Starring Hee Jae and Seung-yeon Lee
Directed by Ki-duk Kim
Reviewed by Michael Allen
Ki-duk Kim's 3-Iron is a plausible case that magic exists on film. It’s not the fastidious digital magic of a computer or the pious beauty of nature but the story of two characters who meet and fall in love without ever saying a word. While many foreign filmmakers may use silence to bore the audience into a waking-dream state where nothing happens, Kim's 3-Iron is a whimsical fable, a variation on Goldilocks and the Three Bears, where two characters sample other people's houses to find out that being removed from society is far more rewarding than being burdened by it.
Wandering through downtown Seoul with only a motorcycle and a lock-picking kit, a young man (Hee Jae) temporarily squats in peoples’ apartments while they are on vacation. To find out if the occupants are gone, he hangs coupon flyers on the door handles. If the resident doesn’t throw them away, he breaks in and spends a holiday in their life. He indulges in their food and TV, but he also cleans up and looks after their possessions. Whether fixing a broken clock, doing their laundry, or offsetting a scale by twenty kilograms, the boy finds ways to improve stranger’s lives without recognition or reward. He is free of any connections that might threaten his nomadic life.
Everything changes when he inadvertently meets a woman (Seung-yeon Lee) who is just as quiet as he is. She’s a professional nude model, married, and has bruises on her face. He offers her a nomadic escape from her affluence and together they disappear within society, to become professional voyeurs without bills to pay or appointments to keep. Kim develops their relationship without mechanically recounting stories of a tortured childhood or the life they gave up. Instead, he uses small moments for intense emotions. Whenever he practices his golf swing, she cries out for help by wordlessly moving in front of him. When they share their first kiss, a portrait of a happy couple hangs behind them. It also helps that Kim found two actors with such expressive faces. The audience always understands the characters’ motives because the silent acting strikes a balance of emotional openness without exaggeration.
The couple’s lifestyle lasts for only so long before her husband returns from a business trip and the police question their habits. Once in custody, the boy learns how to disappear behind his persecutors and their meaningless chatter. 3-Iron isn’t a ghost story, but it briefly emulates one and this is its most obvious false step. Jae haunts his former residents with varying degrees of punishment, but he’s mostly showing off a new magic trick he learned in jail. Jae isn’t a vengeful ghost, but it doesn’t stop Kim from using the ‘Stalking POV Tracking Shot’ a few times too many. But this is only a minor criticism aimed at a director who is presenting a visualization of his allegory.
What makes Kim’s movie stand out is its innocence. These aren’t the German anarchists of The Edukators, showing the rest of civilization “what it means to live.” They’re just two kids who want to live in suspended adolescence, chores and all. When the young man discovers how to fully disappear, the audience buys it because the director plays it as real within the fabled world. With everyone else focused on their own lives, he’s like the motionless kid who believes no one can see him because he believes it; and as in all fables, belief comes true.
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Starring Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, and Katie Holmes
Directed by Christopher Nolan
Reviewed by Nathan Williams
Batman Begins is not a bad film, really. You can tell that director Christopher Nolan and his screenwriting partner, David S. Goyer, put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this thing. Unlike the entirely cynical payday of the Schumacher years, this incarnation of America’s favorite depressive super-hero is seriously and thoughtfully formed. But good intentions and hard work alone do not make a worthwhile film experience.
Underlying the assumption of many reviewers and filmmakers is that yet another Batman film is not merely inevitable, it is necessary. Needless to say, that assumption ought to be rejected outright. We need another Batman about as much as we need another Francis the Talking Mule. In fact, any new version of the familiar rodent vigilante adventure must not only justify its own existence but provide a sufficiently distinctive entertainment from its forebears. Batman Begins is watchable but, unfortunately, leaves us exactly where we were when we came in.
The back-bat-story is covered in detail every time out (rich kid with murdered parents goes a little nuts and fights crime in a costume), but Batman Begins has the bright idea to make the creation myth the emphasis. How did Batman come to be? Tim Burton sensed that a detailed account of a rise to Bat-dom was probably not worth the time spent, so 1989’s Batman thrust us right into the ridiculous thick of things, with flashbacks to appease the Freudians in the audience. Nolan and Goyer do their damnedest to make the early days interesting; we know he’s going to become Batman, but they do surprisingly well giving us some extra intrigue along the way, and we very much hope it’s headed somewhere exciting.
The problem, however, is when he finally becomes Batman—with cape, cowl, and ugly car—they don’t have anything terribly interesting for him to do. He engages in a long, pointless Blues Brothers-esque car chase, he hops and flies around a bit, and he punches the monologuing [thank you, Brad Bird] chief villain in the face. It’s a novel way to get us to a boring place, but it’s a boring place all the same.
Regarding execution: The action is shot and edited in a seemingly deliberately confusing manner; Nolan is clearly not confident in his ability to direct action so he lets the deafening punches and oofs from the sound mix do his work for him. Bale takes on a difficult role and does the best anyone could expect, but at bottom the character is just plain uninteresting. Some of the supporting cast come off well (Michael Caine, Rutger Hauer, Liam Neeson), others have little to stand on (Morgan Freeman, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Tom Wilkinson), and others, well, are plainly miscast (Katie Holmes). Danny Elfman’s iconic score is bravely replaced with a new one by a four-headed monster who turns out something as mundane as the film itself.
A sequel seems likely, but if Nolan’s smart, he’ll cash his check and hop off this train while there’s still time.
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Haute Tension Lions Gate Films
Starring Philippe Nahon, Cécile De France and Maïwenn
Directed by Alexandre Aja
Reviewed by Dion Tubrett
The U.S. marketing campaign for Haute Tension is hinged around the film as a twisted love story: “love hurts,” indeed. The French export and second feature film by director and co-screenwriter Alexandre Aja is a simple but effective tribute to the American slasher films of the 1970s, complete with psycho-babble trimmings. Screenwriters Aja and Grégory Levasseur craft a narrative that as a pastiche of primal horrors remains remarkably fresh.
I first saw Haute Tension at a midnight screening during the 2003 Toronto International Film Festival because of the presence of actor Philippe Nahon. Notorious icon of Gaspar Noe films Carne (1991), Seul Contres Tous (1998), and Irreversible (2002) (as the hate-filled, nameless “Butcher,”), Nahon’s presence as an anonymous and silent psychopath (manipulating his image from Noe’s films) adds a certain understated subtlety often at odds with either genre or intensity of a character’s emotion (see Seul Contres Tous… now). My initial reaction to the film, however, was disgust. What was the reason for my distaste? The film’s “surprise Post-Sixth Sense” ending.
The narrative of Haute Tension follows two friends, students Marie (Cécile De France) and Alex (Maïwenn), on a visit to the latter’s parents at their secluded farmhouse. That very night a stranger appears and casually and methodically murders everyone he finds in the house except Alex. Armed with many murderous tools, from rifle to straight razor, the blue collar psychopath dressed in baseball cap and dirty jumpsuit carries Alex off to his filthy van – another prize for his sadistic decapitated fellatio games. Marie, hidden from the murder, vows to protect her friend, and the film’s cat and mouse game begins. Told from Marie’s point of view, the film effectively maintains its tension by constantly revolving the dynamics of power between hunter and hunted.
Above all the film is masterful in sound design toward the creation of tension and anxiety. Its mise-en-scene complements this: very often the frame is modestly composed or, as is a habit of horror, vital elements are swathed in darkness. The creeping pace of the film early on, reflective of Alex’s curiosity, allows for the establishment of tone and atmosphere with a subtlety that astounds. As the intensity increases, so does its pace. With some very nice set pieces, reminiscent of a number of prior slasher films, and an increasing gratuity that is inspiring due to its excessiveness (the barbed wire bat and the climactic miraculously appearing circular saw are a testament to this), the film viscerally tops itself at each turn. Yet a good film this does not make.
As previously mentioned, the film’s ending nearly destroys all that has been meticulously crafted before it. But this is perhaps too harsh. The film’s ending does much to unite the underlying themes of the film – the politics of desire – which is skillfully handled such that it rewards repeat viewings. Yet it seems too arbitrarily foolish, even for an extreme genre film. Also, in its homage to American slasher films of 1970s such as The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974) and The Hills Have Eyes (1977) – the latter currently being remade by Aja – the level of senseless brutality is integral. That being said, any censoring or altering of the violence lessens the effects of the primal horror. The official website for the film, hightensionmovie.com, includes a statement from the director that states the American theatrical release is “a dubbed English translation” where “the trims in the new version are very minor.” A Korean DVD version of the film I saw included very minor ‘trims’ that are very obvious and disappointing. Hopefully the original film, French language at 91 minutes, will eventually appear. Of course, its availability will depend on the English language version’s success. The original uncut French language film is a fantastic genre piece. I hope I’ll get a chance to see it again.
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Howl's Moving Castle Buena Vista International
Directed by Hayao Miyazaki
Reviewed by D.R. Scott
Although Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Kiki’s Delivery Service) is often called the “Walt Disney of anime,” I think it’s a lazy, inaccurate and backhanded compliment.
The late Uncle Walt, an artistic and financial genius, chose the wrong side in the Art vs. Commerce debate and shamelessly turned his beloved cartoon icons into corporate used car salesmen. Whenever I see Mickey Mouse, I can feel his gloved, four-fingered hand smoothly reaching into my back pocket.
Not Miyazaki. A rigorous 67 years old, the visionary founder of the prestigious Studio Ghibli is a fiery, tough-minded curmudgeon raging against the dying of the light. Interviewed by The New Yorker, Miyazaki said he wanted to live long enough “to see the sea rise over Tokyo” as punishment for mankind’s desecration of the planet. Whoa. Don’t be fooled by his gray hair and the thick-lensed glasses; the old samurai’s sword is still sharp.
Howl’s Moving Castle is the latest film by Miyazaki, adapted from the children’s book by British fantasy author Diana Wynne Jones. Visually, it’s take-your-breath-away gorgeous. If you’re as good as Miyazaki, there will always be a place in movies for traditional hand-drawn animation.
The English-dubbed version features the voices of Christian Bale, Emily Mortimer, Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner, Jean Simmons and Billy Crystal. (For you cinematic purists, The Disney studio has simultaneously released a subtitled cut of the movie) All of these actors, by the way, sound like they’re at a party they don’t want to leave. (Hey, you wanna make actors happy? Give ‘em a good script and they’ll roll over and let you rub their stomachs.)
In Howl’s Moving Castle, the castle itself is this huge, noisy, ugly Thingamajig that lumbers slowly across the countryside on a pair of metallic chicken legs(!). Try to imagine what would happen if the ghost of Rube Goldberg possessed a hallucinating Frank Lloyd Wright. Oh yeah, when needed, it’s able to travel hundreds of miles in seconds just by turning a multi-colored knob by the door. The cunning sorcery animating the castle is courtesy of Calcifer (a witty Billy Crystal, the long-lost Marx Brother), a wisecracking fire demon. Howl himself (Christian Bale, catching up on the fun he didn’t get to have in Batman Begins) is an outlaw wizard overflowing with an arrogant flamboyance and sensuality. He’s a mystical Ziggy Stardust.
My favorite character, however, is Sophie (voiced exquisitely by both Emily Mortimer and the great Jean Simmons). She’s the quiet, strong-willed emotional bedrock in Howl’s Moving Castle that keeps it solidly grounded in reality. Whether it’s Wendy taking Peter’s hand and flying out her window, Alice falling down the rabbit hole or Dorothy taking the 5:15 Twister to Oz, these exercises in fantasy only work when we have a human but not-so-ordinary tour guide.
Sophie, a timid 18-year-old girl is transformed into an old woman by the jealous Witch of the Waste (a wonderful Lauren Bacall, richly savoring her words like spoonfuls of caviar.) On her perilous journey to break the curse in a strange world of wizards, jelly-bodied malignant spirits and war, Sophie discovers that she’s braver than she realized. Forget about sock puppets like Hilary Duff being sold to helpless young girls as role models. Sophie is a real heroine.
When too many animated features are poorly-disguised toy catalogues, Howl’s Moving Castle doesn’t want to sell you T-shirts, bed-sheets or video games. It just wants you to sit down for two hours, ignore the barrel of popcorn in your lap as the ice melts in your soda and believe that magic is real.
Boy, that was great, Uncle Miyazaki!
Tell us another story—please?
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Elisabeth Shoe, and Brady Corbet
Directed by Gregg Araki
Reviewed by Brighid Mooney
In Mysterious Skin, director Gregg Araki (The Doom Generation) takes on a very delicate, mostly taboo subject matter with an unexpected degree of sensitivity and unflinching openness. Based on the novel by Scott Heim, the story follows the neurotic and disturbed Brian Lackey (Brady Corbet) as he seeks out the source of the nightmares and nosebleeds that have plagued him for the past ten years. Convinced that he was abducted by aliens the summer when he was eight years old, Brian's search leads him to a former little league teammate, who reveals that the truth is, rather than extraterrestrial, a much more uniquely human horror.
The main character of Mysterious Skin, though, is really teenage hustler Neil McCormick (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), the little league teammate who haunts Brian's dreams and the only one who really knows the truth about the events that have so traumatically shaped Brian's entire life. What happened during the summer of 1981 profoundly affected Neil's life as well, though his responses are diametrically opposed to the ways in which Brian has reacted to their shared experience. Through the course of the movie, Araki explores the different ways in which the two have attempted to cope with childhood sexual abuse and the unmistakable ramifications those violations have had on the rest of their lives. For Brian the experience has made him a frail, introverted, asexual, and haunted shell of a person. Neil, on the other hand, is sent down a dangerous path of homosexual prostitution, first in his hometown in Kansas and later in New York City. Though the movie suggests that Neil was already gay (and lust-struck) when he first met his abuser as a shy eight-year-old, he realizes how much the encounter has shaped his existence in other ways.
Beautifully acted by the two leads as well as a talented supporting cast including Elizabeth Shue, Michelle Trachtenberg and Bill Sage as "Coach," Mysterious Skin is a difficult movie to watch, redeemed by its sensitive and honest exploration of the varied ramifications of such a brutal violation of childhood innocence, a subject in danger of being desensitized after constant headline attention and months of Michael Jackson trial-watching. Although Araki has taken obvious care to shield the child actors from too much knowledge, with an NC-17 rating, Mysterious Skin is still an emotionally devastating experience sure to remain with you for days.
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Saraband Sony Pictures Classics
Starring Liv Ullmann, Erland Josephson, Borje Ahlstedt, and Julia Dufvenius
Directed by Ingmar Bergman
Reviewed by Michael Allen
Too often cinema’s greatest directors have difficulty throwing in the towel after making their cumulative work, a film that encapsulates their passions, ideology, and artistry. After shooting the ultimate kiss-off to Cinecitta and Anita Ekberg in Intervista, Federico Fellini had to make one last film with, of all people, Roberto Benigni. Akira Kurosawa produced the apocalyptic Ran and intimate Dreams, but ran out of juice on Rhapsody in August and Madadayo. After one of the longest and most prolific bursts of creativity in cinema history (with a visible nadir around 1977), Ingmar Bergman “officially” retired in 1982 with Fanny and Alexander. Many of his fans were impressed that he was able to 1) recognize that his talents were no longer up to snuff and 2) finish with the mind-blowing Fanny and Alexander, an unexpectedly warm film from the angsty Bergman that triumphed in his multi-faceted strengths as a storyteller and his universal observations of enduring familial bonds.
In 2003, Bergman made Saraband, a digital video, made-for-TV-movie which is finally getting a theatrical release outside of Sweden. It’s also a sequel to Scenes From A Marriage, a riveting 5-hour TV miniseries and one of Bergman’s most popular films.
So, a Bergmaniac might ask, has he still got it?
Saraband catches up with Marianne (Liv Ullman) and Johan (Erland Josephson), thirty years after Marriage. They’re divorced from their respective third marriages; Marianne practices family law and Johan is a recluse living on an inheritance. The most touching scenes are the ones between Ullman and Josephson, with Bergman using his protagonists’ weathered faces to convey bittersweet regret under the complimentary but banal dialogue people often employ during a reunion with an ex. Their moments together never feel forced, in part because the original film was structured around their evolving relationship. As they drifted apart, they would come together to find out how much both had changed and are reminded of why they originally fell in love.
What’s distressing about Saraband is the regression into an uninspiring “Bergman film.” Midway through Saraband, Ullman and Josephson are pushed to the background so that Bergman can revisit the estranged relationships between family members who express their love through unrealistic demands of greatness. Johan has a 61-year-old widowed son, Henrik (Borje Ahlstedt), from his first marriage. Henrik is constantly broke and borrowing money from Johan. He is a professional cellist, deep in mourning and attempting to train his 19-year-old daughter, Karin (Julia Dufvenius). Henrik verbally tortures anyone in sight, Karin vents her frustrations at her lack of independence, and Marianne and Johan listen to the bickering artists.
What makes Scenes From a Marriage so special in the Bergman canon is a director finally reaching out to a broader audience and collectively moving them. Absent from Scenes were conversations with symbolic figures, tortured bourgeois artists, and debates about God. Here was a story for anyone who’s ever been in a relationship and realized that the greatest threat to its longevity isn’t drama, but boredom. The universal arc that all long-term relationships go through, sticking together, breaking up, and hopefully some reconciliation, resulted in Bergman’s most popular work abroad and, for the first time, a genuine hit in his home country of Sweden. Saraband abandons the original story in favor of a note-for-note rehash of Autumn Sonata, another apology from an artist more focused on his work than his family.
This is still a Bergman film, so the acting is top notch all around. Seeing Ullman and Josephson together again melts any cynic’s heart. Dufvenius stands her ground and Ahlstedt gives a good Erland impersonation. If any other director made this film, it would be Bergman-esque. But because it’s a Bergman film, it’s a curiously uninspiring retread that fails the original story by not saying anything new. Instead of ending his career with dignity, Bergman veers dangerously close to self-parody.
Comments? Click here to let us know what you think.
Jump Back To Top
Be There Now...
Album Reviews
Film Reviews
DVD Reviews
Concert Reviews
The little flags you see on our site are links to Amazon. We hope you will consider purchasing items through these links, as they help with the maintenance of the site.
Or, click below:
Visitors from the US:
Visitors from Canada:
