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Tuesday, November 30, 2004
Hero
Very much following the formula of Crouching Tiger - take a standard martial arts movie and give it a high gloss make-over with an art-house director and actors who can act as well as kick bits of wood. Crouching Tiger was a beautiful film to look at, and at times Hero is eye-achingly stunning. Each chapter of the story is told in a different primary colour and each shot, from wide vistas of stunning scenery to the tiniest droplets of water on the blade of a sword, attempt to seduce you by virtually licking your eyeballs in a very suggestive manner. Although, as Ruby pointed out, at times this does make it look like a car advert. Jet Li wisely remains fairly silent as the "Nameless" Hero character, and lets the other fine actors do the emoting for him, notably Tony Leung, Maggie Cheung and the absoloutely lovely Zhang Ziyi. And of course they all do well in the wire-fu fight sequences. If this film has a weakness, its that you don't get to care about any of the characters due to the structure of differing flashbacks. But then again, the central theme here is rooted in the political as opposed to the personal - and its a theme that will no doubt have gone down well in Communist part headquarters in China. Hero's visual beauty almost fools you into an emotional response that the plot doesnt warrant, but its still a treat for those who like a bit of arthouse sauce on their martial arts pie.  Coffee & Cigarettes Jim Jarmusch's latest is a mostly improvised selection of short scenes all with the unifying theme of a conversations over coffee & cigarettes. And thats about it. The main reason for seeing this is for its very eclectic cast of actors and musicians, often playing themselves. In fact, the best scenes are the ones featuring musicians - the White Stripes discuss science, Tom Waits & Iggy Pop don't really get on and the Wu Tang Clan discuss alternative medicine with Bill Murray. Apart from those scenes, and the one where Steve Coogan and Alfred Molina buck the trend by drinking tea, the other six or so scenes featuring actors playing parts are utterly unenlightening and just serve to make you want caffeine and nicotine - some sort of simulation to make up for the ponderous dialogue. You could edit it down to make a wrly amusing half-hour comedy show, but personally, if I had those actors (Cate Blanchett and Steve Buscemi are in it as well) , I'd probably try and make some kind of zombie-comedy rock-opera instead. Bubba Ho-tep Elvis joining up with JFK to fight an egyptian mummy is a pretty strange idea for a film, but thats basically the premise for Bubba Ho-Tep. It all makes perfect sense though, because its set in the present day and neither Elvis or JFK are dead, just very old and in a nursing home. (JFK is also now black as well) The screen legend that is Bruce Campbell plays the crotchety ageing old King to perfection, as a man who's bitterness and impotence have nearly overtaken his (artificial) hip swagger. However, life is put back in Elvis's pecker when an egyptian mummy starts sucking the life from the arseholes of the pensioners around him and its up to him to save the day. All in all, a quirky little low-budget film with great performances and an amusing script. "Ask not what your rest home can do for you, but what you can do for your rest home" Oldboy Continuing my obsession with movies from the far east that feature extreme violence, me and Ruby popped along to see this charming little feature. Its basically the story of a man who one day is kidnapped, and imprisoned for 15 years.To add insult to incarceration, whilst he's in there, his wife is murdered and he's framed for it. When he's eventually released (with no explanation) his quest is to find out who kidnapped him, and most importantly why. He eventually achieves this - but its not an easy journey - along the way there's plenty of teeth-pulling torture and live squid eating for a start. Easily one of the best films I've seen in a long while, Old Boy is as visually stunning, in a dark and dirty way, as David Fincher's best stuff, combined with the stylish ultraviolence of Takeshi Miike or Beat Takeshi films. The plot takes some following, and some scenes take some stomaching, but highly recomended to those of you who like this sort of thing. Hellboy Comic book adaptation, featuring the excellent Ron Perlman as the rock-handed Devil-spawn-turned-reluctant-hero , Selma Blair as his fire-starting-love-interest, and Niles from Frasier as an annoying-camp-fish-man. Its certainly not the disaster that most comic book adaptations are, but it doesnt really deserve the hype it got just by not being shit. It could have been a lot funnier, or a lot darker, or even both. The mecha-nazi is an ace badguy, but underused in favour of a lot of cgi monster nonsense. Indeed, there's way too much fighting cgi monsters in a tunnel action, something which is getting pretty dull, especially as it features heavily in Del Toro's other films, Blade 2 and Mimic. He really does need to get outside in the fresh air more often I think, and who knows what Freud would make of his dark, damp, tunnel obsession. |
