Goose Shit Lake

A review of THE WILD GOOSE LAKE (2019)
Written and Directed by Diao Yinan
Cinematography by Dong Jingsong
Score by B6
Staring Hu Ge, Liao Fan, Gwei Lun-Mei, and Wan Qian

Some months back I ran into the trailer for The Wild Goose Lake and I was instantly taken in. I wanted to see this movie bad. It had everything I wanted in a movie: Crime, dirtbags on motorcycles, a beheading, a tiger, brutalism, and maybe violence-centered disco? Lots of ideas on offer, all of them intriguing to me. Unfortunately is not what I had hoped for. Having braved the rain and a pandemic, I can say that I have a candidate for my worst movie of the year. I can also comfortably say that this is the second worst thing to be involved with Wuhan province to come out this year.

The Wild Goose Lake is a threadbare neo-noir centered around a man who made a mistake in a fit of desperation and the people in his orbit and then. . . I don't know stuff happens and the plot concludes. It's a film that takes a long time to get nowhere. It's also a film where the motives of its characters don't seem to be murky as they are underdeveloped. You can't tell if its characters are concealing something or if there just isn't anything there. Of course if you have to ask yourself what the director is getting at, you probably have the answer. . .

Also, there's a sexual assault towards the end of the film. And it's bad. Not just because it's supposed to be bad, but because it doesn't add anything. It's just there. It's this shocking bit of sexual violence that doesn't add anything and doesn't seem to say anything other than look what I can film.

And fuck that.

Having just watched Portrait of a Lady on Fire, a film completely without the male gaze, it was shocking and deeply unpleasant to watch The Wild Goose Lake needlessly assert itself remind me that misogyny is live and well in the entertainment industry. (Of course the cast of Portrait of a Lady on Fire knows all about that. . . )

It was at this point in the film that one of my five fellow film goers walked out of the theater. Good for him.


That said there are moments of actual sublimity in the movie. They are as follows:

• After taking down a suspect, a troupe of plainclothes cops assemble around the perp. Each one of the cops is wearing shoes with lights on the bottom, like they're a bunch of overgrown mall rats. I can't tell if it's supposed to be funny, but like all of the good moments in this movie, it feels out of place.
• A man gets murdered with an umbrella. It's a really strange moment, because it feels like something out of a Takashi Miike movie. Up until this point, as many moments of stylization (and violence) as there are,  The Wild Goose Lake seems to take place on planet Earth, not in the world of Asian Extreme. Still, as jarring as the moment is, it was fun and ridiculous and made me wonder where this movie had been for the entire time.
•  The noodles at the end of the movie look really, really good.

The Wild Goose Lake is a humorless film without characters, and it lacks the panache to make up for its shortcomings. It's a frustrating movie to watch, because there clearly seems to be some sort of talent and perspective behind it-- just none of it ends up on the screen-- at least not in one piece.

Overall, these rare few moments have all of the joy of picking the good stuff out of a salad. Except that the salad is wilted and the dressing is terrible and you just wished that you had ordered something else.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and will see you next time, space cowboy. You can listen to him here and here. You can shovel piles of lucre at him here and here.

I have three questions

1. What is this?

2. Where can I get this?

3. Why can't I have it right now?

What the. . .

I rented Assassination Nation (more on that in the future) and this was one of the trailers attached to the film.




I found it incredibly striking, so I had to find out what it was about. So, I checked out its Wikipedia page.

This movie, uh, goes some places. And now I have to see it. I mean, I read the entirety of the plot and I still have to see it just to find out if any of that is real. Because, man, what a wild fucking thing.

Stomping His Way Back Into Your Heart

It's nice to see that Godzilla is back. Besides the 2014 Legendary Pictures version of Godzilla (which apparently exists in the same universe as their new King Kong movie, because shared universes is what films have been missing these past one-hundred years. . .), we have a new Godzilla from Toho Studios in the form of Shin Godzilla. It's about damn time. In this world stacked to the brim with dystopian fiction and escapist superhero movies, it's nice to see the grandfather of all anxiety pictures back.

It's also nice to see Godzilla back to his original form: A mix of existentially terrifying and sublimely ridiculous.

Shin Godzilla plays out as a healthy mix of Dr. Strangelove and United 93 if they were both about an atomic war-god raised from the sea. It's as much a political satire as it is a drama of procedure. . .It's also about a giant lizard fucking shit up. These three themes bounce back and forth off of each other, making big laughs in dramatic scenes and ratcheting up tension in what amounts to an impenetrable board meeting.

But also, man are those board room scenes good.

Shin Godzilla is a lot of fun and you get the sense that the people making it had a lot of fun as well, which is how it should be, because why should being involved with Godzilla ever be boring? It should be joyful, damnit.

One of the ways that the film manages to have fun, but also convey the byzantine inanity of the Japanese government is with the amount of super-imposed job titles it throws at you. Every character in the film is introduced (in very large typography), who they are and why they are there. This happens again and again and, considering that they're on screen at the same time as the subtitles, it's a decision that is clearly meant to baffle more than it is meant to elucidate. This distinct sense of confusion adds to the drama, as we have about as much idea about who these people are as they have about what Godzilla is (we, of course, know exactly what Godzilla is). Fighting Godzillas, as it turns out, is a confusing and terrifying existence.

What's more interesting is that the film feels like a live action anime (which makes sense considering Hideaki Anno and Shinji Higuchi made their name working on Neon Genesis Evangelion). It's a film cut through with rapid insert shots that energize its scenes and B-roll that give it a sense of place, which comes in handy when those places start blowing up and catching fire. 

Yes, it has scenes where tanks impotently fire at Godzilla for 10 minutes

It even seems to use the same font as Neon Genesis Evangelion. Say what you want about that series, it had a bomb-ass font.

Shin Godzilla is a film that manages to be funny in the way that you want a kaiju film to be, but doesn't ever tip over into camp. While a lot of fun is had at the expense of old Japanese politicians shouting "Way to go, USA!" as American B2 bombers flatten entire sections of Tokyo, you still actually manage to care about the action going on on screen. You want people to get out okay. You want Godzilla to be destroyed. You want your POV characters to do the right thing. And in all that you also get a lot of good laughs at the expense of everything but the film itself.

It's a complex move to pull off and a lot of Godzilla movies don't pull that off. Even as a fan, a lot of Godzilla and kaiju movies are movies you laugh at. They're schlocky, silly B-movies that seem to have been primarily built with psychotropic users in mind. They're rarely ever good films. What makes Shin Godzilla stand out, though, is that you can watch it and laugh at how ridiculous this situation is without actually laughing at the film. Instead, you feel for these characters and this world and you want to see more of it, because nobody should have to live through anything as surreal as a Godzilla attack-- Nor should they have to suffer through a Japanese ministerial meeting. It's a testament to the film's direction that it can play both of these cards at the same time. I mean, that's what movies are supposed to be, right?

I mean, as much as I love War of the Gargantuas, sometimes I want to watch a good movie about giant monsters fucking shit up. I'm sure everyone can agree with me on this one.

Ultimately, if Shin Godzilla is about anything, it's about grace under pressure and not buckling to perceived wisdom. It's an argument against doing the easy or the obvious thing. It's about how heroics is less about who hits the hardest or the fastest and more about who has the resolve to stick around and make the hard decisions. It's a pragmatic lesson that I would cast as being a very Japanese solution if I didn't think that we could use more of that in America right now. . .

Speaking to my friend (who lives in Japan), it's become clear to me that there's a much more literal connection of Godzilla to the real world. Namely, Shin Godzilla is a satire write large of the Japanese government's reaction to the Fukushima Meltdown. While that seems obvious in hindsight, it is a testament of the quality of the film that you don't need to know the specifics to get something out of the picture. Like the original Godzilla, there is something strangely universal about seeing a giant lizard blow up Tokyo.

James Kislingbury is a writer, podcaster, and giant monster enthusiast. You can listen to his movie podcast here. You can listen to his "news" podcast here. He's still looking for a working Marklin Rifle. Anyways, enjoy.

Abandon Hope All Ye Etc Etc Etc

A review of The Wailing (2016)

Directed by Na Hong Jin

The Wailing is a film that, from the outset, purports to be a mysterious film, mystical, even. While there's many questions and concepts the film raises and just as easy moves past, there's one question that bothers me the most. Is The Wailing a dumb film that thinks its smart or a film that's just dumb?

The Wailing: It's like The Exorcist, but shit.

 We might never know. Nor should we. There are some things man isn't meant to know. That might be one of the themes of The Wailing, but you shouldn't spend any amount of time trying to find out if that's true or not. The only thing people should do to The Wailing is to encase it in concrete and drop it into the bottom of a very deep lake.

The main cop is kind of chubby. That's fun.

The Wailing comes from Na Hong Jin, he of The Chaser, one of the more contentious films amongst my friends and I (they love it and I'm right). As troubling as that film is, there was a talent on display. Hearing about The Wailing, I wanted to see what he could do with some more years under his belt, and with a different genre.

This is what I get for being curious.

The Wailing is part ghost story, part possession story, part detective story, and part family drama. It's as much True Detective as it is The Excorcist as it is The Host. And, brother, does it show. In The Wailing's ass-grindingly long seventeen hours (IMBD says “Two hours, thirty six minutes,” but that can't be right), it bounces confidently from one genre to another, from one theme to another. At first it's fun to watch the movie slowly work its way towards the main plot. It's a mystery film and it does a good job of being mysterious. It doesn't show its cards right away and that works right up until you realize that it isn't taking the scenic route, it's just meandering. At no point is either the set up, the execution, or follow through anything less than a waste of time. Exciting sometimes, but, by the end, The Wailing's drama is one massive, ghosty wank.

God, I'm angry at this fucking movie.

Part of this is because the few twists that the film has neither work nor are they actual twists. The film's central premise is wrapped around a mysterious Japanese man that has shown up in this rural mountain village. Ever since he showed up, one of the movie's more gullible charcters says, there's been trouble around town.

The film's main character, like you, knows that this is ridiculous. People don't just show up to town and cause trouble. Especially not foreigners. Plus, it's 2016, you can't just throw a mysterious foreigner into your film and expect us to be afraid of him because it's A) Hackneyed and B) Racist. It would be like a Mexican showing up to an American movies and everyone going “There's something wrong with that greaser up there.”

(Oh, and everyone calls the Japanese man the “Jap,” which, like, I get. These aren't hyper-liberal city folk. Maybe they don't use all the right nomenclature. This isn't tumblr, this is the real world and sometimes that's okay. I'm not so much offended by any of it as I am confused. Am I meant to sympathize with these people despite their xenophobia? Or empathize with it? Am I meant to feel sorry for their ignorance? Is there just a level of Korean mountain patois that I'm missing? If the movie is only two and a half hours long, how come when I look in the mirror, I see the face of a seventy year old man?)

Anyways, if an American movie busted that out, you'd go either “Fuck you, movie” or “Fuck you, guy.” I'm not sure where I'm supposed to stand with The Wailing, which goes back to the degree of stupidity that the movie is guilty of. There are very few sane readings of a plot point like that and I don't think The Wailing accounted for any of them.

As the film unravels, it's supposed to be a revelation that this semi-racist stereotype is, SHOCKER, actually not a bad person. Unless of course. . . HE IS! And then you realiz that you don't care and that none of it makes sense. The film wants to play the premise of demonic possession and ghosts and all that in a straight manner (I must confess, Korean mysticism is not one of the areas of my expertise),

It's like watching a really confident lumberjack run along one of those logs in the water. For a while it's fun to see him play this game, to keep ahead of the log, to keep his balance, then, eventually, the momentum catches up with him and he eats shit and falls into the water. Except he keeps pumping his legs. And he's telling you that this is important, that this is really what lumberjacking is all about. And it takes three hours. And you hate yourself at the end. And lumberjacks. And life.

Fuck lumberjacks.

Fuck The Wailing.

Fuck me.

What movies was this dude in?
Wait, don't tell me, I'll get this.

Like a lot of truly hateable films, The Wailing isn't just plain bad. There's a kind of charm to shabby films. Your indy comedies, your Z-grade monster movies, your exploitation films. Those can be fun. And The Wailing, up until its ludicrous fifth act has some laughs in it, as well. It's also well shot and beautifully set dressed. You won't find a better looking movie that takes place in the Korean countryside this year. Or maybe any year.

Did I mention that I hate this movie?

I guess that zombie attack was cool. I mean, it was nonsense, but. . . No, wait. Why was that even in that fucking movie? 

Alright.

Something nice: The girl that plays Gyo-Jin does an A+ of playing both a percocious daughter that has a dumbass for a dad and a ravenous demon that has a dumbass for a dad. I'd like to see her in a good movie. Also, I can't find her name on IMDB. MY BAD, OKAY?

That script, though. Boy howdy that mother fucking script.

That fucking script.

Jesus Christ, do I hate this mother fucking movie.

Ugh. And the ending. I don't even hate the ending because it's a downer. DOWNERS ARE FINE! The Exorcist is a movie that this film owes and awful lot to and it has a bummer ending and I love that movie. I also love The Host which has a both a bummer ending and an ending that makes very little sense, but I LIKE that movie because it's fun! It does stuff! What does The Wailing do? It makes your a series of promises and then, over the course of the rest of your life, breaks them one by one until you look back on them and have one fatal, terrible realization. It's too late. The Wailing already has you in its grips and it is never letting go.

The Wailing is the Devil.

EL ABRAZO DE LA SERPIENTE

A Review of Embrace of the Serpent (2015)
by James Kislingbury

At this point Aguirre: The Wrath of God is probably hard baked into my soul. Like a lot of movies that I watched at a certain time and like a lot of other movies that I watched when I thought I was writing real important screenplays, it's always there.So, any time you say that there's a foreign language film about Amazonian madness, I'm there. It's that memory that pointed me towards Embrace of the Serpent. That and the knowledge that I hadn't seen a real art house movie in the theaters since. . . God only knows. I needed to see something weird. I needed to see something that reminded me of how I felt about Aguirre, even if it was superficial reasons.

As far as metaphysically harrowing and art house films go, Embrace of the Serpent is exactly what I needed.

Embrace of the Serpent doesn't feel like a lot of films that I've ever seen. Or, well, any really. And I've seen some weird crap in my time. First of all, it's a film shot in 2015 that's in black and white. Typically that comes off as an art house pretension or a statement of some sort. Here is feels integral to the story. This world simply is black and white, and, of course, since it's a movie that deals with dreams, psychosis, and the metaphysical, shooting it in black and white leads naturally to a certain kind of punch line.

Beyond how it looks, its cadence is odd. Its structure, while split like a lot of Western film, it doesn't feel a though its splitting up these stories according to traditional editing rules. It splits its time between a story in 1909 and sometime in the 1940s,with each story sharing setting and the shaman Karamakate. Instead of moving back and forth at a rapid pace, its a film that is willing to let long strings of scenes play out their course until we are brought back to the past (or forward into the future. . . which is also the past) and the cycle begins again.

I dare say, it feels like a South American film. Whatever that might mean. It reminds me of taking my Latin film class in college. Or at least it reminds me of what I remember of that class. Of how I was told that not everyone tells films like Hollywood wants them to be told.

Most of the film is from the perspective of South America's indigenous people. While I'm no expert on that subject (nor do I have the energy to pretend to be), it's interesting to see a movie that emphasizes the South Americans over the Spanish or the Portugese or any other European.That means something. That alone might be why it feels so unusual to me. Yeah, there are two white people and, yeah, they are our ticket into this world, but they're, well, assholes. They're interlopers from the outset and the only concrete takeaway from this movie is that white people, when given the opportunity, will always make things worse. It's a movie about a people that need to be educated and, for once, that group of people isn't the natives.

I don't know. Sorry. It's a movie that seems unadorned in any meaningful way. It isn't precious or showy and yet there is clearly something deeper beneath this film. It's trying to tell a story that reflects its geography and its own history rather than the history of film or the history of, well, Western colonialism. In that way my comparison (and anyone's comparison) with Aguirre is idiotic. It isn't a movie that uses the Amazon as a setting, it's a movie that is about the Amazon by people from South America.

Or maybe, without overextending myself, it feels like a film by Ciro Guerra.

At a length of 125 minutes, Embrace of the Serpent certainly takes its time. I can't say that I wasn't wondering when it was coming to and end. I suppose part of that is down to the fact that it didn't seem to be leading to any sort of traditional climax. It was about a mystic teaching two sick men how to see the world, which isn't exactly your normal heroes journey. That's part of the appeal of the film, though. It takes its time and, while you might be confused or antsy, the film doesn't ever seem to lose its way. In those moments, it still manages to be fascinating. It still manages to fill those still moments with meaning and dread.

It sometimes feels good to break away from traditionally structured films. As much fun as Deadpool might be or as well made as The Witch is supposed to be or as reliable as the Coen Brothers might be with Hail, Caesar, movies like The Embrace of the Serpent have their place, as well. It isn't so much odd as it is unique. It's a film that has a specific purpose and perspective. It's the kind of film that makes people fall in love with film. It's an affecting, insane journey that's better than any other "psychadelic" film that I've seen in a long time. It's beautiful, terrifying, well thought out, and has a half hour jag into an insane Amazonian cargo cult. What the hell else do you show up to movies for?

James Kislingbury is a writer. He has a movie podcast called A Quality Interruption. He worked on a saloon book with his dad called American Saloons, Bars, and Cigar Stores.

684 Words About Rashomon

I watched Rashomon for the first time since college last night, and I noticed somerthing about it that I never ntoiced before. Back then I probably wasn't looking for it. But seeing it now, wit h a college degree under my built and maybe a more open mind about movies and maybe even a more refined palette, I saw it differently. I mean, it's also a great film, which helps. It's a lot harder to muse about a feature when it's trash, you know?

You know, a date movie.

For me Kurosawa was my gateway into world cinema. After him came Herzog, Bergman, Godard, and Renoir and all of these other greats (and Godard). He also came along with me discovering indie directors like Jarmusch and Smith and Tarantino. They showed me that there was more to foreign films than anime and kung fu, and that there was more to movies than Schwarzenegger action flicks (though, those are pretty great too). But, it all started with Kurosawa.

Rashomon is probably one of the well criticized movies in history. It has the distinction of being the first big Japanese film to hit the west (winning a Golden Lion the Venice Film Festival, as well as an Academy Award), as well as being Kurosawa's breakout film outside of Japan. It's well trod ground and I won't waste too much of your time telling you why you should see one of the best films ever made from a man that is maybe the best director of all time.

Now, with that said. . .

Even his sweat is a better actor than everyone else!

There is one aspect of Rashomon that is close to my heart. Watching it again, the film's structure stands out to me the most. I don't mean the multi-layered narrative or the conflicting realities, what I noticed is something that nobody ever seems to bring up. What I noticed was this: It's 88 minutes long. Correction: Rashomon is only 88 minutes long.

The film doesn't feel like it. It feels, at once this incredibly fast paced film, yet it can also be dissected, broken apart, and endlessly gone over again and again. It is a movie full of a vast richness of ideas, that like any great work of art, can be looked from any angle to discover something new. It is also searingly paced. Even its flab is there with a distinct purpose. It's this dictomy that is indicative of Kurosawa's mastery of the camera.

In Rashomon, Kurosawa manages to tell four seperate stories, each with varying levels of truth and obfuscation built into them, and still manages to make the entire package entertaining and accessible. It isn't showy. It isn't pretentious. It doesn't revel in its modernism or its form. It's just a story. A really, really good story.

Takashi Shimura upon hearing Tarantino's next film
will be 187 minutes long.

As much as we need the David Leans and the Paul Thomas Andersons of the world, cinema also needs its Clint Eastwoods and its John Hustons. It needs people that can tell concise stories with skill as much as it needs guys who know how to use an elephant in a scene (Peter Jackson used to be both of these people, now he's some kind of a dwarf-fixated sexual deviant). Bigger doesn't always mean better, though, in Kurosawa's case, sometimes it does. I mean, Rashomon is a masterpiece at 88 minutes and Seven Samurai is one at 207. So, I don't know, maybe even that isn't so cut and dry.

I'm a Kurosawa fan. While others have their Hitchcocks or their Truffauts or their Scorceses, I have my Kurosawa. As much as I associate him with a certain rose colored part of my history, it's films like Rashomon that remind me why that is. He sticks with me because he's a great artist and he's a great artist in so many different ways. As skilled as he was with the three-hour spectacular, he was also capable of paring down his films into these perfect, 90 minute packages. It's like finding out that your favorite painter was as good at panoramas as he was at portraiture. Rashomon being 90 minutes long also dovetails nicely into my belief that 90 minutes tends to be the perfect length of a film, but let's just ignore that for the time being, shall we?

James Kislingbury writes, podcasts, and does not live by the sword, but might just die by it. You can also partially fund his creative endeavors by going to his Patreon.

I don't know what this is. . .

But I know I want it.



White God comes to America on the 27th of March, 2015.

Just Finished "Four Lions"

It was a very good movie, but the only thing I am going to add is this.

FUCK THIS MOVIE PART XXIV

Careful. This is important.



See that trailer? Congratulations, you saw the only good parts of The Raid: Redemption. What follows between the split second cuts is a moldering heap of nonsense, bad CGI blood, and follie work thrown into a blender,spat into, and then hard-boiled. Somehow the featureless, grey mush that pours out is considered a film by some. These people are art-criminals.

At some point I stopped watching the movie as it was intended and instead began to watch it in fast forward. After about five minutes of that (I don't think I missed much), I grew weary of that, too, and quit the entire project all together.

Don't watch this movie. Not drunk. Not high. Not with friends. Not ever. Roger Ebert was right. Everyone else is wrong. It's a nonsense movie. It's the kind of martial arts movie snobs mean when they say, “Oh, isn't that a martial arts movie?”

There's nothing interesting or redeemable at all about this film and I say that as a fan of violence. The plot is non-existent. The main character is a non-entity. The bad guys are just various tank top wearing goons that might have accidentally fallen out of a closeted bisexual's fever dream (nothing but long hair and a lack of sweat despite all his exertions). The main villain himself an out of shape man in a tank top. Even the set itself is a boring, nondescript place that makes you wonder if The Wire ever happened. Or if set design ever happened. Or if reality actually exists in a form that can be observed by any of the production crew at any point in their lives.

Hold on, I'm keeping back the vomit here.

Okay. Let's carry on.

If someone gets their throat slit it should mean something either because it's a horrible thing to happen to a person or because it is the culimination of a lot of other bad things. In this, like everything else in the movie, it's just a thing that happens. Regarding the violence, though, it's my love of violence in film that makes me loath this film just so much, because I've seen this damn thing done right.

That isn't awesome. That's grotesque in a way that is almost autistic in its misunderstanding of how violence works. Violence isn't awesome because it's on screen. Children get this. Why this director thinks that the popping of arteries devoid of context or meaning or emotion is awesome makes me think that he should be put in a home in the country and held down with a series of wet medical-grade blankets.

Then maybe someone should read a story to him, because there's a chance he's never actually encountered one in his entire life. (He is Welsh and they are a people in need of many things. And if this movie is any indication, literacy might have been one boon too many).

If you want a good movie about clearing a tower of criminals watch Die Hard. Or Dredd 3d.  If you're keen for trash, then go check out Fast Five, at least. And if you want an insane martial arts movie watch Ong Bak 2 (a film that involve pirates, child/alligator fights, ninjas, and Babar: King of the Elephants all within the first fifteen minutes), which, for its many flaws, does include things like people and set design in its overall aesthetic. If you want an Indonesian movie then check out Marentau, which isn't even very good either, but at least it has a heart. And a story. And, like things that exist in a place somewhere adjacent to the planet earth. Then it ends.

Fuck. Fuck.

Fuck this movie.

The only redemption to be found is watching a better movie afterwards. In my case it was The Lives of a Bengal Lancer. With you it could almost be anything.

People Love These Lists!

There's been a bit of a kerfuffle about Vertigo replacing Citizen Kane as the "greatest" film of all time. It's kind of easy for me to reconcile this as either it's a sign of Citizen Kane needing to be retired (in the same way that we could probably safely remove Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band from the running of greatest albums as it's something of a shoe-in) or it is a sign of Sight and Sound losing their mind as Vertigo is profoundly boring. Then again, I do own it, maybe I should watch it again. . .

Either way, this article came out as a reply to all of that and I realize that it's about time for me to review my current list.

Alien
Blade Runner
Taxi Driver
Terminator 2: Judgement Day
Yojimbo
Seven Samurai
The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp
The Big Lebowski
Rushmore
Apocalypse Now

Looking at it now, I realize that there's a few titles that bounce in and out of the list, but there's a core set that just stay on. I'm pretty happy with this list. It's better than it was, I think. I mean, I have to feel that way, right?

Then again, lists are inherently kind of silly.

A Perfect Movie

Right now I'm working on a big, long rant about space travel, so in the mean time, I want to point out a film that you should see: The Battle of Algiers.

For those that don't know The Battle Algiers, it is an Italian directed movie about the end of French colonialism in Algeria. It documents the violent clashes, the terrorism, and the hideous tit-for-tat that eventually led to the overthrow of the French regime specifically in the city of Algiers. It's also much more than that. It's a thriller that also happens to be a highly political film-- one you could almost take any way you want. It is also as an immensely allegorical movie, but none of that meaning or weight makes the drama or the specific details of the Algerian revolution any less impactful, it's as fresh now as it was when it came out. In short, it's a classic.

For those that do know what the deal with this movie: This is me guilting you into watching it. What are you doing living a life without this movie? Do you think you are God?

And for those of you who have seen it you know that I'm stating the obvious. I might as well wax on about Breathless or Rashomon.

The overthrow of French rule in Algeria celebrates its 50th anniversary this year. I don't expect you to suddenly care one way or the other, but if that's the excuse that puts you over the edge, then that'd be just dandy.

The Battle of Algiers is currently available in a beautiful set from the Criterion Collection and the packaging alone is almost worth the purchase.

If you love politics, if you love history, if you love really stylish films, and if you just love film, you really do owe it to yourself to see this film. You're welcome ahead of time. And if you're the type of Frenchman that is still ass-hurt about Algeria, then I would recommend that you avoid The Day of the Jackal and then get over it, bro.

Sino-Cinema and you!

I was watching the caper movie Let the Bullets Fly and I realized something that I wasn't proud of, I realized that I know jack shit about Chinese history.

I actually had to find out when the movie took place by watching the trailer. I guess it's assumed that if you're watching this film, you're Chinese, so you just know what the deal is. You understand the imagery, you understand the language (and there's a lot of that going on, which makes me feel bad for the Cantonese film student who has to learn about Billy Wilder), and you understand the forward movement of time in terms of China's history. I don't know any of that and it made me feel dumb and confused. I don't like feeling dumb and confused, Chinese film industry!

Really, though, why should they stop to explain their film? As lacking in knowledge as Americans might be of world history and geography you don't have to explain The Godfather or Apocalypse Now to an audience member. They understand the basics of this story and this time period without actually knowing anything about the Gulf of Tonkin Incident or that the mob is a CIA front for the New World Order. None of these movies pause to explain things to the slow foreigner, they just tell a story. Hell, maybe Let the Bullets Fly is payback for decades of westerns.

I can't rationalize my way out of this, though, not even if I tried. I mean, it's 2012, I'm a literate American, I have DSL, and China is a five thousand year old nation with a population of one-billion people and what I know about their history starts with Dynasty Warriors 3 and ends with Rush Hour 2.I also know that there's a rumor that the Chinese drink their own pee because it's good for your skin. I have my doubts about veracity of that rumor. Regardless of whether it's true or not that should not be the first thing to pop to mind when I think "What up with China?"

All knowing about this does is underline my ignorance of that particular chunk of the world. I don't know Sino from Shinola. So, I decided to solve this problem by watching some more movies about China and by the Chinese.




Naturally I started with a movie about the Rape of Nanking.

The Nanking Massacre is something I'm familiar with to some degree. I've watched a documentary or two on the topic and it's popped up in books I've read and classes I've had, so despite how ignorant I have positioned myself as the content of City of Life and Death did not come out of the blue.

It's a weird movie. On the outside it seems to want to be The Battle of Algiers. They're both gritty, they're both political films by their very subject matter, they're both chock full of violence, they both revolve around one particular city during one particular conflict, and they both chose to be filmed in black and white. The most important difference is that The Battle of Algiers is one of the greatest films ever made and City of Life and Death is not.

That seems to be where it ends, though, because despite its outward appearances, City of Life and Death is basically a straight melodrama with all of the devices and blocking of a standard blockbuster (with a few dashes of steady cam here and there). When this movie wants to go big, it goes very big, too big in fact to still have a foot in reality. None of this helps when you add on the fact that one of the best movies of all time shares a similar style and premise (Plus the title recalls Rome, Open City, which can't be doing it any favors either).

Now, again, I'm quite sure the Rape of Nanking was an intense event and I don't mean to denigrate that, it's just that it doesn't not quite translate into a film as well as it could have.In this case heightening the emotions of the film keeps it from being grounded, it makes it the viewer aware that they're watching a movie about Japanese war crimes and not an actual human experience.

I know there's a fine tradition of Chinese neo-realist films, it is just that going from Let the Bullets Fly to this makes this war movie's operatic moments stand out all that much more. Opera is fine and it has its place in film, but in this particular case the melodramatic aspects undermine what I imagine to be a serious and realistic film. Realistic films don't call for stage blocking. A stylistic quirk isn't something you want to be thinking about, especially when it comes to something like international war crimes. It's not something any film should ever want, really.

Then there's the fact that the very idea (or appearance) of sensationalizing rape and mass murder is a risky undertaking. Either it seems redundant to add further horror to something that is inherently horrifying or it seems exploitative about making a commercial product of somebody's suffering. It might not be a fair criticism and it isn't likely the intent of the authors, then again if the film worked better, I wouldn't be bringing it up.

City of Life and Death does have its moments in between its fairly average world building. I would imagine that it is much more emotionally arresting if you're unfamiliar with the Nanking Massacre and even without the cold shock it does stand out as a pretty solid drama. Despite some more questionable CGI, the film's action sequences are pretty well composed. They don't rank up their with the urban battles of Enemy at the Gates or, again, Battle of Algiers, they do seem to get across the very specific kind of terror that fighting in cities creates. Plus, I doubt that they had the resources of either of those films.

The film also doesn't sap the humanity out of the Japanese either, which, upon reading what they did during the war seems like a very reasonable stylistic choice. It gives its Japanese enough space and humanity to keep it from becoming the kind of one-sided, gung-ho history lessons that a lot of war movies decide to become.

Even though the Japanese soldiers seem to fit into very particular archetypes (here's the reluctant soldier, here's the proud and implacable commanding officer, here's the zealot, et al.), at does make the effort to make them human beings before they're war criminals-- no small feat for an army that perpetrated something called the "Rape of Nanking."

It shows them as people who are caught up in a situation they didn't create and what they do with it, regardless of their nationality and the Chinese (and their European defenders) find themselves in the very same situation.It's this parallel that keeps the film whole, even if it isn't particularly compelling. That's not a profound point to make, I know, it is appreciable when you consider the kinds of emotions this story must involve.

Despite how much the oddness of the "comfort women" aspect of the plot makes me want to squirm and tut approvingly there is one particular moment that tells me that a lot more thought was put into the subtext of this film than you would have previously assumed.

The scene in question involves a young woman being raped by a Japanese soldier at what amounts to a militarized brothel. There's a moment where this woman turns to a Japanese man and she gives him this look that very clearly states that she has all of the power in this particular relationship despite every outward indication that she is a victim. It's a complex and small thing to get across in this much larger film, but it stands out as the one memorable moment that isn't entirely based on shock or misery. I don't know that I've ever seen a woman give a look like that in cinema and I'm glad for that.

I know that saying it's one of the most elegant and rape scenes I've ever seen sounds like a glib joke.** I also know that its worth acknowledging that there are many ways that something like sexual assault can be handled in fiction besides, "Oh, isn't this terrible and fucked up?" These terrible things are not there to be exploitative or to victimize people and that actually does create some compelling, if brief, drama.

The next movie on the list that I tried to watch was the The Founding of a Party, which lasted for about twenty minutes before I went cross-eyed.




Remember when I had an editor and a maximum word count? No? Well, I was a mess then, too, but let's not let that bog us down.

Anyways.

Now, while it's embarrassing to be a grown man in 2012 with the internet and everything to know a high school Power Point presentation amount of information about a country with over a billion people, the fact remains: I really do not have the time for this. My dome is already chock full of World War II stuff and I've still got to cram a bunch more Afghanistan stuff in there and there is never going to be a point where I'm satisfied with what I know about those times and places.

The reality is that I'm always learning new things, even about things that I know quite a bit about already. For example, I didn't even know about the rumor that Afghan women, upon capturing enemy soldiers, would rape them and then pee down their throats until they died! I've been reading about Afghanistan for years and that's the first time I ever heard that!

I bet you didn't know that and now we've learned something together!

The closest I get to knowing anything either interesting or substantial about the Celestial empire has come from research I was doing about other countries. It's kind of impossible to dodge the Rape of Nanking and the Second Sino-Japanese War because you can't exactly read up on the Pacific Front of WWII without involving China in some aspect-- most historians consider them to be a big part of that whole affair. So, there's that.

The second era of Chinese history that I'm familiar with is a side-effect of trying to learn about British colonialism during the Victorian era (and there's a lot of it!). Specifically I was trying to learn about the upheavals and uprisings and minor empires of Central Asia during the second half of the 19th century and I ran into the Dungan Revolt.I mean, it's one thing to learn about small wars that nobody else has ever heard of, but it's an entirely different bag of marbles to learn that there's entire peoples that you've never even dreamed of existing. It's exhausting and it's discouraging and usually by the time I find out about this stuff, I say "Fuck it" and read a chapter of this Murakami book.

But my knowledge basically starts and ends with that singular event (and even that I am not too hot on). It's more or less like saying "I'm familiar with early American history because I am familiar with the works of Jeremiah Johnson." That shit won't hold together when you're defending your dissertation.

In my defense there doesn't seem to be any movies about the Dungan Revolt, so at least what I do know I can say I had to find in a book. Or, more likely, a wikipedia page of questionable historicity.

In my further defense, not knowing much about foreign peoples and histories isn't something exclusive to countries full of white people. Take France for example: I keep on finding out new things about there every time I go back into the World War II history hole. Like, do you know how many republics France has had? How many do you people need?

Oh, wait, no I do know one more thing about Chinese history, which is "Free Tibet?" Right? That still seems like the right choice to make, doesn't it?

All of this adds up to more than nothing, right?



Other Chinese films I have watched/tried to watch/got angry while watching-- I'll be brief--

Iron Monkey 2-- 

Iron Monkey 2 is most confusing because it seems that it could take place anywhere between 1890 and 1945. That doesn't seem to be a stylistic choice, it seems that the movie's budget was "Things that fell off of a moving truck on its way to an antique disposal facility." It's an ugly, confusing mess and I don't think that's due entirely to my pre-establish murky notion of Chinese history.I honestly have serious doubts about whether or not it is actually related to the original Iron Monkey in any way.

Project A 2--
Jackie Chan is always fun and while it has much better choreography and art design I still have to wonder why all of these Chinese men are wearing machine-made t-shirts from the 1980's. That is something I am certain is not an aspect of Chinese history.

The Last Emperor--
This barely counts, but I'm putting it on the list because it is an actual movie that is actually worth a damn.While we could talk about the cinematography or the epic storyline or whatever, this movie stands out in my mind because it includes a scene where it is established that the emperor has two eunuchs whose job description includes: "Smelling the feces of the emperor." There's a reason it won Best Picture. I'm sure there's a lot of people that think it's stylistic and "prestigious" nonsense and hardly deserves to be nominated for such prestigious awards, much less win them, but on the other hand fuck those people.

Nanking-- 
In my mind, one of the other burdens City of Death has is that it has to compete with Nanking.Not only does it overcome the pretentious premise, but it's one of the most arresting documentaries I've ever seen. It also succeeds as important in the way "important films" fail to do. It isn't about awards, it is about documenting one of the uglier episodes in human history. It also made me have to accept the fact that a Nazi party member could exist as proof of the potential goodness in all human beings.



Alright, that's enough of whatever that was. I'm going to go put this to bed by watching the rest of Big Trouble in Little China.

EDIT: Holy shit there's an arcade shooter called War in Shanghai 1937. Fuck.

*After doing ten seconds of research I discovered that the film was set during a period known as the "Warlord Era," which in terms of the name of an era is far more badass than the Gilded Age or the Belle Epoque. Plus, the Warring Twenties is even a cooler rhyme than its Western brother, the Roaring Twenties. I also like that "cliques" were apparently a major part of Chinese politics throughout the ages. It makes me think that China was ruled by insane high school girls for a number of years.


**Here's an article from Jezebel about how to make a rape joke. It was made in wake of Mr. Tosh's ill-advised response to a heckler and I think its safe to say that this is one of the better reasoned arguments regarding the subject

Let Me Turn My Chair Backwards (We Need to Talk)

Hey kids, I don't normally use this blog to talk about real issues. I usually just dick around, but I was recently made aware of the Look East Festival by a friend of mine and I was reminded of something that has been troubling me for a long time in movies (and not that A Bittersweet Life has been around for seven years and I won't have gotten around to seeing it until this film festival). And it was then that I realized that I've been shirking my responsibility as both a blogger of importance and an integral pillar of the community. I need to talk about some serious things. We need to talk about some serious things.

We need to talk about hammer crime.

Yes, that's right. Every year literally tens of fictional characters are killed or wounded with hammers. Some hammers, some not, some without even names. And we need to make our voices heard and put a stop to this senseless form of tool-based violence.

Dracula, perhaps the patron saint of hammer crime.

Er, no, wait. No. Sorry. Wrong kind of Hammer crime. (Though they are using a hammer to put that stake into Dracula. Note to self: Investigate Hammer hammer violence further. Also, under what statutes is killing a dracula a crime? Is the burden of proof on the state or the vampire slayer?)

 

Watch out, Korean mook, there is a hammer on the loose!

Most memorably though, we have to go back to Korea in Oldboy, which not only has one of the most egregious hammer fights of all time, but one of the most brilliantly shot and edited hammer fights, making its sins even more heinous. After all, a hammer fight in a hallway is one thing, but it is quite another to hide behind the precepts of art. Have you no shame, Chan-Wook Park?

I'd go on and on about what makes this one scene in the movie so fantastic, but it'd just read like a list so instead I'd just recommend that you never watch Oldboy except under the strict auspices of learning about hammer and hammer-related crime.

Also, was there any hammer murders in Sympathy for Lady Vengeance? I don't know. Probably! I can't remember! Their were tarps! And bizarre editing choices! That seems damning enough for my tastes!

Then there's The Chaser where most, if not all, of the deaths are hammer related. What's going on, Korea? You got nothing but hammers going into people's heads! That's not what hammers were invented! They're invented for building houses! And cracking nuts! People aren't nuts, they're people!

Beautiful? Yes. Dangerous? Oh, you better believe it.

But the problem doesn't end with that! Oh no, it's crossed the Pacific as is documented in the dangerously stylish Drive. You think it's cool for the guy from The Notebook to bash up a skuzzy strip club owner? Maybe it is, but maybe someday you'll be dressed in a track suit telling a future porn actress to put a sponge in there because she's losing him money and then who will watch out for you? The Goz? Nope. Not him. Too late. You had your chance and now he's hitting you with a hammer and maybe he's not going to stop.

I even podcasted about it.

Then there's London Boulevard, which not only features several instances of hammer crime, but is also a cinematic crime. How can we live in such a world? How can we hand this world off to our children? How will the returning ancient Mayan space-gods devour their essences when they live in a world where such things can come to pass. I don't even think we deserve to be destroyed by returning ancient Mayan space-gods, I just want to vomit. I want to die and I want to vomit and I don't even care who cleans up the mess.

Now, besides making you aware of one thing, this blog entry did have a point, which is that I am going to go see A Bittersweet Life at the Look East Festival and I would recommend that you do, as well (There are other movies, one being hosted by an awesome professor I had, but none of them have a chain-smoking hitman in a tailored suit with serious Le Samourai inflections, so, there you are). I've wanted to see it for quite a long time, but it's never been available (legally) in the United States, so I am going to strike (symbolically) while the iron is hot (also symbolically).

(Oh, hey, the director of A Bittersweet Life also directed The Good, the Bad, and the Weird! That's fun.)

Does it have hammer crime? I don't know! Only time will tell. But if there is I plan to be writing a letter to both Korean governments lodging my complaints. What is acceptable is if some full blown gun fire goes into some peoples' faces. I'll let you guys know on the 23rd when the festival starts. Until then keep your conscience clean and your tool belt buckled.

Too Late to Matter: A Review of Melancholia

Too Late to Matter: A Review of Melancholia
Or
How Being Rich and Pretty Will Kill You Right Fucking Dead
by
James Kislingbury

I'm really trying extra hard to not sound like a smart ass when talking about Meloncholia. Besides being an ostensibly portentous film and is directed by Lord Jag Hole, Earl of Fuckwad-upon-the-sea, the movie deserves better than that, not only because even shitty films deserve some level of serious attention before they're thrown down the well, but this film is actually pretty good. Pretty darn good, in fact. It even ends with a big explosion, which is nice to see after the appropriately named dirge that is Melancholia.

Let's get started with the rambling, shall we?



This movie made me think of the great "Cultural Vegetables"

(or your "Cultural Vegetables", or whatever) argument. The argument itself is a more or less bullshit and I've always felt that it was invented by people who didn't want to admit that movies without robots fighting made them dumb, but it's one of these things that loom large over the whole medium. It's not a terrible argument, at all, and I've certainly encountered the exact opposite of the robot-movie pride crowd at film school (which is guys who think that scenes of somebody driving from Barstow to Mexico in real time is the height of artistry and not just boring, pretentious nonsense).

The vegetable argument stems from this idea that movies are either supposed to be fun and critically bulletproof or boring and built for the elites (read: snobs). In this world films are only meant for popular entertainment and anything that deviates from that must be the opposite (and again, for snobs). That isn't the whole argument, it's just that for the most part I've only ever seen morons press for this worldview.

It's a crock of shit that wouldn't have flown back when people like David Lean were making blockbusters about Russian poets. It speaks of something else besides the content of movies. Of course there are boring movies and there are intellectually vapid movies and every other kind of movie on other. The fact remains, though, that just because something is serious, it doesn't mean that it has to be boring. The whole point of Melancholia is to make you feel bad-- and it completely succeeds for all of the right reasons. How is a movie being compelling and emotionally engaging a vegetable? There is value in a movie being as successfully unpleasant as this one.

A great example of this is The Seventh Seal which I just re-watched on glorious Blu-Ray. While watching it, I realized even the most infamously sullen film makers of all time, Ingmar Bergman, is capable of making light and funny scenes juxtaposed between, well, scenes of a knight playing chess with Death. It's not all chess and death is what I'm getting at. This bares on Melancholia, because, like Bergman's masterpiece (or one of them), this gloomy and existentially horrific story doesn't get in the way of it being a good film and, I dare say, an entertaining one. While The Seventh Seal is far and away a better film (which doesn't need to be stated, but here we are), I think this film falls into the same class of "movies that are explicitly about the end of existence, but are still kind of fun in a weird way."

With all of that said, Melancholia doesn't have any of the irony or even mirth that Bergman's movie does, as instead of being divided among an entire troupe, it's divided in two halves, "Part One: Justine" and "Part Two: Claire," which could be negatively described as "Catastrophically Poorly Thought Out Wedding" and "Catastrophically Unlucky Celestial Event." I don't think I'm out of line in saying that the first half, with its passing resemblance to Festen, offers the most laughter and mirth (I mean for catastrophe).

There's an entire worthwhile film in the reception alone. It has ancient drunken poon-hound John Hurt dancing with a fat chick, a rageaholic Kiefer Southerland, and Udo Kier doing his Udo Kier act. Oh, and it also has Stellan Skarsgaard and Alexander Skarsgard, which nobody else finds as funny of a pair as I do.

The second half starts sometime later with the sudden discovery of a massive doom planet that is (apparently) headed directly for earth. It’s a strange shift in content, but not one in tone. There is just as much of a looming demise on the horizon in the first half as in the second half, it’s just that at the wedding it’s not literal. There’s a lot more going on in the first half, which is odd because, again, there’s a giant metaphor headed for the Earth and you’d think that would be enough to keep one’s attention.

It’s almost as if the film was assembled from two entirely different scripts. Disconnect would be a good word for it, but both halves work on their own. It’s almost like complaining that Kill Bill Vol. 1 was all over the place. That’s kind of the point. In Melancholia it does work as this bizarre split as they’re tonally and thematically similar. With that said, if the first half of the movie was dragged out to be ninety minutes long and the arrival of the planet was ignored entirely, I’d be fine with that. In fact, I might prefer it.

With all of that said, as enjoyable and technically well put together as the movie is, there are hiccups within the story that go beyond the splitting of the two halves. The script is the primary hiccup and I can't tell whether it's because the script is purposefully overwrought or because this isn't von Trier's native tongue (at least Bergman was allowed to hide behind translators for the most part). Those moments of distraction are minor and even in the scenes they occur in it doesn't interfere with the overall tone (which is, in most scenes: Deep-seated psychological gloom teetering on sudden violence). The problem with the screenplay isn't that it’s a mess it’s that it has to compete with how everything else in the movie is so incredibly well composed. It sticks out more than it should as a result. So, even if it doesn’t ring true to the ear, it does ring true to the emotions.

If there's a weak link in the cast, I regret to say that it's Skarsgard (again: The hot guy from True Blood, not the sort of doughy guy from Thor—who are apparently father and son). For whatever reason he's played as somewhere between "affable dope" and "actor who isn't sure of his lines." I can put up with a lot of ambiguity (the fact that I liked this movie sort of proves that), but that's a distracting one as it just leads to me not wondering about the character but if Skarsgard is a good actor. He probably is. Looking at the rest of the cast I would find it odd for him to sneak through as a shitty actor. All of that said, it's an odd experience to watching a scene where a husband explains to his newly-minted wife that he bought them an apple orchard and having the sudden realization that he might just be Lenny and we're two steps away from owning a rabbit house.

It's that twilight area between normal guy and full-blown retard that I seem to be getting hitched up on. Maybe, though, that's the point as who in their right might would marry a woman that distressed and, well, sort of a bitch.

There are a few other, minor hiccups along the way. Or, maybe interrogative hiccups (like, the hiccup has a higher pitch at the end, somehow). Like, what exactly happens with her husband? And if she's this depressed and fucked-up why not just put her in a fancy mental home? And why would this dope marry her in the first place? The mind boggles.

If we had an answer, though, he wouldn’t have a movie. The entire movie hinges on poorly thought-out relationships. That and a planet colliding with the Earth. I guess the basic premise does require a little bit of leeway and in the movie’s defense, it handles these things pretty well. They are just hiccups after all.

Though that can of worms makes me start wondering why this movie exists. What is this movie's purpose? If it can’t handle something as basic as why the relationships exist, then either it’s missing something or I am.

As I said I enjoyed it, I would recommend it if you want a bummer movie, but I still don't know what the point of any of it is. "Being sad is shitty and it will kill you" is not the lesson we go to movies for. We go to be told killing the Nazis was great and that nice people bag the right member of the opposite sex and that black men in fat woman suits is hilarious. Sad semi-European people, though? Well that fucking escapes me to be honest.

I guess it's a worthwhile movie in that there isn't any apparent rhyme or reason to the work other than that idea that melancholia is not goddamn good. It's either a sign of excellent direction and vision to make a movie with no real answer to it or it's a sign that you have no fucking idea what you're doing. I'd like to think it's more the former than anything else.

Maybe the lack of a satisfying answer is somehow a reflection of depression itself? Too far? Sorry. I'll take that one back.

I'm lucky that the moment I gave up on was about ten minutes from the end and at the end I felt a kind of relief that I almost exclusively reserve for movies that suck (like Outrage, which I saw about a week later in the same theater. God. What a stinker). In this case I felt it because it succeeded in the task it set out to do, which was make a horrific, brooding meditation on depression. Mission accomplished. Melancholia works exactly how it should. It’s a well acted and well made movie and yet it’s not one I would recommend anyone to rush out and see. I’m glad my friends asked me out to see it because otherwise I would have spent the night dwelling on my own home-made misery instead of someone else’s on the silver screen.

But don't just take my word for it!



Alright, let me get my Melancholia jokes out of the way (ahem):
1) I'm really surprised that they had the budget to attract and crash an entire planet into the earth.
2) When I go to a Scandinavian wedding movie I damn well expect some laughs.
3) I can't decide which lame title is funnier to me "Melonbowlia" or "Cornholia." Both suck. Both almost make me want to giggle.
4) Watching The Seventh Seal immediately before this movie was not a great choice for a number of reasons.

Good. It's all out of my system now.

SIDE NOTE: Here's another article about defending "boring" movies. Unless I already posted it. Which is likely.

Cinecult: Chiarascuro Chambara

[Editor's Note: I've been futzing around with this post for far too long not to post it. I'd appologize for the delay, but you don't really care, do you? Nah. That's healthy.]


Yes! Yes! Fuck those samurai up!

I just got out of Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins. I'm going to try to refrain from giving a full blown review because I neither have the time, the inclination, nor the sobriety to coherently espouse my opinions on the film. I will leave that to better men and sunnier days. Or at least until I get bored or need a concluding paragraph.

13 Assassins is from the mind of Takashi Miike, who is probably most famous for making a movie where a guy does a sixty foot long line of coke and then explodes the world, as well as a musical with an alien, along with the movie with an assassin who comes all over the people he kills with modified ice skates which sits right next to a surreal road movie where a yakuza member changes genders and eventually emerges from the vagina of a woman hand first.

He's an intermittent blast is what I'm saying.

To say the least, there's a bit of a pedigree to this movie. Maybe a dubious one-- IE: one of those pedigrees that only fucking your cousin for 400 years can create, but a pedigree nonetheless. This particular movie has a pedigree beyond that, it's a remake of a 1963 movie (Don't worry, there's a punchline coming).


They don't make trailers like that any more, do they? Thank God.

The last Miike movie I watched was Sukiyaki Western Django, which is a remake of another genre film from the 1960's. 13 Assassins suffers from the same problem, but where 13 Assassins differs from Django is that the remixed Asian Western is a mind-boggling bad composite of swill and trash and it's safe to say that the title is the best thing about it (See: I Spit on Your Grave, Hot Tub Time Machine, and Snakes on a Plane*).

If you want to know what Sukiyaki Western Django looks like, imagine a world where Quentin Tarantino did a bunch of DMT and decided to make a samurai movie exclusively staring Americans who spoke Japanese phonetically. That's it in a nutshell. It's a mess, not even the tiniest bits of the madness work together, and what's worse is that unlike Miike's uglier and crazier films, it isn't even all that much fun. It's neither as good as the Westerns it copies or the samurai films it is mired in and more than a few of the Westerns it's aping are pretty poor in the first place.


Beware the film with a blurb from Eli Roth. And, yes, that is QT himself.

It's kind of funny. I started watching the first Django movie the other day (which Tarantino is taking the name of for his new film, because I guess that mine is still paying out). It's not a great movie by any means. Apparently, at the time, it was really revolutionary from a violence stand point. Nothing went as far as that-- at least not Westerns-- before Django came along. Looking at it now, it comes off as a goofy B-movie that's plenty of fun and worth seeing if you're a Spaghetti Western completest, but I only see doom in being too inspired by it. I mean, I know I'm not supposed to bother worrying about gun mechanics in an Italian B-movie, but it still drives me crazy that. . . ah, I'm babbling again. Sorry. I've got an upcoming entry on Spaghetti Westerns coming up, I just think that the timing of all of this is funny.

Alright, alright. It isn't that funny. Bizarre? Weird? Metaphysically malicious? Who knows. In short: Go see The Good, the Bad, and the Weird instead.

Anyways, I'm not talking about 13 Assassins at all, am I? Sorry. Sorry, again. Writing and editing this going from drunk to sober to waffling between the two and back to drunk again has done me no favors. I'm sure there's a lesson in this.

13 Assassins isn't a great movie. It is an interesting one and it's rather tame by the standards of Takashi Miike (despite there being more than a few torture victims and at least two rapes that I can remember, in addition to the expected sundry of slashings, stabbings, and executions). There's some very horrific scenes in the beginning that set the stage for the second half of the movie, which plays out like a Chambara interpretation of Straw Dogs and 300 (I'm sure I could draw up a mathematical formula for this. Gimme a minute.). It's also a team movie, a sword fight movie (obviously), and ultimately, a siege movie**.

Of course the elephant in the room for all of this is one film. At the end, when you boil everything down and no matter what angle you come from, one film, above all, stands out as the specter hovering over this whole picture-- Picture, hell-- this whole genre. That film is Seven Samurai.

That isn't necessarily a good thing. Seven Samurai, as you may know already, is a perfect film. It might be the most perfect film ever made (I'm of the opinion that, yes, there can be more than one perfect thing. I mean, we got Jesus and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, you explain that).

To his credit, I don't think Miike was attempting to out Kurosawa Kurosawa, but he did try to out Leone Leone and look at the mess that got us in. There's ambition and then there's insanity.



Toshiro Mifune has no real baring on this article other than his attachment to Kurosawa. He just happens to be one of my favorite actors of all time. So, there's that.

But there I got dipping too deep into the review pool. I'll stop.

Overall I liked it, though a movie like this, with such a specific plot and result can only run up against the elephant in the the movie house: Seven Samurai.

There is no chambara film that compares with Seven Samurai. In the same way there is no mafia movie that compares with The Godfather or no detective movie that compares with The French Connection or no western compares with Once Upon a Time in the West (because I already named that other one he made. It isn't isn't fair, but I'm a film nerd and worse yet, I'm a Kurosawa nerd. It is especially unfair since, like 13 Assassins lives in the shadow of its betters (like Yojimbo and Sword of Doom and Harakiri), so too does the rest of cinema live in the shadow of Seven Samurai.

It's the statue of David, it's the Nightwatchmen, it's the 5th Symphony, it's Swan Lake, it's everything***. It's the best you'll ever get. I might be wrong about that, but I'm not far wrong.

That film one of the most venerated films of all times by critics, by fans, by nerds, by whoever. For me, it has a special emotional resonance. I borrowed my copy of it from a guy I looked up to in a coffee shop (I was twelve or thirteen, in my defense) and from there, my whole like, I'd like to think, changed. I watched it on my PS2 of all things (my parents didn't own a DVD player until years later and the only way I watched DVDs for years was on my game console) and even though it skipped, I loved what I saw. I eventually rented it from Blockbuster (haha, remember those?) to see it in its complete and unmarred form and it still hit me in a way I've never been hit before. I've described the first time I saw The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly as a religious experience and Seven Samurai isn't far from that. It hit me in a certain way at a certain time, but unlike I think a lot of movies or songs I like because of what they represent (when I was young, when I lost my virginity, when I first heard metal music, etc.) Seven Samurai stands up. I guess I was lucky in the order.

With that in mind, obviously 13 Assassins can't compare. But, it isn't quite as quick or clean cut as that. It reminds me of Seven Samurai, it isn't aping it and that's why I genuinely liked it (bringing a flask of Jameson with me and talking to the nerd to my left about Miike's works helped, no doubt). It's chock full of thrills, kills, and spills****.

I guess that's all you need, sometimes. Not everything can be the greatest spectacle in cinema history. Sometimes there's a place for just doing well. In fact, that's all art really is. It's people doing pretty well in whatever field for long enough to make a name and buy a house and maybe feed they're babies. In that regard 13 Assassins ironically fills up that water line. It's a fun movie. If you want to see an unrestrained but less well composed Seven Samurai (or any film like it), then I've got the film for you.

Fourteen year old James Kislingbury would have loved to have watched 13 Assassins in the theater, I can tell you that.



*I didn't mention Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, because it's a fantastic movie and my favorite Sam Peckinpah movie by far.

**I swear to God I'm making a list of siege movies. Some dark day there will be an entry on that. Also, maybe train movies?

***I'm not sure how to cite paintings or symphonies or any of that. I'm sure the MLA inspector would be appalled.

****That is a reference to The Simpsons. I can't find the episode in question on the internet. That is not Google's fault, I'm too drunk.