tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-12656580598047244962024-02-03T00:50:00.836+08:00A Persistent VisionMeditations on film, collated from here and there, some written for pay and all for pleasure. Not an archive or a memory place, but a persistent vision of a way of seeing and reading films.Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.comBlogger763125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-61358964751703352362017-02-14T19:13:00.000+08:002017-02-14T22:19:37.137+08:00Why I stopped writing film reviewsDear readers,<br />
<br />
I have been using this blog to share the reviews I have written (with permission from incinemas.sg and fridae.asia) since I began a career as a professional film reviewer or film critic, if you're using the old parlance. This blog began as a space to ensure that this writing would survive <a href="https://journalistsresource.org/studies/society/internet/website-linking-best-practices-media-online-publishers">link rot and website obsolescence</a>. In 2013, when <a href="https://apersistentvision.blogspot.sg/2013/02/a-farewell-and-welcome.html">Fridae restructured its website and closed its film column</a>, I continued to watch and review films for my own pleasure here.<br />
<br />
As you may have noticed, it has been a long while since I've posted here. To put it simply: I stopped film reviewing. I stopped wanting to be a film critic. That is not to say that I lost my love for films, but I did lose my love for writing about films.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4iYvDbNi4UOsEVTjBlhffoOs-v0DA5S4_plrSD1Wm1Iu4-FZFXqQuiuBYIl4mpaqg0Qd7In3sJyizWHkVIcEwd40txOhgMm632g2OJbdtD4EQK553tjm9EZw4FTwzbW6Ut3aEJlOvP4Wx/s1600/thief.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="170" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4iYvDbNi4UOsEVTjBlhffoOs-v0DA5S4_plrSD1Wm1Iu4-FZFXqQuiuBYIl4mpaqg0Qd7In3sJyizWHkVIcEwd40txOhgMm632g2OJbdtD4EQK553tjm9EZw4FTwzbW6Ut3aEJlOvP4Wx/s400/thief.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Thief, from Alejandro Jodorowsky's The Holy Mountain</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
During a routine check for plagiarism, I discovered in Q3 2014 that my reviews were popping up on other people's websites, under different people's names. Pro-tip: If you do any writing that's published, whether it's work for hire or your own self-published work, it's a good idea to google snippets of what you've written.<br />
<br />
I know for one that there are a few Indonesian teens running a film blog on Blogger that have republished some of my reviews, word for word. This is not about them. They're not thieves.<br />
<br />
At least not on the scale of <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcellomilteer">Marcello Milteer</a>, the owner and chief editor of the erstwhile <a href="http://japancinema.net/">Japancinema</a>. Marcello mostly stole reviews of Asian films from bloggers based in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Malaysia. These are the countries where Asian films would be released ahead of the USA, and whose film bloggers would write in English. It's a colonial legacy kind of thing.<br />
<br />
In the beginning, Milteer would steal reviews in their entirety, publish them on Japancinema.net under someone else's name. Then Milteer got more creative. He'd cut and paste a brand new review by cobbling together a paragraph each from 3 to 4 different reviewers, and publish them on Japancinema. Then Milteer got stupid. He created an IMDB user called "marcello", and post these as IMDB user reviews. And finally, Milteer got greedy. He started taking paragraphs from film sections of the Village Voice, Hollywood Reporter, and even Slant. I kid you not.<br />
<br />
Eventually, Marcello Milteer was found out by his own stable of legit writers and contributors. He made a half-assed apology, blamed everything on unnamed contributors, and denied he was the plagiarist. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_UZa6qRAgGs">Again, I kid you not</a>. When you steal indiscriminately and leave your calling card for everyone to see, and <a href="https://sketchesofcinema.wordpress.com/2014/05/05/japan-cinema-net-and-the-art-of-plagiarism/">people begin to</a> <a href="http://beyondhallyu.com/film-tv/japan-cinema-stole-from-respected-korean-cinema-critics-bloggers-soompi-and-imdb/">document your plagiarism</a>, it's a matter of time before consequences ensue even if Mr Milteer refused to reply to emails, twitter, or facebook messages about the plagiarism.<br />
<br />
Sure, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cello85">Marcello Milteer</a> was caught in the act. Despite his refusal to take ownership of his theft, Milteer no longer operates Japancinema.<br />
<br />
That doesn't mean the issue had been resolved. Mr Milteer isn't the smartest guy in the room; he sure isn't, wasn't, and won't be the only person running a plagiarism racket.<br />
<br />
There of course is the monetary harm Milteer inflicted on his victims; the syndication fees he would have had to pay if he asked Village Voice on one end and Joe Blogger at the other, the very <a href="http://sarafhawkins.com/tax-tips-for-bloggers/">taxable monetary value</a> of the DVDs and swag he bragged he got "for free" for "reviewing" niche films.<br />
<br />
What drives people to publish, often for free, in the <a href="http://www.thelongtail.com/the_long_tail/about.html">long tail</a> of the internet is the belief that when well-crafted, a perspective can be credible, unique and of value (if however non-monetary, and however deferred if potentially monetary). Plagiarism isn't just about the value of the work, but erasing the identity of the author - and thus erasing the value, uniqueness and goodwill that a dedicated writer generates over time.<br />
<br />
Refusing to publish, as I have, was not an emotional decision, but a purely rational one. There was no reason to publish on the long tail of the internet if publishing on the long tail of the internet involves the high risk of being plagiarised, cannibalised, and erased by unscrupulous operators of larger sites.Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-45943083132775207632015-09-24T14:38:00.002+08:002015-09-24T14:38:18.310+08:00Attack on Titan 2: End of the World (進撃の巨人 エンド オブ ザ ワールド) (2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6se4-F5CtRlUug-Ii67-GB7jwQthTdNkHPaIRoY9bSbPCuX1eoAp-3S4lHWiBhyphenhyphenF6zL-K8gWC4BCiH0NkCyXk0Nf8On1EUU9IsR4kWtqegcn8_NLXx8YndtQw-SskB4LPNdU1gFVuioh/s1600/attack+on+titan2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6se4-F5CtRlUug-Ii67-GB7jwQthTdNkHPaIRoY9bSbPCuX1eoAp-3S4lHWiBhyphenhyphenF6zL-K8gWC4BCiH0NkCyXk0Nf8On1EUU9IsR4kWtqegcn8_NLXx8YndtQw-SskB4LPNdU1gFVuioh/s1600/attack+on+titan2.jpg" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Attack on Titan tries to have its cake and eat it</b></div>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a>When a popular work gets an adaptation, who is it made for? In the first Attack on Titan film, director Shinji Higuchi stripped the anime adaptation of the manga series to its bare bones and reconfigured the sci-fi horror franchise as a knowing nod to the zombie apocalypse genre.<br />
<br />
It worked as great cinema: I for one loved the specifically Japanese historical allegory, existential anxiety, and political paranoia invoked by Higuchi, none of which were in the source material. "True fans" were horrified and incensed. The director failed to slavishly and mindlessly deliver a carbon copy of what they had watched or read. Which presumably is what true fans of modern fantasy and sci-fi adaptations have grown to love and demand. (Let's just pretend that Game of Thrones isn't a copy-paste of the novels, and isn't expected to be.)<br />
<br />
If the first film set up an entire world and milieu, the second film sets everything into motion, at long last. Attack on Titan 2 also offers an olive branch to fans of the manga and anime series. If the predecessor was an attempt at worldbuilding and cinema for the sake of cinema, the sequel is an attempt at pure adaptation.<br />
<br />
The sequel begins where the first ended: with the capture of the hero and protagonist Eren. <b>There's still a mission to destroy the giant zombie Titans </b>but first, the military would like to interrogate our shapeshifting hero and possibly dissect him for the sake of science. It's really a trick to put in all the fluff, exposition, and overcomplicated backstory that Higuchi stripped away in the first film. Even the annoying, over the top, cartoonish extras that didn't quite fit in the zombie apocalypse feel of the first film are given meaty roles here. I'm talking about the narcissistic captain and the overenthusiastic, weapons-crazy lieutenant.<br />
<br />
It's a commendable effort, though pacing decidedly suffers for it. I am convinced that both parts of Attack on Titan are best seen in one viewing, like two-part movie adaptations of Gantz and Parasyte before it.Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-32455124309471419992015-08-03T19:02:00.000+08:002015-08-03T19:02:00.030+08:00Attack on Titan (進撃の巨人) (2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj33kKno7K7e_m3gZTuH7E51k6Kspbe2RbfGXOwHXfAZyxWRKdnsv5tWOWaArok6sF76jsBp-wR2_GrIrVW61KYNeKAs4gQNfnAy6nVY4V2GaU3Pp_cXos_78BK9nDgGakktlv99rELc98Z/s1600/attack+on+titan.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="165" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj33kKno7K7e_m3gZTuH7E51k6Kspbe2RbfGXOwHXfAZyxWRKdnsv5tWOWaArok6sF76jsBp-wR2_GrIrVW61KYNeKAs4gQNfnAy6nVY4V2GaU3Pp_cXos_78BK9nDgGakktlv99rELc98Z/s400/attack+on+titan.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Pacific Rim was Hollywood's love song to Japan.</b></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Japan now returns the compliment with Attack on Titan.</b></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a>Behind the imposing walls of the city, the remnants of humanity huddle together against a monstrous, existential threat from without. There, they hope against all hope that their outclassed, underequipped, and gutsy defenders have what it takes to prevail.<br />
<br />
<br />
If Guillermo del Toro's Pacific Rim was a
Hollywood tribute to Japanese kaiju films, Attack on Titan repays the
compliment with interest to the American zombie apocalypse genre.<br />
<br />
In Attack of Titan, the monsters are giant sized, mindless humanoids with a taste for human flesh, and only human flesh. Although the zombie word is never mentioned, what's sufficiently clear is the role these monsters play in the film: they are the mindless invading horde whose threat and appearance inspire paranoia, anxiety, military stupidity, political incompetence, and cold-blooded bureaucracy.<br />
<br />
Visually, the titular titans resemble Goya's <a href="https://www.museodelprado.es/en/the-collection/online-gallery/on-line-gallery/obra/saturn-devouring-one-of-his-sons/">Saturn devouring his son</a>. Functionally, they take the role of the monsters from the zombie apocalypse flick. But Attack on Titan takes the zombie apocalypse genre tribute one step further.<br />
<br />
The film's social and political allegory is uniquely and contemporaneously Japanese. The anxiety in the film stems from an ambivalence towards living as individuals and as a society under an enforced peace and pacifism following humanity's loss, the resurgence of a hostile, mindless, and rapacious giant sleeping enemy outside its borders, and the rearmament of society by an assertive batch of leaders.<br />
<br />
Director Shinji Higuchi is to be commended for striping the original anime series down to its essentials for this adaptation, and reworking the story to shift its allegiance from action sci-fi to the zombie apocalypse genre. His directorial choices are more than sound: there is a real atmosphere of existential dread and horror in Attack of Titan that cannot be done with any other monsters, any other CGI approaches.<br />
<br />
Needless to say, we look forward to Attack on Titan 2.Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-64365948022054967572015-02-19T00:01:00.000+08:002015-02-19T00:56:14.215+08:00Dragon Blade (天将雄师) (2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKBgmtXq5cIf2GE1vHFOgf5cDSZfcODWyURKRq1S7KbDNlYGHldv7o8Twu7PUEkJKa9HPEbrnVVuCcxPEu4jDtcmp_yrWsjpi40BYNHpcnHg-psrqT97Waq0XlCmCx9PgMF34Xfft85HV2/s1600/dragon+blade.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKBgmtXq5cIf2GE1vHFOgf5cDSZfcODWyURKRq1S7KbDNlYGHldv7o8Twu7PUEkJKa9HPEbrnVVuCcxPEu4jDtcmp_yrWsjpi40BYNHpcnHg-psrqT97Waq0XlCmCx9PgMF34Xfft85HV2/s1600/dragon+blade.jpg" height="264" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: center;">
<b>Jackie Chan makes an epic movie, his way </b></div>
<br />
<a name='more'></a>In 48 BC (apparently while Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great make the closing moves of their civil war), Roman forces decide to conquer every kingdom on the Silk Road between Rome and China, despite the Silk Road not being in existence, and no contiguous territory between the republic and Central Asia. Jackie Chan, as the chief of the “Silk Road Protection Squad”, is called upon to intervene in a growing civil war in Rome—but not that civil war. It’s a civil war between the 2 generals, Tiberius, played by deliciously evil and ambitious Adrien Brody, and a war-worn Lucius, portrayed by John Cusack. <br />
<br />
Dragon Blade possesses historical fancifulness which approaches the level of online fanfiction. Your inability to suspend disbelief has been taken into account: the film compensates for its outlandish setting by having elaborate action sequences and full-pitched desert battles that bear the seal of quality of Jackie Chan’s personal stunt and action choreography company. <br />
<br />
Story-wise, the film is a credible effort by the Chinese film industry at producing a Ridley Scott period epic. There is, after all, that epic good vs. evil confrontation (in both political and military senses) between two evenly matched generals with the fate of empires at stake. At over $60 million, it is the most expensive Chinese film ever released, with the $130 million Empires of the Deep still unreleased 2 years after production. The money is in every shot: from the old school sets to the multinational army of costumed extras and the armed stand-offs, big ham performances from John Cusack and Adrien Brody, and tableaux and deus ex machinae gleefully swiped from both Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies. <br />
<br />
For the most part, the film looks like $60 million dollars. Except for say, some dodgy editing decisions, a desperate use of flashback scenes (including that one sequence of Adrien Brody sitting in a chair, Games of Thrones-like), and an entire scene that looked like a video transfer—signs that suggest a rushed post-production. <br />
<br />
Dragon Blade may look like a Ridley Scott pic but plays out like a Jackie Chan flick, with a comic yet saintly central character, comic scenes and corny dialogue, dollops of moralistic preaching, and a propensity for the extras to mug relentlessly in camera. But any epic in the style of Ridley Scott will be severely tested by the levels of historical fancifulness in Dragon Blade. <br />
<br />
Outside the bubble of the Sinosphere, the film may feel somewhat disturbing; Jackie’s heavy-handed “let there be peace between all men and races” and “We Chinese are peace-loving people” preaching throughout the film sits uncomfortably with China’s very public Big Power muscling in both the South China Sea and Central Asia. <br />
<br />
Other than that, Dragon Blade is a highly entertaining epic film that teaches a good moral lesson. It’s certainly head and shoulders above the usual Chinese New Year cinematic fare. It even has potential to be an actual epic. Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-19611472036936700772015-01-20T12:24:00.000+08:002015-01-20T12:24:23.151+08:00Parasyte (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjACcBnIRxVD3UuK3bb6oZhb4ErLsshP_8EXg6nYlrEeB9eKgvF0VAocHYwQps5jinY_KH4W6ClLAXepg2WzjX-bTKscgpTMi3H1mCLRzhGe-zxbywbm9shvkbAPAxfl8HlOYIcrIeVhix1/s1600/parasyte.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjACcBnIRxVD3UuK3bb6oZhb4ErLsshP_8EXg6nYlrEeB9eKgvF0VAocHYwQps5jinY_KH4W6ClLAXepg2WzjX-bTKscgpTMi3H1mCLRzhGe-zxbywbm9shvkbAPAxfl8HlOYIcrIeVhix1/s1600/parasyte.jpg" height="172" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>If John Carpenter and John Hughes
made Invasion of the Body Snatchers as a high school horror-comedy,
this is it</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>A high school student must co-exist
with an alien that’s taken residence in his right hand while
stopping a hostile alien invasion.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Being a feature adaptation of a late
1980s sci-fi/horror manga series, Parasyte has an old school
sensibility. There’s a stealth alien invasion which involves
centipede-slugs crawling up people’s nostrils, eating their brains,
taking over their bodies, and turning them into shape-shifting,
flesh-eating monsters that look like they’d escaped from John
Carpenter’s The Thing. If that’s not bad enough, in their human
guises the aliens run for office, teach (or study) in schools, uphold
law and order...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
This gimmick alone would’ve been
enough to make Parasyte a solid offering: these days, sci-fi and
horror films tend to eschew commentary about paranoia, fifth columns,
conformity and alienation in modern society to the extent that
someone’s liable to think these were problems of a long-gone age.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Parasyte also has a twist. While being
a horror film, it’s also a high school comedy (both literally and
metaphorically) where the wimpy protagonist, as much as his brainy
alien co-resident and the invading antagonists, undergoes the very
human, very funny rite of passage known as “coming of age”, where
one learns about social boundaries, norms, and one’s role in
society—and when to accept, test, and challenge them.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Truth be told, the film didn’t need
to do both but it is the interaction between the social themes of the
sci-fi horror and the high school comedy that makes Parasyte a
brilliant piece of storytelling. Takashi Yamazaki (The Eternal Zero,
Space Battleship Yamato) manages to deliver a film that balances and
switches seamlessly between sci-fi horror and teenage comedy, and
whose moral and philosophical underpinnings are not drowned out by
its impressive CGI.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-14080798580075747382015-01-19T18:01:00.001+08:002015-01-19T18:18:18.693+08:00Whiplash (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4PQq5l5VkBDl2Qe3JIBMfxtya5kqb26_nIh6W1RwF8nS2nMR-43S-j5XTTTDtjPw76c4mMzEKEdtKiAde-LItOF1kUdK2nSTEokzfZ8sfqkeYO9QKLbyHaval0q5LGyREKKBBq76cYtrV/s1600/whiplash.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4PQq5l5VkBDl2Qe3JIBMfxtya5kqb26_nIh6W1RwF8nS2nMR-43S-j5XTTTDtjPw76c4mMzEKEdtKiAde-LItOF1kUdK2nSTEokzfZ8sfqkeYO9QKLbyHaval0q5LGyREKKBBq76cYtrV/s1600/whiplash.jpeg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>The inspirational music teacher
you’ve never had before</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Whiplash has a singular gimmick:
imagine if the teacher in that inspirational music teacher drama (Mr
Holland’s Opus, Les Choristes, Dangerous Minds, School of Rock,
etc.) were played by the abusive, sadistic, F-bomb dropping drill
sergeant from Full Metal Jacket or the perpetually angry Pai Mei from Kill Bill.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
JK Simmons is that drill sergeant from
hell, cast as a legendary teacher in a fictional New York jazz
conservatory. An invitation to play in Mr Neiman’s competition band
means you’re set for life if you make an impression with the judges
at the nationals but before then you’ll have to put up with the
hairdryer treatment (and then some) in his equally legendary
rehearsal sessions. Miles Teller is the middle class kid with no
musical background, big dreams, and some talent at drumming (but is
it enough?) who is inducted into a world of fear, pain,
self-loathing, and dread.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
On his first rehearsal, the young man is reduced to tears, mocked for tearing up, and then berated for slobbering all over the drum set. What follows is a boot camp
drama set in a music school populated by a cast of characters who are
all, save for the drill sergeant mentor, in the wrong genre
altogether. But what makes Whiplash a must-see is how writer-director
Chazelle, Teller, and Simmons conspire to make the emotionally
gruelling boot camp drama fit the genre expectations of the
inspirational teacher drama, right under our noses.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Simmons gets to chew the scenery and
set it on fire, but he also has to convince the audience that there’s
a method in his madness: he’s doing it for the good of everyone
(especially the much picked-on and long-suffering newbie student),
and that there’s a beautiful pay-off in the end. The entire film
falls on his shoulders; it is his performance that determines if the
film’s gimmick succeeds or fails.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It’s a task made more difficult
because of the fanciful script. Whiplash bears as much correspondence
to actual jazz and jazz conservatories as say, Darren Aronofsky’s
Black Swan had anything to do with actual ballet and dance companies.
The script simply gets <a href="http://www.vulture.com/2014/10/ask-an-expert-juilliard-professor-whiplash.html">music rehearsals</a> and <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/culture/richard-brody/whiplash-getting-jazz-right-movies">jazz</a> so, so
wrong. But it is Simmons whose raw emotionality and conviction that
saves the script and the film’s gimmick again and again, and makes
Whiplash a memorable, even inspirational drama.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-7643644713818129192014-11-27T18:29:00.001+08:002014-11-27T18:29:14.724+08:00Stonehearst Asylum (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0YHodZlelkxLpZGyEyJOGgkFP4JxIahkfQrlKKTqiy92X8WlGpGaX5y_rjC6fhowDiqvWBIx0kDTbJGa8NUK77h_rpl6fxl5lCltjupd_JDXBzclE6w6fuuEDAN93QNTekd_JVi8Oomjw/s1600/stonehearst.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0YHodZlelkxLpZGyEyJOGgkFP4JxIahkfQrlKKTqiy92X8WlGpGaX5y_rjC6fhowDiqvWBIx0kDTbJGa8NUK77h_rpl6fxl5lCltjupd_JDXBzclE6w6fuuEDAN93QNTekd_JVi8Oomjw/s1600/stonehearst.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Madness and Civilisation: The
Masterpiece Theatre edition!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Released in the US for Halloween,
Stonehearst Asylum is a rare Edgar Allen Poe story that hasn’t been
tried out for the big screen previously. So instead of huge hams like
Vincent Prize, Peter Lorre, Basil Rathbone and Boris Karloff camping
it up in a gothic, highly atmospheric B-movie in the 1960s, we have
Ben Kingsley, Michael Caine, and Kate Beckinsale hamming it up a
gothic, highly atmospheric and tasteful over-produced movie in the
2010s.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The gimmick in “The system of Doctor
Tarr and Professor Fether” is that the inmates have taken over the
asylum, a fact that the protagonist (played in the film by Jim
Sturgess), despite his wide-eyed innocence and naivete, deciphers
over the course of a surreal dinner party, to his growing horror. The
twist in the short story is that liberated from the oversight of the
progressive asylum staff, the inmates decide to bring back the
positively mediaeval system of punishment and harsh treatment.
Stonehearst Asylum turns the original twist on its head: under new
management of the inmates, the asylum casts away the positively
mediaeval system of punishment, harsh treatment, and humiliating
debasement in favour of a liberal, progressive system...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
What the film achieves, once it
ventures past the initial set-up, is a historical look at the science
of early psychiatry and the institution of the asylum, from the
viewpoint of the 2010s. The sentiments seem to be chiefly, that the
prevailing scientific paradigm of the day turns out to be precisely
the opposite of what we now know to be true, and how we should
congratulate ourselves for being enlightened and better people. This
trope was played for laughs in Woody Allen’s <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFJopF6WJNw">Sleeper</a>
and Tanya Wexler’s Hysteria; here, it is played straight as a
tasteful, Masterpiece Theatre version of Changeling.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Where other Poe adaptations fail
because of the difficulty of adapting the short story form to the
feature film format, the challenge in Stonehearst Asylum is
transforming a biting satire on humanity’s unshakeable belief in
progress and progressive attitudes into a romantic narrative
extolling progress and progressive attitudes. Where Poe satirises the
reactionary movement against the Enlightenment as well as the
illiberal undercurrents within the Enlightenment, Stonehearst Asylum
aims for a neater story. The result is a well-plotted and neatly
paced thriller that at crucial moments, lacks the manic, febrile
passion and intellectual overstimulation of a work by Poe.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-50149257305230430762014-11-15T13:43:00.003+08:002014-11-15T13:49:44.382+08:00Jack and the Cuckoo-clock Heart (Jack et la mécanique du cœur) (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAled9fRgRrLmug7GmFJyIxgdbSSG7Es0FrqR63teMu4B3yp5OzbX4TbR_FuvrgDwraj6YIcqFRgJI9JB1F8mlD4GtlOKj4Tz7TPkKIng6KlQDeLzS5us3sPGwG43RSiVD2iIqkPXJLNG/s1600/jack+mechanique.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirAled9fRgRrLmug7GmFJyIxgdbSSG7Es0FrqR63teMu4B3yp5OzbX4TbR_FuvrgDwraj6YIcqFRgJI9JB1F8mlD4GtlOKj4Tz7TPkKIng6KlQDeLzS5us3sPGwG43RSiVD2iIqkPXJLNG/s1600/jack+mechanique.jpg" height="216" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Everything old is new again as
modern animation finds ways to tell a story differently</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Adapted from a children’s book
adapted from a concept album (all of which are produced, written, and
sung by Mathias Malzieu and his French band Dionysios) Jack and the
Cuckoo-clock Heart is a quirky steampunk fable about a shy boy who
falls in love, pines for, searches, and woos a distant love interest
despite a curious cardiac condition that may prove fatal should his
ardent passions rise. George Melies, complete with his amazing
cinematograph and black and white shorts, has a cameo because why
not.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It’s a fable for adults populated by
quirky characters spouting very adult lines travelling through
landscapes and stages that are lavish visual conceits. The story is
dominated by a series of sequences set to songs performed by Malzieu
(as the singing voice of Jack) and Dionysios, which may double as
standalone music videos.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
In terms of ambition, concept, and
execution, Jack may be regarded as a 3D animation, classic rock
answer to Daft Punk’s Interstella 5555, yet a more fruitful
comparison would be to view it in the context of modern animation and
storytelling. Disney’s classic 2D animations, with Sleeping Beauty
as its pinnacle, were produced as a series of <i>fabulistic</i>
set-pieces that showcased and pushed the boundaries of the creativity
and techniques of animation. In the 3D era, North American animation
has sacrificed the art of animation for easily-produced 3D modelling
and <i>dramatic </i>storytelling with psychologically realistic
characters and Syd Field approved 3 act structures. Jack, with a
handful of recent 3D western animated features, openly rebels against
the realistic representational style of modern 3D animation to
reclaim the ability to engage with the empire of imagination.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
After all, how else to convey the
magical whimsy and monstrous horror of real life when telling a
fable?</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-174977902968694642014-11-11T13:13:00.000+08:002014-11-11T13:23:31.922+08:00Paradise in Service (軍中樂園) (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3GQ0P2fKqOuVlZNUR6sj8eDS6p6OLsERPHKgzPZF9w_dteOGHF9V4l1RKVPgvMjX-EnXdhpvzIt8YTiV9zQSUU77rCuI-MK6IZO0u9CJuDwvJ2yZek3DNUEGKh3iICGqvOiWnGkyvhdB3/s1600/service.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj3GQ0P2fKqOuVlZNUR6sj8eDS6p6OLsERPHKgzPZF9w_dteOGHF9V4l1RKVPgvMjX-EnXdhpvzIt8YTiV9zQSUU77rCuI-MK6IZO0u9CJuDwvJ2yZek3DNUEGKh3iICGqvOiWnGkyvhdB3/s1600/service.jpg" height="267" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Asians are politically incorrect. Proof: The comfort women issue gets a Wonder Years treatment in Paradise in Service!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Earlier this year, the new boss of the
NHK got into trouble when he claimed that Japan was unfairly singled
out for the issue of comfort women by Korea, China, and Taiwan when
in fact conscription of women into military brothels was a widespread
practice in both major theatres of the Second World War.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The beleaguered NHK boss should have
added that free market, state, and even military sanctioned
prostitution all predate the Great War and have continued even to
this day. He could even have pointed out that ever since
Generalissimo Chiang landed on Kinmen Rock, the Taiwanese military
conscripted aboriginal girls and female prisoners into its brothels
to fulfil and regulate the sexual urges of a conscripted civilian
military. Informally, they were called “special teahouses”.
Officially, they were run under Unit 831. Apparently it was all par
for the course and no one blinked an eye at the practice.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Doze Niu’s Paradise in Practice takes
on this thorny, even horrifying topic and gives it the Wonder Years
treatment. 30-something Ethan Juan plays the fresh-faced innocent
barely out of high school, a military conscript who flunks out of the
Taiwan marines and gets reassigned to one of these military brothels.
There, he works as a cross between a prison guard for the sex workers
and a clerk who sells tickets for their clients. And over the course
of the film, he gets to grow up, make friends with both the whore
with a heart of gold and a tragic backstory and the barking drill
sergeant from Hunan with a heart of gold and a tragic backstory that
is often played for laughs. In the permanently liminal space, all 3
can never go back, both literally and metaphorically.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The setting may be a military brothel,
the biggest outrage may be that the workers were transferred from the
criminal system to expedite their sentences—but the horror is
distanced, tamed, and normalised via the protagonist’s mostly comic
rite of passage narrative. The slice of life approach allows the
existential horror to be downplayed in favour of the film’s comic
and sentimental elements. Doze Niu seems to favour the sentimental
even though he’s a far more sophisticated comic writer and
director. And when the horror does surface, it is coded more as
melodrama than the abyss staring back at you.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
I wouldn’t say that Paradise in
Service has taken the wrong approach to talk about the important
topic it raises. It’s an interesting and entertaining film on its
own but perhaps this is as far as Asian society can get talking about
non-Japanese military prostitution, at this point in time.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-38783772027925160262014-10-17T13:34:00.000+08:002014-10-17T13:37:45.579+08:00The Judge (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6KKwGbu3N3brM-Wt3S8uRQ6YXjy8lw50_bp1J65FPvoYd8g4wpz4nthuXq8USy8R39nHgPsg3FlrQm4uSxsHZXnEoh8vlVfXG7gJxlUFzVITjpN5kZgXRqf_A0iV3bMLJAM8b-nwCXuN/s1600/judge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR6KKwGbu3N3brM-Wt3S8uRQ6YXjy8lw50_bp1J65FPvoYd8g4wpz4nthuXq8USy8R39nHgPsg3FlrQm4uSxsHZXnEoh8vlVfXG7gJxlUFzVITjpN5kZgXRqf_A0iV3bMLJAM8b-nwCXuN/s1600/judge.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Stuffed with downer endings and sucker punchlines, The Judge is the Game
of Thrones of courtroom dramas and dysfunctional family dramas!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>A brilliant defense attorney (who only
represents the guilty because they’re the only ones who can afford
him) returns to his Bible Belt hometown and ends up defending his
Republican estranged dad (an unforgiving judge and arbiter of
justice) of a murder it looks like he most certain did commit.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It is easy to see why The Judge was
stuck in development for more than a few years; it begins with
several cookie cutter genre tropes and then subverts them in grand
style. Robert Downey Jr plays the city slicker who is forced into a
return to his hometown—but do not expect him to find his heart grow
a few sizes larger even as he reconnects, however ineptly with his
roots. Robert Duvall plays the grumpy old patriarch of a somewhat
dysfunctional family where the “evil lawyer” is the most
successful son—but the family drama is played for bitter comedy
rather than the broad laughs evoked by the prestige actor scenery
chewing of August Osage County. It is also a potboiler courtroom
drama with riveting confrontations, multiple reveals, and unexpected
confessions—yet there is a studied refusal to evoke, affirm, or
even appeal to high principles of justice or morality.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Hugely ambitious, the script takes on
all these major, often lazily-written tropes and unravels them
methodically. It’s like watching Game of Thrones as a reader of the
source novels: you know the rug is being pulled from under your feet
but you can’t help but be amazed at how the trick is performed.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
On paper, it looks very difficult to
work and it shouldn’t really work, but the film coasts through
easily thanks to screen heavyweights Robert Downey Jr and Robert
Duvall. Perfectly cast for their mutually antagonistic and unlikeable
roles, the two principal actors deliver a screen presence and pungent
screen chemistry that ensures The Judge is not quite a breezy dramedy
or a tragicomedy (for want of catharsis or cheap laughs), but a bitter comedy the darkest shade of midnight.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-6908703570066799812014-10-15T20:15:00.000+08:002014-10-15T20:15:43.481+08:00Brotherhood of Blades (绣春刀) (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjSdrxC5nyMP2jjPdkIkoEzJH4iuOO5wQrr4MmUsSy_6LCu2mw26ugKgmh8oog-umcBea7igHBNgO_begzf9Nwmce_w88PAhPzId-uojVgPft5Efyq37rRm3vpiAtkLbaPOEulN-hLYqE/s1600/brotherhood+of+blades.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigjSdrxC5nyMP2jjPdkIkoEzJH4iuOO5wQrr4MmUsSy_6LCu2mw26ugKgmh8oog-umcBea7igHBNgO_begzf9Nwmce_w88PAhPzId-uojVgPft5Efyq37rRm3vpiAtkLbaPOEulN-hLYqE/s1600/brotherhood+of+blades.jpg" height="226" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Once more, the Ming dynasty and its
political intrigues are a big thing in Chinese film</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>On the ascension of the young Chongzhen
Emperor, a once-powerful eunuch is removed from power and his faction
is purged. Three sworn brothers, members of the secret police find
themselves in a deadly political cross-fire when they are ordered to
bring back his head, and are made several offers they cannot
refuse...<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
While being the last native dynasty to
rule China, the Ming is notorious for its frequent purges and coups
and countercoups. The empire hosted not just one but three different
secret police agencies (the Jingyiwei depicted in this film and the
Eastern Depot and Western Depot) and three ruthless factions at each
others’ throats—a notoriously corrupt eunuch faction (which came
to its height under the leadership of Wei Zhongxian, a key figure in
this film), a notoriously corrupt Confucianist faction under the
Tunglin Academy, and the dynastic plotting of the empresses and their
kinsmen.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It is easy to see the popular wuxia
films of directors like King Hu in the Shaw Brothers stable as a
critical commentary on the political paranoia and utter ruthlessness
of palace intrigues in the communist regime and the Cultural
Revolution, and not merely about the Ming dynasty.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
But what of recent Ming dynasty revival
in Chinese film? Brotherhood of Blades comes the closest to
explaining the phenomenon and we are not surprised at its muted box
office showing in China, as well as the apparent lack of advertising
on home ground. The film recreates the Ming dynasty and its political
culture not as a backdrop for moralistic lessons on heroism,
chivalry, and righteousness in the face of political paranoia, but as
a corrupt capital where just about everyone is on the take and the
best one can aspire to is become rich and powerful enough to get out
of town before they land themselves in a job (or scam) too big for
their shoes or worse, become too successful they can’t be allowed
to walk away from the table. And yes, almost every scene is set at
night with bargains and threats conducted in shadows.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Lu Yang knows precisely what he’s
doing and saying about the People’s Republic of China. Brotherhood
of Blades takes the sworn brothers scenario from Shaw’s Blood
Brothers, puts them into the Ming dynasty (as a proxy for modern
China), and as a result, this is as close as you can get to a true
world-weary and romantically cynical noir in wuxia clothing.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-42781576518468419932014-10-03T17:11:00.002+08:002014-10-03T17:11:12.547+08:00Lupin III (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8XLcLVvF7dC5y-qF4E1pU-BZT8DNN7K52B-d6zkV0vg5ccTrGrQAVIbaKGxryvHDgUa87ggcXzFrb2BFPOgnUgI4FAzpoci-Mnwr-wPpWLxTjlLURqn3TLGakq-j0Xup47SabInYhSyyf/s1600/lupin+iii.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8XLcLVvF7dC5y-qF4E1pU-BZT8DNN7K52B-d6zkV0vg5ccTrGrQAVIbaKGxryvHDgUa87ggcXzFrb2BFPOgnUgI4FAzpoci-Mnwr-wPpWLxTjlLURqn3TLGakq-j0Xup47SabInYhSyyf/s1600/lupin+iii.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Madcap, frenetic, and cheekily
good-humoured, Lupin III is a great introduction to a manga classic</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>A genius thief teams up with other
career criminals from all over the world to steal the greatest
treasures known to mankind. Why Arsene Lupin III and his pals do it
doesn’t seem to be important although their aged mentor claims they
only steal from the rich and powerful—which makes them either
anarchists or revolutionaries even though Lupin III is very much a
gentleman thief who shares with James Bond a taste for convoluted
plots, gadgets, high living, and femmes fatale.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
While this live action feature
adaptation isn’t the first (see the slapstick Strange Psychokinetic
Strategy), it serves as a general introduction to of Lupin III, his
collaborators and rogues gallery that the franchise has accrued over
the years. In a series of heists and setpieces in this film set in
Singapore, Thailand, and Japan, Lupin III alternately teams up with
and outwits the marksman Jigen, the swordsman Goemon, the love
interest and femme fatale Fujiko Mine, and the inspector Zenigata
(here played by a scenery-chewing Asano) to liberate ill-gotten
treasures from their owners.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The pacing is so madcap, it scarcely
matters why this alliance of thieves keep changing by the minute
(even though it makes sense and is rather clever in a way that is
reminiscent of say, Pirates of the Caribbean) or why there’s more
fighting at times than sleuthing and thieving (aside from the film
featuring a great number of Thai action stars and a stuntwork team).
What entertains is the chemistry between the cast and how they play
their roles both as faces and heels, and how the cast manage to keep
up the zaniness from the manga even in life action.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-48569958031301089912014-09-26T16:52:00.001+08:002014-09-26T16:55:08.860+08:00The Babadook (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvLOU5NmlYQDtw6Y7r3HPUBTJ0JB9QYnaUHoMfjsy8OwZiwEMgSLT1PP9QnSQcnBYK62OTBtqnvhj4CFYUBgCZ27pD2oGD3DG4JZG8-ckDihtvpH5FUZfATATKmyabC0G3OVBMRBQPX-Z/s1600/Babadook1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVvLOU5NmlYQDtw6Y7r3HPUBTJ0JB9QYnaUHoMfjsy8OwZiwEMgSLT1PP9QnSQcnBYK62OTBtqnvhj4CFYUBgCZ27pD2oGD3DG4JZG8-ckDihtvpH5FUZfATATKmyabC0G3OVBMRBQPX-Z/s1600/Babadook1.jpg" height="190" width="400" /></a></div>
<b>Scary children's book freaks out family when monster literally pops up to haunt them!</b> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>A young widowed mother with depression
is spectacularly unequal to the task of bringing up junior, now in
his awkward and terrible sixes. While a character-driven domestic
drama would explore the family dynamic before she snaps and throttles
the kid to death, this horror film sticks to the genre’s formula
and attributes the unhappy family’s domestic angst and unravelling
to malicious supernatural causes. In this case, it’s a monster from
a scary children’s pop-up book (the titular and eponymous Mister
Babadook).<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The gimmick is when the hauntings begin
and the monster shows up in the corridors of the big old house,
Mister Babadook looks exactly like what he is: something from a scary
children’s pop-up book gone very huge and life-size. The monster
hardly looks scary but comes across as very disconcerting and
menacing; it is a triumph of papier-mache design, old-school stop
motion, and puppetry.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
I suppose that fits in with the twist:
that despite being a horror film, director Jennifer Kent executes it
more as a character-driven domestic tragedy. That means no scare
shots, loud sound effects, no mysterious shadowy figures moving
rapidly across the screen behind our characters. All these are
replaced with menacing shots of suits and hats in clothes stands as a
manifestation or suggestion of the supernatural figure, whose design
emphasises its huge suit and hat. And they keep popping up everywhere
to spook both mother and child, but mostly the mother.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
If Mister Babadook didn’t actually
show up by the halfway mark of the film, you’d swear it was about
an impressionable harried mother who sees and imagines things. Or
that it’s a horror film allegory about undiagnosed postpartum
depression, or about how most old nursery rhymes are actually creepy
murder ballads and help with postpartum depression...</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
In either case, The Babadook is a
member of the modern horror genre that acknowledges the genre
allegory for domestic anxieties and deals with those instead of
heightening the horror elements.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-26846136547900911742014-09-12T23:07:00.000+08:002014-09-12T23:07:03.001+08:00Life of Crime (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvb3stxyUJbkjvutCXY_XyAWlVLCW0gLW03UswIQYksHOQ0Eyx0fgOwiLVXgowT4xr6Bna6jDFAfSIPdQAhI8GkRd7KQWsyg37yqy1Na7deEOKfHTHOyHqEfHyCO-qTDrjsB4Zw7K7Yxpp/s1600/life+of+crime.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgvb3stxyUJbkjvutCXY_XyAWlVLCW0gLW03UswIQYksHOQ0Eyx0fgOwiLVXgowT4xr6Bna6jDFAfSIPdQAhI8GkRd7KQWsyg37yqy1Na7deEOKfHTHOyHqEfHyCO-qTDrjsB4Zw7K7Yxpp/s1600/life+of+crime.jpg" height="237" width="400" /></a></div>
<b>Little known fact: Robert de Niro and Samuel L Jackson play the same characters in the sequel to this film!</b><br />
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Jennifer Aniston plays trophy housewife
who is kidnapped by a gang (John Garcia, Will Forte, and the artist
formerly known as Mos Def) who doesn’t realise that her wealthy,
abusive, and very crooked husband (Tim Robbins) is having an affair
with a scheming, half-smart mistress (Isla Fischer), about to divorce
her, and isn’t at all inclined to cough up the dough for her safe
release.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
In theory, an Elmore Leonard film
adaptation just writes itself. Aside from an ear for the rhythm and
flow of regional dialect, the king of crime fiction and suspense
thrillers made it his gimmick to make interesting the lull between
the violence and action, where everyone is on tenterhooks trying to
outguess their mark and one-up each other, where everyone is liable
to royally screw things up, where everyone is making deals with their
eyes blindfolded, and where everyone is forced to deviate from their
best laid plans—to great hilarity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Daniel Schechter does punctuate Life of
Crime with moments of comic action and violence but for the most
part, Aniston and the gang are holed up in a small safe-house,
providing the laughs by living the domestic existence of a
dysfunctional family while players further afield keep changing their
minds about saving her, which then provide more laughs as the gang
try to improvise.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
To say more would be to give the film
away. Suffice to say that that for this film to tread as softly as
the source material, to play for laughs but not for howls of
laughter, is a miracle of balanced directing and disciplined acting
by its ensemble cast.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-71110488556286731842014-08-22T00:03:00.002+08:002014-08-22T00:03:29.235+08:00The Giver (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_F4M1DqY8bYd_qzN_HYnZIZ1pArYuicUcoanwIlqYRbNoJmS0Q26XzIX9kyNnllsi_PZsH4iw7JLxCJONaSRpYJFXIHHZRajKQ3-Ig58nvOZj-keI0AlsVtln_G9s8BFr7n22buvIiwoz/s1600/giver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi_F4M1DqY8bYd_qzN_HYnZIZ1pArYuicUcoanwIlqYRbNoJmS0Q26XzIX9kyNnllsi_PZsH4iw7JLxCJONaSRpYJFXIHHZRajKQ3-Ig58nvOZj-keI0AlsVtln_G9s8BFr7n22buvIiwoz/s1600/giver.jpg" height="204" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>In the future, there is no racism,
sexism, inequality, or discrimination of any kind. Look what we did
to eradicate all these evils!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>As a “children’s science fiction
novel”, The Giver isn’t so much a bowdlerisation and literary
compromise of legitimate science fiction (the way the Twilight Saga
was to horror fantasy or Harry Potter was to high fantasy) as an
intersection between coming-of-age novels and classic dystopian
sci-fi.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The role of education in the
reproduction of society is a lynchpin in both genres. Confronted with
the realisation that ‘society’, ‘history’ (and other big
things taken for granted as natural) are both constructed out of
selective amnesia and other well-meaning compromises and suppressions
of other possibilities and ideologies, the protagonist is at once
cognizant of their socialisation into society and thus alienated from
society. The role of the protagonist is to rebel against the
established order, however futile this enterprise may be, to reclaim
‘true humanity’.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
In The Giver, Brenton Thwaites is an
average teenager in what appears to be a liberal utopia run on John
Lennon’s “Imagine”. He has been chosen by the Elders (headed by
Meryl Streep) to be trained as the next Receiver of Memories, a
quaint title held by a quaint old man played by Jeff Bridges. As it
turns out, the Receiver of Memories is the only person in the
community who aside being exempt from all its major rules, also
remembers everything that has been suppressed to keep the community
what it is.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
While the book was a teen-friendly
introduction to dystopian sci-fi, Philip Noyce seems to have made
this film to impress an older demographic. Like Pleasantville, life
in community is in black and white, progressing to sepia and colour
as the protagonist loses his social conditioning and gains awareness.
Architecturally, every building in the community looks as though it
was designed and decorated by the same guy who did the sets in Woody
Allen’s <u>Sleeper</u>. One of the key rites of passage in the community
mashes references from <u>Logan’s Run</u> and <u>Soylent Green</u>. The snatches
of history and memory of humanity that the guru transmits to the
protagonist? You might have seen them before in <u>Baraka</u> and Samsara.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Philip Noyce knows how to make a movie
look respectable, and to highlight the worthy intellectual and
cinematic predecessors of the original novel. The Giver never
succumbs to pop culture populism, but I fear it never quite achieves
the excitement and originality of the pop culture films it references.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-79224460943562023372014-08-19T18:51:00.002+08:002014-08-20T14:57:25.597+08:00The Four 3 (四大名捕 3) (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXzmMGqDv6ou2LtIM5M7lS-P0DbRS7TF8l3azdSj8TlJWZeGkqkzSYGrD1PbSeINOqFDYXOE-sz4QJXJifVUAzAmmbb7SNJ_Rzf5EEZEaGvqXFZHB7Rw3BoqKOFv-gs5GAvr68KbMSxM3/s1600/the+four+3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmXzmMGqDv6ou2LtIM5M7lS-P0DbRS7TF8l3azdSj8TlJWZeGkqkzSYGrD1PbSeINOqFDYXOE-sz4QJXJifVUAzAmmbb7SNJ_Rzf5EEZEaGvqXFZHB7Rw3BoqKOFv-gs5GAvr68KbMSxM3/s1600/the+four+3.jpg" height="260" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Hong Kong’s Gordon Chan concludes
his Chinese X-Men franchise with sound, fury, and a flurry of
carebear stares!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>A group of Chinese <strike><span style="text-decoration: none;">mutants</span></strike>
kungfu experts from a detective agency investigate an attempted
assassination on the Emperor of China. On the bright side, they’re
certain (with absolutely no clues whatsoever!) that the emperor is
still alive. On the other hand, they haven’t a clue where he could
be found. Somewhere, a big bad supervillain who has been brewing up
the most baroque plots lately—Counterfeiting in a gold economy AND
zombies will cause the collapse of the empire! Help the Okinawans
send in the Kraken and destroy the empire!—decides to seize the
throne directly this time round. Why the scheming supervillain took
so long to achieve his plans through direct, simple, and violent
means this time round, I don’t know.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
While Wong Swee Onn, the original
author of the pulp novels, envisioned The Four as the imperial
Chinese equivalent of the Special Crimes Unit staffed by top kungfu
experts, he never quite expected Gordon Chan to portray the
pugilists, the mysteries they solve, and their antagonists as
straight out of a Marvel superhero soap opera—complete with the
shadowy supervillain enacting his nefarious scheme over the entire
trilogy, a move likely taken from Marvel Studios playbook.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The premise and gimmick do work, though
not in simpatico throughout the series. The first movie had the team
of superhero detectives employing their superpowers to solve the
mystery. And even though the mystery itself was completely tangential
to the franchise story, the post-credits scene proved Chan knew his
Marvel Studios filmmaking. The second film had a character-based
story, a mystery that served to develop the franchise mythology, but
forgot to allow the superhero detectives to solve the mystery with
their powers. The Four 3 is unique in how the central mystery is
directly tied to the series arc, again forgets to let the
protagonists use their very useful powers to solve the mystery, and
while having the biggest action setpieces, chooses to end it all with a lazy but expensive CGI Care Bear Stare showdown.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Was Gordon Chan’s Chinese X-Men
concept worth watching the entire trilogy? I appreciated the newness
and boldness of the concept in The Four, and got more and more
disappointed at how the superpowered detectives turned out to be more
bruisers than private eyes in each subsequent film. The saving grace
of the franchise would be the old school wuxia supervillain and his
James-Bond-meets-upper-class-twit villain of a son. Gordon Chan
didn’t seem to have thought through their development as series
villains at all, and what happens to both of them is an indication of
the weakness in the scripting department.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-20494695377791334702014-08-14T14:19:00.000+08:002014-08-14T14:19:12.462+08:00Soekarno: Indonesia Merdeka (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbB7hGSXWtaUcFpdrdSEHEwKri-HnJivi3YL1dtqWBL1TIxJ5wVHBGRIWlVE6IMTemjzQJl-Ld1r9VOeg7yRSqQq0DnC5pn2lO-3BTLemewPA54Cv89EbZrej0-XvqDcvN1dy7pfAKo_ZN/s1600/soekarno.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjbB7hGSXWtaUcFpdrdSEHEwKri-HnJivi3YL1dtqWBL1TIxJ5wVHBGRIWlVE6IMTemjzQJl-Ld1r9VOeg7yRSqQq0DnC5pn2lO-3BTLemewPA54Cv89EbZrej0-XvqDcvN1dy7pfAKo_ZN/s1600/soekarno.png" height="213" width="320" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Finally, a WW2 film made by the Allies that has a positive portrayal of the Japanese!</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>While the subject of Soekarno has never
been banned from films during the New Order regime, his role in the
sanctioned national narrative has been that of a historical hero
turned dupe or victim of the cinematicallly monstrous PKI and
communists, but never as the father of the nation. It is from the
safety of two decades after the fall of the New Order that a film
like Soekarno: Indonesia Merdeka can be made.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The premise is simple. Soekarno is a
charismatic politician who can talk your socks off. All he wants is a
bloodless, non-violent independence for Indonesia, and he will do
anything to achieve that. Naive? Impractical? The opportunity
presents itself with the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies
and the driving tension in this particular narrative centres on how
much agency Soekarno really had, how much he was forced to
compromise, and how far he would go before he passes through the
moral event horizon.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Given its premise, this is a rare
nationalist biopic that doesn’t lend itself to blatant hagiography
and whitewashing. If anything, it veers on the side of heavy-handed
moralising. Pak Karno is enlisted in a propaganda reel and asked to
pretend he’s toiling happily for the “joint war effort” while a
few metres across from him, he watches with guilt as forced labourers
die from exhaustion. In another scene, Pak Karno procures prostitutes
for the Japanese army to prevent the kidnapping of girls from
villages. Rage and shame wash over his face as his torch casts light
on the depravities that follow. Inggrid, one of the many wives that
were discarded by the ladies’ man for a younger, more nubile
candidate, is given the plum end-credits narration, ominously
remarking how prizes that are won by compromise are themselves
compromised and impossible to keep.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Amidst the moralising and the
ideological speechifying, what stands out is the naturalistic
approach of director Hanung Bramantyo, who completely eschews
artificial lighting and employs diegetic music for much of the film.
The resulting grittiness is something you can taste in your mouth,
and takes it far away from the raft of overproduced nationalistic
wartime films and television dramas coming out from say, China.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
My complaint with the film’s rushed
first act misses the opportunity to establish Soekarno as a modernist
architect and visionary who practically invented his public self and
image from scratch, and that the dynamics of the
Soekarno-Hatta-Sjahrir triumvirate isn’t developed enough to set
the foundations for the film’s sequel.</div>
<br />Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-86274501823775728962014-07-25T00:11:00.001+08:002014-07-25T00:11:33.640+08:00Ju-on: The beginning of the end (呪怨: 終わりの始まり) (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbwrePxJAUm8gBrO2liJk1Vd8HBtAxNA9Aqa6Iv-j2mgCtMVcJduq2EH_db18EAph310qfiiMgG25Jug4TuOw9rAIxUoy3bQy01uSq4IWrzGvmKQBjOJGcKj1GQ_NXb2x2VxGjlsvCvSbY/s1600/silent+scream.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbwrePxJAUm8gBrO2liJk1Vd8HBtAxNA9Aqa6Iv-j2mgCtMVcJduq2EH_db18EAph310qfiiMgG25Jug4TuOw9rAIxUoy3bQy01uSq4IWrzGvmKQBjOJGcKj1GQ_NXb2x2VxGjlsvCvSbY/s1600/silent+scream.jpg" height="173" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Despite its title, Ju-on 7 is the
beginning of the remake of the franchise</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>By now, you’d be familiar with the
premise of the Ju-on franchise. It’s a haunted house horror where
the hapless visitors to the lair of evil are haunted back at their
own homes. The twist is the feature films are told as a series of
vignettes presented out of chronological order. And the punchline to
every segment is: this little Japanese kid in white body paint crawls
out from the most inconceivable places (out of a drawer, under a bed)
to stare the poor victim into a fright.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Ju-on as a concept works, and is a
showcase of what can be done on a low budget short film. The
locations are ordinary, everyday homes (so it can happen anywhere to
anyone who’s unsuspecting), while the brevity of each segment and
the minimalist, almost repetitive and predictable storytelling
establishes the franchise style and maximises the impact of the
simplistic punchline, which requires zero CGI or special effects.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
As a feature film franchise, though,
the strength of the Ju-on premise become a millstone around its neck.
The predictability of each segment mean that the punchline is
expected, anticipated, and its shock and scare value negated. It doesn’t help
that all the segments have the same punchline (except the final one,
which always involves what looks like Sadako’s sister crawling on
the floor). And it helps least that every Ju-on movie (aside from
2004’s <u>White Ghost</u> and <u>Black Ghost</u>) all tell the same
story, all uncover the same backstory and mythos.
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Sure, you can tell it all in slightly
different chronological order and with a slightly different cast of
victims but if it ends in the same way all the time without a sense
of progression, I’d say the franchise is stuck in a rut. As it
turns out, Ju-on 7 is a retread of various segments (and punchlines)
from the first 3 features, but with a different cast of characters.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
Best look to Hollywood’s “The
Grudge” reboot later this year to show the way forward, though this
entry is technically has the best execution and storytelling of the
original Japanese franchise.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-50503277338018230082014-07-24T18:10:00.001+08:002014-07-24T18:11:47.450+08:00Hateship, Loveship (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnwc_GGOruZsxTopreuylrl_n9lT6tn-9_0q8fBG7zLBY4gcIcV7CVAtMDA3S1aUEJLAmwlS-JPGD1LufCZq-CN1WGSWidE4hGgUSo1kpJWINlWkNI1naq3MTdBY2y-0b_1k48IT0DwLtd/s1600/hateship+loveship.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnwc_GGOruZsxTopreuylrl_n9lT6tn-9_0q8fBG7zLBY4gcIcV7CVAtMDA3S1aUEJLAmwlS-JPGD1LufCZq-CN1WGSWidE4hGgUSo1kpJWINlWkNI1naq3MTdBY2y-0b_1k48IT0DwLtd/s1600/hateship+loveship.jpg" height="215" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>The post-feminist age bottles up
Cinderella as a suburban wish fulfilment fantasy for all the Mary
Sues out there</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>Kristen Wiig plays a socially stunted,
dowdy, middle-aged live-in caregiver/nanny/domestic who gets her
belated coming of age when her new teenage charge (Hailee Steinfeld)
manages to convince, via a long series of pranks, that her estranged
father (Guy Pearce as a never-do-well jailbird inhabiting a crumbling
motel with a trashy junkie played by Jennifer Jason Leigh) has the
hots for her.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The first act establishes the premise
that this colourless, mousy character who fades into the background
via housework will get her sexual awakening, coming of age, and find
her own voice and identity when she falls for the trick and finds a
ratty, drug-addicted jailbird in a roach motel. Fair enough.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
The rest of the film delivers a twist:
this colourless, mousy character will get everything (reform the
jailbird, get his sympathy and then passionate love, improve his lot,
get a fairy tale ending) by continuing to disappear into the
background via silent housework. I suggest that this twist ill-suits
the premise, and diminishes the film as a work of indie cinema. A
literary narrative would have the protagonist fail to achieve any of
these, then recognise the fairy tale as the source of her naïve
expectations, confront it, and discard it. The twist that the film
does offer is no better than a wish fulfilment fantasy, an
anti-literary device.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
That said, <span style="font-style: normal;"><u>Hateship,
Loveship</u></span> makes for an engaging watch due to the minimalist
performances of its cast, the low-key and controlled direction of
Liza Johnson, and the flat cinematography of Kasper Tuxen.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It’s like watching a Wim Wenders
drama where everything turns out absurdly and effortlessly all right.
You know it’s wrong, it doesn't even make sense (why would a teenage girl need a nanny, and the one that gets hired does nothing but clean the house all day?), but it just looks right. </div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-86006276125803370992014-06-16T13:56:00.003+08:002014-06-16T13:56:55.499+08:00Make Me Shudder 2: Shudder Me Mae Nak (มัธยมปากหมาท้าแม่นาค) (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hyphenhyphenf8Qt76LmTDtE_0SoCaYaPgI2vqKuGWRgqEkD8Ab32UFoOKPifxrEvBMt6Sfhu72Dbqx0mgCQ1eJke8fRwx9xT2uKZ8Pio_xB6LouhIKFUVZo93Y-WVAajs20s1ExSn6ranoV0FXEDl/s1600/make+me+shudder.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4hyphenhyphenf8Qt76LmTDtE_0SoCaYaPgI2vqKuGWRgqEkD8Ab32UFoOKPifxrEvBMt6Sfhu72Dbqx0mgCQ1eJke8fRwx9xT2uKZ8Pio_xB6LouhIKFUVZo93Y-WVAajs20s1ExSn6ranoV0FXEDl/s1600/make+me+shudder.jpg" height="167" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b><span style="text-decoration: none;">Make
Me Shudder 2 </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">is a decent
enough amusement if you can speak Thai. </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">Otherwise,
you’ll miss more than half of the jokes</span></b> </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>This Thai horror-comedy has 2 gimmicks
going for it. It’s a parody of the legendary folktale of Mae Nak.
That’s the one where a soldier returns home to his wife after a
long war, oblivious to the clues that she’s been long dead and the
village has been forced to play along with her loving subterfuge. The
other gimmick is throwing a bunch of foul-mouthed modern Thai
schoolboys into the story. That’s the new talent-scouted comedy
gang of teens from the comedy segments in 4Bia, Phobia2, and last
year’s Make Me Shudder.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">If
you’re watching this </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">outside
Thailand</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">, </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">I’ll
have to warn you </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">that the
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">international English
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">subtitles </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">do
not translate </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">any of </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">the
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">s</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">treet
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">slang, </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">generally
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">offensive language, </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">and
double entendres</span><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">that
spew from the mouths of </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">the
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">fresh-faced cast.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">It’s
a pity given that </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">this
constitutes their </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">comedy
act. </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">It’s even more a
pity because part of the Mae Nak parody involves throwing these
modern bad schoolboys into ancient Siam and having them trade insults
with its most famous and scariest ghost... </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">and
having the ghost pick up their anachronistic speech.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<span style="text-decoration: none;">T</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">he
bits </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">t</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">hat
translate across are its </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">comedy
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">sketch show style
re‑enactments </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">of
setpieces from the </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">1999
</span><u>Nang Nak</u><span style="text-decoration: none;"> </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">film</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">.
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">E</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">ven
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">so</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">,
the </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">relatively </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">low</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">
hit-</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">to</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">-miss
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">ratio is </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">indicative
</span><span style="text-decoration: none;">of the relative
inexperience of the team on this project.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br />
</div>
<span style="text-decoration: none;">Make
Me Shudder 2 </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">is a decent
enough amusement if you can speak Thai. </span><span style="text-decoration: none;">Otherwise,
you’ll miss more than half of the jokes.</span> Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-60580129354451411542014-06-13T21:28:00.003+08:002014-06-13T21:34:11.655+08:00Under the Skin (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWQx9BpxRUe_mZeyr_bxJHv0KsFkuHpJarMlMly36Fz1FAu6CQULr7euU7A1MXzK7Ep2UYXSUOUK8776-Ua54QpllQ7kzYCJ2zNZGS3KkqXIUEO3vaH8niNV7ion0JvI_gf_17g1w7vc8s/s1600/under+the+skin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiWQx9BpxRUe_mZeyr_bxJHv0KsFkuHpJarMlMly36Fz1FAu6CQULr7euU7A1MXzK7Ep2UYXSUOUK8776-Ua54QpllQ7kzYCJ2zNZGS3KkqXIUEO3vaH8niNV7ion0JvI_gf_17g1w7vc8s/s1600/under+the+skin.jpg" height="264" width="400" /></a></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<b>Scarlett Johansson oozes sex appeal
that can melt a man into a puddle in this update of Catherine Zeta-Jones’s
Elizabeth Arden advertisement</b></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
</div>
<a name='more'></a>While Cubist painting in the early 20<sup>th</sup>
century attempted to freeze the multiple perspectives and spatial
relativity from the moving pictures into a single frame, Jonathan
Glazer in these early years of the 21<sup>st</sup> century has put
together a film whose visual style and narrative feels like a Cubist
rearrangement of modern cinematic genres and tropes, simultaneously
coexisting, however incongruously, in one narrative.<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
I could tell you the film was adapted
from a novel by Michael Faber; that isn’t saying much given how
Glazer has stripped most its the premise, characters, and their
motivations in his Cubist distillation, which has very sparse
dialogue and traditional cinematic narration.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It’s perhaps better to say that Under
the Skin is a chimera of <u>Species</u> (subverted), a serial killing
trucker on a highway horror (genders reversed), and <u>Electroma</u>
(played straight). That is to say, Scarlett Johansson plays a
seductress donning human skin from a galaxy far far away, whose modus
operandi is to drive around Scotland in a beat up car picking up good
looking lads and then killing them before the act of sexual congress.
And then she discovers something about the nature of humanity. And
her humanity.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
It is fitting that the film plays like
a disjointed Cubist painting stretched out temporally. During the
“alien” sequences, the film plays like a Kubrick piece with
micropolytonal music, sparse sets, and minimalist, almost geometrical
compositions. When Scarlett as stalker wanders the malls, walks the
streets, and drives through the urbanscape of Scotland, you’d
almost think this is a documentary made with a handheld camera,
supposedly by an alien anthropologist studying human society up
close—until you notice that the seemingly disjointed cuts follow a
disturbing pattern: for a long while, you never get to see what
happens after she gets a lad into a car and strikes up a
conversation. And well, the “Electroma” section plays like
Electroma but without the superior Daft Punk soundtrack.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0mm;">
As a whole, Under the Skin is less than
the sum of its parts, but what glorious parts! Jonathan Glazer
deserves kudos for realising that film is the art of montage, and
then taking this idea to extremes. In its transition from page to
screen and also in its experimental approach, Glazer may have lost a
chance to expound on gender roles, genre expectations, and the nature
of humanity, but he has presented a film that is a slice of pure
visual cinema.</div>
Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-6851695317406747212014-06-05T16:17:00.004+08:002014-06-05T16:18:27.673+08:00Chef (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnst4o7ge1nxUd7mfWAXmro17-tRfkqleYiI4L5xrNXbv6XNivI17oJANNFxqzP2e9eJBAG05CnQWP7kBk9qhCKrVQMMBAX_FofTbfpvxuZLeuZ365d1FCu7yB5kBGPYUNRLbZZA0w0J2k/s1600/chef.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhnst4o7ge1nxUd7mfWAXmro17-tRfkqleYiI4L5xrNXbv6XNivI17oJANNFxqzP2e9eJBAG05CnQWP7kBk9qhCKrVQMMBAX_FofTbfpvxuZLeuZ365d1FCu7yB5kBGPYUNRLbZZA0w0J2k/s1600/chef.jpg" height="200" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">America... on the road Again</span></b></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="line-height: 100%; margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><br />
</span></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">A talented and passionate chef stuck in a boring restaurant cooking the same old menu for years calls it a day, buys a food truck, and goes on the road to rediscover the simple joys of cooking and American regional cuisines, together with a trusty sidekick and an estranged son.<br /><br />I don't tend to watch many food travelogue programmes on television; most of the time you're just watching a second-string celebrity take a paid vacation while bumbling along a foreign country while sampling the tinniest sliver of its cuisine. That said, I'm a fan of the PBS series Spain... On the Road Again, where an Iron Chef (Mario Batali), a New York Times food critic (Mark Bittman), and 2 actresses (Gwyeth Paltrow and Claudia Bassols) traipse about Spain over 2 months. They tour places to soak in the local flavour, they eat the regional food, and then they cook the same meals (or variations thereof) for each other.<br /><br />At its heart, Chef plays like a feature film version of <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Spain-On-Road-Again-Spain-On/dp/B004IZRDQC/">Spain...On the Road Again</a> but set in America. Yes, there is the prerequisite and very engaging story about a passionate chef who's good at cooking and poor at relationships, trying to do both on a road trip in a food truck. But we're really here to see Jon Favreau and gang have a good time travelling, pigging out, and preparing yummy regional cuisine on camera as they cut a path from Miami to Texas and then New York.<br /><br />As with the PBS series, I'm not surprised that Chef has turned out to be wildly entertaining and watchable. The cast looks good (it almost seems everyone in Favreau's Iron Man and Avengers films get walk-on and extended cameo here aside from Gwyneth Paltrow) and more importantly has excellent chemistry with each other, and most importantly, have so much fun producing this that the fun is infectious in the cinema.<br /><br />Chef doesn't intend to make some grand statement about the nature of human relations or the aesthetics and sacredness of food. But it's an amusing and heartfelt way to spend 110 minutes admiring food porn.</span>Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-23568071085121787752014-06-05T13:33:00.004+08:002014-06-05T16:18:06.688+08:00Edge of Tomorrow (2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRT-WICMWJIa9CbpOH4xFvXgN9mmDAAd0M9t4JAf78Ih4l_q-B12PtdtJBOLSKF2gqTWhjpE93IRXeqtbOwwgS6GY2Bz5YKnZK65nzqXrI-KY7SinWEyHPT2PorqLcQ4zqTs2sRpFDm1U/s1600/edge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibRT-WICMWJIa9CbpOH4xFvXgN9mmDAAd0M9t4JAf78Ih4l_q-B12PtdtJBOLSKF2gqTWhjpE93IRXeqtbOwwgS6GY2Bz5YKnZK65nzqXrI-KY7SinWEyHPT2PorqLcQ4zqTs2sRpFDm1U/s1600/edge.jpg" height="212" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><b>Is it a stinker or a hit? I admit I watched this just to see Tom Cruise die over and over again!</b><br /></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Edge of Tomorrow is the Groundhog Day of alien invasion flicks. During the ominously codenamed Operation Downfall invasion of Normandy beach to take back Europe from the aliens, the worst ever soldier alive (Tom Cruise as a smarmy army spin doctor who gets assigned to front-line combat when he pisses off the CO) finds himself dead within 5 minutes of combat, only to relieve the day over and over again. Like the original Groundhog Day, hilarity ensues as our hapless cad learns to be a better soldier, better person, and save the planet.<br /><br />That's not to say that Edge of Tomorrow is anything new. It's a mash-up of the two oldest sci-fi tropes to hit the big screen. What's new is for once, we get a big budget movie with the biggest, most charismatic movie star alive today. There is a certain appeal in seeing Tom Cruise die over and over again on the big screen, just to see him mug for the camera over and over again to give future youtubers enough shots to make a Tom Cruise Faces of Death compilation.<br /><br />Yes, part of this movie's charm lies in its self-aware humour. The aliens may be winning, the war seems unwinnable, our protagonist seems unable to press his advantage—but isn't watching Tom Cruise die over and over again fun? Emily Blunt plays the best role she's played so far in her acting career: a war veteran and hero whose role is not so much a love interest but a merciless mentor who ends up killing Tom Cruise more often than the aliens.<br /><br />It's all fun and games in the first 2 acts until the film is enters its puzzle-solving phase. How on earth would one make use of one's certain death and reset to win a war? There are some clever video games that require a gamer to sacrifice his avatar in order to solve a puzzle upon respawning. Clearly the scriptwriters of Edge of Tomorrow have played some of them. While dependent on some amount of repetition, the story manages not to be tedious and branches off into unexpected territory every once in a while.<br /><br />Yet the scriptwriters also seem to have not played enough of these games. The film's third act has both the protagonist and his mentor forget the lessons they've learnt from and about his Groundhog power, and achieve their eventual victory in a far less convincing manner than you'd expect from how cleverly the premise is laid out and developed in the past 2 acts.<br /><br />Edge of Tomorrow may be flawed. It may not say anything new. But I'd still watch it just to see Tom Cruise die over and over again.</span>Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-28360857906438716672014-05-21T16:33:00.002+08:002014-05-21T16:33:39.493+08:00Fading Gigolo (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXTX9ihFrqWSQvueQ9Nl1ryU2rLynWpvuQuQ0tcZmwzFg6-SCvVbChaPhpSnFBGGXvwb2JVdEfiew9IUak8TMthRmgevElDbJ8nueWU_w00mNZ-QjweXqmD37P4NxwRLP7bXBtTUbzuZd/s1600/fading+gigolo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisXTX9ihFrqWSQvueQ9Nl1ryU2rLynWpvuQuQ0tcZmwzFg6-SCvVbChaPhpSnFBGGXvwb2JVdEfiew9IUak8TMthRmgevElDbJ8nueWU_w00mNZ-QjweXqmD37P4NxwRLP7bXBtTUbzuZd/s1600/fading+gigolo.jpg" height="225" width="400" /></a></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><span style="line-height: 16px;"><b>John Turturro serves up a sex comedy that's a cross between Woody Allen and the Coen brothers</b></span></span></div>
<div align="JUSTIFY" style="margin-bottom: 0in; page-break-after: auto; page-break-before: auto;">
<br /></div>
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"><a name='more'></a>An elderly rare books dealer (Woody Allen) goes out of business and on a chance comment from his doctor (a sex-starved Sharon Stone), pimps out his old pal (John Turturro), a rugged florist, as a classy gigolo for her, her girlfriend, and other well-heeled ladies of New York. Hilarity ensues. Then they take up a Chasidic widow who could do with some tender loving and attract the suspicions of the morality police of her community. More hilarity ensues!<br /><br />The initial premise of Fading Gigolo takes an entire act to establish, given its offbeat absurdity, which is milked for laughs. Yet instead of developing into either a sex farce or a gender-reversed a whore with a heart of gold romcom or drama, Fading Gigolo comes across as a variation of the narrative experiments Woody Allen used to make in middle period, where a familiar premise is married to a wrong genre. In this case, the film is unmistakably the very improbable offspring of an early Woody Allen romantic comedy set in New York (but with seniors!) and a Coen brothers regional flavour shaggy dog story and thriller featuring eccentric locals (but in New York!).<br /><br />This is a rare film that is exactly the sum of its parts—not more and not less. As a sidekick to John Turturro's protagonist, Woody Allen delivers the funny lines without overshadowing the script. Turturro, Stone, and Vergara dial in what is expected from their casting. Vanessa Paradis adds a melancholic beauty that meshes well with the sex comedy for contemplative oldsters and hipsters premise. The film delivers no surprises aside from what it already promises, yet delivers exactly what you'd expect of it.<br /><br />Fading Gigolo plays like an indie film on a very modest budget. While Mr Turturro may have pitch perfect stunt casting but like other indie directors and writers, the script is so shaggy you suspect Mr Turturro just let the story take a few more turns and meanders than a snappy minor studio production—which most recent Woody Allen films feel like—would have allowed.<br /><br />I for one am not complaining. The scenic detours of the script, its rambling but cordial nature, and a stunt casting that doesn't feel desperate all turn out to be ingredients that make this almost-sex farce so watchable and worthwhile despite its unconventionality.</span>Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1265658059804724496.post-55572024031028908712014-04-30T15:30:00.001+08:002014-05-02T08:35:40.483+08:00The Zero Theorem (2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTUh5lGOGGNVuqOY96_EqQf_UV0HkwiPIJWjn-r3ttdkv4b2G-wZUgzaG_VsLircE1AOoTr5hFiVkervu-uHXrItr3xDr5H1RUM8nxzFLYWJ3z21OsEakcCzkiV0_0E4d48NlL5L74GqXi/s1600/zero+theorem.jpg" height="266" width="400" /></div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Watch Brazil instead</span></b><br />
<br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">In a dystopia not too far away in space or time, a mentally unwell savant toils as a talented, high‑value drone for an all-encompassing, mestastatic megacorporation. He just wants to work from home so that he'd be there for a long-awaited phone call from a higher power that will tell him the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. Management (literally the name of the boss) puts him to work on a mathematical proof for the meaninglessness of life, the universe, and everything. Hilarity ensues.<br /><br />Had Terry Gilliam and debut writer Pat Rushin taken this premise as a launchpad for telling a darkly whimsical tale about the absurd condition of modern work and living, one imagines the result to be far different than what we're presented with. It appears though what Gilliam and Rushin have done is to take this premise and fit it into the shape of Brazil, so much so that the audience is advised for their health not to play a drinking game to predict which Brazil tropes (man doing meaningless work in an office designed to prevent work), character types (the creepy yet overly-friendly supervisor, the strong female interest with shady connections to the powers that be), visual gags (spot the anti-consumerist, anti-corporatist graffiti), and plot points will crop up in this film.<br /><br />Yet the problem is not so much with originality than with the depressing feeling that we've seen this all before in a far more superior, more imaginative film the same way one might compare Louis Napoleon to his uncle, Napoleon Bonaparte. It's as though someone kidnapped Terry Gilliam, stole the reels to The Zero Theorem, and replaced them with a creative writing major who'd always wanted to make a tribute to Brazil, and that resulting film. Except Brazil is more coherent and surreal, and less literal and hamfisted, a creature of playful subtexts rather than a creature of that announces its obsessions, themes and variations upfront in minutes of expository, declamatory dialogue.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">Zero Theorem serves as a style guide to classic Gilliam (a style that he's been moving away from for the past decade) but it's not a showcase of why his films are generally so good, or why his films are frustrating, bewildering and yet so sublime anyhow.<br /><br />For a film that is far less than the sum of its parts, it is still possible to admire the derivative set design for the largely indoors film, as well as the valiant performances in the supporting cast, especially young Lucas Hedges, who more than holds his own against Christoph Waltz, and even the underutilised cameos by Matt Damon and Tilda Swinton.<br /><br />So many things go wrong in this film but its biggest misstep—the inability to distinguish between the irony of its premise, and identifying that as the film's punchline—coupled with its derivative, second-hand feel seems to indicate intellectual and filmmaking laziness as the chief culprit. Then again, it could be a private little joke, a passive-aggressive play by Terry Gilliam in response to a financier who wanted “something like Brazil”.<br /><br />After recent triumphs like The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus and Tideland, The Zero Theorem might be the weakest film Terry Gilliam has made for a long time. We hope the director returns to form soon.</span>Vernon Chanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/17129559256776572609noreply@blogger.com0