RobotSkirts

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the first movie in Chan-wook Park‘s “Revenge Trilogy”. I’ve seen the second film, Oldboy. In this film, Ryu is a deaf mute working to get his sister a kidney transplant. Things go wrong from the very beginning when Ryu finds out he isn’t an acceptable donor. If there is a lesson to be learned from this it is that eight wrongs don’t make a right… maybe it was nine. The movie looks great and the story is interesting, even switching protagonists mid film. I look forward to seeing the final film Lady Vengeance, which hasn’t been released in the US yet.

Shattered Glass tells the story of former The New Republic writer Stephen Glass’s fall from grace. The ball started rolling when TNR published a story titled “Hack Heaven” about hackers been hired by corporations they deface. The problem was the story didn’t stand up to fact checking, none of it. This was discovered by Forbes Digital Tool and when confronted about it Stephen Glass fabricated phone numbers, email addresses, and websites. It was later discovered that at least 27 of 41 articles he wrote for TNR contained some form of fabrication. This movie was excellent. The cast is great, even Steve Zahn in serious role as Forbes’s ivestigator.

AMC was showing Live and let die last night, since Bond marathons seem to have a really high rate of return. Frosty and I were curious about the incredibly attractive Bond girl (redundant?) [picture from jamesbondmm]. I looked Solitaire up on IMDB and found out is was Jane Seymour‘s first major role. Dr. Quinn, medicine woman, ah crap.

The latest Bond girl was announced yesterday: Eva Green. She will be starring in Casino Royale alongside Daniel Craig‘s Bond. Her film debut was Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Dreamers (torrent), one of the few films to get a broad release in the US with an NC-17 rating. From what I remember, Roger Ebert loved this film for using the ’68 Paris riots as a backdrop because ‘he was there’. The film follows a young American man that is befriended by a French brother and sister. The film is thick with quotes and scenes from historical cinema which I’m sure I would appreciate more if I actually cared, but I left the film feeling that I had just watched a film buff masturbate for two hours… and I know what that looks like now, since it’s in the movie.

Cypher is a story of a regular guy who is unhappy with his life and decides to take up a job doing espionage for a company. This movie is pretty bland, but is better than most things you would see on the Sci-Fi channel. The plot isn’t very engaging and makes a lot of odd turns you won’t care about. Take this shocker: Morgan goes to work for company A, agreeing to spy on company B. Later he finds out company A is brainwashing him to spy on company B. Ugh. The movie is directed by Vincenzo Natali who also directed Cube, a far better low-budget film. He also has a future project with Paul W.S. Anderson (Mortal Kombat, Resident Evil, Alien Vs. Predator) called Necropolis.

In the world of Battle Royale, Japanese kids are out of control. The government passes a secret act so that each year a highschool class is selected at random, dropped of on an island, and given three days to fight to the death. Everyone gets a different weapon, but as you can see from the screen cap, they aren’t always the best. That’s the kind of silly humor that shows up throughout the film as they count down the deaths of each of 42 students by name and number. There’s plenty of gore and weird humor to make this a great cult film. If you can stand the blood, this film is a fun ride.

Ong-bak is one of the best action movies I have seen in a while. Set in Thailand, Ting must retrieve the stolen head of Ong-bak, village’s idol. This sends him into street fighting underworld of the big city. Ong-bak prides itself on it’s lack of movie magic during fight scenes with the tag-line “No stunt doubles, no computer images, no strings attached”. It is refreshing to see really realistic fighting on the screen. Since they don’t use any tricks there are many times where you’ll see the same scene from 2-4 different angles in a row. It’s kinda weird the first time you see this Deja Vu, but you get used to it. You should see this movie if you’re looking for some inventive chase scenes and lots of wire free fighting.

I had listened to Neil Gaiman’s Anansi Boys on my trip to New York and really enjoyed it. I went looking for other Neil Gaiman material and found MirrorMask a movie about a young girl that ends up in a magical kingdom that she has to save, natch. I was pretty underwhelmed by this movie. The magical world isn’t that appealing and the story’s clever moments are few and far between. I did enjoy the discovery that she was actually trapped in her doodles. The progression of clues didn’t seem to make any sense either; they didn’t really having any connection. I can’t recommend this film, it isn’t that much fun and seems like it is just CG showboating.

After seeing Ichi, I decided I wanted to see another Miike film. So, I grabbed Audition from my movie rental service (bittorrent). Shigeharu is a widower of seven years and is encouraged by his son to remarry. His friend, the producer, decides they should hold an audition for a movie and weed out a potential candidate from there. Shigeharu fixates on one candidate even before the audition begins, but she’s not everything she seems. I love going into movies cold, knowing that the movie is supposed to be good, but not seeing the trailer. From the first act I was thinking “wow, look at Miike’s range”. The audition was fun and light hearted. Even through the second act you want to give the film the benefit of the doubt, “things couldn’t go too wrong from here”. Then the third act arrives, looking very much like a gory Mulholland Dr. I liked Ichi’s ballet of torture (the frame I showed happens in the first five minutes), but this film does stand well as a suspense film. He does a good job working the audience’s emotions. With both films the main characters do seem a little too happy after completing their ordeals.

Serenity is a movie spawned by the cancelled Fox series Firefly. Both are directed by Joss Whedon, the man behind Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I didn’t watch either TV series. I avoided the original run of Firefly because I generally hate all cowboys, space or otherwise. I did catch a few episode reruns before seeing this film though. This movie stands by itself and is a decent sci-fi action film compared to recent offerings. I did have some issues with it. It didn’t give me some burning desire to resurrect the series. I felt that I could identify a Joss Whedon joke by the end of film and would probably be pretty tired of them half way through a second movie.

This fun family romp… no not really, that’s why I chose this screenshot. Now that you’ve made your decision whether to see it, I’ll tell you a little bit about it. Ichi the Killer is probably Takashi Miike‘s most well known film. Miike is a prolific Japanese director having made at least 60 films in the last 13 years. This film follows the sadomasochistic Kakihara as he looks for his Yakuza boss/brother who’s disappeared with a large sum of money. Torturing people along the way, Kakihara is put on the trail of the mysterious Ichi. The movie is violent to a surreal level, but has well developed characters. The movie actually has a point unlike Suicide Club. I would recommend this movie if you think you have the stomach for it; People at the Toronto film festival were given promotional air-sickness bags.