Quick

It’s sort of like ‘Speed’ but in South Korea and on a motorcycle. It’s a comedy-action film that’s pretty entertaining all things considered, though it might be a little too long, a little too unfocused and a little tonally inconsistent. The movie mostly overcomes its shortcomings and offers a silly take on motorcycle action flicks.

Ki-su, the former leader of a motorcycle gang, is now down on his luck working as a bike courier in Seoul. He is given a job driving the lead singer of a popular pop-band to a concert she’s performing at, only to discover that it’s Chun-sim, the girl he unceremoniously dumped during his gang-leader phase. She puts on his helmet, only to trigger a time limit - a terrorist bomber has rigged the helmet with explosives, forcing Ki-su and Chun-sim to deliver three packages across town. There are rules – they have a strict time limit of thirty minutes to make each delivery or the bomb will go off. Ki-su’s wristwatch also cannot be more than ten metres away from Chun-sim’s helmet or it’ll explode. If they try and remove either, it will explode. Forced together the two need to race against time to deliver the packages while avoiding explosions, the police and angry gangsters, while the police force try and track down the bomber.

There is some action, some thrills, some stunts and a lot more comedy than you’d probably expect. There are also a lot of explosions. Maybe more than you’d expect (it gets to the point where everything seems like it explodes), and almost every single one of them is used to show characters making ridiculously silly faces. The film is more a comedy than anything else. Instead of the high-stakes action-thriller trappings of Speed, Quick goes for silly slapstick and ridiculous hijinks. It’s comedy-action more than action-comedy. That’s not to say it’s devoid of action – there are a few chases thrown in, but more time is spent off of the motorcycle than on it and a lot more character interplay and comedy is thrown in together.

 

There are some odd tonal shifts. Every scene actually involving the villainous bomber is serious and would fit in a proper thriller. Actually the underlying background plot is pretty much serious business against the comedy silliness of most of the rest of the film. It’s also a bit too long. The finale continues a lot longer than you’d imagine as they throw in some flashbacks to explain and link just about everything together. There are also several threats to overcome all thrown onto each other – at least twice you feel as though the final conflict has been dealt with.

There are some motorcycle stunts, which will seem pretty slow and basic to those who watch a lot of car chase movies, but over the end credits they show the stunt footage which astoundingly shows that pretty much every single stunt went wrong, resulting in a lot of people getting hurt. One stunt woman in particular gets burnt, cut and bruised constantly. The reel at the end is pretty sobering as it shows people getting taken to hospital, getting cut and burnt and hurt in general. What is more concerning is the looks of genuine horror and worry on the faces of the spectating cast and crew when something goes wrong, some who are even on the verge of tears. The bigger motorcycle stunts and explosions are all done with CGI, and it mostly looks fine. Barring one or two dodgy instances of CGI (CGI glass looks insanely fake), it mostly works well.

 

A big aspect of the movie is watching Ki-su and Chun-sim making silly faces as they ride off buildings, away from explosions and through traffic. The two have an odd sort of wacky chemistry – while the film does try to do the whole ‘rekindling the romance’ thing, the two click better when they’re just involved in random hijinks. Without the comedy aspect, Ki-su would make a dull lead – they do try for some drama with both characters, but it doesn’t quite work. For a movie titled ‘Quick’ it certainly takes its time getting around. It’s not exactly slow, with the movie running at a pretty brisk pace over its 110 minute length, but at some points the movie seems to get side-tracked and the desperate race-against-time never feels that important.  

One point of odd interest – as the audience we’re meant to be rooting for Ki-Su and Chun-sim to make the deliveries on time, but every time they deliver one of the packages a bunch of people get blown up and killed. So while the heroes go through some action stunts and silly hijinks, every time they’re successful some people get killed. The movie sort of tries to distract you from this, with most of the victims being gangsters or corrupt businessmen, but it’s still pretty grim when your comedy-action movie periodically has the heroes basically bomb a few buildings full of people.   

In the end Quick is pretty entertaining. It's not the best movie ever but it is a fun time.

Cure

 

A Japanese psychological horror/thriller overflowing with ambiguity and uncertainty. It’s astoundingly effective at being unsettling, and while it seems quite methodical and slow it becomes clear that there’s something else under the surface.

 

Takabe is a Tokyo detective with issues. He’s a cold, almost emotionless man who is struggling with his wife’s slow descent into mental illness. He begins investigating a series of odd murders occurring across the city. Every murderer is different, but the details are the same. Regardless of the cause of death, each victim has a large X cut into their throat. The murderers, all ordinary people with seemingly no connection to each other, all confess when confronted, but are unable to explain or remember why they killed.  

As the investigation continues, it becomes clear that all of the murderers have a single link, an amnesiac man named Mamiya who had come into contact with every murderer shortly before they committed their crime. Mamiya, seemingly confused as to who he is and what is happening, constantly asks circular questions and trying to get people to tell him about themselves. Takabe and a psychology professor begin to investigate Mamiya, finding a link to various forms of hypnotism and mesmerism. As the investigation continues, Takabe begins to have visions and starts to question his own sanity, becoming more aggressive as the investigation continues.

I’ve mentioned previously that Japanese horror films tend to leave things vague and unexplained. While American and most Western horror flicks are far too focused on being obvious and overly explaining what is happening (for example, whenever a horror movie has to explain the ‘rules’ of the monster/curse/horror), Japanese horror tends to be either more subtle or far more ambiguous. It’s not interested in explaining what’s happening, because that’s not the point. The real horror, the real under-your-skin feeling of uneasiness comes from uncertainty – from not knowing.

Cure revels in ambiguity and uncertainty. It leaves you to figure out what’s happening. When it shows you some freaky imagery, it leaves you to interpret it. Cure doesn’t offer any answers. Instead it leaves you with questions you have to try and answer yourself. And that’s how it gets under your skin. As the investigation continues, things get stranger and more concerning, with obscure details coming to light that seemingly change the nature of the film, yet never get delved into. The ending in particular is wildly open to interpretation, offering a few scenes almost abstractly, with no dialogue or explanation.

 

 

There’s an almost clinical sort of grim sterility to the movie. Everything feels cold, soulless and empty, which is likely the point. As it continues, it starts to become unsettling. There’s an atmosphere of uncertainty underneath the coldness that’s almost smothering as it continues. It’s a movie I keep thinking back to and dwelling on, trying to decipher in some way. On surface level it seems pretty standard, and almost plodding in its slow, deliberate pace. But trying to put a finger on why the movie is so strangely unnerving is hard, and trying to make sense of what might have happened is likewise difficult. In that sense Cure works really well as a psychological thriller.

John Wick

 



It’s awesome. Surprising everybody, John Wick turns out to be is a highly entertaining movie that re-establishes Keanu Reeves as a legitimate action star. The movie is great and he’s great in it.

John Wick has just lost his wife to cancer. He’s a stoic, seemingly emotionless man, who seems somewhat lost without his wife. He receives a dog from his late wife, something that helps him start to grieve for his wife. Russian gangsters break into his house, beat him up, smash his stuff, steal his car and, the very worst of it, kill his dog. Big mistake. John Wick is actually a retired hitman with a fearsome reputation. And he wants revenge for his dog. Thus he suits up, arms himself to the teeth and goes on the hunt for the gangsters, one of whom is the jackass son of Viggo, a powerful Russian mobster, and Wick’s former employer.  Soon Wick is slaughtering his way through Russian gangster, rival hitmen and dozens upon dozens of goons.

The plot works well in its seeming simplicity. It seems like a standard action-revenge flick, but it’s a bit smarter than that. Or, at least, it’s been given a smarter treatment. It’s shot exceedingly well and the acting is top notch, even when it veers into over-the-top caricatures (some of the Russian gangsters are a bit silly). The best thing is that everybody else in the movie already knows who Wick is, and rightly fears him. It’s a small detail, but it works really well in selling how the character.

Keanu’s emotionally empty persona works really well here as Wick. He gets his moment two thirds of the way through where he has a furious emotional outburst, and one remembers just how good Keanu is at crazy, angry outburst (Johnny Mnemonic isn’t great, but Keanu getting progressively angrier and more pissed off through it was memorable).

The movie also has an awesome layer of world-building when it comes to showing what a society of assassins might look like, and how it might run. ‘The Continental’, which acts as a private hotel, an exclusive club and an association for hitmen, is conveyed quite well, often subtly. The inner workings and ‘rules’ aren’t explicitly stated but make sense, with a ‘show don’t tell’ style of storytelling (the significance of golden coins doesn’t need to be overtly explained when the movie shows how they’re used). It’s smart without being condescending or obvious, much like most of the rest of the movie.   

The action scenes are awesome, especially since they have a central sort of ‘theme’ to them; close-quarters gunplay/fighting. I’m talking about fighting a guy with a gun who is a foot away from you. Wick is a powerhouse, utilising throws, strikes and rolling kicks to down goons before he finishes them off with a headshot. And it’s never just one goon, it’s usually two or three at a time. The kill count has to be close to seventy, or maybe even past that. Wick kills a lot of people, and thoroughly so. People are shot several times, often in the head, and stabbed a few times too.

There’s just something immensely watchable about John Wick. Not just the film, but the character too. It’s a great mark on Keanu’s career, and the best thing he’s done in ages. John Wick is a highly entertaining movie, the sort that makes you want to see more of it, and it receives my recommendation.

The time i accidentally read an erotic novel

I like reading. Ever since I was a kid I’ve always loved reading, loved picking up a book and getting involved in a story. I would read just about anything I could get my hands on. This was both good and bad. On the good side I read my way through a lot of books I really enjoyed, and managed to form a cohesive idea of what I liked and what I didn’t – I developed my own taste for books. On the bad side however, I ended up reading a whole lot of crap. I’m talking pure, literary garbage, and a whole lot of it too. I read nonsense horror stories, dull thrillers, countless condescendingly simple ‘young adult’ and children’s books. But I kept reading anything I could get my hands on anyway, garbage be damned.    

And that’s how I came to accidentally read an erotic novel. And I’m not talking Mills and Boons type crap, I’m talking full-on hardcore porno in written form. This wasn’t a love story, this was horny idiots screwing each other in elaborate ways for two hundred pages or so before it just sort of ended. And I read it accidentally.

Why? Well, it really was a mistake. I actually thought it was ‘Murder on the Orient Express’. Honestly. I had reached that early reading phase where I wanted to try out books I’d heard were famous or regarded as classics, more because I thought that if I read them then it’d make me look smart. I was either twelve or thirteen and found it and started reading. I don’t remember what it was called exactly, but I do remember it definitely had the words ‘Orient Express’ in the title.

The cover had a picture of a woman lying down with an open blouse, exposing her lingerie. Some people would probably say that that should have warned me that it wasn’t the book I was after, but at the time I didn’t actually know what Murder on the Orient Express was about, so it wasn’t a red flag for me. For all I knew the woman was the person who got murdered on the Orient Express.

Instead it turned out to be an erotic novel following the adventures of Frannie, a slutty woman who married a rich guy and uses his cash to travel the world with her slutty maid and bulky bodyguard and fuck everything she comes across. I actually remember a fair bit about it.

In this novel, apparently part of an ongoing series, Frannie and co board the Orient Express for some vaguely defined reason. While on board she has a series of erotic adventures, by which I mean she sleeps with everyone that gets within reaching distance, regardless of gender, age or mental state. And since she’s on a train, that turns out to be quite a lot of people.

A lot of nonsense went into the sex scenes. At one point she goes to some foreign lord’s mansion where he reveals that he’s spent millions of dollars to develop holographic technology…that he’s using exclusively to make porn with. Frannie, the insatiable nympho that she is, actually tries to have sex with the holograms and then gets really pissed off when she realises they aren’t real. This is the sort of character she is.

Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly), for a slutty rich lady a lot of people try to kill her. Like, more than you’d expect. That’s the other thing that happens apart from all the boning, people try and murder her for ill-defined reasons. Not for money, mind you, mostly ‘just because’. The would-be murders all naturally screw her before they try to murder her, because of course they do.

At one point on the train she meets a handsome, rich gentleman who invites her to his mansion at the next stop for some boning. This isn’t the holographic porn rich mansion guy, this is another guy (she meets/screws a lot of rich guys who have mansions). When they get there he tells his sad sob story about how his wife was murdered by an intruder and that he’s all sad and lonely and hasn’t been with a woman since. Frannie is touched (or wants to be) and gets ready for some banging. Handsome rich guy asks if they can do some role playing and if Frannie will pretend to be his beloved wife. She says fine, sounds good to me. He says great, I’ll roleplay as the intruder who killed her.

Now this is the point where the flashing red warning lights should have switched on in Frannie’s mind, but the woman is a ridiculous slut so she doesn’t think it’s odd when the guy puts on a balaclava and ties her to the bed.

Luckily, thanks to bullshit, she’s wearing a ring with a built-in warning system that instantly alerts her bodyguard (who, otherwise, exists solely to add another cock to the free-for-alls). The bodyguard just so happens to be nearby, and saves the day by beating the crap out of the would-be killer.

At the very end of the story she meets another handsome guy and everybody has a free-for-all in their room on the train. Now in the thirteen or so years since I read the book I’ve actually been on an Orient Express train (in South America), and the rooms are not that big. Or at least not big enough for a six-way orgy. Handsome guy number whatever bangs her, then reveals that he’s an assassin and tries to kill her…by attempting to lift her up and throw her out the window. Again, I’ve been on an Orient Express train, and the windows are awkward and don’t open that much, certainly not to shove a person out. Also the bodyguard is like right there next to them, and he sorts things out pretty much instantly.

Frannie survives her self-inflicted ordeals, doesn’t learn any lessons and goes about her boning life as if nothing had ever happened.

From what I can tell, Frannie and her entourage get into a lot of stupidly dangerous sex-related shenanigans. One of the characters casually mentions that on one of their horny adventures they managed to get involved in an orgy with an angry death cult of massive, seven-foot tall black dudes who were planning on sacrificing them after the gangbang. Nobody seems to act as though this is a strange occurrence.  

And that’s that. I remember other vague details about the massive number of sex scenes that made up the book, but otherwise there wasn’t much for plot or characterisation (though that’s obviously not the point). I started reading it by pure accident, and continued due to curiosity. Young me was surprised and astounded by the ridiculous stuff that happened over the two hundred pages of smut.
It remains the only erotic novel I’ve ever read. After that I really don’t think I need to read another one. There’s no punch-line here. That’s the end.

Bangkok Knockout

A decent Thai action flick that lacks the certain punch needed to make it great, but mostly makes up for it by being decidedly fun and silly. It has a lot of fighting and some mild stunt work, but while some of the moves are pretty cool it lacks the impact, choreography and stunts the best of the genre has to offer. Things aren’t helped by forgettable characters, a pretty basic plot and a thick streak of unintentional silliness and stupidity. That being said, it’s still a fun watch, but it isn’t going to be particularly mind blowing.

A group of martial artists/stunt men who call themselves ‘Fight Club’ audition to get a part in a Hollywood action film. They win the audition and have a celebratory dinner, inviting family and friends. However the food is drugged and the next day they wake up in an abandoned factory. By winning the audition they’ve unwittingly been chosen to be part of an illegal violent game for rich degenerates where they have to survive bouts against several fighters trying to kill them. Thus begins a literal fight for survival as the group has to form together, fight, escape and survive.

The fights and choreography are pretty decent and fun, which is good because it’s the backbone of a film like this. One involving a cage of chain-link fences has the fighters clambering upwards to unleash flip kicks and the like. There’s a good mix of styles and weapon-based fighting, including some grappling and katana/axe based kung-fu. The combat itself tends to lack a brutal punch for the most part though, especially considering the supposed danger (for a movie about a death fight club, hardly anybody dies). There are also some noticeable edits and frame cuts in the choreography that indicate second takes. Some actions, particularly involving weapons or big kicks, also have a noticeable delay or miss completely, giving the actors breathing room to perform dodges but making some action feel stilted as opposed to fluid.

There are too many characters to keep track of. ‘Fight Club’ has about six members, but then a bunch of other people join, including relatives, friends and even a comic relief fat guy. It’s way too many to the point where I only knew the names of about three or four of them. The attention is spread thinly amongst them, and none of them really emerge as the focus. There is a character, Pod, who seems like he’s going to become the main hero, but honestly he spends most of the movie being pummelled, has few fights and isn’t particularly impressive.

 

The story is silly nonsense, and it’s the sort we’ve seen a few times before. Any and all attempts at dramatic or emotional moments fall completely flat. Most characters don’t have any personality or characterisation at all so you won’t care. When the silly twists start coming (including obvious betrayals) you won’t care, especially since the movie oddly piles them all on top of each other in a single scene. There’s a five minute stretch that seems dedicated to a few ‘it was me all along’ moments.

The pacing is probably a little too gung-ho after the opening. After a pretty mild, action-less opening, things finally kick into gear and then it is action action action until the end. The finale actually gets a bit exhausting actually – there’s a massive brawl and a final boss fight and it’s seemingly finished, but then there’s another ten minutes of action thrown in (this time with guns). I guess you get bang for your buck, but it is a bit of overkill. Most action flicks have a sort of wave-like structure – slow build up, action, cool-off, slow build-up, action etc. etc. Bangkok Knockout is slow build-up and then action for the rest, with the cool-off period also containing action.

 

 

It’s actually a really silly, stupid film. The evil fighters in particular tend to be ridiculous. One is a flamboyant gay dude with makeup who wears a fishnet shirt and pink underwear. He’s defeated when one of the good guys constantly bashes him in the crotch. One is just a guy with a metal plate strapped to his chest. The most ridiculous is an axe-wielding mask-wearing dude that looks like he wandered off the set of a slasher flick. Increasing the silliness, a fight against a presumably scary, intimidating opponent becomes a battle to cause an asthma attack by preventing him from using his inhaler.

The background villains are goofy as fuck. A cigar-chomping white guy in a tiny room with four really ordinary looking folks who bet on who will win/lose/die make up our villainous cabal, and the film constantly switches to them after every fight to show them either celebrating when they win a bet or complaining when they lose. They all speak in laughable bad English (evil Japanese lady sound like she learnt her lines phonetically). It also has to be the lowest budget evil rich person club I’ve ever seen – they’re in a tiny trailer with small flat screen televisions and two prostitutes.

Bangkok Knockout might not be a knockout, but it is fun. After the slow opening it gets going in a big way and the action scenes are entertaining, and though it does devolve into constant punching it’s still a fun time. The overwhelming silliness also help spice things up, as do some of the weirder fight scenes and villains. Bangkok Knockout’s problems are the competition – there are better Thai action flicks out there. But, by that same token, there are many that are far worse. So with that I’d say it’s worth a watch if you like some Thai action that’s sillier than they probably intended. 

Haunters

A pretty damn effective and unique Korean thriller with a creepy premise.

Cho-in is a crippled man with a terrifying gift – he can control people just by looking at them. Having grown up in an abusive household, Cho-in has become cruel and deranged and uses his ability to rob people and inflict pain on others. On the other end of the scale is Kyu-nam, a cheerful, hard-working and somewhat absent-minded man. He’s easy-going and cares for his friends, and seems to be special in his own way. When Cho-in attempts to rob the store Kyu-nam works at, he finds that his powers don’t work on him. Already deranged, he becomes furious to find someone he can’t control, and becomes determined to kill Kyu-nam by any means necessary, including turning his own friends against him. Kyu-nam, in turn, makes it his mission to put a stop to Cho-in and save his friends, and the world, from Cho-in’s madness.

After a dark opening in the company of Cho-in, the introduction of Kyu-nam and his friends is positively cheerful and somewhat goofy. They’re a likeable bunch, which makes the turn into full-on dark thriller territory all the more effective. There are occasional moments of light, silly humour thrown in, but when the film turns dark it turns dark. It manages a good balance of the two.

Cho-in’s ability makes up for his own disability – he doesn’t do his own killing, but rather controls others to do it for him. The implications of just how powerful Cho-in’s ability is leads to some pretty chilling scenes. Kyu-nam, on the other hand, is determined and capable, and willing to throw himself into harm in attempts to save others. He’s also gifted in his own specific way, fitting to his character. In this respect, you could argue that Haunters is a superhero movie. If you want to argue that, then you’ll find that Haunters is a far better hero origin story with a far greater villain than countless big name superhero movies. 

The acting is top notch. In particular the guy they chose to play Cho-in is creepy as hell. He has the look of a deranged serial killer. Everybody else does their part well. The special effects work is very light and understated, and works well. The film is also well shot, with some really creepy scenes and shots sprinkled throughout. One complaint is that the film is often too dark visually, with shadows and darkness being too black. Scenes at night are often almost entirely black making it impossible to make out what is happening. One sequence within a pawn shop at night is pretty much the same as watching a black screen for a few minutes.

So this is turning out to be a rare, short review. Haunters is a good movie with a really interesting premise. It gives it a good treatment too, with a tight story that focuses on the characters and builds up exceptionally well. This one gets my thumbs up.   

Milocrorze - A Love Story

What the hell? Milocrorze is a decidedly bizarre Japanese anthology offering three weird, vaguely connected stories about ‘tragic’ love. Stylistically it’s wild and interesting and content-wise it’s full of strangeness, for both good and bad. It’s also rather vapid and shallow underneath all its style, with segments that lack any real meat, but it doesn't really matter. Like many anthology flicks, Milocrorze is an uneven movie as a whole. There’s a great segment, a good segment and a bad segment that bookends the film and brings the whole thing down. What’s weird is that the three segments are, as far as I can tell, directed by the same person and star the same main actor.

Anthology films are a weird concept, as I’ve discussed in the past. Sometimes they can give you something great (like Safe Haven from V/H/S 2) and other times you get garbage (ABCs of Death sucks). Anthology flicks also tend to mostly focus on horror (all the ones I can remember are horror-focused). So Milocrorze is a strange change for me in that regard. The easiest way to do this review is to go through each segment.

The first segment is split into two parts, the first at the very beginning of the film and the second at the end. It bookends the film, opening and closing it. It’s also the worst segment by far, starting things poorly and ending them weakly. Ovreneli, a weird young man with bright orange hair (played by a child), falls in love with a woman named Milocrorze. She’s described as the most perfect, beautiful woman in the world, but honestly she’s kinda plain and has no defining or positive characteristics. They have a house together and are happy, until she suddenly gets bored and starts dating other people. The young man gets sad, his heart falls out and he uses a frying pan to cover the hole in his chest. He lives the rest of his life sad. The end (of part one).

The second segment is the best and possibly the weirdest – Besson Kumagai, a ‘youth counsellor’ who runs a call advice number, gives desperate, nervous young men relationship advice. The advice is always something ridiculous and terrible (like constantly buying condoms at the supermarket so checkout chicks think you’re a stud). Every time he gives somebody advice, Besson suddenly breaks out into party dancing (with his own theme music), joined by a scantily clad lady entourage. He’s just funny. He has a bowl haircut, wears big shades, has a paunch, an ugly white suit and an oversized bowtie. He insults a lot of people, gives a few of them bad advice and dances a lot before the segment crashes (literally) into the next one.

 

The third is the longest segment by far (longer than the other two combined), and almost feels like it’s from another movie entirely. Tamon, a nice young man, falls in love with Yuri, a flower girl. He starts the romance slowly, and has to contend with her giant brutish boyfriend. He beats up the boyfriend and they’re happy for a while…until a gang of crossbow-wielding human traffickers attack, shooting out one of Tamon’s eyes and kidnapping Yuri. Tamon goes to find her, becoming a wandering samurai in the process, and tracks her down to a massive brothel/gambling den, which he then hacks his way through to find his love. The battle, Tamon versus a seemingly endless horde of goons, is stylistically cool but it goes on for ages because it’s shot in slowest-of-the-slow motion. You can fast forward through it and it’ll still look and feel really slow.

The ending brings us back to the first segment, some thirty years later. Ovreneli (now played by an adult) has lived a mostly sad life, and goes to a hot spring resort to cheer himself up. When he gets there he finds it’s run by Milocrorze and her new husband, a man twenty years her senior. Ovreneli pines for her, confronts the husband, gets punched out and leaves. When he goes home he’s finally over Milocrorze, his heart grows back and he lives the rest of his life happily. The end (of the movie).

 

So how does it all stack up? Oddly. It’s highly bizarre and strange, even for an anthology film. Its visuals and content feel more suited to music videos than a feature film, but there’s something inherently watchable about it, even if it is just the visual strangeness. This is a movie you could just have playing on mute in the background of a party.

The opening and ending ‘Milocrorze’ segments suck badly. I really didn’t like the style or story for either. While the vibrant colours are eye catching, the content is vapid and empty. They’re full of nonsense, as if stupid names and weirdness make up for a lack of anything good or clever. There’s no meat or humour there. Thankfully they’re both pretty short, but the opening sucks and the end segment (which is somehow worse) weakly limps the film to its credits.

The Tamon segment starts oddly (it initially feels a bit like a re-tread of the Milocrorze opening, including the initial high-colour style and seemingly even the story), and then gets weirdly interesting once it hits the wandering Samurai segment. The style and tone go darker and better and it looks really cool. Sadly it also wears out its welcome with its painstakingly long action sequence finale. This segment is also the only one to really feel like a proper short movie, with an actual plot and structure.

The Besson part is really funny, mostly because of the oddness of it. The random bursting into party dancing, the horrible relationship advice (complete with dramatizations) and just the character Besson are great. It does feel more like an extended sketch from a comedy show than anything else, but it’s good, weird fun nonetheless. 

In the end, like with any anthology film, it has its ups and downs. It’s sad that the downs bookend Milocrorze, which is otherwise a pretty strange, stylistic but bizarrely watchable anthology.

The Happiness of the Katakuris

A Japanese remake of ‘The Quiet Family’, directed by Takashi Miike, the man behind Ichi the Killer and Audition. And it’s insane. Surreal, bizarre, cartoonish - it’s an entirely different film. Oh sure, the premise is the same – a family running a failing lodge starts to receive guests who all die under various circumstances, causing the family to bury the bodies so as to not destroy their lodge’s reputation – but the details are different, as is the tone. And as they say, the devil is in the details (literally here).

For one thing, it’s a musical. A full-on musical with multiple song and dance numbers and a few dramatic scenes where actors just sing their lines when something important happens. Each music number is different in style. There’re dramatic songs, cheery songs, one involving zombies doing back-up dancing and even a colourful, chintzy (and ridiculous) ‘Love Boat’ styled one involving wirework.

The rest of the movie is downright strange. Again, it’s a remake and follows the basic premise and a few details from the original film, but otherwise this is an entirely different film. Action scenes play out in Claymation, where things get downright bizarre. It also changes a lot of the plot details and road bumps. Instead of sexual predators, undercover police men and assassins there are con artists, escaped serial killers and a sudden, unexpected volcanic eruption.

The opening Claymation scene sets the tone – a woman in a restaurant finds a demon in her plate of soup. The tiny imp rips out her tonsils and goes on an odd, abstract journey where he is killed, reincarnated then killed again, his corpse ending up in the woods where the Katakuri’s newly open mountain lodge is. Travelling psychics at one point declare this as the reason for the lodge’s bad luck, and the following slew of deaths (a vaguely similar scene also happens in The Quiet Family, minus the actual demon). This entire sequence essentially sums up what sort of movie Katakuris is, and establishes how different it is to the Quiet Family.

Compared to the Quiet Family, the Katakuris are a more likeable bunch, mostly framed as unfortunate underdogs. They’re a more loving and caring family group as well. It’s made up of Grandpa, Mom and Dad, the Son (the only character similar to his Quiet Family counterpart), the Daughter and the Granddaughter who narrates. Of the group only the Daughter and Granddaughter are (mostly) ignorant of the mounting bodies. The daughter herself is completely deluded, spending much of the movie pining over her (con artist) suitor, while the granddaughter honestly doesn’t really add or do much, and is strangely absent through most of the carnage.

The Quiet Family was darker and subtle, while Happiness of the Katakuris is downright bizarre and cartoonish. While the former was grim, Katakuris is almost jovial in its nonsense. It’s a more colourful movie, mostly devoid of the horror-like atmosphere of its source material. I suppose the differences are cultural – a lot of South Korean films employ darker humour, while Japanese ones use completely weird and bizarre humour (the musical numbers are a perfect example). Compared to the Quiet Family’s vague ending, the Katakuri’s get a semi-happy one that ties up everything, almost comically so. It's also sort of built up to - the Quiet Family lacked a real climax, while the Katakuris goes full crazy with its one.

It’s a substantially different film to the point where I don’t really know how to compare the two in traditional terms. Sure, they have the same concept and a few similar details, but they’re two exceptionally different takes offering incredibly different experiences. As for which one is better? Depends on what you like I suppose. The Quiet Family is a black comedy shot as a horror film, using dark humour. Katakuris is a bizarre musical comedy that employs a massive amount of absurdity. I can enjoy both, but it really depends on where your sense of humour lies.

The Quiet Family

 

A South Korean black comedy directed by Kim Jee-woon, who also directed I Saw the Devil, A Bittersweet Life and The Good, The Bad, The Weird. It's an entertainingly grim farce, filmed almost like a horror film with a thick streak of dark humour.

A family leaves the city and opens an isolated lodge in the mountains. Named ‘The Misty Inn’, the family works hard and hopes to become successful, but weeks go by without them receiving a single guest. As time goes on the mixture of ongoing failure and desperation starts to turn the family strange.

One night they finally receive a guest. The family all become excited, thinking this is the end of their bad luck. But overnight the guest kills himself with the death looking almost like murder. Not wanting to add bad publicity to their already failing lodge, the family doesn’t report the suicide but instead bury the man in the woods, hoping to forget about it. From then on the lodge starts to receive more guests, most of whom invariably die, causing the family to frantically cover up the evidence. As the film progresses things continue to get darker as the corpses begin to pile up with the lodge receiving visits from sexual predators, undercover policemen and assassins.

It’s a darkly humorous farce, with things continuing to get darker as the family continues to cover up the onslaught of dead bodies.

The characters are all fairly broad strokes, often with a quirk or two. And, strangely, none of them are particularly likeable – you won’t really be rooting for any of them. Most are stubborn or lazy, stupid or aggressive, but maybe that’s the point – they’re normal, fallible people (and a dysfunctional family unit). The focus isn’t really on any one character (though younger sister Mina does narrate at times) so you never get too much of an insight into any of them. The film stars some actors who would go on to become big stars in Korea, including Song Kang-ho (The Host) as the son and Choi Min-sik (Oldboy) as the uncle.

The surly patriarch takes charge quickly and is really freaking eager to bury some bodies. The second they find the first corpse he’s almost instantly prepared with plastic bags and shovels, and after that he practically has his burying equipment on standby. The matriarch is happy to listen to her husband and offers no objections. The uncle is somewhat lazy but seems to have a few more morals than the rest. The son is stupid, spending his time trying to peek in on guests having sex. The two daughters are selfish, lazy and offer no help whatsoever. As a family unit they’re a mess, but covering up murders and burying bodies becomes something that brings them all together. There’s a lot of humour to be had in the simple situation, and the film milks it well.

 

What the film lacks is a traditional plot structure. It doesn't really have a big climax – while the situation builds and gets more bizarre, it never really blows over or has a resolution. The ending is somewhat vague as well, leaving unanswered questions. That being said, as an odd finale it sort of brings events (and the family) full circle.

This is a true black comedy, offering a darkly farcical situation and seeing how grim it can go with it.  There’s a real commitment to the dark humour, as there are no real moments of levity or lighter humour – everything is as dark as it can be. That’s not to say that it isn’t funny – it is, with a lot of humorous misunderstandings (a scene where the son and uncle are chasing leaving guests through the woods to ask them a simple question is made hilarious by the fact that, unwittingly, they’re brandishing hatchets and cleavers). It’s that the commitment to being a black comedy does mean that if you don’t enjoy dark humour you probably won’t get much out of it. It's almost like a horror movie.

As with Kim Jee-woon’s other films, the cinematography is top notch. It’s shot like a horror movie, with a creepy atmosphere in the lodge and the cold woods outside. Most scenes are framed in horror terms, with dark shadows and angles that give things a menacing air which leads to more humour. The choice of music is odd but strangely fitting, keeping with the director’s other works. There's a selection of classical tunes mixed with what sounds like Mexican flavoured hip hop and some Partridge Family songs; it’s an odd mix but it works.

The Quiet Family is an entertaining movie, though it is strange. It’s a dark comedy in every sense of the meaning, and also a sort of weird peek at a dysfunctional family unit that will neither break apart nor change, for better and worse. It’s also a really interesting film to watch in terms of Kim Jee-woon’s career. It’s his first feature film and showcases a lot of the stylistic and cinematic flair and dark humour and themes that have come to characterise his later works.

Twixt - a bad, stupid bad movie

 

At the end of Twixt it’s revealed that everything was just a story that the main character was writing. Now some people reading this might be angry that I spoiled the ending. You shouldn’t be. I saved you time. I had to spoil this because it’s stupid, lazy bullshit that’s sums up the entire movie. It’s nonsense on the same level of ‘it was all a dream’, the sort of bastard storytelling that kids get beaten out of them in grade school. If you pull that crap in a novel, you’ll be laughed at so hard you’ll lose your literacy skills. It’s inexcusable.

And it’s particularly inexcusable here in Twixt, a subpar tepid 'horror' flick, especially so considering the director it came from – Francis Ford Coppola. The man should know better. He should also have crafted a better movie, because this one is terrible. Bland, boring and dull, with subpar acting and filmmaking and a thin layer of pretention spread over its nothing story – Twixt is a bad movie made by a once great director.

I don’t have pictures because I only rented the movie (thank god) so I’ve added pictures from other, better Coppola movies.

The cat in this scene from the beginning of The Godfather must be high as shit on catnip, since it keeps rubbing itself lovingly on Marlon Brando

Horror novelist Hall Baltimore (played by Val Kilmer) is struggling. He made his fame writing witchcraft-themed horror stories, but since then his popularity has vanished and while he’s expected to churn out more witchcraft-based stories he finds it immeasurably dull. The final insult-to-injury is the humiliating book signing he attends in a small town – he’s set up at the back of a tool shop and nobody knows or cares who he is.

He’s approached by town Sheriff LaGrange, a wannabe writer who wants to collaborate with Hall on a book about vampires regarding a series of unsolved murders in town. LaGrange, eager to sell his idea to Hall, takes him to the morgue to show him the body of a dead girl with an iron pole impaled through her chest – the latest murder by a local serial killer.

That night Hall has a strange dream where he meets a mysterious young girl named V who claims to be a vampire. She tours him through the town and tells him about the mysterious history of many of its landmarks, including an abandoned hotel Edgar Allen Poe once visited, a clock tower with seven faces which tell different times, an orphanage with a dark past and the riverside camp where a bunch of goth teenagers thought to be Satanists hang out.

Waking from the dream, Hall becomes convinced that he needs to write a book about the place. Thus he stays, determined to return to his dreams and find inspiration while also looking into the murder. What follows is a series of scenes and dream sequences where Val Kilmer tries to write his book and attempts to solve the murder and uncover the secrets of the town.

Smell, Napalm, Morning, Surfing, Blah Blah Blah

Val Kilmer is a strange actor because the quality of his acting is entirely dependent on the size and scope of his role. He’s excellent as Doc Holliday in Tombstone, and his minor support roles in Kiss Kiss Bang Bang and Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans were great. In all these roles he played second or third fiddle to other, better actors and he shone through (Doc Holliday steals every scene from Kurt Russel in Tombstone).

It’s when you give him a whole movie where you realise how little of a shit he gives. He was a boring Batman, and as Hall he’s even more boring. He doesn’t act so much as he stands around reading his lines. A scene where he’s meant to have writer’s block involves him sitting there with a blank expression on his face, which is the same exact expression he uses when he’s investigating a haunted clock tower, viewing a corpse or digging up a coffin in a dream.

The rest of the cast? They appear occasionally (most of the film is just Kilmer), but none are memorable and some don’t even have names. The only two recurring characters are V and the Sheriff, and the former does nothing other than talk about her backstory while the latter acts kooky but isn’t involved much. The rest are mostly there for single scenes, never doing anything and mostly being their costume (the leader of the goth kids looks like a goth and has no other characteristics). 

Gary Oldman Dracula, from a movie actually about vampires

Half the movie is dedicated to slow, dull dream sequences. That’s where everything happens. They’re shot in black and white, with occasional splashes of colour (like some red on V). Sometimes Hall wanders around the town. Sometimes he talks to V about how she was molested by a priest, who then murdered a bunch of children while she ran away (more stupid spoilers, but whatever - none of it happened anyway). Hall hangs out with Edgar Allen Poe a few times who talks about the importance of endings (which is silly due to Twixt’s final cop-out) and helps him get over the death of his daughter. The whole ‘Hall’s daughter died and he feels responsible’ thing is an example of the incredibly loose narrative threads that are rife in the film – it’s hinted to maybe once, and then the film suddenly decides it’s really important, only to drop it completely afterwards. Same with the mystery of the clock tower and solving the murder and all of this other crap.

As a result of the constant dream sequences, we also get a whole lot of scenes of Hall lying in bed, falling asleep or getting knocked out so he can have a dream sequence. They happen a lot, to an almost laughable degree.

The film is billed as horror but good luck finding any thrills or chills. Nothing frightening, atmospheric or creepy happens and there's no gore. The things that do occur are boring clichés. There's a scene where Hall and a few others use a Ouija board to talk to spirits which is so tame and lame that it's almost a parody of other films that use Ouija boards, only Twixt takes it seriously. The 'vampire' angle adds nothing to the film at all, features into none of the plot and is only mentioned once or twice.

 

Keanu Reeves could potentially use his wooden acting to kill Vampires

Twixt is a bad movie and confusingly so. I mean that in the sense that it’s confusing that it’s as bad as it is. Francis Ford Coppola has made three excellent movies that are worthy of being deemed classics – the first two Godfather movies and Apocalypse Now. How he could go from them to direct something as bland, as dull, as bad as this is astounding. Now granted he’s directed his share of crappy movies (‘Jack’, in which Robin Williams plays a thirteen year old boy with the body of Robin Williams), but this just takes the cake. It smacks of disinterest and a lack of effort. Nobody seemed to give a shit in any aspect of the film.

It’s also a visually dull film, which is astounding considering Coppola’s previous pedigree. ‘Bram Stoker’s Dracula’, for all its faults (and there are many), was visually vibrant and interesting. Twixt is visually bland and uninteresting. The black and white (with an occasional bit of colour) dream sequences are more drab than artistic, and have no meaning whatsoever.  

There's no caption here. I'm done.

The ending twist, that it was all a story Hall was writing, is preceded by a stupid ‘shock’ scene (the dead girl in the morgue is V, Hall pulls the iron pole out, she comes back to life as a vampire and attacks him). Then you switch to him in his editor's office with the manuscript, and the editor praising the ending (no sane editor would praise that ending). It was all a story, and not even a good one. It also leaves a lot of questions as to whether anything actually happened – did Hall even go to the small town? Not that it matters at all. Nothing matters. The only thing anybody will take from this is disappointment.

Attack the Gas Station

 

As far as descriptive titles go, it’s a pretty apt one for this oddball South Korean comedy. Four bored, disillusioned youths attack and rob a gas station, trashing the place, terrorising the employees and making away with some cash. A few days later, they get bored again and rob the same gas station. This time the manager hides the money, so the four take the employees hostage and take over the gas station, pumping gas for customers and pocketing the money.

What follows is an strange night where they beat up a bunch of people, take a lot of hostages, force the hostages to fight each other, pump gas, antagonise customers, order Chinese take-out, antagonise the Chinese delivery man, antagonise the police and smash up the gas station a few more times. By the end a full-on street brawl has erupted between gangsters, angry take-out drivers and the police.

Underneath all of this are brief snippets of the main four that show reasons for their disillusionment. These segments give a little insight into the personalities of the main four, which helps because there isn’t much to most of the characters. The movie has fun with its premise, and is fairly entertaining for what it is, but it’s lacking that certain something to lift it up.

 

It’s not really about anything. Barring the central premise of ‘guys take over gas station, hijinks ensue’, there isn’t really anything of a plot structure. There is a gradual sense of progression as the night goes on, but otherwise it’s a series of fairly humorous events slightly linked until the morning where it ends. That ending itself is sort of shrug worthy, though the end credits give snippets of what happened to each character afterwards.

There is a sense of escalation and recurring events. The four of them continue to piss off a lot of different people, often with direct consequences of each other. They constantly antagonise a Chinese delivery man, causing him to form a posse of angry delivery men. Most events lead into each other directly, giving the escalation a sense of meaning. Otherwise the focus is mostly on the characters, which is odd because they are all pretty basic really.

The four attacking youths are the film’s heroes, and while it’s mostly a comedic light-hearted affair and played for laughs, some of the stuff they do is concerning and dangerous. They take two people hostage and lock them in a car boot, where they remain completely forgotten for the rest of the movie (to the point where it’s an honest question as to whether anybody will find them). They instigate two car accidents, beat a lot of people up and do some other pretty sketchy and dangerous stuff. While their anger and disillusionment is given some brief outlining, it’s a pretty thin reason for us to take their side as they terrorise the gas station.

 

No Mark, the leader, is odd. He spends a lot of the movie basically being a villain. He’s the most serious of the group, constantly threatening and assaulting the manager. He’s the most calm and collected of the group, but also responsible for the more illegal plans and ideas. His backstory might be a culturally specific one – he has the stigma of being an orphan. Honestly it’s sort of hard to really get behind him, he’s played straight so he comes across as a villain more than anything for the most part.

Mad Dog, the dumbest of the group, is fun. He carries around a wooden beam that he constantly makes use of. His job for most of the film is handling the ‘hostages’, which often involves making them lie down with their heads on the ground. He’s probably the most fun character, as his hijinks tend to be less malevolent and more juvenile, and underneath it he has a weird sense of justice.

Paint is the least involved and interesting of the four. He’s a painter/artist whose dreams and talents are trashed by his angry traditional father who considers his creativity pointless. He does some painting I guess, but he leaves the smallest impression of the group. There are side characters that get more attention than he does.

Rockstar is the most aggressive by far, often the first to violence. He spends a lot of the movie angry and annoyed at the lack of good music, forcing some of the hostages to sing for him, leading into a random music number (a lot of these Asian movies tend to do the ‘random music number’ thing). 

The gas station’s manager can’t help but antagonise the four, leading to further conflict. He constantly talks back, constantly riles them up and also constantly pays for it. It gets to the point where you wonder why he doesn’t just get with the program and keep his mouth shut, but I guess in a South Korean context it might make sense – he’s an adult and being talked down to and disrespected by a bunch of youths.

The rest of the characters are vaguely defined. Asides from the constantly-suffering gas station manager, there’s three employees, only one of which has any sort of defining features (he sort of develops a little bit of Stockholm syndrome and confidence when, forced to fight his school bullies, he actually wins). The majority of the ‘characters’ are the random people who turn up at the gas station, from lazy police officers to music producers and allsorts. None really have much of an impact.

Oddly not a single character emerges as the focal point. Not even any of the main four, with the film spreading its attention thinly amongst them. You learn very little about anybody, and nobody changes or grows as a person.  

 

This is going to sound really weird, and bear with me for this, but the movie feels a bit like a Korean teenage douchebag version of Clerks. While they are largely completely different films in almost every single aspect, they both have a similar sort of feel. It’s about disillusioned, aimless youths confused about the world, themselves and where to go with their lives, largely avoiding these questions through shenanigans. It’s also just a bunch of random, humorous things happening in place of a plot. Much like Clerks, it’s also about the everyday oddness of working in a mundane environment and the sorts of people who patronise those places. Weird, angry people tend to turn up at the gas station, while the four tend to harass them and take their money.

It’s also has some culturally specific themes, regarding South Korea culture, where cultural differences come into play. What I assume to be a Korean phonetic word game is played by two of the characters with zero explanation, while certain quirks seem Korea-specific. The filmmaking is fine, with occasional stylistic edits. The movie almost completely takes place in and around the gas station, rarely venturing outside of its confines.  

 

Attack the Gas Station pretty much does what it says on the tin. A gas station gets attacked, there’s some humour and a little action thrown in. It’s fairly entertaining but it also never really ascends to anything particularly special. 

Project A

Project A might as well be the quintessential Jackie Chan movie. The film, which he wrote and directed, is filled with all the things that would come to characterise his movies - death-defying stunts, fast-paced action scenes and slapstick physical humour. It might feel a little bit dated in terms of technical filmmaking and some weird cultural quirks appear, but otherwise this is something of an early landmark film in Chan’s career, where he formed his own style of filmmaking that would come to characterise the films he would go on to make.   

 

Jackie Chan plays Dragon Ma, a sergeant in Hong Kong’s coast guard in the 1800s. The coast guard has a strong rivalry with the police force, as while the police keep the streets safe, the coast guard are unable to handle the violent band of pirates which constantly attacks British ships across the South China Sea.

When the coast guard’s ships are destroyed, leaving the large force ineffective, Ma and his team are forced to become police officers, training under his law enforcement rival Officer Hong (Yuen Biao). But apparent corruption in the police force linked to the pirates causes Ma to leave the force and take justice into his own hands. Teaming up with an opportunistic troublemaker named Fei (Sammo Hung), Ma becomes determined to bring the pirates and criminals to justice.

It’s a pretty simple plot that’s more of an excuse for the series of action/stunt/comedic set pieces that are spread throughout the film.

 

The stunts and action set pieces are really great fun, and back then set the bar for what was expected from Jackie Chan action flicks. The fights in this film, compared to earlier Chan action flicks like ‘Young Master’ and ‘Drunken Master’, are far more free and ‘adaptive’. Instead of the stiff sort of combat older chop-socky films employed, Project A shows off the sort of Jackie Chan action he would be come to known for. His fight scenes have him against groups of opponents, where he takes them on simultaneously, alternatively attacking and fleeing, and using a lot of weapons and objects. Chan swings from chandeliers, flips over chairs and throws bottles and pots during the action.

The action isn’t solely made up of fight scenes. Chase sequences and assorted hijinks ensue. One set piece has Chan and his pursuers on bicycles, riding through narrow streets. It’s a lot of fun, leading to some amusing stunts. This main antagonist, San-Po, gives a great final fight, with the combined forces of Chan, Hung and Biao being needed to take him down (though they do cheat and sort of kill him horribly).     

Project A also has one of the quintessential Jackie Chan stunts, the clock tower fall. Chan hangs from the hands of a clock tower face and falls, passing through two awnings, before hitting the ground. Apparently Chan was too afraid of letting go of the clock hand, so he ordered his film crew to continue to film him as he held on as long as he could before his arms got tired and he slipped off. And when he wasn’t happy with the first take, he did it again. And then again. Chan was determined to get his stunts right, even when they were causing him substantial physical pain.

 

 

Dragon Ma is the quintessential Chan character – righteous, well-meaning, often jokey and sometimes foolish (often prone to accidents). It’s a role he plays a lot, in titles like Armour of God, Police Story (and even in his American films like Rush Hour and Shanghai Noon).

If Dragon Ma is the quintessential Chan role, then Fei is the quintessential Sammo Hung role. Sammo Hung is a Chinese actor/martial artist/choreographer and a contemporary of Jackie Chan and Yuen Biao (they trained together as children in the same performance troupe and largely dominated Hong Kong’s action film scene in the eighties and have worked on many of films together – Biao also co-stars in Project A as Inspector Hong). Hung mostly played cheeky, sometimes goofy troublemaker roles (though in his older age he now seems to exclusively play gangsters), and his role as Fei is no different.

This is a personal opinion of mine, but I feel that if Hung made a similar breakout in America around the time that Chan did he could possibly have seen a somewhat similar Western popularity. While he didn’t do the ridiculously dangerous stunts that Chan is famous for, his action choreography is exceptionally solid and his boisterous and cheeky personality is quite funny (though, once again, he has traded that out in his older age).

Yuen Biao, as mentioned before, is a contemporary of Chan and Hung, offering a more acrobatic athleticism. His role as Inspector Hong is, oddly, far different to the sorts of roles he usually played. He tended to play enthusiastic underdog characters (as in The Prodigal Son and Zu Warriors from the Magic Mountain), but his role as Inspector Hong is strangely stoic, though he gets his fair share of action. 

 

One issue is the fairly loose and lax plotting, with the moving sometimes feeling a bit aimless and long. While there is a story there, it’s not particularly important, more of an excuse to stage the various action and comedy set pieces throughout the film. The coast guard’s training to become police officers aspect of the plot seems to solely exist for the ten minutes of largely physical comedy and hijinks that makes up their training. The conflict with the pirates doesn’t really come into play that much, while most of the film is a loose collection of slapstick encounters and chase scenes. 

Chinese humour is weird. I feel I say some variation of this in every Asian movie I look at, but from a western perspective the humour used is strange. Often the jokes are of the groan-worthy kind or weirdly childish and bizarrely telegraphed. During a bar brawl one guy announces his plan to throw a plate of spaghetti at his opponent. He ends up face-planting into the spaghetti himself because of course he does. A lot of these earlier Hong Kong action flicks have the same sort of weird humour, so I can’t exactly blame Project A too much, but I still feel it’s odd.

 

Project A is a fun movie with entertaining action and stunts. More importantly, it’s a movie that perfectly encapsulates its main star and the shape of the Hong Kong action movie scene at the time. It’s definitely worth watching (and its sequel too), especially if you’re a fan of Jackie Chan, though if you haven’t been exposed to old Hong Kong action films before it may seem a little strange.