Twitch: Film & DVD Reviews

THE HURT LOCKER Review

2009-07-09T23:49:21Z

[I originally reviewed Kathryn Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker when it screened as part of the Toronto International Film Festival and with the film finally receiving a limited release now - opposite the Bruno marketing behemoth, a factor that does not bode well - I figured it could use a little love and have pulled the original review forward.]

I present to you a basic Hollywood reality that should have been recognized long ago but apparently has not been: This is a bad time to be making an Iraq War film. Good film, bad film, big cast, no cast, fiction, documentary, it really doesn’t matter. Whatever the merits of the film in question - and there have been a number of good ones made - if it is about the Iraq War it is destined to fail at the box office as has been proven repeatedly over the last year. The conflict is still far too fresh, still far too much in the news and an audience overloaded by Iraq every night on the six o’clock news simply won’t pay money to see more of the same on the big screen. Too bad for Kathryn Bigelow, then, because with The Hurt Locker she has put together one potent piece of work.

Brünoooooooooooo. Review.

2009-07-09T20:17:10Z

Oh boy. Where to begin. First off let me just say that Sacha Baron Cohen’s got balls. Huge wrecking ball size balls. His followup to the mega hit Borat goes farther than I had imagined or dared to imagine and had such an effect on me that I spent most of the time watching the film with my hands over my eyes and saying to myself “No no no no no! This isn’t happening.” At one point I had to close my eyes and and put my hands over my ears because I couldn’t bear the tension that was on the screen. I have a very hard time watching these types of comedies where people are put in to awkward situations, like the UK’s The Office and Extras, Alan Partridge and such because I get an actual physical reaction to what’s happening on screen. I want to be somewhere else, be able to shut it off if it becomes to unbearable and I can’t do that in the cinema unless I simply walk out. That’s why I’ve only seen Borat once and that was in the cinema.
I live in a very liberal and easygoing society and it takes allot to shock us but the people at the screening were stunned after watching this thing. So I can’t imagine the reaction this film is going to get in the states where sex and homosexuality is still taboo in many people’s minds. But man the film is funny, I haven’t laughed like that at a movie since, well Borat I think.

REVIEW: WRITTEN BY - another take

2009-07-09T17:49:03Z

Wai Ka Fai clearly has a penchant for the supernatural. His directorial collaborations with Johnnie To (MAD DETECTIVE, RUNNING ON KARMA) often explore spiritual, philosophical and fantastic themes that To, when flying solo, tends to eschew in favour of more grounded, if super-stylised, interpretations of reality. When Wai works alone, however, the results can often be a little more haphazard.

REVIEW of THE CONSCIENCE OF NHEM EN

2009-07-08T19:05:24Z

Steven Okazaki’s Oscar®-nominated documentary short The Conscience of Nhem En is profoundly distressing for reminding that Hannah Arendt’s conception of the “banality of evil” is as global a phenomenon as it is a human one and no less a threat in the machinations of warfare today as yesterday. Our’s is the constant task to remember and resist such inhumanity. Arendt’s understanding of the complicity that supports man’s officious inhumanity to man aligns with filmmaker Okazaki’s thematic concerns with the extraordinary lives of ordinary people. When he and I spoke on the occasion of his Emmy®-award winning White Light, Black Rain, Okazaki expressed his upset with a historicity that excludes the testimonials of survivors of horrific events; an exclusion he deemed “disturbing” if not “racist.” Such exclusions avoid the fascinating and tragic human story and—for his part—talking about survivors and allowing survivors to speak for themselves is “more of a rebellious act” against systemic historical erasure; a rebellion made all the more essential in the face of a younger generation of Cambodians remaining uninformed about these relatively recent events. Admittedly not a political creature, Okazaki achieves an intimate view of the past through individual experience by stressing—as he says—the story rather than the message. Allowing individuals to tell their stories, he asserts, is itself a political act.

Along with Smile Pinki, Megan Mylan’s Oscar®-winning documentary short, The Conscience of Nhem En will screen FREE this evening, Tuesday, July 7 at the Jewish Community Center in Berkeley followed by a discussion with Steven Okazaki. The Jewish Community Center is located at 1414 Walnut Street, Berkeley, California. Doors open at 6:30PM, followed by the screening at 7:00PM, filmmaker discussion at 8:15PM and a dessert reception at 8:45. Those interested should RSVP at https://www.homeboxoffice.com/rsvp/oscarshorts or phone 888.684.0385. For those unable to attend this community outreach event, The Conscience of Nhem En debuts July 8 at 8:00PM on HBO2. Other HBO2 playdates: July 13 (5:30PM), 18 (10:00AM), 21 (8:30AM), 23 (noon), 26 (6:00AM) and 30 (3:30PM). All listings EST.

MURDERER Review

2009-07-07T18:37:33Z

Generally, I don’t like knowing that a film has a “shocking twist ending” before I see it. So, when we were asked before tonight’s screening of Aaron Kwok’s new serial killer thriller, Murderer, not to give away the film’s “shocking twist ending” I knew that I was destined to spend the next two hours trying to guess what the twist was going to be. Now, fear not, I am not about to reveal what happens, but not because it is unpredictable, revelatory or will ruin your enjoyment of the film, just because it is jaw-droppingly dreadful. It is the kind of ending that only confirms that the majority of Hong Kong films begin production without a completed script. It is impossible to accept that anybody would have financed this project had they read beyond page 50. It can only be assumed that when the financiers handed over their cash, there was no page 50.

MESRINE: L’instinct de mort and L’ennemi public n° 1 Reviews

2009-07-06T22:14:46Z

[Our thanks to Joshua Chaplinsky for the following.]

I recently had the “opportunity” to view both L’instinct de mort and L’ennemi public n° 1, neither of which has seen a stateside release at this time. The timing of the subtitles was off, and they were translated from Czech based on the original French, but that did nothing to detract from my enjoyment of these fine films.

Where did Jean-François Richet come from? His had the potential to be another clichéd story of foreign talent drafted by Hollywood to helm a steaming pile of mainstream dreck (Mathieu Kassovitz comes to mind, as does Gavin Hood.) After the craptastic Assault on Precinct 13 remake, he tucked his tail between his legs and ran back to the bosom of Mother France. Normally, that would be the end of the story, but cut to three years later and Richet has risen from the ashes with the double barrel blast of Mesrine.

LOVE EXPOSURE: Another Take

2009-07-06T21:59:10Z

[Our thanks to Greg Christie for the following.]

This may possibly be one of the most difficult films a person could possibly sit down and write about or review. If you’re a regular here at Twitch, chances are you’re already familiar with Sono’s previous work and all of the hype surrounding his current opus. So I’m going to avoid redundancies and refrain from providing any basic synopsis. I’m also going to keep this review as spoiler free as possible. This is simply one person’s emotional reaction to what they’ve witnessed. I’ll leave the major plot spoilers for the talkback below.

Like all of you, I’ve been reading and hearing heaps of praise and a generous amount lot of hyperbole for Love Exposure as it’s been making its rounds on the festival market. I’m a long time fan of Sono, having seen the North American premiere of Suicide Club at the Philadelphia International Film Festival back in the spring of 2002. To this day, I still find Noriko’s Dinner Table to be Sono’s strongest work and one of the most powerful Japanese films made in the last decade. But I was also absolutely horrified by Strange Circus and found that to be one of the single most disgusting films I’ve ever seen. So I went into Love Exposure extremely excited, but not without some trepidation.

DVD Review (Part One): Jeonju Digital Project 2000-2008

2009-07-06T03:33:40Z

On the occasion of its 10th anniversary, the Jeonju International Film Festival has released a handsomely packaged compilation of 27 shorts by filmmakers from Asia, Africa and Europe. For the past decade, JIFF has been commissioning films from three directors a year, awarding them each 50 million won (USD 38,000) to produce a digital film of around thirty minutes in length. Bong Joon-ho, Zhang Yuan, Sogo Ishii, Shinya Tsukamoto and Pen-ek Ratanaruang are just a few of the recipients who have contributed to the project. Spread out over nine discs, and running from just 12 to 42 minutes in length, the films cover a broad range of genres, encompassing experimental, horror, drama, science-fiction and documentary. The latter address issues as diverse as the hardship of the homeless in Portugal and the plight of Indonesian domestic workers in Singapore; a sobering look at a transit camp for deportees to the gas chambers during WWII; and a decidedly unconventional portrait of a transsexual dancer. Six of the entries in the anthology are by Korean directors. No fewer than four of the films in the collection were subsequently expanded, and one of them, Song-il Gon’s Magician(s), was made into a feature-length film. The Jeonju Digital Project offers the possibility of seeing short films by some of the world’s most acclaimed directors, works generally relegated to the film festival ghetto.

NYAFF 09 Review: LOVE EXPOSURE

2009-07-06T01:44:03Z

[Our thanks to Ben Umstead for the following review.]

Sold out show. Standby line. Director Sion Sono in person. A crowd from 18-80: men, women, White, Asian, Black, Latino, everybody, anybody with a taste for the real, weird, wacky. I don’t want to over hype the fest screening nor the film itself (which won the Fipresci prize at this year’s Berlinale and played to sold out shows in Japan for three months) but when one feels the energy popping like I did on Friday night, one can’t help but know exactly why cinema does the wonderful things it does. And Love Exposure contains many wonderful things – Catholicism, cults, up-skirt photography, kung fu, cross-dressing – and over its epic (lean) 4 hour running time it explores all this and more like no other film. Yet when it gets down to it, Love Exposure translates to three
words: susceptibility, devotion and yes, love (in all its quaint and twisted forms). So yeah, get ready, I’m going to ask the question, some of you have been wanting to know… is it Sono’s masterpiece? You bet. I’ll take it one further now… best film of the year? So far… And one more… Will people be expressing their joy for this with physical feats such as reenacting its bonkers street fighting scenes, while others do their geek dances, exclaiming it to be an instant classic? Why yes, how could they not?

MY SO-CALLED LOVE review

2009-07-05T22:37:14Z

Soon to appear in the latest from Wong Jing’s production line, On His Majesty’s Secret Service, Taiwanese actress Barbie Hsu has managed a successful film and television career in soap operas, genre flicks and Hong Kong blockbusters – but last year’s My So-Called Love saw her make a major attempt at serious drama. How did she measure up with an up-and-coming director and a weighty script heavy on the emotional baggage? Find out after the break.

COWEB review

2009-07-05T20:34:57Z

A first time director, but one who’s a long-time veteran from behind the scenes of Hong Kong cinema’s golden age. An up-and-coming star cherry-picked by a living legend. A plot looking back to some of the all-time classic martial arts movies – so why exactly is Xin Xin Xiong’s Coweb still yet to see a release outside mainland China? Read on after the break.

REVIEW of ELDORADO

2009-07-04T04:13:33Z

The San Francisco Film Society’s longstanding working relationship with Film Movement ensures the theatrical exhibition of several festival-lauded films on the Sundance Kabuki’s SFFS Screen. For this, Bay Area audiences should be especially grateful. Recently, Film Movement’s collaboration with SFFS provided Munyurangabo; this week they’re providing Eldorado (July 3-9); and in future weeks they’ll be providing encore screenings of both La Ventana (July 17-23) and Lake Tahoe (July 24-30), which were featured at the 52nd edition of the San Francisco International Film Festival.

This week’s entry, Belgian director Bouli Lanners’ Eldorado—a “small but damn-near perfectly formed serio-comedy” (Leslie Felperin, Variety)—was selected for the 40th anniversary of the Quinzaine des Réalisateurs (Directors’ Fortnight) at the 2008 61st Cannes Film Festival where it won Best European Film. Eldorado was likewise the official entry from Belgium for the 81st Annual Academy Awards (Oscars®), received a special mention at Italy’s Pesaro Film Festival, and was nominated for a César for Best Foreign Feature.

NYAFF 09 Review: THE MAGIC HOUR

2009-07-03T20:02:37Z

[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]

Koki Mitani’s latest film The Magic Hour is an entertaining and beautifully designed tribute to movies and movie-making that revels in its artificiality. Early in the film, Natsuko (Haruka Ayase), a nightclub waitress, remarks that the elements of the story – gangsters, guns, cement overshoes, a boss’ moll – all make the town seem like a movie set. At the film’s outset, nightclub manager Bingo (Satoshi Tsumbuki) has run afoul of yakuza boss Teshio (Toshiyuki Nishida) by having an affair with the boss’ girlfriend Mari (Eri Fukatsu). Bingo saves them both from being the proverbial feed for the fishes by claiming to be an acquaintance of Della Togashi, a famous hit man known as the “Phantom Assassin,” whom Teshio would like to meet. Not actually knowing the assassin at all, and unable to find the real deal, he comes up with the idea of asking Murata (Koichi Sato), a stuntman, bit part actor, and aspiring star player, to stand in for the assassin. Bingo must keep up a double ruse, convincing Teshio that the actor is the hit man, and also making Murata believe he is in a film. The film’s scenario echoes other films such as Bowfinger and, more recently, Tropic Thunder, in which much humor is mined from the idea of tossing actors unknowingly into dangerous real-life situations. All the complications that one would expect, and then some, ensue. All the visual elements of this film – its cinematography, production design, and canny recreations of old movies – are top notch, as are the spirited performances of its cast, especially Koichi Sato, Eri Fukatsu, and Haruka Ayase.

NYAFF 09 Review: VACATION

2009-07-02T20:46:09Z

[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]

Hajime Kadoi’s contemplative second feature Vacation explores the relationship between Toru (Kaoru Kobayashi), a prison guard at a high-security facility, and Kaneda (Hidetoshi Nishijima), a condemned prisoner soon to be executed for murder, who has spent most of his years in prison appealing to the authorities for clemency. The “vacation” of the title is granted to Toru for volunteering for the traumatic task of assisting in Kaneda’s execution by leading him to the death chamber and holding his legs as he is hanged. Making this much harder for Toru is the fact that he has developed an unexpressed fondness for this quiet prisoner, who spends his days in his immaculately furnished cell drawing in his sketchbook. For his efforts, Toru is given a week off to have a brief honeymoon with his new bride, divorced single mother Mika (Nene Otsuka), accompanied by her young son Tatsuya (Shusei Ito).

Japan Cuts Review: CONFESSIONS OF A DOG

2009-07-02T02:42:28Z

[Our thanks to Christopher Bourne for the following review.]

A very lengthy feature (three hours and fifteen minutes) which, like Ryosuke Hashiguchi’s film All Around Us (also screening as part of Japan Cuts), deals with the criminal justice system in Japan, and that is as deliciously engrossing as it is disturbing, Gen Takahashi’s Confessions of a Dog is perhaps the most devastating indictment of Japan’s police ever committed to film. Following in the great tradition of, and likely inspired by, Sidney Lumet’s stories of police corruption such as Serpico and Prince of the City (which this film is most analogous to), Confessions of a Dog maps out with surgical precision the anatomy of police crimes, and the system which supports and enables them.