Things Fall Apart

Filipino Horror Double Header – Feng Shui and TxT

2012-01-31T00:58:00.001Z

Two reviews for the price of one here at ThingsFallApart today, with two smart little Horror movies from the Philippines. They are both a little derivative and frankly not without problems, but are more than reasonable enough to warrant some investigation and discussion.

We will start with “Feng Shui” in which middle aged Housewife Joy (Kris Aquino) comes into possession of a Chinese Bagua (A Mirror with 8 sides. Think of it like the Dharma Initiative logo from LOST). Initially she is delighted with it, as it starts to bestow good luck upon her, getting a bonus at work and winning a prize at her local supermarket. Then it becomes clear that luck comes with a cost, as anyone else who looks in the mirror dies. And not only dies, but dies a death tied into their Chinese Birth Symbol. So one chap born in the Year of the Rabbit gets knocked over by a Van with a Rabbit-based logo, a woman born in the Year of the Rat gets killed by a disease spread by Rats. It is a bit tenuous I agree. But even when she realises this, she finds it hard to get rid of the Bagua, and moreover, she has to struggle to save her friends and family who have already looked in the mirror!

This really is quite a solid little Horror film. Whilst obviously hamstrung by what it can both afford to show on screen, and what is culturally acceptable, it manages to be fairly imaginative, maintains a decent sense of suspense and a jump out of your seat moment or two. But it does not entirely satisfy for a couple of reasons.

Firstly we have the underlying reasons for the curse itself. Despite a full exposition from a Fortune Teller (who can tell about he curse and history of this mirror by looking at it for maybe 10 seconds!), it isn’t really explained why the spirit causing all these problems takes such a bizarre revenge. Why would the own have good luck? Why would it take random actions against those who look in the mirror? And why tie them into the Astrological signs? In fact, the spirit itself is given only moments of screen time, and frankly would have worked just as well if it had not been mentioned. Not only that, but the death with the biggest build up, that of one of Joy’s friend’s seems to have no particular tie to a sign at all (unless she was born in the Year of the Drunk Neighbour).

Secondly, the film is not wholly comfortable in being a straight up horror movie. It seems to want to be a daytime soap-opera too. So we have Joy’s husband having an affair with an old girlfriend, who in turn is getting beaten up by her estranged husband. A friend is about to move to Canada. Joy’s mother in Law has no respect for Joy. The Children make friends with a boy whose parents are hardly ever home. It is all fairly interesting if you like that kind of thing, but it is as if a Horror movie just accidently got a few pages stuck in a weeks worth of something more formulaic and melodramatic.

It isn’t particularly flashy, I cannot thing of any exceptional scenes or moments that really made it stand out, yet the film does manage to overcome all these problems by being sensibly put together, and has a really good ending, which whilst not being awfully original, does play out rather well. Mild Recommendations I think.

A slightly different experience is given by “TxT” though. We start the film after some car accident has killed Roman (Oyo Sotto), but left his Girlfriend Joyce (Angel Locsin) alive. We learn that she was driving the car illegally, and his parents blame her. Joyce continues to mourn, but begins to experience odd text and photo messages from Roman’s mobile phone. Her best friends Ida (Julia Clarete) and Alex (Dennis Trillo) who holds a huge torch for Joyce) try and help her solve the mystery, but things get even crazier when people who openly criticise Roman end up dead – at the same time as Roman’s time of death!! And as Joyce digs deeper it becomes clear that Roman was maybe more than an attractive rich “bad boy”, and that we maybe have not been told the whole story about the state of their relationship, and just what happened before the camera started rolling.

Now you could say this film is terribly derivative. And in some ways it is – the haunted modern appliance is a Asian Horror staple, and I can think of a handful of movies that make use of the mobile phone as a mechanism of terror. So, don’t expect to see much originality here.

But there is an awful lot to admire. The opening sequence is terribly well done, a single floating camera moving through the Police Station, introducing us to a post accident Joyce, dealing with the recently deceased body of her boyfriend, along with the attendant heated emotions of his family. A later scene at a restaurant where we are exposed to just what a jealous rage Roman can get into is cleverly realised splitting the image between the different areas of the restaurant also impressed me greatly. The acting is of a reasonable standard, with Julia Clarete actually being very impressive as the best friend.

As with “Feng Shui” it is certainly scary enough and builds up a decent atmosphere, but fails for a few reasons to utterly convince. The score is just too noisy, and at times rather shabbily edited. The deaths themselves are a little too similar. And then there is the fact that most of the people who are killed seem a little too distant from the vengeful ghost to waste his time on, when there is Alex just asking for it. And then we have the final 15 minutes of the film, which seem to have come from a different script. Because suddenly instead of the phone calls killing people – which we see – suddenly it is something about a Shadow, and for good measure, Roman suddenly becomes utterly corporeal. And the ending? Its just cheap and disappointing.

But if you can forget the final 15 minutes, i think this is a pretty decend and worthwhile horror film, that certainly suggests a lot of promise on behalf of the Director, with a handful of pretty smart scenes. Recommended.

The Dirty Picture

2012-01-27T17:12:00.001Z

Well, I have been ignoring it for 3 years now, but I am finally going to have a little delve into Bollywood proper now. To be frank, it is not a cinema that I have ever felt the urge to explore too deeply – on the whole the films are usually too long for my attention span, and those that I have browsed always feel the urge to leap into a song and dance number far too often. I don’t mind a nice song and dance occasionally, but not in every film and genre. However, this one caught my eye, as it seemed to have been reviewed positively, it was telling a story I found to be interesting, and was taking it’s cues from one of my favourite movies of all time - “Boogie Nights”

“The Dirty Picture” is a very loose bio-pic (more inspired by rather than a slavish retelling) of South Indian Actress ‘Silk’ Smitha. It tells the rise and eventually tragic fall of Reshma (Vidya Balan). An ordinary “girl-next-door” in terms of looks, she runs away to Madras in an attempt to break into the movie industry. Her initial attempts are dismissed and cut from Director Abraham’s (Emraan Hasmi) film, but upon the films failure, the Producer sees the cutting room for footage and sees a goldmine. You see Reshma has that undefinable ‘sex-appeal’ on screen, which will bring men rushing through the doors of the cinema. Re-christened “Silk”, she embarks on a popular B-Movie film career, on the way creating a powerful and dirty/sexy persona. The film follows her many affairs with actors and Directors, and the way her personality changes. Then events lead to her popularity waning, and despite an unlikely final relationship, Silk eventually takes her own life (I don’t think that is too spoilerific).

That was unexpected. I really enjoyed this film. Sure it is easily 30 minutes too long, but I found the story to be fascinating and compelling. It helped that really this story is a universal one – this could be the tale of any film starlet in any film industry (Marilyn Munroe anyone?) – she is propelled to stardom, but however powerful and in control she thinks she is, there are always then Men behind the scenes that can bring her crashing back down. The reality is that her sexual allure lets her go only so far. Universal story or not, it is also interesting to see a very different film industry in a very different time (the 1980’s), there is much to both contrast and draw similarities to.

The Director has spoken about the “Boogie Nights” influence – but think of this more in the themes in the fore and background. Yes, she is a B-Movie actress, and her main asset is sexual, but these are not skin flicks – in a conservative country like India it is more about little doses of flesh, come hither eyes, a dirty smile, and mostly her rather brazen way of speaking.

It is delightfully funny, and most of the great lines are spoken by Vidya Balan herself, who carries the picture brilliantly. It seems she has had to change her physical size a fair amount for this role, but she carries it off, embodying exactly the kind of character she is charged to play. She is also exceptional in some of the quieter moments – her disappointment of being cut from the first film, and in a number of conversations with Abraham in the final third of the film (leading to the only real reciprocal romance in the film, where is is a meeting of minds, not of desire and ambition), she shows that Silk is not just a aggressive and brazen woman – rather she has been playing a role, one forced and expected of her, but that underneath there is the charming and downtrodden Reshma.

There is plenty of singing and dancing, but as the conceit of the movie is to show her acting in films, it rather cleverly makes this feel rather more natural and not really out of place.. And to be fair, some of the tunes are catchy, and the dance numbers are pleasing on the eye. I was not at all inclined to fast forward through these set pieces, as they really felt rather necessary to the story being told.

As I mentioned in the synopsis, this is not strictly a bio-pic. It is certainly influenced by Silk’s real life, with certain key moments and sequences taken from her story. It also varies significantly, with the event that drives her to take her own life being a little more seedy, and indeed her method of suicide something more peaceful. But it also draws on other characters, and I think this decision not to slavishly follow someone’s life works here. It is respectful to the source, but also means the story can work better dramatically, allowing some themes to work the way through the story.

So in conclusion – despite my reticence, I have a great time with this movie. It was fun and engrossing, and made me want to dig a little deeper into the story it was telling. Above all, it is performed with a lot of respect for the tragic story that influenced it, with no small amount of heart. And that dear reader, as you know, always gets a film here the Highly Recommended seal of ThingsFallApart approval!

Hong Kong Ghost Stories

2012-01-23T18:24:00.001Z

Three posts in a day. You lucky people! Right, so whilst “Sleepwalker” was a crushing disappointment because of the pedigree of the film maker and lead actress, I had no such expectations here. Because this is a Portmanteau film with two Ghost Stories directed by two of the most populist (that is they make pretty awful lowest common denominator movies) Hong Kong Directors – Our old friend Wong Jing, and hitherto only once reviewed in this Parish, Patrick Kong. But, I did wonder if being constrained to a 40 minute tale, that some interesting stories might be told. Plus, these are proper Ghost Stories. In China! Maybe times are changing?

Wong Jing brings us “Classroom”, where Jennifer Tse is Miss Yip, a supply Teacher. She has not taught for a while, and has recently escaped from a very abusive relationship. She is given a small workload, mainly teaching one particular class, who are known for being a bit ‘naughty’. So as you can imagine they make teaching very difficult for her. One student does catch her eye, and she tries hard to connect with this one. But when you meet the female students out selling their bodies at night, one begins to realise that maybe she is wasting her time. After one night trapped at school in a haunted Bathroom, it all comes crashing down on poor Miss Yip, as it becomes clear that these students are not of this world.

The best thing I can say about this is that is is underwhelming. It is really nothing you have not seen before, and anyone who has seen any film like this knows exactly what is happening. It is undemanding, and frankly, the scares that do appear are half hearted and badly conceived. But for 25-30 minutes, it is pretty harmless.

And then for the last 5-10 minutes everything unravels. But instead of the explanations being deserved and earned, we just have characters walking in off the street and explain to us what is going on. That's clumsy, but it also makes a mockery of what has gone before. Sure we know that our lead character is unreliable – but many more people were involved from the mortal plane, which just means the whole thing makes little sense. It’s a shame, because it could have been a decent if unoriginal little Ghost Story, but it is just deployed in such a half-arsed manner.

But that is art compared to Kong’s “Travel”. In which four really annoying women attend the funeral of another woman (Chrissie Chau) who died whilst on holiday in Thailand with them. Now the story moves back and forth in time, showing how we ended up here, and eventually a ghostly revenge is exposed. In fact, a couple of them!

I have a feeling that this might play a bit better to native HKers, as there is a lot going on here that is little jibes at HK TV culture, that whizzed a long way over my head. I saw the jokes, but didn’t understand them. But I do know annoying when I see it, and I know over-acting. If I say that Chrissie Chau is the best acting on display here, I think we all know what I mean.

The Ghosts take a long time appearing, but when they do, it is another old school reveal, and actually, I didn’t mind the story so much. At least Kong has but some thought into his story, and done something interesting with how he presented it. But, it really looks cheap, and lacks any sense of terror or dread. It is probably a better story than “Classroom”, but it lacks equally in the terrifying stakes. And those women are just so… ANNOYING!

The stories are preceded and joined by a strange little idea of an un-dead director, which could have worked if they had somehow been tied into the stories being told, and it had continued up to the end. Maybe it did. I turned off once the credits rolled. “The Return of Hong Kong Horror” says that poster. Sadly it forgot to bring any fun, any imagination, any inventiveness, and certainly no heart. Not Recommended.

But, maybe, this does show that the Chinese powers that be are going to loosen their stance on Ghosts in cinema, and if better people can get involved in the writing and Direction, then possibly this could be a good thing. Or it shows Wong Jing is just such a powerful character, he can do what he likes. Let’s hope for the former.

Sleepwalker

2012-01-23T12:16:00.001Z

One of my favourite Directors’ Oxide Pang has a new film out. Usually I can mark these as being a win, even if they don’t tend to review too highly (some people just can’t get past ‘The Eye’). Sadly, this time the reviews were right, as evidenced by friend of the blog Neko’s little writing here. But please come back after reading what she has to say!

In “Sleepwalker” we are introduced to Yi (Angelica Lee), a 30-something dressmaker. She has obviously suffered some trauma that her friends and colleagues tread lightly around, and she suffers from Sleepwalking. In a parallel story, a female Police Detective is struggling to solve the kidnapping of her young Nephew. However, could the trauma of Yi’s past be somehow linked to this modern event? And could what she gets up to in her dreams somehow solve the mystery?

I am at a loss to describe quite how awful this is. So much so, I actually watched it twice just to make sure I was not being unfair. But no. It is officially my first crushing disappointment of 2012.

So much of what is wrong in the film is made clear in the opening 20 minutes or so. I am used to the Hong Kong Police being shown to be inept, but I just could not get past the fact that our Police Detective is closely related to the kidnapped boy. Even if they were short staffed, that’s just wrong. As the story unfolds, this gets even worse, with cases being linked, obvious evidence being ignored, and frankly its just amateur story writing.

Not only that, but there is a clue dropped early on, that is so frighteningly obvious, it takes away and sense of shock later on. Then the story gets muddled and confused and drops in a character that has an interesting back story. BUT FOR NO OBVIOUS POINT OR STORY DEVELOPMENT REASON WHATSOEVER! And then, with all this (which actually is not THAT unusual in a film by either Pang Brother), the film just gets dull and boring. It certainly is pretty enough, and there are a couple of scenes which are very attractive. Angelica Lee looks stunning with her array of excitingly coloured hairstyles, but to be honest she is doing this in her sleep (both literally and story wise), and most of the other acting verges on the risible.

It was also made for the 3D market, which fortunately I was not exposed too – but again, it seems to make no use of this format, other than a couple of severely out of place moments.

I do wonder if a better film is hiding in here. It just seems to be put together badly, the story beats seem out of sync, and it almost feels that it is just combining several half developed ideas the Oxide had hanging around, but was unable to coalesce into a tangible whole. It ends up having nothing to recommend it for – it is neither scary or thrilling, it does not make your mind even think about what might be going on. Without the story problems, it could have just been forgettable average. But with them, it is just awful.

The only thing I can hope is that Oxide did this for the paycheck. Making a film to pack the seats for a few weeks I hope give him the resources and opportunity to work on his much more interesting personal work such as a 3rd Aaron Kok Detective film. Not Recommended.

Yes Or No

2012-01-23T08:40:00.001Z

I am going to try and do lots of reviews over the next couple of days, as I have had a little film watching burst over the last week or so. I have been exploring some of the more under-explored regions of Asian Cinema, with some gems to talk about, as well as some awfulness. The net effect will be some shorter reviews than usual, but I wanted to do a little more than the usual capsules. We will start in Thailand, with a lovely little romantic comedy. What makes it a little different is that it is a Teen Lesbian Rom-Com.

In “Yes or No” we meet pretty University student Pie (Aom Sucharat Manaying), a pretty young Marine Biology student who has been having some issues with her openly lesbian room mate, and has been moved to a new room. There she meets new Agricultural student Kim (Supanart Jittaleela), who is rather boyish in appearance. This causes some initial discomfort, as although she seems to have a lot of gay friends, her upbringing has meant she is not terribly accepting to “Toms” – girls who dress like boys. The irony is that Kim may well outwardly appear to be a Tom, but she actually is not sure of her own sexuality, and coming from the country, is not very experienced in the world of love and indeed gender stereotypes. However, even though Pie is terribly rude to Kim initially, separating the sides of their room by red tape, eventually they grow to become firm friends, and they start to have much deeper feelings for each other. They both struggle with these feelings, and are doubly compromised by Pie’s homophobic Mother and her childhood friend Wan who would love for Pie to be more than his friend. Add into the mix Pie’s ex-roommate Jane, who holds a massive torch for Kim. Can the girls actually be together, or will their own doubts and the compromises they make for societal acceptance drive the burgeoning lovers apart?

This really is a lovely little film. Whilst nearly every Thai film I have ever seen has found some place to introduce Lady boys, the concept of lesbianism seems to be one that is not so accepted. And it is handled so well – this is not a film full of soft focus teasing and titillation. With little more than a couple of kisses and some hugs, we really get the sense of a proper romance brewing, with the two girls getting to know and become reliant on each others company. It is in a word – believable.

This does contrast with the other characters, who are drawn in much broader strokes, mostly for background comedic effect – Jane is an aggressive girly-lesbian, Boy is an overcompensating camp gay male, Nerd is a strange asexual creature (that steals every second she appears on screen with one single biting line of dialogue) and there are a bunch of typical boys that act as a kind of Greek Chorus. On the less humorous side we have Pie’s mother, who is a strange way is actually a refreshing character – with deep issues about boys and girls that play with gender appearances. She is in no way a sympathetic character, but her voice does add balance. On the other side – we have Kim’s Father, who rivals Nerd for scene-stealing – a more open and accepting Father a young Lesbian girl could not wish for.

This is a low budget film and is not spectacular in any way, and the acting is a little ropey - Supanart Jittaleela is a little awkward and uncomfortable, but it works in this case as it shows how different she is – both in terms of her sexuality and being away from her country home. But is has that certain something – a gentle tenderness and understanding about what is being explored. Reading up a bit, it does seem that whilst homosexuality is accepted in Thailand, there is still a bit of a disconnect – on the level of it is ok for people to be gay – as long as they are not my Children – and the complex nature of the religious and cultural background of the Thai people.

Not only that, but it is also brave enough to only give us a semi-happy ending. We never find out the final fates of our lead characters. They gain acceptance of their relationship between each other. Little is resolved with Pie’s Mother, and I am not certain that this is the “one” for both of them, that they will live happily ever after. The message of the film is, if you find the one you love, then give it a go, and give it a go whole-heartedly. Its a great message, and one I can support, and therefore this one is Recommended.

The Maid

2012-01-18T12:31:00.001Z

I have decided to take a little trip around the various Asian territories that don’t get quite the same love for my next set of reviews, moving away from the Cinematic heartlands of Japan, Hong Kong/China and South Korea, and having a look at some Thai, Filipino and in this case, Singaporean films. Kelvin Tong is a Director that has appeared a couple of times before here, giving us the very good “Kidnapper” and “Rule Number One” so I thought I would have a little look at the film that really bought him to wider attention, Singapore’s first home-grown Horror movie, “The Maid”

Rosa (Alessandra de Rossi) is a young girl from the Philipines who travels to Singapore to become the live in Maid to a middle aged Chinese couple. It is her first time away from her home town, and she is exposed to a new, strange world, where the family are very much believers in old Chinese Customs. They are part of a local Chinese Opera Group, and have a son who is mentally disabled. The seem nice enough though, and welcome Rosa in to their family with wide open arms. Rosa’s arrival coincides with the Chinese Ghost Month, where the story goes that Hell opens its doors for 30 days, and Ghosts walk the earth – so lots of superstitions are observed, all of which is very new to Rosa. However, as time goes on, Rosa begins to realise that not everything is quite on the level, she does not seem to do an awful lot of Maid duties, and the family start to act in a very controlling manner. On top of this, she begins to experience strange dreams of Ghosts, which start to appear in her waking world as well. Then she finds out that she is not the couple’s first Maid, and in her attempts to discover what happened to her predecessor, she finds out that the couple may well have somewhat different plans for her than cooking and cleaning.

The first thing I was struck by in the film, is just how good a job it did on showing differing Asian cultures. Rosa is Filipino, so her Asian heritage is very much mixed with American and Spanish influences, whilst the Singaporeans are from an English/Malay/Chinese brew. It seems obvious, but it is something I rarely see in Asian cinema (outside of Japanese bashing), this sense of there being quite disparate and different cultural influences in the Oriental world. Rosa therefore acts as a good way for us outsiders to explore local customs, without the film becoming too expository.

The film does have a good range of scares, although to be honest they are of the cheap “quick shot of a ghost with loud music” nature on the whole, but it works much better when displaying a palpable atmosphere of dread and discomfort, things just don’t feel ‘right’, and this keeps the viewer interested in the underlying mystery. It helps that de Rossi is an engaging and empathetic actress, taking us on her somewhat confusing journey, and it actually improves on a second viewing as some of the oddness makes much more sense.

So it is well put together, and well acted, but to be honest, it is not entirely original. At the risk of spoiling things, there is a heavy dose of standard Asian Horror tropes (Ghost Girls, Suicides, mentally ill man-children) along with the fact this is a post-“Sixth Sense” Ghost story. So in and of itself, it is a very good exponent of this kind of movie, but doesn’t have that extra hook which raises it up that extra notch. Experienced viewers will grasp what is going on here pretty quickly.

It does have an odd subplot about a partially deaf Mailman, that comes to nothing really, I will accept it being a red herring, but it feels like something more could have been done here.

It is a very accessible film to Western Audiences though, not just because of the way Rosa is written, but because language-wise it uses (other than a smattering of Tagalog and some Chinese) Singlish, which is a kind of pigeon English with smatterings of local words. So whilst as an English speaker you understand most of what is being said, the subtitles are actually more full of context – quite the opposite of subtitles I am used to!

One thing which does make it a little different is the ending – I am used to no one coming out alive, or that the curse is still continuing on. Without wanting to spoil too much, we get an ending with closure, and a lovely little end scene that shows the final fates of everyone involved.

In conclusion, giving it credit for being produced some 6 years ago, it is a fine and worthy addition to the Asian Horror collection – it does lack in originality, but has enough going for it to make it Recommended, more so knowing about the improved work the Director would come to produce.

Capsule Reviews–The 601st Phone Call, Quick, The Silent House

2012-01-14T11:09:00.001Z

A few little mini-reviews now, as I have a sore throat and really don’t feel like writing too much, but wanted to get my thoughts down. Also, a bit of admin news – I do occasionally try and look at films from outside Asia, and I think that I will be starting a another blog up to capture my thoughts on those. Not sure of a name yet, any suggestions are of course welcome! What it will mean is that I am just going to give up on the comic book one (http://thepaintingthatateparis.blogspot.com) as I just don’t have the energy or inclination to keep that up to date. Frankly, I managed a single post on it last year, and the truth is, I am not as in love with comic books as I once was. I still read and collect them, but this has pretty much taken over my creative and free time.

Right, onto the films!

I only watched “The 601st Phone Call” as I am a huge fan of Chinese Pop Singer ’Bibi’ Zhou Bichang, and this is her only screen outing to date. It tells two interconnected tales. 600 phone numbers of various Hong King celebrities are released on the internet, causing a media storm. The problem is that one of the numbers is wrong – giving Office Girl Yi-Shu’s (Zhou Bichang) number out in place of Tianyou’s (Cecilia Cheung). This leads chronically ill wannabe singer Xiaowen (Ge Hu) to contact her. He believes she is Tianyou’s assistant, and he begs her to tell her employer about his song. Together they work on the lyrics, and a phone call and text based romance ensues. Meanwhile, Tianyou is having a hard time matching her artistic integrity against the needs of the record company.

It is a strange and undemanding film, that never quite succeeds on either storyline. The Yi-Shu/Ziaowen romance never really goes anywhere, other than the pair moodily waiting for each other’s calls and messages, but it is harmless enough in true “Fatal Beauty” style. The other story could have been much more interesting, if it were not for the fact that Tianyou seems to be exactly the kind of Idol-style pop singer she claims not to be. In fact, the story gets quite surreal when the record company arrange for her to first get beaten up, and then drive her to a suicide attempt!

It is an undemanding film, with nothing really to mark it out amongst many films of this ilk, and although there are a couple of hilarious moments (like the Chinese Actor who is utterly distraught he is not considered famous enough to have his number released) the dual nature of the story hurts the film, meaning it lacks depth. Mildly recommended, unless you are a Bibi completest.

“Quick” on the other hand is an unexpected treat from Korea – a real summer Popcorn blast – that works as long as you really do not thing too hard about the plot mechanics. Motorcycle courier Gi-soo (Lee Min-ki) is drawn into a mystery man’s act of revenge against his employers, when forced to deliver explosive packages in order to prevent his ex-girlfriend Ah-rom (Kang Ye-won) being killed by the bomb wired to her motorcycle helmet. The Police are hot on their heels, along with an ex-fellow motorcycle gang member (and now Policeman) Myeong-sik (Kim In-kwon).

If you think along the lines of a “Speed” on two wheels, you will get the general idea of this one. But I really enjoyed it despite is not really being my normal kind of movie, it is fun and exciting, and on the whole the stunts are spectacular (only failing when it tries to CGI-up – one rooftop scene looks terrible, and a sequence of flying canisters is not only unoriginal, but does not quite work). In that wonderful Korean way, it manages to mix a decent action thriller with a decent love story (of course showing that Gi-soo maybe is not the utter heel he is painted to be at the beginning of the film). Not only that, but it actually spends time looking at the consequences of actions of the carefree and responsibility lacking youth in quite a dark manner. It is also rather amusing (if sometimes a little over-daft), even finding time to poke a little at K-Pop girl bands and the usual inadequacies of the Police Force – but never in too cruel a way.

It is maybe 20 minutes too long, but I had a huge amount of fun with this film. It certainly made up for the crushing disappointment of “Sector 7”, so Recommended.

“The Silent House” is not Asian, but hails from Uruguay. Laura (Florencia Colucci) and her Father travel to a decrepit old house owned by one of her Father’s friends, with the intention of renovating it so it can be sold. However, as soon as they settle down for the night, Laura hears a noise upstairs, and when her Father goes to investigate, he ends up dead. Laura struggles to leave the house, and uncovers a dark secret. But then, is everything as it seems?

The big deal about this film is that it is meant to be filmed in a single shot (as you probably know, in the days of real film stock, you were limited to maybe 10-12 minutes before the film ran out – in this age of digital I guess you are only physically limited by storage). Now whilst even I spotted at least two moments where there probably was a cut made, technically I though this was pretty well done, in terms of moving the actress and the camera around the locations within the house.

The problem is firstly, it really is not THAT scary, sure it has atmosphere, but the scares that are used are pretty standard fare. More problematic though was the storyline. You see, without spoiling it too much, there is is a pretty horrible story here, but you have to realise that you are effectively seeing this film through the eyes of a very unreliable source. And whilst the film is mostly done in one shit, the only way you can make sense of it is if you realise that events are not unfolding chronologically (I saw a pretty decent explanation of this over in an IMDB comment). And that just seems at odds to me with the idea of the single shot.

At the end of the day, I appreciated the craft, and even the central performance, but as a story, it seems that the technique won over the execution. A US Remake is about to hit our screens in March, it will be interesting what approach that takes. Mildly Recommended.

Speed Angels

2012-01-10T16:09:00.001Z

The first review proper of 2012, and it seems I have some leftover Christmas Turkey. I was not expecting a whole lot from this so-called sports action film, but it sounded like some low level popcorn munching fun, and had a couple of interesting names in the cast. Jingle Ma may well be a director with a chequered history, but one of his films did make my top 10 of last year, so I am nothing if not open minded. Sadly, it is a dire piece of work, and if I was feeling like putting together some clever car-based one liner, I would say it never gets out of first gear. Problem is, I am not sure the film even is worth that poor bit of wordplay.

Bing (Rene Liu) is preparing for her Wedding to her Japanese husband (Kitamura Kazuki), when she gets a call that he is in a Hotel room with another woman. Imagine her shock when she finds it to be her friend and fellow Racing Driver teammate Mei (Cecilia Chung). In the ensuing melee, Bing accidently runs over her sister. Some years later, the Coach of the titular “Speed Angels” racing team, Gao (Justin Han), finds Bing at the bottom of a bottle, and offers her a chance to race again for the newly reformed team, the carrot being the prize money will help her sister have a life-saving operation. Gao stumbles across a naturally talented Taxi Driver, Xiaoyi (Tang Wei), and proposes to put the rookie in the other car with the experienced racing Idol. And for some reason employs her really irritating cousin Gigi (Cheng Yi) as well. That does not work out so well, as Xiaoyi seems to have a problem when she is being watched (a holdover from her Father’s Death), so Mei is brought into the team. That bad decision gets even worse when Mei defects to another team – which happens to be run by her now renamed Husband to be/Bing’s ex!! Not only that, but the dastardly Japanese chap is also determined to attack the Speed Angels by industrial espionage AND by sending the thugs in! Can Xiaoyi step up and help win the final race of the season? Can Bing work her way out of an alcoholic haze? Can Mei see that her husband to be is a total %$*#??

For about 30 minutes I actually thought this film was doing ok. It obviously was not going to concentrate on the racing too much, preferring instead to play up the drama angle. Tang Wei and Rene Liu bring a bit of class to proceedings, even if the dialogue is a little poor, and there is a fun sequence with Xiaoyi chasing down some muggers with her Taxi and Kung fu. And then in one moment it just went downhill. Fast.

You see Mei is not really accepted by Bing, which is fair enough. Though to be fair, she seems nice enough. There is a moment where Xiaoyi has failed to get the place on the team, and Bing is taking out her frustrations on the rookie. Mei says some nice things to her, and we move on. Then, 5 minutes later, Xiaoyi gets into a car with an obviously drunk Bing, and a road race with Mei starts. The race stops, and Bing walks off. Mei then says - “So you are Xiaoyi?”. Erm, hang on, you just spoke to her maybe 10 minutes ago??? This lack of care then becomes the signature of the rest of the film.

Some things I could just write off as being the nature of a lowest common denominator Popcorn film. The fact that a Taxi Driver would be put into an expensive, high performance vehicle. The fact an Alcoholic would be allowed to race. The fact a driver could just swap teams at the last minute without anyone knowing. Scratch that – there is just too much of this. More than that, there are who subplots that are just totally brushed over – after Bing’s sister is hospitalised, we never see her again (at least we do hear about her eventual status), there is a traitor in the camp yet we never really find out his motivation, and Xiaoyi’s fear of performing in front of an Audience is just forgotten about. Let us not forget about that mole in the camp – we are given a major dramatic moment that is resolved before the dust has settled! In short, it attempts a lot of story, but simply does not have the script to carry through on pretty much any of them.

I refuse to talk about the Karaoke-style singing of an obscure 1990’s Country and Western Song.

To cap it all off, after about 100 minutes, we finally get some racing. And it is the worst kind of CGI I have seen in a long time. It looks like the highlights reel from a Playstation 2 era Gran Tourismo, intercut with little headshots of our stars in crash helmets. It is amateurish at best, and quite honestly looks awful. It does maybe explain why the rest of the film seems to be shot through some strange garish filter – so as not to make those scenes look too artificial. Sadly, it fails, only making the whole feel look as if it is incorrectly shot and out of focus.

It there anything good about the film? Well I suppose it does complete the acceptance of Tang Wei into mainstream Chinese cinema, and in the first part of the film, she acquits herself well. Veteran Pei Pei Cheng seems to be having fun as Xiaoyi’s mother. Once the film totally crashes and burns after about 30 minutes, neither of them, nor a strangely over-wrought Rene Liu can do anything to save it. Cecilia Chung possibly sets feminism back maybe 20 years as well. Not Recommended – it is a confused, ugly, horrible car crash of a film, that does not even have camp value to rescue it – AVOID.

My Top 10 of 2011

2012-01-07T23:26:00.001Z

Last year I became a little frustrated just after I posted my Top 10 of the year as at least two films that would have easily made the list came to light in early January, the wonderful “Confessions” and the little delight of “Kung Fu Wing Chun”. It is always a problem with doing these kinds of lists – you cannot see everything in the calendar year it was released, and moreover, because I am looking at films from abroad, I may have to wait for a DVD release, or at least online subtitles to become available. But rules have to be maintained, so here are the ThingsFallApart Top Ten of the Year guidelines:

The film has to have been released in its Host Country during the year in question – I will use IMDB as my guide here, but I know it is far from a perfect system.
The exception is films released in the run up to Christmas, can be included (to get those last minute releases in).
I have to have reviewed it.

So, that is the administration over, lets have a little look at the films that did not quite make the cut. To be honest it has not been a great year for Asian Cinema on the whole, and I was afraid this was going to end up a top 5 at best, even with a little flurry of top films appearing in the last couple of months. In fact, the year was punctuated by two awful disappointments – both the remake of “A Chinese Ghost Story” and “Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” boasted great casts and where certainly pretty enough, but both totally missed the point of their existence.

But reading back through the blog, there have been some worthwhile films that maybe have not quite stuck in my memory as they should have. Apart from the two I mentioned in the first paragraph, I thought “Merry Go Round” (released in November 2010) was a great and touching way to start the year, with a touching set of stories and a fantastic if unusual soundtrack. “Bruce Lee, My Brother” was a brilliant little bio-pic, more so as it concentrated on the man himself, and not his on screen persona. “Come Rain, Come Shine” was simply an acting master class. “Hello Ghost” was the yearly entertaining Cha Tae-hyun vehicle that I think I maybe enjoyed more than I admitted to. My only real annoyance is that I could not get subtitles to the new Tsui Hark film in time for this post, as I have heard some good things about it.

The worst film of the year? Easily “Mysterious Island”, a horror film so bad it not only has a nonsensical plot, but forgets to be scary.

But now on to the main list!

10. Love You You

Sue me. I am a sucker for a gentle romantic comedy, and even though this one was pretty much pilloried by greater critics than I, it really won me over. Sure, the story is silly, but I thought the little twists where on the good side (and made the film make a lot more sense upon a second viewing), and Eddie Peng and Angelababy had charm and charisma to spare. In fact, Angelababy is someone I would normally ignore as being one of those Bikini Models who gets into film as eye candy. But she actually was the best thing about “Love in Space”, even though she was surrounded by much more respected talent.

9. The Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Down Below

Finally an Anime makes my end of year list, and this one ticks all my boxes. It is beautiful to look at, it is thought provoking, and for want of a better phrase is just so “mature”. I just loved the way that the film concentrated on it’s themes of loss and grieving, without getting tied up in the fantasy/sci-fi mechanics of the plot, and was brave enough to put some roots of ideas down that it did not feel it had to explore as part of the main plot. As I said in my review, this is somewhere to look once you have exhausted the Studio Ghibli back catalogue.

8. Don’t Go Breaking My Heart

Another Jonnie To helmed rom-com, which despite a love triangle that held no actual threat to the end result, charmed me immensely. The little trick of people communicating by messages pinned to the Windows of their Offices was the cutest idea I have come across in a long time. Gao Yuanyuan was an attractive and fun leading lady, and Louis Koo managed to make a quite reprehensible character almost likeable. It even made me feel sad for a poor Frog, and even though it did play that “look how nice it is in China” card near the end, I was able to forgive it for that.

7. Countdown

By far the best thing I saw out of Korea this year. The initial caper side of the story is darkly comic and more than enough to make it a great film, but the sudden change of pace of the final third of the film reminded me of just what it was that makes me love Korean Cinema so. Add to this two performances by two of Asia’s finest that were able to make me actually care for two Characters that would normally be completely unlikeable, then for me this film was a complete win. The fact it underperformed at the Korean Box Office does make me wonder for the future of locally produced Korean films, but the ThingsFallApart team (i.e. me) thought this was a winner.

6. The Flowers of War

Two levels of shock here. Christian Bale makes my end of year Asian film list, and Zhang Yimou makes a film that I actually got emotionally invested in. Once we are past the “Saving Private Ryan” battle sequence (technically good, just out of place), we get a story about a shocking period in human history. Yes, you could complain there is some Japanese bashing here. and that a couple of the moments seemed a little false, but you would be a hard person if you were not emotionally affected by this movie. Add to this a couple of possible breakout stars, and this film has a lot going for it. It’s not bad when it is being Epic, but its amazing when it drills down to the personal. The scene between Bale and young Huang Tianyuan at the end of the film is one of the most affecting things I saw this year.

5. Help! My Girlfriend is a Vampire!

Friend of the site and damn good fellow blogger Miyuki bought this one to my attention, which is also my first Malaysian film ever. It is low budget, a little wobbly, the acting is variable and the special effects are so-so - but the film is full of fun and heart, and even finds time to be a little post-modern. It is like a Hong Kong film form the early 1990’s, and was the biggest surprise to me this year. I adored every minute of it, and in terms of sheer minute by minute fun, no other film on this list made me smile so much. I will be looking for similar films from this region in the future.

4. Ladda Land

Thailand gets an entry this year too, and is the only Horror film on the list, which is ironic as Asian Horror is pretty much what got me started here. This one certainly has atmosphere and scares, but what raised it up was the all too human story of a man trying to do the best for his family. You could have cut out most of the ghostly goings on, and still had a pretty darn decent drama. It’s not a film without faults – the initial Ghost is forgotten about, and the interesting story of the female Child get pushed off camera too quickly, but for film based on that hoary old standby of “Urban Legend” this one excels.

3. Starry Starry Night

Another new country for the end of year list, Taiwan (though I have seen many excellent Taiwanese movies), this is another excellent Jimmy Liao picture book adaptation. It is a touching story about growing up, about dealing with family breakup through the eyes of children. At times the images on the screen are utterly spellbinding, and I dare you not to fall in love with the character of Mei. Other reviews have been less kind, but I think it speaks totally to those of us whose parents broke up at a similar age, about the loneliness and lack of understanding that you have when not quite an adult.

2. The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake

Herman Yau does it again – he takes a well known historical figure and creates a marvellous bio-pic on a fraction of the budget that most Chinese “epics” have. This is a story of one of the most important feminist figures of the 20th Century (though I bet you had not heard of her if you are from outside China). Great performances all around, with a bit of hyper-realistic kung-fu thrown in. What really makes it a winner is that it does not try and claim Qui Jin as a heroine of the Chinese Revolution – she is a hero of China and of her Gender. It spices up the potentially dull cradle to grave nature of many of these type of films by being a bit smart with the timeline, which makes it a really satisfying and engrossing watch.

1. Wu Xia

The one film I was really looking forward to that did not disappoint this year. Utterly gorgeous, tremendously acted and intelligently directed. This film managed to take the Wuxia genre, and look at it through a modern eye, whilst keeping the important aspects intact. A story of honour and failed redemption, this film dissects everything that I have grown to love, casts a modern eye over it, and puts everything back together again intact. It is a film seeped in intelligence, and I know that it will have disappointed the action junkies, with Donnie Yen fans being treated to very few real fight sequences. But if you can get past this, this is the most rewarding film I have seen this year, that succeeds at every level.

And now.. onwards to 2012. What am I looking forward to? How about:

Park Chan-wook’s “Stoker”, his English Language debut (you will see a theme here from the big Korean Directors).
Wong Kar-wai’s “The Grandmasters”, finally? maybe? please.
Edmund Pang’s “Love in the Buff”, a sequel to my film of LAST year.
Derek Yee’s “The Great Magician”, blending both my favourite subject (Magic) with Tony Leung.
Bong Joon-ho’s “Snowpiercer”, his English Language debut (see?).
Kim Jee-woon’s “The Last Stand, his English Language debut (told you).

Countdown

2012-01-06T14:22:00.001Z

It has been a pretty weak year for new films really, and with regards to Korean Cinema this has been especially evident. Whilst looking through my reviews for my top 10 I was seriously concerned that no Korean film would make it. Luckily, this little gem came up just before the end of the year, and it epitomises everything that I love about Korean Cinema – even though it did poorly at the box office.

“Countdown” explores the story of a rather efficient, not to say violent debt collector, Tae Geon-ho (Jeong Jae-yeong). Geon-ho pursues his targets relentlessly, and he seems utterly focussed and frankly friendless. It becomes clear that the loss of his son a few years ago has impacted him greatly, and even more so as some form of Amnesia means he cannot even remember the details of his Son’s death. Suddenly he starts experiencing blackouts, and is diagnosed with Liver Cancer. Given a tight deadline to find a suitable donor, he starts hunting down those recipients of organ donations from his deceased Son, as they are the only people he can be guaranteed to be a match too. The hunt does not go well, until he finds the final donor, Cha Ha-yeon (Jeon Do-yeon). Ha-yeon comes with baggage though – she is a con-woman who is about to be released from prison. She cuts him a deal – she will donate to him a portion of her liver, if he helps her track down the criminal boss who betrayed her and put her behind bars. The thing is – she is a con-woman, who attempts to betray Geon-ho at every turn. However, her attempts at getting her revenge drag not only Geon-ho into more trouble, but also her estranged 17 year old daughter. Can Geon-ho help save them both, with the reward of saving his own life? And at the same time maybe find the answers about his own missing memories, and finally grieve?

For over an hour, this is a superior Korean caper film. Jeong Jae-yeong brings us a fascinating character, who in other films could have been the bad guy. He is sullen and determined, and frankly rather unlikeable. His interactions with other people are wholly selfish, until you meet his parents, when suddenly you get a clue as to his past. You do begin to warm to him when you meet the calculating Ha-yeon, who is a totally selfish con-artist, who will use anything and anyone to get her money and revenge. There are a couple of excellent set pieces, it is blackly comic, and frankly if the film continued in this vein it would be very good indeed.

Then it does one of those Korean tone and genre changes.

The point the change happens is when we meet Ha-yeon’s daughter – a sullen little teenager who is used as a target against her mother. But we see that maybe her Mother is not quite as selfish as previously suggested, that she knows she has been a bad, absent parent, and is in some ways trying to make up for it. However, this is paralleled with the telling of Geon-ho’s past – he was raising alone a Son with Downs Syndrome – and it had a huge effect on him – frankly he was not up to the job. As the film rumbles along, we see the final fate of the boy, and his death, due in no small part to Geon-ho’s inabilities. It is quite heartfelt and quite realistic stuff.

Suddenly the story isn’t about the money, or even about the liver transplant. It is about a man atoning for his perceived sins, and that the cost for that can only end up being utterly tragic. Trying not to spoil things – but only one of our main characters makes it to the final credits, yet the effect they have on the other character is transformative.

Special mention has to go to Jeon Do-yeon – she really is one of Korea’s finest actresses – and she totally sells a character that first seems no more than a selfish con woman. Not only that, but she still looks utterly gorgeous, and you can see just how she manages to manipulate the men around her (and tellingly, the only other real female of the piece, her daughter) is utterly immune to her charms.

I thought this film was utterly fantastic, but, I can see how a Western Audience would really struggle with that tonal shift – it is much more jarring than a Romantic Comedy that turns into a Fatal Beauty – but for me I found all aspects of the story totally compelling. It looks as fantastic as any Korean movie does, and has two great central performances from frankly two of asia’s finest talents. But that journey from blackly comic crime caper to a story of personal loss and self doubt is one you have to be prepared for.

Highly Recommended

The Lady

2012-01-05T13:16:00.001Z

A little off target as “The Lady” is an English Language film (mostly) by a French Director (Luc Besson). However, the subject matter is most definitely Asian, and the star is the Legendary Michelle Yeoh. Enjoy!

Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below

2012-01-05T08:26:00.001Z

Nearly at my Top 10 of 2011, with just this and one other film that I am desperate to talk about. There maybe a little bit of fun before we get there, but what would this blog be without my long drawn out promises?

I have mentioned before how Anime is not a film genre that often excites me, but there are the odd exception, including the output of Studio Ghibli and the work of the creator of this film, Makoto Shinkai. Very much an auteur, each one of his works gets more interesting, and this one is no exception (and not just because of his fantastically long titles).

In “Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below” we meet a lonely young schoolgirl called Asuna. Now she is a hard working girl, class president, but has had to fend for herself after the early loss of her father, and continued absence of her Nurse Mother. She often likes to go up in the hills and listen to signals she picks up on her Crystal Radio set. One day she encounters a strange beast, and is saved by a mysterious young boy, whom she befriends. Sadly, one day the boy does not turn up for one of their meetings, and afterwards his body is found. At the same time a rather intense substitute Teacher, Morisaki, turns up, who intrigues her with tales of cross cultural myths about secret lands where people can rescue loved ones from the underworld. It turns out that not only is he not a real Teacher, but these are more than just stories, and together the find an entrance to a world underneath our own, Agartha. Asuna joins her Teacher in a quest to this world, encountering a magical but harsh world that is intent on keeping its secrets from those who live above. Asuna encounters her friends’ brother, as well as some less friendly figures, but will Morisaki’s desire to recover his decade long dead wife prove to be a quest that Asuna can survive unscathed?

The thing I have loved about all Shinkai’s work up to now, is that although he plays in the genre of Sci-Fi/Fantasy Anime, he is able to build up a realistic world that is nothing more than a backdrop for his characters. Yes we have a fantastical journey here in a mythical world, but that is merely his backdrop for examining relationships and real world issues such as loss of father figures, grief and being able to let go. Asuna is a really three dimensional young girl, full of joy and wonder, but also hiding a great pain. Morisaki is even more interesting, showing that although he is ostensibly the substitute father figure here, he has his own goals, and may not stop at anything to ensure they are met.

Not only that, but he is comfortable enough to drop various hints about certain events that he simply does not make a big deal about – for example, it is quite clear that Asuna’s late Father was from Agartha (the provenance of her Crystal, and hints about why she is so sought after by the creepiest inhabitants of this strange world), but it is never allowed to be investigated too deeply, and is something for the viewers to ponder about, the story remains true to its themes, not letting this detail get in the way.

The artwork is as beautiful as you would expect from a Shinkai piece, with the backgrounds deserving of the leisurely pace afforded to it, giving the audience time to examine the little details. The soundtrack is also lovely and unobtrusive.

I thought the ending was also a brave one, Morisaki does a selfish thing in the end, and he suffers for it physically. Shinkai does love to silently tie things up in the closing credits (as he did with “The Place Promised In Our Early Days”), giving us some closure, but not allowing it to interfere with the real story of interest – the growth and change afforded to our heroine.

This one is Highly Recommended – although it never quite reaches the heights of “5cm a Second”, it is an example of how good Anime can be. If you are looking to branch out a little in this Genre, and have enjoyed more mainstream works from Studio Ghibli, I think this would be a perfect next step – in some ways it is a much more accessible work than his previous two films, but could prove to be a gateway to looking at the work of a really interesting creator.

The Flowers of War

2011-12-30T15:49:00.001Z

It’s not often that I am able to review an Asian film so soon after it has been released, even with the wonders of the internet, I usually have to wait several months before usable subtitles become available. But as this one is the Chinese entry for the Best Foreign Language Film at the Oscars, it seems a DVD Screener is available with full subtitles online much earlier than usual. But more on that at the end of this review. I should also mention that I would normally be putting up my Top 10 of the Year right now, but there have been a number of late breaking releases that have quite possibly jumped on the list at the last minute – so I need to get a few reviews out of the way first.

“The Flowers of War” is the latest epic from Zhang Yimou, who is probably one of China’s most famous film Directors to Westerners, as he not only Directed crossover hits like “Hero”, “House of Flying Daggers” and “Curse of the Golden Flower”, but he also was the artistic force behind the 2008 Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony. However, I have to be honest, I also admire his films for their visual style, but I have never really been touched by anything of his that I have seen. This changes now.

It is 1937 Nanking, and one of the most horrific events of the 2nd Sino-Japanese war is taking place. Stumbling through the Horror is American Mortician John Miller (Christian Bale, yes THAT Christian Bale), who seems to be intent on fulfilling his contract to bury a recently deceased Catholic Priest. A broken man, he not only finds himself in the middle of a War, but the Cathedral he finally makes he way too had become a hiding place for not only a bunch of Catholic Schoolgirls who have been unable to escape Nanking, but a group of Prostitutes have also made it their refuge from the Japanese. Although initially only interested in collecting his fee, events conspire to make John pretend to be the incumbent Priest, in order to protect both sets of women. Can he balance those very different groups of women, maybe even find himself again after years of depression, and keep everyone safe from the Japanese? Even when it becomes obvious that even a noble Japanese Commander may well not have the young girls best interests at heart?

I have a lot of issues with the film to be honest, but I am pretty sure I can blame most of them on the nature of the source material (from a novel by Yan Geiling I don’t think has been published in English yet) – the story relies on a few too many coincidences for my liking, John Miller suddenly goes through a personality change that many will find jarring (although I personally can understand what happened when a conversation hidden late in the film is bought to light), and a section with a local Chinese Army leader seems to be forced too far in the front of the film.

In fact, the first 30 minutes of the film are a bit at odds with the rest of it – it is a little “Saving Private Ryan”, done well, with lots of bloodshed and slow motion deaths – but far from anything special, and I am certain some reviewers did not watch much more than that opening segment. It’s all perfectly fine, but it isn’t until we move into the Cathedral, and leave the war behind for a while that the magic happens.

Bale is as good as he usually is – I like him as an actor, he always puts in 100% to his roles, even if sometimes his film choices are questionable. But he manages to pull off the down on the world and himself Character of Miller here, without chewing up the scenery, and is surprisingly capable of sharing the screen with some young and new to acting talent.

In fact special mention should be made of the cast here – Huang Tianyuan is brilliant as the young boy forced to look after the female students, with a conclusion to his story which could easily have ended up as an awful mess becoming both wryly amusing and tender. The acting from all the females is first class, whether they be Children or Prostitute. Newcomer Ni Ni impressed me greatly as the de facto leader of the courtesans.

Its a long film, clocking in a around two and a half hours, and after the initial 30 minutes, it really is a film about talking, along with a build up of tension, punctuated by a couple of moments of really rather nasty events perpetrated by the Japanese. You could actually find the portrayal of the Japanese rather distasteful in this film, but I am afraid the Historical record is pretty much going to show that even for a Chinese film, I’m not sure things are too exaggerated. The Massacre in Nanking really is a quite horrific example of the depths that the human race can fall to. However, in the final third of the film, once or principal characters have managed to work through their relationships with each other, I can honestly say I was as emotionally connected with this film as I have been with any film in the last twelve months.

You really get to know the characters, even though you actually only meet a few on first name terms. You care about their fates, and the sacrifice that one group make for another is honestly one of the bravest yet logical things I have seen (and yes it IS only a movie, I know this). Initially I was actually disappointed with the lack of conclusion that the film gave me – but hen I realised that I probably did not need to see any more rape and murder, and it was best to remember these characters alive.

I loved this film, and I didn’t expect to. There are a million things wrong with it. Yet, as a story that touched my heart, that made me care about the fates of those involved, I have to find this one Highly Recommended.

But now a post-script. The film is China’s nomination for the Best Foreign Language Oscar. Now there are various rules and regulations, and it hits most of them happily enough. Except, I think 50% of the film is in English. And at least 10% of it is in Japanese. Which means it doesn’t really fulfil the requirement of the film’s main language being the native one of the country that is putting the film forward. So, I doubt it is going to make the shortlist – which is a shame.

Re-cycle

2011-12-29T09:54:00.001Z

Long term readers know that I am a huge fan of the works of the Pang Brothers, and have greatly enjoyed most of their work both as a team and individually post “The Eye”. For some, they have never lived up to the promise of their Asian Horror debut (and to some extent “Bangkok Dangerous”), but I have always found their films both visually and thematically interesting. This one however, is one of those which I have started watching on a number of occasions, but for many reasons, I have struggled to see much past the initial 20 minutes. However, as is usual in my build up to the New Year, I have taken it upon myself to actually clear out some of these half unwatched films, and “Re-Cycle” is the latest to get this treatment.

“Re-Cycle” is the story of Hong Kong Author Ting-yin (Angelica Lee), who is riding high on the success on a trilogy of Romance Novels, the most recent of which has been made into a Film. Interest in the background to these stories is high, but she is declining to comment on the man who inspired her – not surprisingly as it turns out she has had a long affair with a Married Man. They have since split, but he returns onto the scene, recently divorced, wishing to start afresh. Ting-yin wants nothing to do with this, instead desiring to start work on a new novel, in a new genre, a Ghost Story called “Re-Cycle”. The creative process is tough on her, as she is struggling to even get started, despite the encouragement of her literary agent. When she does start to knuckle down, she is affected by odd goings on, strange phone calls, mysterious long hair in her basin, and animated garbage start to invade into her solitary life. Even stranger, is when she suddenly finds herself in a strange alternate world, a decaying one full of all the things that have been abandoned – from ideas, to children’s toys, to amusement parks, to the unremembered dead and a room of foetuses. Can Ting-yin unravel the mystery of what is going on, why she is here and most importantly, get back to reality before she decays along with the rest of this decaying parallel universe?

I can see how this one really divides the audience. By pairing up with her partner Oxide and his brother yet again, many must have been expecting something on the level of “The Eye”. And for the opening 25 minutes or so, we get very much that, a classic Hong Kong Ghost story. Except, although it is full of atmosphere and shocks, it does really feel like we have been here, done this. Then suddenly it gets interesting, and really shifts gears. Suddenly we are in this strange, decaying CGI world, at once visually stunning and full of thought provoking imagery. It is no longer a horror film, but now far more a fantasy, albeit with some classic horror tropes.

Lee really is one of the best actresses at mixing the strong female role who harbours a great sense of heartbreak – she is far more than a helpless scream queen. The film lives or dies on her performance, as so few other characters really get a chance to shine, but she is as watchable as ever.

The film structurally has an issue – it is almost too much like a computer game – she meets odd events, and works out (sometimes with the help of a mysterious Old man and a young girl) how to get through each hurdle, moving onto to the next stage in her quest. It therefore feels that the film is almost like an amusement park ride, we are on rails working towards the eventual conclusions, with nothing else to help fill the story, or provide resonance with the real world. When the real truth of the story is revealed, I am afraid it is just too obvious to have ever been a mystery, although it still packs a real emotional punch – especially when her loss is accepted only to be taken away.

My overwhelming emotion with regards to the film is that I just wish there was more. I wish we had more time to look at the things which had been abandoned, to understand Ting-yin’s life a little more. Despite the bold imagery, some of the ideas seem a little undercooked – whilst one character in her alternate world makes perfect sense, the second reveal seems to come from nowhere. Moreover, there is a final scene shock which is probably enough for another film to be made out of, but we are left utterly unfulfilled about where it is going.

Saying all this, I really enjoyed the film, not just on a purely visceral level. It is certainly one of those films I would consider getting a Region A Blu-Ray player to see, but there is also enough in terms of the themes of loss and abandonment to make it worthy of multiple views. It is probably the fact that there are so many wonderful yet unexplored ideas and images that make me a little disappointed in the end – another 10 minutes of running time, a little pruning and some more dialogue would have raise this one up a notch, but it still remains Recommended!

Hansel and Gretel

2011-12-21T21:17:00.001Z

Up next is the second film that somehow I missed first time around, although in this case it was more I got the film at a time other things were going on, and it just dropped down to the bottom of the pile. However, I had heard good things about the Korean Horror/Fantasy, so I had high hopes when snuggling down on a cold Winters Afternoon to watch it.

“Hansel and Gretel” takes us on a journey with Eun-soo (Cheon Jeong-myeong), a young man driving around for work, while his girlfriend is pregnant at home. A car accident leaves him stranded in the woods, where he comes upon a young girl. She takes him back to her house, to meet her younger sister and older brother, and her doting parents. He soon realises all is not well – these are children to which every whim is met (big platters of cakes for breakfast anyone?), and his attempts to be assisted to get to the nearest village are ignored. Then the parents run off, asking him to stay in charge. Not to worry though, as the son brings home another couple, a preacher and his rather catty wife. Eun-soo keeps trying to escape, but eventually realises things are even stranger than he could have ever expected, leading to a psychological story of abuse, lost childhood and a storybook you just don’t want to be a part of.

The film is utterly gorgeous. The colour palette is bright and hyper-real, and in terms of set design, the whole thing is designed beautifully. It has that bright glare that only childhood memories can have, and your eye is constantly drawn to new detail, with the occasional curve ball thrown in to just put you off kilter. Surreal is the order of the day, yet it never quite goes too far.

The story is a fascinating one, playing with the themes of abandonment and abuse from the original fairy tale, but aside from that, it is no retelling of Gingerbread Houses and wicked Cannibal Witches. There are subtle hints of trails of breadcrumbs, but this film does not really take its cue from there, rather a couple of Twilight Zone Episodes, to say much more would spoil things. There are some wonderful ideas though, such as a never ending attic, a women turned into a tree, and another who becomes a doll. But is never quite moves from the realms of disturbing and creepy into that of outright horror.

Whilst I enjoyed the film, it does have problems. Part of me thinks it maybe tries a little too hard to be “A Tale of Two Sisters”, and whilst visually it is nearly on a par, it never quite is able to compete in terms of acting, mood and just that lingering feeling of something unsettling going on. The eventual back-story takes up too much of the final third of the film, and is frankly just not as interesting as what went before. The Preacher character, although suitably creepy, just mirrors something from the past, and feels a little too convenient. Most frustratingly, our main protagonist, Eun-soo, is really little more than a cipher – I never really found out who he was, and what he was learning from the experience. There are hints that maybe all is not well between him and his pregnant girlfriend, but they seem unimportant and are forgotten once the film reaches its conclusion. He is just a nice guy in a strange place.

There is a lot here to enjoy, and certain images will stick with you for a long time. I think it is a film full of great ideas, and visually I have rarely seen better. But it lacks something in terms of emotional connection with our characters – even though the underlying events are potentially heart breaking, and the themes of destroyed childhood and parental abandonment are strong, you lack a real emotional attachment with anyone, which means you never quite care enough about what is going on. So it is Recommended, but its not quite hitting the heights of really great Korean Cinema.

Shutter

2011-12-14T10:48:00.001Z

The next couple reviews are films that hard both back to my early dealings in Asian Cinema (i.e. Horror), and also odd omissions from my watching C.V. This film I can’t believe I missed at all, being as it is probably the key Thai Horror, and as I often say, I really should watch more films from Thailand.

Our main protagonist in “Shutter” is Tun (Ananda Everingham), a handsome freelance Photographer, who seems to have it all – looks, great job, pleasant personality and a lovely Girlfriend, Jane (Natthaweeranuch Thongmee). After attending a wedding party one night with his college friends, Jane and Tun are involved in a car accident, where Jane appears to run down a young girl. In a moment of ill-judged panic, Tun convinces her to drive on before anyone notices. This eats at Jane’s conscience a lot, yet when they revisit the scene of the accident, they find no evidence at all of anything having happened. However, Tun is initially intrigued by strange imagery, possibly of a Ghost, on his latest Photographic sets, and he is beset with a terrible back ache. Jane and Tun investigate the world of Ghost Photos, and eventually uncover a horrible truth about a past tragedy, one which casts a worrying light on the true nature of Tun.

On the face of it, co-directors Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom (Best name ever!!) have crafted little more than a by the numbers Asian Horror movie. Long Haired Asian Female Vengeful Ghost? Check. Use of a common phenomena (Photos of Spirits in this case)? Check. A dark personal secret hitherto unsuspected? Check. Yet, to be fair, this one is actually in the superior bracket of these films.

Being a Thai film, it is never going to be a film reliant of graphic detail, and is stronger for that – it relies on atmosphere and some quite excellent set pieces, aimed to chill you rather than scare/upset you. In fact, the weakest aspects of the film are actually when our Ghost makes a full appearance, not because it is bad, it is just we have seen Sadako-lite too many times before. Yet a glimpse here and there works really well, as does the use of the technical side of Tun’s Photographic Skills – the Darkroom and the flash bulb. It is certainly a film made on a budget – it is not lushly filmed, but certainly looks professional enough, and makes the most of what it can place on the screen.

It is also a film that needs to be watched fully to the end. Tun seems a nice guy, but his strange reaction to the hit and run seems utterly out of character until we discover his actions in the past which are only revealed in the final half hour. He is moved very slowly from being the handsome hero, to someone quite weak and actually to be despised. Jane on the other hand works her way up, from being the pretty girlfriend who is there to act all scared, to the more investigative of the two, and actually at some point becomes our lead character.

It also has the unusual structure of effectively having three endings. Tun and Jane eventually track down the dead girl who is haunting them, and we get a rather sad story of a lonely girl and her grief stricken mother. Then we get the full story of Tun’s relationship with this girl, and our understanding of some of the events are made clear – involving something that is all too human and far more horrifying than a ghostly image. If it ended there, that would make it a reasonable film, but it is that final few minutes, when everything is tied together, when vengeance is shown to be eternal and unforgiving, then that is the point it suddenly become special.

The film is also pretty open minded about the phenomena of Ghosts on film. It is willing to show that a lot of them are fakes, either accidental double exposures, or mock ups designed to sell magazines. But it also leave the door open for those which are unexplainable (although suggesting that a Polaroid ™ cannot be faked is just wrong).

For me, this is a worthy, even superior entry into this genre. It is disturbing enough to chill, but has enough character work in it to maintain interest even when the Ghostly activities are not the main focus. And that final scene, well that makes it worth the price of admission alone. Recommended.

The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake

2011-12-08T16:58:00.001Z

Video review time, and from the depths of exploitative CAT III, here is a very different Herman Yau film. Proving that there is life in the Chinese Bio-Pic, this film ranks as one of the very best I have seen in a long time. Highly Recommended.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9bUrBZ2P3E

The video is a bit more off the cuff than usual, its just I had a stinking headache and I just could not get my head around writing.

The Ebola Syndrome

2011-12-05T11:20:00.001Z

This is one of those films I have had in my to-watch list for longer than this blog has been in existence, harking back to my Horror Movie love, rather than anything Asian-influenced. It has quite the reputation, but I have always ignored it as out and out gore films do not really interest me. What is more interesting it that it is directed by Herman Yau and stars the always great Anthony Wong – two people which always get good reviews here, and who are teamed up again in the NEXT film I want to talk about. And the fact it was produced by our friend Mr Wong Jing… well that just adds an extra nuance.

In “The Ebola Syndrome”, we follow the misadventures of outright loser Kai (Anthony Wong). Before the opening credits we find him having sex with his Triad bosses wife, and when caught in the act, he proceeds to murder 3 people, and is about to murder a young girl, but is stopped before he can light the petrol he has doused her in. He escapes to South Africa, and finds a job in a Chinese Restaurant. The owners are aware of his past, and use him as a cheap dogsbody. After 10 years things reach a head, when he joins his boss on a trip to a Zulu village that is in the grip of an Ebola outbreak whilst in the search to buy some cheap pork. The ever-horny Kai decides to rape a dying native, and contracts the disease himself. However, he is one of those rare individuals that does not actually succumb – after a bout of man ‘flu, he is it and healthy again, but a carrier of the disease. He is bullied by his boss and his wife one time too many – he rapes the wife, kills them both, and then chops them up and serves them as Hamburgers in the restaurant. This starts an outbreak of Ebola in Johannesburg, but Kai is not one to hang around – he finds the savings of his now deceased boss, and returns to Hong Kong, to continue his spreading of the disease.

Right, let’s just make this clear. At face value, this is an exploitation film that covers all the bases – Rape, Racism, Cannibalism, Necrophilia, Food-Based Masturbation, Autopsies, and child peril. I’ve probably missed a few taboos out. It’s pretty graphic, and frankly not something that anyone other than the hard core gore/CAT III fans would actually want to see. But it is also the blackest of comedies, and has a quite amazing central performance. Oh, and for us sensitive Brits – several scenes of animal dismemberment – not a happy film for any live Frogs and Chickens!

I remember the furore over Ebola back in the late 1980’s – after the AIDS scare, but before SARS, this was the great flesh eating plague for darkest Africa which was going to destroy the world. It never quite happened (although it does exist although outbreaks have really been quite small and limited to small villages in Africa and the odd laboratory accident). The reality is here that whilst the film is using the cause célèbre for the poster, it really is a treatise on AIDS – its no accident that most of the infections come from the fact Kai just cannot keep his pants on.

Wong is utterly fantastic. I have come at his career somewhat backwards – whilst he is now an elder statesman of the Hong Kong film industry – it really was not always that way. He made his name in CAT III films like this, and has a large back catalogue of unsavoury characters. Yet, even though his Kai is a loathsome and unkempt individual, Wong plays him with such Charisma, that you know the film just would not have worked at all with anyone else in the role. In-between the moments of (at best) lewd and (more usually) repulsive behaviour, you actually find yourself feeling kind of sorry for this man – he is bullied by all and sundry, used and abused by those around him. It does not go so far to make him sympathetic, but it does raise it above pantomime villain. And you can just see the fun that he and Yau are having – knowing the off-the-cuff manner in which most Hong Kong cinema is made, you just know so much of this is either made up on the day of the shoot, or improvised.

If you can live with the graphic, over the top and unsavoury moments, then there is also a downside to Wong being such a powerful presence. Any periods when he is not on screen, the film frankly slows to a crawl. Any moments with the Hong Kong Police are just painful, and utterly lacking in any interest. There is a sub-plot which involves the young girl who was doused in Petrol, who has grown up to be a Cabin Attendant. She encounters Kai, and is overwhelmed by his odour, reminding her of what he did 10 years ago. And despite it being bought up a number of times, not an awful lot is done with this whole idea – and has a pretty perfunctory conclusion during the final moments. It is like the inventiveness of the first two thirds of the film has impacted on the time available to develop much of the original script.

So in the end, I enjoyed this film far more than I actually intended to. Graphic gore movies are not usually my thing, and really I watched this in order to gauge the growth of both Wong and Yau. I’ve seen far worse visually, but it was actually unusual in that it had a sensible progression of story. Coupled with a brilliant and fun central performance, I am going to shock even myself and give this – Recommended!!

Blind

2011-11-30T11:28:00.001Z

Another big summer movie from Korea, and starring another one of my favourite actresses Kim Ha-neul. Could this one raise the bar from the overwhelming feelings of adequacy and malaise I am getting from the Korean Film Industry this year? It’s a thriller, which raised hopes a little, but the overall idea is a tad hackneyed. Yet I always try to embrace a new film with an open mind – will my trust be rewarded, or once again betrayed?

In “Blind” (Or as I think the Korean title actually means “The Blind Witness”), we are introduced to trainee Policewoman Min Soo-ah (Kim Ha-neul), who goes AWOL from training to pull her fellow orphan and as-good-as Brother from taking part in an underground dancing competition. In a fit of pique, she handcuffs him to the car, moments before they are involved in an accident. This accident results in the death of her “brother”, and damages Soo-ah’s retina’s leaving her blind. Skip forward three years, and we find her coping with her physical disability, but still haunted by the death she caused. One night she is picked up by a strange Taxi driver, who seems to have unhealthy designs on her, but another road accident saves her. However, she is awfully suspicious and tries to report this to an awfully disinterested Police Department. The case is assigned to Detective Jo (Jo Hie-bong), and unkempt out-of-town Detective who is struggling to make his name. Initially dismissive because of Soo-Ah’s blindness, he realises that she has picked up on other clues from her reliance on both her previous Police Training and heightened reliance on other senses. But just as the case seems to be moving somewhere, another witness turns up, Kwon Ki-sub (Yoo Seung-ho), a young angry punk kid, whose visual account seems at odds with that of our sightless heroine. Just as the case seems to be going nowhere, the mysterious taxi driver, actually a serial killer/rapist, decides to tie up the loose ends of Soo-ah and Ki-sub, leading to a game of cat-and-mouse.

I have some really mixed feelings about this film. On the one hand it is a well put together, well produced thriller. Kim Ha-neul puts in an excellent performance as our vision impaired heroine, mixing up her normal girl-next-door image with someone who is not only strong, but severely emotionally damaged. Not only that, but it does not play too hard on her heightened senses, ensuring that much is also made of her Police Training. The initial set-piece is good, and the central scene involving a chase through the subways assisted by iPhones is actually worth the price of admission alone. The character of Detective Jo is also a huge amount of fun – initially he seems to be a bumbling loner, but it becomes quite clear he is far more from the Columbo School of Detection – his unkempt manner and disarming charm actually hide a mind which is dogged and razor sharp. He does not need much convincing at all that there is merit in Soo-ah’s testimony.

Then again, it has some major faults. The final set piece just does not quite have the same amount of tension that it should – it not only feels old and by the numbers, but it also is a bit amateur when introducing a plot element – this is something which is introduced early on in the film, but rather than bring it out again when it would give maximum effect, we are clumsily re-introduced to it some 20 minutes before it becomes important again. The relationship between Soo-ah and Ki-sub is as subtle as a tin of spam (yes I get it – he is like her “brother”), and in fact the character of Ki-sub is awfully under developed, relying on the Yoo’ Seung-ho’s undeniable charm.

My biggest issue is with our Serial Killer. To be honest, I never really understood him. It is not that he is a total cipher – we do get to see him a lot – but I never once understood quite what he was doing and his motivations. Why would he pick up a girl he ran over in a car accident? Why would he draw attention to himself by attacking two witnesses that actually were simply cancelling each other out? For someone who is obviously very meticulous and careful, he makes an awfully large number of huge blunders. Worse though is the story problems with the character – when the Police work out his identity, it seems to me that he cannot possibly have the job he appears to have, given the fact he spent 4 years in Prison for an illegal activity (and yes, I am being rather obtuse as not to spoil, but if you watch it, you will know exactly what I mean).

Equally frustrating is that is obviously wants to go a little bit further than it is able to. There are a couple of scenes that nearly get creepy and graphic, but it pulls its punches. On the other hand, it does do something to one character, that I know just could not happen in a Western (and certainly a British) movie. I’m pretty certain at least one storyline has been severely edited too – there is an odd moment between a female Police Officer and Soo-ah that is suggesting a connection between the two that is neither hinted at previously, not taken any further.

And then there is one final thing that bugs me. It is explicitly stated very early on in the film that whilst Soo-ah would dearly love to rejoin the Police Force, and is stymied in her attempts to do so, it is not her blindness which is stopping this happening – it is rather her actions that led to the initial fatal accident. So whilst numerous characters keep mentioning to her that she should rejoin, she keeps this information to herself – I understand that, and adds to the depth of her character. Yet, in our One Year Later coda, everything seems to have changed. That just does not make sense.

I actually rather liked this – it is not horrible, and there was enough in here for me to get lost in despite all it’s faults. It is no “The Chaser” nor is it “I Saw The Devil”, but as a piece of Korean Popcorn, I think it is pretty good. Recommended, with reservations.

Most Wanted–Movie Marathon

2011-11-23T14:16:00.001Z

A little change of pace here. I was recently asked by Most Wanted, the blog of VoucherCodes.co.uk to contribute on a piece they were doing to advertise their new LoveFilm voucher. The idea is that various film bloggers put together a small movie marathon to be enjoyed while tucked up in bed hiding from the seasonal inclement weather. The brief was very open – just chose three films. Obviously I wanted to talk about three Asian films, but the possibilities were endless. What I decided to do in the end was use this as an opportunity for me to promote a Director who is not very well known in the West, by revisiting three of his films that I have looked at in the past. For the uninitiated, I am going to look at some fabulous films from Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung, a ridiculously talented Hong Kong film maker. He also has the advantage of not being restricted by genre – here we get a Drama about a very modern phenomenon, a Love Story with subtle social commentary and a clever take on the Slasher movie. I find his style of film-making very intimate, he gently prods as social issues without lecturing, and brings out amazing performances from not only Actors you would expect them from, but also those that may be more limited in capabilities.

[And yes, this is pretty much content long term readers will have seen before slightly edited].

I will start with the interesting drama, Beyond Our Ken. It is a small story about the friendship between the titular Ken’s (Daniel Wu) ex-girlfriend, Chan (Gillian Chung), and his present paramour, Shirley (Höng Tao). Ken does not appear to be a terribly nice chap, and has apparently posted naked pictures of Chan on the internet. The girls get together to help Chan exact some kind of revenge, and form a strong bond whilst doing so. If that was all the movie was about it would be great – but there is a final twist in the tale that raises it to fantastic.

Ho-Cheung Pang creates an almost voyeuristic view on proceedings. For good portions of the movie you feel you are eavesdropping on private conversations. He also shows huge range, able to display moments of drama, emotion and high comedy.

The real highlight of the movie is the realistic portrayal of the growing friendship between the two girls. Even when the final act twist occurs, you still feel, despite it all, they are going to remain firm friends. Both girls are fantastic, and C-Pop star Chung is far from overshadowed by her co-star. In fact, this is easily the best performance I have seen by her.

It would be remiss of me not to mention the irony of Gillian Chung’s character being exposed in compromising positions online. I guess sometimes life really DOES imitate art. But the movie was made well before the scandal, so I guess we have to mark it down as one of life’s little ironies.

Please don’t get the idea that the film is seedy – far from it. But is is honest, cynical, subtle and wonderful.

After that bit of drama, let us have a look at a delightful Romance. "Love in a Puff" sets itself firmly in modern day Hong Kong. Modern anti-smoking legislation has driven the smoking workers to designated areas and alleyways, creating small areas where people enjoy a smoke, while exchanging stories and chit chat. Shopgirl Cherie (Miriam Yeung) stumbles upon a group of such people, including recently dumped advertising executive Jimmy (Shawn Yue). The pair hit it off immediately, and the film follows the next 7 days of their lives, as they begin a romantic relationship.

Much has been made of this film's language, which got it the dreaded Cat III rating in Hong Kong, which affected the attendances initially before word of mouth (and the internet) bought people into the cinema. Now sadly, I do not speak Cantonese, and the subtitles that I have are quite possibly not as strong as the words being spoken. However, the wordplay still feels modern and natural to me. The jokes seem genuinely funny, and unlike a lot of Hong Kong comedies, the subject matter seems universal, rather than relying on HK-specific pop-culture.
To be fair, not a lot happens in the film. The two characters meet, walk around a bit, smoke a lot, go to a birthday party, girl leaves her boyfriend, they fall out, etc. etc. However, as all Edmond Pang films that I have seen, the gritty, voyeuristic style leaves me gripped and engrossed. Remember, this is the man who got an amazing performance out of Gillian Cheung! Think of it as a cross between Wong Kar Wai and Woody Allen, and if that appeals, I promise you that you will enjoy this. The use of a pseudo-documentary to look inside the various participants minds is not a distraction (if not entirely original), it just adds layers to various characters, especially those whore are not directly important to the story.

Shawn Yue gets a lot of love on this blog, and rightfully so. Here he plays a man who is obviously in love with his job - his friends and ex-girlfriend all seem to be based at his company. He seems to be hurting from his girlfriends infidelity, and is naturally worried about the sudden intensity of his new relationship with Cherie. This is maybe not his most powerful role, but it is actually rather nicely underplayed, and most importantly realistic. Miriam Yeung is however fantastic. She is funny, flirty, a good friend, obviously stuck in a dead relationship. Her character seems so well fleshed out, and whilst she is not unattractive, she is not an unobtainable beauty, yet she just glows on the screen - a person you would love to hang around with. For me, this is HER movie.

You do have to let a few things go. Everything moves REALLY quickly - within four days of meeting Jimmy, Cherie is leaving her boyfriend of 5 years, and getting Jimmy to pick her up. I'll take this both as a cinematic short-cut, and maybe a meta-commentary on the speed of modern life. It certainly is an interesting variation on the years that love affairs can take to be requited in say a Korean film.

It is also a film that may be cursed by some of it's contemporary elements - txt messaging and Facebook are major devices used to move the plot forward - I do wonder how kindly these elements will be thought of in 10 years time. The smoking subject matter may well concern a few people. For these people, smoking is a huge part of their social lives, and other than reflecting on the effect it has on Cherie's Asthma, the film never once delves into the health aspects. I found this rather refreshing to be honest - smoking is part of these peoples lives, we maybe do not need a public health announcement in EVERY film. This is a film about modern life in Hong Kong for a certain type of 20-something - it is NOT a lecture in the perils of the cancer stick. In short - this is a funny, charming and utterly beguiling movie.

It always feels right to end any Movie Marathon with a horror film. "Dream Home" is the story of telemarketer Cheng Li-sheung (Josie Ho). She does not have a great life - she is from a poor background, suffered a lot of family pressure, has a dead end telemarketing job and is having an affair with one of Hong Kong's sleaziest married men (Eason Chan). The only thing that seems to keep her going in life is the desire to own a specific apartment - one far outside of her price range, and frankly even her friends call her obsessed about it. Even when she has the opportunity to fulfil that dream, it is taken away from her, and she snaps, embarking on a night of escalating murder.

I am not sure if the above synopsis actually clues you in to what this film is. It is part dark and gritty social satire about the housing situation in Hong Kong, and part Slasher movie. I don't know of many Hong Kong slasher films, the Asian horror genre seems to have other preoccupations (Ghosts, Long Haired Girls and currently in Japan, wild and crazy splatter with girls in Bikinis). The implementation of this one is pretty good.

The film eschews the normal conventions of the Slasher film. Firstly, it places the perpetrator front and centre. Cheng Li-sheung is the lead character, and this is her story. The story is structured in a somewhat unusual way for this type of film - instead of starting slow and building up to the night of terror, we alternate between Cheng Li-sheung's past and the gory details of the night of terror. It's an interesting way of structuring the film, as it means that the horror sections are a constant throughout the film. It does also mean that the horror is always visceral, we don't get an awful lot of in-scene tension and build up.

And the gore is graphic. Whilst it is usually done with a tongue in the directors cheek, this is not a film for the faint-hearted - eyeballs get stabbed out, entrails are spilled. But the director does take pains to coat the graphic scenes with a little humour - I enjoyed one dying man's attempt at a final cigarette. Cheng Li-sheung is not a superhuman - her victims fight back and she gets hurt in the process. Killing someone is a messy business. Another delightful touch was to turn the convention of the killer's sudden late return from the dead to one of the victims.

Josie Ho is utterly superb. She is focused when she needs to be, but there are scenes where she really gets to show her acting chops - I defy you not to feel her pain at her Mother's funeral, or when she takes the hard decision to aid in her sick father's death.

Style-wise this is classic Edmond Pang Ho-Cheung - the camerawork is accomplished, but still voyeuristic. I love watching his films for this reason, you are becoming a spy in the lives of others. There are loads of clever touches - often we see Ho via a series of mirrors, displaying her fracturing psyche. At other times we see her revulsion to smoke (which we find out later was part of the cause of her Fathers illness). We even get a disturbingly cute scene where the childhood Ho is encouraged to swear. You could strip away the gore elements, and still get a moving and accomplished movie.

Even the end makes for something special, where it does not end how you expect, but even those who do get out alive are going to be punished because of the world's economy meltdown.

Now, reading around on the Internet, I see a lot of somewhat mixed reviews. It is not entirely the case, but I see a lot of drama fans disturbed by the gore aspects, and splatter fans unhappy about the drama aspects. I can see these criticism, but for me it all worked together to generate a fantastic experience. All I worry about is if this is going to be a DVD that I will come back to again and again? It is not flawless, as it is possibly a little too depressing (I can't think of any really likeable characters, and there is a sense that all the victims are the complete innocents here).

The only problem with my film choices is that outside of Asia, they are not all readily available. Happily, the final film, Dream Home can be found at Lovefilm. Maybe give that a try, and then explore further afield!

Lust, Caution

2011-11-17T21:35:00.001Z

One of the oddities of this blog is that there are a few internationally known Asian Directors and Actors I have hardly spoken about. John Woo is the glaring omission (which I will rectify very soon), and is is Chow Yun-Fat and Bruce Lee. In some ways, at least internationally, one of the biggest omissions is Ang Lee. This Taiwanese Director is possibly the most lauded in terms of big Hollywood awards, and he has been able to work within the Western and Asian Markets at will. I have enjoyed much of his work, although I cannot say that I have ever been blown away by any of it – he is excellent at character work and bringing great performances out of his cast – even “Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon” that did utterly impress me on first seeing it has lost much of its lustre now I am conversant with the films that inspired it.

Which brings us to to his most controversial film, the Espionage Drama “Lust, Caution”. On its release it gained a certain notoriety for it's rather explicit sex scenes, and frankly I was just not interested in seeing it. But now I am aware of the work of the leads, and much more understanding of the subject matter, I put nearly three hours of my life aside today to see if this was a film that transcended this controversy.

“Lust, Caution” is really a film of two halves. the first hour or so tells a tale of a group of students in Japanese Occupied China that are inspired to take on real life roles as potential assassins of Mr Yee (Tony Leung), a collaborator with the occupying Chinese forces. This motley crew assign young actress Wong Chia Chi (Tang Wei) to pretend to be a Hong Kong Businessman’s wife, Mrs Mak, involve herself into the circle of friends of Mr Yee’s wife (Joan Chen), and basically seduce Mr Yee. Then when she can trap him alone, kill him. The problem is that not only is Mr Yee a little too careful to fall for their plan, they really are pretty poor assassins and spies. The plan fails and end horribly, driving Wong Chia Chi back to China. The second half picks up the story 3 years later, where we finally see the impact of the Japanese occupation – slaughter on the street, rationing, the attempts of the Japanese to replace the Chinese Culture with their own. Chia Chi is rediscovered by her gang, now more fully fledged members of the resistance, and is asked to restart her role as Mrs Mak. She agrees, and this time, the now much more important Yee takes her as his mistress, and they embark on an initially violent, but eventually compelling affair. However, will Chia Chi be able to reconcile her emotions and her role as the lure that will lead her lover to his proposed death?

This is one long film. Clocking in at well over two and a half hours long, even the most avid film fan is going to struggle with this. It is performed at a languid pace, with only the briefest moments of action. It really is a tale of two characters, that really do change and grow as the film progresses. Tony Leung is always excellent, but here he is frankly exceptional. He starts the film almost as a silent cipher, and well dressed black devil. But as we learn more about him, as he slowly opens up, we see a man tortured by the role he has to play, a self-loathing man, unable to express himself fully. The real star is Tang Wei. At the time she was an unknown film-wise (although she has plenty of TV Work under her belt), and whilst I take the tales of her being selected from 10,000 actresses with a pinch of hyperbolic salt, the casting is perfect. She too changes as a person. She starts as a young actress full of joy and excitement of her first performance, and ends the film confused and lost within the role she knows she has to play, and the emotions that being so deeply undercover have awoken within her. The tragedy that this role led her to being blacklisted by the Chinese for so long means that only now are we getting to see the performances that this movie promised (although I see she was cut from her latest outing, again for explicitness).

As I have mentioned it, lets talk about the sex. There are four sex scenes in the film, one is gut wrenching (as she has to lose her virginity to a fellow agent in order to know how to fulfil her role), and is upsetting (as Yee basically rapes her), and two are very graphic indeed. Whilst I understand them in terms of what the Director is trying to achieve in terms of character and emotion, I do wonder if maybe they went too far. He must have known the furore that they would create, and would lead to both a loss of potential Cinema business (in the USA) and severe cuts in some Asian regions. Looking around the net, the cuts are actually more than just the sex scenes, one totally changes the emotional impact of the conclusion! One wonders that with a little more restraint, a little less pubic hair on display and different shot selection, that the film could have had a wider audience (one this Ang Lee can provide is an international audience for what is a very Chinese film). Saying that, it sold gangbusters on DVD, so maybe there was method to the madness.

Despite this, that is not my biggest criticism of the film. My real issue is that had I watched it upon release, I don’t think I would have understood the time period properly. The Japanese Occupation of China has been rich pickings for recent Chinese Cinema (the Ip Man films, Cow), yet back when this was released, I would have been utterly ignorant of it. It lacks that little bit of exposition which would have helped the casual observer. Of course to me now it is all obvious, but 5 years ago? I’m not so sure. For a film of this length not to spend just a little bit of time contextualising the film is somewhat puzzling.

Looks-wise the film is utterly gorgeous, the period detail mesmerising. Lee cut his teeth on period Dramas, so that he pulls off something closer to home comes as no surprise.

I really enjoyed the first half of the film – the hopeless attempts of the initial plan are both charming and to be honest probably painfully accurate. The second half I struggled a little more with, not because it was bad, but to be honest I have seem a lot of spy films where the undercover agent loses touch with themselves and the role they are playing. Luckily, the film rescues itself with a quite devastating ending, that not only shocks the brain but tugs on the emotions too. It is only right that we end with the haunted character of Mr Yee, again caught between his Duty and his Love.

“Lust, Caution” is a tough watch for many reasons. It is far too long, the sex scenes I think provide a distraction, and most of the other characters are very one-dimensional. But it does have two fantastic performances at the core of the movie, and despite how I may have phrased things above, it is never boring. I have spent the day wondering how to rate the film though, because although there is much to laud about it, I am not sure I will ever sit down and watch it again. For that reason, although I appreciate the craft in Direction and Acting it is Recommended, but no more.

Starry Starry Night

2011-11-15T19:34:00.001Z

My favourite kind of film – that unexpected treat, which I discover with no knowledge of what world I am about to enter, and find myself not only charmed, but that it hits some very personal notes for me also. I have read some rather middling reviews for the film, but for me this was a treat of the highest order, and a personal journey I am glad I took.

“Starry Starry Night” is yet another film based on a picture book by Jimmy Liao (see previous reviews of the sublime “Turn Left, Turn Right” and the less balanced “The Sound of Colours”). Thirteen year old Mei (Josie Xu)* is going through a bit of a crisis. Her doting Grandfather is dying, her Parents and on the verge of Divorce, and she feels alienated from her peers. She hides away somewhat in a world of her own, often populated by imaginary characters based on the toys made by her Grandfather. When a new boy, Jay (Eric Lin) joins her class, she finds a kindred spirit, and a friendship, maybe even romance blossoms. When their school project is ruined by some of the other children in school, they decide to take a trip to her now deceased Grandfather’s Mountain Home. What life lessons will the two learn on this journey?

I’m not usually one for putting too much of myself obviously in my reviews, but in this case I feel it is important. My parents split up when I was just a little younger than Mei. It confused me, mostly because I knew no-one else that had been through this. Although I was not alone as Mei (I have a sibling), so much of this called out to me. My parent’s divorce happened with me ignoring the signs, arguments behind closed doors, difficult silences at mealtimes, an almost gentle decay of the family unit until that moment of separation. I too found it hard to communicate with my peers about this, and struggled to deal with it, and like Mei took comfort in an imaginary world, and occasionally obsessive behaviour. So, you could say this one really spoke to me.

The film is beautifully shot, and sparingly uses fantasy imagery to show Mei’s state of mind – sometimes emotions are betrayed by animated shadows, or a walk through the streets with her Origami Animals, or even a train journey through Van Gogh’s titular painting. These moments are not only gorgeous and fantastical, but they are also used with restraint, more like punctuation than the story itself.

Josie Xu is equally as beguiling as the lead character – she is often a girl of few words, except when she is with Jay (when you cannot shut her up) – her performance seems honest and true. She has a chemistry with newcomer Eric Lin, which belies their ages, and makes even a potentially difficult scene in the woods actually seem very touching and poignant.

Rene Liu is also excellent as the Mother, again reminding me of my own mother who took refuge at this time in memories and alcohol. What is important though is that we only ever really see or hear things from Mei’s point of view – a mumbled argument behind a door, the way things that used to be commonplace (like the family doing a jigsaw together) suddenly disappear from the agenda – so these adults are sketchy at best, but for me that is the point. At Thirteen we are on the cusp of adulthood physically, but mentally we have a long way to go before we are mature enough to understand the subtleties of emotions and relationships and love.

I will say that the actual night in the woods is not quite as successful as it should have been, it is a little too dark (literally rather than metaphorically) to always understand what is going on, and whilst I loved the way Mei’s eventually fever dream played out, I think I would have liked to have seen just one more scene between her and Jay. This is because it is a friendship I can believe in. Not only that, but in Jay’s stoic silence about his own family breakdown, he showed a different way of dealing with it – for him it was in a silent rage, occasionally exploding in a basically impotent rage. I was in that place too.

There is a little coda to the film, where “years later”, a grown up Mei (LunMei Kwai) finds some closure to the events in the film – I am torn as to whether this is a lovely way to close off the film, or maybe I would have preferred the film to have ended with Mei’s speech about being Thirteen and some things just left up to me to digest. It is a lovely moment though, so right now I am glad it is there.

To be honest, this is one of the most beautiful and touching films that I have seen this year – although I am certain my feelings for it are amplified because of the emotional connotations it has for me. Yet, it did not make me sad, it made me nostalgic, and maybe even happy that the feelings I had back then, the small fantasy life I withdrew into, was not not that unusual. Highly Recommended

* I notice the IMDB entry is a bit confusing, as young Miss Xu gets two entries, one as Jiao Xu – it is however the same person – she did indeed play a little boy in “CJ7”

The Japanese Wife

2011-11-12T18:37:00.001Z

Up till now I have concentrated pretty much on films from South-east Asia, but I am aware of the cinema of the Sub-Continent also. Even though I probably know more people of Indian Origin than any other ethnicity, my explorations into the second largest Film Industry in the world has been muted at best. The odd subtitled movie when stuck in some far-flung Hotel Room, or maybe even twenty minutes when I scroll down to the bottom of my Digital TV Programme Guide. Frankly most of the output of Bollywood just does not appeal – the films are too long, and pretty much everyone seems to have the urge to spring a Song-&-Dance Number on me at least once. But, this one attracted my interest for a couple of reasons – firstly, it is in Bengali (as opposed to the normal Bollywood Hindi), and more obviously, the subject matter meant that it might just fit into the more oriental persuasions of my blog.

“The Japanese Wife” tells us the story of Snehamoy (Rahul Bose), a poor Village Schoolteacher from the West Bengal Region of India. He is a painfully shy man, an orphan who lives with his Aunt. He starts up an old fashioned penpal relationship with a young Japanese Girl, Miyage (Chigusa Takaku). They write letters to each other regularly, and a bond forms. When The Aunt (Moushumi Chatterjee) starts to introduce Snehamoy to a young woman called Sandhya (Raima Sen) with the intention of marriage, this prompts Miyage to ask Snehamoy to become her Husband – even though they have never met, and frankly are unlikely to. He accepts, and their relationship continues for the next 15 years, and is even accepted by his fellow villagers. However, difficulties arise when Miyage falls ill, and Sandhya returns to his life as a Widowed mother. Can the unusual relationship survive all these brickbats? Can true love exist in such an unconventional format?

I have a feeling there are going to be three issues that the casual viewer is going to have with this film:

1) I will deal with the Elephant in the room first. The plot is kind of rather ridiculous. Or as ridiculous as you want it to be. Because Snehamoy really does live in a terribly remote area – there is no electricity, no computers, no internet. Even a telephone call will involve a visit to a nearby town and the use of a 3rd party. Whilst their initial contact is not truly explained (I think it was done via a magazine), I actually can believe that two terribly lonely people could meet in this way, and find that using letters to be a way they can communicate with each other. In fact I am sure some married couples could probably benefit from this.

2) I mentioned up front that the film is in Bengali. Actually this is only party true. Whilst a good 25% of the film is indeed in Bengali, the rest is actually in English – with Snehamoy and Miyage narrating their letters to each other. As English is neither of their first language, this presents a level of awkwardness as a listener – but also means that the actually words between the two has a refreshing honesty, not hidden behind flowery phrases, never complicated by metaphor.

3) Its not much longer than 100 minutes long, but the pace is languid. There is no action (other than a Kite Fight), and our main characters never even meet. Yet I found the film beguiling and beautiful. I was actually surprised how beautifully shot the film was, with both wonderful glimpses into the Bengali traditional way of life, along with some brilliant dramatic moments reminiscent of 1950’s American Melodramas.

As you can see, I am apologising for it, as I really found myself enjoying this. Rahul Bose makes for an engaging lead – genuinely nice but painfully shy. The experienced Moushumi Chatterjee is actually brilliant, and steals every moment she is on screen. The films real star though is Raima Sen, who starts as a minor character, but grows as the film progresses into a threatening presence as “the other woman”. Chigusa Takaku does fine as her character, but as she only interacts physically with other cast members so very rarely, she has little more to offer than either look radiant or pained and suffering.

It is a lovely movie all round, as long as you can accept the basic premise. It asks all sorts of questions about love, and about the concepts of marriage (both love-based and arranged). It does not hold back, dealing with Snehamoy’s sexual frustration and his impotence in dealing with Miyage’s illness. It allows itself time to poke a little fun at the various different kinds of medical care available in India, and also uses the format to spread a little education about the Bengali way of life.

This one is Recommended, as long as you look at my three points above, and think you can handle it, I think you will have a great time with this film. Be warned though – bring a few tissues.

Capsule Comments–Overheard, Au Revoir Taipei and Balzac & The Little Seamstress

2011-11-12T10:53:00.001Z

It has been a while since I took the capsule approach but been a little busy with work, although I have managed to fit some films in. Usual rules apply – I may one day come back to these in a fuller manner, but it is unlikely.

Overheard

Bought to you from the makers of “Infernal Affairs”, this is a complex little thriller, following an investigation into a potential Stock Market Scam. Our investigating team are full of quirks though – leader Johnny (Ching Wan Lau) is having an affair with the estranged wife of his best friend, Gene (Louis Koo) has a sick child and finds out he too is terminally ill and Max (Daniel Wu) is struggling to keep up with the financial expectations of his prospective Father-in-Law. So when they get wind of an insider trading tip, they decide to take advantage. However, it all goes wrong, and their attempts to cover up their mistake leads to the criminals exacting revenge on the threesome and their families.

It is pretty darn good, with strong performances all round (even the oft maligned Michael Wong is great as the mastermind), including a nice performance by Jingchu Zhang. But several things stop it being truly great. The underlying plot is not too well realised, concentrating (for once) maybe too much on the strong characterisation of not only our three main protagonists, but also a number of secondary characters. It also has an ending which although is kind of exciting, really does not make an awful lot of logical sense. Recommended though, and expect a fuller review of the in-name-only sequel soon.

Au Revoir Taipei

Poor Kai (Jack Yao) has seen his girlfriend go to Paris to further her education, leaving him to spend his nights alone in a bookstore learning French. Pretty Store Assistant Susie (Amber Kuo) seems keen on him, but he is immune to her charms. He borrows money from local crime boss Brother Bao (Frankie Gao) to go visit his girlfriend after she dumps him on the phone. In return, he is to take a mysterious package with him. However, this attracts the attentions of both the Police and Bao’s Nephew Hong (Lawrence Ko) who wants to stop being the legitimate face of his Uncle’s organisation and get him and his boys a “Sweet Score”. Cue a chase around Taipai one night for Kai, his best friend (Paul Chiang)and the unwitting Susie.

It really is the most beautiful and gentle of comedies, evoking a real sense of love for Taipei. It is colourful and noisy and just overwhelmingly like candyfloss. The problem is that there never really is any sense of threat about proceedings, which makes for a pleasant enough journey, but means it just lacks that special extra thing which would elevate this. Jack Yao isn’t quite strong enough to carry the film, but Lawrence Ko is brilliant and I challenge you not to fall in love with Amber Kuo. It is a film to make you smile rather than laugh out loud, and I recommend it with just a touch of caution. However, I look forward to seeing what Director Arvin Chen produces next

Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

One of those films I have meant to watch for ages. It is 1971 China where Luo (Chen Kun) and Ma (Liu Ye) are sent to the countryside by the Party for re-education. The both fall for the beguiling young daughter of the Tailor from the neighbouring village (Zhou Xun).

Sadly I wanted to like this one far more than I did. Based on the directors semi-autobiographical Novel, the individual vignettes are fine, helped by the stunning landscape. Yet, I felt there was a cruelty about it – the city boys seemed to be always looking down on the villagers, and even when their desire to educate the Little Seamstress backfires on them, I felt no sense of regret, or even learning.

The lead males are sadly anodyne at best, though Zhou Xun is wonderfully effervescent – a far cry from those cold femme fatales she tends to play in more modern times. It also has a really odd penultimate scene, set in the present day, which makes no sense when it is followed up by a final scene showing the final fate of our heroine.

It is interesting, and at times lovely, but the whole thing felt like a series of recollections rather than an engaging story arc. Worse, I got mixed feeling about the re-education programme – an evil thing – where I got the sense that the lead was actually feeling this was the best days of his life, and that as the boys were so abusive and cruel, that Mao may have had a point. Mildly recommended, mostly for the beautiful vistas and a glowing Zhou Xun.

Snow Flower and the Secret Fan

2011-11-05T18:16:00.001Z

Back at the beginning of the year, there were a number of films I was really looking forward to, and so far each and every one of them has disappointed. This was one of them, and to be honest, I already knew it was going to be a let down. Reviews had been mediocre at best, and frankly, when I can get the DVD from the USA just before it even gets a UK cinema release, then things are not usually positive. But maybe, just maybe, everyone was wrong, and this adaptation of a novel I rather enjoyed would actually turn out to be ok!

‘Fraid not.

“Snow Flower and the Secret Fan” decides to use two different stories over three different timelines. At the core of it, is the story written in the novel, about women in early 19th Century rural China, particularly the journey of Lily (Li Bing-bing), a poor girl whose status is elevated by the almost perfect binding of her feet, her elevation by a fortuitous Laotong match with a girl named Snow Flower (Jun Ji-hyun) and a marriage that has produced sons. Over time she survives poverty, disease, and uprising and the difficulties created by her friend’s less fortunate life. Its an interesting story, and would make a fascinating and lush historical film.

The problem is, the filmmakers felt for some reason this was not enough. So this story is told via the story written by a modern Korean girl called Sophia (Also Jun Ji-hyun) who had entered a more modern version of a Laotong relationship with Nina (also Li Bing Bing). So we get the story of their childhood friendship, along with the present day tale – where Sophia and Nina have become estranged, and an accident to Sophia brings them back together. Except Sophia is now in a coma, leaving Nina attempting to piece together not only the story that her friend has written, but also what has happened in the time since their friendship broke down.

There are two fundamental problems here. Firstly, the Novel has enough content for a nigh-on two hour movie. By adding all the extra story (which I assume is trying to draw parallels between the struggles of modern and ancient Chinese women), it means we get some kind of bullet point version of the novel. Most of the main story beats are here, but we get nothing of the character development. The Novel is narrated by Lily, and it is through her we gain understanding of the rules and mores of the era. Here we have nothing. In fact, if I had not read the novel, I am not sure I would have even understood half of what was going on in these flashbacks. Secondly, the modern day story is hardly worth our time, its is underdeveloped and to be honest, utterly dull. Nothing in it really has the same impact as the ancient events – cheating on an exam hardly counts as the same trauma as a family ravaged by disease.

Fundamentally – you never get any sense of the depth of feeling that is built between the two girls. You never really understand how Lily has risen and how Snow Flower has fallen. And the core moment in the novel, of Snow Flowers rejection of Lily (and the reasons why) is really stupidly handled, and is done in a way that lacks and sort of revelation. The modern day story is even weaker, and does not even bother to give us any sense of reconciliation, despite the final scene.

I could list all the things the film ignores – Lily’s relationship with her Mother, her Mother-in-law, with her children, the way she she’s Snow Flower’s husband in a new light once a tragedy strikes. Bits of it are there, but it is realised pretty woefully. Whole concepts described in the Novel are hardly explored, critically the whole idea of the Nüshu language only understood by women and indeed the importance of the Secret Fan itself.

Li Bing Bing is actually very good in all her various roles, and Jun Ji-hyun does OK, but she seems glaringly underwritten in her guise as the titular Snow Flower and as she spends one timeline in a coma, she has little to offer. A strange cameo by Hugh Jackman is fine, but seems a little out of place, and no other character is really given any time to shine whatsoever (other than Vivian Wu’s Aunt – who thinking about it as I write this has had her character moved from the Ancient China setting to the present day, and only seems to be an exposition device).

Is it an awful film? No of course not – it has at least one strong performance, the soundtrack is lovely and the ancient China scenes are beautiful. Its failing is that it did not have the courage to stick to the source material, probably scared that a film in Chinese, starring relative unknowns (in the West) just was not going to pull in the crowds. To be fair, they were probably correct, but by golly – why even bother? At the end of the day, it is pretty, but also pretty boring. Not Recommended. Go read the novel.

Mr Vampire

2011-11-01T21:22:00.001Z

This year for my Saturday Night Halloween choice I was at a bit of a quandary about what to watch. I have actually seen a fair few horror movies recently, and frankly they have not cut the mustard. Then, I came across something that enabled my past and my present to come fortuitously together. I have recently been reading Kim Newman’s rather fabulous Novel “Anno Dracula”. It’s a highly recommended read, placing itself in an Alternate Universe where Dracula survived the end of Bram Stokers Novel, and was able to effectively become the ruler of Victorian England. Mixing it in with the other great Villain of the day, “Jack the Ripper”, the novel cleverly mixes in all sorts of characters, both real and those from fiction (so we have a shadowy underworld ruled by Moriarty and Fu Manchu, as well as various characters from all sorts of Vampiric fiction, from Varney the Vampire to Blacula). In a couple of Chapters one of our protagonists is set upon my a Chinese Vampire, which was an obvious play on the “Mr Vampire” films from the 1980’s. This struck a chord with me, as I remember watching a couple of them in my teens, late night on a minor TV Channel on my Black and White ‘Portable’ television set I was allowed in my bedroom. I remembered little more than the “Hopping Vampires” (Jiang Shi), so it felt like a good time to rediscover this little classic.

The story of “Mr Vampire” goes something like this. Master Gau (Lam Ching-ying) runs a Mortuary, assisted by his less than able employees, Chou (Chin Siu-hou) and Man Choi (Ricky Hui), along with his rather fetching unibrow.. After some initial fun with some animated corpses, the gang are asked to rebury the Father of a wealthy businessman, whose very attractive daughter Ting Ting (Moon Lee) is taken a fancy to by Man Choi. However, our corpse is actually one of the Living Dead, and he starts a rampage, taking the life of the Businessman (who is reanimated) and infecting Man Choi. Can the gang save the day with their Kung Fu, anti_vampire tricks and frankly wacky hi-jinks? And can Chou survive his seduction by a rather sexy Ghost (Pauline Wong)?

They just do not make films like this anymore. And for once I mean this literally – in this world of the Mainland ruling Hong Kong, Ghosts and Vampires are just total no-nos. And this film shows what a complete shame that is. Sure it has a spooky undercurrent, but it is just full of joy and fun. It is totally silly, at times makes no sense, But it has those elements which make Hong Kong films of this era so special – a sense of kinship and no little (albeit doomed) romance.

In fact, that is what surprised me the most. Two Thirds of the way through the film, a brand new story is introduced, of a seductive ghost who basically is going to drain the bewitched Chou’s life-force away by constant ‘bedroom fun’. Now in many films this can really disrupt the flow, and seem a little erroneous, but here is not only worked as a change of pace, but care was taken to tie it back into the main story, plus it led to a rather run special effects sequence (come on – who isn’t entertained by a ghost who can use her detached head as a projectile weapon?).

It isn’t the most polished of productions – the wobbly sets are hilariously visible, and there are wires in some of the Kung Fu sequences that have not even attempted to be hidden and visible wires, but for me this is all part of the charm. As a horror film, is is not exactly scary, but there are some moments of peril, along with some decent makeup and some fairly impressive kung fu.

It is very funny, and it plays well to a Western Audience. The physical gags are pretty universal, and even those dependant on wordplay were easy to understand (such as Ting Ting being mistaken for a Lady of the Night, or a crooked Rice Seller being caught out by his own sons ineptitude). A little bit of Wikipedia helped me understand the various ways to ward off the walking dead (and whilst inky string may sound a little bizarre, is it really that much odder than our Western concept of Garlic warding off a Transylvanian Bloodsucker?). As I understand it, the film took a few of the ideas, added some twists of its own, and basically set the film standard for the ‘rules’ in these kinds of movie.

Now I really enjoyed this, and was pleasantly surprised on how well it stood up to my modern eye. It did let itself down in the end, and it just ended mid action, with no resolution to one huge plotline, but that really is par for the course in these kinds of films. I see there are 4 direct sequels, plus some spin offs, and a re-imagining. I am not sure I am going to try them all (well I know one I definitely will), but for this Halloween – Highly Recommended.

Dark Water

2011-10-29T08:13:00.001Z

It’s been a while, so apologies for regular readers – life just got in the way this last week, and after a spate of posts before my absence. Now, one of the big disappointments recently was the K-Horror “The Cat”, but it did make me think back to “Dark Water” (as it stole the ending), which I wanted to talk about for two reasons – firstly, the Japanese film version was one of those long spoken about films I wanted to discuss all those months ago at the beginning of my journey, and secondly, I have had the DVD of the US remake sitting unwatched for over 5 years. So, with Halloween approaching, what better time to pop them both in the DVD players, and do a little compare and contrast?

Both versions of “Dark Water” take their inspiration from Kôji Suzuki’s short story “Fuyū Suru Mizu” (of course the US remake is also taking inspiration from the Japanese film), and whilst they both take the general idea and theme from that tale, they interpret it in different ways. The story goes like this – A woman is going through a difficult divorce, and is forced to move into a rather dingy apartment with her daughter. It is cheap, and close to a good school, but it has a huge flaw – Water keeps dripping in from the ceiling. Not only that but both Mother and Daughter are being haunted by the ghost of a young girl. No-one really wants to help – the Husband is more interested in getting custody of his Daughter, the Real Estate Agent was only interested in the sale, and the building caretaker seems utterly uninterested. The Woman becomes slowly unhinged, not helped by the constant reappearance of a bag that seems to appear at will, and may have belonged to a young girl who disappeared some years previously.

The Japanese version is directed by Hideo Nakata, who of course made his international name directing another Suzuki Story, “Ringu” (going back to the Well as it were). Whereas in the first film, he turned what was a sci-fi/medical horror story into a creepy tale of ghosts and hauntings, he plays this one much closer to the source material. Hitomi Kuroki does well as the Mother, exuding both love for her daughter, frustration at the divorce, and that unsettling sense that she really is rather mentally unstable. However, most other characters are very one note – the strength of the film is in the atmosphere – imbuing common events like a damp patch on the ceiling or a children's bag with a hidden sense of threat and menace. It is creepy and the tension is well developed, but the film does lack any real scares, it really is an exercise in atmosphere – and the lack of any real exploration of other characters makes it a good, but unexceptional film. When I first saw it nearly a decade ago, I remember being much more impressed with it, but now it is more of a curiosity.

The US remake (albeit by Brazilian Director Walter Salles), moves the story to New York, with Jennifer Connolly as the Mother. The story remains untouched, and even plays out some scenes in an identical manner. However, it really plays down the supernatural aspects, making this much more a drama about a woman breaking down, not just because of her divorce, but because of her own mental issues. Connolly is fantastic, as are those around her (the film is blessed with an amazing cast, including John C. Reilly, Tim Roth and Pete Postlethwaite). As I often find though – this becomes both a strength of the film, but also its biggest failing. Whilst here the characters have a depth that the Japanese version totally lacks, it also forgets to have that supernatural sense of dread – in fact cut two minutes from the ending, and frankly this could be a straight up drama. I have no issue with this, interpreting stories differently can be a worthwhile way of exploring themes, but it means the film which is obviously trying to be marketed as a Horror Film falls terribly flat. It also seems very concerned with explaining everything, not necessarily by exposition, but it wants to dot those ‘i’s’ and cross those ‘t’s’ that the Japanese version is willing to leave up to the audience.

Tim Roth’s Lawyer is quite excellent also, and frankly is a character worthy of a better film than this. He is fabulously unconventional, unlike his much more straight-laced Japanese counterpart. He balances out the unbalanced Connolly to perfection.

One interesting difference is the way both films decide to end (and spoilers here). The Japanese version goes for a 10 years later approach, with our little girl all grown up, and barely remembering the event of the film. She is able to get some closure about what happened to her mother, and knows that she has been there watching over her. The US version dares only to move forward 3 weeks, choosing instead to give our young child hope for the future.

I enjoyed both films in different ways, but the truth of the matter is that however you dress the story up, it really is a 30 minute short story stretched out to a feature length movie that is cannot quite sustain. Both really struggle to hide the flimsy nature of the underlying concept. However, taken together – the atmosphere of the Japanese, and the character work of the US version, well I think there is a strong piece of work here. Both are therefore Mildly Recommended.

Sector 7

2011-10-21T12:14:00.001Z

Dear Miss Ha Ji-won

As you know I have followed your career with both interest and admiration over the years. I honestly believe you are one of your countries finest actresses, equally at home with being a “Scream Queen”, a blockbuster heroine, and also capable of touching and nuanced roles. So when I heard about your latest Blockbuster offering coming out I have to admit I was excited. Of course I was not expecting anything deep, but maybe a fun action romp about monsters on an oil rig, maybe something akin to “The Host” mixed with a dash of “Alien”. Then I started hearing about the troubles with the production, the poor press screenings, announcements that the film would be ready 2 days after the release date. Then the terrible reviews, and awful second week takings. Yet, I still had faith, here in my little world I am quite capable of seeing good things in the worst movies, and at the very least I had hope that your performance may well shine through.

The story in “Sector 7” shows promise. A group of people are working on an Oil Rig off the coast of Jeju island attempting to find Oil. Early on they discover some funny little fish creatures that the on-board Ecologist starts to study. The search for Oil has proven fruitless, and the Rig is about to be shut down, when a senior man from the Oil Company arrives, to announce they are going to have one last attempt. 3 Months pass, and whilst no Oil is found, the Rig is beset by tragedy. Firstly a crew member dies in an undersea accident, then the Ecologist apparently commits suicide, and then the Rig’s Doctor is murdered. Initially blaming a mentally challenged member of the team, it becomes apparent that they are not alone, and that some kind of Monster is sharing this location with them. Can the team survive? And is it quite the mystery that they all think it is?

Where to start? Well, a good monster movie really needs to hit to points. Firstly, the monster needs to be scary, and the threat needs to be real. Secondly, it always helps if there is more going on than a nasty creature chasing and killing people. Think of the motivations behind the “Company” of “Alien”, and the social commentary about pollution in the Han River of “The Host”.

Your latest film suffers on both scores. Firstly the monster lacks any kind of shocking reveal, some 40 minutes into the picture you just see it, big and bold in all its glory. There is no sense of foreboding or threat – it is just a big lumbering brute – totally at odds with how it may have been portrayed in the killing of our Doctor. The idea of being trapped in an Oil Rig with some creeping threat is lost when something the size of a bus is lumbering around. And then the subtext is also muddled. I understand that a nation like Korea that has no Oil reserves of its own would very interested in finding their own resource, and the film tries to suggest that this creature may be some kind of manageable energy source. But the idea is never explored. Not only that, but the creature makes no sense. Why did only one of the little fish things get this way? What on earth made it grow so huge so quickly? Why would an undersea creature have legs, be able to breathe air, and be so flammable?

I can’t believe I am saying this, but the film lacks any kind of believability – do any of the film-makers understand what it takes to run an Oil Rig, even one which is just doing Exploration? You would certainly need more than the handful of people on board. And when you factor in that 2 people seem to be managers, there is a Doctor and an Ecologist in this group, there really does not seem to be enough people about. Not only that, but do they think there would be time to have exciting Motorbike races around the rig (heaven knows how two Motorbikes even got there). Would they even employ someone like our mentally challenged friend who seem to have no useful purpose on the Rig? And why would there be a Flamethrower aboard? A Gun I can just about stomach, as well as the Emergency flare device, but a full-on Flame Thrower? Please.

Even when the film builds up some 40 minutes of quiet, trying character development, it falls flat. Everyone is a cipher, most do not even get names. Your own romance seems an afterthought (although I do know some of the early scenes were cut to make the film ‘more exciting’). The moments of homage range from the ill-judged (the “Jaws-my-scar-is-bigger-than-yours”) to the obvious (“Ripley-face-to-face-with-the-Alien).

I am fortunate that I did not see the film in IMAX 3D, as there were no obvious moments where it would have helped in the scare stakes, and so much of the film is woefully under lit I wonder with the additional 30% brightness loss that 3D gives you whether anything would be visible at all. Ironically, the best scenes did involve the aforementioned Motorbikes, which is a shame as they belong in a totally different film altogether.

Even you, my dear Ha Ji-won, seem to be bored by the whole endeavour, not helped because you do seem to be the only capable person on board, and eventually you are reduced to scowling and running around. Watchable as ever, but utterly wasted.

Your film disappoints because it is not only badly thought out and poorly executed, but because so much money has obviously been thrown at it. Lots of the CGI are halfway decent to be fair – but it is a pale shadow of the films it is obviously inspired by and must desire to be like. Other than having you in the film, and a couple of nice scenes, I find nothing here to Recommend.

Still, you are allowed a failure or two – I still eagerly await your next film.

Your Servant and Fan

ThingsFallApart

Rinko Eighteen

2011-10-21T12:13:00.001Z

This will be a short little review, of a short little movie. But boy, what an unexpected treat.

Based on a Manga (of course), “Rinko Eighteen” is the story of Rinko, a young Japanese girl who has it all. She is hard working, has wealthy parents and is well on her way of fulfilling her dream of being a Doctor. The it all goes pear shaped, when her Father’s business goes bankrupt, he disappears, her Mother runs away with her lover, and she not only finds herself homeless, but now unable to go to school. But she is the enterprising type, and desperately tries to find herself a job, but her age, the economy and her lack of experience prove to be major stumbling blocks. Finally, she gets a job at a small AV (Adult Video) production company, where she is initially shocked (and frankly hilariously naive) to find out what they do, but she knuckles down, and is determined to do her best to succeed.

The Elephant in the room first – this is a sweet, heart-warming and funny movie – BUT it is about the adult movie industry. So there is not only a fair amount of naked flesh on show (some breasts and buttocks), but some of the sexual acts are just on the other side of unusual. So not one for the kids, but if you have the tiniest of open minds, you will not find this offensive.

What we have though is a story about someone, who through their own drive and will to succeed, finds herself becoming a success. And not just because she finds herself in an uncomfortable situation, but also in the little things in life, like learning to ride a bike. Her innocence is never something to laugh at, although you will laugh with her. In a film that barely covers an hour, you watch this girl grow and change.

It is low budget stuff, and the acting ranges from the humorous to the awful, but it really does not seem to matter. It is a fun movie, played by people who are obviously having fun. The camerawork is little more than point and shoot, there are no glamorous locations, and even the sex is workmanlike. But that is kind of the point – these are real people doing real jobs. There are those good at their jobs, there are those just getting on with it, there are even those that love what they are doing and believe in it whole-heartedly. You know – just like in real life.

I also liked it because it did not go the obvious route – Rinko is never actually subjected to being part of the films other than as her role as an assistant director (a.k.a. Gopher). And even those that are are dealt with in a human and realistic way – for some this is just a job, and even for the stars, they are painful away that their celebrity is something only fleeting.

Sometimes Japanese movies can appear awfully cold, it is rare they have the fun of a great Hong Kong film, or the gushing romanticism of a Korean one. The one thing they are able to do is talk about sex. Yet this one manages to do that, yes occasionally semi-graphically, but with a heart and warmth that many more expensive, better acted and better constructed films utterly fail to do. Highly Recommended.

The Sorcerer And The White Snake

2011-10-20T11:17:00.000Z

Nearly caught up on my films watched and not reviewed, and next up is the latest Jet Li release, which is actually a retelling of a story filmed before, and a very entertaining version has already been talked about here. The basic story structure is the same, with a few tweaks, and of course the benefits (or not) of modern CGI on offer. It is also going to be called “It’s Love” in some territories.

Jet Li is the Demon Hunting Abbot in “The Sorcerer and the White Snake”, running around China fighting and capturing the Animal Demons that occasionally escape into the mortal world. He is assisted by a young novice, Neng Ren (Zhang Wen), and they are very zero-tolerance team – all demons are bad demons in their eyes and need to be returned. Meanwhile White Snake (Shengyi Huang) has been intrigued by a gentle herbalist, Xu Xian (Raymond Lam), and after her sister Green Snake (Charlene Choi) thoughtlessly puts him in peril, she saves his life, and the forbidden Demon/Human love starts to blossom. Meanwhile, Neng Ren is turned into a Bat Demon during a fight, and starts a romance of his own with Green Snake. However, our Abbot is not happy with any of these events, and will go to extreme measures to split up White Snake and her human paramour.

This is a popular story, and as I said above, I have seen a version of this before. However, there are some interesting twists. Firstly, we have the subplot of Neng Ren’s transformation, which should lead to some interesting conflict of interest. Sadly, this part of the story gets totally forgotten about after some initial interaction with the A Plot, and not only never gets properly resolved, but also leads to a shockingly rushed and unsatisfactory conclusion. Secondly, we are given an almost existential interpretation of the love between White Snake and the Herbalist. In the other version I saw, the love was genuine, and the Snake Demon very much was willing to sacrifice her immortality for the man she loved. In this take on events, it raises an interesting question. Does our human hero love her, not out of desire, but because she implanted a piece of her soul in him when saving his life? Again, things are not taken to their conclusion here, and the film seems insistent on the same ending as the previous film – a big loud one with a sad ending. However, even though these ideas could do with more development, they do at least give the film more merit than some other modern retellings I have seen this year (*cough* Chinese Ghost Story *cough*).

Acting on the whole is above average, Shengyi Huang makes for a very beguiling and sincere White Snake, Charlene Choi is a lot of fun as the more playful Green Snake. Jet Li does not have an awful lot to do, other than make poses against a Green Screen, but at least he has a depth and gravitas that the role demands. Raymond Lam is little more than ok, to be honest he does not have a lot to play with – which feels like a common complaint in these films – the human male lead is often just too nice, that he lacks any interest. The best bit for me was the gang of lesser Animal Demons (including Miriam Yeung, Lam Suet and Chapman To), which in one “Meet the Parents” scene are delightfully funny – but again they are shuffled off to the side far too early.

Then we have the special effects. The world has moved on a lot, and no film based in a fantasy world can get away without the obligatory CGI-fest. But this is not Hollywood, so you have to accept that budgets are less, and technically not as advanced. The problem here is twofold – some of the effects are pretty poor (White and Green look terrible in their hybrid form), and then come the final section of the film, they are too much. The very human story of loss and sacrifice and love is lost underneath a morass of loud big flashiness. The shame is, the opening prologue scene, although odd as it never feeds back into our story) works much better as it maintains a little restraint.

The film is however, better than ok, and well worth a watch. The core romance actually works, and it does not feel an unnecessary remake, more of one that maybe missed the change to capitalise on some of the new ideas it offered up. I’ll give it the Recommended seal of approval, tarnished only because it really could have been so much better if some more time was given to the story, and maybe a little less attention given to the CGI.

Blood Ties

2011-10-17T12:07:00.000Z

And now another unexpected treat from Singapore, a little revenge thriller, with more than a dash of the supernatural. There's enough in that alone to make me curious, but it chooses an interesting way of telling the story, whilst far from unique, actually works!

"Blood Ties" introduces us to Policeman Shun (David Leong), who is working undercover. When his cover is blown, the criminals he is investigating break into his apartment, rape and murder his wife, and then shoot him in the head. All in front of his younger sister Qin (Joey Leong), who is hiding in a closet. The devastation goes on, when it appears in the press that our hero was possibly corrupt. 7 days after his death, his bloodstained sister turns up at his ex-partners house, asking for help. Because, as part of the 7th night tradition, his restless spirit has possessed his younger sister in order to exact vengeance. Not only that, but his Mother (an unexpected role for the great Pei-pei Cheng) is trying to get some answers from his boss, and something so does not feel right there.

This really was a little gem of a film, because it not only was able to put together a compelling storyline, and was able to mix up realism along with the supernatural, but because it was able to deliver the film in a complex time-shifted narrative, that actually served the story well. Unlike the more recent Hong Kong thriller “Punished” which I looked at a few weeks ago, it actually got away with not only mixing up the timeline, but also giving away what should have been the killer twist very early on in the film. It kept up a relentless pace, and was able to deliver numerous storylines with equal tension. We got the storyline from 7 days ago, the night of revenge, and Pei-pei carefully investigating her Son’s Boss. They them tie together beautifully, and still has time to add a couple more surprises in the dénouement!

It is filmed beautifully, using different film stock to delineate between the different moments in time, and is smart enough to be as graphic as it needs to be, without ever feeling exploitative. Even moments that could be as dull as being in an office with one character trying to have a sly look at a PC is put together wonderfully. Actually, thinking back on it, this is a very graphic film, but it never feels too over the top, and it isn’t comic book violence – it is dirty and bloody and painful. There are several moments where the audience will look away, or between their fingers – one scene in particular is going to cause the Male demographic to squirm very uncomfortably.

The star of the show however, without question is young Joey Leong. She has a complex role to play – being not only a young girl who has experienced some horrible crimes, but also when possessed by the vengeful ghost of her brother. In those latter moments, I could really buy that someone else was in there behind her eyes. This could well be the emergence of a great new star – although worryingly, her second film role is as a possessed girl by the same Director. I have hopes though!

When you take the film apart, there really is nothing new here. There is a possessed girl, violent revenge, corrupt Policemen, even the twists you will have seen before. But the jigsaw is put together so well, and with nothing extraneous. This makes it Highly Recommended

Love You You

2011-10-14T13:00:00.001Z

Once again, not the film I was expecting to talk about, and certainly not the review I was expecting to give it. I found this recent release as a DVD screener on the net, and decided to have a watch whilst popping iOS5 onto the iPad 2 and iPhone (For the record, mixed results – the iPad 2 got wiped, which was annoying by not fatal, the iPhone fared better, although took ages to come back). But it looked pleasant enough, had a shortish running time, I have grown to like the lead female, and frankly, what else am I going to do on a Thursday Night? What I did not expect to be was delightfully charmed.

In “Love You You”, Xiami (Angelababy) has suffered a traumatic childhood when her parents were killed in an accident at sea, from which she was the only survivor. She has become an investigator at a Law Firm, mostly due to her abilities as a lip reader, although she is loathe to use that ability at work. She manipulates her way into a job investigating the Manager of a Malaysian Island Wedding Resort, You Le Le (Eddie Peng), who is suspected of using underhand business techniques. He does appear to be a rogue and a scoundrel (not only that but he is actually using her accident at sea as part of his general selling pitch, not knowing that she is the same girl), and she takes an immediate dislike to him. However, as they get to know each other, romance blossoms, and they form a formidable partnership. However, not only is she having to hide the fact she is actually there to investigate him, but she is hiding a bigger secret about herself from everyone. You Le Le is also has a secret to tell.

On the face of it, yet again, this is just like most of the Rom-coms you have seen before. Two people, forced together, that don’t get on, and yet find love after a couple of bumps on the way.Add in an exotic location, a bickering couple on the cusp of marriage, and an unscrupulous half-brother, I think you could probably write the script in your sleep. Except it has two things going for it that I think made it far more worthy than I expected.

Firstly, you do have the charms of both Angelababy and Eddie Peng. Both are ridiculously good looking of course, but it isn’t eye candy - they have wonderful on screen personas, and the chemistry between them is believable. As the film unfolds, and we get to find out things from alternative viewpoints (or rather with more information than we had when first viewing scenes), a lot of the character work actually gains more depth. Peng is especially good, his initial role as the charming rogue will initially detest you, but as you get to know him, there are layers to him that actually make sense.

Secondly, you have one fabulous twist, that once it is revealed is shockingly obvious (I tend to just watch films, and let them wash over me, rather than let my mind work out the whys and wherefores – so the twist may be unsurprising to a more attentive audience), but not only puts various actions into context, actually becomes part of the background plot, rather than just something affecting their relationship. It explains why they both who they are, and why they have been acting with each other the way they do. The film is also bookended by another development, which I thought was OK, if unnecessary, and thankfully it was not explored in too much detail.

This one isn’t high art, nor is it a Rom-Com game changer. What it is though, is a sweet, sometimes funny (occasionally VERY funny) little film, that has more going on than it ought. I loved the squabbling couple that are vacationing on the Island, the unorthodox approach to the Wedding Vows that You Le Le imparts, and the later meal in Bejing is hilarious. Heck, even a conversation loaded with double entendre on the beach was great – who would have thought a Mainland Chinese film could tickle my funny bone so much by dialogue alone?

Of course it is not perfect- for a film barely hitting the 90 minute mark, it reaches the zenith of their relationship maybe 10 minutes too quickly, leading to a frustrating period where the film goes for the classic reunion not once but twice. Whilst the “Bejing-ending” has got a lovely comic moment in it, and is important in showing you how they have moved on, I am not sure that it quite worked, when we have pretty much the same set of events about to happen in 10 minutes time back on the island. And of course – it is chock-a-block full of those co-incidences that can only happen on film. Yet, I find myself being so charmed by the whole piece, that I forgive it.

It also has an important lesson to impart – don’t go into things with a prejudiced mind, as you will sometimes miss the obvious things that are staring you in the face. This is the most fun I have had with a film for a long time, and I am glad I did not let my own prejudices get in the way of me seeing it. I think I might get even more out of it on a second viewing – Highly Recommended.

The Cat

2011-10-13T12:38:00.001Z

Another K-Horror this time, and the big question is – will it be better than the awfully disappointing “White: The Melody of a Curse”? I have been hearing things about this one for a while, and although I do understand the spooky connotations long associated with our feline friends, not only in Western Cinema, but also in Korean film (an interesting article here for you to peruse, but please come back), I frankly came i with low expectations, but maybe my prejudices would be dashed on celluloid rocks?

“The Cat” is the story of So-yeon (Park Min-Young), a young girl who works at a Pet Shop/Grooming Parlour. One day she is asked to take care of a cat of a client who was mysteriously killed in a Lift. Over time, she encounters many violent deaths of people who are linked to abusing cats, whilst she is battling her Claustrophobia, and the constant appearances of a ghost of a young girl. Can she, with the help of a young policeman (Kim Dong-wook) get to the bottom of this mystery, before So-yeon becomes the latest victim of this curse?

I have to be honest, I could hardly be bothered to write that synopsis, because is feels so hackneyed.We have seen this in Asian horror so many times (just replace the Cat with something else), and even the poster is riffing on “A Tale of Two Sisters”. Frankly it is going to be easier to describe the issues with the film than try and be balanced about it, which is a shame, as it isn’t a terrible film, just awfully unoriginal and frankly ill-conceived.

The good? Well, I am glad to say the cinematography is up to the standards I expect from a Korean movie, and some of the little side stories are well done (such as the old lady with Alzheimer's). Park Min-young is also amazingly good looking, and does the whole girl in peril thing rather well – so at least you can get some empathy with her. There are a couple of shocks too, but sadly the whole thing just feels so weakly put together.

Let us start with her Claustrophobia – it comes and goes, as the story requires. She has no internal doors on her apartment, but at various points she goes into strangers houses and does not seem bothered. There is talk of some “traumatic event” that starts this off, but we never get any details. Even when confronted with something that would rightfully terrify her – the claustrophobia is ignored (to be fair there is a ghost in her face). I did like the reveal that the reason she would not visit her mentally ill Father was because the meeting rooms were on a floor only accessible by a lift – but that doesn’t really work when you think about it (surely they have a stairwell in case of fire or mechanical failure, and i think the staff at the facility would understand someone with a mental illness)

The scares are reasonable if generic at best, and sadly a couple of them are laughable. It’s hard to be scared when it looks like someone is having stuffed cats thrown at them. Yet, time and again, you are taken out of the story because things just don’t get followed through on. Your best friend is mysteriously killed? I like to think it might hit me a little harder than So-yeon appears to be here. A Policeman lets a witness walk away from a crime scene? I hope he would get a little more punished than a private insult!

Sometimes it works ok. I saw a documentary a while back, that showed there is this subculture among Korean women that like to dress cats up in costumes and apply makeup to them (although the documentary was trying to say – look at these wacky Koreans – they treat their cats like babies, but eat dogs). So there is a little social commentary here, along with the usual knocking of the Police Force. The Man in the rescue shelter who not only takes pleasure in killing his charges, but also keeps polaroid pictures of their corpses is another nice touch.

If you forget the cats, then you might recognise the story – lifted wholesale from “Dark Water” (another film I should get round to talking about), and of course the Asian ghost child is very passé now (her unique selling point? she has a Bob, not long hair!). The general idea is that the ghost is taking revenge on people that are being abusive to cats – except I have no idea why she was haunting poor So-yeon, and why she was not taking revenge on those responsible for killing HER cats and accidently leading to HER demise.

Taken as a by the book Horror film, it is ok, but I would be struggling to find anyone who would be scared of it. But as the plot is literally lifted from elsewhere, and the whole thing just does not stack up when put under the mildest scrutiny, I'm afraid – not recommended.

C’est La Vie, Mon Cherie

2011-10-12T12:40:00.001Z

Let us up the quality of films being reviewed now, and have a look at a rather special little “Fatal Beauty” from 1995. And whilst I am in the midst of my Autumn blues it managed to inspire rather than depress.

“C’est La Vie, Mon Cherie” is the story of Kit (Lau Ching-wan), a struggling Saxophonist in pre-handover Hong Kong. Whilst his career is struggling (he is a successful session musician, but his own jazz-inspired works are deemed as non-commercial), his girlfriend Tracy (Carina Lau) finds her career going from strength to strength. Kit becomes moody and aggressive, and eventually leaves Tracy, moving to a poor area of town to work on his music, supporting himself by playing piano in seedy bars, and sleeping the days away. Downstairs from him lives a family of street musicians, and his playing attracts the attentions of their youngest daughter, Min (Anita Yuen). Min takes it upon herself to pull Kit from his fugue, and whilst initially reluctant, he eventually is swayed by her charms and lust for life. After some initial reluctance on part of Min’s Mother (Bo-Bo Fung), Kit and Min become a couple, but just as things start to look up for them both, a tragedy from the past rears its head.

There are two things which really impressed me about this film. Firstly, we have that sense of time and place. This is a real melting-pot Hong Kong, full of the rich in their luxury apartments, and the poor extended families (all living under one roof). Yet, it is brave enough to not make a big deal of this – there isn’t a terrible conflict between the two. Also the poor family are making do, doing the best they can. Sure they are hoping for the big break, but they are happy to be part of their community. It is also hard not to be seduced by the big city with its night markets, along with the more rugged countryside. Music plays an important part, again showing the diversity of Hong Kong – we have classic Chinese Opera, Torch Singers, Pop, Jazz and even a joyful Big Band sequence.

Secondly, we have the amazing performance of Anita Yuen. Her Min is young and pretty and full of life, seeing her recovery from ill health as a reason to embrace life. Just as she infects Kit with her outgoing nature, she inspires the audience, and it is hard not just to fall in love with her. She is funny and sassy and capable of being manipulative in a good way. And when her disease returns, you feel that sense of betrayal that she has from both the Gods and the Medical Profession.

Let us not ignore the other roles – Lau Ching-wan is great as the tortured Kit, and grows on you as the film progresses. Bo-Bo Fung is excellent as the mother too, obviously holding a lot back behind her calm exterior – she is the rock round which the family is held together.

I also loved the way that their initial friendship slowly grew into something quite special. It happens slowly, and is not highlighted by big speeches – it is organic and realistic. You see Kit slowly climb out of his depression, and become part of not just Min’s life, but that of her family. Now, it is a Fatal Beauty, so you know what is going to happen (I have read some reviews that complained this came from out of nowhere, but it is quite clear from early on she is taking some kind of medication), but even that is handled sensitively – showing how Min, Kit and her family are affected by the downturn. And once Min realises what is going to happen, she is mature enough, and loves Kit enough, to hope that he can carry on, inspired by their time together,

If I have a criticism, it is minor. The film stops sharply, as do many Hong Kong films, I would have liked just a little more examination of how Min has changed those around her once she has gone.

A pretentious title? Maybe. A pretentious film? Certainly not – Highly Recommended.

Treasure Inn (Wong Jing-athon 4)

2011-10-10T16:10:00.001Z

I’ve been a little quiet on posting these last few days, shrugging off those blues again, but this week I have a stack of films to talk about. We have a rather good thriller with supernatural overtones from Singapore; a classic “Fatal Beauty” from 1990’s Hong Kong; and the latest version of the ‘White Snake’ story to hit the silver screen. But to start, I will end this little Wong Jing marathon with the latest release from our friend, and this time he wrote and directed the whole shebang. Very much to my surprise, I had a huge amount of fun with it!

So, as I usually start, lets have a look at the plot of “Treasure Inn”. Lowly Policemen Young Master (Nicolas Tse) and Brad (Nick Cheung) get caught up in a mystery involving the violent theft of a White Jade Statue. Initially falsely accused of being the thieves, they join forces with two bandit sisters, Lady Fire Dragon (Yi Huang) and Lady Water Dragon (Charlene Choi), along with a lovelorn Doctor (Tong Dawei) to visit the titular Treasure Inn, a desert-based Inn famed for being the only place to fence stolen goods. They are up against a gang of high class martial artists, a horde of bandits who prize the statue above all else, and the rather suspicious Police force who just don’t want any help. On top of this a storm is coming…

This one Harks (see what I did there?) back to the Wuxia movies of the 1990’s, with lashings of mo lei tau comedy. Everything is by the numbers really, the humour is slapdash, and occasionally more miss than hit. Yet, it hits all the right notes – Characters to root for, villains to boo, a romance or two (some doomed, some not). As it is a comedy, I can forgive it for the plot not really making sense (Why didn’t the bandit horde just go get the Statue themselves? Why is the Statue being taking to Treasure Inn, when there is no need to actually fence it? What exactly were the Sisters doing in there cross-gender imprisonment and escape?). I even laughed at most of the jokes (although I still think you can’t squeeze humour out of rape, and if you are going to poke humour at actresses breast sizes, at lest make it a decent visual)!

Nick Cheung is the real star here. I only know him as the quite dark character from recent Dante Lam films, but he made his name in such comic roles, and even with the obvious humour of a pair of false teeth and a heightened sense of his own attraction, he has all the best lines, and frankly keeps the whole show going, with some nice support from Yi Huang. Nic Tse on the other hand is pretty bland, partly because his character is so one-note – a sickening romance with Choi and an underdeveloped one with the hostess of the Inn really struggle to give the character the limelight.

The Action is actually pretty good, sure there is maybe a little too much CGI going on, but it counterpoints the humour well, and actually there are a couple of moments of gore and at least two “ouch” moments. Sadly, the film is burdened with far too many bad guys, with too few of them getting any decent screen time, and for too much time is given over to the girl with the deadly lute. But as a film that is paying homage to a golden era, with some modern trappings, I don’t think it is too badly done at all. I even was able to spot a couple of spoofs and more serious homage's going on, including a nice nod to “Wu Xia”.

So, surprisingly, I really rather enjoyed this. It isn’t going to make any film of the year lists, and I doubt I would ever be bothered to watch it again. But it was far from offensive, and as a Westerner, I found it far less impenetrable as many films of a similar ilk. A little higher than mildly recommended. Oh, and thinking about it, I do know what our bandit girls were up to, so I will apologise there!

Kidnapper

2011-10-06T12:33:00.001Z

An additional review today, and from yet another new territory, Singapore – although the director Kelvin Tong is not new to long time readers as he gave us the very well received in these parts “Rule Number 1”. This is a diversion from his normal horror mode, giving us Singapore’s first proper action film. And you know what, I loved it.

In “Kidnapper”, our ‘hero’, Ah Huat (Christopher Lee) is a down on his luck taxi driver. His wife left him to move to Australia, his precocious son (Jerald Tan) lives with him but it is a struggle to look after and care for him. His wife returns, to gain custody of the boy, leading to a chain of events that causes him to be kidnapped. Mistakenly. Our Kidnapper was meant to take the boys friend, who is the son of a rich man, who is also the husband of his ex-lover. When he realises his mistake, he continues with his ransom demand of $1,000,000. Obviously Ah Huat cannot get his hands on this kind of money, and is reduced to selling everything he owns, even a Kidney. But that is not enough for our Kidnapper, who takes his threats even further, leading Ah Huat down a trail of madness and extreme measures. Then he turns the tables, by kidnapping the daughter of the villain.

On one level this is just a by the numbers kidnap film, and we have all seen plenty of them over the years. Not only that, but the plot is full of holes that you could drive Ah Huat’s taxi through. Yet for a couple of reasons, this one utterly gripped me.

Firstly we have an amazing central performance from Christopher Lee. He really is an everyman, out of condition, greying, struggling to get by. Yet at the same time, he is driven to save his son. Not only that, but even when driven to the depths of his frustration, the basic goodness of the man shines through.

Secondly, the sheer pace and twists of the plot are exceptional. More happens in the first 30 minutes than would normally fill a normal film. And the pace is relentless, never pausing for breath. The balance of power shifts often, as do our feelings about certain characters.

The rest of the cast are ok, with Jack Lim playing a suitably creepy kidnapper – that scar on his cheek is maybe a touch too far, but his performance as an almost unstoppable force works in this case. It is not a movie where you may feel some sympathies for him (such as in “The Beast Stalker”), but this does not pretend to be as complex as that film. Phyllis Quek does her best as the step-mother and ex-girlfriend of the Kidnapper, but she maybe lacks the range to illicit our complete sympathies, even when she goes from accomplice to heroine. The acting from the children is well done as well, never veering into the cloyingly cute

The narrative style changes a little in the second half of the film, suddenly relying on flashbacks on events both previously seen and unseen, but fortunately none of them really seem to cheat the viewer. Well maybe one does, as it shows us the kidnapped girl writing her mothers telephone number on a window for no apparent reason. It is needed for the plot to progress, but it came from nowhere. The film also takes some time to talk about family and the relationship between parents and children – it is all a little basic, but heartfelt.

In short, an unexpected and highly recommended treat. Even if you have seen this all before, I think the Direction and central performance are worth 90 minutes of your time.

White: The Melody of the Curse

2011-10-05T13:02:00.001Z

It has been a while since I saw a really good new horror film from Korea, and I had read good things about this one. Sadly, it did not live up to expectations, but it is interesting nonetheless.

In “White: The Melody of the Curse” we follow failing K-Pop girl band “Pink Dolls”. They are losing ground to their rivals, and people don’t even download their videos from their website any more. And it isn’t surprising really. Eun-joo (Ham Eun-jeong) is a former backing singer, who whilst the leader of the band is wracked with self doubt. Je-ni (Jin Se-yeon) is the main singer, but actually can’t sing. Ah-Rang (Choi Ah-ra) is addicted to plastic surgery. Sin-Ji (Maydoni) is so bad at singing she is reduced to rapping. Oh and they hate each other. However, one day Eun-joo uncovers and old video of a lost song by some similar band. The girls record it, and it becomes a huge success – but as each girl in turn is forced to lead the band they not only become prey to petty jealousies, but horrible accidents (related to their flaws) happen to them. The band reduce in number until only Eun-joo is left – but as her solo success increases, can she beat the curse of the original singer?

You have seen a lot of this before. Korean girls being petty and spiteful to each other. A cursed videotape. A long haired female ghost (although this one does have White hair, which is always a good visual on an Asian woman). In fact, as a horror movie it fails terribly, as it breaks the cardinal rule – it just is not scary. There are one or two jump out of your seat moments, but to be honest, it never really produces a compelling atmosphere. One scene where one of the girls is injured by an out of control camera crane actually raises more laughs than scares. It does not help that all our main characters are unlikeable at best, and utterly one-dimensional. Even the nominal lead, Eun-joo fails to elicit an awful lot of sympathy. The only character we really can empathise with is Eun-joo’s friend Soon-ye (Hwang Woo-seul-hye).

The film also seems a lot less well produced than Korean cinema has been of late. It looks a little rough around the edges, and struggles to really carry off the effects it wishes to show. Ironically, this actually does work in its favour in the final death scene, which although inspired by another film, it actually works rather well.

And yet, it actually is not without merit. The social commentary side of things is very well done. The damning indictment of the Korean Pop Idol scene in some ways is where the real horror is here – the manufactured nature of the music, the controlling abuse of the record company, and a very seedy sponsor are all far more interesting than the curse itself.

The curse is another failure, and mainly because it tries too hard. I was never sure actually what the curse was trying to achieve, and even how Eun-joo actually worked it out. It then over-complicated things by changing the actual perpetrator near the end, which really added nothing but confusion. The fact the subtitles fail to convey a lot of the music-industry speak may have held me back here.

I have been pretty harsh on the film, but it is far from horrible. It just fails to achieve its primary goal – to be scary. There is some really interesting things going on in the periphery of the story, and one or two nice moments. With a really compelling performance from someone, it could have been saved from mediocrity. Instead, it is only Mildly Recommended.

City Hunter (Wong Jing-athon 3)

2011-10-03T12:09:00.001Z

Back to Mr Wong Jing now, after a few days spending time in better company (and there will be another review coming up before I complete this). This is a more straightforward Hong Kong Comedy (although inspired by a Japanese Manga) which actually is a lot of fun, but does seem to obey my new Wong Jing Theory, which is as follows:

A Wong Jing film will almost always star someone who has been responsible for MUCH better Work).
A Wong Jing Film will show a very good taste in female actresses, although they will be treated in a mysongonistic manner (albeit with varying degrees of offensiveness)
A Wong Jing film will have at least one moment of repulsive sexual violence, that is either the source of “comedy”, or be leering and unapologetic.
A Wong Jing film will have the guts of a really interesting story, but somewhere along the line forget to satisfy the plot set up in the first half of the film for loud bangs an crashes.

It also intrigued me as it has been pretty much disowned by its star, Jackie Chan, who not only thinks it his worst Hong Kong film, but actually lead to a fair bit of bad blood between the two. I’m sure his views are coloured by his experiences, as actually the finished product is far from terrible.

In “City Hunter” our hero is Private Eye Ryu Saeba (Jackie Chan), a famous if somewhat lecherous chap who solves crimes that the Police just seem to be no good at. He is assisted by the daughter of his dead former partner, Carrie (Joey Wang), who holds a candle for him, although she has no idea how much he actually likes her as he made a promise to his friend on his death bed that he would not touch her. They are hired to track down Shizuko (Kumiko Goto), the wayward daughter of a rich industrialist, which eventually leaves them on a Cruise full of Hong Kong’s rich set. At the same time Policewoman Saeko (Chingmy Yau) is also on board following up a lead about a potential terrorist action. Of course, this lead comes to fruition, and the gang all come together to take down the evil Colonel MacDonald (Richard Norton) and his gang. Can they save the day? Will Carrie and Ryu get it together? Wasn’t this sort of the plot in Steven Segal’s “Under Siege”?

Let me be up front about this – this is a real “Marmite” movie – you are either going to love it or hate it. It tries really hard to be a live-action Manga – with silly visual jokes, comedy sound effects and some over the top acting. It is quite frankly a silly film that you just cannot take seriously. The opening scene sets the tone with some nice 1960’s-Batman TV Style graphics (which sadly do not make their way into the rest of the film), and that ever humorous comedy device of a Man being hit by a huge Hammer. If that makes you smile, then you may just want to stay aboard for the ride.

Joke-wise, for me it had a reasonable balance – 50% of the gags are actually hilarious (and again, if you think Jackie Chan being hit in the face by a gun thrown to him is comedy gold then you will agree with me), and 50% are tiresome at best, and frankly unfunny at worst (one scene has a girl admitting to having haemorrhoids poolside, it serves no purpose whatsoever). To be fair, not too many jokes are stretched out too long, and indeed a couple could have stood up to a bit of repetition (Ryu is meant to be starving, so when faced with one attractive woman he sees her ‘assets’ as Hamburgers and Chicken Legs, its a smart gag, yet never used again). The musical number however is one of the direst things I have ever seen, and what Leon Lai’s character is meant to be adding to an already rather full cast list, I have no idea. Chan is amiable, although it does look like he is not convinced by what he is doing. Joey Wang is playing it with her tongue firmly in her cheek, and Chingmy Yau is actually playing it pretty straight (and the film surprisingly benefits from this).

The plot really rather lets things down, some of the blame probably has to go on the original property, but some things just make no sense. In the initial hunt for Shizuko it is made clear that they are in Japan, and they go to Hong Kong to look for her. Then they obviously return to Japan, but all then get on a Cruise ship in Japan again. The villains are explained to be terrorists (they even boast that they are), but actually they are just after money, Bandits at best. So why do they lay explosive charges all over the ship?

It is actually rather restrained action-wise, with none of the really big stunts that Chan made his name doing. Instead it does have a couple of actually rather clever set pieces. At one point he takes on a couple of giant black men in an empty cinema, whilst Bruce Lee’s “Game of Death” is playing a similar scene, leading Ryu to take some tips from the great man. The scene is actually only partially successful, as it does not work enough with the opportunity it has created. The other scene is much better, with Chan and his rival taking on the roles from the “Street Fighter II” Arcade game. Look away if the sight of Chan as Chun-li might disturb you, but it is not only amusing, but also terribly well observed.

The down side of the film is that it is awfully slight, it works as nothing more than a series of gags, with no character development, a messy plot, and no-one really being much more than one-dimensional. It also has a nasty moment where the Richard Norton mid heist encourages his 2nd in command to take Joey Wang up to his cabin to rape her. Whilst nothing actually happens, it feels out of context with the general slapstick nature of the movie.

As the final credits roll (with those Jackie Chan ever present amusing out-takes), I could not help but smile. It was a fun and amusing ride, with a couple of moments of genuine class. The lightweight nature of the film means is is never going to be anything more than Recommended, but it is not a terrible film by any stretch.

[I have one more Wong Jing to look at, but I will be taking another detour into K-Horror (via K-Pop) and a little Singaporean thriller before I return]

Make Up

2011-09-29T12:26:00.001Z

I have been moonlighting again. I was invited to contribute to another blog, the Girl’s Coffee Shop. Whilst it is not somewhere I would have been expecting to contribute to, I am a shameless self publicist, so I thought expanding my audience was no bad thing. Although, I often wonder what exactly my demographic is!

Anyway, I have written about this wonderful little Taiwanese movie over here, so please go visit the girls. A work of warning though – some of the images are over there are NSFW – not in a bad way, but there is a little more naked flesh than your boss might approve of.

Next up – More Wong Jing!

Wu Xia

2011-09-28T16:30:00.001Z

It really has been a pretty weak year for new films Asia-wise for me this year. Whilst I have caught a couple of special films from unusual territories, most of the really good films from Hong Kong/China were technically released last year. Those I have been looking forward to have disappointed, yet it was with huge excitement I was anticipating the latest from Peter Chan, the rather blandly titled “Wu Xia”. The omens were good, Chan is a director I have a lot of time for, Takeshi Kanishiro is usually excellent and Donnie Yen has really grown as an actor as he embraces middle age. The extended 10 minute trailer that was released earlier in the year wetted the appetite, but I have basically been waiting for some decent subtitles to be made available. And finally they have been, and I am glad to report it is very much worth the wait.

“Wu Xia” is part detective story and part ,well Wuxia. Liu Jinxi (Donnie Yen) is an unassuming paper mill worker with a wife and two young children. One day he stops a robbery at a local store by two kung fu masters, killing them both. Whilst he is feted by the village as a hero, something is bothering local policeman Xu Baijiu (Takeshi Kaneshiro). These villains were serious bad men, but also highly skilled – how could this man have killed them both? Despite pressure from his bosses to just close the case, he decides to dig further, uncovering the past of Liu Jinxi. But they are both hiding from their past, and with uncovering the truth cause trouble for them both.

What we have here is a post-modern twist on the Wuxia genre. It eschews a lot of the mystical element, giving it a somewhat scientific feel. The elements are all there – a downtrodden general population, a corrupt hierarchy, a general sense of code and honour. We have individuals with almost supernatural abilities. But it is a world viewed through a modern eye. It actually only has three fight scenes, and the first is shown to us multiple times, in a CSI-style reconstruction of events, giving us a little more information as the story unfolds. The second is far more traditional (and to my eyes the best of the three), and the final evokes memories of films I have not seen, but I am aware of.

It is as beautifully filmed as I expected, with the 1917 rural setting beautifully realised, and the modern reconstructions work well. The soundtrack is also an interesting mix of the old and the new, and whilst initially jarring, I thought it worked very well.

Donnie Yen has become a really good actor as he has aged. He actually has little to say, preferring to keep his thoughts to himself, but you really do feel that he is a man who is struggling with the demons of his past life, and his wish to reinvent himself as a more simple, hardworking family man. That is not to say he does not pull off the action with aplomb (doubling up as action Director too), it does have some of the best moments I have seen in a long time.

Takeshi Kaneshiro is always good, so to say he impresses here is merely stating the obvious (and I know there has been some debate about his dialect used in the film, but as I am ignorant about these things it did not phase me). The character of Xu Baijiu though is fascinating. A mix of Sherlock Holmes, Gregory House and Gus Grissom, he is a remarkable creation. Yes, he has an almost otherworldly ability to reconstruct events in his head, but he is also capable of making mistakes, and allowing his actions to overcome his thoughts. So convinced is he that he is correct that occasionally he makes huge mistakes that affect both those around him and himself. I loved it that he was not a fighter too – yes he has talents in forensic science and acupuncture, but he is never going to win a fist fight. He is also troubled by Schizophrenia, which is evidenced visually on screen, and haunted by one act of kindness which backfired on him. A simple scene where he ends up asking his ex-wife for help works brilliantly, giving you a clue as to the man he once was, and how far he has fallen since.

In fact both men parallel each other. Liu Jinxi is a man who wishes to run from his previous life, and find solace in being part of humanity. Xu Baijiu on the other hand has worked hard to divorce himself from his empathy. You could almost say they are parts of the same whole, or on different parts of a circle of understanding. The men eventually form a bond, but it is never a close one, it is more out of a mutual respect than any actual friendship.

Tang Wei also buts in a sensitive portrayal as Liu Jinxi’s wife. A quiet, unassuming woman, she holds a deep fear of being left alone, just as her first husband did. She does not have an awful lot to do, but her presence is needed, as it adds weight to Yen’s character. She easily holds her own in her solo scene with Xu Baijiu, and in the closing moments you believe she is a woman in fear for the life of her Son and Husband, and of what she could lose.

A tiny little rant about the international name[s] for this film. It will be released under the banner of “Swordsmen” (or maybe “Dragon”). Neither of which make an awful lot of sense. There is some swordplay near the end, but the film certainly is not about that. I have read some complain about the generic nature of the real title, but I think that it kind of the point – it is a new look at the genre, a fresh approach. Will it be the first of many? I doubt it, but it is a very worthwhile experiment.

Film of the year so far? Definitely, and one that looks like it will keep giving more on repeated viewings. I do however understand why some might not be so enamoured – it isn’t a traditional Wuxia, and it may not be the action-fest some may crave. It also is a little lacking in the exploration of the villains, who do come across a little one-note. But it does what it aimed to do – try some new clothes on a different genre, and for my money it worked.

Highly recommended.

Rest On Your Shoulder

2011-09-26T16:36:00.001Z

[Don’t worry, the Wong Jing-athon is still going on, but a couple of other films have slipped in, one that I had high hopes for, and the other, well let’s talk about that one now]

In “Rest On Your Shoulder” Botanist Guo (Kun Chen) is deeply concerned with using the fauna on Moon Island to combat the diseases which seem rife in the world. At the same time his girlfriend Bao (Yiyan Jiang) is desperate for him to commit to marriage. Ironically a special Orchid they have planted together as part of a special festival celebrated on the Island unexpectedly causes him to go into an allergy-based coma when it blooms. As he is near deaths door, Bao pleads with the God of Love (called Eros in the subtitles, but I am not sure that is a great translation) to save his life, even if it means the loss of hers. The God gives her another option – to spend 3 years away from him, to see if their love is true. And there is a wrinkle – she will spend these three years as a Butterfly, able to observe him, but never able to communicate with him. She accepts, and begins an adventure that not only sees her anxiously seeing Guo being wooed by a young student (Lunmei Kwai) and an in-awe Journalist (Gigi Leung), but also dealing with the politics of the insect world, assisted by a Ladybird and a Grasshopper. Will she manage to survive these three years, and will Guo remain true to her?

Until about the 50-60 minute mark, I thought this was going to be a very special film. It had an interesting visual, mixing a real-world story (albeit slightly given a hyper-realistic approach by some CGI) with an animated story in the world of insects. And then the film lost focus, tried to reach to far, and ended up failing all over the place. I have a feeling that the Director was going for a live action of a Studio Ghibli style Anime, which could appeal to both adults and children. But when he tries to cram just too much into the story, and fails utterly to tie up any of his themes satisfactorily.

The Insect scenes are done well enough, a cute style that does not jar too much when interacting with the human world, but it never quite goes far enough, and nothing really happens which would pull in the younger viewer. It all feels a little “bitty” and underdeveloped. But then, the same is true for the rest of the film. It takes nearly 90 minutes before we get a scene that even suggests that other than a little sadness, that there really was a deep relationship between Bao and Guo. Lunmei Kwai seems to initially be an interesting character than is acting in a strange and potentially dramatic way – but she is written out halfway through the film, with no reference to her ever again, and never once really explaining some of her earlier actions. Gigi Leung gets a better stab at things as least her character is able to vocalise her intentions in words and actions – but again, she is rather unceremoniously written out near the end. You could say it is mature storytelling, not to have any fission of a romantic relationship between these women and Guo – but it just feels awfully underwritten (in a bad way). I’m sad to also say, that despite being a handsome and nice guy, Kun Chen offers little here – he is far to anodyne for us to really care. In fact, the only character you really feel like you understand is trapped as a butterfly for 90% of the film.

If it was just the relationships that were handled badly, I could still adore this film, but everything feels like this. The Epidemic which affects Moon Island is just swept under the carpet with no explanation, the trial that Bao goes through is not only fruitless, but appears to have no point. There is obviously a world that is suffering greatly from disease, but other than Gigi mentioning it, we never get a sense of what is really going on, and that might help us to understand what the real importance of Guo’s work might be.

The frustration is, that there is a really good and interesting Chinese film in here. I’m giving it a little latitude as the subtitles may be lacking some depth, but I thought I had found something that I was going to utterly fall in love with. It had beauty and an interesting story, along with actors I really liked. It had no political axe to grind, in fact I thought some of the ecological themes where quite interesting considering it comes from somewhere where pollution is rife. Yet it ended up being a really frustrating exercise. So I am going to say the first 50 minutes are recommended, the last 70 not. I also read that the film makers had a big fight with the distribution company, who felt the film was overlong, which partly explains why it was on the shelf for 2 years. I would actually be interested in seeing the 93 minute cut – once in a while they can work.

Naked Killer (Wong Jing-athon 2)

2011-09-21T18:44:00.001Z

So for our second film in this little trawl through the bowels of the Hong Kong film scene, we come across a film that is surprisingly a bit of an international hit, certainly getting a couple of UK DVD releases back in the day, riding that “Asian Extreme” wave. I did see it back then, but to be honest, it had little effect on me, so it was interesting to see it again. Fascinatingly, you will come across some glowing reviews of this film online – giving it some props as maybe an intentional comedy maybe, and forgiving a lot in return for the naked flesh on display. I’m not going to be so kind.

In “Naked Killer”, a series of murders have been taking place, the only link being the corruption of the bodies, specifically the genitals. Cop Tinam (Simon Yam) has recently returned to duty, after accidently killing his brother in a shoot out. He has some theories that the killer might not only be female, but also that there might be a gang of them. However, his mental state is rather suspect and he is ignored. Even better, even holding a gun now makes him physically sick! He meets a feisty young girl called Kitty (Chingmy Yau) at a hairdressers where she is exacting revenge on a cheating boyfriend of an acquaintance of hers by stabbing him in the crotch with a pair of scissors. Wondering if this might be a clue, he pursues her, but although he fails, the pair strike up a flirtatious relationship. She then disappears when she exacts revenge on the man that killed her father, and is taken under the wing of Sister Cindy (Wai Yiu), who starts to train her as a hitman. Tinam and Kitty meet again, and although she insist she is not Kitty, they again embark on a relationship. However, at the same time, another one of Sister Cindy’s girls (Carrie Ng) is back in town with a brief to take out her mentor and replacement.

I cannot believe quite how awful this was. I will start by saying it is rather stylishly filmed, and the girls are very pretty in their various states of undress. The rest of the film though is just a really awkward combination of “Basic Instinct” and “Vertigo”. With a side order of lipstick lesbianism and an obsession with penis mutilation.

It really is subtle as a tin of SPAM. The victims all have their penises removed. Men get shot and stabbed in the penis regularly. One character is not only called “Dickhead”, but he accidently eats a penis. It is crass and silly. Worse though is the symbolism that the film tries to use – Tinam can’t use his “gun” – see what they did there? Except, instead of leave it as symbolism, they have him say to “Dickhead” that he is impotent. You know, as if we didn’t get it earlier.

The storytelling is utterly confused, jumping from scene to scene with abandon, never quite letting the story hang together. I’m pretty sure we never actually see Kitty act as a hitwoman, but we are told how good she is. The Police force are shown as utterly useless (not a unique thing in Hong Kong cinema I agree), but how on earth can Tinam be allowed to have a gun, if he is so mentally ill? The “romance” such as it is seems to be based on nothing more than lust, which really doesn’t balance out the feelings that the characters seem to be talking about.

There is a lot more nakedness going on that in “Naked Weapon”, but probably not much more than you would see in most Western Pop videos, and the sex is oddly stylised and frankly un-erotic. Chingmy Yau is actually a lot of fun, and I guess she was right at home in this kind of film, so the twinkle in her eye is a knowing one. Simon Yam on the other hand has done much better work.

And then there is the final scene, which whilst nicely apocalyptic, utterly negates what happens 5 minutes before. Not wanting to spoil it, but milk WAS not only mentioned, but shown. And why did she turn the gas on? It is just clumsy and confusing.

So whilst I can see that people might laud this film for its message of strong women, it really is nothing more than cheap exploitation. Which in itself is not a bad thing, but the gloss really hides a really empty and charmless movie, that struggles to cleanly tell what again could be a half decent story. The Writer? Wong Jing of course. There is at least some nakedness, and a lot of killing. So I suppose I can’t accuse it of lying.

Not Recommended.

Naked Weapon (Wong Jing-athon 1)

2011-09-20T16:00:00.001Z

I am not really sure why, but I thought I would try another set of themed posts. This time however, I thought I would have a look at the work of a much maligned figure in Hong Kong movie history – Producer/Writer/Director/Actor/Presenter Wong Jing. And when I say much maligned, this is not going to be an apology for him. I have seen many films that have been touched by him, and on the whole they have been awful, for all sorts of reasons. However, I am a fair man, and maybe in the next crop of four films, I might be able to find something to enjoy. A masochistic exercise maybe you might say, but at least one of these films was part of my original Asian cinema education. So I will look at that particular Cult Classic next, followed by a Jackie Chan film, and finish up with one of the big releases of 2011. I’ll start though with a film that could nearly have been rather good.

“Naked Weapon” has nothing to do with the international hit (although heaven only knows why) “Naked Killer” (which I will be looking at next time), other than the fact it is about Asian Women becoming Hitmen, with a dash of lesbianism thrown in. Daniel Wu is Jack Chen, a CIA Agent who in his early career encounters the work of the mysterious Madame M (Almen Wong), who seems to run a group of female assassins. When the job goes awry, Madame M kidnaps forty 12 year old girls, each with skills in the Martial Arts, and spends 6 years training them to be her new group of Assassins. Actually, it turns out, she is only after the strongest and fittest of the group, as after the weak have been whittled out, she then puts the last few girls in a battle to the death against each other. For some unknown reason (and we will find this a common phrase in the next few reviews) she calls a halt near the end, suddenly deciding to keep the strongest three – Charlene (Maggie Q), Katherine (Anya Wu) and Jing (Jewel Lee). After an unpleasant introduction into the world of men, she unleashes her assassins onto the world. However, Jack is still on the trail of these “China Dolls”, and manages to track down Charlene via her mother (Cheng Pei-pei). Jack and Charlene get some kind of connection – but can love save the day?

To be fair, the first half of this movie is actually pretty good and really interesting (and that is not surprising considering the pedigree of Director Ching Siu-tung). The opening scene works rather well, actually showing a real “Naked Weapon” in action, and giving us a taste for the ruthlessness of Madame M. The young girls are trained on the Island, and it is all quite interesting, and not without interest and excitement. It then all goes a bit pear shaped. You see, everything stops making any sense, and the story fails to explain anything. It appears that Madame M only has one assassin in play at any one time. So it looks like she has 6 years without any business. That does not seem to be a good business model to me. And then without real explanation, she suddenly settles on keeping three girls, again with no real reason why. This is all mere annoyance, when you are suddenly presented with the girls getting drugged and gang-raped – in order to teach them that their bodies are there to please men. It is horrible, unpleasant and frankly unnecessary. Even putting this aside, you suddenly realise that for six years the girls have been trained like soldiers, and not really assassins at all. You would have thought to have been skilled seductresses, they might have had some training in this too!

The film then pretty much self implodes after this. It just becomes a bit of a mess of nonsensical moments - in short, every scene you can say “why did that happen?” The irony is, that whilst the acting is pretty much awful, that it is directed with a lot of class. The action scenes are fun, if a little stagey, and one particular moment it utterly odd. It is the story that just makes no sense at all. The soundtrack may well be decent, but it was drowned out by my inner voice screaming “why why why” at me incessantly!

It then gets really rushed. Madame Wu is killed offscreen by a villain (Andrew Lin), which again raises more questions than answers. If Madam Wu is really that good, surely she would have done a few background checks? And why is this done offscreen? I would have made for an interesting dramatic moment (although you would have felt no pity for her). The villain then tempts Charlene into confrontation, and kidnaps Katherine. But instead of killing her then, he pumps her full of an Aphrodisiac. Yup, yet another WTF moment, which seems to only serve the need to get Jack and Charlene to have a tryst on the beach, while her best friend/lover is at the mercy of a murderer.

The whole Katherine/Charlene love aspect played down, and basically kicked into touch once Charlene and Jack meet. Six years of closeness thrown away? This is the problem with the whole film – there are some really good ideas and nice touches, but they are always underdeveloped and ignored. To be fair, the coda is quite nice, showing that Jack and Charlene can’t be together, but he is accepting of some parts of the chinese way of life, and she is there like a guardian angel.

To conclude, there is half a decent film here. It is choc-full of some interesting ideas, but the execution lets it down. In fact, the general plot is excellent, and with some work, a really good film could have been made. Yet the film fails at 45 minutes in with a moment of misogynistic cruelty, at which point the whole story progression becomes a total cluster****. The mildest of recommendations here. But I warn you… this marathon gets a lot worse before it gets better.

Help! My Girlfriend is a Vampire! (Tolong! Awek Aku Pontianak!)

2011-09-19T13:29:00.002Z

I was feeling a bit down at the end of the week, and Saturday night crept up on my, and I was down with a severe case of the blues. As usual, I turned to my movie collection, and wondered what could raise my spirits? Would I attempt to start my masochistic run though a selection of Wong Jing films? Or would I go and try the next random film off of the “to-watch” pile? The easy option would be to put on one of those old favourites. But none of these options felt quite right. And then it struck me… how about having a look at a Malaysian film that friend of the blog Nekoneko had recommended over at her Litterbox? I have not tried anything from Malaysia before, and it seemed light and frothy enough to maybe raise my spirits a little. To my utter surprise, not only did it achieve that goal, but it was one of the best films release in 2011 that I have seen! Now I am afraid this one doesn’t seem to have made it to IMDB, to it will be a little link-free, but I am sure you can Google it as well as me!

Poor Bob is not having a good time of it recently. He has been plagued with a recurring nightmare about his long term girlfriend being a Vampire. And to make matters worse, when he attempts to propose to her, she announces she is leaving him for another Guy. His work life is not too much better, as his teams great ideas are being passed off as the work of his department boss (who is also the son of the companies owner). He has also been forced to live above his means to impress his girlfriend, so he decides to cut his losses, and downsizes to a new flat along with his best friend. It is all a bit run down and has a reputation for being populated by immigrants and ghosts, but there is an unexpected bonus in store. Not one, but two gorgeous sisters are his neighbours. Thing is, they really are Vampires!! But Bob and the older sister, Maya, start to fall for each other. But is this a relationship doomed from the outset? Can Bob stop being a terribly nice guy, but also an utter loser? And what part does a third Vampire and her pursuing Shaman play?
Well, what a pleasant surprise this one was. Even though the film wasn’t the most polished, indeed it was rather basic (it is more like a TV show than a film), it really struck a chord with this reviewer. It doesn’t have the flashiest direction, the acting is so-so and the special effects are limited to some makeup and wirework. Yet it manages to tell a story well, in a humorous and touching manner.
The humour works very well – and this was something I was worried about going in to the film. It took me a long time to “get” a lot of comedy from other Asian films, but this one works at both a basic and multi-national level – it isn’t reliant on clever word play, just simple comedy bought out of everyday situations. Well as everyday as a world that includes Vampires can be of course! Whilst I am sure there is some stuff which is Malay-specific, it really is a film that can be embraced by all cultures, a nice little visual gag about Avatar shows this well. I found the language rather interesting also – lots of English words peppered around which really helped me get into the film.
A word about the Vampires involved too. The actual title (and the spoken words) talks about them actually being something called a Pontianak, which is more akin to a Gaelic Banshee. However, the actual website of the production company translates this as Vampire, and there is a scene which is playing on the more traditional Western concepts of Vampires, both visually and using Garlic, so I think there is a bit of blurring of the lines here.
The film would be fine if it was just a humorous little love story, but it actually has elements that push it just a little further – whether it be social commentary on how badly Malaysians can treat African immigrants (and surely the fact that all three Vampire Sisters seem to come from different ethnicities is a little nod to this too); or the failings of nepotism in the workplace – they all add up to make this film world a little more real than I was expecting.
It is smart enough to even play some of the villainy in shades of grey. Sure, the final sister is a bad Vampire, but not only are the main Sisters genuinely good, but even the work Villain goes from utter tool to actually wanting to save his employee. And there is a special moment when the ex-girlfriend finally sees that Bob actually is a decent guy after all – and it is beautifully underplayed – just a little look, no great drama.
I utterly adored this film, which came as a huge surprise. It is sweet, amusing, and has a bag-load of Heart. So much so, unless 8 wonderful films come my way in the next 3 months, it is a shoo-in for the top 10 of 2011 – something which I really did not expect before seeing this film. Has it made me a Malay movie fan? Probably not, but it is still Highly recommended.

Love in Space

2011-09-17T11:20:00.001Z

Before I get started on my next set of themed posts (and be warned, it is not going to be pretty), this little film was bought to my attention. The cast alone made it a must watch, although I was pretty certain it was going to be little more than some enjoyable fluff.

“Love in Space” tells the story of the three daughters of Mary (Xu Fan), an elderly widow who now finds herself with a lot of time on her hands due to the success of her Daughter’s careers. Rose (Rene Liu) is an Astronaut, Lily (Kwai Lunmei) has moved to Australia to pursue her dream of being an Artist, whilst Peony (Angelababy) has become an Popular (if not very good) Actress. Sadly, all are very unlucky in love, and this film follows their latest attempts to complete their lives. Rose is drafted in at the last minute to join the 2 man crew of a Space Station, only to find the other crew member is her boyfriend from 10 years ago (Aaron Kwok), with whom she had a messy break up. Lily, crippled by OCD and a fear of germs meets Johnny (Eason Chan), who works in his family Refuse business. Peony, after being voted the worst actress, decides to go all method, and starts work at a cafe to gain experience for her next role, and meets and falls for a poor waiter (Jing Boran). All the while, Mary herself is being courted by one of Peony’s assistants. Will the girls find love in the strange and unusual environments?

As you can tell, this is an ensemble piece, moving between the four distinct storylines (some of which conclude together), which is both the strength and the weakness of the film. No one story is probably enough to carry an entire movie, but with four in play, there is the feeling that not one of them gets enough screen time to really get any emotional connection with the viewer. Sure there are moments of humour and sadness and drama, but at the end of the day, it all seems terribly lightweight.

The most disconnected story is of the couple in Space. It is actually really well done, with two people forced to confront what happened in the past, and in a situation where it has to be resolved. Yet whilst the special effects are really well done, I never really bought into the relationship. There is also a lack of realism here (seriously, you think a couple that have had a relationship would be sent alone into space, and moreover – there does not seem to be anyone other than us watching over them?). It is a shame, as I really have enjoyed everything I have seen these to in in the past, and the filmmakers have tried really hard to make this convincing.

Kwai Lunmei is someone I will watch anytime and anyplace. Yet again, this story feels under-developed, and possibly is the one that could have stood on its own. The story never really convinces just how crippled she is by her OCD and fear of germs, as she certainly seems able to go out and live a life of sorts. I doubt someone really crippled by these conditions would get involved in the Radio competition which enables her to meet Eason Chan again. Chan however is very good – he is someone who has grown on me a lot recently. The Australian setting confused me – it seems to have no real bearing on the story at all.

The third story is probably the most familiar of the three (with one party having to pretend to be someone they are not), and actually the one I enjoyed the most. Angelababy is not someone I have seen act before, but she plays it very well indeed. I’m not totally sure I buy the actual romance itself, but it was the one story that actually got me a little emotional. I will say that the film that we see her starting film on looks infinitely more interesting than the one we are actually watching!

The film is perfectly decent, and not offensive or horrible in any way. It is just a tad too predictable, and maybe all too sweet and wholesome. At not point did I feel there was any threat to any of the relationships, and not one of the characters had any real depth to them. It really could have done with a touch of darkness, maybe a failure amongst them all. There are a couple of very funny moments, and certainly a few sweet smiles were raised.

It is nothing more than OK in the end, which is a shame, because a cast like this is very hard to come by. If you like British Rom-coms like “Notting Hill”, or “Love, Actually”, then you might enjoy this a little more than me. It gets a mild recommendation mind you, if for nothing more than the star-gazing opportunities.

Temptress of a Thousand Faces

2011-09-14T17:48:00.001Z

And now for something utterly different. A complete camp classic from 1969, with Shaw Bros. showing there is a lot more to their oeuvre than Kung Fu. To be honest, I have been punishing myself with some pretty average 9at best) fare recently, and I thought I would take a little punt on something that looked just a tiny bit unusual. And so very glad I did!

In “Temptress of a Thousand Faces” Hong Kong is suffering a crime spree organised by our titular villainess. No-one knows who she is, but her mastery of disguise and signature calling card is confusing the Police, including feisty (and lets face it terribly sexy) detective Yi-jing (Tina Chin-fei). When Yi-jing makes a TV appearance denouncing the Temptress, she finds herself kidnapped by the villain, and eventually set up to be the prime suspect. Even when Yi-jing escapes, and with the help of her boyfriend Yu Ta (Liang Chen) proves her innocence, the Temptress decides to take further revenge by seducing the boyfriend disguised as Yi-jing. Can Yi-jing save the day? I have said this before… but wacky hi-jinks certainly ensue!

Right, this is not a film to be taken seriously. It is the height of late 1960’s camp, with fantastic outfits, stacked hair-dos, lurid colours. It is inspired by “Mission Impossible”, “James Bond” and the “Batman” TV show. It’s tongue is firmly in its celluloid cheek. And boy what a fun ride it is.

Briskly paced, it crams a lot into its 75 minute running time, it is a film that grabs you and does not let go until the closing credits. Is it ridiculous? Does it make much sense? Do you even care?

It is actually kind of risqué too – the is certainly a menacing lesbian overtone to the Temptresses incarceration of Yi-jing – full of skimpy costumes and panty shots. Yet at the same time, the female characters are definitely the protagonists here – they are in charge. The boyfriend is the unwilling victim in an interesting reversal of roles. In fact he only shows any kind of gumption when he cross-dresses to give Yi-jing a false alibi.

Don’t come here if you are looking for realism – the Temptress has an array of amazing gadgets and a underground lair that would put many a would-be world conqueror to shame – yet despite these at her disposal, along with gun toting females and a handful of Ninjas, it seems she does not want to conquer the world. Nope she is happy with jewel thievery and messing with one individual’s life. And all because of something about men using her in the past, which really is not explored. Thing is though, it really does not matter a jot – you just need to sit back and enjoy this guilty pleasure.

I didn’t even mind the downbeat ending. The final reveal of the temptresses identity was a bit of a “so what” moment (and really doesn’t make an awful lot of sense with regards to the rest of the film, whilst also being the only obvious candidate), and the odd way someone is killed in the final scene, and then left to lay there in the dirt while protagonists from all sides just walk off laughing in the sunset together is in keeping with the whole surreal nature of the film.

In short – on the face of it this is just high camp and silliness. But by golly did it cheer me up this week. And therefore – Highly Recommended!

Beach Spike

2011-09-13T09:53:00.000Z

Yes, I was bored this weekend, and I did foolishly decide to watch a couple of films that I knew had been badly reviewed. You will probably already have seen my thoughts on “Mysterious Island”, and frankly I was expecting this film to be equally as bad. As it turns out, it wasn’t as mind-numbingly awful, it was just, well frighteningly adequate.

“Beach Spike” is about a community of people who live beach side in Pui Long Bay in Hong Kong. Cousins Sharon (Chrissie Chow) and Rachel (Theresa Fu) while away their days doing the things that young people who live next to the beach tend to do the world over, a mix of parties and sports, in their case, Beach Volleyball. There is a threat to their lifestyle in the form of a new Development overseen by the family headed by the Brewsters. The Government are insisting that the Development takes over the beach, destroying the home and lifestyle of our cast. But could it be avoided by the girls winning a Tournament against the Brewster Children, Natalie (Jessica C), and Natasha (Phoenix Valen)? And how will this effect the burgeoning romance between the third Brewster child (Him Law) and Sharon?
Yup, this is the story you have seen so many times before. Pretty young vapid people, having vapid romances, spiked up with a bit of sport and a threat from Business people. There is nothing really new here, and everything turns out exactly as you expect. The overall threat is pretty negligible, as no-one involved really wants to lose the beach. So without any real threat, you don’t get engaged with the story.
And it doesn’t have the courage of its convictions to really play up the Beach Volleyball concept. Now, I know it is a proper Olympic Sport, and it is tough and skilful. BUT, lets be honest, the reason it is popular, it the visuals of attractive, lean people playing it in swimsuits. And the film makers here never really play up on this angle, playing it all rather straight, never really trying to make it sexy nor to be honest that interesting to watch. A token attempt to add some kung-fu to the equation fails also, tempting us with some “Shaolin Soccer” but delivering us a whole lot less.
In fact, this film has one clever trick up its sleeve – someone in the production team bought a slo-mo camera. But instead of using it in a clever way, we get to see an extended montage of the characters getting hit in the face repeatedly (which believe me gets real boring real quick), and a strange homo-erotic sequence where two Black Muscle Men get hit in the body repeatedly by Volleyballs. Neither sequence really fits into the film at all.
The acting is not horrible, with most of the girls being serviceable (aside from the terrible Jessica C – and why do the Brewsters talk to each other in bad English?), with Lam Suet providing some laughs and Candace Yu adding some gravitas that frankly seems to suggest she thought she was in a much more worthwhile film.
So what we have is a film that really struggles to find a voice, never too sure what it wants to be, and ends up being much less than the sum of its parts. There are one or two worthwhile moments (a lovely scene at the end is done with a touch of class that the rest of the film is crying out for). The sport aspect is anodyne, the kung-fu is undercooked, the characters are bland, the romance is weak. It isn’t as horrible as reviews and that much laughed at Trailer would have you believe, it’s just, well nothing really.

Mysterious Island

2011-09-11T09:10:00.001Z

It has been a pretty bad year for movies as far as I am concerned this year. There have been a handful of really good ones, but on the whole I have been disappointed with many new releases. However, I was not prepared for what is possibly the worst film I have seen this year, when I started watching the big Mainland Hit of the year – “Mysterious Island”.

Where to begin? Well lets have a little look at the story? After a little reasonably spooky scene in the past, we join our cast in the present day. 8 young pan-Asians are taking part in a Reality Show, which involved them going to a desert island, and in pairs race to find some kind of location which will earn them a million dollars. The boat crashes, and they find themselves (along with the cameraman and the presenter of the show) trapped there without food or water, and only one copy of the map! Eventually they realise they are on the site of an old leper colony, and when they start finding themselves dying and disappearing, one by one, they need to find out if they are the victims of a vengeful ghost…. or if the murderer is indeed one of our cast?

This is just awful. Other than a reasonable (if hackneyed) final 5 minutes of tension, there is nothing about this film to like. It is directed badly, acted horribly and the story just fails to hang together. Things happen on screen that seem to make no sense. It’s like the characters are in one film, but we are watching another. Things are said that lead nowhere, or just don’t match what we have seen.

I knew to expect the worst when our presenter announces that this is going to be about “…the survival of the fitness”. And yes, she says this in English as clear as day, it was not me mishearing the word ‘fittest’, and the subtitles agree. In fact why these two characters speak in stumbling English all the time, even to each other makes zero sense, but then the cast are all speaking in Mandarin, Cantonese, and in one case Japanese. They may be utter ciphers, but at least they know their languages.

And yes, when I say ciphers I mean it. Other than one character, I have non idea who any of these people are. We learn nothing about their names, their motivations. The just seem to be pretty and vapid people. Character development is zero, and the film even starts killing them off in such a way that the ones that might have some interest are taken off the table first.

This film made a bucket load of money in Mainland China. And I can see why – they won’t often get to see a film like this, but god do I wish they had seen a better example. It is really hamstrung by itself though. Chinese censors are pretty strict on violence and nudity, but more importantly in this film, the very mention of the supernatural. So despite lots of talk about ghosts, one character seems to be only there to say “There are no ghosts”. Despite the creepy music, the wails and screams, the mysterious events. Even when the truth is revealed, it really does not explain anything that went on in the previous 90 minutes. What sunk their boat? What was the old man in the wheelchair at the TV studio going on about? Who was making at least 3 characters violently fly around in the air?

Now, I have read some reviews that make a lot of apologies for this film. Saying that we should applaud the clever way the film makers have gotten around the limitations of censorship, that actually it is all tongue in cheek, and everyone is really having a load of fun – that in fact it is deliberately trying to be a good “bad” movie, evoking the craziness of 1980’s Hong Kong cinema. Now, if the film was actually constructed well as a piece of cinema, I might be able to go with that. But it is utterly awful at every level. There is nothing to take away from this. Even at the fundamental level, it isn’t scary, it isn’t funny, and for the first time in a long time, I want my time back.

You will notice I have not named any actors – some of this is because I really don’t know who any of them are, and I have no idea what half the characters are even called. But also it is to protect some of them, who I have seen before, doing MUCH better work.

Devastatingly awful, avoid!

Heart Beat

2011-09-08T08:43:00.000Z

[This is weird. I was on the web version of blogger this morning, doing some housekeeping, and I noticed this post still marked as ‘draft’. It was really odd as the review was about 90% written, the poster uploaded and all the links set up. Yet I hadn’t quite finished it or posted it. It was done during one of my more prolific periods back in May, and I am totally struggling to understand why I never finished it or posted it. So as an extra gift to my lovely readership, here is an extra review]

Confession time. I came to this film wanting it to fail. I am not sure why really. Maybe the odd promotional blurb I had read had put me off. The opening scene also failed to connect with me – was this going to be a straight up thriller/drama, or was something blackly comic going on that was going to miss me due to cultural differences. Even at the halfway point, I was still not sure, with lots of things about the film really bugging me, but I think by the end, I was actually touched.

In “Heart Beat” Kim Yun-jin (probably the most recognisable Korean Actress here in the West due to her being in LOST) is Yeon-hee. She is a Widow, and totally devoted to her 8 year old daughter Ye-eun. Sadly her daughter is terribly ill, in desperate need of a heart transplant, which is even more troublesome as she has a rare blood type. Yeon-hee is at the point she is willing to do anything, even resorting to a rather botched flirtation with illegal organ donors. Park Hae-il is Hee-do, a bit of a low life wannabe gangster type that feels the world owes him everything, but seems sadly inclined to actually do much about it. He rarely sees his mother, only meeting her occasionally to sponge money from her. After what seems to be their final meeting, his mother collapses into a coma, from which she is unlikely to recover. And guess what – she is a perfect match for poor little Ye-eun. Yeon-hee finds this out, and offers the husband a good deal of money to have his Wife’s heart, which he agrees to readily. Hee-do finds out, and seems agreeable, until he thinks he sees his mother move whilst in her comatose state. This leads him on a path of discovery, about the truth about his mother, his relationship with her, but also down a path of bad decisions and kidnapping. So what we have here are two people, a Mother fighting for her daughter, and a Son fighting for his Mother, but with their end goals utterly incompatible.

I’ll start with the bad. Now I am not a Doctor, and my medical training is little more than a first aid certificate gained when I was about 13. But I am pretty sure that Heart Transplants are a big deal. I am certain a 60 year old heart is no good to an 8 year old girl. I am certain that liver transplant patients are not allowed to go out and have a smoke 30 minutes before their donation. I am certain that transplants are not done in open wards. I am also of the belief that South Korea is a pretty modern country, where you can’t just slip comatose patients out of a hospital with 30 minutes notice. Moreover, I am sure that even a Doctor who might be blackmailed a little really can’t just get such a patient into his hospital with no paperwork.

So you can see, this was troubling me all the way through the film, nagging at my mind. Sure I am able to suspend disbelief as much as the next person, but I couldn’t let it go. But slowly but surely, the actual story won me over. To be honest, the Yeon-hee story was not as entertaining. I’ve seen this before, a Mother willing to do anything for her poor sick daughter. But the Hee-do story, now that was much more interesting. He is not a hero, and he is frankly not a very good low-life. He gets beaten up a lot. He uses his mother. He has a beautiful girlfriend that is way too good for him. Yet, we see him grow and change, and not in a totally ridiculous way, in fact, even by the conclusion, he still has a long way to go on the road to redemption. Park Hae-il is slowly growing on me as an actor, and certainly has the arrogant selfish failure of a Son role down pat (I actually liked him in the disappointing “Moss”).

There are a couple of familiar faces here from that film, and they are both rather fun. Hee-do’s *spoiler cough* Step-Father (Ju Jin-mo) is gloriously reprehensible character, and Kim Sang-ho’s jolly Organ Donor Fixer is a delight (but then he is always really good, very underrated). Hee-do’s girlfriend, (Kim Min-kyeong), although I guess a stereo-typical “tart-with-a-heart” is also well worth watching, as probably the only Adult without a truly dark side.

Once I got over my struggles with the glaring flaw in the story I actually ended up rather enjoying this. It delivers on the tension, and has that complex mix of emotion that Korean cinema does tend to deliver. Our “Bad Guy” is actually quite complex, but the film never quite cops out and makes him totally redeemed. The main story, that of a kidnap, and what a Mother will do for her child has been done many times before, and so much better, but the fact our villain is actually multi-dimensional gives it a touch of class. It isn’t the most stylish Korean film I have seen, but it is still very watchable. Recommended, as long as you don’t think about it too much.

Shanghai and The Troll Hunter

2011-09-06T20:26:00.001Z

OK, on first glance you might think I am betraying the central ethos of what ThingsFallApart has become about over the last couple of years. I have pretty much been talking only about Asian media, with the very occasional foray outside of those parameters. But I do watch films from elsewhere, and in this case I think we can sneak them in comfortably - "Shanghai" is easy, as it stars 3 of the biggest names in Asian Cinema in a worldwide context, along with the very Asian setting. "The Troll Hunter", well.... it has subtitles? Nah that doesn't work does it? How about it was independently recommended to me by not one, but TWO people of Asian origin? It's a stretch I know. But I badly want to talk about it, so bear with me!

I stumbled upon "Shanghai" by accident, whilst looking for something else entirely. It is a US production, but has been very troubled in both its execution and although it is two years old, it still has not been distributed in its homeland, currently only having received a Mainland Chinese release. But it is interesting for a few reasons, although terribly flawed.

Welcome to 1941 Shanghai. Most of China has fallen to the Japanese, leaving a portioned Shanghai (apparently the Paris of the East) struggling under the interests of nations such as Japan, the United States and Germany. Spy Paul Soames (John Cusack) is sent to the city to investigate the disappearance of his old friend and colleague who has gone missing whilst investigating something as yet unknown. When his friend turns up dead, he tries to find out who is responsible. Is it the still Isolationist American Government, desperate not to get involved in the bigger world situation? Is it Anthony Lan-ting's (Chow Yun-fat) Triad organisation, who appear to be the muscle behind Japanese interests in the city? Or is it the Japanese themselves, including the very shifty Tanaka (Ken Watanabe)? And what part does the beautiful femme fatale of the piece play – Anna, the wife of Chow Yun-fat (Gong Li)?

What we basically have her is a film noir, set in the unusual locale of a very cosmopolitan Shanghai. It is filmed in that dark way a good Film Noir should be, with Cusack providing a grim narration throughout. What we also have is a film that is trying to be a modern re-telling of Casablanca - you can see the characters from that film in this, even though their faces and motivations are very different. It looks fabulous, evoking the time period wonderfully.

Which all would be very promising, except it is all a bit rough around the edges, despite the gloss. It feel a bit like someone who has handed in their homework not yet quite finished. It is 90% of the way there, but there are too many rough edges to ignore. The main issue is that it really does not go far enough. Cusack's character just comes across too nice and idealistic to be a hard core spy. He has no shades of grey, and for a Noir, this is really unforgivable. Chow Yun-fat’s triad boss must be really rather hardcore, but he comes over as awfully nice (with a terrible British accent to boot), the film never making it quite clear why he helps the Japanese whilst cursing them under his breath. Gong Li is excellent, although there simply is no frisson between her and Cusack, which really is rather important for this kind of movie. Sure there is a little flirting, but it never is allowed to grow, and frankly this then sells the ending short.

It also struggles with something I call "Fatherland" syndrome. In that Robert Harris novel, he puts together a full and realistic version of the world where Hitler won World War 2. The lead character stumbles across something, which leads him to uncover a terrible secret. Now I love that book, but the central mystery falls so very flat as it is something which has happened in the real world too. The same thing happens here. I don't think it is spoiling much when you are dealing with mysterious Japanese ship movements in 1941 that what has been uncovered is the attack on Pearl Harbour. Colour me unsurprised I am afraid.

And then the film stumbles to a halt. I don't mind open endings, but the final voiceover basically suggests the final 30 minutes of the film was all a bit of a waste, as everyone returned to Shanghai. It feels unsatisfactory. It is not a terrible film by any stretch. Most of the performances are excellent, and it does look fabulous. It is just that the story feels weak and underworked, and by hanging it's hat on such a classic film as Casablanca, it really has to aim higher in terms of the story. It is mildly recommended though.

On the other hand, the Norwegian 'found footage' fantasy "The Troll Hunter" is an unqualified success in my eyes, which actually was a huge surprise to me. Three students making a documentary about a suspected Bear Poacher find out he is actually a Government employee who is tasked with keeping Norway's secret population of Trolls under control (more a Gamekeeper than a Hunter).

I was very wary to start with, as I find this kind of 'found footage' film awfully limiting in terms of film making. Once you get past the clumsy camerawork, I usually feel they struggle as they are unable to utilise so much of the language of film - you can't have a flashback for example, nor can you show events that happen at the same time in different locations. When the first meeting with the Trolls in this film happened in a dark wood, I have to admit I sighed a little, envisioning that the next hour or so was going to be more of the same.

But no!

It actually attempts to widen the scope of the film. We do meet a Troll in a darkened wood, but we also visit the mountains and the icy wastes of Norway. It looks at little(ish) Trolls, and gigantic Trolls. It is sometimes scary (although never horrific), and very often wryly amusing. The film then starts to work on more levels than people running around in the dark screaming from some half-glimpsed horror. It builds in a little social commentary with it's government conspiracy arc, which is hilarious because of the low-tech nature of it. It plays with the mythology of Trolls is a fun way, using just everyday things in the world to explain them away.

Central to this is our Troll Hunter himself, Hans (Otto Jesperson). To start with he is distant and mysterious, but he realises he can use these noisy students for his own ends, and welcomes both them and us into his life. He is like most of us, driven to do a job that he sees as necessary, but beholden to an ineffective Boss. He doesn't quite have the tools of the trade he really needs, and yet he does what he can. He also cares for his charges - he isn't there for the glory of being a monster hunter, and in one scene you see real sadness in his face when alluding to an unnecessary massacre. It really is a great performance, which could so easily have been one note.

I suppose we have to talk about the CGI. Lets face it, this film is going to have been made on a tiny budget, but most of the effects shots look great. Only a single sequence looks a bit rough around the edges (the scene on the bridge), but to be honest the hilarity of Han in Ned Kelly-like armour more than makes up for this.

The Director has fun playing with standard parts of Troll Mythology (i.e. the one that lives under a bridge), as well as paying homage to other monster movies (if you don't think of Jurassic Park during the final chase, I would be very surprised). I actually feel for once that the 'found footage' method worked here, keeping it feeling rough and raw, and oddly realistic.

In short, I thought it was fantastic, and it is highly recommended, although this is tempered by the threat of a US remake on the cards, which would be rather pointless.

The Lost Home (aka Ladda Land)

2011-09-03T11:54:00.001Z

Back to Thailand, and a surprisingly good little horror movie. I have been struggling a bit with horror movies recently, the obsession with torture porn and excess has really turned me off the genre, and maybe the Asian ghost stories have turned a little stale. This one however, attempts something a little different, by putting some proper drama on screen as well as some creepy visuals, with some genuine scares. It was allegedly inspired by some true life events in a now-abandoned gated community, but that is not really too important, other than some excuse to google.

Thi has finally achieved what he wanted. A new job in Chang Mai has enabled him to move his wife Pan, his young son Nat and his angry young teen daughter Nan into their own house for the first time. A dream home if you like, in a safe gated community. Things are far from perfect – his daughter pretty much hates him for taking her away from Bangkok and the Grandmother who dotes on her. There is the suspicion that his wife may well have had an affair with her old Boss. The job itself seems a bit suspect, obviously a pyramid scheme that simply cannot survive or give him the money he needs to maintain this lifestyle.

Things quickly go a little wrong, when a Burmese maid that he had approached to help with the housework is discovered dead in a refrigerator, in a nearby house. But hang on, she has been in there for days… didn’t Thi see her only yesterday? And what about that strange family next door? The Husband seems abusive, the wife a little odd, and their Son seems to constantly attempting to play strange games with Nat.

It really is the most un-Asian film I have seen for a while. Other than a little bit of Buddhism, this really could take place anywhere in the developed world. These are people who are trying to live if you like an American dream, owning their own house, living a perfect family life. Yet as always, the dream is only attainable at a cost. Angsty teenagers, troubled relationships, the desire to provide for your family, all universal stories.

In terms of scares, this one is top notch. It isn’t gory or graphic, it relies on half hidden glimpses, and music cues. I have seen a lot of horror films, it takes a lot to scare me, but I was wishing I had not turned the lights out. It will not be anything the average horror fan has not seen before, but it is executed beautifully.

What raises it up is the little bits around the edges. The mother-in-law who hates Thi is only heard as a voice on the phone (until a nice little coda at the end), chipping away at her daughters relationship. The moment when Thi is caught working in a convenience store by his estranged Daughter. They give the film a depth that many horror films ignore in the pursuit of ever increasing thrills.

It is also interesting in that it really does not attempt to explain much. There is a twist of sorts, but it isn’t the driver for the story. There is no deep dark secret here – the horror merely matches the crumbling of this perfect life. It could have been an utter mess, but for me it totally worked.

It will not appeal to the hardened horror audience though – I think the other story will take away from it. And there was one scene which actually felt a little odd, when Thi murders an annoying cat. Maybe it is the English (nation of animal lovers and all that) in me, but that just seemed really strange, cruel and had little to do with what was going on.

For me, it was a bit of a random punt on a film that I expected little off. Yet I found something that really surprised me, and whilst it isn’t high art, this one is highly recommended.

Space Battleship Yamoto

2011-09-01T13:58:00.001Z

Well this one is an interesting choice for me. It’s a Japanese Sci-fi, based on a popular anime that I have never seen, but is actually really rather important as it was one of the first to be shown to a Western Audience (although in a somewhat edited and re-voiced version called “Starblazers”). Regular readers know that I am not big on science fiction films (and to repeat, I don’t hate them at all, it’s just not a go-to genre for me), but to be honest I was kind of excited about seeing this for some time, mostly because it originally was going to have the delicious Aya Ueto starring in it (sadly she eventually was limited to a blink and you will miss it cameo… and turns out I blinked). But as it turns out, I actually rather liked it, with a couple of reservations.

“Space Battleship Yamoto” takes place in 2199 and fr 5 years, Earth has been under attack from an alien race called the Gamila’s. They have been throwing meteorites doused in radiation at the earth (shades of “Starship Troopers"), rendering the surface of the planet inhospitable. The survivors of the human race have been driven underground, and whilst a space war is going on, we are losing it. One day however, a different kind of missile is sent to the planet, bringing with it not destruction, but hope. A message from another race, with guidance on how to create a super weapon and the plans to create a space warp drive to visit the planet of this alien assistance, Iskandar. Planet Earth (well Japan really) kit out an old battleship with these new devices and recruit a crew to go save the day.

The interesting thing about this film for me is that its strengths are also its weaknesses. It is in effect a live action anime. This may sound obvious, but it attempts to recreate all aspects of this format – in terms of look, story and acting. And this works both ways. Whilst it is over 2 hours in length it struggles to fit in a really well rounded story, instead hitting upon what I assume to be key moments of the original animation. This leaves little time for any character development outside of our main hero, Susumu Kodai (Takuya Kimura). This can be quite jarring at times. Relationships between characters are always bought up via exposition – one example is a character who meets Kodai in a corridor, and they seem to have been old colleagues. Two scenes later, and Kodai is having to give an order to effectively kill him, Without any real backstory played out on screen, this does not quite have the emotional impact it deserves.

The body count is also incredibly high, but again, because we never really get to know these characters, it sometimes feels empty. There is spectacle, and once or twice it tugs on the old tear ducts, but it doesn’t quite reach the emotional requirements of a Space Opera – it is all about the story.

In terms of look and design, it has obviously been inspired by both 1970’s/80’s post Star Wars Sci-fi as well as the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. The special effects actually rather superior. The key visual of a World War 2 battleship being converted into a Spaceship is actually rather iconic and stunning. The outfits echo that of the Anime, but they actually work really well visually. The $12,000,000 (huge for a Japanese film, tiny for a US one) is utilised really well – it feels and looks futuristic, but isn’t a CGI mess (cough *Transformers*).

I’m sure there are plenty of little items for fans of the animation, obviously this was lost on me, but I do know one character changed gender, and another was repurposed. I think that is reasonable enough, a little updating is never going to hurt anything. The re-gendered Dr Sado (and her cat) obviously must have been a bigger character in the original, but here she is little more than window dressing. The aliens have been changed radically, but to be honest that HAD to happen.

This looks like one of my negative reviews, but actually I really enjoyed it. Director Takashi Yamazaki has shown once again he really is the Asian go-to guy for sci-fi cinema, and whilst this doesn’t have the sheer joy and fun of his “Returner” it is well worthy of your time. Recommended.

Seven Days and Punished

2011-08-27T12:56:00.001Z

One of my two for the price of one review today, linked somewhat thematically in that they are both thrillers that look at the effects of attempting revenge, but more so as they both make stylistic execution decisions that just do not really work.

We will start in Korea, with the troubled “Seven Days”. Somewhat cursed as a project when the initial Director was fired, and the proposed leading lady (Kim Sun-ah) walked away at the eleventh hour. In comes a new Director, and LOST’s Kim Jun-jin. She plays a very successful Lawyer, who apparently has never lost a case. She is a single mother, and one day her young child is kidnapped whilst at a School sports day. She then gets a message from the kidnapper, telling her to take on the appeal of a convicted murderer, and only success will have her child returned to her.

On the plus side, this is on the face of it a pretty enthusiastic and complex film, with plenty of twists and turns. Aided by a disgraced Policeman (Park Hie-sun, the best thing about the film), she uncovers a conspiracy behind the original conviction, but the actual facts of the case suggest that they actually did get the right man. Can she free the killer and save the day, and more importantly, her daughter?

Sadly, the film fails on a number of levels. The film tries hard to invoke the spirit of both the hyperactive and over saturated camera work of a Tony Scott film, along with an obvious desire to ape the US Crime Scene Investigation TV shows. The problem is that EVERY scene is done in the choppy handheld camera style with multiple edits. The viewer just gets seasick and confused, as pretty much every scene, whether the events being played out deserve it or not. The CSI aspect also runs aground, as it does not have the conviction to really concentrate on the trail of evidence, relying on some pretty haphazard ways of moving through the clues. In fact one clue is so fundamental, I can’t believe it was not picked up by anyone previously (this being the familial link between one of the suspects and the Chief Prosecutor).

Also, for a film of over 2 hours, it really struggles to examine some of the themes it brings up. The corrupt Policeman? Well that is all resolved in a matter of moments with a single document, the details of which are never explained. The idea that Kim Jun-jin can run fast? Bought up and never explored again. Even the twist reveal of the kidnappers identity happens far too late in the film, and whilst very interesting is given no time at all – in fact, the opportunity for a great reveal is actually just, well ignored. One scene between Kim Jun-jin and a potential witness is left utterly open ended, with just a few meaningful glances between some characters, which leaves you utterly unaware what the resolution of the previous 10 minutes was. It wants to draw a connection between Mothers and their children, but other than a few random scenes, it never gets the dialogue that it deserves. The B plot ends up being utterly unnecessary, which is a shame as it really is the more interesting storyline.

It’s not horrible, it is just really badly executed. There is a very interesting thriller somewhere inside here, and I can see why maybe it was bought for a potential US remake. At the end of the day, it is a typical US thriller with Korean faces, and therefore it ends up as the most mild of recommendations, if only because I could see what it could have been.

On the other hand, this years Hong King Thriller “Punished” takes a different path to jazz up the revenge thriller it has to tell. Rather than flashy camerawork, it decides to use a fractured and occasionally confusing timeline.

Anthony Wong (brilliant as ever, but then isn’t he always?), plays a very hard nosed Real Estate Kingpin, that runs his family with the same iron fist that he runs his business with. His Daughter Daisy (Janice Man) is a mix of spoilt brat and drug addict, who one day is kidnapped, and as we find out in the opening scene, dies as a result. Wong employs his bodyguard, Chor (Richie Ren), to track down those responsible, and exact the revenge.

Anyone who has been following this blog knows that this is the sort of film that I seem to have been watching a lot of over the last couple of years. A revenge thriller, involving characters that are murky shades of grey rather that easily defined heroes and villains.

The problem with the film, is really that not much happens in it – girl gets kidnapped, killed, and father seeks revenge. With a tiny and rather unfulfilling twist at the end. The film then tries to compensate by doing something that could have been clever, but ends up ruining any kind of dramatic tension. You see, it starts with what would normally be the dramatic highpoint – the discovery of the dead girl. And from then on, it really is nothing more than an exploration of a bunch of pretty hideous people.

Daisy is portrayed as a horrible spoilt, selfish brat, and at not time do you get to illicit any kind of sympathy for her. In fact, no-one is particularly good at gaining the viewer’s empathy, even (the other) Maggie Cheung’s step-mother is obviously complicit in her husband’s rather violent business practices. Which leaves us with only Richie Ren’s character to root for – which is hard, as although he cares about his son (and there is a lovely scene with Daisy), he really does do some quite awful things.

And then there is the villain of the piece(Lei Lam), who we finally get to some 70% way through the film. The problem is, we never really find out who he is. I don’t really know his motivations, he is nothing more than a face and a name. Which is probably why we get an odd little coda with another character who is exposed as part of the conspiracy at the end – finally we meet someone that we can sort of understand, that we can see some hope despite her actions.

But it’s not enough. Other than yet another fantastic performance from Anthony Wong, there is so little to see here. If we re-edit the film to make it more linear, it really is run of the mill stuff. But by showing it’s hand so early, the film suddenly lacks any real tension. The direction is OK, but even the couple of fight scenes fail to generate any real adrenaline. It is far from offensive, but I am afraid you can find 10 or 20 films like this on this blog alone, all of which I would recommend to my loyal readership first.

So that’s two films that tried hard, in different ways, but ultimately failed. Neither were utterly without merit, and they were far from offensive. Coming up next though.. finally a candidate for a film of the year list!

Wu Yen

2011-08-22T09:44:00.001Z

I’m having a little explore of the films of Sammi Cheng at the moment, even though her time has come and past. This one was made at the height of her powers, and also stars one of my favourite actresses in Anita Mui, and directed by Jonnie To and Wai Ka-Fai, so it has a decent pedigree.

However, “Wu Yen” is a Lunar New Year comedy, and on the whole I find them a little strugglesome as they are made broadly for the Hong Kong market. However, when I think about it, they often take a well known folktale, add in a spot of cross-dressing, sprinkle liberally a lot of stars, and use the broadest strokes of humour to appeal to both the young and the old. In England… we call this Pantomime!!! Actually, I detest Pantomime, but I am an open minded individual, so yet again I will dive head first and see if anything appeals.

The synopsis? OK, well this is complicated. Anita Mui is the Emperor of Qi during the Warring States period. That’s right, the Emperor. Keep track of this, because all three female leads switch gender a lot. She accidently releases an Enchantress (Cecilia Cheung) together with the leader of a small tribe, the eponymous Wu Yen (Sammi Cheng). The Enchantress falls for both the Emperor and Wu Yen, and when it becomes clear that they are destined to marry, she curses Wu Yen by making her ugly. Wu Yen is determined to overcome this, and assisted by the spirit of the Emperor’s ancestor (also Mui), she embarks on a number of epic tasks to win him over. The problem is – when things are going well, he is enchanted by the beautiful Enchantress, and when this are bad, then he always calls on Wu Yen. It’s a recipe for disaster huh?

It actually was a bit of a struggle for me to watch this one. Firstly, it takes some time to realise that Mui actually is playing a male. I get over that issue, and suddenly I find that Cheung is playing someone who can be both genders at will, and that Cheng spends a small portion of the movie also as a man. It takes a little while to get your head into the paradigm of the movie, but once you do, it is pretty rewarding.

Mui is actually fantastic, hamming it up brilliantly. Cheng is also rather fun too, actually able to flesh out her character a little, whilst Cheung tries hard, but her character is a little too one-note to either really hate or love.

It is actually able to be pretty funny, although I am afraid I still don’t see fart jokes as especially funny, especially when drawn out across an entire film (It is funny in “Shrek”, but that’s it for me). Suet Lam camps it up nicely as a Prime Minister too. But the jokes are kept to a reasonable length, and even the repeated ones (the Mah-jong skits raised the biggest laughs in me). Even the obvious joke that Sammi is not actually ugly (she looks more like Aladdin Sane Era David Bowie than Quasimodo), does not grate at all.

The fault in the film is however, twofold. Firstly, at over two hours it is just far too long for a light comedy. It has no depth which would enable it to sustain the sheer length of the film, and makes a bad error in repeating “the country goes to war” section. Secondly, even for early 90’s Hong Kong, the film looks cheap – like a TV Drama rather than a movie. The scenes set outside actually look ok, and would fit into any Hong Kong movie of this era, but most of the film is set in a very plain and open court setting – more like a play if anything.

It also ends rather suddenly and unsatisfactorily, but that is the norm for Lunar comedies in my experience. The just end with a quick fix, happily ever after (if they do not collapse in a bout of collective back slapping that is).

But despite that, Mui’s performance alone makes this recommended, just don’t go in expecting anything too deep, or too funny, or to learn the true meaning of love. Mild recommendation.

Capsules… Too Many To List

2011-08-15T11:53:00.001Z

I have been watching a lot of films these last couple of weeks, and whilst I have one review that is nearly ready to go, it might be turned into a video review. And frankly, time is going to be against me if I am to get these down with any kind of freshness in my mind. As always I reserve the right to do a fuller review later on (and that did happen once I think), but don’t go holding your collective breath.

Sick Nurses

I really do not watch enough films from Thailand. Although, to be honest they don’t tend to sit in my normal genre interests. This is an interesting take on the Asian Horror film. A Doctor and a bevy of incredibly attractive Nurses are involved in an Organ harvesting scheme. One of the Nurses is murdered by the others for a couple of reasons, and they decide to use her body in the scheme. Sadly for them, it can’t be picked up for 7 days, and according to local myth, a ghost will return in 7 seven days to wreak revenge. So it does. Cue lots of extravagant death sequences, most of which the experienced viewer will have seen before. To be fair it is a touch above the normal quality for this kind of film, with a convoluted time scheme, and is quite beautifully realised. It fails to truly engage though, for a couple of reasons. Firstly, Thai Censorship about Nudity means that the film wants to be a lot more exploitative than it is able to be. Secondly, it seems to take place in the quietest Hospital in the world, which really takes you out of the film. And then, it adds that oh-so-usual Thai twist on altered genders that I am frankly bored of now. It is far from horrible for the Asian Horror fan though, and does actually dare to add something new to the mix, and I have read reviews that are generously saying it is actually a satire on the genre (I’m not wholly convinced), so mildly recommended.

Swordsman 3

The Second Swordsman film is one of the greats of the genre, and this sequel takes the Asia the Invincible/Dong Fong But Bai Character (Brigette Lin) from that film and weaves a quite amazing and frankly crazy new story. With more gender mix ups than a Thai film can even dream of, and more imagination that 10 American movies, this is one brilliant way to while away an hour and a half. What struck me most of all, is that I could actually follow the story, which I can see other reviewers really struggled with, so I think I am finally able to work within the paradigm of Tsui Hark’s 1990’s movie output without a spirit guide. Hark is only on production duties here, but you can feel his style and ideas permeate every second. It rocks along at a fair old pace, with allegiances turning every 5 minutes. The closest thing I can compare it to is a 1970’s DC comic, so much is packed into it. The remaster I saw is also beautiful. The only couple of downsides is that we don’t get enough shared screen time between Brigette Lin and Joey Wong, and that our lead male is so terribly wooden. But that is countered by a fantastic Wooden Galleon cum Submarine. Highly Recommended. In fact worth it for the sight of Brigette Lin shooting off to battle on a giant Marlin.

Love Undercover 3

What do you do when your two main stars don’t turn up for part 3 of your franchise? Well you send them off to Europe in the opening dialogue, barley mention them again, insert Fiona Sit as a new character and let the old supporting cast run wild. It is more nonsensical and eclectic than its predecessors, and certainly lacks the heart of the first film. The verbal jokes fall awfully flat to a non-Cantonese speaker like me, but the visual stuff is still on occasion side-splitting. Sit sadly cannot carry the film as well as Miriam did, she is more in the attractive and cute bracket here (and genuinely nice and torn), but it is far from a total failure. Don’t expect it to make an awful lot of sense, and certainly don’t expect ay great insight, and there is a lot of fun to be had here. It is one of those Hong Kong films that you are pretty certain that they made up the next bit of the story on the morning of the shoot, and occasionally forgets when things cease to be funny. If anyone is ale to tell me just what is so funny about her name and her original Police Number, then leave me a little message in the comments. Recommended.

Underdog Knight

I started this one with a huge amount of trepidation, seeing the name Wong Jing on the credits. Luckily though, what we actually get is a pretty interesting film. Ye Liu plays a Chinese Navy Veteran with brain damage, whose simplistic world view leads him to vigilantism. Add in a girlfriend who struggles to love the new version of her man, a child who idolises this man and Anthony Wong as a really rather different Crime Boss and you actually get something which is rather good. Sadly, it runs off the rails in the final third of the movie, but I can see why people think highly of this. Ye Liu is really really good, pulling off a character which could have been little more than a bad-ass Forrest Gump and creating someone that is rather well rounded. There really is the core of an interesting story, some decent action, some nice camerawork and the only downside is that it could have been maybe 20% better if that final section maintained the interesting character work that it painstakingly set up. I can see how this has become a franchise. Recommended.

The Detective

I’m a huge Pang Brothers fan, and this one from Oxide is a mini-classic. Aaron Kwok plays a frankly average detective, drawn into a mystery involving a missing girl and a bunch of mah-jong players that he keeps stumbling across dead. Helped and hindered by his old childhood friend (Liu Kai Chi) who is now a Policeman, our hero literally stumbles from clue to clue. Kwok’s Tam is a detective that has all the physical skills to be a Private Eye, with tenacity, a friendly manner, and a certain amount of street smarts, but has none of the intellectual capacity to pull all the clues together. Luckily he is being assisted by something otherworldly. Filmed in that Pang style, it delivers a great central performance, a mystery with supernatural undertones, a wonderfully grimy Chinatown in Thailand location, and a couple of really quite excellent set pieces. Kwok really is excellent, being charming and occasionally dim-witted in equal measure, and with a a haircut that this reviewer likes to empathise with ;). The location is well realised, and unusual, and it has a really interesting soundtrack that marks it out as something just that little bit different.

And guess what… it spawned a sequel….

The Detective 2

….which sadly is not quite as good. This time our detective is involved in a Serial Killing case, and he appears to have an upgrade in his detecting skills (rather he seems now able to pull clues together). The mystery itself is absent, as we get 90% of the information from a storyline that runs parallel to the investigation, and any supernatural elements are removed (pandering to a more mainland audience I suspect). Kwok is again excellent, and the friendship angle is really bumped up. Oddly for a Pang Brothers film, it lacks something in terms of a twist (the one that there is does not actually serve the story terribly well, although it does provide a well shot moment). It does fail as a detective film though. Whilst in the first film we got the sense Tam was being manipulated to solve the case from the next world, here every deduction feels unearned. Moreover, one key moment is really rather unexplained, and tense though that scene is, and it does move the story forward, it leaves this viewer a tad confused. The film ends oddly though, quite clearly getting ready for the next sequel, which I am eagerly anticipating. Both movies are highly recommended, although I wonder if the introduction of a real femme fatale would have fully realised the Sino-Thai Noir feel that was being shot for here.

My Left Eye Sees Ghosts

Made at the height of Sammi Cheng’s popularity, this is one of those Jonnie To/Wai Ka-fai romantic comedies that they use to fund their crime films. Cheng plays a woman who met a guy on holiday, married him and then he died. A few years later she is involved in a car accident, and finds she can now see ghosts via her left eye. Assisted by the ghost of Ken (Ching Wan Lau), and old school friend who died young, she starts to get her life back on track. The problem with the film is that Cheng’s character is not properly fleshed out until the final 20 minutes of the film, when we finally get to understand her. It probably has too many ideas, and struggles to really examine everything it brings up. It is funny at times, and eventually does tug at the heart strings, but the almost anti-climatic ending I think hurts the overall film. It ends up being acceptable, but also neither one thing or another. If you don’t like surprises, then don’t click on the IMDB link as it does kind of give the twist (such as it is, and come on, even I worked it out very early on). Cheng does this kind of film in her sleep, and whilst she isn’t a natural comedienne in my eyes, she does get a couple of excellent scenes. Mildly recommended, but mostly because I think there are two better movies in here..

On…. The Joys of a Good “Bad” Movie, and the Pain of a Truly “Bad” One.

2011-08-08T18:15:00.001Z

Not quite the post I planned for today, but the Video Review is going to be a few more days in the making, so I thought I would look at a couple of films I watched in the last week or so, that are possibly of a less than stellar quality, but one provided enjoyment, the other was possibly the most pointless thing I have ever seen. Maybe on the way, I can think about what makes a bad movie sometimes so bad it is good?

I’ll start with the far more enjoyable of the two – the 1992 Hong Kong Film “The Cat”. It really is one of the craziest films in terms of ideas I have ever seen. It is one of the Wisley series, of which I have watched, but apparently not talked about one before (The Seventh Curse). The basic gist of these films (and novels I believe) is that there is an Author called Wisely that investigates unusual usually paranormal events, I guess like a Hong Kong “X-Files”, but without the seriousness and a huge dollop of fun and craziness. In this film, Wisely is informed of some strange happenings in an apartment populated by a very bizarre old man, a beautiful young girl, and a black cat. This leads on to some utter madness involving the theft of an extraterrestrial artefact, a body snatching alien presence, and, well, a Cat that can fight a mean battle.

To be honest the film makes very little sense when written down like this, but to be fair, regardless of the nonsense, it actually does hang together rather well, as long as you leave your scientific brain at home. It wants to be nothing more than crazy, enjoyable fun. It has that “made up the morning of the shoot” feel to it that so many films of this era from Hong Kong have, and it is obviously inspired by the kinetic work of Sam Raimi and the Body Horror of David Cronenberg. Some of the effects are actually pretty horrific, somewhat at odds with the playful tone. But there is one scene that shows how well it works. The plot mechanics move to a point where our extra-terrestrial feline has to embark on a battle with a Dog. Sure it is done by clever cutting, close up shots and some less than convincing models. But you know what? It totally works. The action is easy to follow, it is exciting, and the audience is actually torn on who to root for.

And that is the thing, you actually get to care for the characters. I am not saying it has huge emotional impact, or that there are dense and revealing character arcs, but you really do get the sense that people are in danger. There IS risk here, as a number of Policemen find out. Think about it all too hard, and of course it all falls apart, but for me it doesn’t matter. I had a blast watching it. It is not art, but it is great entertainment.

On the other end of the scale, I had the misfortune to watch “Jaws in Japan” (sometimes to be found as “Psycho Shark”). This one is from last year, and is honestly the worst piece of drivel I have seen in a long long time. The plot, such as it is, concerns to boob-heavy Japanese girls that go to a rather windy looking seaside resort. One meets up with a guy, the other finds a video tape which details the events that affected the previous 3 boob-heavy Japanese girls that had the same vacation.

Yup, what we have is a Blair Witch found footage deal, mixed with a heavy dose of Psycho, with the tease of Jaws. It sounds silly, but it could be fun right?

Sadly no. On every level it is a fail.

The found footage device is already rather tired, but the film manages to make it also terribly tiresome. For a film that barely reaches the 80 minute mark, so much of it is played and replayed. Not only that, but there is only so long a film can support watching girls splash around in the sea. In fact it is so dull, even the girl watching it falls asleep. It manages to make shower scenes of girls in bikini’s actually boring. There is a serial killer about too (and no guesses for who it might actually be), which despite lots of screaming and fake blood, utterly fails to scare or intrigue. And the shark? Well all I can say it is big, and gets maybe 15 seconds of screen time. And whilst you can ignore the physics of some of the goings on in “The Cat”, in this case, it looks stupid as well as cheap.

Moreover, our Director actually seems to think he is making something far more artistic than he really is. Odd camera placement, and meaningful pauses are used, but as the film has no real content, no metaphorical insight, they are just pointless.

So what we have here are two films, obviously made on a budget, that are appealing to some lowest common denominator in all of us. And that is totally fine in my book, not every movie has to be Oscar winning. Heck, I’ll even take a film that is exploitative, as long as it creates some emotion in me that is not boredom. Yet one of these manages to be fun, entertaining even though it is nonsensical, managing to make even the silliest of conceits work. The other tries to build on the success of others, and somehow manages to create a world where even staring at large breasted Japanese girls in the shower is nothing more than a reason to tear your eyeballs out.

The Founding of a Republic

2011-08-08T15:21:00.001Z

Not the video review I had planned, but found some cool iPad software that gave the whole thing a 70’s super-8 feel. Normal service will be resumed soon.

Villain

2011-08-04T09:37:00.001Z

Hello again my faithful readership, another review for you all. I actually did not have this one on my radar until I was inspired to finally watch it last night. Laden down with lots of awards, and garnering some excellent reviews, I was excited to see if another recent Japanese film could possibly live up to “Confessions” [Actually, there is a Japanese film from a few years ago that is going to get the full video review treatment in the next day or so, but that is another story, and another potential broken promise from me to you]. So, with a weight of expectation on its shoulders, I powered up the iPad, pressed play and….

“Villain” is the story of Shimizu (Satoshi Tsumabuki), a lonely young man, with a low paying job, abandoned by his mother, raised by his Grandmother, whose personal life seems to be based around caring for his sick Grandfather in Hospital, work, driving around all night, and occasionally meeting lonely young women on the Internet. His latest relationship, with a rather flighty young girl who was only doing it for sex, goes awry when she dumps him rather publically for a wealthy young Student. It goes more awry when she turns up dead at the roadside. Initially it is thought that the student is the murderer, but once he is cleared, it becomes clear our murderer is the only other suspect. This leads to a series of intertwining storylines concerning the dead girl’s Father attempting to make sense of what has happened via frustration and vengeance, his Grandmother (Kirin Kiki) being swindled by thugs extorting money for Chinese medicine and Shimizu’s new relationship with another lonely heart, the effervescent Mitsuyo (Eri Fukatsu).

I have been a little obtuse in my synopsis so as not to give away too much, but the reality is that the murder is nothing more than a catalyst for what the story really wants to talk about. Behind this almost-mystery is an exploration of evil and villainy (but not the Bwah-ha-ha kind). It looks at the reasons for our Murderer’s behaviour, but is careful to not use this as an excuse, only as a set of steering influences. It shows that modern society is full of people with if not bad, then selfish intent. This might be a target as big as the media or class differences, or maybe something more obvious such as an absentee Mother.

The performances are excellent throughout, especially the principle females, with Eri Fukatsu being especially excellent. Satoshi Tsumabuki is great also, initially monosyllabic, but growing as he becomes more comfortable with Mitsuyo. The film certainly looks better than most Japanese films, never delving into flashiness, but it is certainly hypnotic and watchable. The soundtrack is a little odd, I found the Vertigo-like themes a little distracting, and to be honest, the American TV Show montage sequence at the end a little cheap.

But it is thought provoking, and wonderfully acted. And yet…. I don’t think I actually enjoyed it.

You see, for me, the film is too dark, too full of unredeemable actions. No matter how the story tries to explain away the reasons for the Murder, the act itself is one of violence, it goes beyond an accident or a crime of passion, which means I cannot sympathise at all with the perpetrator. I’m not even sure anyone learns anything from the story. The cynic could say, well life is like that, which may or may not be true, but I think even the darkest films often have a ray of hope. There are tiny moments (an encouraging bus driver, a friend of the Student who is repulsed by his friend’s attitude), but it isn’t enough, and at the end of the film, I feel more preached at than educated. I wonder if the source novel explored some of these ideas in a little more depth? Also, for a film that is well over two hours in length, I think I deserve more closure. Moreover, the film has a really odd structure – the truth of the crime is revealed almost exactly halfway through the film, and our second main character, the one who carries the most interesting emotional journey is only introduced after 30 minutes.

In conclusion? The film is actually pretty good. It raises questions, and is superbly acted. It makes some interesting structural decisions, and it never attempts to actually be apologetic for the bad acts that go on. It just did not talk to me. I will give it the Recommended seal of approval for it’s overall class, but I think I would leave it up to you to decide quite how it affects you.

Love Undercover (1 & 2)

2011-07-31T16:15:00.001Z

Two movies for the price of one today, to make up for a lack of recent postings. I actually have a heap of films to review, so hopefully I will be able to sneak away from work and do a lot of updates this week.

I have actually looked at one of the films in this series before, the dire “Beauty on Duty”, but as always, I hold no grudges, and usually a film that spawns a handful of sequels must be a franchise that originally had some merit.

And “Love Undercover” does indeed have a lot going for it, if nothing else, as the film which launch Miriam Yeung into superstardom. he story is one we have seen before – a young female cop called Kuen (Yeung), fresh out of the academy, has graduated with less than stellar results, and is relegated to the Lost Property Department. However, the Serious Crimes Division thinks she could be a perfect fit for a small undercover assignment. All they need her to do is act as a Waitress at a restaurant, and plant a microphone on the table of Hoi (Daniel Wu), a handsome son of a retired crime lord. You see, no one is sure if he is a legitimate businessman, or actually has made his millions from crime.

And of course, the sting goes a little wrong, and Hoi falls for Kuen… and as Kuen is pulled deeper into the undercover life… the feelings become reciprocated.

What we effectively have here is a classic Hong Kong gentle romantic comedy, with a crime background. It is certainly amusing, Yeung we know is an excellent comedienne, and I was pleasantly surprised by Wu, who can blow hot and cold for me. In this case, he is playing it straight, when the rest of the cast are working only for laughs – and it works. Sure, at times it is a bit too Hong Kong for my sensibilities (I know many of the wordplay jokes have been badly subtitled), but the physical humour works well, and most importantly, there is a genuine frisson between our leads. Even the repeated jokes actually work – one policeman keeps getting hit by Hoi’s bodyguard – and to be honest I would normally find this annoying, but it actually gets even more amusing each time.

The biggest plus point for me is a technical one, in that they actually deal with the fact that the in-ear headphone that Kuen uses to stay in contact is pretty obvious (as it is in all these films), and Hoi spots it right away. They use it as a plot point to say she is deaf – sure it is all glossed over later, but at least it was addressed.

So this one is Highly Recommended – not a classic by any means, but a lovely way to lose 90 minutes.

“Love Undercover 2”, brings back the majority of the case, and just continues the story. Kuen is rewarded for her previous success, and gets the chance to try other roles, including a wonderfully inept Hostage Negotiator. Her relationship with Hoi is now legitimate, and the couple are struggling to balance her job with the demands of being a couple. She eventually is convinced to help protect a foreign dignitary, which leads to her becoming involved with a gang of rich layabouts who get involved with crime for fun.

This one is actually scene for scene funnier. I mean legitimately side splitting at times. however, it isn’t as satisfying a story. Indeed, the film splits somewhat into two – with the story of Kuen being run alongside the rest of her department trying to help Hoi’s father (who has retired from a life of crime) show some of his fellow recently freed from prison Godfathers the error of their ways.

It is all ok, but neither storyline really works terribly well, despite the comic set-pieces, and they certainly don't mesh awfully well together.

Director Joe Ma is present for both films, and although not the flashiest of Hong Kong Directors (and is responsible for some utter tripe), this is his comfort zone, and he pulls it together well, and for me, makes the films work to a non-asian audience. He does know what is funny, and is capable of reigning back a joke.

So this one is more of a mild recommendation – more of a film I might watch a scene or two on YouTube rather than slip in the DVD with a bag of popcorn.

The Eye

2011-07-21T12:51:00.001Z

Back to a more traditional written review format now. The video blog will be back (a couple of people said they enjoyed), but I need to work on making it a little more visually interesting. Which means taking way more time of it, rather than just point and shoot. Anyway, today I am going to write a few hundred words on one of the original 15, a movie which I had actually forgotten just how good it was - “The Eye”. Back in my first deep foray into Asian cinema, back in the height of the J-Horror boom, this film garnered some serious attention, and even got a limited UK release. It was also successful enough to get it’s own US remake, which I have never seen.

In “The Eye”, Angelica Lee plays Mun, a girl who has been blind since the age of two. She undergoes a cornea transplant, which enables her to see again. Whilst this might be a fantastic idea, she finds her life has been changed more than she could imagine… not only does she find herself actually excluded from her full previous life amongst fellow sight-impaired people, but she suffers visions of Ghosts, faceless figures who seem to be ushering the dead onwards to the the next place, and a slow morphing of her reality into that of someone else's. Eventually she convinces her therapist about what is going on, and they travel to the home village of her donor – a young Thai girl who was equally afflicted until her suicide.

I actually think this is my favourite film directed by Danny and Oxide Pang together. It has all the hallmarks of their usual visual flair, and some of their recognisable ticks. but it has a really strong story, and I wonder if they were helped by having Jo Jo Hui on board with the script. The story therefore makes sense, and their ability to rack up tension and provide the occasional scare adds to the experience immensely. So we get some really interesting stuff about how she can no longer be part of a blind orchestra, and her relationship with a terminally ill child.

The tension is what it is all about though. The set pieces are terrific – and not dependant on a final moment shock (there is only really one of those). The scene in a lift with a creepy looking ghost slowing turning and moving toward her is just wonderful, even though I had seen the film a few times before, watching it with the lights turned out still had be nervous and tense – and believe me I am a hardened horror watcher. It never dives into the cheap route of gore and blood, which I feel is a strength here. I also loved the fact that maybe others could see the Ghosts too – another lovely scene was when she saw a woman and child ghost in a cafe – the waitress could also see them, but was not bothered, and just dealt with it to explain yet another sad story. In fact, the film works very well as it does NOT try and explain everything away – some of the ghosts are hinted at, but these are really just colour and little red herrings. The real answers come in Thailand.

This final sequence in Thailand is well done, maybe a little exposition heavy, but provides us with another view of having this power of seeing ghosts and the seen to be dead. It is an awful responsibility, and one that can only provide heartache and mistrust from those around. The final set piece, possibly just a little too grand for the budget available, is also fascinating – not only is it steeped in tension, but moves from the scares to almost a sadness – she knows 100’s of people are going to die, and yet she is utterly powerless to stop it.

Angelica Lee is always very watchable in this kind of film, with a natural discomfort about the world that unfolds around her, without becoming an annoying scream queen. I loved how she overcame her fear with her eventual understanding, and was trying to embrace the situation. If there is a problem, it is that no other character is really painted as well as her, Lawrence Chou does his best with the screen time he has, but I never quite bought into their somewhat unethical relationship.

The film ends as it should. I won’t spoil it, but it has a much happier ending than you would expect. Sure, not much is actually solved, but the journey was one of learning, the experience taught much about life and the living of it. Highly recommended, even nearly 10 years on. And it spawned 3 more sequels of varying quality… and that is what is coming up next.

Aftershock

2011-07-20T14:40:00.001Z

Another little video review for you. A bit of a change of pace from the independent horror of “The Neighbour Zombie”, with the big budget Mainland “Aftershock” from Director Feng Xiaogang. A bit of a mixed bad this one, with wonderful visuals and a couple of great performances being somewhat ruined by a strange set of decisions in terms of which parts of the story to tell, and the usual frustration of attempting to get the truth in modern China. It is far from horrible, but maybe I just expected a lot more from it.

I have made a couple of changes in presentation, mostly in terms of the angle of approach, I feel I look a bit less like a bloated whale this time! Next time I am going to try and embed a few clips, and make the whole thing a bit more presentable. The problem is that it just takes so darn long, and I like the immediacy of how I normally write on the blog. Anyway, please enjoy, and feedback is always welcome.

‪Aftershock‬‏
- YouTube

"The Neighbour Zombie"

2011-07-17T12:51:00.001Z

Right, I have been waiting to watch this one a long long time, after fellow reviewer Nekoneko piqued my interest. The DVD was stupidly expensive, but I just could not wait to see if a cheaper Hong Kong release would come out, and any online versions remained subtitle free. Of course this changed the minute the DVD dropped through my door – but then that’s how my life works.

“The Neighbour Zombie” is an interesting low budget anthology piece – far from perfect, but with enough ideas to make it at lease Recommended.

“Hang on” I hear you say – “that’s a bit of a short review, even for you Mr ThingFallApart”!. Well, as you probably have noticed – this is my first video review, so you will have to listen to my thoughts on this one. And watch. But you are allowed to close your eyes!

It’s all a bit low quality, basically it is me and my iPad2. The angle is unattractive (although to be honest there is a reason I am not a film star), and my eyes are all over the place. If I am to do this again I may prepare a little more, at least memorise my notes. Also, the phone rang just as I was finishing up, and I am too lazy to be super clever with this. Anyway, that’s a bucket load of excuses, I hope you enjoy.

‪"The Neighbor Zombie" (이웃집 좀비)‬‏
- YouTube

I will be sticking with written reviews in the main, but I do like to play with the format a little. I have another little idea to explore if I can find the right movie, and to be honest if this does not break the internet in half, I’ll try and do this once a month or so.

A World Without Thieves

2011-07-13T17:50:00.000Z

Well now we get to the second of my Feng Xiaogang films and this one is fabulous. I have not been as pumped about a film for some time, and have been eager to share my love with you, my faithful readership.

“A World Without Thieves” introduces us to two con artists/pickpockets played by Rene Liu and Andy Lau. Moving on after a successful extortion, they board a train. Liu meets a naive country boy, nicknamed “Dumbo” (Wang Baoqiang), who is openly announces he has 60,000 Yuan in his bag, as he can’t believe that there are bad people in the world. Not only does this raise the criminal attentions of Lau, but also of a more professional outfit, run by Uncle Li (Ge You). Liu however has has a bit of an epiphany, bought on in part by Dumbo’s kindness, but also by another life changing event. She tries to protect Dumbo from the various thieves, and slowly attempts to move Lau to her way of thinking. Uncle Li is not to be distracted from his quest – he likes Lau’s abilities and does not take a failed attempt to recruit him well. So we enter a cat and mouse struggle on a packed train.

The film is surprisingly layered in tone. It starts off as a very light romantic comedy, takes time to provide a little social satire (as much as a Chinese film can), and ends up utterly heart breaking. There are various shades of grey in the world, and this story takes time to look at them all.

It is beautifully shot, whether in the close confines of the public carriages, or in the more luxuriant compartments afforded to the rich. The beautiful Chinese (and Tibetan) is allowed to provide an escape from the cramped environs, and the film allows itself a little trickery when showing the pickpockets in action. One scene is utterly magical – when the two main thieves have a little skills contest using unboiled eggs. Silly yes, but utterly captivating.

The acting is uniformly good. Lau is not bad at all, which is good as he often is an actor which leaves me a little cold. Wang Baogiang plays he naivety very well, I can see how some would find him unrealistic, but I think you have to see him in context. Li BingBing provides solid support as the new female member of the gang, being suitably sexy (and flexible), but also there is a depth there that could have been ignored. The real stars though are Ge You and Rene Liu. Ge You is pretty masterful as the leader of the thieves. What I really liked about it is that you could see he was once truly a leader, but his interest in Li BingBing has eroded his judgement and his leadership. Liu plays the conflicted role well for most of the film, but the last 10 minutes totally belong to her.

And it is a tough ending. Some tough decisions are made, and for once, love does not cure everything.

I really only have a couple of criticisms – the film is easily 15 minutes too long, and more importantly, I think I would have liked to have seen some response from Dumbo about the events that unfurled around him.

Frankly, it is a fantastic film, and asks enough questions to deserve multiple watches. And that makes it… Recommended.