Wang is back on the 'women's movie' track of The Joy Luck Lambaste, directing Alvin Sargent's accommodation of Mona Simpson's rites of passage tale. Portman is excellent, balancing sharpness and petulance, fidelity and imposition, as Ann, a 14-year-old dragged away from Bay Urban district, Wisconsin, in the Mercedes of her individual mother, speech psychiatrist Adele (Sarandon), who's hellbent on making it in Beverly Hills. That they only get to the foothills can't be counted a real setback. Nor could the compromise apartment, nor the effects of Adele's misjudged mawkish liaison, nor the load of Ann's increasingly pertinent contribution to family falling-out. Why, then, does Adele's uncompassionate earned veneer of optimism look set to crack? Wang knows his way around material like this: the trick of balancing the tears and laughs without refuge to easy targets, special pleading or the diminishment of 'patsy' characters. Adele should have been a dressmaker made role in behalf of Sarandon. The casual strain in her differently attractive performance may betoken her easing raw on the pedal. Wang's most telling in the quasi-waggish riffs and teasing out the complete switch of the pair's roles and responsibilities. Wrapping it up, there's nice 'Scope work, keen-edged supporting performances, and a captivating cameo by Milhoan as a sympathetic LAPD policeman.
Archive for August, 2009
Like the previous movies in the series, "Final Destination 3" underscores how inevitably death comes to those who are, well, in the cast.
Just as she's about to embark on a roller coaster with her high school friends, Wendy (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) gets a horrifying premonition that this will be a death ride for all. She gets off before it starts, and so do most of her friends. But the event is just a precursor of the grisly calamities that will soon visit everyone — clues to their respective demises can be found in the digital photos Wendy happens to have taken of all of them.
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Despite the attempts of Wendy and her friend Kevin Fischer (Ryan Merriman) to warn everyone, the decapitations and gorings claim their buddies, one by one. With a premise as cavalier as this, perhaps director and co-writer James Wong could have found a tone more original than post-Wes Craven cynicism. Instead, he panders to viewers, allowing them to take gleeful comfort in the destruction of the stupid and doomed.
– Desson Thomson
Final Destination 3 R, 92 minutes Contains gory violence, nudity and profanity. Area theaters.
This moody, erotic thriller from two first-sooner directors overcomes its insubstantial narrative with its confident, bravura direction and cinematography.
Pic has the look and feel of a French film, in that atmosphere and sexual tension take pride of place over a slender plotline involving an affair between a femme jazz singer, Wendy (Santha Press), and Mack (Hugo Race) a knife-wielding young hood. Also involved is Wendy's young sister, JoJo (Rebekah Elmaloglou), a 15-year-old who gets turned on by her sister's sexual activities.
Tale takes place in an Australian city (Melbourne) in the middle of summer; heat is a factor in every sense of the word. Characters perspire a lot, and no wonder, given the energy of the numerous sex scenes.
Race, an Aussie rock singer, gives Mark a sinister persona. Newcomer Press is a knockout. Elmaloglou is touching as the aroused teen whose attraction for her sister's dangerous boyfriend nearly ends in tragedy.
It's called "Iron Monkey," and mainstream moviegoers are in for a treat.
It's a lot more fun than "Crouching Tiger."
There's a family resemblance, and it's no accident. "Iron Monkey" was
directed in 1993 by Yuen Wo-Ping, the master of Hong Kong "flying" martial
arts, who a number of years later staged the "Crouching Tiger" action for
Taiwan director Ang Lee.
Lee went to the source, and now so can we.
Producer-distributor Miramax has provided "Iron Monkey" with a shiny new
look, some computerized touching up, a new digital soundtrack and sound
effects, and idiomatic English subtitles. Where it really counts, though, it's
the same good old comic action fantasy.
It is a Hong Kong banquet, and everybody's invited.
That includes preteens who were taken to "Crouching Tiger" and were bored.
Kids old enough to get the drift of the subtitles and handle fantasy violence
and a little clownish sexuality will be OK. This is one Hong Kong movie that
might have benefited from dubbing, but the Cantonese adds to its authenticity.
In this rambunctious period tale from the mid-19th century, there are
reminders of "Robin Hood" and "The Scarlet Pimpernel." The Iron Monkey is the
moniker of a disguised mystery man — his name is based on the monkey god and
there's a statue of it. The hero is a masked defender of the poor and weak
against the corrupt governor. By night, he goes on raids against villains and
by day is an ordinary member of the community. The governor wants to smoke him
out and arrest anyone who "even sneezes like a monkey."
Martial-arts whiz Donnie Yen, his head shaved and toting an umbrella, is a
visiting physician traveling with his son — played by a spunky 11-year-old
girl, incidentally. Yen has a battery of elegant moves and piston feet and is
especially adept at dodging blows.
Yu Ruang-Guang ("Shanghai Noon") is an esteemed herbal doctor whose
commanding presence implies hidden strengths. There's strength, too, on the
bench. Each major character has his or her own particular martial-arts skills,
including the boy. They bound among collapsing rafters — even the food flies -
- and the showdown has combatants balancing on poles amid flames. One of the
fights is such a close shave the loser's eyebrows get shaved off. Every stance
has its own name, including the fearsome "Buddha's palm."
In one exquisite moment, the herbalist (Yu) and his assistant gather
scattered papers out of the air. The most emotional relationship is between
the physician (Yen) and his son. "A strong man sheds blood before he sheds
tears," the stern father admonishes, but he cannot follow his own advice.
– This film contains fantasy violence.
'CORKY ROMANO'
Starring Chris Kattan. Directed by Rob Pritts.
(PG-13. At Bay Area theaters. 86 minutes.)
.
"Corky Romano," the first feature starring Chris Kattan ("Saturday Night
Live"), is oddly likable at scattered moments, although nobody would claim it
adds up to much of a comedy. It's strictly for someone looking for a goof-off.
Corky (Kattan), a veterinarian at an animal hospital called Poodles and
Pussies, naturally takes to animals and little old ladies, despite one client
who wants him to kill her cat.
Klutz Kattan, all teeth, fidgets, pratfalls and tics, plays the only nice
member of a mob family. He must infiltrate the FBI to steal evidence against
his dad, who is into money laundering and landscaping.
"Corky Romano" at least provides work for some unemployed actors, one of
whom, Peter Falk, as the father, doesn't have a single funny line until the
very end. The laugh is one of the few surprises in the movie. Each of Corky's
brothers has a quirk, but they don't fare much better. Peter (Chris Penn) is a
latent homosexual and Paulie (Peter Berg) is a few watts short of lighting up
(thanks, Anne Robinson).
Richard Roundtree (yes, Shaft!) puts in duty as the FBI boss who assigns
Corky to the case of the Night Vulture, a murderous heroin dealer. Two FBI
agents bring a little nutty life to the proceedings: Matthew Glave has a nice
"nobody appreciates me" breakdown, and Vinessa Shaw, nobody's fool, does a
neat turn undercover in a nurse's uniform.
– Contains sexual innuendo.
'MY FIRST MISTER' Drama-comedy. Starring Leelee Sobieski and Albert Brooks.
Directed by Christine Lahti. (R. 109 minutes. At Bay Area theaters.))
.
A snarky teenage Goth girl (Leelee Sobieski) spots a paunchy, middle-aged
haberdasher (Albert Brooks) in a mall clothing store and becomes smitten. This
is one of many preposterous moments in "My First Mister," a coming-of-age
story that gets it all wrong.
It's puzzling that actress-director Christine Lahti, who won an Oscar for
the short "Lieberman in Love," chose this material for her feature directing
debut. The script, by sitcom writer Jill Franklyn, is maddeningly unfunny and
ill-conceived.
"Mister" shoehorns the fine young actress Sobieski into a cliched loner
role, and she responds by looking downcast and spitting out her lines. With
lines like "I love chocolate because it's soft and warm, like what I imagine a
hug might be like," we can see her hurry to get rid of them.
The lumpy salesman and the girl become co-workers, bicker and then bond —
all highly unlikely developments. He mocks her black clothes, piercings and
heavy makeup. So this guy is 49 years old, borderline unattractive and bastard
enough to insult a teenage girl. Dreamy.
Lahti's attempts at comic surrealism fall flat. Carol Kane is a cartoon as
Sobieski's shrill and pastel mother, and the "Ally McBeal"-style morphing
fantasies are old hat.
Nothing sexual happens between man and girl. That the first half of "My
First Mister" strongly hints that it might is both misleading and unseemly.
– Contains raw language.
'T-REX: BACK TO THE CRETACEOUS'
(IMAX 3-D adventure. Starring Liz Stauber and Peter Horton. Directed by Brett
Leonard. (Not rated. 50 minutes. At the Metreon.))
"T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous" is the movie to take friends and relatives
visiting from those deprived towns without 3-D IMAX. It represents the
pinnacle, so far, of 3-D filmmaking, and even apart from the technology, it's
a very watchable little movie.
The @sk,1 picture tells the story of a paleontologist (Peter Horton) and
his daughter, Ally (Liz Stauber). The early scenes, of the paleontologist
mining in the mountains, are stunning in their 3-D effects. (People chip away
at stones, right under the viewer's nose). Later, his daughter has a series of
fantasies, nicely rendered, in which she imagines herself in a variety of
historical and prehistoric locations. One of them is the Cretaceous era, where
she strikes up a rapport with a T-Rex, only seconds before dinosaurs become
extinct.
It really does seem as if 3-D IMAX is where movies have to go. One watches
people in this film with the same fascination with which audiences of earlier
generations once greeted synchronized sound or color film. Everything becomes
interesting — facial blemishes, eyes, clothes, hair, teeth. The problem is
that everything is equally interesting, but we'll leave that for some great
future artist to solve. One day such an artist will take this process and make
something so good and so commercially appealing that there will no going back.
That would be a good day for actors, too: Unlike two-dimensional film,
which adds weight, 3-D shows how skinny actors really are. Three dimensions
would spark a transformation in the physical types who become successful
onscreen. Anyone good-looking in real life will be good-looking in the movies,
which is not the case today, and actresses will no longer have to go through
life starving.
RATING: (Polite Applause)
'DOWN FROM THE MOUNTAIN'
Concert documentary. Directed by D.A. Pennebaker, Chris Hegedus and Nick Doob.
(Not rated. 98 minutes. At the Red Vic.)
.
The runaway success of the soundtrack to the Coen Brothers' slapstick
odyssey "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" ensures an audience for this follow-up
concert documentary. Like the old-timey music that inspired it, "Down From the
Mountain" is sweet, serene and utterly unconcerned with polish.
The film, co-directed by camera legend D.A. Pennebaker ("Dont Look Back,")
and his partner Chris Hegedus ("Startup.com"), documents a live performance by
many of the soundtrack contributors at Nashville's Ryman Auditorium. Though
the "O Brother" soundtrack has been credited with reviving widespread interest
in bluegrass, the show hardly seems like an exercise in self-congratulation.
Emcee John Hartford, who died earlier this year, makes sure the evening
never gets weighed down by any undue sense of significance. Looking like a
threadbare mime in a bowler and a loose-fitting black vest, he introduces his
own fiddle tune as "some hanging music" and calls Emmylou Harris "so beautiful
it wouldn't matter if she couldn't sing a lick."
The cameras peek in on backstage preparations much as a privileged fan
would. Harris interrupts a dressing-room rehearsal to check her sports ticker;
Gillian Welch frets about her outfit.
But such moments are incidental. The songs themselves are the stars of the
show. Members of the Cox Family fight back tears during their exquisite "I Am
Weary (Let Me Rest)." Krauss sideman Dan Tyminski, his bottom lip jutting as
if it were stuffed with chewing tobacco, proves himself a star in his own
right as he takes an assured lead vocal on "Blue and Lonesome."
"Here comes the sad part now," says bluegrass patriarch Ralph Stanley,
introducing his solo a cappella version of the traditional "O Death." He says
it for levity, but there's nothing funny about the performance.
SERENDIPITY: A light romantic comedy about potential soul mates who place
their future in destiny's hands, set in a New York just a short while ago that
now seems like another lifetime. At the Empire, Galaxy, Vogue and Loews
Metreon.
VAMPIRE HUNTER D: BLOODLUST: A time-tripping Japanese anime that casts a
High Romantic Gothic spell. At the Opera Plaza.
THE ENDURANCE: This true story of a 1914 Antarctic expedition takes on
elements of legend in this documentary, with its ghostly images from the past
in still photographs and live film footage. At the Castro and Rafael Film
Center.
– Bob Graham
I hypothesize one of the fundamental differences between British television and American is that the U.K. can get the likes of Danny Boyle (Shallow Grave, Trainspotting, 28 Days Later) to direct a movie, while in the States its considered helpful if a auxiliary character from a failed sitcom gets behind the camera. The thing that makes Boyle such a ridiculously phlegmatic choosing as a chief for a BBC TV project is that his films traditionally count in strange working pedigree characters and bizarre scenarios, all imbued with problematical levels of selflessness and self-preservation. This time around Boyle uncorks with a brunette, twisted comedy that merges elements of slapstick and drama, but mostly survives with a staunch stream of wildly, scratchy dialogue.
With Vacuuming Truly Unclothed in Paradise—written by Jim Cartwright, who also wrote the enjoyably offbeat Little Voice—Boyle takes on the cutthroat universe of door-to-door vacuum cleaner salesmen. Retiring and mild twenty-something Pete (Michael Begley) is looking for the purpose himself, spending his time getting stripper gigs an eye to his bitchy girlfriend, Sheila (Katy Cavanagh), while he tries to perfect his baton D.J. skills in their tiny apartment. When Sheila puts her foot down and demands that Pete start making some corporeal money or else, he lands a business as a salesman for a vacuum cleaner company. This turns out to be a mixed blessing because, for training, Pete is teamed up with Tommy Rag (Timothy Spall), a frothy, oily, vile, and unrefined huckster who just happens to be the company's topmost salesman, regardless of the the gen that his boss refers to him as "a spieler without ethics."
What's bad for Pete, however, is good in behalf of the viewer, because Spall's manically frenetic Tommy Dialect clout is the humorous focal point of Boyle's film; he's an sensitive, sexist pig living out of his car whose mantra is actually "Sell or Die", and Spall takes on this vitriolic task like he's John Candy's protracted-wasted calamity and cruelly demented brother—his idea of a motivational tape is one-liner with him frequently screaming "SELL, F***ING SELL!" Begley's gentle and kind Pete is certainly a likeable chap, but Spall gives a woman of those uniquely hyper performances that deep down carries the film, as he moves from hostility to rage to compensate a gravity of unexpectedly repressed emotion as he tells lousy Pete about a haunting dream he had, which serves as the footing for the treatment of the film's title. It is a surprisingly tender vista, and Spall is so hair-trigger that down repay during a dormant passage like this, Boyle keeps viewers coiled because we're never sure if he's about to lose one's temper into a sales-induced rage.
As Tommy works his course toward winning the coveted "Golden Vac" trophy owing most vacuums sold—something that is more outstanding to him than life itself—he drags Pete 'round working-class England at 100 miles per hour, devil-may-care to make upright one more sale. Here's where Cartwright's screenplay introduces a stream of colorful characters, including a quirky salesman with a glass examination, a bizarre and sexy computer specialist, a weird old lady neighbor with a furtively, and a woman, known as The Spaniard, who adopts a Spanish accent and scurvy wig to save no reason other than because Tommy Rag is a smooth speech-maker. Begley's Pete, all nervous and shy, has an odd and sharp scene with his first vacuum sale involving a poverty-stricken single concubine with a disciplinary problem of kids; as complete of the only characters in the film with any shred of normalcy, Pete after all is said acts as we secretly foresee he would, and there is a brief glimmer of hope that everything might induce out alright in the bound. Maybe.
Boyle shot Vacuuming Completely Nude in Paradise on digital video, as he did with 28 Days Later, and there are scenes that look as if they could induce been test footage for that zombie pellicle. A scene where Pete runs nearly in one's birthday suit into the empty streets is about a shot-in behalf of-shot vanguard to the moment in 28 Days Later when a at a loss Cillian Murphy first ventures outside to get a look at the extinction-decimated streets, minus the bunny ears. Boyle's England is dirty and cold, and the flexibility of the aspect gives him the opportunity to employ a number of his trademark strange camera angles, which combine to the often dizzying editing.
Why don't we get off-the-wall made-for-boob tube stuff like this in the States?
The Movie:
The Academy Award nominated documentary Prisoner of Paradise
tells the life story of Kurt Gerron, an actor and talented director who
was popular in pre-war Germany. Living during the insanity that was
Nazi Germany, Gerron, a Jew, was taken to a concentration camp. There
he was ordered to make an impossible film; one that turned the horror of
a concentration camp into a paradise.
Kurt Gerron was a star of both the stage and screen in pre-war Germany.
He starred in the classic film The Blue Angel with Marlene Dietrich
and directed several popular films. But all that changed when the
Nazi's came to power. Gerron was a Jew fled the country leaving behind
his substantial houses and most of the money he had earned. With
his family and parents to support, he settled in Paris, then later moved
to Amsterdam in search of work. While many of his contemporaries
emigrated to the US and South America, for some strange reason Gerron stayed
in Europe.
When the Nazi's marched in though, Gerron and his family were shipped
in a cattle car to the concentration camp of Theresienstadt in the present
day Czech Republic. Crowded, with little food of clean water, many
of the greatest Jewish artists in Europe found themselves in this camp.
The commandant allowed them to put on shows and cabarets, and in these
Gerron proved to be vastly entertaining and was noticed by the higher ups.
As the Allies landed in France, news of what was happening to all the
European Jews who had disappeared was beginning to leak out. The
neutral countries were starting to pressure Berlin into releasing details.
To appease these countries, it was decided that the Red Cross could let
an inspector come to one camp, Theresienstadt. Thousands of the Jews
were transported to Auschwitz for extermination so the ghetto wouldn't
look over crowded. The camp was cleaned and decorated, and even a
pool was installed. The Red Cross agent, a young man of 26, was taken
on a carefully planed tour showing people making bread and a Jazz band
playing in a café. The ruse worked, and the inspector gave
the camp a glowing recommendation. If one person could be fooled,
why not try to fool everyone?
It was then that the Germans decided to make a film, showing how lovely
and wonderful the concentration camps were. The picked Kurt Gerron
to write and direct the film, and he pored his heart into the production,
creating a film that was better than anything the German's expected.
Told through contemporary photos and film clips and through the stories
of camp survivors, Prisoner of Paradise is a compelling and interesting
documentary, which raises as many questions as it answers. Why did
Gerron stay in Europe when others were leaving? He even raised money
to send Peter Lorre to Hollywood, but didn't go himself. In one heart
breaking scene, it is revealed that he did have an offer from a Hollywood
studio, but they refused to pay for a 1st class ticket, so he turned them
down.
The film touches on the question of whether Gerron should have made
his film, but doesn't dwell on it. They put forth the premise that
he was in love with movies, and took the assignment so that he could direct
once again, though I think pragmatic concerns, such as the fact that he'd
be killed if he refused, played a more important role in his decision.
The one fact that does support the film theory is that Gerron worked, and
worked hard, to make a very good film that did just what the Nazi's wanted.
He was able to turn a concentration camp into a model city full of culture,
art and happy citizens.
The DVD:
Audio:
The stereo English soundtrack fits the program well. The narration
and dialog is very clear, and the few sound effects and the incidental
music sound clean. There are no subtitles.
Video:
The non-anamorphic widescreen image is very good. The WWII era
film clips show their age, and the old photos are sometimes blurry, but
this is to be expected. The contemporary segments are clear
and crisp.
Extras:
There are no extras on this disc. It is very disappointing that
the film that Gerron created for the Nazis, the 23 minute long Theresienstadt,
wasn't included. Including that would have made this a complete package.
Final Thoughts:
This was a very good movie. Equal parts biography and Holocaust
tale, the film is able to explore Gerron's life while also commenting on
the strangeness of having a Jew create propaganda for the government that
is killing his people. An engrossing and captivating film, Prisoner
of Paradise is Highly Recommended.
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This is Alfred Hitchcock at his most elfish, Cary Let at his most debonair, and Universal's territory video crew at their most skilful. It's a potent mixture for one of the screen's choicest comedy thrillers, "North By Northwest."
Actually, I suppose "North By Northwest" might best be described as a romantic escapade comedy thriller. It is quintessential Hitchcock, containing every ingredient the old master had perfected up to that indicate, 1959. The two films that came directly after would follow different paths, "Psycho" in 1960 and "The Birds" in 1963 adding outright shock to the ambiguity. But "North By Northwest" stays quit of too many horrendous episodes, and when things do get tense for a two minutes they are sure to brighten up before extensive. Grant would reprise much the that having been said formalities and material several years later conducive to kingpin Stanley Donen in "Charade," both films providing romance, excitement, suspense, and humor in equal regulate.
What we have here is the innocent bystander caught up in extraordinary events, believed by no sole and pursued by each. If that sounds like "The 39 Steps" or "The Unfitting Man" or "The Man Who Knew Too Much," you'll already have the idea of Grant's predicament. He plays a Madison Avenue advertising executive, Roger Thornhill, who is mistaken by a gang of foreign spies for a secret go-between named George Kaplan. They kidnap Thornhill and attempt to make him talk, what yon never being made clear, nor is it meant to be. It is, in deed data, what Hitchcock called a McGuffin, a plot widget that moves the story along but, otherwise, has no real purpose. Therefore, we don't need to know what the bad guys shortage from Kaplan, only that they're after him and they concoct Thornhill is their shackle.
Anyway, Thornhill gets away from them and in the approach manages to emerge as notwithstanding that he's killed a man, right in the centre of the U.N. Building in full view of witnesses and a photographer! Immediately, he figures the exclusively way to corroborate his innocence is to find the real murderers, which leads to a cross-native land romp, a romance, and at least two of the most celebrated chase sequences in all cases filmed.
Don't uniform with go into to somebody the reason behind it all. In Ernest Lehman's blithely illogical plot, the spies are after Thornhill, the police are after him, his personification is in all the newspapers, so he hides faulty on a train, where he meets a young female named Eve Kendall, played by Eva Marie Saint. Ms. Saint is in the mold of multifarious Hitchcock heroines–Dignify Kelly, Kim Novak, Janet Leigh, Tippi Hedren, all of them blond, beautiful, and plausibly gentle but harboring more secrets than they let on. The chief rotter, Phillip Vandamm, is played with roguish bind by James Mason. I norm, the English name such wonderful heavies, don't they? Ditty can't facilitate thinking of the "Diehard" series' Alan Rickman or Jeremy Irons. Dialect mayhap it's the pompous precision of their idiom and enunciation that makes us long to see them have a comeuppance.
In any event, Mason makes a good, menacing, gentleman villain, ordering about several henchmen, including Martin Landau as the diabolical and enigmatic Leonard. Leo J. Carroll, a certain staple of Hitchcock films, plays the Professor, a CIA operative we're never too dependable far until the jolly uninterruptedly. Indeed, nothing in Lehman's script is noticeably what it appears to be. For event, Allowance is almost too good-looking, too intermittently, too neat, too cosmopolitan, too refined to be trusted. Remember, as an ad confine his business is duplicity. Then, too, his middle opening is O, as in zero, because it stands in support of nothing except to give him the acronym ROT. Nothing but rot? Outrageous, no?
As a piece of more distant mischief, his origin in the film is effectively played Jessie Royce Landis, who in truth was the same age as Grant (they were both born in 1904). At the last moment, you gape, where is Hitchcock's acclaimed cameo in all of this? Audiences would sometimes spend as much energy looking in the interest Hitch's air as they did following the parcel of land. As in most of his later films, the director gets it onto with early, this time playing a fellow bothersome to take a bus and being jail outdoors.
Sumptuously mounted but emotionally remote, Chen Kaige's historical costumer "The Emperor and the Assassin" is a string of amazing plant pieces hung on a dramatically shaky clothesline. Long-in-the-works, much-fraught movie — prevalent synergetic China's first leader, the servant sent to parricide him and the woman they both value — is undeniably impressive on a tech standing. Further it fails to build a Thespian head of steam worthy of its subjugate consequence and manufacture values, with characters making negligible headway against a fragmented storyline and the sheer preponderancy of the visuals. Continued reaction to its Cannes competition screening will be crucial in deciding whether this will be a commercial thumbs-down, like Chen's previous "Temptress Moon," or an arthouse hit, like "Farewell My Concubine." Midrange business looks likeliest.
There's plenty riding on the picture, apart from the $ 15 million-or-so budget, largely raised from Japanese and European sources. Chen, whose career had its share of ups and downs even in the '80s, hasn't had a hit since "Concubine" co-won the Palme d'Or in '93, and "Assassin" has all the signs of a high-stakes roll of the dice to re-establish himself as the international, big-budget emperor of Chinese cinema.
In fact, though the pic is undeniably superior to "Temptress," it again underlines Chen's strengths and weaknesses: He essentially remains a gifted miniaturist whose passion for detail is not matched by a similar emotional fervor or grasp of longer dramatic arcs.
None of his big-budget movies during the past decade matches the emotional intensity of his smaller '80s pics "Yellow Earth" and "King of the Children." If "Assassin" succeeds on any non-tech level, it's more in the realm of historical allegory or general lesson about power and its abuse; on a simple human level, as a love story centered on a woman torn between two men, it hardly gets off the starting blocks.
Last fall, a 176-minute version test-screened in Japan to less than rapturous response (pic quickly died on subsequent release). After Chen made a reported 300-or-so changes, a 160-minute cut preemed, with much hoopla, in Beijing's Great Hall of the People on Oct. 8 to decidedly mixed response again. Present version, running the same length but reportedly totally reworked, is in fact Chen's fourth try, after a 140-minute version shown only privately to foreign distribs.
Story is set during the late 3rd century B.C., near the end of the so-called Warring States period, when China was a collection of seven rival kingdoms (and in Europe, Hannibal was girding his loins for war with Rome). Pic starts with a bang (and the first of many explanatory captions) as Ying Zheng (Li Xuejian), head of Qin, invades the neighboring state of Han and parks 250,000 troops outside the capital, threatening to destroy it.
Already half-crazed by his dream — a mandate from heaven, he says — of forging one nation out of several states, Ying outlines a utopian scenario of unification, in which the country will then be divided into provinces under good leaders, peace and prosperity will flourish and the barbarians will be held at bay outside a Great Wall. (Today, Ying is best known for his gigantic mausoleum, containing terra cotta armies, unearthed in Xi'an.)
The downside is that huge numbers of people will have to die first. First to feel the cutting edge of his ambition are the people of Han who, despite the protestations of Ying's elderly prime minister (Chen Kaige, in a sonorous, stately perf), are crushed in 230 B.C.
Next on Ying's shopping list is the state of Yan — at which point things become increasingly complicated, not least because its head (Sun Zhou, helmer of "Heartstrings") was once a childhood friend of Ying. To give Ying a good excuse to invade the place, his longtime lover and confidante, Lady Zhao (Gong Li), hatches the idea of being branded a traitor, fleeing to Yan and hiring a local assassin to kill Ying. When the plot is uncovered, Ying will then be free to destroy Yan.
Everything initially goes according to plan. The only problem is that the man Zhao picks, Jing Ke (Zhang Fengyi), has a past: Ever since he caused the suicide of a young blind girl (Zhou Xun, in a touching cameo) during a hit, he's become disgusted with himself and his profession, and is more than a little mentally unstable. Jing refuses the assignment, but Zhao persists: As a patsy in her plan , he's just right.
But events back in Qin change the whole scenario. In one of the pic's most impressive sequences, making potent use of sound, silence and visuals, the ambitious Marquis Changxin (Wang Zhiwen), lover of Queen Mother (Gu Yongfei), attempts a coup, fails and when captured reveals a secret about Ying's parentage that sends the latter off the rails — and heading straight for the state of Zhao with mass slaughter on his mind. Story arcs further from there.
All this is, believe it or not, a drastic simplification of a plot that unwinds in boggling detail through five chapter headings — "The King of Qin," "The Assassin," "The Children," "Lady Zhao," "The Emperor and the Assassin" — clearly designed to bring a sense of structure to the storyline and its multitude of cross-loyalties.
To get the most from the picture, viewers need to stay alert, especially in the early stages, not only to follow the plot but also to memorize each of the main characters' backgrounds: Four of the leads were either raised as hostages or born in the state of Zhao (a crucial ingredient in their mixed loyalties or emotional confusion), and the relationship between the queen mother and the marquis is delineated in a manner bound to be confusing to Western viewers.
It's here that the script basically falls down. Faced with few hard facts about the era, Chen and scripter Wang Peigong (a noted playwright) have come up with a clever story but overgild the lily to an extent that the dynamics between the three leads get lost in the detail.
Chen seems not to have learned the lesson of the great historical epics of cinema: simplification at all costs and the rapid establishment of clear conflicts to carry auds through the battles, political hanky-panky and long running time.
A much more dramatically powerful movie on the same subject, Zhou Xiaowen's "The Emperor's Shadow" (1996), kept the focus tight on three leads and used limited spectacle, a restricted color palette, and a sense of massiveness and barbarity in the production design to enhance the central drama and its message about how absolute power corrupts.
In "Assassin," the sets are bigger, the battles more spectacular, and the art direction more detailed and lavish; but rarely (except in the king's map room and some striking hydraulics in his unification room) do they enhance or comment on the drama. They're there to dazzle the eyes, period.
The dialogue, too, rarely has any special flavor. It is largely routine, with the thesps giving it occasional resonance through performances — especially by the two male leads — that often approach caricature.
As Zhao, Gong has the right wardrobe and bearing but hardly touches the heart of her conflicted character; Zhang, as the assassin, is most impressive when saying little, especially in sequences that draw on conventions of swordplay cinema to portray his skills; and Li, in the central role of Ying, is a commanding figure onscreen but too one note in his obsession. (Compare what Jiang Wen made of the same character in "Shadow" and the difference is clear.)
Of the rest, Gu's commanding Queen Mother is most impressive in a smallish role.
Still, despite these faults, the movie never drags, is given a measure of adrenaline by Zhao Jiping's accessible score (with choirs, brass and percussion motoring the action sequences) and moves at a pleasant clip for the first two hours before an unseemly haste overtakes the picture in the "Lady Zhao" chapter.
Ace lenser Zhao Fei's compositions are always eye-catching, and his play with light and amber tones is frequently seductive, though the decision not to shoot in widescreen seems regrettable.
As is the case with any film that is known to drive people shocked and nauseated from film festival theaters, Kim Ki-duk's The Isle put him on the international map. Thankfully, he has proven himself to be a film maker to watch. While many of his films often contain dour themes and downright biblical violence, there is always an uncompromising intelligence clearly present and he's not just showing extremes in order to be provocative- though some critics disagree and have venomously pegged him as a brutal sensationalist. Recently he managed a much gentler feature, Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter… and Spring Again, that only solidified his reputation as one of the most important film makers coming out of Asia in the past decade.
Samaritan Girl (2004, aka. Samaria) concerns two teenage friends, the carefree Jae-young and the more serious Yoe-jin, who dream of going to Europe together. To realize this, Jae-young has been prostituting herself with Yoe-jin acting as her manager/bookkeeper/pimp. Yoe-jin is also the voice of reason, of concern, trying to keep Jae-young from taking the clients too lightly and also a bit jealous of the stolen affections.
Things take a tragic turn (other reviews and the back cover description state it as an "accident," however, I think it is open to interpretation- accident?-suicide?-sacrifice?) and Jae-young dies. Guilt-ridden and grieving, Yoe-jin, decides to return the money they made and, as a form of penance, sleeps with the clients. Her widower father, a detective, discovers her salacious activities and it shatters his world. His devastation leads to violence as he tracks her and then confronts a series of her customers.
The film is divided into three chapters- "Vasumitra" which introduces the girls and explores their bond. "Samaria" which follows Yoe-jin's actions after Jae-young's death and her father discovering his daughters secret life. Finally, the conclusion is titled "Sonata."
Like pretty much all of his works, in Samaritan Girl, Kim Ki-duk presents a straightforward story with a challenging theme. The best way I can think of to describe it, is an existentialist coming of age tale about loss of innocence. The controversial, discomforting, discussion point is in how Kim connects teenage sexuality, in risque fashion, to a kind of sainthood (evidenced in Jae-young's choice for her nickname, the clients re-evaluating sleeping with teenagers after their free/payback session with Yoe-jin, and the Yoe-jin naked nun promo/cover art which is never actually visualized in the film). It all ties together in heavy, metaphorical fashion to the end, from a fathers rage, to a fathers acceptance, and his letting go of his no longer so little girl.
It may be a tad discomforting for some, but Samaritan Girl's approach to sexuality and violence is fascinating and just as mixed message as you'd think someone combining Buddhist and Catholic philosophy would be prone to deliver. Yoe-jin begins justifiably judgmental of the men that sleep with her friend and then turns to a strange acceptance, finding something compassionate in the clients after she embraces Jae-young's attitude and selflessly turns her body over to them. Likewise, her father undergoes his own transformation. The initial shock of uncovering his daughters actions leads to an escalating rage; he goes from innocuously bumping into one man, to pelting rocks at anothers car, to breaking down the door of a johns home and interrogating him at his family dinner table, and, eventually, to committing the ultimate sin. Again, Kim see's this unhinged, breaking point as a sort of transcendence, the only way this father can accept his daughters deflowering.
Kim Ki-duk isn't afraid of traveling across a minefield, and luckily he has the defiant sense and cinematic skill to guide viewers into these difficult, philosophically probing territories. On the technical side, Samaritan Girl is often visually stunning and always precise in its direction, and Kim manages some excellent performances from his cast.