Movie Review: Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins

At one point in Japanese director Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins, the character of Shinzaemon (Koji Yakusho) makes a remarkable statement. When asked to plot the assassination of a cruel lord, which in effect would guarantee the end of his own life, Shinzaemon responds not with a "why me?" or a "no way," but instead stammers, "How fate smiles on me." The chance to perform a good deed and die a noble death is a blessing to him. This illustrates the character of one of the great men of this film, and the audience's admiration for its 13 heroes is much greater than their admiration for Miike's overlong, climactic battle.

Miike is the most famous of modern Japanese directors here in the West, but he has only achieved this status through shock value; his movies such as Ichi the Killer (2001) and Audition (1999) are exploitative and stomach-turning in their violence. 13 Assassins is easily the best and most watchable film I have ever seen of Miike's, but it is still in danger of drowning in its own blood.

The film has a simple plot, divided into three segments. First, Shinzaemon is approached to kill the evil Naritsuga (Goro Inagaki), and we witness the lord's misdeeds in flashback. Second, Shinzaemon gathers 11 other faithful samurai to join his new cause (the thirteenth warrior joins up later). Finally, after some brief travel, Miike slices his film into a 50-minute battle, with more action than I have ever seen in an uninterrupted sequence. I can't be sure, but I believe this easily sets the body count record for a samurai film, as 200 soldiers square off against our heroes.

Miike still fails to show restraint as a filmmaker, and this awesome action movie suffers for it. The final battle is too long, as one bloody, telephoto shot full of bodies and swords and mud rolls into the next. The events become very difficult to differentiate. The battle is actually less effective than those in Akira Kurosawa's Seven Samurai (1954) because Kurosawa's film does not drag the action out until it has lost all impact and become formulaic; Kurosawa also set the standard for chaotic, close-range battle footage shot with long lenses in Samurai. To Miike's credit, the rape of a married woman by Lord Naritsuga is left off-screen, but shots of Naritsuga's mutilated-- but living-- sex-slave recall Miike's inability to make a movie that doesn't offend.

13 Assassins looks spectacular and benefits from wonderful performances, and I even liked it enough to consider a Blu-ray purchase, but overall it doesn't live up to the standards for meaningful but entertaining samurai films set by the Kurosawas and Goshas of yesteryear. It tries so hard that it bleeds out right off the edges of the screen.

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I Owe You All an Apology...

So I said in this blog a few months ago that I would not see Michael Bay's Transformers: Dark of the Moon when it comes out this summer. The third film in this overwrought series of excess, it is the first to star someone other than Megan Fox as the primary heroine. Due to the fact that there is not enough room in downtown Chicago for two divas as big as Bay and Fox to exist at the same time, she has been replaced by Victoria's Secret model Rosie Huntington-Whiteley.

Oh well. None of us were going to see it for the acting, anyway. Oh, and it was written by Ehren Kruger, who also wrote Revenge of the Fallen. None of this bodes well for the film, even though the early screening got rave reviews from Ain't It Cool News.

...oh my gosh! look at this trailer!

The movie was shot digitally in James Cameron's true 3D, Fusion Camera technique, so it will look insane in any case. The pure insanity of Bay's unquenchable destruction-lust will be on display.

Yes, I will probably see it. *sigh*

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Go See This

Terrence Malick's fifth feature film, The Tree of Life, is due out May 27 in limited release.

Tell me this doesn't look like the most beautiful film ever put together.

Okay, so I'm not promising a cohesive narrative, but anyone who knows Malick's work knows to expect a sensual montage, not a formulated unfolding of events.

By the way, if you haven't seen The Thin Red Line (1998), go see it.

Happy viewing,

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Blu Recommendation: AMC's The Walking Dead season 1

That, uh... that sound you hear is God laughing while you make plans.

Cable network AMC has clearly gotten into the modern television game, leaving behind its horrendous early-millenium malaise of unexceptional movie airing, and producing cutting edge dramas. Everyone loves Mad Men, which I couldn't care any less about, and Breaking Bad is exceptional. Then along stumble The Walking Dead, pushing the bounds of what can be shown on standard cable and creating more credibility for TV shows as art; this series has the pacing and quality of a major motion picture.

First airing in October of 2010, this continuing series is based on a series of Image graphic novels by Robert Kirkman. The great Frank Darabont (The Shawshank Redemption) deserves the credit for getting this on screen, serving as the series mastermind, producing and even directing some of it. The series stars Andrew Lincoln, John Bernthal, and Sarah Wayne Callies as zombie apocalypse survivors trying to make their way through Georgia with their limbs, and humanity, intact.

The blu-ray is awesome, filling your HDTV screen with its 1.78:1 aspect ratio. The series was shot on 16mm film, and the resulting image is beautiful, maintaining a grain veneer when the shots are dark but being clear and detailed during the bright shots. There is a lot of facial detail to see here, whether it consists of the stubble of a sweaty Lincoln or the abrasions of some demented walker. It also comes with a very satisfying Dolby TrueHD 5.1 surround track to take full advantage of your HD-compatible home theater.

While there are no commentary tracks, the blu-ray does have some good extras, including a behind-the-scenes documentary on the entire creation of the show, mini previews for each of the six episodes, a San Diego Comic-Con panel with the creators, and HD trailers for other shows and movies. The only technical problem with the 2-disc set is that there is no way to select specific chapters within any of the episodes, something even DVD's have been doing for ten years.

Violent and upsetting, The Walking Dead is also extremely compelling, and 99% of viewers will pound through the short first season and want more. AMC is going to continue the series in 2011, so those of us safe in the real world can continue to watch these very human characters struggle through their threatening world.

Happy viewing,

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Okay, Maybe I'm not so Happy Anymore...

Ugh.

This trailer looks absolutely horrible. I love Chris Evans (Sunshine, Fantastic Four), but this is ridiculous, and his CG-emaciated body looks like a bad joke.

Director Joe Johnston, who hasn't made a piece of celluloid crap since last year's The Wolfman, looks like he has no idea what he is doing; an exaggerated production design and silly tone is not the way to win over modern audiences.

I used to love comic book movies, but now I'm waving the red, white, and blue flag.

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Movie Review: Zack Snyder's Sucker Punch

All flare, no care.

I probably cold write for a month and still never address all the different ways critics hate director Zack Snyder's (300) new movie, Sucker Punch. Snyder is one artist whose work it is currently en vogue to hate on, but I have never felt that he deserved the derision until now.

Snyder shows virtually no restraint in any way here, except that the exploitative presentation of the film's young, female antagonists never quite reaches R-level, and I will give him credit for restraining himself from falling into Tony Scott-like hyper cutting to round out the obnoxious presentation, but that was probably only avoided to allow for the exceedingly long takes of CGI cartoonery.

The lovely Emily Browning (Lemony Snicket's a Series of Unfortunate Events) plays Baby Doll, a girl forced into a mental institution in Vermont after her mother dies and she accidentally kills her sister. The institution's cruel master, Blue Jones (Oscar Isaac), plans to lobotomize her. Doll and the four friends she earns (Abbie Cornish, Jenna Malone, Vanessa Hudgens, and Jamie Chung) plan a way to escape, but that way is through their own imaginations.

It is all a mess from here, as the mental institution is immediately re-presented as a burlesque, the girls now trashed up, dancing whores and Blue their pimp. Within this more colorful world, Baby doll uses her dancing to gain power over her audience, the same trick Snyder apparently wanted to pull. But even when the girls dance, we don't see it; the metaphorical battle against sci-fi enemies in video game locales becomes our reality.

Sucker Punch is inane and derivative, three levels of Inception deep in a trashy Christina Aguilera video, by way of anime action leftovers. You never have time to care about the characters, and the action scenes fail to entertain, but they annoy with their excessively loud pop music remix soundtracks. Almost the entire film is an enigmatic daydream, and the total running time in what you could exhaustedly call the real world- or what Christopher Nolan would call zero levels deep- is probably about 20 minutes.

The film is outright ugly, as a smog renders all things brown and even the (mostly animated) fight scenes look blurry. A faithful DVD/Blu-ray transfer in a couple of month's time will not be fun to look at, though it will shake your house non-stop, so if you want to own this movie you had better find something worthwhile in its content. If you are a teenage boy, I am not judging.

Happy viewing,

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Movies I Really Wish Didn't Suck: part 1

I will be bringing you an ongoing series at random intervals. These posts will name movies I wanted to love throughout my life that turned out to be crap. These are a real tragedy, and I'm going to get kind of emotional discussing them.

P.S. This is a great idea for a continuing series because Hollywood will always continue to supply us with disappointing crap!

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

I am happy to kick off this series with a Michael Bay "film" (hey, Mike!), and it is truly the worst of his worst. I didn't like Bay's 2007 original, but I had hopes that, since the production values on these movies are mammoth, he would hit the right tone with the sequel.

Boy, was I foolish. Transformers 2 is unwatchable, the epitome of cinematic excess, full of juvenile humor and racially stereotyped anime mechs. Shia LaBeouf is about as annoying as possible in it, and Megan Fox really doesn't get anything to do besides look good. In fact, the only thing Bay seems to want his (supposedly 'tween) male audience to objectify more than her curves is all of the military imagery.

I hated Revenge of the Fallen.

2. The Matrix Reloaded (2003)

The Matrix (1999) is one of my favorite movies, and the trailers for its sequel made Reloaded look amazing, but the film was a complete waste of time. It broke the rules already established for its universe by the first film, and it did so with bad contrivances to boot.

The Wachowski brothers got too ambitious with their effects sequences so that the fight scene between Neo (Keanu Reeves) and a ton of Agent Smiths (Hugo Weaving) in the middle of the film literally looked like a cartoon. The story went swiftly down hill, and the filmmakers made the mistake of minimizing Neo's power; all of the momentum from The Matrix was gone.

On the bright side, the film's freeway chase scene is one of the greatest action scenes ever crafted.

3. The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

Yeah, I might as well piss off everyone sooner rather than later with this list. But I know the story of LOTR better than you (unless your name is Tolkien), and I'm passionate enough about Peter Jackson's trilogy paling in comparison to the books that I should write a doctoral thesis about it.

Jackson and his band of rich, know-it-all writers had already dug themselves a hole by butchering the second part of the trilogy and leaving too much ground to be covered in the final film. How to fix this? Well, simply leave out tons of amazing moments, exclude main characters, and reduce Tolkien's poetic writing to bad one liners.

"I am no man!"? Are you kidding me?!?

Boy, 2003 sucked.

Late,

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