Monday, July 27, 2020

Funky Forest: The First Contact (2005)

Funky Forest: The First Contact is not an easy film to discuss. While some films are off-color, this film is slightly out of its mind. It is difficult to describe a plot that precisely summarizes any of it, let alone draw conclusions of what the film is “about”.

The charm of Funky Fores is that, in its live-action Japanese multi-director anthology form, there are a lot of things that are hard to fully comprehend. Yet, at the film’s core there is genuine emotion and character. It is something you feel more than understand, at times tasting with your mind rather than seeing with your eyes.

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Thursday, July 16, 2020

Archive (2020)

Like many sci-fi flicks, Archive starts strong and ends poorly. It is not for lack of budget, but rather a lack of reason to care. Not to piss on Gavin Rothery’s feature directorial debut. The filmmaking is competent. The story is the problem.

If you are looking for relatable characters in a relatable story, you will not find that here. If you just want background noise in your living room, it’s not the worst thing you could put on. As this is an audiovisual experience, there are also shiny things to look at. Sufficient for the easily entertained.

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Tuesday, July 14, 2020

I Stand Alone (1998)

A number of 1990s independent films were criticized as being “too indie” or “too foreign”. Most of these criticisms came from the US and UK, where experimental style wasn’t a big thing yet. Nowadays, anything goes. Back in the ’90s, the slightest bit of style made a film “weird”.

Enter the mind of Gaspar Noé in 1991. He had just finished his short cinematic masterpiece Carne (loosely translated: “horse meat”). It was awesome. Seven years later, the film was reborn in feature form as I Stand Alone.

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Thursday, July 9, 2020

The Phantom of the Opera (2004)

Hack though he is, Joel Schumacher can occasionally turn out an okay film. The Phantom of the Opera is less of a Batman-level war crime and more of a border skirmish, with an old boring book that nobody read on one side, and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s famed rock opera on the other.

Schumacher’s interpretation is mostly faithful to the Broadway show. The characters sing, the costumes are extravagant, and the physical acting is as operatic as you could ask for. In a word, the film is epic. Epic characters, epic drama, epic emotions.

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Tuesday, July 7, 2020

Sugata Sanshiro (1943)

Action movies are in a bit of a recession these days. It might have something to do with Steven Seagal, or superheroes, or critics not paying proper respect to the biceps that built this world. Maybe the decline of action represents weakness in society. Enter Sugata Sanshiro-sama: the figurehead of humanity and the prototypical man, 1943 edition. He kicks, throws, and makes faces as he simultaneously sets the stage for Bruce Lee and all of entertainment wrestling.

Like Enter the Dragon (1973) and The Matrix (1999), this is a seminal film, the likes of which happen only once in a generation. (Until the sequels.) It is also a Kurosawa film, his first feature. Even if you don’t like martial arts movies, that is reason enough to watch it.

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