Reviews

It was only out of dedication to Slackerwood that I decided to brave the Fantastic Fest 2010 closing-night film, 13 Assassins (Jûsan-nin no shikaku). I had a very understandable reluctance to see anything directed by Takashi Miike, having once heard my brother describe the "awesomeness" of Audition to me in intense detail. I know he's made family films, but I was still justifiably wary of a Miike movie with the word "assassins" in the title. Let's face it, I am squeamish about certain kinds of violence in movies.

Fortunately, 13 Assassins had no more violence and gore than a Sam Peckinpah movie. In fact, if Peckinpah had decided to remake The Seven Samurai, this might have been the result. "No more gore than Peckinpah" doesn't exactly mean we're in G-rated territory, but I can deal with limbs and heads being sliced off, as long as it's done relatively quickly and not as lingering scenes of torture. A whole lot of people are brutally killed in 13 Assassins, but it's mostly straightforward death in battle. One character has been tortured and mutilated, but we only see the results at a later date, we don't have to watch it happening. Thankfully.

13 Assassins is actually a remake of a 1963 Japanese film, with a traditional story. This version is set near the end of the shogun/samurai period of Japanese history in the mid-19th century. Lord Naritsugu (Gorô Inagaki) has amply demonstrated that he is psychotic, and his actions have brought shame on the shogun. The shogun has asked Sir Doi (Mikijiro Hira), the leader of his samurai, to take care of Naritsugu in a non-public way ... and to do so before Naritsugu reaches the Akamai district, where he where he will be named as the shogun's second in command.

In a festival filled with brutality and and splatter effects, one might think a straightforward rom-com would get lost in the gore. But Drones was not only a refreshing break, but stands on its own as a witty tale of an office romance with a twist ... aliens.

Yes, aliens. Yet the film contains no CGI, no prosthetics or special cosmetics, just a guy and a gal and impending alien invasions. "Boy meets girl but she's an alien" is not a new plot device, but writers Ben Acker and Ben Blacker capture interpersonal dynamics with dry wit while embedding a science-fiction theme within a very typical office, although with a very unusual copy machine. 

Brian (Jonathan M. Woodward, Firefly) is a dedicated worker bee of an office drone, who has a crush on Amy (Angela Bettis, May) across the aisle. Brian's best friend and coworker Clark (Samm Levine, Inglourious Basterds) pushes Brian into finally asking Amy out. Things get complicated when Brian finds that his girlfriend isn't just out of this world, she's from out of this world. And so is his best friend.

I have a fondness for geek characters in movies -- they're often oddly attractive underneath those glasses, and I find it attractive when they start talking about mathematical formulas or programming code or scientific theories. What can I say -- I knew my husband was the man for me when he made a joke about how he'd be happy to put Linux on my computer. Go figure.

So naturally I enjoyed watching The Social Network, although I must admit that Jesse Eisenberg's portrayal of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is one of the few geek characters I would not want to spend any time with, or make dreamy eyes over, even if he were closer to my age. Eisenberg may bear a slight physical resemblance to a geek guy I dated in college, but the minute his character opens his mouth, it's hard not to want to give him a good smack.

The Social Network is based on the real-life birth and development of Facebook, which Zuckerberg started while at Harvard, trying to prove himself so he could get into a Final Club. The movie jumps back and forth from the main timeline of the early days of Facebook, to scenes where characters in earlier scenes are giving depositions for two Facebook-related lawsuits filed against Zuckerberg.

A thriller based on a Beatles song, Golden Slumber (Gôruden suranbâ) is one of the most absurdly satisfying odes to friendship captured on film. Yoshihiro Nakamura's latest adaptation of a Kotaro Isaka novel pits the laid-back Aoyagi (Masato Sakai) against an assassination conspiracy wrapped up in revelations about trust.

Aoyagi's plans to catch up with a college buddy (Hidetaka Yoshioka) for a fishing trip are thwarted when the Prime Minister is assassinated. Suddenly the school day reminiscences are over as Aoyagi has been targeted as the prime suspect and it seems impossible he'll survive the day. Help comes from the most surprising of places as friends old and new make it their business to help the fugitive Aoyagi stay half a step ahead of corrupt police and the media. Just who his true friends are, and how they help or hurt him, make Golden Slumber seem like a movie half its 239-minute run time.

Filled with comic absurdities, Golden Slumber is filled with equally surreal characters, including a cheerful serial killer (Gaku Hamada), timid friend Gus (Gekidan Hitori) whose obsessed with Aoyagi's previous claim to fame, his coworker (Kiyohiko Shibukawa), a college sweetheart (Yuko Takeuchi), and a hospital patient (Akira Emoto) obsessed with the story as it's played out on TV. Each character, no matter how long they're on screen, plays a vital part in Aoyagi's story.

Last year, I had the luck to attend an all-night movie fest where Quentin Tarantino treated us to a screening of Inglourious Basterds. We were also treated to a number of cool exploitation/action movies. The final movie of the night was a true gem known as Ip Man. Ip Man stars Donnie Yen and is set during the Japanese occupation of China during World War II. The film is the true story of Ip Man, a legendary Kung Fu master, and tells the story of what it was like in China before and during the Japanese occupation. It is a tale of family and honor when faced with oppression. Ip Man quickly rose to the top of my all-time favorite kung fu movies.  

Enter Ip Man 2. When the list of Fantastic Fest 2010 movies was announced, this was one movie that  caught my attention immediately. When it screened at the fest, I sat in my seat with excitement and trepidation. Would this sequel deliver or would it fall like sequels typically do? Let me tell you: it delivered from the starting frame to the end. 

Is The Thin Red Line a war film? When Terrence Malick's monumental film was released in 1998, there was much debate about its true nature. Many critics hailed the film, set during the battle of Guadalcanal, as one of the best war films ever made. Others argued that labeling The Thin Red Line a war film misses its point entirely, for it is really a meditation on the nature of life and death.

The elegant new Criterion release of The Thin Red Line, available today on DVD and Blu-ray, will only reignite the controversy, but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. Films of this caliber deserve to be endlessly analyzed and debated.

Based on James Jones's 1962 novel, The Thin Red Line tells the story of C-for Charlie Company, a group of young soldiers sent to Guadalcanal to battle the Japanese for control of the island. Victory on Guadalcanal is crucial to an Allied victory in the Pacific, because the island's airfield will serve as a base for the Allies' Pacific campaign. C-for-Charlie's mission is to break the final Japanese resistance, and the film follows the men through a costly, hellish, protracted battle to take control of the few remaining Japanese strongholds.

The action is seen from the perspectives of many soldiers in the company, among them Lt. Col Tall (Nick Nolte), Capt. Staros (Elias Koteas), 1st Sgt. Welsh (Sean Penn), Sgt. Keck (Woody Harrelson), Cpl. Fife (Adrien Brody), Pfc. Doll (Dash Mihok), and Pvt. Witt (Jim Caviezel). As the soldiers slog their way through Guadalcanal's dense jungles and steep hills and finally earn some long-overdue R&R, they share their thoughts through dialogue and numerous voiceovers (and, for Witt, gauzy flashbacks to his childhood and newlywed days). These thoughts are about far more than the battle at hand, however; they're poetic and deeply philosophical musings about everything from the meaning of death to humanity's relationship with nature.

Please welcome back contributor Rod Paddock as he gives us the lowdown on one of this year's Fantastic Fest features.

If you ever wondered what would happen if The Karate Kid's Mr Miyagi went back to the Cobra Kai and opened a can of whoop ass, you will love Gallants.

Gallants is the story of 98-pound weakling Cheung (You-Nam Wong), assigned by his bosses to evict a group of elderly tenants from the establishment they have rented. The story starts with the typical "weakling meets bully" theme, but concludes with an interesting set of twists and arcs. During his travels to evict the family, Cheung gets himself in trouble picking on a boy half his size. The boy's elders show up to teach Cheung a lesson. During Cheung's beating, an older gentleman carrying a bag of rice happens along. The elders postpone Cheung's beating to taunt the old man. It doesn't take long before the old man teaches the bullies a lesson in humility. Meaning: he opens that can of whoop ass.

After having his bacon saved, Cheung returns to his task and continues into town where he comes to Law's Teahouse. Through a bit of storytelling serendipity the teahouse is operated by two Kung Fu Masters: Tiger (the old man with the bag of rice), played by Kung Fu Hustle star Siu-Lung Leung; and Dragon, played by Flying Guillotine star Kuan Tai Chen. Interestingly enough, Tiger and Dragon are caretakers for Master Law, another Kung Fu master who has been in a coma for 30 years.

I mentioned recently how much I enjoyed the History of Film class I'd taken at Texas A&M, but what I didn't share was how much I disliked much of the required Liberal Arts curriculum. I found philosophy and classic literature to be dry, boring and uninspiring. However, if I'd had Tim Blake Nelson as a classics professor perhaps I would think differently now and my life would have taken an alternate path. As writer and director of  Leaves of Grass, Nelson introduces themes of classic literature in a very modern and engaging manner. Leaves of Grass is not a typical stoner comedy, as it switches to more of a drama and thriller about halfway through the film.

Edward Norton stars as Bill Kincaid, a conservative Ivy League college classics professor who reluctantly returns to the backwoods of southeastern Oklahoma after learning of the murder of his identical twin Brady (also played by Edward Norton). However, Bill discovers that his pot-growing brother is not actually dead but rather faked his death so that Bill would come home for his wedding -- although we quickly learn Brady has alterior motives. The more selfless motive is for Bill to reconcile with their hippie mother (Susan Sarandon), who lives in an adult care residence despite the fact that she is ten years younger and healthier than the other residents.

Turns out that Brady is in debt for his state of the art pot-growing facility to Pug Rothbaum (Richard Dreyfuss), a Jewish druglord from Tulsa. He and his sidekick Bolger (Tim Blake Nelson) come up with a plan to deal with Rothbaum who is wanting them to branch out into harder drugs. Meanwhile, Bill meets Janet (Kerri Russell), a writer who can "noodle" and quotes Walt Whitman while gutting a catfish. This comedy of errors results in a rather tragic resolution. 

When it was announced that the Swedish horror film Let the Right One In would be remade for American audiences, many responses were skeptical. The selection of Matt Reeves as director for Let Me In left fans and film critics conflicted. Cloverfield had such a distinct cinematographic style that many folks were left wondering if Reeves could possibly stay true to the spirit of John Ajvide Lindqvist's novel on which the films are based, as well as meet the bar set by director Tomas Alfredson and Lindqvist's original screenplay. Let the Right One In was so compelling that I immediately followed up by enjoying the book, so my expectations for Let Me In -- this year's Fantastic Fest opening-night film -- were not very high. However, Reeves has delivered a worthy homage to the original movie while adding more emotion to the lead characters.

Let Me In focuses on Owen (Kodi Smit-McPhee), a stereotypical young 98-pound weakling. The school bullies terrorize him on a daily basis, and the only person he could possibly confide in is his mother (Cara Buono) who drinks herself into a stupor every night. Instead he lies about injuries suffered at the hands of his attackers as he is subjected to public humilation.

When Abby (Chloe Moretz) moves in next door with her guardian, Owen befriends her despite her protestations. We quickly learn that she must consume blood to live, and that her guardian "Father" (Richard Jenkins) is charged with the precarious task of finding fresh blood sources on a regular basis. Father gets sloppy, and a frenzied Abby takes matters into her own hands, which jeopardizes their new home. Meanwhile Abby encourages Owen to stand up for himself and fight back. Although he succeeds in turning the tables on his tormentors, it backfires by making him the target of the head bully's older brother in a supernatural climax reminiscent of Carrie.

The opening image of Lebanon is bright and beautiful and tranquil, and yet strangely startling. The movie opens abruptly with a shot of a vast field of sunflowers under a brilliant sun, an image that lingers much longer than expected.

This image is a stark contrast to the rest of Lebanon, a violent and harrowing film about an Israeli tank crew in the First Lebanon War in 1982. All action in the film, which opens today at the Arbor, takes place inside the tank, a setting that could not be more distant from a sunny field of flowers.

Lebanon's story is compact, spanning only a day or so during the war's opening in June 1982. Amid the Israeli invasion of southern Lebanon, a lone tank and a platoon of paratroopers enter a bombed-out Lebanese town in search of remaining enemy forces. The tank crew expects the mission to be relatively easy -- defeating the assumedly weak resistance and occupying the town for a short time. It quickly turns into a nightmare, however, when they find themselves in a violent situation. The crew's somewhat naïve hopes for a quick victory disappear in a hail of gunfire and explosions, and their mission becomes one of mere survival. To reveal more about the story would spoil much of the astonishing dramatic tension.