen Films simply because while it's worth noting, it kind of just misses... but since I'm mentioning you may want to give it a shot.

The Beaver (2011)

2012-01-04T05:42:00.001-05:00

It’s all about the Mel

Seriously Mel Gibson gives one of the best performances of the last decade as --- Black, a man deep in depression, and who may have found solace in a beaver puppet.

A darkly …darkly? That’s not right. Strike that. Make that black but hopeful film about the pain of life and finding a way to endure. It’s as unlikely a Hollywood release as you are likely to find. I am still in shock with the thought that anyone thought this had a chance at the box office where the darkest thing people want to see is the latest Harry Potter film (don’t get me wrong I like the film, but if they wanted to impress me Rowling should have killed off one of the central trio).

The plot as I said has to do with a deeply depressed man who starts to find a way out of the depression with a beaver puppet, however all does not run smoothly and Mel sinks deeper and deeper into madness. It’s not a pretty picture.

Think Gena Rowlands in Woman Under the Influence or some of the other great mad performances and go darker. Gibson goes to hell and then begins to climb out…It’s an amazing performance and in any other year, or if Gibson had any luck at all his performance would be the one to beat for this years Oscar. As I said, it’s easily one of the best performances of the last decade, maybe longer…and if you twist my arm I could say ever.

Sure Gibson’s role seems to have been ripped from the headlines, but it doesn’t matter its raw and real and painful…almost so painful that it’s unwatchable. Here is a man dismantling across the screen and leaving psychic wreckage everywhere.

Give much of the credit to screenwriter Kyle Killen and costar and director Jodie Foster for creating a masterpiece of a film. Sure it’s jagged and uneven, but its infinitely more real than anything Hollywood and most off Hollywood independent films have given us in the last few years.

I have no idea if I like this film. I have no idea if I want to see it again, this is a painful film at times, but at the same time there is no denying that this is one of the best films of the year. Give it points for what it is doing, bt give it several dozen more for being unique and refusing to bend to Hollywood convention.

A must see for anyone who can take the darkness.

DB's Best (or Favorite) Films of 2011

2012-01-03T19:20:00.009-05:00

And now the best films and those that are my favorites (which on some level is the same thing). As always I'll also look at my favorite pieces of movies. I know thats cheating but truth be told sometimes all a movie can muster is a glorious moment. After`that I'll take a look at the whole films that have stayed with me since I saw them earlier in the year (You will find reviews of all of the complete films somewhere on the blog)

First up the best pieces of the year:

The Angel parts of $9.99 an animated film about people in an apartment building in Australia. There is simply something so wonderfully off kilter about the angel who crosses through one of the tenants life.

The Funeral and dancing scenes in Sabu's MONDAY. While the whole movie is wonderful, these two sequences are so wildly brilliant the rest of the film is lessened by them.

The final song in SWELL SEASON. Watching the performance from backstage at Radio City Music Hall is as magical a moment as you'll find in a musical.

Patrick Breen in BLEEDING HOUSE. Evil. Evil. Evil and the reason the film works.

The I won't go out with you song from SELL OUT. All of the music is wonderful but that one song transcends everything and is one of the best songs from any musical, movie or stage, that I've ever seen.

The heroics of GREEN LANTERN. Say what you will about the movie as a whole, they nailed what it is to be a hero.

Mel Gibson in THE BEAVER give the performance of a life time, which in this case is one of the best I've ever seen.

All of the performances in ONCE FALLEN. Its a middling movie with a kick ass cast making you wonder why they aren't all super stars. I love the stars and their characters I just wish they had a real plot to act in

The opening montage of MELANCHOLIA. Beautiful, scary and it makes the rest of the film unnecassary. Its a perfect mini-movie.

While the first half of the Korean horror film Sector 7 plays like a bad comedy in front of green screens, once the moster shows up in the second half the film redeems itself with one of the ugliest most, stomach churning beasts ever put on film. Put it in the top ten greatest monsters ever put on film...maybe even the top three. The movie isn't particularly good but the monster is as great as they come.

Anthong Wong shows yet again why he is one of the best actors ever in PUNISHED. Its a great film that made my Finds list and just missed the Best list because it got lost at the NYAFF amongst other films. That said Wong's turn as a father who wants revenge for the death of his daughter, only to find out the cost to himself and those around him is masterful, and it's way hopefully heartbreaking.

The best complete films:

I want to start by saying that one of the best experiences I had going to the movies this year was seeing Mott The Hoople the movie at the New York Film Festival. From the time spent waiting on line when we got a wave from Ian Hunter as he went in, to Hunter's entry to sustained applause, on through the screening where you could feel everyone in attendance being one with the movie to the point where they sang along and danced in their seat, this was a pure joy. This was what movie going is supposed to be, everyone expeirencing one moment together. It was glorious. It was what I always thought going to a film festival, or even the movies, should be. It was so much better than most other screenings where it was simply a collection of solo people sitting in the darkness alone together. I loved the experience more than I can say and it could only have been made better if I could have stayed for the Q&A (damn late starting movie).

WOOCHIE TAOIST WIZARD- Great fun even if it's too long.

ALWAYS SUNET ON THIRD STREET - it manipulates the audience and you know it but you don't care because you feel too good. It also has one of the best Christmas scenes ever put on film.

THE KINGS SPEECH- One of the few times in recent years Oscar got Best Picture right.

KARSKI REPORT- A film that changes everything you ever thought you knew about anything. Put this on my list of one of the greatest films ever made.

13 ASSASSINS- One of the greatest action films ever made. Sure the cut International version works but the full scale Japanese version is even better with the additional 20 minutes a serious contender for one of the best films of any sort ever. Movies don't get better than this.

MON MON THE WATER SPIDER- One of the most romantic films you'll ever see, and one of the best films Ghibli ever made...unfortunately it's not available outside of the Ghibli Museum, which is a gross injustice. Do what you have to to see this film because Movies don't get much better than this.

GRAVE ENCOUNTERS- I love this film. It up-ended expectations and forever wrecked ghost hunter TV shows in my eyes, not to mention scared the crap out of me.

SEMPER FI- How one man refuses to let the government screw the men and women who serve our country. I dare you not to cry- repeatedly. This is on the short list for an Oscar and deservedly so

ROMANTICS ANONYMOUS- Pure joy. One of the absolute joys of the year and one of the treats of Tribeca. Best of all it will make you feel good for months after you see it.

ABRAXAS- A movie to make you tingle all over. A monk finds that there are many oaths to god, even through punk rock. Its like the end of last years amazing Live Tape all over again.

A BOY AND HIS SAMURAI- Time traveling samurai as pastry Chef. Winner of the Audience award at NYAFF and rightly so. I have yet to meet a single person who has seen it who wasn't in love with it. This movie will make you feel good to be alive and then some. Why the hell doesn't this have a major US release?

MR TAPS HOLIDAY- Short film is so off kilter you'd never expect it to be one of the most touching films of the year. Why do I love the NYAFF so much? Because they always manage to find wonderful films like this.

RINCO'S RESTRAUNT- It made me feel stupidly happy on a level I can not explain. Rarely in all my life have I ever been made this blissfully happy by anything ever (except maybe only the birth of my niece). It's a wonderful film about life and miracles and cooking. Why isn't this out on DVD with good English subtitles?

MACHETE MAIDENS UNLEASHED- a perfect exploitation film, except it's documentary.

LAST RONIN- What happened after the story of the 47 Ronin is a kick in the chest and quite simply an awesome experience. When it was done no one in the audience moved for a good while. The film may have ended but we were all haunted by what we had just seen. If you want to understand honor, loyalty and duty see this film.

CAPTAIN AMERICA- They nailed it. Its a near perfect comic book on film. And had they not forced a connection to The Avengers it would be a perfect film.

LE HAVRE-Perfectly retro and modern. How do you make a modern update of a movie about the French Resistence? Make it about illegal immigrants. Its a realistic fable that makes you feel good. How good? I had to fight John about who was going to write it up (He kicked my ass thanks to Bully's help)

RESURRECT DEAD: THE MYSTERY OF THE TOYNBEE TILES - solving a real life mystery has rarely been so damn fun.

OLD FISH-I'm running a review in January for Chinese New Year, and all I can say until then is this was the called by anyone who saw it at the New York Asian Film Festival in 2009 as the best film of the year no one's seen. I'll say it again in 2011- its one of the best film almost no one in the US has ever seen. Its about a man who works in a bomb squad and its not what you expect--- and its basically true. (From the director of The Message which is mentioned below))

ADJUSTMENT BUREAU - Forget the science fiction, this is just a wonderful romance

WESTFRONT 1918- as devistating an anti-war film as they come. Find this film and see it. It will leave you talking to the screen.

ONCE UPON A TIME IN ANATOLIA- A perfectly paced meditation of life and murder (And it's out in theaters soon)

THIS IS NOT A MOVIE- Its something else, something more. Go see it when this comes out in a a theater near you (AND LETS GET ITS DIRECTOR OUT OF PRISON)

ANONYMOUS- Did Shakespeare write his plays? Does it matter? Not really since this is just a great tale.

PATIENCE AFTER SEBOLD- a true cinematic journey.

The second part of DRIELEBEN. Divorce it from the other two parts of its a trilogy and you have a wonderful film about the relationship of two old friends.

THE MESSAGE- An epic war film about secret codes and the resistence during the Second World War. It may not seem all that great on the first go through, but once you realize whats going on its an amzing piece of filmmaking.(This has the same director as Old Fish)

And lets not forget BRAID and SCRAPPERS which I talked about yesterday.

I'm reserving judgement about Coriolanus. I need to see it again to see to determine how good it is. Certainly Ralph Finnes has positioned himself to be a great director.

Death in Love (2008)

2012-01-03T07:15:00.000-05:00

I'm not sure what I make of this film. Its certainly its own film in a way that few films ever are. Is it any good? Your guess is as good as mine.

The plot of the film concerns a woman who survived the concentration camps by sleeping with one of the Nazi doctors. We also follow her two sons, one who is unnaturally attached to his mother and won't leave home, and the other a man who works at a questionable modeling agency and sleeps with a good number of women. Its a very sexual and dark tale that has everyone on a downward spiral into destruction.

I'm disturbed.

This is a trip into the dark side of the human psyche. Rarely have I ever seen the eroticism of death so clearly stated. There is a great deal of food for thought here, but I'm not sure it adds up to much. The people here seem to be some form of extreme cases and they border on certifiable which makes taking anything away from their exploits all that more hard to take. The performances are good and I understand why everyone took their roles, but I'm still struggling to work out what they were getting at.

Worth a look if you don't mind looking at the darkness and want to see a unique vision. All others stay away

DB's Finds of 2011

2012-01-02T18:01:00.008-05:00

What do I mean by finds? These are`the small joys of the year. Some are almost the best films; Some are no where near that; all have something special about them that made them stand out from all the other films. To me they are just really cool films worth revisiting and sharing.

I'm going to start by pointing out two films that come from people who have become friends of Unseen Films. These were films by filmmakers that I spoke with and who have made great things. Both are on the Best of the Year list but the discovery of their existence makes them top of the heap of real finds.

BRAID- Chun-Yi Hsieh's award winning short film about a desperate dad and his daughter is one of the best films of the year. I'm putting it here under finds because the real news is Chun-Yi Hsieh a filmmaker of amazing ability. I've seen several of his films and I can not believe at how good they are and how much better he gets with each film. As I reported back in November Braid continues to win awards and Hsieh is wading through numerous projects. Trust me, this is a talent that is going to dazzle us for years to come.

SCRAPPERS- Stephan Wassmann's film is a fantastic movie. Stephan Wassmann is a fantastic director. He's made a deceptively simple story about picking up scrap metal and turned it into something more. I can't say enough good about the film. It's been a while since I spoke to Mr Wassmann but when last I left he was trying to work on several projects relating to Scrappers. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Other finds of the year are:

VILLON'S WIFE- A non-cliched love story about an a drunk and the woman who will do anything for him. Best of all is the ending, which is as perfect as they come.

MIDNIGHT TAXI- Great Brian Donlevy crime film.

STORY TELLING SHOW-Fun and funny animated film about the power of parents telling stories. Wow.

BUKOWSKI- A perfectly told short trifle.

MARCEL THE SHELL- a grin and a smile and five minutes of pure joy (and I got to see the voice behind Marcel do a Q&A as Marcel)

DRIVE- The Sabu metaphysical masterpiece about life and Karma and existence, not the Ryan Gosling film. It will either drive you mad or make you smile from ear to ear at the wonder of it all. Me I still remember the Punk Rock scene and the talk of Karma with great delight

NINJA KIDS- Oh what fun this film is. Its Takashi Miike at his most wonderfully goofy. Watch it and become six again.

THE TROUBLESHOOTER- A pure slam bang popcorn film. Deep its not but damn its a great deal of fun.

UNJUST-Mean Nasty and ugly story of corruption from Korea. Who said we can't have great films like Sydney Lumet used to make because Lumet has died?

HEAVENS STORY- If this wasn't five hours long it would be one of the best films of the year. as it is it's still a haunting film about the wreckage left by senseless murders.

SWORD OF DESPERATION- Great samurai film... with almost no action.

Buzz Aldrin in the Transformers 3 made me smile. Something about that one moment sold the whole thing for me.

THE GUARD- An Irish Western with a great hero and a wicked sense of humor. One of the Joys of Tribeca

WINNIE THE POOH- a remake that nails the original source material perfectly. If only it wasn't just 65 minutes long.

A COLT IS MY PASSPORT- Spaghetti western yakuza film

MONTE CRISTO (1929) Talk about epic filmmaking. A French silent version of the Count of Monte Cristo is film making on the most majestic scale. I saw a short version- oh to get the full version in English (A review is coming in February)

THE SHRINE- a scary film transcends cliche

GOLGOTHA- A wonderful retelling of the life of Christ that is one of the most human you'll ever see.

444 LAST DAY- The world ends with a whimper and leaves us pondering everyone and everything. I suspect this will get better with each new viewing.

TIME OF EVE- Wonderful animated film who's only flaw is it doesn't end (damn TV series source)

INCIDENT AT TOWER 33- Possibly a perfect science fiction film about an alien and a water storage plant.

GNARR- A funny hopeful film that misses being on the best of the year list because it has no sense of who what where.... Please add titles for the VOD release in early February and I'll add it to the Best of the year list

LIAR AND THE BROKEN GIRL- What the hell was that? Cage rattling movie about kidnapping, its aftermath and true love. I'm still rattled six months later.

PUNISHED- Its great but it managed to get lost and just misses the best of the year list. Still Its Anthony Wong giving one of the best performances of the year in a film by one of the world's greatest directors.

THE GANTZ FILMS- Action Science fiction from the managa. If you view them as one super film it;s a masterpiece that just misses being on the best of the year because its got a few sequences that stop the film...and blow your mind (a twenty minute fight on a moving subway for example)

IF YOU MEET SARTANA PRAY FOR YOUR DEATH - First of the 4 or 5 official Sartana films is the introduction of a great character who truly kicks ass. I'll be running a review in March as a series of Spaghetti Westerns on the weekends.

These were all truly great films but the best and my favorites remain and I'll get to them tomorrow.

The Miracle of Marcelino (1955) (aka Marcelino Bread and Wine)

2012-01-02T05:58:00.002-05:00

What a strange film.

I’m still trying to deduce what I’m supposed to get out of it. I know some people have found it to be a wonderful uplifting film, I on the other hand find it really creepy.

The film begins with a priest visiting a young girl who is sick in bed. Everyone is going to a feast and she is sick in bed. He decides to tell her the story of Marcelino over her parents objections.(I’m not sure why they object other than it’s a weird story)

The story of Marcelino takes place in the wake of war. Much of the area was ravaged and is now being rebuilt. There is a fort like area that was destroyed but left in ruins. Some monks ask to be allowed to build a monastery on the site, and permission is granted. After the monastery is built a baby is left on the door step. The monks fall in love with the baby, which they name marcelino. However they know he can’t stay and they try to find the baby a good home but there are no takers. Realizing that there is no other choice they decide to raise the child themselves, more so when the richest man in the area, and a foe of the monks ask for the child. Five years on the Marcelino goes through life around the monks. There is still antagonism with the rich guy, but mostly things go on.

One day after recovering from a scorpion sting Marcelino ends up going into the attic where he becomes fascinated with a large life size Christ on a cross. One day he offers it bread and watcher and it comes down and takes it.

Things get weirder from there, with an ending that is really creepy.

Far be it for me to make judgments but I wouldn’t want anyone telling my kid this story, it’s one of scarier films I’ve seen all year and it’s not a horror film. In all honesty I can’t see what many people see in the film, nor could I understand the chatter on some message boards of people looking for this film. What is it that they click with?

For most of the film as Marcelino goes through life things are fine, it’s once he starts talking to Jesus that things go sideways. Sure Jesus is a sweet guy but his solution for bring on the mother and child reunion is well… not right.

I don’t know what to say.

If you want to see one of the stranger things I’ve seen in 2011 see this film, just be prepared for weirdness.

Happy New Year!

2012-01-01T22:02:00.007-05:00

DB here.

As we close out the first day of 2012 I’m going to take this time to look forward to whats ahead and to comment on some things that you may have seen commented on via Twitter.

First thank you for your patience with the New Years Trailers experiment. It was something that was kicked around by a couple of us here at Unseen. When we talked about it it was a seemingly good idea, but I'm not sure it was wholly successful.

The death this past week of writer/director/actor Don Sharp was a loss. Sharp was a director who helped set the tone for what we think of as the Mod British 1960’s with work on Hammer films (and later the TV series) such as Rasputin the Mad Monk, The Christopher Lee Fu Manchu films, and TV show the Avengers. In the 70’s he did action films like Callan, Hennesy, a version of the 39 Steps (which spawned a TV Show) and Bear Island before moving on to things like A Woman of Substance. His films were never the best of the best, but they were almost always enjoyable popcorn fare. He will be missed.

Also reported on Twitter was the glee I got from seeing Arthur Christmas. This is a great Christmas film about one of Santa’s son’s who goes to great lengths to make sure no one is forgotten. Its warm and funny and certain to become a classic once everyone gets a chance to find it when it hits home video (though it’s still playing in the odd matinee so if you can go see it.)

As you already know by the inclusion of the film on my Worst of the Year list as a Dishonorable Mention, I was not particularly happy with Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol. Yes, it has some great action set pieces, but the film is soulless and lacking in anything resembling characters. It’s a film that exists purely for the big action sequence. I am completely perplexed at how Brad Bird, a man responsible for some of the best character driven films of the last 15 years could make a film so empty. By the half way point in Dubai I was bored by it all.

My first film of the year was the critical hit Drive with Ryan Gosling. This is the second film I saw this year with the same title and with a similar philosophical bend in a 12 month period. The earlier film was by Japanese director Sabu and was so much better. As I said the film plays like an existential remake of The Transporter but with a low brow 80's soundtrack and bland performance by Gosling (that's not acting, its staring). I know its based on a novel, but it seems more like a riff on similar 70's and 80's films like Two Lane Blacktop, Vanishing Point, To Live and Die in LA, not to mention the similar titled The Driver from Walter Hill. Its not a bad film, as such, it's just that I think the people who are praising it haven't seen the earlier, better films in the genre. To me it's the one film that the critics have praised from 2011 that has left me wondering what film they saw.

I should remind you that tomorrow night I’ll be posting the film finds of the year. I’m following that up with my picks for the best/favorites on Tuesday night.

What’s coming up beyond that? This week are five mind bending films that make you go WTF was that. The week after is some really good random titles I had been meaning to get to and finally have. That will be followed by a week of Buster Keaton films, then nine days, and I'm still not sure how many titles, for Chinese New Year. Mr C is oranging it all and is still tinkering so you'll have to keep reading to see what shows up. From there we’ll have a week of Tarzan films, Women in Prison films, Alien invasion documentaries and lots of other goodies. (I have plans into June so don't expect anything to stop any time soon)

A new year means that the film festival season is starting all over again.

Look for extensive coverage of the Korean Cultural Service screenings which start on the 10th. The line up of the first four weeks is incredible, with two already having played New York at the New York Asian Film Festival in 2009 and 2010. These are group of films you really should see if you haven’t already. Details can be found here. Full reviews of every film will run a few days before each screening.

I have tickets for a couple of screenings for the New York Jewish Film Festival at Lincoln Center. There is a ton of good stuff this year and I’m hoping to get to more than the three films I have tickets to. The trouble this year is that the job that pays the bills has gotten complicated so I’m still not sure if I can take off for all I’d like to do.

I have tickets to see Haywire the Steven Soderbergh action film on January 17. It’s a sneak preview with the director and star in attendance. (Follow this link for details for both Haywire and the Jewish Film Festival).

For those who want to know what else is coming up at Lincoln Center you maybe interested to know that after the Jewish Film Festival there will be a Dance on Film series, the Complete Bela Tarr series and a look back at the work of Raquel Welch. In between will run assorted goodies including the Film Societies continuing look back at the NYFF on Tuesdays and the Family series on weekends.

Tickets go on sale for the BAM Kids Fest Wednesday. This is a winter festival aimed at kids up to ten. Last year I went to the screening of Moomins and the Comet Chase with John, Randi and Bully. The movie was great and the festival looked to be fun if you’re of the right age. Bully is and he had a blast. (We never officially ran a review of The Comet Chase, but don’t worry one has been scheduled)

I want to mention that we are just past the half way point at the Studio Ghibli retrospective at NYC’s IFC Center. This is all of the feature films from Nausicaa to Ponyo. Even if you have seen the films, but only on home video you really should go see them BIG. If you don’t live in New York you are in luck since G Kids is touring the retrospective around the country.

As for Gkids, their New York International Children's Film Festival runs from March 2 to 25. I'll let you know when tickets go on sale.

Just to remind you that we will take requests. Just email me with your ideas and we’ll give’em a go (just be patient about our posting the reviews)

I think that's it for now. Time to shuffle off to bed and get ready for the day job in the morning. I hope the holidays were good for you. Thanks for reading.

Video Nasties The Definitive Guide

2012-01-01T14:00:00.001-05:00

Three DVD set exploring the Video Nasty panic in the UK that resulted when movies were available on video tape. 72 films were determined to be too dangerous to be viewed by the public at large. Amazingly some people were actually prosecuted for releasing these films to the public.

The set contains roughly 12 hours of material, trailers of all of the banned films with commentary and image galleries. However at it's heart is the documentary Video Nasties:Moral Panic Censorship and Videotape, which is what I'm going to talk about.

The film begins with the reminder that the whole panic arose in a different time, a time when you either had to hope that a film played on TV or in a nearby cinema. There was no such thing as video on demand, and when it started you had to save a long time to get a machine that is roughly the size of a good size computer tower or say three or four Xboxes mashed together. It continues by saying that because the picture could be "bad" (especially compared with today's HD pictures) and because the image could be degraded you often could infer that things were worse than they really were (one guy talks about making a degraded copy of Cannibal Holocaust and passing it off as a snuff film)

From there the film is off and running talking to critics, filmmakers and assorted other people about what exactly happened in the UK that caused everyone to talk about so called video nasties.

The nasties were the graphic horror films that were flooding the home video market in the early days. These were usually low budget horror and exploitation films from the US and Italy (mostly) that graphically showed death and destruction. With titles like Cannibal Holocaust, Driller Killer, I Spit on Your Grave and the like these were stomach churning films that made some laugh, some throw up and freaked out the "right minded" folk who tried to regulate everything. In England the right minded folk started with the infamous Mary Whitehouse, a prim and proper woman who professed to know what was best for the youth or England.

This is a great documentary that carefully lays out what happened and why. For example the filmmakers explain that it wasn't always the films that got a movie into trouble but it's box, which was often lurid and eye catching since that was the only way to get a sale. They then go on to explain how the boxes could be seen by anyone and this bothered many parents. IAdd into the mix you have a few crusading journalists looking to sell papers and using terms that matched the comic book scare of the 1950's and you are heading for an explosion. That's even before you have the Thatcher government taking power just as crime was rocketing up and needing a scapegoat for all of the worlds ills.

As you can see this is the sort of documentary where you actually learn something in between all the clips of blood and gore. It's one of the films, like Machete Maidens Unleashed, where you have a film that is just as exploitative as the films it's documenting and all the better for it.

Watching the film I found that not only was I filled for nostalgia for many of the films caught up in the controversy (the vast majority of which I have seen), but I also understood the hows and whys of the censorship wars that played out not only in England but also here in the US since there was similar battles going on as far back as I can remember.

To me one of the most intriguing stories is how a video company sent the infamous Mary Whitehouse a copy of Cannibal Holocaust to provoke a reaction and get some publicity, only to have the whole matter blow up in their face when her reaction got the government involved and the film on the banned list. Talk about unintended fallout.

This is a great film and I would recommend it to anyone who wants to know about film history and censorship...or anyone who likes the sort of exploitation horror films that were covered under the bans. However just be prepared for copious amounts of blood and gore since this film has lots of clips.

The limited edition set I have also has tons of goodies. There's material from every film on the Nasties list both as trailers and as art. Its a solid 12 hours of material and is actually too much of a good thing. I've only watched the documentary and some of the trailers because frankly it's overwhelming.

Definitely worth tracking down if you can find it. Though be warned the set I have was a limited edition and is PAL encoded. Check places like Diabolik video for a copy.

New Years Trailers:Without Warning

2012-01-01T13:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers:Deadly Spawn

2012-01-01T12:00:00.001-05:00

New Years Trailers: Dr Phibes

2012-01-01T11:00:00.001-05:00

New Years Trailers: Equinox

2012-01-01T10:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Logan's Run

2012-01-01T09:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Rollerball

2012-01-01T08:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Death Race 2000

2012-01-01T07:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Beyond Atlantis

2012-01-01T06:00:00.000-05:00

New years Trailers: The Sword and the Sorcerer

2012-01-01T05:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Hawk the Slayer

2012-01-01T04:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Excalibur

2012-01-01T03:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Curse of the Crimson Altar

2012-01-01T02:00:00.001-05:00

New Years Trailers: Gigantis The Fire Monster

2012-01-01T01:00:00.001-05:00

Intermission Time!

2012-01-01T00:01:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Outland

2011-12-31T23:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Starcrash

2011-12-31T22:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Wizards

2011-12-31T21:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Golden Voyage of Sinbad

2011-12-31T20:00:00.001-05:00

New Years Trailers: Silent Scream

2011-12-31T19:00:00.001-05:00

New Years Trailers: Fade to Black

2011-12-31T18:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Brides of Blood

2011-12-31T17:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Mad Doctor of Blood Island

2011-12-31T16:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Dawn of the Dead

2011-12-31T15:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Battle Beyond the Stars

2011-12-31T14:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers :Dominique is Dead

2011-12-31T13:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Black Belt Jones

2011-12-31T12:00:00.000-05:00

New Years Trailers: Galaxina

2011-12-31T11:00:00.002-05:00

The Best of Sex and Violence (1981)

2011-12-31T10:00:00.005-05:00

The Best of Sex and Violence has a special place in my heart. It was the first time that I had ever seen any sort of collection of movie trailers. What’s the big deal about that?

Nothing except I love movie trailers. In a weird way I love them more than many movies. When they are done right they convince you that some god awful film about say snakes on a plane is actually gong to be good. A good trailer will get you to go out and see something that reason tells you isn’t very good. A great trailer will haunt you more than the film (the one for Black Belt Jones for example).

Back in the early days of home video you either had to go to the movies to see a trailer, hope that you had some thing like the trailer shows on E or Turner Classic or even HBO, or you had to rent a video tape, where like today’s DVDs the trailers were put on the front of movies. (An aside: back when I managed a video store one of the most rented film wasn’t any of the big films of the day, rather it was Children Shouldn’t Play with Dead Things directed by Porky’s Bob Clark and written by Alan Omsby. The film wasn’t why people were renting it. It was the trailer for Faces of Death that screened before it that everyone wanted to see.)

Somewhere along the way cable started running something called the BSV and I was in suddenly as happy as a pig in poop. Here was a movie that wasn’t really a movie; rather it was a collection of exploitation trailers all cut together. It was pure exploitation stuff like Attack of the Killer Tomatoes, Truck Stop Women, The Big Bird Cage and others. Best of all the trailers were introduced by a cranky John Carradine who comments and makes snide asides between the trailers. The film fits very loosely into the documentary category, more so than say It Came From Hollywood or some of the other compilation films which just had clips and the odd remark. (Another aside- it maybe apocryphal but I was once told that this was the only time that John and his two of his three actor sons, David, and Keith appeared in a movie together.)

Originally released in 1981, this had a brief theatrical run in a few theaters before arriving on home video where it developed a cult following which was enhanced by repeated cable screenings.

How good is this collection?

Simply consider that its still in circulation thirty years after it premièred. Yes you can see the trailers on You Tube and elsewhere, but there is something about the packaging, the John Carradine part that has kept the film as something that is still watched today.

If you can track down a copy do yourself a favor and see this.

Addendum:
Fullmoon Just released this on home video. Check Diabolik in the side bar for ordering information

--

This being New Years Eve we at Unseen are going to give you a treat that ties into BSV and tomorrows Video Nasties The Definitive Guide documentary and trailer compilation. We’re going to present a series of movie trailers one an hour until 2PM EST tomorrow. This is going to be broken up by an intermission at Midnight. When the series finishes tomorrow I’ll have a review of the Video Nasties (which is a look at the panic that resulted when horror films hit home video in the UK). The trailers are some of the best (family appropriate) exploitation trailers out there. So sit back, relax and check back often as Unseen goes Trailer crazy.

DB's Worst of 2011

2011-12-30T18:57:00.005-05:00

We're at the end of the year and it's time to take stock of what we've seen. The good, the bad and the ugly.

Today I'm going to be looking at the bad and the ugly. These are films which for the most part never graced this website. As you know Unseen is primarily concerned with pointing out good films and the films on this list certainly aren't good. This list is the real bottom of the barrel. Sadly, I saw even more bad films in 2011 but I've forgotten them, The films are this list are different, these are the ones that burned their badness into my brain that I can't forget them. These are the films and film experiences that scarred me for life in 2011.

I'll keep my comments brief about each one lest you try and find these films.

I'd like to start off by saying that the worst experience of the film going year was probably Susan Orlean non-talk on Rin Tin Tin. It was a self surviving pointless waste of an evening that was almost all about the speaker and little on the advertised subject. The film that followed her talk, Clash of the Wolves, was enjoyable, Orleans talk wasn't.

MANDATE MISSION FROM GOD- The Best thing I can say is it's a poor supernatural action film.

KINTA-Horrible film with various martial artists playing near slaves working in a mine. When they ask for better conditions the mine owner decides to kill everyone instead. Some of them escape and plot revenge. Bad music, bad computer blood effects, just bad.

DREAMS OF JINSHA- worst film I've ever seen connected with the New York International Children's film festival. Its so bad that it colored every film after it and made me ponder if the festival as a whole lost it's way. Of all the films they've run since they started this is the first film I couldn't understand why they ran it.

GRAY MATTER, BOMBAY BEACH, and THE KITE - the three pretentious low points of this years otherwise excellent Tribeca Film Festival. The less said the better.

TUNNEL- A short film from The New York Asian Film Festival is 15 minutes I'll never get back. Its proof that sometimes a director will tell a story out of order simply so he can trick the audience into not beating him up.

UNCLE TOM'S CABIN- A classic American novel desecrated by a German producer. You will laugh at all the wrong places.

MISS BALA- Jaw droppingly stupid film is the Mexican entry for the Oscars. It makes no sense on any level. The film would stop dead if our heroine simply did the right thing at any point, or behaved in a rational way. I should have left early on but I stayed because each new twist left me even more incredulous than before...

Special Dishonorable Award goes to Brad Bird.
The director of Iron Giant sells his soul to Hollywood and makes one of the biggest most spectaular films of the year. Don't get me wrong it's got great action, but little else. The story exists purely to get to the set pieces. As soulful and full of humainty is Iron Giant, Mission Impossible Ghost Protocol is as dead and souless. How can some one who has created some the screens best characters turn around and make a film with no one that has any real personality? MI4 is one of the emptiest film experiences of the year.

As I said there were plenty of other bad films, some probably worse than these,but these are the ones that have stayed with me like a parasitic twin or an intestinal blockage. I'm sure that 2012 will reveal several losers to me, but I really hope not.

Okay Onward and upward with the good stuff starting on Monday.

Hanna (2011)

2011-12-30T07:36:00.004-05:00

Living deep in a snow covered wasteland of Finland Eric Bana is raising his daughter to be a ruthless killing machine. Cut off the world he teaches her as best he can so she can survive in the world. There is a method to his madness, he is trying to protect her from Cate Blanchett who will do anything, anything, to get her hands on young Hanna. One day when Hanna professes to be ready, Bana brings out a tracking device. If she turns it on it will bring her into contact with the Blanchett; if she doesn't flip the switch they will continue on as before. She of course flips the switch and all hell breaks loose.

Saorise Ronan plays Hanna with an icy coolness. She is very good at what she does, but she is also a fish out of water. Once things are set in motion and Hanna is turned lose in the world she makes it very easy to believe that she can speak a variety of languages and kill you in 47 ways to Sunday but at the same time is baffled by how a light switch works. Its a tricky role that she manages to pull off wonderfully.

Cate Blanchett is hopefully a shoe in for at the very least an Oscar nomination. Playing one of the greatest villains you'll ever see on screen, Blanchett is the reason this film will have a long and healthy life in the years to come. Evil isn't strong enough word for what Blanchett is, she is somewhere else. Stuck in some sort of twisted neurotic world of her own she is the sort of vile creature that might give Hannibal Lechter a run for his money (though she is closer to Lechter of the books and the rough cut of Silence of the Lambs). Nothing is beyond her or her aim. I do warn you you will not like her in any way, she is pure demon and there is nothing to love about her.

The film itself is an odd mix of action and coming of age tale. As Hanna heads to the meeting with her father and her target she is forced to come to terms with growing up and dealing with a world that she only knows as abstractions. The things her father taught her can only take her so far. Its an intriguing tale that is not really like any other I've run across in film.

Its uniqueness helps the film over come some bumps in the road. These bumps come mainly in the cool distanced style of director Joe Wright. Wright seems to be very much going for a feel and a look for much of the film and this form over content weakens the film in places where a little bit more emotion could have been used. This is particularly the case toward the end of the film where things seem to be a tad neater than they should have been.

Still I like the film a great deal and find that I was thinking about the film for days after I saw it on home video.

Definitely worth tracking down.

A big thank you to long time friend of Unseen Film Miriam for pushing me towards the film. For those of you who haven't discovered her blog in the side bar I suggest you all go over and click on mimo studios or simply click here.

DB Looks Back at the Festivals of 2011

2011-12-29T19:06:00.009-05:00

Its the end of the year and time to look back. I'm going to be doing four posts covering the films and events that Unseen Films and I ran across. Tonight will be a look back at the festivals and other movie related events tonight. Tomorrow I'll do the worst of the year and then Monday and Tuesday I'll do the finds and then the favorites/best of the year. Outside of the worst of the year there probably won't be anything regular readers haven't seen but these posts will act more as a summing up for 2011.

First up the festivals.

Earlier I had written along rambling piece looking over the past year of film festivals and film series but it didn’t say much and it was kind of pointless since it just recapped everything. I’ve tossed that and I’m going to go with a few thoughts on the high points of the film festival year here in New York and one thing that really vexes me.

First and foremost I have to say that The New York Asian Film Festival is still the king of the heap. It’s a blast. Its two mad weeks of Asian film craziness and fun. I can’t thank Grady, Marc and everyone else enough for the incredible job they do every year. The festival has rocked for all the years I've gone and that now that it's at Lincoln Center with one of the best theaters in Manhattan at it’s disposal it's damn near perfect. Film Festivals don’t get better than this.

Right now the second best slot is a tie between the Korean Cultural Service (KCS) screenings and The New York International Children’s Film Festival.

The KCS screenings are as much fun as the NYAFF screenings but they happen every other week or so all through the year. If you want to find some real treasures of cinema you need to start going, because they are really high lighting some hidden gems. The only reason I’m not putting this not as high on the list as the NYAFF is that some of the films can be uneven and the schedule be erratic with the every other week schedule some times going weekly or monthly. If you don't stay on top of it you might miss something. It’s a minor thing but it makes planning sometimes difficult and I’ve missed a couple because of it. That said the next series starts on January 10th with a kick ass film The Frontline, which will be getting a review hopefully next week. (And keep reading us because we've mentioned and will continue to mention every screening before they happen)

New York International Children's Film Festival (NYICFF) was for a long time the equal of the NYAFF but this year things seemed to change. For the first time they scheduled a film that boggles my mind at its inclusion. Dreams of Jinsha is so dull and derivative that I can’t believe that anyone who would have seen it would schedule it, especially when it rips off so many Ghibli which they (under the GKids banner) are now releasing to theaters. The Festival also slightly censored a short documentary, a fact which didn’t sit well with me (as does the things they won’t run because parents might get upset, especially compared to some things they do run). I’m guessing its due to the fact that there has been a change over in management. The few new reservations aside, they are still among the very best NYC has to offer and I’m already jonsing for its month long series of goodies.

Talk about jonsing for goodies. I had a blast at this year at Tribeca Film Festival and I can’t wait to go back. I had a blast, I had a ball. I want to go back and do it all over again. This is movies as sensory overload. Simply put it’s too many movies in too short a time. I saw 54 features plus half that number in shorts. When it was done I had seen several of the best films of the year, a few of the worst and many many more I just can’t wait to see again. Everything I hated about the year before was corrected in spades. Best of all the volunteers are among the very best you’ll ever encounter. I can’t wait for the next one.

One of the finds of the year was the Brooklyn Film Festival. This is a wonderful warm fuzzy hug of a festival where everyone is nice and the movies are good or at least okay. I had a blast. How could I not have known about this before? This is the best kept secret of the New York film festival year. I got to meet Stephan Wassman and see his marvelous film Scrappers. I can’t wait for this years fest. It’s a glorious way to decompress after Tribeca. I’m really looking forward to doing this years festival from start to finish.

My home away from home is the Walter Reade theater at Lincoln Center. Over the past year I saw way too many movies in it’s warm confines and I always feel like I’m home when I walk in there. I have been to several screenings at the new Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center and its functional but its not as warm as the Walter Reed.

The Walter Reade is the home of the Film Society of Lincoln Center and I’m so glad I‘m a member. I love their programming. I love New Directors New Film, Scary Movies, Spanish Film Now, Film Comment Selects, French Cinema and pretty much everything else they do. Sure they occasionally misstep, but mostly if they program something it’s worth a look. I would include everything I like about them but it would be a way too long post just as to their wonders.

The one thing I’m puzzled by and the one thing that vexes me (as I mentioned at the top) is how the Film Society can get everything so right 50 weeks a year and then they go crazy for the New York Film Festival. I’m not saying the NYFF is bad, it’s not, its just that after attending the every film festival over the last ten years I can’t completely understand why the films at the NYFF vary in quality so wildly. Seriously after programming the great New Directors and Film Comment Selects and the French Series and the Spanish series and Scary movies all of which are filled with winning films, we get to the NYFF and suddenly we get a wildly eclectic selection of films that is all over the place in quality. This year you have say, the ecstatic highs of This is Not a Film and the lows of Mud and Soldiers. You have the finds of 99 Unbound and 444 Last Dayand the mainstream misses of Carnage. When you see more than a film or two its always like getting cinematic whiplash. Don't get me wrong the hits are always worth the misses, I just wish the Festival was more consistent as all their other offerings.

And with that rambling statement done and 2012 just days away it's time to look forward to 2012 and the Jewish Film Festival in mid January and the BAM Kids Fest in February. I hope you'll keep reading because we'll keep reporting.

Contagion (2011)

2011-12-29T07:54:00.000-05:00

I was resisting seeing Steven Soderbergh's Contagion when it was in theaters because it looked like a big budget big screen film with tons of stars that was geared to be deep and meaningful and make a ton of money because it had a ton of stars.

The film completely went out my head until toward the end of the theatrical run when I was looking for something to see and I stumbled a cross the film and remembering that it was suppose to be good I sat down to watch it.

And you know what? Its a damn fine film.

The plot of the film follows the out break of a deadly disease and how it affects people in government and people on the street. We meet victims, survivors, doctors, news people, and a variety of other people. The film takes us from day twp (we see day one at the end) to a point several months into the out break. Its a tale of sadness and fear and hope.

The star casting is in its way a stunt and kind of necessary. First the stars bring us in to the film, but because the film has so many characters running across its slightly less than two hour run time there is a good chance that we would be lost with out them. The ability to say look Jude Law or Matt Damon or Laurence Fishburne means that the characters are instantly recognizable as they pop in and out of the story. People like Gweneth Paltrow or Kate Winslett show up for a few scenes and then are gone for whole chunks of the film the fact its them means we don't have to think, who was that again when we see them later on.

The film itself is a frightening tale very much in the vein of the Andromeda Strain but tinged with the sensibility of something like Soderbergh's earlier Traffic. This is a plague across a vast canvas. Its a tale that is terrifying because it's very possible. Don't see this film if movies affect you deeply because you may go home and never come out of your house again.

I think it's one of the best films that Steven Soderbegh has made, which is saying a great deal.

If there is any real flaw in the film it's simply that it's too short. There are simply too many characters and it would have been nice to spend a bit more time with them.

If you want to see one of the better films of the year (I'll wait to see it again before I decide if it's one of the best) see this film.

Dogs of War (1980)

2011-12-28T18:29:00.004-05:00

On of the first films to star Christopher Walken, if not the first film to have him as the lead after he won an Oscar for the Deer Hunter. The film is based on a Frederick Forsyth novel. It concerns a New York based mercenary who is hired by a bunch of rich men to put a team together to bring about a regime change in a small African country. As Walken’s Jamie Shannon puts his team together and plans the raid he has to try and figure out if he would be better off hanging it up and doing something else.

Easily one of my favorite films of the 1980’s, possibly of all time, it’s a film that has hung with me ever since I saw it in a movie theater back in 1980 with my Dad and brothers. There is something about Walken’s quiet performance that has stuck with me when other films at the time had come and gone. I think perhaps it’s the fact that it was one of the first times where I saw a hero who seemed not to care, until he revealed that he did. One need only see the terrible retribution he takes for the death of a friend by shards of glass or the finale of the film where he screams “You’re late!” to the men who paid for the revolution, to understand just how much he really cares…

Actually Walken’s performance is different depending on where you see the film. What I mean by this is that the original US release version of the film is 16 minutes shorter than the version shown in the UK. In the UK version there is an expansion of the Walken role with scenes that give him a more human edge, in particular between him and the young boy who always seems to he sitting on his couch when he’s home. This addition material greatly enhances an already excellent film and makes it much better. Why the film isn’t available in the US is a matter that confuses me since one would think that they would have at least included it as deleted scenes on the DVD.

The material has only been released in the US on the now long out of print laser disc. As for being able to get it from the UK, you apparently can’t get it since the UK DVD is the cut US release- a fact prompted a call from Amazon UK when they heard me cry out in anguish when I popped in my import DVD and found it was short 16 minutes. (Its missing nature could makes this film the sort of thing that would have allowed me to include this in last weeks films we were never suppose to see)

This is a perfect thinking man’s action film. I know that some action films don’t like the film because there isn’t enough action. There is some action at the start, a little bit in the middle and a full on assault at the end. Mostly there is talk and the planning, which I find absolutely gripping because as Walken’s reconnaissance trip proves things don’t always go right. To my mind the climatic battle comes at the perfect moment to release all of the tension built up.

As you can tell, I really like this film a great deal. I like the cast which includes some of my favorite character actors (Tom Berringer and Colin Blakely) I also like that this film has a great early performance by Walken who, while a tad stiff and very intense is free of all of the ticks and lazy habits that have made many of his more recent film roles more fun cartoons rather than real people. This is not a role that you can make fun of.

Actually what I like most about the film is it’s just a great rip roaring tale. If you like well made, well thought out and wonderfully acted action films- especially where nothing has been computers have been used to enhance the action- see this film.

Currently out on DVD

Chaplin's Goliath

2011-12-28T06:23:00.000-05:00

This story of Eric Campbell is a great way to learn about a man who is an iconic film presence (he started with Chaplin in 11 of his First National Films) but who had his life and screen career cut short by a tragic car accident (he only did the Chaplin films)

This is a 50 minute film about one of the lost sons of Scotland. Campbell was born in the lat 19th century and through circumstance drifted into acting. His huge physical stature made him some one you remembered once you saw him. Oddly he had a sweet and handsome face that was hidden by garish make up in his film roles. Campbell eventually found his way into the Karno troop that would bring Chaplin and Stan Laurel to the US. Everyone went every which way and it wasn’t until several years later that Chaplin reconnected with Campbell when he was starring in a broadway show. Chaplin scooped up his friend and the rest is cinematic history.

The life and times of Campbell are not a completely happy one. As his fortunes rose with Chaplin tragedy struck close to home with the death of his wife and a marriage to a gold digger and death in relatively rapid succession. It’s a story that I never knew until I saw this wonderful little film.

Seeing the film I was torn, here is such an iconic person, who only made a hand full of films and deserving of a really detailed telling of his life that will put him back into the public eye, however time and the brevity of his life make that kind of impossible short of a narrative film. I loved (and was heartbroken) by what I saw in this film, and I didn’t want it to end.

This is a super little film, that manages to do what it seeks to do, namely reveal the life and times of a great actor who was lost much too early.

Highly recommended.

(Though see if you can rent it since the film only runs 52 minutes and there are no extras on the DVD)

Ghost Rider (2007)

2011-12-27T05:54:00.000-05:00

Clunky comic adaptation is some where toward the middle of the pack of big screen comic stories. After the set up of young Johnnie Blaze selling his soul to save his dad, the story jumps ahead to Johnnie as supreme motorcycle daredevil. He reunites with his childhood sweetheart (left because of guilt over what happened to his dad) just as Mephistopheles returns to have Johnnie fulfill his end of the bargain. Blaze must stop Blackheart from getting a contract for 1000 souls which will result in hell on earth. Mephistopheles sweetens the pot by promising Johnnie his freedom if he completes the task. And with that Ghost Rider is reborn.

After a slow set up the movie kicks into high gear with the first appearance of Ghost Rider. Here we have the comic come to life and its fun on a purely comic level. This is not the deep musing of Spiderman, the solid novel like quality of Batman Begins, nor the the misdirected but interesting occult Constantine, this is the sort of thing that regularly graced the 22 pages of the comic book in four colors, its pure mindless cheese that hooks you on the "oh thats so cool" level of the visuals and ideas, even though it makes no logical sense. It hasn't been pumped up for real movie life, rather its the comic come to life, with its lack of complexity intact.

Sue me I liked the film-or at least I did once Ghost Rider shows up. Its just those neat four color panel books I used to read but up there on the big screen.

Classic? I think not.

Mindless popcorn flick? most definitely. If you take it on its terms I think you'll enjoy it, especially once it gets going. Hell, it even has Sam Elliot, what more could you want? Worth a look, especially if you want to be brought up to speed before the belated sequel hits theaters soon.

Cinderella Man (2005) : Celebrating boxing day!

2011-12-26T03:59:00.000-05:00

Director: Ron Howard
Stars: Russell Crowe, Renee Zellweger, Craig Bierko, Paul Giamatti
Genre: boxing drama, biography

I couldn’t find a more fitting way to celebrate Boxing Day on December 26 than to shine a spotlight on the real life story of light heavyweight pugilist -- the bulldog from north bergen -- the pride of New Jersey, James J. Braddock! He was a tremendous inspiration to many americans during the time of the great depression when our country needed a shot in the arm during a very dark period of economic duress. Cinderella Man would be a great representation that told the tale of his struggle!

Yes, this film is about a professional boxer, but in essence, it was really more about the undying love between a man, his family, & how they stuck together as he remained true to himself while he used boxing as a vehicle to lift his family from poverty which would give working class americans throughout the country something to cheer for at a time when bringing food to the table was a major concern.

The outstanding performances by Russell Crowe as James J. Braddock, Renee Zellweger as the wife, & Paul Giamatti as Joe Gould the trainer clearly stood out from the pack! Even the boxing sequences and choreography seem to be on par with the fighting style from that era. The movie did a great job depicting Braddock as a humble, working class family man while his trainer was a boisterous, in your face brazen individual. A nice combination of personalities that would play off each other well in the game of boxing. All the while, Braddock’s wife would stand by his man as he struggles to provide for his family when the great depression hit hard in 1929. It didn’t help the situation when the Bulldog of Bergen lost his stock as a major heavyweight title contender when he lost a 15 round fight to Tommy Loughran in 1929. Braddock’s stronghold as a fighter began to plummet as did Wall Street. On 9/25/1933, 4 years into the great depression, the BullDog lost a fight to Abe Feldman in Mt. Vernon, NY. Compounded with injuries, the boxing promoters begin to label Braddock as an embarassment in the ring, not living up to his expectations. The bulldog of bergen would soon find himself with a revoked boxing license as his life begins to spiral downwards. Working on the docks as a day to day laborer would be his source of income which is part time at best. No matter how bleek the situation got, Braddock would spend time to show love and preach morality to his kids. A trip to the Emergency relief system of NJ to collect funds would be in order for the family as the electricity is turned off due to non payment. A trip to Madison Square Garden bowl to visit his former boxing contigency including his ex-trainer would reveal a touching scene with him begging for assistance as a broken down man wilted before their eyes.

The latter part of the film would be more upbeat when a 2nd chance at life is given to the Bulldog of Bergen as his trainer, Joe Gould manages to get a bout in the ring with the #2 heavyweight contender John “Corn” Griffin as his original opponent had to pull out of the fight. The selling point in signing Braddock for this match was that he had 80+ fights without ever getting knocked out so a Griffin win would make him even more marketable. However, on the day of the fight & 3 rounds in, the Bulldog would flash his new left hook as he developed his southpaw tendencies while working at the docks due to the broken right hand from earlier fights as he KO’s “Corn” Griffin for an upset win! A few more successful prerequisite fights would climax into a championship bout with the cocky and menacing Max Baer! That famous fight would become known as the cinderella man bout! And we all know what the final result would be! Long island City, Queens would play host to one of the biggest upsets in sports history! The pride of North Bergen, NJ would eventually lose his title to the Brown Bomber -- Joe Louis who was one of the greatest fighters of all time!

If you are looking for a rags to riches, Rocky Balboa story or a dramatic train wreck like Raging Bull then you should steer clear of Cinderella Man. James Braddock offers a much more subtle, heartwarming tale in a not so heartwarming economic frame of mind in american history. There were no fairy tales despite the cinderella name. And there definitely were no glass slippers nor pumpkins turning into carriages. The bulldog of bergen, the pride of New Jersey was all blood, sweat, tears, and full of persistence with a little help from some family lovin’!! A true local hero, Braddock went on to serve our country in World War II.

As an interesting side note, pay close attention to the character named Mike in the movie. Mike (Paddy Considine) was a dockworker friend of Braddock in the film. The character talks about instituting work unions & organizing people in order to rebel against the government in order to make change. I thought that was real mind blowing and courageous despite the odds. He also stayed at a self-made shack in central park in an area they called ‘hooverville’ because they were evicted from their home. Many of the homeless would take refuge at the park.

Go see Cinderella Man if this film somehow bob and weaved away from your defense in 2005! Enjoy & appreciate boxing day, folks!!

The River Murders (2011)

2011-12-25T19:08:00.001-05:00

Where did this movie come from? I was sure that this was going to be a time waster, instead I find it to be a wonderful little thriller in the twisted serial killer genre.

The plot has a series of murders happening around happily married cop Ray Liotta. At first it's an unhappy coincidence that he knows one of the victims, but it quickly transpires that he knows all of the victims since they were all past lovers. The who is doing it and why is the film.

Liotta is wonderful as is everyone in the cast including Ving Rhames and Christian Slatter. This group of greatly under appreciated thespians take what is for some of its running time, a cliched film, and keep you watching until the final 20 minutes... its at that point as all of the plot points come to together that the skin begins to crawl on you body as you realize where this might be going...and it's not pleasant.Or to put it another way I did say "Oh that's just wrong", a couple of times

I'm not going to lie and say it's perfect. It's not. Odds are you will get several plot points ahead of the detectives, but at the same time the film builds a nice tension that keeps you watching and makes you uncomfortable in the final half hour. It may not be the be all and end all of murder mysteries but damn does it pack a bit of a kick.

Definitely worth watching, as the emails, phone calls and tweets I sent after finishing it will attest.

This is currently out on home video and worth tracking down.

K Gordon Murray's Santa's Fantasy Fair

2011-12-25T05:18:00.001-05:00

K Gordon Murray, the man responsible for many of the films we ran back around Halloween cut and pasted clips from many of those films into this holiday family spectacular....

...I use the term loosely.

Santa gets ready to head off from his cloud city at the north pole. He winds up his clockwork reindeer and then heads off. On earth we see 3 kids plotting to jump Santa to get the toys, a poor mother trying to comfort her daughter and a devil on a roof top. After playing a game of moving chimneys with the devil the Santa portion of the film stops and we get clips from various children's films:

An abbreviated version of Puss in Boots.
A section from the end of Little Red Riding Hood
Part of a version of Rumpelstiltskin
Some of the Pied Piper of Hamlen starring Van Heflin
The story of the Golden Goose.

The film then finishes up with Santa as he resolves the various threads.

This is one of three or four films that K Gordon Murray put together using new holiday shorts to bridge clips from his other feature films. If I remember correctly they were advertised in such away that you seemed like you were getting a couple of features instead of clips. I can imagine parents being outraged at thinking they were getting more than 90 minutes of entertainment for their kids.

To be honest I can't really recommend this film in any conventional sense, however if you saw any of the films we reviewed back around Halloween then you might be interested in seeing how those films were recycled over and over again. This is also the sort of film that anyone who is interested in what used to shown in the waning days of Kiddie Matinees will want to check out.

I'm not sure what the status is of this film or the the Murray films in general, since I know his estate have been trying to regain control of the films from the collectors market, however I kind of suspect that they think the films have a bigger audience then the small one of twisted individuals like myself who remember the films with a fondness. If you're interested I suggest looking on line and at collectors shows.

Where God Left His Shoes (2007)

2011-12-24T09:55:00.000-05:00

This is one of the small films that Unseen Films was started to highlight. Its a good little film that isn't great, but is definitely worth seeing. It's also one of those small independent films that are going to fall into the darkness if no one shines a light on it. This then is our shining a light on Where God Left His Shoes.

John Leguizamo stars as a father whose family ends up in a homeless shelter at Christmas time. On Christmas Eve he gets word that an apartment they applied for is there's however a catch, he must have a job by five pm that day in order to get it. Leguizamo and his son then head off in an effort to find a job so that they will have a home on Christmas morning.

Darkly hopeful tale about the power of family to make things alright is an okay film.

It's a great looking film that really feels like New York at the holidays, but at the same time it feels very much like a film that is wearing its independent nature on its sleeve like a badge of honor. The result is that the film never fully clicks. To me the film seems like its trying too hard to be about something.

I'd like to give points to Leguizamo for a nicely rounded portrait of a family man trying to do the best he can. It's a warts and all portrayal that helps keep his character some one we want to watch.

Worth a look if the subject matter interests you

The Korean Cultural Service starts 2012 with a bang

2011-12-23T22:14:00.001-05:00

DB here.

I just got in from some holiday festivities to find an email in my inbox with the line up of films for the Korean Cultural Services January and February free screenings...Christmas has arrived early.

While I have not seen the first film, I do know that the remaining ones kick serious butt. I saw Rough Cut and Secret Reunion at the New York Asian Film Festival and both are must sees ( and if I remember correctly, when Rough Cut ran at the NYAFF there was a near riot when fans of the star tried to push their way in to see him at the screening.) The final film in the series White Night, I only know by reputation but it's excellent.

Look for me to be attending some if not all of the films.

And with out further adieu here's the line up:

Korean Movie Night
from January 10, 2012 – February 28, 2012
courtesy of the Korean Cultural Service

Every other Tuesday @ 7pm
Tribeca Cinemas
(54 Varick Street, on the corner of Canal Street, one block from the A, C, E and 1 train Canal Street stops)

Price? Free.
All seating is first-come, first served. Doors
open at 6:30pm.

Series 1: Jang Hun Plus One!

Jang Hun started out as an assistant director to Kim Ki-Duk, but with his first film, Rough Cut, he established himself as Korea’s answer to Steven Soderbergh: a director making big budget movies with an independent sensibility. Rough Cut, Secret Reunion and The Frontline have all become massive box office hits without making an compromises or talking down to their audiences. To round out the trio of movies in this mini-retrospective, we’re including White Night, another crime film that transforms itself into something dark, glittering and truly amazing.

Tuesday, January 10 @ 7pm
THE FRONTLINE (East Coast Premiere, 2011)
One of the biggest hits of 2011, The Frontline is the simple story of a hill: Aerok Hill, a small rise on the Eastern Front of the Korean War that changed hands 30 times over 18 months of fighting. A military investigator is dispatched to see if allegations that the South Korean soldiers tasked with taking the hill are collaborating with their North Korean enemies to deliver letters to their families. It turns out that they are, and that’s the least of it. A movie about men (and some women) trying to hold onto their humanity in the midst of war, Frontline is Korea’s official submission to the Academy Awards.

Tuesday, January 24 @ 7pm
ROUGH CUT (2008)
Kim Ki-Duk wrote this high concept knuckle-buster about a spoiled actor, famous for playing gangsters, who hires a real-life gangster to appear in his new flick. It sounds like nothing but a pile of cliches, but Jang Hun ignores the traditional approach and instead focuses on the volcanic, boiling testosterone that drives the conflict between a man used to getting his way because he’s famous, and a man used to getting his way because he’s violent. The seduction of filmmaking, the appeal of acting and the temptation of a street brawl all exert their siren song on the two studs in suits at the heart of this film: superstar So Ji-Sub, surprisingly, playing the gangster and Kang Ji-Hwan as the actor.

Tuesday, February 15 @ 7pm
SECRET REUNION (2010)
Two of Korea’s best actors face off in this blockbuster action flick that manages to be sly, subversive and really funny while delivering white knuckle thrills. Song Kang-Ho (The Host) is a South Korean secret agent who fumbles a sting operation on a North Korean spy. Pop star Gang Dong-Won (Haunters) is the North Korean assassin who has been embedded in the South. After the botched operation, both men are cut loose by their respective agencies and Song becomes a private eye, while Gang sinks into deep cover, trying to survive long enough to go home. Years later, they cross paths and what audiences are treated to is a buddy movie to end all buddy movies.

Tuesday, February 28 @ 7pm
WHITE NIGHT (North American Premiere, 2009)
White Night is a sprawling, evil epic about an unsolved crime that happened 14 years previously that has spilled its poison out over the subsequent years. Based on a best-selling Japanese novel, and featuring a riveting performance by Ko Soo, star of The Frontline, director Park Shin-Woo turns this movie into a slick, beautifully realized film about true evil, as a detective refuses to let go of this single case, instead insisting on following its threads for years no matter where they lead. And where they lead is dark and truly shocking. This hit film has been called the best Korean film of 2009 by several critics and once you’ve seen it, it’s hard to forget

1776 (1972)

2011-12-23T06:41:00.003-05:00

As we close out our week of films we were never suppose to see and head into the holiday weekend I want to take a look at a great holiday film 1776.

Okay it’s not related to the holiday that is Sunday, but it still is a holiday film. Its also not a film we were never suppose to See, rather it has a sequence which was relatively recently restored to the film with in the last couple of decades.

Based upon the Broadway stage play about the writing of the Declaration of Independence by Peter Stone and Sherman Edwards 1776 is also nominally a musical since it contains several songs, however the songs are used sparingly and used to enhance what is going on in some sequences as a kind of short hand. If you think of songs like “He Played the Violin” you have the entire relationship between Thomas Jefferson and his wife laid out in the course of a few minutes. Similarly a song like “Sit Down John” lays out John Adams and the congress with a skill that ten pages of dialog couldn’t do.

At other times the film (and the show) ignores music and goes simply for drama. I mean when was the last time that you can remember where a musical didn’t have any music for around 45 minutes?

The films strengths are many beginning with Peter Stone’s well researched script. As you will hear if you listen to the DVD commentary or read the notes Stone wrote for the play’s script, pretty much everything you see is what happened. To be certain there has been some changes but all of the major points are there and can be backed up via documentary evidence. I’ve played the commentary track for friends who thought the film was a light hearted goof only to walk away with a deep respect, this is, in many ways what happened.

Another of the strengths is that the producers of the film pretty much brought the entire Broadway cast to Hollywood and had them recreate their roles. It’s a stunning move that not only manages to record the show in some form, but it also allows for well worn a nuanced performances which are the result of having played the roles hundreds of time.

The film, as it now is on DVD, contains a recently restored sequence for the song Cool Considerate Men. This is a number sung by the Southern delegates about their attitudes and how they view themselves. It’s a nice song but it’s probably the one truly extraneous song in the entire play. I suspect it existed in order to give the leads some time off stage and to allow some of the vast cast something to do other than be background. Originally included on the laser disc as a black and white clip inserted back into the film (how the sequence was first found) it was later found included on the DVD in color.

Personally I think the film should have been left out of the film since its inclusion stops the film dead. Its not a bad song, but it serves no real purpose in the film. As I said the song filled time on stage, but having seen the show when it played on Broadway a decade ago with Brett Spiner in the lead I can say it should have been cut there as well.

One weak song aside you really owe it to yourself to see this film, especially on DVD where you can listen to one of the best commentary tracks you’ll ever run across.

Thief and the Cobbler- The Recobbled Cut

2011-12-22T07:03:00.002-05:00

The story of the Thief and the Cobbler is pure Hollywood legend. Begun in 1964 the film went in and out of production for the next 28 years. It was begun by animator Richard Williams who had the film yanked away from him when a completion bond company pulled the film away. It was then finished (in a manner of speaking) by others. It was then cut and recut and released in several editions, none of which really match what was intended. Eventually the film was put back together by fans in a form that kind of approximates what Williams intended...

...but it's a version that we are not suppose to see....

The plot of the film has the lives of a cobbler, a thief and princess intertwining when the thief’s attempts at stealing from the cobbler results in the cobbler being arrested by Zigzag, the kings lead advisor. The princess takes a shine to the young man and conspires to keep him out of the dungeons. As the story unfolds the advisor attempts to seize control of the kingdom with the help of an evil horde lead by One Eye.

As I said at the start the film was begun by animator Richard Williams in 1964, who wanted to make the greatest animated film ever made. Diving into various myths and legends he began to cobble together (no pun intended) story set in an Arabian setting. He brought in various actors such as Anthony Quayle, Vincent Price and, for one line Sean Connery. Funding was, for a while, entirely independent with Williams struggling to find and keep backers (a member of the Saudi royal family gave money to the production only to be frustrated by missed deadlines and wild cost over runs).

Eventually after winning two Oscars for Roger Rabbit Williams found big studio backing but ran afoul of the completion bond people when the spiraling out of control cost mixed with one too many missed deadline and they pulled the plug…and seized control.

What happened next was that the bond company had someone come in and finish the film. Actually what he did was re-cut, reshoot and re-dub the film… It was released as Arabian Adventure to mixed critical acclaim and zero box office. The film was then re-cut and redubbed again and released as the Princess and the Cobbler to DVD.

None of the released versions of the film (there are at least six) are really what Richard Williams intended (for one thing neither the thief nor the cobbler ever speak in the original and they do in all other versions). All we could do was kind of look at the release versions and wonder at what the film would have been had Williams finished it.

Actually we can do more than that, we can actually see what Williams was up do thanks to a bootleg and unofficial release called the Recobbled Cut.

Using a work print that Williams put together for backers and combining it with footage from the “finished” film (the various versions) we now can see the film in all it’s glory. (The work print apparently has been floating around on VHS since Williams first put it together)

The first thing you’ll notice when you see the Recobbled version is that the film is a mixture of finished footage, pencil tests and storyboards (which Williams only created for the work print to show what had yet to be filmed).

The next thing you’ll notice is that the vocal track is different than any other version. First off neither the Thief nor the Cobbler speak (except for the Cobbler’s final line). Secondly outside of Vincent Price the voices are pretty much all different.

The last thing you’ll notice is the film is infinitely better than it was in any of the previous versions.

Until I saw the Recobbled Cut I never much cared for the film. It was beautiful to look at but it just didn’t really work. Bits seemed to just be there (The dialog for the non-speaking characters for example) while other bits which were the result of the restructuring never seemed to work. Watching the released versions of the film it was easy to believe the stories that Williams had simply been making things up as he went along, that there was no real central plot and that Williams was never going to be finished.

After seeing the Recobbled Cut, my opinion changed. No longer was the film a near total mess on every level but a visual one. Here was a very messy but certainly solid fable…actually I would be hard pressed not to say it’s one of the top five animated films from a visual stand point ever created. The visuals in this version simply are more spectacular then in the release ones.

You’ll notice the qualifier there, and I have my reasons for not making a blanket statement about it’s quality, which is basically, as I said, it’s a very messy film. What do I mean by Messy? Sequences go on to long, there are dead spots, the lack of dialog from the main characters, while better than the nonsense they spoke in other versions, often makes things seem empty. The film could use a very gentle trimming. That said the film is a visual delight and you completely understand what Williams was going for.

If you want to see what the film could have been and should have been you need to try and track this film down.

Sadly the Recobbled Cut is not readily available. Its something that is floating around in the grey area of the internet and something that can be had at various conventions where DVDs of questionable sources are sold. Its also something that is handed off from collector to collector. Ultimately it’s a copyright violation…

…which may someday, maybe perhaps have something of an official release. What I mean by this is that before he broke with Disney Roy Disney had been shown a version of the Recobbled cut and was so impressed that he had a restoration of the film started at the studio (Disney owned Miramax at the time and they owned rights for release). Unfortunately once Roy broke with the company the restoration was stopped. Perhaps, if we are lucky the studio will start up again and give us a pristine version of the film as Williams intended.

(For a full accounting of the film's history the wikipedia entry can be found here.)

Capsule Reviews 12/21/11 - Mystery

2011-12-21T18:49:00.002-05:00

Great Hospital Mystery
Uneven comedy mystery involving bank robbery and murder around a big hospital. It starts with a parolee getting carjacked outside of a bank robbery. In order to hide out he goes to a friend in a hospital and they decide to fake his death. From there we end up of misdirection and murder.

A good mystery is under cut by a boneheaded nurse who has been inserted for comic relief. She's so loud that you tire of her nonsense instantly. I liked it but I wish it was better and less silly.

(The film spawned two sequels)

Preview Murder Case (1936)
Someone first threatens and then kills people connected with one film at a film studio. Reginald Reginald Denny investigates.

Robert Florey sends up life in a film studio in an okay murder mystery. It's more intriguing for the throw away stuff then the main plot which never seems to be what Florey is interested in.

Watching the film I was shocked at how retro the film felt. It seemed more like a film from 1931 or 1932 as opposed 1936. There is a denseness to to the staging with everyone all crowded around the center of the frame. You got this in early sound films because of the mics- but not in 1936.

It's good but it's not quite great.

Secret Six (1931)
The title sounds like a super hero movie but it's not.

Its about a Victor McLaughlin who works in the stock yards in Chicago. His buddy Ralph Bellamy brings him into the bootlegging business where he excels and eventually takes over for Bellamy. Into the mix comes Jean Harlow, Johnny Mack Brown, and some guy named Clark Gable, who impressed MGM so much they made him into a superstar (actually watching him he did it on his own- they just signed him). Its a crime pays until the final fade out tale that Hollywood used to do so well.

This is a dense potboiler of a film. Its full of great characters and sets and lines and is super meaty. The trouble is it's almost too much. Actually it is too much and too knowing. This is a big budget picture and it knows it, wearing it on it's sleeve. It's the sort of attitude that kind of gets in the way since it has too polished.

I like the film, though the film to me is more curio for the casting and the filmmaking. rarely have I ever seen a film quite like this (the title refers to a band of good citizens who hide their identity to trip up our antihero.

Definitely worth a look. Its something you'll probably like more than love and which you'll sing it's technical and casting praises more than it's story