If you appreciate and get this film (as many people seem to) then that's all well and good. For me it was two and a half hours of people wandering around in fields, stopping for a long chat about existential type stuff that for me was virtually indecipherable, and then having another little wander around. And then another little chat.
Some beautiful visuals made it watchable, but despite the massive presence of fog it was strangely lacking in atmosphere. This is my first Tarkovsky film and I'm not that keen. When I'm after my slow ponderous film fix I think I'll stick with a bit of Werner Herzog.
Due to the time pressures of not having been too well recently and trying to get more painting done to start a new art career, I've been struggling to get many reviews written. So what I've decided is that I'll write longer reviews for really good (or bad) films and for the more average of offerings, I will do a little mini-review. Here we go then with my first. Gyo: Tokyo Fish Attack.
It all starts off as pretty bonkers, yet entertaining, with scenes of fish walking on metallic legs attacking people left, right and centre and even a cheeky threesome (fish not included).
Then, at about the halfway point, the fish creatures are replaced by human creatures and the whole thing - whilst continuing the bonkers theme - falls apart into a turgid mess. A disappointment after the promising first half.
(Due to the fact that I've already reviewed The Pack, the competition rules state that Doccortex has to review it instead. So here's the final review of the FA Cup of Actors as Émilie Dequenne faces Ellen Page, who scored a respectable 6.5 with The East - evlkeith) It’s the
final of the FA cup of actors and I’m faced with reviewing this offering from
the tournament favourite Émilie Dequenne with equal amounts of anticipation and
trepidation. After her steadfast campaign through to the final of the World’s
premier acting knockout competition, her ultimate success relies on what I think
of this grubby looking little horror film. My hopes are not high, but maybe her
impressive pedigree in the game will pull her through this final challenge.
It’s
strangely likeable for a French horror film but no less predictable, with
grotesque characters performing unspeakable horrors to passersby in the rural
heartland of the country. Dequenne, however somehow manages to hold our
interest with a smouldering, tobacco stained performance as the hapless road
tripper Charlotte. She single-handedly turns the film from something I would
have mercilessly fast forwarded into a positive experience holding your
hand as you charge headlong through a nightmare world of fat women in chain
mail, hell’s angels and miners. (Yes, that’s coal miners.)
The rest of
the cast, action and plot seem to swirl around her classy performance in a
somewhat shambolic fashion. After picking up a mysterious hitch hiker Charlotte
ends up a captive in a dubious bar/café establishment which not only serves up
croissants, coffee and onions to French rural folk, but also acts as a feeding
station for a gang of mutant zombie coal miners who rise from the earth now and
again for a bite to eat.
Although the miners are heavily stylised and
moderately ferocious they’re no way near a frightening as their South Yorkshire
cousins who chased me around a local golf course as a teenager due to the ‘Did
you shout fore?!’ incident. Needless to say it all ends in tears as bikers, fat
woman, zombie miners and an attractive French actress all meet up for the shack
based resolution rumble.
It’s a cut
above the other French horror films I’ve viewed due the dark humour, the atmosphere
and Dequenne’s excellent performance. Ultimately it’s fun, a little gory and
engaging stuff but lacks anything particularly memorable or especially scary,
(and to be honest evlkeith’s original review was way more entertaining than the
actual film!) And for that reason…I’m sorry Emily because you were great…I’m
rating the film just a little better than average at 6/10. I just hope that’s
enough but I know how highly evl rates Page so I'm not hopeful… 6/10 Doccortex How close was that? It all came down to half a point. But Ellen Page is the winner of the FA Cup of Actors. We will have the crowning ceremony soon... - evlkeith
In the second semi-final of the FA Cup of Actors the young challenger Émilie Dequenne faces off against screen legend James Stewart. Who will come out on top?
Being a native French speaker I can easily translate the title without even the sneekiest of peeks at a English/French dictionary. Cut the Temperature is a biopic focussing on the early disastrous cake baking attempts of Mary Berry. Burning sweet food products is her speciality until an evil hunchbacked Cornish Pisky makes a deal with her: Mary's cakes will be perfectly cooked and to be generous, he will even throw in the ability to knock up gorgeous salad dressings. The downside is that Mary has to suffer with a permanently itchy bumhole. (Watch her on 'The Great British Bake Off', she's forever having a crafty scratch. Possibly.)
I think that the DVD distributor must have put the wrong disc into my box because the film I watched was very different to the above, more to do with listening to time. (Don't know where they got that from?) But despite the lack of Mary Berry this is actually a pretty ingenious film.
Charlotte's (Émilie Dequenne) mum - rumour has it in the local village community that she was a witch - has been murdered and Charlotte moves back into her old house to investigate. Everyone in the village is a suspect. Being a sound recordist, Charlottes starts to record the creaking in the dilapidated house. Imagine her surprise when the recordings turn out to be conversations that happened in the past - hence the listening to time thingy. Examining these conversations, Charlotte starts to piece together what has happened to her mum.
The cover had me interested from the start, looking like something from a bank heist or spy thriller. The criss-crossing threads have an altogether more interesting use linked to the time travelling sounds. As with Peacock it has made a pleasant change to watch a film that tries something different.
Despite the engaging premise this film never hits the viewer with a startling twist or a stunning revelation. Charlotte just plods along finding clue after clue until she works out who the cheeky murderer is. No thrilling finale to be had here.
This isn't one of Dequenne's finest performances but it's by no means bad. It's very solid within the parameters of the script. But the lack of anything of real quality happening within the final third could have left an opening for James Stewart. If Vertigo or Anatomy of a Murder comes up for him, it's goodbye to the competition favourite Émilie Dequenne. 6/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: White Noise, The Pack.
When South
African street hoodlum Tsotsi pinches a car from a well-to-do suburban couple
the last thing he expects to find on the back seat is a baby. From this point
on our hero’s life changes on a variety of levels as caring for the infant
conjures up feelings of empathy, memories of his past and his hopes and
aspirations. Yes it’s a little like a gritty version of 'A Christmas Carol', but
how could that ever be a bad thing?
The film has
its wince inducing moments, firstly as Tsotsi and his gang rampage around Johannesburg
and latterly as he clumsily attempts to care for the baby. Any new parents
could do a lot better than ignoring Tsotsi’s guide to looking after infants,
especially nappy changing, feeding, transporting in a carrier bag and insect infestation.
Ultimately, however the film leaves you with a lovely warm feeling as if you
are soaking in a lovely warm bath of hopefulness for humanity, but without the
candles and Lush bath bomb filth.
The lead,
Presley Chweneyagae, deserves credit for producing this feel good factor as he
struts around the township eliciting feelings of both fear and sympathy. Like
the rest of his gang, he’s believable, detailed and likeable. Also worthy of
special mention is the lovely Terry Pheto, who portrays a single mum who
befriends Tsotsi. She oozes positivity, love and wholesomeness as if she’s some
kind of supernatural South African earth mother on a mission to save the lost
boys of the township.
It’s a great
film without ever reaching the heights and complexities of City of God. South
Africa has so much potential for gritty offerings and I’ll definitely be
looking up other options from the country over the next year. Some lovely imagery,
a great soundtrack and a meaningful story means that this is certainly worth a
couple of hours of your time.
Back to the FA Cup of Actors again and here we are with the odds on favourite Émilie Dequenne. She faces Barbara Crampton in this match so surely she's got it all sewn up already. Let's see...
The Girl on the Train is similar to films like The Child and The Son in that it sets up a situation and then sees how people would behave in that given situation. This is a film of two halves even to the point of being broken down into two chapters. The first part shows what has been happening in the life of Jeanne (Émilie Dequenne) as she finds a new boyfriend (Nicolas Duvauchelle) and moves in with him as part of a caretaking duo. But there's something a bit suspicious about him. Maybe she should have worked this out when he plays a particularly nasty practical joke on her - I'd have been out of the door like a shot - but she sticks with the shifty little guy. Suffice to say things go wrong and Jeanne pretends to have been part of an anti-semitic attack on a train.
The second chapter deals with the consequences. At one point a young lad asks Jeanne why she did what she did. She doesn't know. I can't say I do either. I don't think that it would have been my course of action if I'd been in her position (if I was seeking attention I would buy a wide-brimmed pink felt hat, a fur coat, cigars and a chihuahua and then prance about, to a suitable disco soundtrack, through the back streets of Grimsby, that'd get a fair bit of attention) yet her choice to be a total liar does tie together lots of things that have been happening in her life. It's a shame that the boyfriend thread of the story seems to get lost though.
You then get to see people being people and dealing with the predicament they're in. It's interesting in its own way but is never convincingly gripping. There is a fair amount of following Jeanne around, she's normally rollerblading so the camera looks back at her as she skates along, but it's not quite as much fun as following a woodwork teacher around for ages and ages. And ages (The Son).
I've got quite a binary character, 0 or 1, on or off, right or wrong, but this film actually managed to throw up some interesting grey areas: Is the boyfriend really that dodgy? Is it better to keep quiet about it all being a lie? And is Jeanne really to blame for the way that the incident is sensationalised? If you watch it, you can make up your own mind.
So what we have here is a well-acted (it's got Émilie Dequenne in it, what were you expecting?) slice of understated French drama set against a backdrop of anti-semetic attacks. I still find it quite hard to buy into Jeanne's actions, but seeing as though it's based on a real-life incident, people can obviously be driven to do these things. I found it entertaining enough and thought-provoking at times but it's not one of my favourites, although due to the quality nature of the film-making on show, I'm sure that there will be people out there who like this a lot more than I do. Maybe you are one of those people? 6/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: The Child, The Son, Rosetta.
Based on the anime series from the seventies, Space Battleship Yamato is a live action space based actioneer. I've never seen the original anime so I can't comment on how well it translates from 2D. From looking at screenshots though it seems that the character and ship design are pretty much spot on.
The Earth is under attack from an alien race known as the Gamilas. The planet is generally in a radioactive state so the Earth Defense Force decide to launch a counter attack at the pesky aliens. After a severe whooping things go from bad to worse until some crafty alien tech falls (literally) into the hands of our human chums. They rebuild the Space Battleship Yamato using this new and fancy technology and go in search of Iskandar, the co-ordinates of which came with the alien tech.
Space Battleship Yamato reminds me of two films in particular - well, actually a lot more than two but I'll come to that soon. The first would be Hell's Ground, a little known zombie film hailing from Pakistan. This was a film that heavily borrowed from loads of other horror films, but did so in a way that was fun and entertaining. Space Battleship Yamato homages Star Wars, Battlestar Gallactica, Star Trek and to a lesser extent Serenity, and just about gets away with it. This is probably due to its desire to put on a large epic scale show despite a relatively meagre budget for this type of sci-fi thing ($23.9 million). I got carried away by the sheer exuberance of it all. Saying that, I'd be moaning if a big budget film had done the same. Maybe more time should have been spent at the script and planning stages to develop some more original ideas. That probably comes down to money though.
The other film it reminds me of is Casshern, another live action adaptation of an anime. Casshern is overlong and the pacing is all over the place. When I watch it I always end up slightly disappointed and think about what could have been if the editing had been different. Yet I still keep going back to it. Space Battleship Yamato feels very similar. The final act should be an action spectacular but it gets bogged down with lots of emotional chatting. It really drags. But again, I felt the need to watch it again.
This hasn't been too positive so far so you may be thinking, why bother watching it again. It does get some things right. The space battles, despite being way too short, are some of the best I've seen in years. They take their cue from bullet hell shooters and are suitably exhilarating with ships swooping through a barrage of laser fire. Admittedly the ships can do some pretty stupid things such as grow arms that can pick people out of space and give them a little cuddle, but that's all part of the fun.
The effects are pretty great too given the budget. They have stuck to one of the strengths of CGI: rendering hard metallic spaceships. There are some creatures and they don't look too hot but at least they are simple enough to be effective. They are normally only seen from a distance and in hordes so the effects don't come under too much close scrutiny. One of the highlights - and quite rightly so - has to be the reveal of the titular battleship as it rises from beneath the ground. It's a quality design and there's something delightfully quirky, in a Terry Gilliam way, of seeing what is basically a naval vessel charging about through space.
The characters are all fairly standard issue with only Yuki being that interesting (and I think that's only because she's stunningly attractive). Yet at the end, when little photos are shown in the credits of all the characters - many of which are killed within the film - I found myself looking back on them with fondness and wishing that they could all be in a sequel. There is something endearing about the whole production that is hard to put my finger on.
One example of this endearingness is also one of the funniest moments of the film. When something positive has happened in a space battle the action cuts back to the bridge and the characters cheer and give cheeky little fist pumps, yet it's all done without any accompanying music. It feels distinctly odd, but due to the fact that it happens about three times it gets funnier each time.
The music is also another source of quirk. When I watched some visual effects extras the soundtrack was playing along with the footage and I thought, crikey this music is pretty good. But in the film it's feels out of place at quite a few points, and at worst, exceedingly cheese ridden. There are also moments where you would expect music where it just doesn't appear (like the celebration scenes above). Again in all comes down to the editing.
Another positive though: the lead character Kodai has lovely luxurious locks.
It's hard for me to recommend this but it's struck a chord with me. I'm even considering shelling out £15 for the blu-ray. 6/10 evlkeith If you like this you could also try: Any of the above films that it thieves from.
Undeniably
epic, Brotherhood is a second dip into the dark, vast pool of Korean cinema and
an enjoyable enough experience it is too. As with all war films, you’ve got to
ask where it sits in relation to Band of Brothers, Private Ryan and Days of Glory? The film aspires to this level of greatness, but somehow fails, with the
end result something weirder and at times more interesting, but not always in a good way.
There’s a
definite touch of reality on show here. Soldiers, civilians, children and
animals are blasted with bullets, bombs and copious amounts of blood. The only
people immune from the flying shrapnel are apparently the two brothers at the
heart of the film. They walk through the battlefields seemingly invincible,
like east Asian versions of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now. It makes for a preposterous
viewing experience and adds a sense of unreality that permeates the whole film.
And here lies
the main problem with the film. On the one hand it attempts to illustrate the
true horrors of war (and for the extras it certainly succeeds), but on the
other hand there’s the epic almost supernatural tale of the two brothers that
veers from over the top joyfulness usually only witnessed in musicals, to full
scale anti-communist propaganda. It’s an odd mix of fairy tale, human drama and
bloody conflict that almost never gels.
That’s not to
say that there aren’t plenty of positives; the scale of some of the battle
scenes is awe inspiring for starters. The acting of the two brothers (Jang
Dong-Gun and Won Bin) is over the top, but never less than convincing, with
younger brother Jin-seok displaying excellent character development as the film
progresses. There’s moving scenes, especially when the anti-communist vigilantes
grab Kim Young-shin, there’s dismay in the hospital scenes and complete
abandonment in the finale. It’s enough to power you through the film without
questioning the overarching oddness of the experience.
It’s not a
great film, but it’s interesting and definitely different from the standard
combat offerings. With low expectations and a pinch of salt it’s more than
moderately entertaining and thought provoking. However be prepared for the ‘there’s
something not quite right here’ feeling from beginning to end.
4/10 Doccortex If you like this you could also try: Days of Glory, Assembly, My Way.
