Archive for the ‘Reviews’ Category

  • 27 Feb

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    Blu-Ray/DVD Review: Insect Woman & Nishi-Ginza Station

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    Insect Woman (a.k.a. Nippon Konchûki)

    Director: Shôhei Imamura
    Screenplay: Keiji Hasebe, Shôhei Imamura
    Starring: Sachiko Hidari, Kazuo Kitamura, Jitsuko Yoshimura, Masumi Harukawa
    Producers: Kano Otsuka, Jirô Tomoda
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 123 min
    Year: 1963
    BBFC Certificate: 15

    (4.5/5)

    Masters of Cinema continue to release the early work of the Japanese New Wave pioneer Shôhei Imamura, with a dual format Blu-Ray & DVD edition of Insect Woman, considered one of his earliest masterpieces (alongside Pigs and Battleships from 1961). The film is also packaged with an earlier studio comedy, Nishi-Ginza Station (see below for a full review).

    Insect Woman is a clear step, or rather leap, towards the work Imamura would produce later in his career. As he is famous for stating, he has always been “interested in the relationship of the lower part of the human body and the lower part of the social structure… I ask myself what differentiates humans from other animals.” Insect Woman makes this question clear from the outset by opening on a shot of an insect struggling up a hill in some sort of fruitless journey it seems programmed to do. The ensuing film mirrors this fruitless existence with the life story of Tome (Sachiko Hidari), the bastard child of a poor family. Shunned by her ineffectual mother and treated like livestock by most of her family, her only source of love comes from her simple-minded father/step-father Chuji (Kazuo Kitamura), with whom she shares a creepy relationship that veers on the incestuous. After having a bastard child of her own, Tome leaves for Tokyo to earn a living to pay for the child, who lives back home with Chuji. She soon moves from the factories to prostitution though and her downtrodden innocence gradually turns her into a hardened old woman who tries to manipulate others to her advantage but ends up causing her own undoing. In the end the film comes full circle as her daughter Nobuko (Jitsuko Yoshimura) succumbs to some of the same vices as her mother and gets pregnant with possibly another bastard child. In the final shot we see Tome struggling up a dirt path on her way to see her, mimicking the insect’s struggle we opened with.

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  • 22 Feb

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    Review: Lancelot du Lac (1974)

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    [Throughout February and March, Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox will be presenting a retrospective of French master Robert Bresson's films entitled The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson. Film blogger Corey Atad has provided a summary of the program over at Dork Shelf. Lancelot du Lac will be screening once more on Tuesday, March 6th.]

    Lancelot du Lac was a major passion project for Robert Bresson that took him several years to eventually make. However, it isn’t the sort of grand, large-scale epic that one might imagine given both the great importance placed on it by its creator and, especially, the mythic nature of the story material. After all, the tales of King Arthur, Sir Lancelot du Lac and the other Knights of the Round Table make up some of the most oft-told tales in history, usually illustrated with magnificent portrayals of castles, battles and adventures. Yet Bresson offers a very different take; one very much exemplifying his strict ideas regarding control, minimalism and muted expression in the cinematic medium.

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  • 19 Feb

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    DVD Review: Afterschool

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    Director: Antonio Campos
    Screenplay: Antonio Campos
    Starring: Ezra Miller, Jeremy Allen White, Emory Cohen
    Producer: Josh Mond, Sean Durkin, Victor Aaron
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 107 min
    Year: 2008
    BBFC Certificate: 18

    (4/5)

    First time director Antonio Campos was only 24 when he made Afterschool, a disturbing look at the YouTube generation and how they deal with tragedy on top of the usual pressures of teenage life.

    Ezra Miller (We Need To Talk About Kevin) stars as Robert, a loner student in an exclusive prep school who has an unhealthy addiction to online videos and hardcore pornography. He joins the school’s AV club in an attempt to get closer to Amy (Addison Timlin), a girl he has a crush on, and is assigned to produce a school promo video. During this assignment he accidentally captures the dying moments of two popular senior girls who have overdosed on badly mixed cocaine. The film then follows Robert as he tries to deal with what he witnessed and the varying reactions of those around him as his video project is changed to producing a memorial for the dead girls.

    Afterschool is not an easy watch, especially the first half. Opening with a range of YouTube clips beginning with the inane and building to show Saddam Hussein’s execution and the bloody aftermath of some sort of Middle Eastern conflict, you know you’re not in for an easy ride. To rub salt in the wounds we then move on to see Robert masturbating over a dark, humiliating hardcore pornography video. This uneasy tone runs throughout the film and there is very little light amongst the darkness.

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  • 16 Feb

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    Blu-Ray Review: Repo Man

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    Director: Alex Cox
    Screenplay: Alex Cox
    Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Emilio Estevez,Tracey Walter, Olivia Barash
    Producer: Peter McCarthy, Jonathan Wacks
    Country: USA
    Running Time: 92 min
    Year: 1984
    BBFC Certificate: 18

    (4.5/5)

    Masters of Cinema continue their run of re-releasing cult classics from Universal’s vaults with a film which the term ‘cult’ seems to have been made for, Repo Man. I’ve seen the film about 3 times now and with each subsequent viewing I like the film more and more.

    For those of you unfamiliar with the film, Repo Man introduces us to Otto (Emilio Estevez), an punk loser living in L.A. with his parents, spending his days stacking shelves and his nights with his criminal friends at various punk parties and clubs. When he’s at his lowest he’s randomly approached and coaxed into ‘chauffeuring’ a car for Bud (Harry Dean Stanton). It turns out Bud is actually a ‘repo man’, one of a particularly despised group whose job it is to repossess cars from people behind on their payments. After unwittingly doing one of these jobs for Bud, Otto is begrudgingly brought onto the repo men team, and he quickly grows to love his new role. Meanwhile though, a mysterious car is roaming Los Angeles with a deadly and much sought after cargo in it’s boot (or trunk to any yanks out there). A wide variety of weird and wonderful groups join the chase as the repo men themselves learn of it’s value.

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  • 15 Feb

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    Review: A Man Escaped or: The Wind Bloweth Where it Listeth (1956)

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    [Throughout February and March, Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox will be presenting a retrospective of French master Robert Bresson's films entitled The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson. Film blogger Corey Atad has provided a summary of the program over at Dork Shelf.]

    With his 1956 film A Man Escaped, Robert Bresson may very well have made the definitive prison escape film. Based on real-life prisoner of war André Devigny’s experiences and set in the Nazi-run Fort Montluc in Lyon, 1943, it depicts the experiences of a captive named Fontaine (François Leterrier) as he carefully tries to form a plan to liberate himself. He relies on the precious few resources available to him: the meager furnishings of his cell, crucial windfalls of information and extra materials provided by his fellow prisoners, the inner strength he gathers and clings to as he carries out his dangerous actions. Often, pure, blind luck fortuitously intervenes, carrying Fontaine along a little bit further. He is eventually informed that he has been sentenced to death; very soon thereafter, he gains a cellmate in a young man named Jost (Charles Le Clainche). This causes Fontaine to consider whether to place his trust in his newfound acquaintance or take proper measures to ensure his own safety.

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  • 13 Feb

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    DVD Review: The Chameleon

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    The Chameleon DVD

    Director: Jean-Paul Salomé (Arsène Lupin, Female Agents)
    Screenplay: Jean-Paul Salomé, Natalie Carter, Christophe d’Antonio (book)
    Producers: Ram Bergman, Sidonie Dumas, Pierre Kubel, Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, Bill Perkins, Cooper Richey
    Starring: Marc-André Grondin, Famke Janssen, Ellen Barkin, Emilie de Ravin, Nick Stahl
    MPAA Rating: R
    Running time: 94 min.

    (2/5)

    In the years since the release of C.R.A.Z.Y., I haven’t had the opportunity to see Marc-André Grondin appear in much of anything. That’s not to say he hasn’t been working but his films are almost exclusively French language and rarely make a splash outside of Quebec. Enter The Chameleon.

    The ChameleonDirected Jean-Paul Salomé and adapted from a best selling novel by Christophe d’Antonio, The Chameleon stars Grondin as a French man who passes himself off as a 13 year old boy named Nicky who went missing years before from Louisiana. He claims he was kidnapped and taken to Europe where he was held captive, forced to speak French (hence his French accent) and abused both mentally and physically before making his escape and being picked up by French police.

    Though his sister is happy to have him back, Nicky’s mother isn’t convinced that he is really her son. Neither is the police. A local cop is convinced that the boy passing himself off as Nicky isn’t really the missing boy and she sets off to find out who he really is and in the process, uncover the truth of what happened to the real Nicky.

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  • 13 Feb

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    DVD Review: The Accidental Husband

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    The Accidental Husband

    Director: Griffin Dunne (Fierce People, Famous)
    Screenplay: Mimi Hare, Clare Naylor, Bonnie Sikowitz
    Producers: Jason Blum, Uma Thurman, Jennifer Todd, Suzanne Todd, Bob Yari
    Starring: Uma Thurman, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Colin Firth, Sam Shepard, Ajay Naidu
    MPAA Rating: PG-13
    Running time: 90 min.

    (1.5/5)

    With Valentine’s day a sleep away, it’s no surprise tomorrow’s release slate is loaded with romantic titles some new (Breaking Dawn: Part 1 opted for a Saturday release) some old and at least one that has been floating about for quite some time.

    The Accidental HusbandThe Accidental Husband doesn’t appear to have seen the light of day theatrically in North America and it’s not hard to see why. The story follows the trappings of a conventional romantic triangle with two very handsome and very different men, fiancé Richard (Colin Firth) and Patrick (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), and the woman, Emma (Uma Thurman), caught between the two. She’s the relationship “expert,” a radio doctor and newly minted author who shells out relationship advice to people she doesn’t know.

    On one such call, Emma doles out some advice to a bride-to-be that leads her to cancel her wedding. Patrick, the groom-to-be, decides to exact his revenge on the woman that ended his happy relationship and employs his best friend to alter City records to show that Emma is already married. To him. You can see where this is going from the moment you meet the two men. They’re night and day and while Emma goes around trying to get Patrick to sign the appropriate paperwork to end their “marriage” so that she can marry the successful publisher Richard, she falls for him and he for her and the next thing you know the two are married and expecting.

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  • 05 Feb

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    Review: Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne (1945)

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    [Starting Thursday, February 9th, Toronto's TIFF Bell Lightbox will be presenting a retrospective of French master Robert Bresson's films entitled The Poetry of Precision: The Films of Robert Bresson. To celebrate the event, here is a review of Bresson's second film, which will be playing at the Lightbox on February 23rd and March 5th.]

    Here, in Les Dames du Bois de Boulogne, is a story that might have been given an unsatisfactory treatment, like so much melodramatic drivel, and instead is carefully invested with some actual weight. Each of the central characters and their concerns are represented with an admirable amount of depth and conviction, elevating the narrative to nearly grand proportions. This shows how, even at just his second feature film, Robert Bresson had a firm grasp on his craft. That craft would eventually grow into a singular, pure style far more severe than what he uses here, yet Les Dames still certainly deserves recognition as a notable (and entertaining) entry in the great filmmaker’s body of work.

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  • 05 Feb

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    Extended Thoughts: Chronicle

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    *Some Spoilers, Fair Warning*

    Perhaps a goofy co-incidence that Facebook filed with the SEC to launch its $5 Billion (with a B) initial public offering in the same week as this virally advertised film hit cinema screens. The dollar value for the filing is itself equal parts news-catcher, market-hubris and ultimately an underscore on where society, in the here and now, lays its value: Social Networking. Even more curious that the script for Chronicle makes room for Carl Jung and Arthur Schopenhauer, but relegates Facebook and Twitter curiously to subtext. Chronicle is an interesting name for the movie; perhaps more literal in meaning (a chronological ordering of events – here by an unseen editor) but also less on-the-nose than say, “Status Update.”

    I’m getting ahead of myself, perhaps.

    The latest found footage movie is one of the more interesting uses of this increasingly strained sub-genre and this is why: The main character, an angry young man with nascent telekinetic powers who is well on his way to becoming a super-villain, not only self-incriminates himself by filming the process of his road to villainy but (and here is the kicker) he uses his powers control the camera’s framing of his own story. In the case of the films big climactic show-down, the full self-realization/actualization of himself as the Apex-predator, he uses dozens of cameras to capture things from multiple angles. The thing that always struck me as strange with the outbreak of social networking, is how so many young people capture themselves drinking underage, skipping school, or other such activities that are both unacceptable in society (but also loaded, perhaps, with a cachet of cool) and upload it THEMSELVES to later be prosecuted, ostracized, or whatnot by their own self-publication. To make the the unspoken, but underlying ‘thesis’ of the film is interesting to me. I wish the filmmakers (Josh Trank and Max “son of John” Landis) did not have to be so overt with every character justifying or explaining why they are filming all the time (see also George Romero’s Diary of the Dead) because, dammit, it is 2012 and rather obvious that we are race of beings whose souls are been stolen by the camera on pretty much an hourly basis – from mall and street security, to our own goshdarned phones!

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  • 05 Feb

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    DVD Review: The Ozu Collection: The Student Comedies

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    The Student Comedies is a DVD collection of some of Yasujiro Ozu’s earliest feature films, all part of the ‘student-comedy’ genre, popular in Japan at the time (the late 20′s and early 30′s). The films include Days of Youth (Wakaki Hi), I Flunked, But… (Rakudai Wa Shita Keredo), The Lady and the Beard (Shukujo To Hige), and Where Now Are the Dreams of Youth? (Seishun No Yume Ima Izuko). Below I give brief reviews of each feature and look at the set as a whole.

    Days of Youth

    Director: Yasujiro Ozu
    Screenplay: Akira Fushimi
    Starring: Ichiro Yuki, Tatsuo Saito, Junko Matsui
    Country: Japan
    Running Time: 99 min
    Year: 1929

    (3/5)


    Ozu’s earliest surviving film and his first feature length film as director, Days of Youth follows two student friends as they (at first unknowingly) chase the same girl. One is a glasses-wearing bookworm, the other a cheeky prankster who will pull any dirty trick he can to get the girl. These come to a head when the three of them take a skiing trip together.

    Like most of the films in this collection, Days of Youth strikes an odd but successful balance between gag-comedy influenced by the Hollywood comedies Ozu loved and mildly melancholic drama which suggests the direction he would take in his later years. The film isn’t one of his masterpieces it must be said. The artistry and subtlety the director is famous for is in it’s fledgling years, but nonetheless there are signs of future genius in the film. Although not nearly as funny as the silent comedies of Lloyd, Keaton or Chaplin (Ozu’s cast don’t have the charisma or comedic prowess of these legends), the film does have a human and naturalistic element that most cinema of the time lacked. Visually there are a couple of nice touches too, with some early use of his famous low angled static wides and signs of his careful framing, although there are a fair amount of conventional Hollywood techniques on show too.

    So it’s an interesting glimpse into how the great master started out, but taken on it’s own is not much more than a simple yet charming diversion.

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  • 03 Feb

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    Gamble’s Quick Thoughts: Chronicle

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    [This is an ongoing series where Cinecast regular and antagonist (He is our "Q") Matt Gamble offers an immediate reaction to new movies coming to a theatre near you; they are cross-posted from his corner of the internet, Where The Long Tail Ends]  

    I’m sure you’re quite aware of my fondness for comic books. I’ve been reading them, fairly faithfully, since the early 80′s and I don’t plan on stopping anytime soon. That being said, as I’ve aged I’ve drifted further and further from reading mainstream titles from Marvel and DC. Nothing against them, I’m a pretty die-hard fan of Vertigo, but I just don’t have much interest in most superhero titles these days, and Marvel and DC’s primary publications focus almost entirely on superheroes.

    Nothing against superhero comics, I’m just a bit worn out after almost 30 years of reading them. They are still great when done well, but I simply don’t have the free time to wade through mediocrity, and unfortunately, in recent years too often mainstream superhero comics have been more concerned with just getting by then trying anything different or interesting.

    Oddly enough, certain cinephiles are undergoing similar reservations when it comes to superhero movies. Sure they are one of the most popular sub-genres in recent memory, but man if critics don’t seem eager to crow about their downfall. Populism doesn’t pay the bills when you are a movie critic. Well, unless you are Peter Travers. That shill will rave about anything put in front of him.

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  • 03 Feb

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    Review: The Innkeepers

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    [Because The Innkeepers is graduating from Video On Demand to Theatrical Exhibition today, we revisit Kurt's Toronto After Dark Review. If you want to go further back in the archives, Jandy's review is here.]
     

    There is a scene, perhaps midway through Ti West’s most recent film of spooky interiors and patient tracking-shots, where an underpaid employee struggles to get a bag of garbage in to the rear alley bin. It is as good of a touchstone for what he has been managed thus far with his career, going against the grain of mainstream horror trends (torture, found footage, etc.) by making more patient, measured films which rely exclusively on atmosphere and tension. Making a horror film in this day and age that eschews gimmickry and/or mounds of bad CGI (and worse dialogue) while actually getting it out into the marketplace is a herculean task in and of itself. Alas, for all the chatter (and wonderful key art) posted on the internet about The House of the Devil, the film is only a success within the select niche of genre aficionados. Notwithstanding some very minor issues with its digitally-flat (and rather abrupt) ending, it is one of the great horror pictures of the past 10 years. I have little reservation in calling it a master-work in terms of generating both tension and anticipation, which when you boil things down is damn near everything in the horror genre. Yet, suspense seems seems to be dying off with each new re-invention of horror-formula with only a few notable exceptions.

    Back to the bag of garbage.

    The employee is Claire and she is one of only two remaining staff serving a meagre three guests living at the The Yankee Pedlar Inn until the business shutters at the end of the week. The bag is leaking some sort of fluid as she drags it haltingly across the uneven cracked asphalt. She makes several Sisyphean attempts to heave the hulking sack into the bin whose lid seems close just a millisecond too soon. The whole scene plays out as a charming bit of physical comedy, a levity that rests purely on the comic timing and chummy vibe of Ms. Sara Paxton which, more than a bit, reminds me of Anna Faris’ endearing goofiness in Smiley Face. And so goes The Innkeepers, a haunted hotel story that trafficks in the gentle, snarky comedy of its pair of underpaid and unambitious wage-slaves before breaking out the Shining and the ghosties and turn-of-the-screw tension to become one of most effective horror films of 2011. One of the smartest, too. An early gag in the movie, which threatens to echo/resonate in the films final shot, is one hell of a deconstruction of the jump-scare and its often gross misuse in the genre. This is a good sign that West has his brain and his talent laser focused on the nature and the possibility of this type of filmmaking. The syntax similar to The House of the Devil, but the tone could not be more different. Gone is the late 70s early 80s setting, although it retains a feel of classic, vintage filmmaking that outside of a few laptop computers, and a latte bar across the street, could place the film anywhere in the 20th century. Horror and comedy are rarely mixed well, but resulting cocktail here is shaken and stirred. Hell, it is downright effervescent. The icing on the cake is that the ending here feels far more organic to the themes brought out in the storytelling than House of the Devil. In its own fashion The Innkeepers turns the rules of this sort of film inside out while still managing to follow them. It’s a neat trick, and a welcome one.

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