All posts for Movies in 2010
Confucius 2010-11-27 13:55:09-05:00
There are a few actors I will watch in literally anything. Chow Yun-Fat remains one of them, and I have sat through some of the most amazing junk just because he was in it and could make anything seem plausible—or...
The Last Princess (The Hidden Fortress (2009)) 2010-11-24 18:09:49-05:00
The first half of The Last Princess gave me hope—not much hope, but hope all the same—that this remake of The Hidden Fortress, one of Akira Kurosawa’s better films, would not be the crashing bore that was Tsubaki Sanjuro or...
Centurion 2010-11-20 13:33:25-05:00
I liked Neil Marshall’s previous film Doomsday for its sheer unapologetic audacity. Centurion is essentially the same movie stuck in a single timezone (the Roman Empire vs. the Picts), minus the audacity and with no Frankie Goes To Hollywood music...
Sakuran 2010-09-28 22:34:34-04:00
I know I’m not alone in saying Memoirs of a Geisha annoyed the living daylights out of me. It was humorless, overwritten, fly-blown Hollywood schmaltz—half tinselly soap opera and half bogus exoticism, right down to the oh-so-sad shakuhachi flutes on...
Shutter Island 2010-09-21 00:11:58-04:00
It’s a cliché of movie criticism to say that a given film needs to be seen more than once. Yes, Shutter Island deserves multiple viewings, but not because the final stretch reveals that everything you think you know is wrong....
Suicide Manual 2010-09-09 11:27:35-04:00
Is it wrong of me to want a movie like Suicide Manual to be more interesting, compelling, or (god help us) controversial than it actually is? It’s the sort of film where the story behind the film is more interesting...
Yatterman 2010-09-01 00:41:47-04:00
I’m used to Takashi Miike working on multiple levels by now. He did this before with Great Yokai War, which was a kiddy movie in the guise of a satire of same … or maybe the other way around, depending...
Pleasures of the Flesh 2010-08-29 15:47:28-04:00
During the Sixties there surfaced in Japan a whole slew of films which expressed dismay for how that country’s newly-won material prosperity came at the expense of a great many other things the Japanese barely seemed aware they were losing....
Space Is The Place 2010-08-28 00:25:44-04:00
The difference between an “eccentric” and a poseur is, I think, a matter of empathy. An eccentric inspires fondness and even a little reverence, in part because the true eccentric isn’t putting on airs. He really is what he is....
MW 2010-08-26 22:40:44-04:00
When I heard work had started on live-action film version of Osamu Tezuka’s MW—easily the bleakest, most nihilistic work ever produced by a man not conventionally known for his dark side—I was skeptical. How were they going to do justice...
Barking Dogs Never Bite 2010-08-26 14:53:48-04:00
Before Bong Joon-Ho came to the attention of Western audiences with Memories of Murder, The Host and most recently Mother, he had made Barking Dogs Never Bite—although for years the only way you could see it was through the Korean...
Besos de Gato (Cat Kisses) 2010-08-21 15:56:46-04:00
Here’s a movie that turned out to be about four times better than I expected. Besos de gato, or Cat Kisses as it’s been Anglicized, has the plot of one of those dreadful TV movies about an estranged father and...
Max Headroom 2010-08-11 18:42:21-04:00
[Note: I originally wanted to publish this review with screenshots, but I decided to file it as-is, let people read it for flavor, and then add the images later when time permitted.] Of all the TV shows I adored as...
Mother 2010-07-24 15:02:49-04:00
It took Mother to wipe the taste of the abominable Tsubaki Sanjuro out of my mouth—which it did, and then some. Every year for over a decade now there’s been at least one wallopingly good Korean movie. This one ranks...
Tsubaki Sanjuro (2008) 2010-07-24 14:09:39-04:00
I am not, in principle, against remakes. I am against them when they add nothing to a movie that was perfectly good all by itself. The problem is that the economics of moviemaking no longer favor storytelling, let alone individual...
Kantoku Banzai (Glory to the Filmmaker) 2010-06-28 22:41:45-04:00
Takeshi Kitano’s Takeshis’ was Kitano On Kitano, an attempt to turn a mirror on himself, and it works. Kantoku Banzai is Kitano On Kitano Yet Again, where he not only deconstructs his own career as a director but Japanese cinema...
Freesia 2010-06-06 13:34:22-04:00
So, picture this. Sometime in Japan’s future, while some great war continues raging somewhere, a law has been passed that allows the victims of violent crime to legally retaliate against those who have wronged them. The whole process is strictly...
Queen's Blade 2010-06-03 21:16:38-04:00
Queen’s Blade’s is an adventure story with the plot of a fighting game, the heart of an X-rated dating sim, and no brain to split between them. It comes straight out of the same chainmail-bikini school of post-feminist storytelling that...
Yakuza: Like A Dragon 2010-06-01 23:07:21-04:00
You know within the first few seconds of Yakuza: Like a Dragon that you’re watching a Takashi Miike movie. That is, if you’ve seen his movies before, you’ll recognize all his amusing little hallmarks here: the dazzling, fast-moving cinematography, the...
K-20: Fiend With Twenty Faces 2010-05-29 22:38:08-04:00
The first five minutes of K-20 feature, get this, the theft of Nikola Tesla’s wireless-power transmission device by the masked-and-cloaked Fiend of Twenty Faces. If that description makes you grin, then you are most likely the right audience for this...
Heaven's Door 2010-05-22 14:09:30-04:00
If it weren’t for Michael Arias’s name on Heaven’s Door I might never have bothered to say anything about Heaven’s Door. When I heard the director of Tekkonkinkreet was directing his first live-action feature, I was intrigued. Then I actually...
Ponyo 2010-05-12 22:31:24-04:00
Hayao Miyazaki’s Ponyo isn’t just a movie for children; it’s a little like one made by them as well. It doesn’t have the epic emotional scope of Nausicaä or even Spirited Away, but I’m not sure it’s supposed to. At...
Long Dream 2010-05-10 20:55:47-04:00
Long Dream isn’t a great movie, but it takes an intriguing idea and plays it out in a way that makes me curious for a more ambitious adaptation of the same source material. The movie was inspired by a manga...
Samurai Chicks 2010-04-30 23:47:47-04:00
I didn’t expect a movie named Samurai Chicks to be much good, and I was right. That said, it does have the benefit of being cheap and oddball, which is better than being expensive and boring, I suppose. It does...
Ninja Assassin 2010-04-28 18:01:36-04:00
Well, at least I can say Ninja Assassin does something I’ve never seen before: It makes ninja boring. It’s to 2009 what The Hunted was to 1995, without the saving graces of Yoko Shimada or Yoshio Harada. When it’s not...
High Kick Girl! 2010-04-28 00:42:16-04:00
High Kick Girl! is what happens when great martial arts meets mediocre filmmaking. The “High Kick Girl” in question, real-life karate champ Rina Takeda, deserved to have a movie made that featured her talents. I just wish it hadn’t been...
Stormy Night (Arashi no yoru ni) 2010-04-26 19:16:54-04:00
What a charming movie this is, and at the same time a deep and thoughtful one. Stormy Night adapts a children’s book from Japan into an animated film of remarkable intelligence and keen wit, in much the same way Kiki’s...
Battle Heater 2010-04-25 01:10:24-04:00
How can I not take to heart a film this gleefully bonkers? Battle Heater is about a man-eating radiator, a description which all by itself could well tell you whether or not you want to see it. It’s the sort...
Sorcerer (1977) 2010-04-12 21:20:06-04:00
It’s a little difficult to convey the disappointment that landed like bricks dropped on the heads of many moviegoers after William Friedkin’s Sorcerer appeared in 1977. The director of The French Connection and The Exorcist had spent something like $20...
Tebana Sankichi: Snot Rocket and Super Detective 2010-04-12 01:03:08-04:00
Snot Rocket and Super Detective. I’m going to just sit here for a moment and say that title out loud a few times. Snot Rocket and Super Detective. No, the original Japanese title probably doesn’t have that lovely alliteration to...
Big Man Japan 2010-04-08 23:31:24-04:00
We are now, I think, well into the post-modern phase of superhero stories, where making such a thing automatically counts as commentary on the very genre it inhabits. These things have been done straight so many times there’s almost no...
Battle Girl: Living Dead In Tokyo Bay 2010-04-08 22:06:15-04:00
This past week I watched two movies that could not be more diametrically opposed. One was The Hurt Locker, which reminded me that computer graphics and spastic millisecond edits are no substitute for standbys like strong characterization and fascinating subject...
Thirst 2010-04-06 01:28:53-04:00
What sort of film do you think would be made from the story of a Catholic priest who discovers he’s been turned into a vampire? Given that the director is Chan-wook Park, he who gave us Oldboy and Sympathy for...
Astro-Boy (2009) 2010-04-03 03:27:35-04:00
There are two ways to talk about Astro-Boy, each a little incomplete, so I must speak of both. Way #1 is as an Osamu Tezuka fan, seeing his work adapted for the big screen for a primarily English-speaking audience. Way...
The Hurt Locker 2010-03-31 23:12:16-04:00
“…war is a drug” Most people look at those words, from the opening titles of The Hurt Locker and think addiction, By the end of the movie they may also think about the other effect most drugs have: derangement of...
The Rebirth 2010-03-24 22:25:13-04:00
Some movies give you everything and manage to say nothing. Some movies give you what seems like nothing and use that to say everything. The Rebirth is made up of the tiniest details of the daily lives of two people...
Black Kiss 2010-03-21 14:43:45-04:00
A pedigree goes a long way with me. Black Kiss was written and directed by Macoto Tezka*, none other than the son of Osamu Tezuka himself, but it has as about as much to do with the work of Tezuka...
Moon Child 2010-03-14 23:56:54-04:00
Here is a film where J-rocker Hyde plays a vampire, J-rocker Gackt plays his up-from-the-gutter sidekick, lots of people shoot guns and beat each other up, and Susumu Terashima has druggy conversations with a hallucinated fish. Would that it added...
Black House (Korea) 2010-03-12 22:51:26-05:00
First there was Black House (Japan), an adaptation of Yusuke(Crimson Labyrinth) Kishi’s novel. And now we have Black House (Korea), which is … also an adaptation of Yusuke Kishi’s novel. The Japanese version was mannered and strange with many obvious...
Hundred Stories (Kousetsu Hyaku Monogatari: Kowai) 2010-02-24 22:41:07-05:00
Here is another instance of the same material being adapted multiple times—both in live-action and in animation, and with the animated version turning out far better in every respect. The original story is Hundred Stories by Natsuhiko Kyogoku, he who...
Black Dynamite 2010-02-22 10:59:50-05:00
Was it coincidence or serendipity that the day before I watched Black Dynamite I was having a long, thoughtful discussion with my wife about the differences between satire, parody, farce and spoof? Because here’s a movie that might be all...
Doubles 2010-02-14 00:09:21-05:00
There’s little more disappointing then a movie where there’s not much, you know, movie. Doubles is about two hundred percent concept and almost no percent actual story, an experiment that most assuredly failed but one where we’re forced to read...
Onimasa 2010-02-13 18:44:06-05:00
There are many things wrong with Onimasa, and it pains me to no end to say that one of the very worst is Tatsuya Nakadai. Here is one of the finest actors that Japan ever produced, under the direction of...
Ong Bak 2 2010-02-04 12:48:01-05:00
What we have here is not a sequel to the original Ong Bak, and most everyone with some clue about either film knows this. It’s Tony Jaa’s attempt at creating the sort of spiritually-fueled martial-arts epic that Bruce Lee was...
Divide 2010-01-31 00:39:47-05:00
Well, you can’t say I didn’t try. After seeing director Masato Tsujioka’s first feature Lost By Dead and writing it off as a dog’s breakfast, I found he had made another movie, Divide. From the trailer, it looked like it...
Departures 2010-01-30 20:18:13-05:00
Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) was—was—a cellist for a symphony orchestra. One day, after a performance to a mostly-empty concert hall, his boss fumblingly tells everyone “The orchestra is dissolved.” Not You’re fired, which would at least have some ring of honesty...
Lost By Dead 2010-01-22 21:17:57-05:00
It’s a rare and wonderful thing when you see a film by a first-time director, made by people with no money and no moviemaking experience—and yet the passion they feel for what they do makes those limitations meaningless. The movie...
Ōoku (The Inner Chambers) 2010-01-15 21:42:53-05:00
Note:This movie is not related to the manga Ōoku. When I talk to other fans of movies from Asia, they praise the ambition and fearlessness of the best such films—how they aim higher and shoot farther than their pusillanimous Hollywood...
The Young Murderer (Seishun no satsujin sha) 2010-01-12 22:21:23-05:00
Jun is a young man in his twenties who runs a bar near the airport, a tiny cube plopped down in the middle of a desolate stretch of land where the only things growing are the weeds in the cracks...
District 9 2010-01-01 15:40:13-05:00
“Prawns,” we call them. They’re a horde of aliens, a couple of million strong, half-starved and left for dead in a giant mothership that floated to a stop just over Johannesburg. That was twenty years ago, and since then they’ve...
