The Filth, The Freaks, and the Fools...

Hot Fuzz (B) - The 'Spaced' and "Shawn of the Dead" crew are back, and this time they're taking on the "Action Movie" genre. The key to parodying this genre is to have a fundamental love for it, which is why all the John Woo/John McTiernagan/Michael Bay tropes in the movie work so well. Being English, it's primary inspiration in terms of the story is from "Straw Dogs" (one of the villagers was an extra) and "The Wicker Man". The super cop protagonist so outshines his fellow officers in London that he's transferred to a small village where bodies start turning up. Turns out it's the work of a local cabal of village leaders who want to keep their place free from "Gypsies, Hippies, and Ravers". It's like neighbourhood leader types on this side of the Atlantic who reprimand their neighbours for putting basketball hoops over their garage and such...taken to an extreme level. Anyway, this all leads to a classic two gun standoff in the final act with hilarious results.

The movie works, unlike say, "Date Movie" or "Scary Movie" because while it acknowledges the genre, it doesn't condescend to it. Edgar Wright's made a solid enough film on its own that eats its cake and has it too. (Remember the opening scene in the village police station? Get it? Get it? Eh?) Favorite bits: "By the power of Greyskull!" and Timothy Dalton falling on a spike, head-villain style; "Thisth really fucking hurths!" Only complaint: Wright's repetitive quick cuts (Darren Aronofsky-lite) get, well, repetitive...

Spiderman 3 (C) - Film making by committee, and it shows. The webslinger faces not one but three antagonists in this installment, on top of the subplots straight of of "The O.C." Will Peter and M.J. stay together? Will Peter and Harry Osborn reconcile their friendship? What's the deal with Gwen Stacey? What's that upstart Edward Brock's game, anyways? Oh, and turns out it was escaped con Flint Marko who killed Uncle Ben all along...

Perversely, I found myself tuning out during the big fight scenes- CGI characters have no real weight to them, so when our heroes hit their heads or get thrown through wall, you don't feel any tension. Sam Raimi has enough skill as a director so the 'soap opera' moments held my interest more.

It seems Superhero movies are a law of diminishing returns unto themselves. On one hand, you have to please the long-term comic fans so favorites like the symbiont costume 'Venom' has to make an appearance. On the other hand, you've still got to shoehorn a semblance of story into the film. When 'Spiderman 4' shows up, you know- you KNOW Flash Thompson and 'The Lizard' will make an appearance. And the Lizard'll kidnap Mary Jane. And Peter'll show up to rescue her. And the subplot with Gwen will resolve itself when the Lizard (or was it the Hunter?) kills her off. And M.J. says, "Go get 'em, Tiger!" and...and...

Ehh...

Blades Of Glory (C) - The only people who give a shit about competitive figure skating are, well, competitive figure skaters. And their parents. And sexless nerds. So the only reason to see this film is if you're a Will Farrel (and Will Arnett) fan. I'll level with you; Farrel's brand of 'improv' comedy is hit or miss with me. Mostly 'hit', though it's the type of comedy which can get real self-indulgent and lazy real quickly. Could it be that Farrel appreciates the high level of skill and improvisation that real figure skaters need to master their craft? Nah, he came on board after Ben Stiller passed on his role. Worth a few chuckles, at least. (I liked the video of coach Craig T. Nelson's first attempt to create the "Iron Lotus" stunt, with predictably lethal results.)

As for Jon Heder, well... I hated 'Napoleon Dynamite' so much that he's kinda ruined for me as a comic actor, or really, as an actor. He's too wispy to play straight man, like he does here. This is really mean of me, but in less than a year, he'll be competing with actors like Andy Samburg (who I thought for a minute was Heder in that upcoming 'Hot Rod') for Jon Heder-like roles. I laughed when his character was disowned by his step-father for getting booted out of the figure skating circuit, but in retrospect, I'm not sure I was enjoying his character's pain, or Heder's.

Korean Animation

Wonderful Days (C-) and Aachi & Sipakk (B-)

Korea's developed quite a reputation for a high level of craftsmanship with it's animation studios. Mostly owing to its studios doing 90% of the grunt work for American productions like 'The Simpsons', 'Family Guy', and such. These two recent examples show what Korea's capable of when left to its own devices. Well, that and there's some new law in Korea making local theaters show local films at least 100 days out of the year.

Wonderful Days (aka Sky Blue) is beautifully animated, there's no doubt. It's just a Generic Post-Apocalyptic World Where the Bad Guy goes, "Nyah-ha", the Beautiful Heroine is a Cop Dedicated to Enforcing the Law in this World, And she runs into Her Former Lover Who is Now on the Side of the Rebels Dedicated to Overthrowing the Bad Guy. Surprise, surprise, she joins forces with him after some initial skirmishes and they both triumph. Is there a flow-chart from which all these type of movies are supposed to come from that I'm not aware of? It's technically proficient, but I'd give it a pass unless you're the type of cgi-obsessive animation geek-completest that has to see this type of thing.

As for Aachi and Sipakk, well... The setup is that the world's only form of viable energy comes from, er, 'dooky'. More specifically, 'Dooky' from you and me. In order to harvest this source, everybody has a ring put into their ass (keep reading), and every time they 'pinch a loaf', they are rewarded with an addictive Popsicle. Still with me? One side effect is that these Popsicles become a black-market commodity, like cocaine or meth. The two leads team up with a porn actress who's had a whole bunch of 'rings' put into her 'end', making her the goose that lays golden 'eggs', as it were. Complications arise when a cult leader who commands a bunch of addicted pygmies and the powers that be get wind of her 'abilities'.

I tell you what, I love this type of sophomoric humour and over-the-top violence. And the Dave Cooper-inspired design is perfect for this type of story. While it gets a little too reliant on in-jokes at times, it's pretty funny. I suspect it came out of the years of Korean animators toiling on mindless American animation, finally snapping, and crafting this vulgar little gem as a not so subtle 'Cho-Ka'! to their earlier toil.

Here's a clip...

Grumpy Old Previews...and Reviews...

Die Even More Harder Than Ever Before- The action genre is basically a silly one. I watched the first three in a row, and it had occurred to me that even the makers of these things have to acknowledge that. For instance, the line, "I don't believe this!!" or a variant thereof pops up in every Die Hard film. I'd have to look through a bunch more to confirm this, but I believe this type of line comes up in every action film ever made, since the beginning of the genre. It's an understanding of the filmmakers that the fundamental premise is ludicrous, and if you stopped to think about the actual mechanics of the film in question, your enjoyment of it would be seriously hampered. I'd say it's also a subconscious acknowledgement by the filmmakers that what they are engaged in is a fundamentally silly genre that, while it puts bread on the table and gas in the Hummer, is not really what they signed up for when they first entered the movie business.

Still, the action movie's continued success indicates to us that culturally, we haven't progressed much from the early days of cinema, where the novelty of showing top-hatted patrons the thrill of having an onrushing train come directly at them hasn't worn off quite yet.

Transformers-the movie- Here's something to think about: Let's say that 'Demolition Man', that Stallone movie from years back, where Sly is frozen and put into a futuristic overly-politically correct world (where fine dining is Taco Bell and popular music is radio jingles), became a t.v. show. A running gag in the show would be where the camera would pan by a movie theater, and the titles on the marquee would be advertising ninety-minute commercials. "Country Crock Margarine-the movie" "Diet Pepsi-free: the movie". Do you see where I'm going with this?

Michael Bay is just a more successful version of Uwe Boll, really. There'll be explosions, swooping camera shots, bombastic scores, and the Magical Black Guy. (The MBG, in Bay's movies, is a colourful urban character that's thrown in to comment on the movie for no other reason than to add a bit of 'hipness' to it. Sort of the same broad reason T.V. in the 70's had Ray Charles do a walk-on now and again. He was a bike courier in Armageddon, he conducted a rail car in The Rock, he was Michael Clark Dugan in The Island, and in Bad Boys he was, um, Martin Lawrence and Will Smith. Here he plays a used car dealer.)

The Bourne Supremacy- The well's running dry for this particular franchise. Still, for what it's worth, it did motivate the James Bond franchise to bring their character more down to earth. Matt Damon's okay, I guess. Though if you put Matthew McConaughey or even Luke Wilson in the lead, you probably wouldn't notice any difference.

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Reviews:

Hostel II (F)

I hated this one, but not because it's a sadistic exercise in pointless bloodletting. (though it is...) It's using an atom bomb to smash a fly. See, the 'gore-nography' sub-genre of horror goes as far back as the turn of the century Paris, with it's 'Grand Guginol' theater. If I were to look at it in a semiotic sense, the horror film in general is like a form of cultural vaccination. We get exposed to an inert form of transgressive behavior, kind of like riding a really scary roller coaster, and perhaps we feel better equipped to handle life's real horrors.

The sub-genre of 'gore-no' films, however, is like sticking our hands in really hot water to see how long we can last. A more intense form of inoculation, if you will. What keeps it from being more prevalent is in it's low budget and spotty distribution. The better ones, like Peter Jackson's 'Dead Alive' and Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer" work because their tongue is planted firmly in their cheek. Being low budget, the creators of these films have to spend their time and money in a more thoughtful way than someone like director Eli Roth is capable of. (If his mock horror trailer from the movie, 'Grind house' was really made, you'd have seen all the good parts already...)

What really sucked about Hostel is that, a) Eli Roth plays his work straight, so much that the torture segments throw you out of the movie. b) he spent way too much money in making and promoting it, and c) when the box office receipts started to fall off, he acted really hurt and surprised that not too many people feel like spending their evenings at the local cineplex watching young women get tortured and murdered. Cue my monocle popping off my face into my gin and tonic. When you think about it, if you think about it, while the premise is creepily logical (an underground company stages events for clients to sadistically torture and murder wayward tourists), the way they procure their victims is ludicrous. If the company is in Eastern Europe, wouldn't it make more sense economically to grab impoverished locals off the street for fodder than to undertake the time and expense, (and legal risks) to procure young American tourists?

Ratatouille (A-) What a pleasure to see craftsmen being allowed to do that what they do best. It says something about the creative culture at Pixar in that even their mediocre stuff, like 'Cars', is still watchable at least, and still heads and shoulders over everything that comes out of the 3d animation line these days. In this case, the pleasure is not in the story, which is okay in and of itself, (Rat that loves food comes to Paris and becomes a chef) but in the subtle details that add up to make the sum more than its parts.

Notice how the various textures all have their own specific glow. Notice how all the rats move. In a bunch, they're repulsive, one on one, they're adorable. See how much better animated the water is in this picture than 'Finding Nemo'. (So much so that I'm sure they worked to make it a bit more 'cartoony' in the final steps, if you know what I mean.) The craftsmanship here is so advanced and surefooted that a character's glance and heave of the chest is all you need to know about them.

The only nit I have to pick, well, two - The little monologue by Anton Ego (Peter O'Toole) rings a tad false for me - is that Pixar tends to run out of story before they run out of movie. You could sum up their last three movie endings as: "And, uh, trust us on this, everything worked out for everyone in the end. Bye!" Still, it would be the height of corporate stupidity on Disney's part if they started mucking around with the good thing they've got with John Lassiter's band of geniuses.