“And everytime I see you in my dreams” – A review of Harmony Korine’s “Spring Breakers”

I walked out of an opening night matinee of Harmony Korine’s Spring Breakers into the first true sunny day of Vancouver spring with a big ol’ grin stretching ‘cross my face.  When he penned the uncompromising script for Larry Clark’s Kids at age 19, Harmony Korine showed an uncanny ability to distill the sexual energies and metaphysical confusion of 90s youth into filmic language.  Now, at age 40, with what is arguably his first “mainstream” film Spring Breakers, he shows that his connection to the frenetic pulse of media-saturated, over-sexed, coming-of-age teenagers is as relevant as when he was one of them.  Though his approach is now more voyeuristic than immersive with its warm lights, dripping soundscapes, and pretty, pretty girls.

(L to R) Vanessa Hudgens, Rachel Korine, Selena Gomez, Ashley Benson

Disney princesses Selena Gomez and Vanessa Hudgens meld sensuously together with Pretty Little Liars‘ Ashley Benson and Rachel Korine (partner to Harmony) to take on the bacchanalian of Spring Break with as much violence and sex as they can muster.  They rarely wear more than bikinis (and often wear less).  Hudgens and Benson are the uncontested leaders, and Korine holds her own as proverbial party monster; but the religious Gomez is ultimately overwhelmed and unsettled by their debauchery.  For Gomez, Spring Break is a coming-of-age journey, but her child-like philosophizing about “finding herself” and “finally being who she really is” prompts kindhearted but condescending snickers from Hudgens and Benson, who are after something much bigger than sex, drugs, and self-awakening.

Enter Alien, played with astounding fearlessness by James Franco.  Always an actor to make bold choices, Franco buries himself in the role of the dreadlocked, silver-grilled hustler and hip hop artist Alien, who is very much, as he says, “not from this planet”.  All the intelligence, good-looks, and charm that we know Franco possesses are disappeared into the preening, simple-minded, powerfully-creepy presence of Alien.  He provides an outlet for the girls’ insatiable hunger for more and finds his own fears and desires actualized in his relationship with them.

James Franco as Alien

What starts off as a wild road-trip movie quickly turns into something less defined.  The editing keeps folding back in on itself, both anticipating what is to come and replaying what has already happened.  We are rarely in one place for too long, experiencing most of the film either in retrospect or as premonition.  It’s part sexploitation, part ethereal art-film.  It’s like seeing the Hunter S. Thompson-like depravity of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas meet the playful and pretty existentialism of Vera Chitlová’s Daisies (a sublime 1966 Czech New Wave film), subtracting all of Chitlová’s feminism, then adding Skrillex and sub-machine guns to the mix; the film is chaotic, titillating, and beautiful.

Spring Breakers is an experience unto itself (and is nothing like its trailer suggests it will be).  It’s a dream.  A terrifying, beautiful dream.  And like a little-known pop singer once said, “It’s haunting me.”

Rating: 4.5 stars.  (Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver.  1st viewing.)

“And everytime I see you in my dreams / I see your face, it’s haunting me.” ~Britney Spears

2012 in Review (or, Nate’s Top 12 Films)

So I’m back at ‘er after a protracted absence from blogging.  And in style.  Here is my altogether-too-long list of movies from 2012 that tore into my heart and made it their own.  But maybe that’s over-dramatic.  Here are some good movies and some things I wrote about them.  I’ve ordered them according to some misguided quest to rank personal preference and, if you disagree, by all means do it loudly.

12.  The Dark Knight Rises (Christopher Nolan) [Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

So The Dark Knight Rises is relatively low on my list.  Not because it’s a bad film.  But because relative to Christopher Nolan’s usual calibre of film, I find it lacking.  Of course, a mediocre Nolan film is better than most Hollywood fare, but my high hopes for TDKR were left wanting.  I loved how dark it got emotionally.  Bruce Wayne has always been a troubled fella, but this film rips his entire safety net out from under him.  With no access to his money or to the stalwart Alfred, the Batman must rise from a low, low place.  And that makes for some damn good cinema.  What I didn’t find effective was how Bane’s story played out.  His prison origin was fascinating, but once he actually has control of Gotham, his plan has more or less played itself out and there is nowhere left to go.  His decision to take on Ra’s al Ghul’s mantle and simply destroy Gotham seems a weak decision from such a strong character.  Though, SPOILER ALERT – seeing as how he is motivated out of loyalty to Talia al Ghul rather than his own desires is actually quite romantic.  END SPOILER.  Actually, the more I think about it, the more I am quite pleased with this film.  Though I thought the supposedly-climactic return of the Batman played out a little bit like Escape From New York and I kept expecting Snake Plissken to show up.  And the end, in which the Batman SPOILER AGAIN hauls the bomb out of the city before it explodes, making everyone think he is dead is such a common trope that it was almost eye-rollingly obvious.  (Other examples of “relocating the bomb” include, but are not limited to: this year’s Avengers, The Iron Giant, Superman II, Angels & Demons, GI Joe: The Rise of Cobra, Stargate, Heroes (Season 1), 24 (Season 2), Lost, and an episode of Pokemon).  END SPOILER(s).  So I guess, in summation, I’m a little torn on how much I like this film.  There was so much good in it, as well as so much mediocrity.  Though it seems like simply by writing about it, I find that I like it more than I initially thought I did.  Which is often the mark of a good film.

One-Line Review: Dark and atmospheric but suffers from weak dialogue (relative to what I’d expect from the Nolans) and plot clichés.

11.  Skyfall (Sam Mendes) [Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

James Bond films are rarely known for their resemblance to family dramas.  But the Daniel Craig era has been one of reinvention and the third installment is one of the reinventiest.  Without skimping on action, gadgets or cars, Skyfall also gives us some classic Freudian melodrama.  Bond returns to his childhood home and some serious mother-son issues are hashed out (though not in the way you might think).  I’ve always been of the opinion that throwing some serious emotional weight behind action sequences makes them more satisfying to watch and Sam Mendes delivers.  The closest Bond has come to having a family previous to this was in the ever-popular George Lazenby installment, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, in which he is married for all of 37 seconds before his wife is riddled with bullets by Telly Savalas.  But here the drama is sharp, the action intense, and the cars just as cool as ever.  Mendes obviously has a respect for the history of the James Bond franchise and does his best to pay homage to it whenever he can (perhaps mitigating the sweeping thematic changes he’s making to the series).

One-Line Review: My new favorite Bond girl is Judi Dench.

10.  Moonrise Kingdom (Wes Anderson) [DVD]

I came late to the Moonrise Kingdom bandwagon.  I’d been told many great things, but while I’ve always liked Wes Anderson’s films, I’ve never loved any of them (with the exception of Royal Tenenbaums which is just marvelous).  Moonrise Kingdom, however, is right up there with Tenenbaums for me.  Maybe I was feeling sentimental at the time.  Maybe something about Anderson’s fairy tale version of 1965.  Maybe it was the deadpan-comic-serious way Anderson’s actors deliver their lines.  But there was something altogether charming about this little love story, which is played with utmost sincerity and emotional weight.  We know the two runaway lovers are only 12 years old, but they teach us to take them as seriously as they take themselves.  Moonrise Kingdom is a charming love story that doesn’t deviate from Anderson’s established style, but is still effective and heartwarming.

One-Line Review: Wes Anderson at his best.

9.  The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (Peter Jackson) [3D, 24fps, Empire Theatre, Sydney, Nova Scotia]

Tackling The Hobbit in three movies is a wholly different approach from taking on the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy (well, hexalogy if you’re counting) in as much time.  Where Jackson had to hack and slash his way through Lord of the Rings, he is here expanding and drawing out the material, exploring scenes to their full potential.  And for this I applaud him.  Though it’s been a good 12 years (Jesus, really? Time to start coloring my hair) since I’ve read The Hobbit, I can still tell that Jackson is staying as true to the material as a filmmaker can, scenes often playing out word-for-word.  And Jackson’s additions are not blasphemous to the faithful either (well, they might be to the fanatics, but they were going to be upset regardless so it’s a moot point).  The addition of a pale orc named Azok with a mission of vengeance against the throne-less dwarf-king Thorin is a necessary addition from a filmic perspective.  The film covers only the first third of the novel, in which there is an absence of any true antagonist, and Azok is an appropriate through-line.

It’s an interesting result.  With his film, Jackson is returning to the serial format, popular in the silent era with The Perils of Pauline or the French Les Vampires, in which audiences would have to return to the cinemas for each new installment.  Yes, it’s a none-too-subtle studio money-grab, but it also changes how we experience going to the cinema.  Because it is not a whole film; it is only a portion of one.  Jackson and his team do an admirable job of getting the film to stand alone.  But the fact remains that, despite a rollicking good adventure, very little has been accomplished or resolved.  We found the same thing happen with Harry Potter and Twilight (sorry for grouping them together) splitting their finales into two films: the first half just wasn’t really a film.  Seen together, Harry Potter 7 is a sprawling epic and a worthy ending for the series.  Seen apart, the second installment is still very good but the first falls flat.  So the question is: do we judge The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey on what we’ve seen?  Or in anticipation of what we know we’re going to see as the series continues?

Also, the 3D was nice and I’m sure the 48fps wasn’t too nauseating.  I saw it in reg’lar ol’ 24fps and am just going to ignore that entire discussion.  Oh, and Andy Serkis, I love you.

One-Line Review: So… Gandalf and Galadriel were totally hooking up, right?

8.  Cloud Atlas (Tom Tykwer, Andy Wachowski, Lana Wachowski) [SilverCity Metropolis Theatre, Burnaby, BC]

Cloud Atlas Concept Art

My experience of Cloud Atlas is colored very strongly by the fact that I saw it almost immediately after finishing David Mitchell’s novel.  It had been on my to-read list for ages, but the release of the film forced me into it because I wanted my experience of the novel to be purely imaginative, not tainted by being unable to see anyone other than Tom Hanks in every role or Hugo Weaving in drag.  Reading fiction is a very personal experience; you create the world and the characters from the words on the page.  Film does the work for you.  I wanted my own world, and as grand as the Wachowski siblings own vision of the Cloud Atlas sextet was, I prefer mine (as I’m sure many readers do their own).

This is not to say that it was not an excellent film.  It lost some of the subtlety that is possible in fiction and less so on the screen.  (And when I say “some” of the subtlety, I mean “shit, son, you done just spelled it all right out, di’n’t you?”)  The film gets a lot of flak for being “pseudo-deep” and relying too much on the whole reincarnation thing (and too much on Tom Hanks).  But the film actually does a number of interesting things.  The book follows six story lines, each taking place during a different point in history (including an Orwellian future and its post-apocalyptic beyond).  Mitchell presents his material palindromically, telling each story (except the middle one) in two parts (a 12345654321 structure).  By chopping up Mitchell’s hexapalindromic structure into filmic cross-cutting, the chronological progression of each storyline plays out in synch with the others.  In Mitchell’s novel, the midpoint in the book represents the furthest point on a world-time scale, before continuing backwards in time to wrap up the initial story lines and conclude thematically.  But the film has free access to each story whenever the filmmakers see fit to cut to it.

Both structural techniques can be read very explicitly as expressions of “counterpoint” within their medium.  Counterpoint is a musical term (prominent during the Baroque period and mastered by Bach) describing the relationship between voices that are harmonically-interdependent, but independent in both rhythm and contour.  Counterpoint was the primary expression of music theory during Bach’s time (1685-1750) and music theory was largely dictated by Church doctrine, which contained a series of very specific rules declaring what made a melody acceptable.  The types of intervals you can use, the order in which they are allowed to be played, the number of times a directional interval is allowed, are all explicitly laid out in the rules of counterpoint.  By making a composer one of his protagonists, Mitchell was very consciously translating counterpoint theory into fiction.  The Wachowskis and Tykwer are doing the same thing to Mitchell, translating counterpoint fiction into film.  The thing about counterpoint is that it’s difficult to be original or creative when you have very restricting rules to which you must adhere.  But this is the genius of both the film and the novel: like counterpoint intervals, we’ve seen all this before.  The slave drama, the political thriller, the Orwellian future, the post-apocalypse.  They are all familiar to us.  But like Bach, who wrote exquisite, emotional music using the rigid counterpoint system, Cloud Atlas’s success is not in the originality of any of its stories, but in the way in which the stories are played together using their respective familiar pieces.  All criticism of the poorly-executed Asian-face aside, reusing actors in each of the sextet’s voices is crucial to the film’s own self-imposed rules of counterpoint.  No singular story in the film is so great that it warrants its own movie.  But played together, they form a score for something new, something creative, something affecting.  The cross-cutting techniques inherent in producing a film lend themselves well to counterpoint, even more so than Mitchell’s palindromic structure.  And the Wachowskis’ film plays out the independent rhythms and contours of each voice, while inextricably linking it to the whole.

One-Line Review: Despite its shortcomings, the Wachowski-Tykwer-Mitchell film-fugue is a resounding success.

7.  Django Unchained (Quentin Tarantino) [Scotiabank Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

Django Unchained Issue #2 comic book cover by artist Mark Chiarello.

The far left critics think it’s a flippant portrayal of the history of slavery.  The far right critics think it’s reverse racism.  Spike Lee refuses to watch it.  It’s even taken some of the heat off of Modern Warfare 3 as the scapegoat for violence in entertainment breeding violence in real life.  Hooray for controversy!  I really don’t feel it necessary to respond to any of the critiques leveled at Tarantino’s latest film; there’s enough of that floating around the Interwebs as it is.  I just thought this movie was great fun.  Structurally, it’s essentially Taken written as a slave story.  Liam Neeson (Jamie Foxx) has his daughter (wife) kidnapped (legally sold) into slavery (slavery).  To get her back, he uses his very special set of skills to kill everyone in Europe (Mississippi).  Granted, Tarantino’s film is much more nuanced than Taken, but at its heart, it’s just immensely satisfying to watch Jamie Foxx kill all those white people (ahem, slavers).  There isn’t much room for complex characters in a film that’s so outrageously violent it’s basically a cartoon.  With the exception of Christoph Waltz’s Dr. King Schultz, everyone in the film is either a racist or a slave (or both if you consider Samuel L. Jackson’s fantastic performance as Stephen the house slave).  Waltz shoulders all of the racial tension in the film – he’s the only character who exists in the gray.  He abhors slavery on moral grounds, but just finds it so useful sometimes.  It’s an enormous responsibility to put on one character and one actor, but Waltz handles it masterfully, bringing his Inglourious Basterds charm to the dubiously-gallant Schultz.  Of course he opposes slavery, because owning a human being is a barbaric notion, but… he still feels vaguely superior when faced with a black “equal”.  Django Unchained is a fantastically-entertaining Spaghetti Western slapstick revenge drama that contains faintly-controversial race relations (and a wonderfully-maniacal Leo DiCaprio as plantation owner Calvin Candie).

One-Line Review:  Dear Spike Lee: If you’re so mad about this, why don’t you rally some funds and make your own damn slave drama.  Despite your occasional, inexplicable incompetence (i.e. She Hate Me), you’re still black cinema’s golden boy.  Act like it.

6.  Holy Motors (Leos Carax) [VIFF: Centre for Performing Arts, Vancouver, BC]

This is probably the weirdest film on my list.  Holy Motors is an absolute trip.  It was the chosen film for the Vancouver International Film Festival’s closing gala.  Wine, awards, speeches, and then… this.  There is no way to summarize this film in any sort of coherent way, but I’ll do my damnedest.  Denis Lavant plays a gallimaufry* of strange characters and attacks each of them with reckless abandon.  He is a motion capture actor, a man on his death bed, a bag lady, an assassin, and at one point he bites a man’s fingers off, kidnaps Eva Mendes, hauls her to the sewer, and eats her hair.  The tenuous thread holding together these disparate characters is the fact that Lavant plays an actor who is hired to play them.  He travels the city in a limousine/dressing room, doing his own make-up and preparing his own costumes while he is shuttled between jobs.  The film is a love song to the cinema, in all of its foibles, its technological advancements, its gratuitous ego.  And it is a director’s love affair with an actor, Carax trusting Lavant to carry his battleship of a film through all the murky waters he sends it.  It’s all very meta, very abstract, blurring the lines of artifice, reality, narrative, and totally screwing with filmic conventions.  Lavant dies several times on screen and, even though we know it’s all a show, we’re still affected by his death(s) because of his astounding stage presence and emotive capabilities.  But Carax doesn’t so much exploit his audience’s yearning for affective connection as he does expose the strengths and weaknesses of film’s ability to bring affective response about.  Near the film’s climax, we find Lavant performing a soaring musical theatre-esque duet with none other than Kylie Minogue and, sentimental and contrived as it is, we find ourselves relaxing into the musical’s familiar conventions after being jostled about so vigorously.  Of course, we’re never allowed to relax for too long and pretty soon Lavant is returning home to his wife the chimpanzee and we’re left at the Holy Motors garage, where the limousines park at night and discuss the days events with garish cartoon voices à la Pixar’s Cars.

At the film’s screening at VIFF’s closing gala, the festival director relayed an appropriate anecdote.  Holy Motors premiered at Cannes alongside David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis (which is also worth a watch, though it missed my Top 12).  Cosmopolis stars Robert Pattinson as a billionaire investment banker who tours the city in his white limousine in search of a haircut.  When he idly ponders, “Where do all the limousines go at night?” a savvy Cannes viewer shouted “Holy Motors!” to a smattering of applause, laughter, and disapproving tsk’s.  And this is what Holy Motors has the ability to do: garner laughter, applause, disapproval, disgust, and invade other films by virtue of its mere existence.

One-Line Review: *Gallimaufry – a confused jumble or medley of things.

5.  Rust and Bone (Jacques Audiard) [VIFF: Vancity Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

Here is a film that deserves to be seen.  It is absolutely brimming with love and violence.  Unlikely couple Marion Cotillard (a killer whale trainer) and Matthias Schoenaerts (a bouncer and underground MMA fighter) are electric, tender and real.  Theirs is a love story that destroys sentimentality while still clinging fiercely to it.  There is an immediacy to Audiard’s direction that puts sharp feeling into punches, tears, and sex.  And it boasts perhaps the most emotionally-affecting use of a Katy Perry song (“Firework”) that has ever or will ever exist.  It should be getting a relatively wide release, so seek it out if you can.

One-Line Review: Sexy, sad & violent.

4.  The Hunt (Jagten) [VIFF: Vancity Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

This stark drama is Danish filmmaker (and co-founder of the Dogme 95 movement) Thomas Vinterberg’s best film since his breakout The Celebration (Festen).  I realize that I am now in serious film-snob territory, considering the fact that I’m going on about Dogme films and that numbers 6, 5, and 4 on my list all had verrry limited release.  But whatever, bite me.  I like movies.  Mads Mikkelsen plays a divorcee struggling to maintain a relationship with his son.  His already troubled life is shattered wide open when he is accused of pedophilia.   A well-loved elementary school teacher in a small Danish community, he becomes an immediate pariah, condemned by insidious popular consensus.  Mikkelsen displays a tightly-wound tension between vulnerability and defiance in what I believe to be one of the year’s best performances.  Vinterberg’s direction is tight and atmospheric, never dipping into melodrama in a very melodramatic situation.  It is perfectly-paced and, like all great films, gets to the heart of human nature (ugly as it often is).

One-Line Review: Dark, gripping & powerful.

3.  The Master (Paul Thomas Anderson) [Park Theatre, Vancouver, BC]

PT Anderson’s latest is less a continuously-progressing story than it is a series of inter-connected vignettes in the lives of dangerously-damaged WWII veteran Freddie Quell (Joaquin Phoenix) and charismatic cult leader Lancaster Dodd (Philip Seymour Hoffman).  Late-40s America gets the PT Anderson treatment, exposing the menacing disquiet underlying the facade of idyllic suburbia.  Phoenix encapsulates male post-war malaise with aching perfection.  And Hoffman’s preening is a brilliant lampoon of Scientology’s L. Ron Hubbard.  But the film is more than any of these things, as Anderson’s films always are.  It’s about power, personality, a desperate search for home.  But perhaps overshadowing even PTA’s talent as a filmmaker is Joaquin Phoenix’s monumental performance as Quell.  His stoic self-destruction (consuming self-brewed concoctions of various household chemicals, including residual liquid from unused aerial bombs) is terrifying and utterly captivating to watch.  It is one of the most astounding feats of acting I have ever seen and if he doesn’t win an Oscar, I’ll eat my shoe.

One-Line Review: I’m lost in this world and I want to stay that way.

2.  The Avengers (Joss Whedon) [Galaxy Cinemas, Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan]

The Avengers makes you feel like a 12-year old again, creating rudimentary spreadsheets of superhero stats and staging imaginary battles to find out who would win.  Wait, you didn’t do that?  Doesn’t matter.  This is what blockbuster cinema is meant to be.  Joss Whedon’s dialogue shines (as it always does, and as pop-Hollywood dialogue tends not to).  Putting Whedon in charge of such a financially-ambitious project was vindication for all those Firefly and Buffy fans who’ve felt cast aside over the years.  With such a collection of alpha male egos (plus Whedon’s token ass-kicking female in the form of Scarlett Johansson), the danger was having an over-saturation of awesomeness, resulting in a cacophonous mess.  But Whedon handles the characters like a fan would.  Egos do clash, but in the service of the story.  And you know you’ve got good writing on your hands when straight-man Agent Coulson (his first name is “Agent”) can upstage Ironman and have the audience entirely at his back.  Though it works well as a stand-alone film, seeing its precursors (in particular the mostly-disappointing Thor) is necessary to complete the Avengers experience.

One-Line Review: A (Hulk) smash hit.

1.  Beasts of the Southern Wild (Benh Zeitlin) [5th Avenue Cinemas, Vancouver, BC]

Benh Zeitlin’s first feature film is a monumental achievement.  It’s one part fairy tale, one part poetry, and two parts intense realism.  The film takes place in a fictional community in the Louisiana bayou called “The Bathtub”.  The lead character, five-year old Hushpuppy is played with extraordinary surety by Quvenzhané Wallis (now the youngest Oscar-nominee in the history of the awards).  She and her father, Wink (Dwight Henry) survive day-to-day in the overwhelming poverty of the Bathtub and weather a devastating tropical storm (with shades of Katrina) together.  Hushpuppy longs to seek out her absent mother and deals with Wink’s alcoholism and unreliability with her own child-like stoicism.  There is so much love and beauty in this film, with an array of amazing performances and spectacular visuals creating an atmosphere unlike any other.  The mostly-amateur cast (Dwight Henry was a bakery-owner who wasn’t even looking for an acting job when he was cast) deliver noteworthy performances all around.  The film has a strong non-linear visual spirit throughout, bolstered by Hushpuppy’s poetic, philosophic narration, but the story takes over at the film’s climax and the non-linear tone resolves its emotional journey with Zeitlin’s powerful storytelling.

One-Line Review: Magnificent.  That is all.

Honorable Mentions

1. Looper (Rian Johnson)
2. Laurence Anyways (Xavier Dolan)
3. Like Someone In Love (Abbas Kiarostami)
4. A Royal Affair (Nikolaj Arcel)
5. Prometheus (Ridley Scott)
6. The Loneliest Planet (Julia Loktev)

Films I’ve Missed Thus Far (which may eventually change the list)

1. Amour
2. Something In the Air (Apres mai)
3. Zero Dark Thirty
4. Flight
5. Lincoln
6. Monsieur Lazhar
7. We Need to Talk About Kevin
8. Argo
9. Polisse
10. Keyhole
11. Silver Linings Playbook

Review of “The Odds” [2011]

It’s encouraging to see a local (i.e. Vancouver) film with such a limited budget that looks as good as The Odds.  This beautifully-shot film is the first feature from writer/director Simon Davidson and stars a slew of Vancouver talent.  Tyler Johnston stars as Desson, a high school senior who gets caught up in an illegal gambling ring.  Murder and mayhem necessarily follow.

The film is intended as a fresh take on the high school thriller genre, with a dash of film noir thrown in for good measure.  The film’s aesthetic hits all the right notes, with deep, cool colours, dark shadows, and shallow depth of field all helping to create an effective atmosphere for the film.  In a Q&A panel at the Vancouver premiere, Davidson claims cinematographer Norm Li took his cues from David Fincher’s Zodiac cinematographer Harris Savides and shot much of the film two stops under “ideal” aperture (without Davidson’s knowledge) to ensure that night exteriors were dark and deep.  Good work, Li.  Because the cinematography is one of the shining points of the film, with the early wrestling scenes being some of the most skillfully-composed (with a nod to editor Greg Ng as well).

The Odds, unfortunately, suffers from over-writing on Davidson’s part.  Instead of letting situations play out in Li’s capable visuals, nearly every scrap of information is crammed into unnecessary dialogue.  Despite citing Jacques Audiard as an influence (in that his characters are neither good nor bad, but “somewhere in between”) Davidson feels it necessary to spell out every character motivation for us.  It’s obvious that he is trying desperately to make his film into Rian Johnson’s Brick, and while he is on the right track from a technical standpoint, with capable direction of both camera and actors, The Odds could’ve used a screenwriter.

Tyler Johnston as Desson exhibits an easy charm and honesty that carries the film forward, but is not given the opportunity to express much emotion other than his detached confidence and sexy just-off-camera eyelines.

Julia Maxwell is beautiful as Colleen, at turns vulnerable and strong, making the best of an under-written character who in the end is peripheral to the story itself, despite being the film’s ostensible female lead.

Robert Moloney is the best actor in the film, his self-loathing apathy as Desson’s father a source of sympathy, frustration, and humour.  Scott Patey and Jaren Brandt Bartlett as antagonists of sorts fall into cliché occasionally, but hold their own.  Calum Worthy also turns in an effective performance as Barry.

Patric Caird provides an original soundtrack and the industrial-dirty-underground-electronic stuff he comes up with lends an air of badassery to a bunch of kids playing cards in Paul’s mom’s basement that might not otherwise have been there.  However, his soaring violins serve not so much to complement the film’s emotional scenes, but to overpower them with melodrama and could have been reigned in a bit.

Verdict: Norm Li, call me.  Simon Davidson, call a screenwriter.

Rating: 3 stars.

Medium: Empire Granville 7 Theatre, Vancouver. 1st viewing.

[Photos by Lyle Stafford]

Cumulus Discord at Cuppa Joy Coffee, 21 April 2012

I’d like to take a few seconds to send out props to a local Vancouver band, Cumulus Discord, who played an acoustic set Saturday night (21 April 2012) at Cuppa Joy Coffee in Kitsilano.  Cuppa Joy gave them the floor for the evening and they played two 50-minute sets.

Frontman Alexander Keurvorst was charismatic as ever, belting out poetry with a voice that rang as sweetly as if an angel had taken up a celestial tuning harp and struck it on a star.  His soaring melodies brought the room to a breathless silence, released only when the last vibration of his guitar’s nylon strings faded into the inchoate ether of the spell that been cast upon the room.  A thunderous applause awoke us from our rapture — had we been but dreaming?

Ingrid Cheung’s army of flutes and incomparable harmonies had lulled us into a trance-like stupor.  We existed only in the moments of pure music emanating from her lips — no future, no past; only the sheer, unadulterated ecstasy of her aerophone glory.

The violin was held in the delicate and sensual hands of a true master.  Devon Kroeger pulled our heart-strings taut and bowed them as if she knew them intimately.  If a man or woman present was not ready to give their life for another moment of Devon’s sensuous stringing, then they possessed cold, dead souls.

Marcus Luk, of course, is the power behind the throne upon which these kings and queens of music are seated.  Steadily pushing them to new and greater heights, he percusses — now fast, now slow, we all are subject to his divine whims.

Re-interpreting the work of the modern era’s undisputed poet laureate, Mark Allan Hoppus, Cumulus Discord created a magnificent and fresh reading of his most cherished work, “Dammit (Growing Up)“, eliciting layers of meaning hitherto undiscovered.

A work of their own, “Cherry Orchard”, so named after the Anton Chekhov play offered a sad and simple oblation of  the mundane things in life to the realm of divine comedy which they more appropriately belong in the untouchable world of our four raconteurs.

Cumulus Discord even had a query for us, their humble and unworthy audience — they currently seek a change of nomenclature.  Cumulus Discord, clearly, is not a name which encompasses their unrivaled majesty and, as an act of good will to their adoring fans, deigned to request suggestions for what we in the mortal realm would describe as a “band name.”  Personally, I am partial to Good Morrow.

If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended; that next you visit Cuppa Joy, here gods walked among the boys.

And girls.

And non-gender-specific entities.

Confessions of a Punk (or: Channeling Russell Brand)

On the set of Yuri Cabrera‘s short film “Smile”.  While setting up for a shot, Yuri grabbed a camera and had me improv a backstory for my character.  So I put on my best Mockney accent and did my utmost to channel the great Russell Brand.

It’s not really a Russell Brand impersonation – more so just my attempt to conjure the spirit of the S&M Willy Wonka.  Below, for your viewing pleasure, is Russell Brand’s 5-minute Shakespearean riff on his character Trinculo in Julie Taymor’s production of The Tempest.  All hail the Shagger of the Year.

Review of David Cronenberg’s “A Dangerous Method”

Cronenberg’s latest is something of a period piece.  Horse-drawn carriages, manicured gardens, haute couture, and erotic spanking.  ..  Wait, what?  Yes, sexuality (transgressive sexuality in particular) is an integral component in A Dangerous Method, as its primary players are the fathers of modern psychology, Sigmund Freud and Carl Gustav Jung, played by Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, respectively.  One only has to mention Freud’s name to conjure phrases like “penis envy” and “castration complex.”  But the salient sexuality in the film comes not from Freud, but from Jung and his affair with patient/student Sabina Spielrein (Keira Knightly).  The film is really about two relationships – Jung and Spielrein, and Jung and Freud – and how they develop over the 10 years that the film spans.

Keira Knightly’s manic hysteria as Spielrein has been unfairly criticized as exaggerated and off-putting.  But for all her cringing, chin-jutting, and delirious laughter, there is an indelible vulnerability in her performance.  Viggo Mortensen is fascinating as a relaxed, arrogant, often-humorous Freud.  And Fassbender is engaging as always.

The film very effectively integrates the development of Jung’s relationships with Freud and Spielrein with the development of his theories of the psyche.  For anyone familiar with Jung’s work, the nascent incarnations of archetype and anima/animus are evident.  And Vincent Cassel appears as the lecherous and anarchistic Otto Gross, a clear personification of what Jung would later term the “shadow self” or “dark side” wherein all the impulses the ego would normally consider unsavory are held.  (And, yes, it was Jung who coined the term “dark side,” not George Lucas.)

The only poorly-executed moments come in Cronenberg’s portrayal of the issues that made for the fundamental discord between Freud and Jung.  Freud took issue with Jung’s emphasis on spirituality and religion as a channel for psychological analysis – he thought it was limiting.  Jung saw Freud’s techniques (especially finding the root cause for neurotic/abnormal behavior in childhood trauma and repressed sexuality) as reductive.  Jung believed in the mysterious nature of the psyche.  ”Our psyche is part of nature,” he says (the real Jung, not Fassbender-Jung), “and its enigma is as limitless.  Thus we cannot define either the psyche or nature.  We can merely state what we believe them to be and describe, as best we can, how they function.”  (Jung, Man & His Symbols, 1964).  And Jung saw religion as a legitimate expression of the psyche’s mystery.

Nowhere, however, is this evident in the script.  We hear Jung complaining to Spielrein that there must be something other than just sexuality to account for changes in the psyche.  And later, in Freud’s office, he seems to get very excited about a “burning in his stomach” that he calls a “catalytic exteriorization phenomenon” – basically a precognition ability.  But at no point does the film mention religion or spirituality and at no point does it have any bearing on the development of Jung’s character.  It simply feels peripheral and out of place in the story – which is odd, because it was central to the breakdown of Jung’s relationship with Freud.

Jung’s relationship with Spielrein is at turns sad and sexy and ultimately satisfying, but his relationship with Freud, while it has some affecting moments, as a whole falls flat.

Verdict:  It is an intelligent, beautifully-shot film – and wonderfully-acted.  Unfortunately, one of its primary components (which happens to be the most famous relationship and feud in the history of psychology) feels lacking and out of place.

Medium: Amazon Instant Video. 1st viewing.

Rating: 3.5 stars.

Battle Royale – Profile of a Film

Battle Royale (2000)

Director – Kinji Fukasaku

Screenwriter – Kenta Fukasaku (Kinji’s son)

Running Time – 114 min; 122 min (Director’s Cut)

Released – 16 December 2000

Budget – US $4.5 Million (estimated)

Gross – US $30 Million (approximately)

Novel – Koushun Takami – April 1999

Manga Series – Koushun Takami, Masayuki Taguchi – November 2000

Tagline – One dead. 41 to go.

[See IMDb 's Battle Royale page if you don't think I'm already being WAAYY too goddamn thorough.]

Summary

In near-future Japan, a desperate government, in an attempt to curb juvenile delinquency, passes the BR Act.  Once every year, a ninth grade class is chosen by lottery from the Japanese population, drugged and brought to a deserted island, where the wake up wearing irremovable metal collars.  They are told that they have 3 days to kill each other.  The last remaining student gets to go home alive.  If more than one student is left alive after three days, the collars explode and they all die.  Each student is given a survival kit and a unique weapon.  The weapons range from assault rifle to pot lid and everywhere in between.  Takeshi Kitano stars as Kitano, the host of the game.

The Director

Kinji Fukasaku was almost 70 when he made Battle Royale, his 60^th film, and it would end up being his last completed project.  He was working on Battle Royale II: Requiem in 2003 when he died of prostate cancer.  As the story goes, he was diagnosed as a terminal patient during pre-production for BRII and, ignoring doctors’ advice to seek treatment, decided to start production.  He died after directing one scene with Takeshi Kitano and his son, Kenta, finished directing the film.

Throughout his prolific career, Fukasaku worked in a number of genres, including science fiction, war drama, jidaigeki (period/costume drama) and most notably, the yakuza gangster drama.  His films include: the Japanese sequences of Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970), The Yakuza Papers film series (5 feature-length crime dramas produced between 1973 and 1974), Samurai Reincarnation (1981) starring Sonny Chiba (with whom he collaborated frequently), and Crest of Betrayal or: Loyal 47 Ronin: Yotsuya Ghost Story (1995), which won two Japan Academy Prizes for Best Film and Best Director (Fukusaku’s 3^rd win in each category).   He was also responsible for directing an English-language film called The Green Slime (1968), which ended up being the first film featured on the cult TV series, Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

He served as the chairman of the Directors’ Guild of Japan from 1996 until his death in 2003. [1]

Reception

With a substantial budget (US $4.5 Million) and a well-established director, the film was going to be “big.”  The novel had already caused something of a controversy a year and a half previous.  And the first edition of the Battle Royale manga series released a month previous to the film served only to increase anticipation of the cinematic release.

The result was an immediate dichotomy.  It was both wildly popular and vehemently derided by the populace, the critics, and the parliament.  After members of parliament were shown a pre-release screening of the film, it was labeled “crude and tasteless” and became something of a rally point for those concerned about more government intervention in media violence. [2]

Despite some extremely vocal dissenters to the film, it was also acclaimed by audiences and critics for its peculiar success in blending campy, exploitative ultra-violence with biting satire and social criticism.  It was incredibly successful in Japan, winning the 2001 Blue Ribbon Award for Best Film, and garnering nine Japan Academy Prize nominations (winning three).  It grossed over ¥3 Billion (approx. US $30 Million) in Japan and became an international cult hit.

It was rated R15 in Japan (i.e. suitable only for those over the age of 15).  Fukasaku originally opposed this rating on the grounds that most of his actors were 15 or younger.  However, when the Diet of Japan (the Japanese legislature) called the film “harmful to teenagers” and began to criticize the film industry’s self-regulated rating system, Fukasaku dropped his complaint.  Contrary to popular belief, the film was not banned in the United States, it just simply never received any sort of distribution deal.  (It did, however, play at both the Cleveland and Seattle Film Festivals in 2001.)  For a number of years after its release, it was available only on bootlegged video cassette from the Internet or in Chinese video stores.  Eventually, it was picked up by a distributor in the UK and made its way to DVD.  A Director’s Cut was released in 2004 with extended flashbacks, three epilogues, and additional CGI.  And finally, last week, received its American DVD-BluRay release (March 20, 2012).  One of the most effective voices lauding the film was Quentin Tarantino, who describes Battle Royale as “my favorite movie of all time.”  He paid his own little homage to Battle Royale, by casting Chiaki Kuriyama (Takako Chigusa) as Gogo Yubari in Kill Bill, Vol. 1 (2003).

Interpretations

Underneath the film’s exploitative ultra-violence and camp aesthetic, critics have attempted to divine what sort of satire or social commentary was intended with the film, and whether or not it was effective.

Battle Royale, at its heart, is a violent film that opposes violence.  In a self-reflexive, somewhat self-defeating manner, it exploits the audience’s fixation with violence in order to condemn it.  This is a very consciously inept strategy, to be sure.  We watch it for the violence and we simultaneously revel in its glory and are condemned for doing so.

We also watch Battle Royale  because it is a movie that Hollywood would never dare to make.  Despite Hollywood’s propensity for violence, a movie about children killing each other would never get studio approval.  NY Times critic Robert Ito writes “In post-Columbine America…audiences weren’t ready to watch 14-year-olds — even cute ones in stylish school uniforms — maiming and killing one another with axes, crossbows and automatic weapons.”  [3]  The newly-released Hunger Games, based on Suzanne Collins’ best-selling trilogy (that bears striking similarities to Battle Royale), may prove Robert Ito wrong, but its PG-13 rating will likely restrain the violence to a more, shall we say… palatable level.

Some saw the film as “an underlying portrait of parental neglect.” [4]  The protagonist, Shyuya Nanahara (Tatsuya Fujiwara) is the son of a mother who has abandoned him and a father who has committed suicide.  One of the film’s deadliest girls, Mitsuko (Kô Shibasaki), was victim to an alcoholic mother who accepted money from men to use her daughter sexually.  Others saw it as an early criticism (or even a presage) of the phenomenon of Reality TV (Survivor’s first season was in 2000).

There is also a very obvious correlation between the literally cutthroat competitiveness of the Battle Royale and the figuratively cutthroat competitiveness of the Japanese education system.  The first nine grades in Japan are compulsory and publicly funded.  Advancement from one grade to the next is generally assured if the student attends.  However, after Grade 9, the schools become privately funded and acceptance to a reputable secondary school helps ensure acceptance to a reputable university.  Students compete for placement in prestigious schools through nation-wide examinations, and competition is fierce.  As Anthony Leong points out, writing for Asian Cult Cinema, “it is no coincidence that the students picked to play Battle Royale are in the ninth grade.” [5]

One point of criticism for a number of reviewers is the essential lack of impetus for the Japanese government’s excessive response to juvenile delinquency.  The film begins with a short text introduction about the economic collapse of Japan, high unemployment, 800,000 youths boycotting school, and soaring youth crime rates.  In such an atmosphere, “the adults lost confidence and, fearing the youth, eventually passed the Millennium Educational Reform Act.”  The novel apparently goes into much greater detail regarding the atmosphere of this fictional Japan, beginning with a WWII victory for Japan and the eventual decline of Japanese society.  Leong declares this to be “part of the problem” with Battle Royale: its “greater emphasis on exploitation than examination.” [6]

The film also becomes an emotionally engaging study of teenage culture.  The audience wonders why adults are so frightened of these “delinquent youth” when most of them conform to well-known high school stereotypes.  You can laugh at the absurdity of the Battle Royale’s plot device, but once engaged with the characters, you can’t help but take their situation seriously.  Passionate performances from almost all of the students make the film enjoyable and, eerily enough, believable.  Robert Koehler writes that “the notion that girlish cliques can go John Woo on each other is one of the movie’s funniest, darkest jokes.” [7]  And casting Takeshi Kitano (aka Beat Takeshi, a Renaissance man of Japanese cinema), renaming his character “Kitano,” and having him play a what amounts to a parallel universe version of himself was a stroke of genius on Fukasaku’s part.  Kitano is at once terrifying, deadpan funny, and full of pathos.

Final Thoughts

Battle Royale is a film that elicited many varied responses from many different people.  To some it is, for good or bad, simply exploitative, violent entertainment.  To others, it is a social commentary on Japanese society, media and/or education.  And it is an engaging morality play and character study.  It is all of these things.  Whether or not you enjoy the camp aesthetic and whether or not you think the satire is effective is where discussion of this film can really take off.  And, as a director, that is exactly what you want.  Discuss.

Director’s Statement

“I immediately identified with the 9th graders in the novel, Battle Royale. I was fifteen when World War II came to an end. By then, my class had been drafted and was working in a munitions factory. In July 1945, we were caught up in artillery fire. Up until then, the attacks had been air raids and you had a chance of escaping from those. But with artillery, there was no way out. It was impossible to run or hide from the shells that rained down. We survived by diving for cover under our friends.

After the attacks, my class had to dispose of the corpses. It was the first time in my life I’d seen so many dead bodies. As I lifted severed arms and legs, I had a fundamental awakening … everything we’d been taught in school about howJapanwas fighting the war to win world peace, was a pack of lies. Adults could not be trusted.

The emotions I experienced then–an irrational hatred for the unseen forces that drove us into those circumstances, a poisonous hostility towards adults, and a gentle sentimentality for my friends–were a starting point for everything since. This is why, when I hear reports about recent outbreaks of teenage violence and crimes, I cannot easily judge or dismiss them.

This is the point of departure for all my films. Lots of people die in my films. They die terrible deaths. But I make them this way because I don’t believe anyone would ever love or trust the films I make, any other way.

BATTLE ROYALE, my 60th film, returns irrevocably to my own adolescence. I had a great deal of fun working with the 42 teenagers making this film, even though it recalled my own teenage battleground.”  – Kinji Fukasaku [8]

---

[1]  http://www.dgj.or.jp/english/article/000292.html

[2]  http://mediacircus.net/battleroyale.html

[3]  http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/09/movies/09ito.html?_r=2&oref=slogin

[4]  Schager, Nick.  http://www.nickschager.com/nsfp/2004/03/battle_royale_2.html

[5]  Leung, Anthony.  http://mediacircus.net/battleroyale.html

[6]  Leung, Anthony.  http://mediacircus.net/battleroyale.html

[7]  Koehler, Robert.  http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117797143.html?categoryid=31&cs=1

[8]  Fukasaku, Kinji.  http://web.archive.org/web/20021205020037/http://www.battleroyalethemovie.com/staff.htm#