Closing Ceremony

I am calling this challenge finished. 59 days in with 45 films and no way in hell I am going to be able to get around to watching enough to catch up, and stay caught up, I am calling it over.

Does this mean that the blog is done? No. Not by a long shot. There are a lot of movies I want to talk about here that just did not fit into the blog's format. What this will be is instead of going for X movies in a specific time frame it will be a more detailed look at only the films I think deserve close attention. This will include movies I have already scene, and even some repeat viewings of films already covered in the blog (Most importantly The Hurt Locker and Oldboy).

It will also mean longer articles, and possibly a read over before I post something (which is something I need to do but I don't).

It has been a fun challenge. Lets spend more time focused on a single work instead of trying to cram 100 years of film down my throat.

Tokyo!

Day 53

Film 45

Tokyo! is the collection of three short films set inside the city by three acclaimed directors, Michel Gondry, Leos Carax and Bong Joon-ho. Each of the films is unlike anything else I have seen, and each of them is a flawed piece of art. This is the kind of film I adore, so lets get to it:

Interior Design (Gondry)

This is the story of a couple new to Tokyo. It is a subtle story ending on a twist that makes you have to think. It looks at an aspiring artist and their significant other. It defines both, although the ending becomes a bittersweet as the artist grows to create more things and the girl becomes more a tool than person.

It is endlessly strange, and is a good start as the rest of the short films because the others are even more strange.

Merde (Carax)

Definately the strangest of the bunch Merde looks at what it is to be a monster, a terrorist and to be a human being. Merde, the name of a man who is part madman, part monster, part misunderstood race, hops onto the screen in a green coat, with a strange sideways beard and a foggy eye and just starts beating up Japaneese people. It is comical and horrific. It also makes no sense in the conclusion, in a sort of sideways Jesus effect, but I cannot speak much more on that.

Shaking Tokyo (Joon-ho)

Shaking Tokyo follows a man who has spent the last ten years of his life walled off from the world by his own will. The wonder of the first half is in the meticulous set design and the regimented way the man leads his life (Very Stranger than Fiction like.) Catapulted from eye contact with a robot pizza delivery woman the shut in leaves his isolation world to find her. It is sweet and fun film with a hint of darkness hidden in its happy ending.

Die Hard

Day 53

Film 44

Die Hard joins the ranks of big flashy fun movies that does not try and push itself beyond that. It aims to be a popcorn flick and it succeeds.

Die Hard follows Bruce Willis' fight against a racial hodgepodge of international terrorists/robbers. The plot is not that complex going from the intro directly into a sticky hostage situation and then having another one and a half hours of Bruce Willis kicking ass. The most interesting thing is that Rickman plays the villain, and he does it very well. My problem is I cannot get over the fact that Bruce Willis is in an epic battle between Severus Snape, the robot from Hitchhikers Guide and the spock ripoff in galaxy quest all balled into one psudoeuropean douche bag.

The movie is fun, and really grabs you and keeps you interested because beyond the explosions the characters have heart.

Possibly the worst movie ever. It's a good thing

Evil Dead 2

Day 52

Film 43

Directed by: Sam Raimi

Written by: Sam Raimi and Scott Spiegel

Starring: Bruce Campbell

This movie is terrible. It is so horrendously bad you cannot put it into words. Raimi built it Evil Dead 2 into the worst, most over the top horror movie you could possibly have and he pulls it off with shining colors. It is not terrifying (although some of the undead things try to pull at unconscious fears) the most it can do is make you jump or roll on the floor with laughter. It is a good movie because it understands what it is, a B movie, and laughs at itself for its own horribleness.

That and can you ever REALLY pass down Bruce Campbell beating the crap out of rubber masked monsters for an hour and a half. That's right, no you can not.

Rant Time: The Best Picture 2010

So, this is a very strange break from the usual film of the day. Since it is awards season, the time where all of the best films of the previous year juggle awards around ending in the only award people care about. Yes, that is right the Academy Awards (Who would have guessed?) and their little golden man (you can take that any way you want.)

After finishing The Hurt Locker, the last of the serious candidates for the best picture, I thought I would give you a little run down of the best picture hopefuls and give you my two cents (based on absolutely no prior knowledge of the issue.)

So, lets run down the list of the big four:

Avatar

The Hurt Locker

Inglorious Basterds

Up in the Air

These are the serious contenders, films like Precious and An Education are just a step below these four in the race. that and I have not seen them, so I cannot make a full judgement on them.

Now, each of these films has a list of pros and cons, some that most Academy followers could hone in at a second. But since I am not one of these types I am going to just aim in the dark, one at a time.

Avatar:

Oh man, Avatar. This movie is as terrible as it is spectacular. This movie is the Jurassic Park for a new generation. The paper thin story is stretched tight over a hundreds of millions of dollars budget and shiny new effects.

Avatar does so many things wrong, the Dances with Wolves ripoff the most apparent, but in the end Cameron made a fun thoughtless film.

Pros: Advances Tech another step, made HUGE amounts of money, and has a loyal fan base that are only seconded by the Twilight crazies.

Cons: The story sucked, the message is about as old as any other now a days in film, Cameron is an ass, and it really needed to only be two hours (Go go editors)

The Hurt Locker:

This film is a very relevant film for this time. Unlike the other Iraq films bubbling up from the conflict it nails the war perfectly. It humanizes both sides and offers no answers only questions. It is a daring work and should be respected.

Pros: Topical, above anything else yet released about Iraq, spectacular critical success

Cons: Bigelow is female, people do not like talking about the war, marginal box office success

Inglorious Basterds:

Quentin Tarantino has been honing his craft for the last fifteen years and Inglorious Basterds is possibly his best work. It takes the traditional war movie and laughs at it. It is fun stacked on daring with a dash of vision.

What I love about this film is that it does not try to make a standard war film, those are just too riddled with troublesome facts. Tarantino threw the history book out the window and finished WWII as it should have ended, with Hitler getting shot up by a Jewish American and then exploded.

Pros: Changes everything about WWII movies, brilliantly written and directed

Cons: It's Tarantino, revisionist history does not fly with everyone, it's Tarantino

Up in the Air:

This movie hits home in the same way The Hurt Locker does as its timing is spot on. It is a character study hidden inside a movie about the impacts of the economic downturn. Reitman does a good job juggling this along side Clooney's spectacular performance. Overall it is just a good movie about what it is to be human through the eyes of a man who tries his best to not.

Pros: Almost perfect movie, timely, carried by many spectacular performances

Cons: Not as flashy as the other 3, limited commercial success

So, now that I have ranted a bit about the movies in question you must be asking yourselves (assuming you are still awake) "Yes I already know this, what do you think is the best film of the year?"

Well that is a little trickier than the summary, because these movies are all very good. So, lets start with the one thing I am most sure about:

AVATAR should not win.

Now, put down your blue makeup and smurf-cat porn and stop writing your hate mail. Look at Avatar, for all of its good and its bad, does it deserve the award. No. Avatar is the king of all popcorn movies chocked full of overused cliches, carried fully on its technology. In ten years Avatar will not be a good movie. Avatar will only be remembered by studios trying to reproduce its box office success. The tech will get better. Better film makers will put it to better use. Avatar will no longer be important, while every other film on this list will endure as a spectacular work of art.

What Avatar is is a money grab, using the same storyline of a dozen previous works, the same message found in countless movies (about the environment, the industrial military complex and human's lust for resources) that have done it better that is needlessly long. It had all the potential in the world but instead it falls back on the same rehashed tricks.

Having just scared away all of the Avatar fan boys, that must mean that the rest of you are more level headed. Right? Good.

The other three movies are about equal in my heart at this time. They are each wildly different and each have their own reasons for being on the list.

For me I have to throw The Hurt Locker off of my list, because Up in the Air and Basterds are films that I just like more. They play with characters and people's expectations in film. Reitman does it in a very human and subtle way and Tarantino throws the rules out the window like it is job. I will get back to the Hurt Locker in a bit.

Narrowing down the list to these two, I have to choose Basterds. Up in the Air is possibly the better movie. It is nears perfection, which is respectable, but in doing so it loses everything that art is about. Art is messy, just as humanity is messy. Basterds is a messy, imperfect stab at something different. I cannot help but respect that. It is a daring, fun movie choking on its depth. I have to go with it.

My circuitous logic aside the best picture, in my mind, should be Inglorious Basterds.

But I am not done. The Academy Awards are just as much about politics as they are about good movies (maybe more so) and as much as I would want Inglorious Basterds to win if I was going to submit a ballet I would not choose Basterds. I would throw my vote away to The Hurt Locker in a second because it is just as worthy as Basterds or Up in the Air are for the award, and stand at the exact same level in my mind as a work of art. I just really do not want Avatar to win, and the best bet is The Hurt Locker for dethroning Cameron's big blue leviathan.

Yes, I am a backstabbing bastard (or basterd?) I am tired of this stupid smurf buzz ruining my time at the movies. That and I have faith in The Hurt Locker winning the big award in March.

So, just in case you did not want to read this little rant thing...

A SUMMARY:

My Personal Pick: Inglorious Basterds

Who Will Win? : The Hurt Locker

Is that a bomb in your pants or are you just happy to see me?

The Hurt Locker

Day 51

Film 42

Directed by: Katheryn Bigelow

Written by: Mark Boal

Starring: Jeremy Renner, Anthony Mackie and Brian Geraghty

The Hurt Locker is the film that everyone is pitting against Avatar for this year's Best Picture. It seems that way around the blagoblag. It is understandable, as it is a spectacular and timely movie. It has about as much importance in timing as Up in the Air does, although at this point a lot of people are just flat out ignoring the American wars (me included.) The image of the war makes even less sense once living a month in Bravo company's shoes. This is a running theme in anti-war movies, and although The Hurt Locker is not as loud as All Quiet on the Western Front about it you can feel it.

The Hurt Locker is not a fun movie, it will leave you shaken with an entirely new view of the war. You should see it.

SHH!

All Quiet on the Western Front

Day 51

Film 41

Directed by: Lewis Milestone

Written by: Erich Maria Remarque (Novel)

Walking into this film I thought it would be like a bad John Wayne war flick, filled with American pride. I was very wrong on this, because it is far from a pro war movie, it was the first big budget anti war movie and what it does to World War One is make transform it from a gaudy glamourous war into the shit hole it was.

This film attacks war from every concievable level, going so far as to make the Germans portrayed and make them speak like good old American boys. This makes the horror that the characters experience hit the Americans head on. It also creates a universal look at the war from every angle. It is spectacular film making.

All Quiet on the Western Front is such a complex piece of cinema I can only scratch the surface of it. Watch it, think about it, then get back to me.

Short Circuit Film Festival

Day 50

Film 40

Ok, you must be saying: "Hey this is a film festival why does it only count for one film?" And I would answer you with: "Well they were all just really short films, totaling up until about 75 minutes. Which is enough to qualify as a film in my books" (If I was desperate to catch up I would say that each of these little films was one film in and of itself. But what fun is that!)

So lets break apart each film then:

The Mouse that Soared:

This was an interesting short animation, filled with dark comedy, slapstick and a good amount of fun. It was a very fun four minutes.

Gone Fishing:

Gone Fishing tries to do a lot in only 13 minutes. It felt a little awkward juggling a lot of 'well you'd get it if you are paying close enough attention' bits. It was fun though and well done even with the scope.

She Said:

This was a music video by a local filmmaker. It was really well done. It was not my favorite music video ever but its hard to top Christopher Walken dancing for 5 minutes.

True Beauty this Night:

This was a spectacular little film. Carried by its actors and their charisma and timing it sets up some ironic little twists that you cannot help but love. This was probably my favorite if only because it was just so much fun to watch.

On the Road to Tel-Aviv:

This film was the most heavy hitting for sure. It boldly asked if we should profile Arabs as terrorists. The whole thing was spectacularly done with the narrative ending with a twist that would make M. Night. Shamalananalam proud.

Horn Dog:

A fun, sadistic little tale about a dog in love. I cannot say much else. Great though.

The Job:

This turned the Mexican illegal immigration issue on its side. It was hilarious, and it seemed that the audience loved this one the most by judging their laughter.

The Last Bogatyr:

This was a film by another local, Sarah R. Lotfi, and was very well done. It felt a little awkward in parts and it was hard to take it seriously when Marshall Rainey appears at the end. Even so, it was a very well done film.

Fargo
Day 49

Film 39

Directed by: Joel and Ethan Coen

Written by: Joel and Ethan Coen

Starring: Frances McDormand, Steve Buscemi and William H. Macy

Fargo is an interesting film. It is an interesting story told in a very down to earth style. There are no explosions. The action is understated with quick brutal murder sequences. The story follows a group of likable enough people, who turn out to be more pitiful than villainous, and a cop who is just a cop, unraveling the loose strands that the bodies leave.

The film has a very warm feeling to it. The conspirators are like able enough, especially Lundegaard (Macy) who you cannot help but root for in the first half of the movie. He is a sad sack who just wants to make his family happy, but cannot impress his father in law. He turns out to be a spineless coward who is more pitiful than heroic.

Marge Gunderson (McDormand) ends up being a lovable character amidst the death and backstabbing. She ties the stories together with a Minnesotan accent and good by the books police work. You cannot help but love her. Without McDormand the film would have fallen on its face, being far too raw for anyone to really like.

Fargo reminded me a lot of No Country for Old Men, although I am not entirely sure why. It is obvious that the Coen brothers have a very distinct style of telling a story. If I was to guess the biggest difference in No Country for Old Men and Fargo is that Fargo is built as a comedy, where the good guys win, while No Country is built so no one does. Or something... (I really need to rewatch that film)

O Captain! My Captain!

Dead Poets Society

Day 48

Film 38

Directed by: Peter Wier

Written by: Tom Schulman

Starring: Robin Williams

Dead Poets Society feels like a usual coming of age story, and in that regards it could have easily been a forgettable movie but Williams' performance as John Keating along with the well sculpted screenplay really make the film step above.

Now I could be a little biased. I am a fan of poetry and I know the power it can have to move the soul. Williams' seems to take these qualities and rally not only the hearts of the students in his class but our hearts as well. It is enough to make you want to shout 'My captain' in the final scene and enough to make you believe these rigidly brought up children would defy their parents.

Overall I liked Dead Poets, I do not have a good grasp at what was actually going on in the late 80's to get any sort of important significance out of it. It is a well crafted and enjoyable movie, but beyond that I am not sure what to think.

Destry Rides Again
Day 48
Film 37
Directed by: George Marshall
Written by: Felix Jackson, Henry Myers and Gertrude Purcell
Starring: Marline Dietrich and James Stewart

I have no idea at what way I should approach this film. This is the second of many films that I watched for a film class. because of that I am driven to think as my instructor told me to think. Destry is America, quiet quirky and more than able to fight when it needs to (or when a friend falls) but not the first to reach for a gun. America is a place that when the fight begins it will be carried not only by the men carrying the weapons but also by the women who will rise to the occasion. As a film that is trying to get a grip of the future in 1939 it seems to make a lot of sense.

Destry is a spectacular film. It is a fun western that keeps you enthralled by the narrative. At first look it does not seem to be the kind of film built to narrate the future's conflicts, but with the proper nudge it does seem to be very clearly forced into the film.

Um...

L'Age d'Or

Day 43

Film 36

Directed By: Luis Bunuel

Written By: Luis Bunuel and Salvador Dali

This is the first of many films that I was forced to watch in my film studies class (one of two.) It was not the kind of movie I was expecting. I do not think anyone could see it coming, no matter how strange you describe it.

I cannot say much about it because it is a surrealist film. It is just wildly strange, laughable at spots. It has no set in stone storyline. Instead it jumps from figments of stories to other figments. it is enough for us to realize a narrative, but it is so disjointed it is hard to get a good hold of it.

My mind is going crazy trying to figure out if Bunuel was actually trying to aim at something beyond the dreamlike insanity that this film portrays. He seems to be poking at the church, or God but that is drowned in unexplainable images of giraffes falling into the ocean, of cows sitting on beds like a cat or a dog, or of man punting a dog. It is just so very strange.

As a recommendation... I honestly do not know what to think. Watch this at your own digression, if you can find it. It is a good film, but it will leave your head spinning.

Bruce gets lost in his own stardom

My Name is Bruce

Day 42

Film 35

Directed by: Bruce Campbell

Written by: Mark Verheiden

Starring: Bruce Campbell

I am just going to say this now: This movie is terrible. It is worse than terrible. It knows this and does not try to do anything beyond that and instead relishes in Bruce Campbell's chin.

My Name is Bruce follows Bruce Campbell, played by Bruce Campbell, a B movie star who is kidnapped by his biggest fan to save a town from a B movie monster. The plot is horrid, the acting is spotty at best, and it really relies on Campbell's natural charisma to do anything beyond its terribad horror movie roots.

What it comes down to is this: Are you a Bruce Campbell fan? Yes? Then you will love this film. No? Watch The Evil Dead again and convert!

Revisionist History

World's Greatest Dad

Day 42

Film 34

Directed by: Bobcat Goldthwait

Screenplay by: Bobcat Goldthwait

Starring: Robin Williams, Daryl Sabara, and Alexie Gilmore

World's Greatest Dad is a dark comedy. It is a startling look at how death can change people. This movie would have been unbearable without its sense of irony or sarcasm. Even with it it was far from an easy watch. World's Greatest Dad dragged by, with a first act that was more painful than funny, and more introduction than plot.

It picks up in the second act as we helplessly watch father and protagonist Lance Clayton (Williams) clean up after his son Kyle (Sabara,) who died accidentally due to asphyxiation while masturbating, and frames it as a suicide, writing a suicide note that was more poetry than truth. This note becomes a perfect storm inside the high school where Lance teaches. The rest is a tangled mess of painful sarcasm and the blackest of humor. We laugh because otherwise we would have to accept this horrible act.

Black humor is something that is very hard to do right, because it is a balancing act of making a world so twisted it looks like our own and then making it humorous enough to not make us want to kill our selves while watching it. It is also something that most people do not like. People do not like looking into the mirror and seeing what is actually there.

World's Greatest Dad is not a perfect film by a long stretch, half of it is downright painful to watch. There are some spectacular scenes, and the screenplay was a spectacular weave of irony but it too was just as brilliant as it was flawed.

World's Greatest Dad is not for the faint of heart, who want their movies to be a dream. It is a nightmare that you cannot turn away from, but more importantly one you want to see through to the end.

Dance, Dance, Dance

The Seventh Seal

Day 41

Film 33

Directed by: Ingmar Bergman

Written by: Ingmar Bergman

Starring: Max von Sydow, Gunnar Bjornstrand, Nils Poppe, and Bengt Ekerot

The Seventh Seal is a movie that is lost in the art of itself. It is a strange feeling to come across a film like this because as an English major I cannot help but want to disect every scene to find out what Bergman was trying to say. As a lover of film I cannot help but be disapointed because it was a little disjointed, and a little dull (or dated) right up until the end.

I do not think Bergman made this film to be enjoyable, so we can write it off as a popcorn classic. This means we have no excuses to make to appease the drooling masses who will eat up something like Avatar or Transformers without questioning anything and weigh the film on a much harder scale, the 'is it art' scale.

I would say that The Seventh Seal is a piece of art, and a finely crafted one at that. Bergman uses a very basic story to try and describe death. This is no easy task and even though Bergman falls short on any philisophical level, he gets close enough to chill your heart. The movie seems like a thesis paper more than a film concerning that and every character and act seems to be a justification for Bergman's final message.

We are all dragged along by Death's hand, to try and run or fight it is meaningless. We are all just dancing along, and the only people who understand this are the artists.

Or something to that effect. It is hard to get the whole meaning from a single viewing.

An Allegory for the Times

West Side Story

Day 41

Film 32

Directed by: Jerome Robbins and Robert Wise

Screenplay by: Jerome Robbins, Aurthur Laurents (play) and Ernest Lehman

Starring: Natalie Wood, Richard Beymer, Rita Moreno, and George Chakiris

West Side Story was a film that I was very quizzical about going into it. I am not a musical guy, and for the first thirty minutes I was a little uneasy about the film, because everything felt a little too rigid and a little too out of place. But as I warmed up to the film I came to understand why it considered a classic. It is a good film, and beyond that it is a very important film.

The original musical was put out in 1957, the film appearing in 1961. This was a time right at the tail end of a repressive time for the baby boomers, and it comes to no surprise that almost every adult figure is portrayed as a drag. This takes a secondary stage to the real message of the film, which focuses on racism from both sides of the issue which was much more prominent in the news of the times.

The plot is a very basic one, based off Romeo and Juliet (A story most people know very well.) This shell allowed the director focus more on the racial interaction as a war. It becomes apparent that it is not a fight between gangs but instead a war of peoples, one where the cops are biased toward the whites and who's parents are as sided as the kids fighting. It grows into an unending fight in which no one can truly win. The only hope is in the final scene where boys from both gangs carry away.

It is a truly great film, not because it is a good story, or because it is filmed well (even though it is) it is an important slice of the times.

Citizen Kane

Day 40

Film 31

Citizen Kane is supposed to be the best film ever made, at least by a slew of directors and critics. Even if that is true it is pretty much unknown by today's average people. Hell, I did not know about it until I made the list of the 25 films I knew I would have to see in this whole 100 films thing. It is odd that The Godfather or Casablanca can be named so readily as the best film ever in casual conversation when I doubt they have seen Citizen Kane.

I will say this upfront: Citizen Kane is a spectacular film. It deserves the praise.

I am not going to go into a story recap. If you want to know it all you can read it on wikipedia or watch the film. Instead I am going to drain the millions of thoughts about the film into an indecipherable soup of ideas and hope you all can sort it out.

Citizen Kane is a million things. It is a look at a man who has serious separation issues. It is a look at how our world progresses and what drives the men who do it. It is a look at rebellion. It is a view of the world through the eyes of a monarch, a businessman and a god. It is a view of the super rich at a time when no one had anything. It is the unforgiving tale of man at his finest and at his lowest. It is all of this and more and the more I think about it the more I want to think.

Kane is Rupert Murdoc. Kane is a President. Kane is a mover and shaker in a time when there were very few of them. Kane was a man of the previous age, when people were cattle. Kane is a slave driver and jailer of souls. Kane is a lover, a fighter a fool. Kane is a child. Kane proves we are all just children. Kane is a king in a castle of nothing. Aren't we all?

Orson Wells seems to have a view of the human condition with Citizen Kane. Kane is a man who can choose his path, knowing very well the doom that awaits him, but cannot control the other people in his life. Kane is a man who built an empire of stuff and hid away inside it, his existence defined by the knickknacks he left behind.

Three in One Special

Day 36

In order to save some time, because I am already a good week behind on my movies, I am going to condense the flicks I saw today into 3 mini-reviews. Enjoy!

Sympathy for Lady Vengeance

Film 28

This film is the third in Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy. As a film it could be his best crafted work but it does not take the same chances the earlier installment took. It is a beautiful, enjoyable and challenging film and probably the easiest to understand in the trilogy. It is worth seeing.

The Man Who Knew Too Much

Film 29

This film was an early Hitchcock from the 1930's. It feels dated and the plot is a little sketchy. Overall it is not bad, but only something you should watch if you want a feel for older films.

Enter the Dragon

Film 30

This was a fun kung fu film. The plot was not great, but good enough to propel you from fight to fight and learn to hate the monster behind the tournament. Kung fu lovers should enjoy the cheesy fun.

Norman Bates Would be Proud

American Psycho

Day 35

Film 27

Directed by: Mary Harron

Screenplay By: Mary Harron and Guinevere Turner

Starring: Christian Bale, Willem Dafoe and Reese Witherspoon

American Psycho was a very hit and miss film for me. Harron tried to stuff the film with so many different ideas it loses a lot of its punch. It goes from a satiric look at the 80's power businessmen into a broad and unfocused critique of the 80's itself.

The film is best when it is analyzing Bateman (Bale) who is everything from a suave businessman to a monster who replaces his face every morning. Bale plays the character spectacularly, dancing on the line of millionaire playboy and homicidal maniac. The scenes where we get inside his head or watch him mutilate a business partner or prostitute are spectacular. They form a couple high points in the film that the rest of the scenes have a hard time reaching.

Harron tries to fill the time by mocking 80's film making. With a loud 80's pop soundtrack that is more annoying than amusing and a climactic fantasy that would fit better in Lethal Weapon it is hard to shake the feeling that these ploys would be better suited in the mid 90's and not at the beginning of the 00's and now just as the newest decade begins I wonder if this film is just a little too dated for its own good. I found this type of film making, be it lost in the 80's by design or by accident by Harron, really just annoyed me and fueled the ups and downs enough to leave a bitter taste in my mouth by the end.

American Psycho is a respectable film, with a few spectacular scenes that are worth watching even if they are caked in mediocrity.

The Fab Four's Fantastic Film

A Hard Day's Night

Day 33

Film 26

A Hard Day's Night is the first film made by The Beatles, and has been heralded as just a great movie. When I started the film I was a little quizzical if only because every other Beatles based movie has always been worse than its music and for the first 30 minutes of the film I felt just that. But as I got used to its very bare story, and cheeky fun I just started to love it. It was a perfect storm of fun, making it a very enjoyable 90 minutes of film.

A Hard Day's Night was not made to be challenging, its message is not one that changes your view of the world or leaves you questioning your very existence, and if I was to just look at A Hard Day's Night in this regard it would fall flat on its face. It would join the ranks of Pineapple Express in the 'damn good time' type of movie that you quickly forget. Interestingly, A Hard Day's Night is one of those movies that is so very important you cannot simply right it off.

For all of its lighthearted and forgettable fun A Hard Day's Night is a perfect example of the radical change that happened in the 60's. The fab four are constantly defying authority, be it their manager, the director or the police. They choose fun, they take risks, they flirt with women and they laugh at all the men who try to control them. It shows the beginning of a change in the world, for people generations beyond to enjoy.

That and some of the best music in film.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance

Day 26

Film 25

Before I get to work on Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance I first want to say this: Look! 25 films down! Sweet right? I am just 75 movies away from the goal. As much as I would like to say that it is a short way away the next 75 films seem to be quite daunting. Oh well, at this point there is only one thing to do really, and that is just keep on doing it.

-

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is the first film of Park Chan-wook's Vengeance Trilogy. A couple days ago I reviewed Oldboy (which is the second of the seemingly unrelated films) and I was absolutely blown away by it. Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is no Oldboy, which is both sad and expected.

The beginning of the film is slow, and the main characters have a hard time getting you to care about them and the pace crawls. The main character Ryu (Ha-kyun) is a deaf mute who is a nice enough guy, working in a closing factory, and taking care of his dieing sister (Ji-eun.) Ryu bargains with some mafia types selling organs, but lacks the money to pay for the operation. This leads Ryu, after being provoked by his girlfriend Cha Yeong-mi (Doona) to kidnap his ex-boss Park Dong-jin's (Kang-ho) daughter.

Everything falls apart when the sister dies. Ryu is forced to bury his sister along side a river and Park's child accidentally drowns. The story degrades into a corpsefest as Park attempts to get revenge on Ryu and Cha while Ryu goes after the mobsters who made it impossible to save his sister.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance is a quiet film. There is no soundtrack, most of the film is acted quietly or signed out and the absence of sound makes the film drag. Chan-wook seems to be playing with sound, and even if it does not work it is interesting to look at how it changes the film.

Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance falls pretty far short of its sequel Oldboy. It is by no means a bad film, but the chances Chan-wook took with the film made it less than enjoyable to watch.

Chinatown's Teenage Lovechild

Brick

Day 26

Film 24

Brick is an exciting piece of cinema fusing together noir with a high school drama. It does not sound like it would work, and it does not 100% of the time but in the few times where the idea stumbles it catches itself by never letting the tension drop.

Brick begins with Brendan Frye (Gordon-Levitt) staring at his dead ex, Emily (Ravin,) at the bottom of a sewer drain. The movie flashes back to the days before her death and is propelled by this first scene as we try to piece together the mystery along side Brendan. What starts as a edgy teenage drama quickly turns into a noir film as Brendan smooth talks and fights his way through a cast of characters that are as much noir as high school.

The pace does not let up, we meet Emily right before she is killed. After that Brendan turns from a man searching for answers into a single minded beast ready to do anything to get the truth. This means walking into the basement of a drug lord, dodging murder accusations and fighting with the school administration while still asking questions. It leads up to a spectacular few scenes at the end.

The only hole I can find in Brick is the fact that it is a noir story set on a high school campus. There are a couple scenes where it just does not quite work. The interesting thing about these scenes is that when they do not work perfectly you are not jarred from the movie. These quirks become hilarious lines caught that break the tension of the frantic story. When the dialogue, which is almost Shakespearean in complexity, stumbles it shifts from barely able to follow to amazingly understandable. It is strange, but I think Johnson wanted it like that. It forms a give and take relationship between accessibility and perfection.

I loved Brick. It does a spectacular job dancing around with two orthogonal genres. It keeps you entertained in a way only noir can.

Being John Malkovich

Day 25

Film 23

Being John Malkovich is another one of those strange imperfect movies. It makes you think. It plays with the medium and the audience's expectations.

Being John Malkovich asks the question: 'What would happen if someone discovered the door to another person's mind?' It probes this at a very sophomoric level at first, letting us imagine what it would be like to be someone else while at the same time letting us get the feel for the ragtag group of leads.

The film is weakest in the beginning. Craig Schwartz (Cusack) is a loser artist who's more pitiful than love able. The setup feels a little long, as we are introduced to Craig's wife Lotte (Diaz) and the love interest Maxine Lund (Keener.) The time is stretched over half fulfilled gags and awkward scenes between Craig and Maxine that do not settle very well.

The discovery of the door into Malkovich's mind catapults the film from an awkward romantic comedy into a sobering view of humanity and identity. The contradictions laced into the film force you to think. The love affair between Lotte Schwartz and Maxine Lund becomes a twisted mess of ideas. Untangling this mess of homosexuality and transgender identity is as thrilling as it is daunting and makes for a compelling mind screw. Craig Schwartz degrades from a pitiful but like able guy into a sociopath who cannot get over a woman. His relationship with Lund feels like a stalker's sick fantasy, crossing the lines of rape through another man's body.

Being John Malkovich dares to do the unexpected. The questions it asks and the ways it asks them are new and exciting. Where it fails in the beginning it makes up for it at the end leaving a discomforting human aftertaste.

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Weep and you weep alone.

Oldboy

Day 24

Film 22

Before I get started I think I should say something about my particular viewing of Oldboy. I watched this film on netflix without the ability to get the undubbed version, so I will be avoiding some of the issues of pacing and acting for this little review.

Oldboy is my favorite kind of movie. It takes risks. It plays with the medium. It is far from a perfect film. Park Chan-wook' twists every thing that you take for granted with film and throws it out the window forming a narrative that is as twisted as it is remarkable.

Oldboy is a look at the revenge story. The protagonist, a likable businessman Oh Dae-su (Min-sik,) is imprisoned against his will by what we can only assume to be mobsters. Fifteen years pass. In this time Oh Dae-su is driven insane and emerges a changed man. Trained by fifteen years of television kung fu and driven by the death of his wife and wrongful imprisonment Oh Dae-su goes after the man responsible. As the story unfolds Chan-wook throws enough curve balls to keep you going and the conclusion leaves you amazed and appalled at the same time.

**From this point on there will be spoilers. You have been warned.**

What makes Oldboy so amazing is how Chan-wook plays with the revenge archetype. Oh Dae-su's imprisonment is an obvious parallel to the Count of Monte Cristo. It could almost be a complete retelling if Oh Dae-su's driving force was just revenge, instead there is a very Hamlet like drive in him that keeps him going until it leads to his tragic end. Oh Dae-su is given every chance to kill the man who has set out to ruin his life and fails to do so, leading up to the a final revelation that is too much like Oedipus Rex to just ignore.

Each of these pieces is taken and warped in Chan-wook's hand. Every familiar story is turned on its end and changed into something until now unseen. The Count of Monte Cristo suddenly is changed from the story of a man who lusts for revenge to the story of a man who cannot avoid another man's revenge. Hamlet gives up every opportunity to not kill Claudius and is forced to see the ruins his actions have caused, instead of conveniently dieing before it all comes into view. Oedipus chooses to forget everything that is told to him, and remain in happy ignorance till the end of his days. Each of these stories is warped just enough to give them a new angle and to leave the audience asking new questions about it.

Beyond these twists on classic stories Chan-wook plays with more subtle cliches. The most obvious of these is of the roll of Mi-do, who serves as Oh Dae-su's love interest and daughter. For the majority of the film Mi-do swoons over Oh Dae-su. It is almost pathetic as Oh Dae-su attempts to rape her, and leaves her again and again sometimes tied up and other times locked inside a cell. Mi-do would not leave this stranger, whom she did not know a week before, and it just does not fit until the final scenes. Everything is tied together with the use of hypnosis (which is a thin strand to hang the story on but it clings on just enough) and every scene where Mi-do was in it and I was asking 'why on earth is she still a character?' suddenly makes sense. Chan-wook shifts this story ruining, too flat character to what drives the final twist.

It is everything that makes you want to have faith in the medium, because for every Spiderman 3, which is the epitome of boring and poorly executed, there is a film like Oldboy that makes you take a new look at film.

My final verdict:

Oldboy changes how you watch film. It is not perfect but it makes you think. I would recommend it to anyone who wants to be challenged by a movie. To the rest of you: Just go back to re watching Avatar.

A Better Rabbit Hole

Coraline

Day 22

Film 21

Coraline was an imaginative romp through a world we have never seen. It is the type of movie that makes you have faith in animation again. The world has a very alien feel without going far enough away to disconnect from the audience. Coraline is amazing in this aspect, trumping Selick's other creations (most importantly Nightmare Before Christmas.) I could go on and on about how beautiful and imaginative the film is, but my ramblings would not equate.

The film starts Coraline, a little girl who is prone to fantasy and is just a little bit odd, just as her family moved into a reclusive house out in the wilderness. Her family does not seem to pay much attention to her, being journalists at the very end of a deadline and we are quick to dislike them. And when Coraline finds a new world through a small door beneath the wallpaper she is eager to escape. The world she finds is a perfect one, with marvelous and beautiful contraptions and loving parents. Every bit of it is as amazing as the real world is dull, but you cannot shake the feeling that something is just a little bit odd. Every character in the other world has buttons for eyes, and there are some sequences even before the final scenes that are just down right creepy.

Again, the visuals are more than enough to keep you watching the film and unlike its other visual driven counterparts (Avatar springs to mind) the story just as much sucks you in, and makes you wondering what all is going to happen.

My Final Verdict:

Coraline is a beautiful movie and should be seen for just that. Beyond that it has an engaging plot that is just as much fun as it is to watch. I would recommend it.