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  • 23 May

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    Movies I Watched at the 65th Cannes Film Festival 2012

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    With the 65th Cannes Film Festival enjoying one of its most (potentially) impressive line-ups in years I was lucky enough to attend the festival this year. Due to work and financial constraints I could only make the first few days of the festival, but I still managed to squeeze in 10 films (and the last half of Project A on the beach). So to give you my thoughts on what I watched, plus to rub it in for those who weren’t there, here are capsule reviews for everything I caught.

    A couple of my friends and colleagues are still there and plan to record some podcasts during the festival, so keep an eye out at Blueprint: Review for those. I recorded a couple with them last week so check those out over there too.

    Flying Swords of Dragon Gate

    Director: Tsui Hark
    Screenplay: Tsui Hark
    Starring: Jet Li, Xun Zhou, Kun Chen
    Country: Hong Kong
    Running Time: 121 min

    (2.5/5)


    Tsui Hark’s latest martial arts extravaganza is entertaining and handsomely mounted but rather uninspired and clumsily plotted. There are a few too many characters too and it gets a little confusing at times. It’s not as enjoyably crazy as Hark’s previous offerings either which was disappointing but it is action packed and still fun to watch. The 3D is OTT which does it favours at times, adding depth to the lavish and extravagant sets, but distracts at others with a barrage of items being thrown at the camera.

    Moonrise Kingdom

    Director: Wes Anderson
    Screenplay: Wes Anderson, Roman Coppola
    Starring: Jared Gilman, Kara Hayward, Bruce Willis, Frances McDormand, Bill Murray, Edward Norton
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 94 min

    (3.5/5)


    Wes Anderson’s new film is charming and enjoyable but ultimately very slight. The central romance is a little too creepy to anchor the emotional core with the kids acting like adults all the time, but Anderson’s style takes centre stage and it’s clearly lovingly crafted, making for a very pleasant and easy watch. Maybe that’s feint praise but it’s hard to come up with a better way to describe the experience. I certainly enjoyed it at least.
    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 06 May

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    Blu-Ray Review: Yakuza Weapon

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    Director: Tak Sakaguchi & Yûdai Yamaguchi
    Screenplay: Tak Sakaguchi & Yûdai Yamaguchi
    Based on a manga by: Ken Ishikawa
    Starring: Tak Sakaguchi, Shingo Tsurumi, Mei Kurokawa, Akaji Maro
    Producers: Yoshinori Chiba, Toshiki Kimura & Shûichi Takashino
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 106 min
    Year: 2011
    BBFC Certificate: 18

    (2.5/5)

    After spending the last couple of weeks watching and reviewing Mizoguchi films and Mark Cousins’ Story of Film I’m heading right over to the other side of the spectrum by covering the latest Japanese splatter-comedy offering, Yakuza Weapon. The star (Tak Sakaguchi) and writer (Yûdai Yamaguchi) of cult classic Versus join forces behind the camera after working together on Battlefield Baseball to co-direct this blood-soaked action comedy for specialist production company Sushi Typhoon (Cold Fish, Helldriver etc.).

    Ex-Yakuza Shozo (Tak Sakaguchi himself) discovers that his gang-boss father has been murdered and heads back home to find the culprit. When he returns he discovers that his father’s right-hand man Kurawaki (Shingo Tsurumi) was to blame and has ruthlessly taken over the business. Shozo of course heads off to take revenge, but an epic battle results in both of them being mutilated. A secret Japanese governmental agency who have their eye on Kurawaki then step in, kitting out Shozo’s missing arm and leg with a high powered mini-gun and rocket launcher, turning him into the Yakuza Weapon. Kurawaki meanwhile, takes it upon himself to build an army of super soldiers to get his own revenge, including turning Shozo’s former friend Tetsu against him.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 29 Apr

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    Blu-Ray/DVD Review: Ugetsu Monogatari & Oyu-Sama

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    Eureka are re-releasing some of their previous Kenji Mizoguchi Masters of Cinema releases in new dual format Blu-Ray & DVD editions. Below is my review of a two-film collection containing Ugetsu Monogatari and the lesser known Oyu-Sama. I reviewed the other set they released here – Review of Sansho Dayu & Gion Bayashi.

    Ugetsu Monogatari

    Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
    Screenplay: Yoshikata Yoda, Matsutarô Kawaguchi, Kyûchi Tsuji
    Based on Stories by: Akinari Ueda
    Starring: Masayuki Mori, Machiko Kyô, Kinuyo Tanaka, Ichisaburo Sawamura, Eitarô Ozawa
    Producer: Masaichi Nagata
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 94 min
    Year: 1953
    BBFC Certificate: PG

    (4.5/5)

    It’s very interesting listening to the special features for Ugetsu Monogatari where Tony Rayns talks about when the film was premiered at the Venice Film Festival. Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon had won the festival’s Golden Lion a couple of years previously and Mizoguchi was jealous. He wasn’t happy that this ‘upstart’ was one of the first Japanese directors to be recognized at such a level in the west. So he went to work on quite a personal project, Ugetsu Monogatari, in the hope of dethroning the ‘youngster’. It played at Venice and was declared the best film that year, but the judges refused to award it the Golden Lion, instead giving it the Silver Lion, claiming that no film was strong enough to gain the top prize that year. On top of this, Mizoguchi himself wasn’t happy with the film, claiming the studio made him change his intended ending. However, these days Ugetsu Monogatari is considered by many to be the director’s finest work and has cropped up on numerous lists as being one of the greatest films of all time. Personally, I think I’d side with Mizoguchi though to an extent. As great as the film was, it didn’t quite match up to Sansho Dayu in my eyes and to be honest, I even slightly preferred the less respected Gion Bayashi.

    Set during the Japanese Civil War of the sixteenth century, Ugetsu Monogatari follows the trials and tribulations of two men, Genjurô (Masayuki Mori) and Tobei (Eitarô Ozawa), as well as their wives (and son in Genjorô’s case). Genjorô is a hard-working family man who wants to profit on the inevitable war by selling his pottery to the soldiers. Tobei is a simple man who wants nothing more than to be a samurai but is told that he can’t even attempt to join their ranks without appropriate weaponry or armour. So he helps Genjorô produce a great stock of pottery to take to town and earn a slice of the profits. The war comes early as they have put the wares into the kiln though and the families are forced into refuge. Sneaking back into their village, the men do manage to rescue the results of their labour and take them to a further town, making a lot of money, but separating themselves from their wives. As the film goes on the men are punished in various ways for their greed, with Genjorô’s story bringing a supernatural element to proceedings as he is seduced by the mysterious Lady Wakasa (Machiko Kyô) and all memory of his wife seems to disappear with his new dream-like existence.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 28 Apr

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    DVD Review: The Story of Film: An Odyssey

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    Director: Mark Cousins
    Screenplay: Mark Cousins
    Starring: Mark Cousins, Lars von Trier, Kyôko Kagawa, Paul Schrader, Robert Towne, Bernardo Bertolucci
    Producer: John Archer
    Country: UK
    Running Time: 900 min
    Year: 2011
    BBFC Certificate: 15

    (5/5)

    Say what you like about the documentary itself, but nobody can deny that Mark Cousins’ The Story of Film: An Odyssey is a phenomenal achievement. Based on his own book of the same title, Mark Cousins presents us with an epic 15-hour love letter to cinema. Shown in the UK originally as a 15-part documentary series, the film was intended to be seen as a whole and played at numerous festivals in one go. This 5 disc DVD set presents it as such, only splitting the film 5 ways for storage reasons.

    Cousins describes in his introduction to the journey how the widely known history of cinema is inherently racist and sexist. He believed it was “time to redraw the map of cinema history”, presenting the true story of how film moved from the early static shots of traffic or people leaving factories to the variety of films we enjoy today. A lofty, arrogant statement to make of your own book/film perhaps, but as you move through this long trawl of film’s development over the past 11 decades it’s hard to disagree or scoff at the high ambitions of his work.

    Beginning with the very invention of film, the documentary moves chronologically through the last century or so, only overlapping from time to time with specific film movements that occured concurrently. Cousins’ primary focus is looking at the innovators of cinema; artists that changed film language and heralded new eras as well as looking at how historical change effected film. His scope spans the entire globe, drawing attention to revolutions in cinema big and small rather than going over old ground only covering Hollywood classics such as Citizen Kane or Casablanca (although these do get a foot in). This epic scale justifies the epic length of the piece and made the documentary eye-opening to me. Yes I’d heard of a large proportion of the filmmakers discussed, but it certainly got me onto a number I hadn’t, and also made me realise how many of these important directors I’d heard of but not actually discovered for myself. If one negative can be found in me watching The Story of Film it’s that it’s going to cost me a lot of money in DVD’s and Blu-Rays. As I first watched the ‘series’ as it was portrayed on TV I would add to a great ‘shopping list’ of films and filmmakers that I wanted to invest it.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 25 Apr

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    Cannes 2012 Festival Lineup Announced (update)

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    Wow, the list just keeps getting better. Now Ben Wheatley’s latest has been announced as part of the Director’s Fortnight. See below for an updated list of films.

    The full lineup has been announced for the 2012 Festival de Cannes and by God it look like a good ‘un. As well as Wes Anderson’s latest which was confirmed a while ago, they’re premiering work from Cronenberg, Andrew Dominik, Michael Haneke, John Hillcoat, Abbas Kiarostami, Ken Loach, Walter Salles, Carlos Reygadas and Alain Resnais, to name but a few of the art-house heavy hitters they’ve got running in the main competition. Outside of the competition there aren’t quite as many big names, but there’s still work from Argento and Takashi Miike as well as a film by David Cronenberg’s son, Brandon. An anthology film featuring shorts from directors Laurent Cantet, Benicio Del Toro, Julio Medem, Gaspar Noe, Elia Suleiman, Juan Carlos Tabio and Pablo Trapero sounds interesting too.

    Cannes is also famous for adding late entries, so I wouldn’t put it past PT Anderson or any other big names slipping another film into the mix just before the festival starts on May 16th.

    I got my accreditation confirmed yesterday so I’m getting very excited about heading down to the festival. I’m only around for the first 4 days unfortunately so I’ll be limited as to what I’ll be able to see, but I’m hoping the list below is in order of performance (as it doesn’t seem to be alphabetical and starts with opener Moonrise Kingdom) so I should catch a few of the first half of the in-competition titles. I’ve got friends who are staying for the whole fest so I might twist a few arms to get some more coverage for you guys.

    The full list is under the seats…

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 22 Apr

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    Weekend of Trash VII

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    The Weekend of Trash is back (backstory and previous write-ups can be found here – 1, 2, 3 & 4, 5 & 6). The guys visited me for the first time, saving me the trip down to Bristol. We didn’t all get together until the Saturday, but I snuck in a trash-classic on Friday to make up for it. There were no horrors this time around, but we got plenty of action films watched which is fine by me.

    The reviews are a bit brief because I’m ultra busy, but I’ve included plenty of clips and trailers for your enjoyment. Lets have a look at what we watched:

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 22 Apr

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    Blu-Ray/DVD Review: Sansho Dayu & Gion Bayashi

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    My regular coverage of releases from Eureka’s Masters of Cinema series is starting to make me worry about my reputation as an online critic as my reviews seem to be a stream of 4-5 star love-ins. With their remit of restoring and remastering well-loved and forgotten classics from some of the world’s finest directors, it’s hard to find fault with their output though and when they continue to release films as incredibly good as they do, it’s difficult to buck the trend. Not that I’d want to. I guess these reviews are more a reminder of the work they are currently doing and a way of helping the discerning film collector add to their shopping list.

    Eureka are re-releasing some of their previous Kenji Mizoguchi Masters of Cinema releases in new dual format Blu-Ray & DVD editions. Below is my review of one of the first sets to be released, a two-film collection containing Sansho Dayu and the lesser known Gion Bayashi.

    Sansho Dayu (a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff)

    Director: Kenji Mizoguchi
    Screenplay: Fuji Yahiro & Yoshikata Yoda
    Based on a Story by: Ogai Mori
    Starring: Kinuyo Tanaka, Yoshiaki Hanayagi, Kyôko Kagawa
    Producer: Masaichi Nagata
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 125 min
    Year: 1954
    BBFC Certificate: PG

    (5/5)

    Sansho Dayu, alongside Ugetsu Monogatari, has always had a powerful reputation as being one of the finest examples of Mizoguchi’s work and can often be seen loitering around various ‘Greatest Films Of All Time’ lists. Often films which draw such critical admiration struggle to live up to the hype and require a second viewing to fully take in, but that wasn’t the case with Sansho Dayu for me. Along with Sunrise and Battleship Potemkin I’ve had an eye-opening year for cast-iron classics that I’d never got around to watching previously.

    Sansho Dayu (a.k.a. Sansho the Bailiff or Sansho the Steward) is based on a Japanese folk tale set in the Heian era, the final period of classical Japanese history. The story begins (told through flashbacks) with a compassionate governor being exiled by the military and governmental leaders in the area due to his wish to do good for the poor and needy under his rule. He is even taken away from his family, and several years later his wife Tamaki (Kinuyo Tanaka), son Zushio (Yoshiaki Hanayagi) and daughter Anju (Kyôko Kagawa) head off on the difficult journey across the country to reconcile with him. Along the way the children get separated from their mother though, to be sold into slavery and Tamaki gets sold to a brothel. The rest of the film follows the plight of the children as they struggle under the hand of Sansho the Bailiff, waiting until they are older and stronger to try and escape their forced servitude.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 18 Apr

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    Blu-Ray/DVD Review: Lifeboat

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    Director: Alfred Hitchcock
    Screenplay: John Steinbeck, Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited)
    Based on a story idea by: Alfred Hitchcock
    Starring: Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Walter Slezak, Mary Anderson
    Producers: Alfred Hitchcock & Kenneth Macgowan
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 98 min
    Year: 1944
    BBFC Certificate: U

    (4.5/5)

    When I was first getting into films as a young teenager, Lifeboat was always one of my ‘go to’ titles when I wanted to impress people with my knowledge and appreciation of film. Back then I only tended to watch the Casablancas and Gone With the Winds of the film world, I rarely ventured beyond ‘the canon’, so I felt like I was unlocking some hidden gem when I discovered the relatively unappreciated Lifeboat. I can remember liking the film a lot and for the decade or two that followed I’ve always brought it up in Hitchcock conversations as his ‘underrated classic’. Of course it’s not actually the most rare of films, but it does tend to get pushed aside in favour of titles like Psycho, Rear Window and Vertigo. These and many other of Hitchcock’s bonafide classics are rightly worthy of their status, but I always felt this needed a little more recognition. Well, I haven’t actually seen the film since those early days, until the fine people at Eureka offered me the chance to review their meticulously restored Masters of Cinema edition. Of course I jumped at the chance and have finally settled down with the film that had stuck with me for over half of my life, so what do I think of it now?

    For those of you that haven’t heard of Lifeboat, it’s a film that Hitchcock produced for 20th Century Fox during the Second World War in the first few years of his move to the USA. With David O. Selznick leaving producing duties to help with the war effort, Hitchcock saw his chance to make a picture on his own terms, so he came up with the story behind Lifeboat. This idea was then brought to John Steinbeck to produce a script, which was later adapted by Jo Swerling & Ben Hecht (uncredited). The film is about the rag-tag group of survivors of a ship torpedoed by the Germans during the war and how they cope together on a lifeboat as it drifts across the ocean, hopefully towards rescue. The waters are further muddied however by the arrival of one last survivor, a German from aboard the very submarine that put them in this situation.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 17 Apr

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    DVD Review: Four Horsemen

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    Director: Ross Ashcroft
    Written by: Ross Ashcroft, Dominic Frisby
    Starring: Noam Chomsky, Gillian Tett, Max Keiser, Prof. Joseph Stiglitz, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Camilla Batmanghelidjh
    Producer: Megan Ashcroft, Ross Ashcroft, Jason Whitmore
    Country: UK
    Running Time: 97 min
    Year: 2012
    BBFC Certificate: E

    (4/5)

    I‘m ashamed to say I tend to avoid discussing the economy and often sidestep documentaries like this. It’s not that the economic crisis isn’t affecting me or I don’t care – it’s effecting everyone around the world at the moment and isn’t going away anytime soon. I just don’t feel I know enough about what happened or what we can do about it to offer an opinion. I tend to hide in my little bubble of ‘I’ve got a job so I’m ok’ and not worry about such things, because I know if I research exactly where things are headed I’ll just make myself ill worrying about it because thats the kind of guy I am. However, when I was asked if I wanted to review Four Horsemen, a documentary about the very topic, I was feeling brave and figured maybe now’s the time to look into this financial meltdown business and have a bit more of an educated opinion on things. Besides, the blurb says the film offers solutions – they should make me feel better about it all.

    Well, I can’t say it did that exactly, but I’m certainly glad I watched the film in the end.

    Four Horsemen uses a simple concept in its presentation. It takes 23 ‘Global thinkers’, including Noam Chomsky, Gillian Tett, Max Keiser etc. and gets them to explain what they believe caused the recent financial disaster, what effect it is having and what needs to change for the western world to come out of the hole it has dug for itself. The film is broken into segments similar to these headers with the interviewees giving their thoughts through talking heads mixed with stock footage and some specially produced graphics used to illustrate some of the more complex financial aspects.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 12 Apr

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    Blu-Ray Review: The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume 2

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    The Complete Humphrey Jennings Volume 2: Fires Were Started brings together the short films and single feature that were made by Humphrey Jennings between 1941 and 1943. Thought by many to be his most fruitful period (in terms of quality), these films include The Heart of Britain, Words For Battle, Listen to Britain, Fires Were Started and The Silent Village.

    Produced for the Crown Film Unit during the Second World War, these five films were all commissioned by the government to boost moral and spread a positive message about Britain and all it stood for at the time. These films have much more value than mere curiosity in their propagandist qualities though. Humphrey Jennings is often thought of as one of Britain’s greatest and most influential documentary filmmakers, but unfortunately he died in 1950 aged 43 and he never got to produce much outside of the GPO and Crown Film Unit and only made one feature length film (Fires Were Started), so we can only imagine what he could have been capable of outside of the constraints of these state-led organisations.

    What he did produce is still of great value though and I’ll run through the gems available in this collection.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 07 Apr

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    DVD Review: Crows Zero

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    Director: Takashi Miike
    Written by: Shôgo Mutô
    Based on the manga by: Hiroshi Takahashi
    Starring: Shun Oguri, Takayuki Yamada, Kyôsuke Yabe, Meisa Kuroki
    Producer: Mataichirô Yamamoto
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 130 min
    Year: 2007
    BBFC Certificate: 15

    (2.5/5)

    Takashi Miike has had an insanely diverse and prolific career, with 88 directing titles under his belt in only 21 years (according to IMDB). These have ranged from his more famous fucked up, twisted work like Audition and Visitor Q to his recent samurai epic 13 Assassins and family friendly fare such as his forthcoming Ace Attorney (based on the popular video game series). Crows Zero is certainly one of his more mainstream films, although it has its share of dark edges.

    Genji (Shun Oguri) is a new transfer to the infamous Suzuran Senior High School for Boys, nicknamed “The School of Crows”. This is no ordinary school, no subjects or lessons ever seem to take place, it’s merely a territory in which the students fight for supremacy. In a bid to please his Yakuza father and take his rightful place at the head of the family, Genji pledges to topple current school ‘leader’ Serizawa (Takayuki Yamada) and prove he is capable of rising to the top. Seeing the boy’s potential and an opportunity to vicariously live out his own dream of making it big, small time hood Katagiri (Kyôsuke Yabe) takes the boy under his wing and teaches him how to climb up the ranks.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

  • 26 Mar

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    Blu-Ray/DVD Review: The Gospel According to Matthew

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    Director: Pier Paolo Pasolini
    Screenplay: Pier Paolo Pasolini
    Starring: Enrique Irazoqui, Margherita Caruso, Susanna Pasolini
    Producer: Alfredo Bini
    Country: Italy
    Running Time: 137 min
    Year: 1964
    BBFC Certificate: U

    (4/5)

    The second Pasolini Blu-Ray/DVD package to be released by Masters of Cinema after Accattone & Comizi D’Amore is the director’s classic retelling of probably the Bible’s most widely known book The Gospel According to Matthew.

    For those of you who have been living under a rock (bad semi-pun intended) for the last couple of thousand years, The Gospel According to Matthew tells the story of the birth, life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Pasolini’s film is no different, but skims over the Nativity and other earlier segments, focussing mainly on Jesus’ life as an adult.

    This film had a peculiar background. Pasolini was a well-known atheist, homosexual, and Marxist, so for him to approach such material in a country like Italy where Catholicism is the backbone to their entire society is bizarre. What is even more remarkable is that it was filmed by invitation from the Pope himself. With Pasolini’s reputation for making films about controversial and taboo subjects, it’s also surprising how closely it sticks to the subject matter and how ‘un-blasphemous’ (for want of a better phrase) it is.

    » Read the rest of the entry..

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