SAMURAI BANNERS (1969).
Impressively mounted, though fairly bland epic was a big hit for Toshiro
Mifune, and was directed by the improbably popular Hiroshi Inagaki. Mifune
plays the scarred, limping, insanely ambitious Kansuke Yamamoto, first seen
deceitfully entering the service of Lord Takeda (Kinosuke Nakamura). Yamamoto
dreams of unifying Japan, and due to his strategic brilliance quickly rises
to be the top-ranking general for Takeda. Along the way the daughter of
a defeated enemy (Yoshiko Sakamura) becomes Takeda’s concubine and gives
him a son, and Yamamoto, who secretly loves her, becomes obsessed with making
the boy Takeda’s heir. Typical big-budget spectacle from the period shows
what a generally poor actor Mifune was without the guidance of Kurosawa,
here he dominates, but only because the script gives him the lead role,
his personality never dominates. Even the battle scenes are not particularly
impressive (a typical Inagaki fault, he was never very good at human drama
or action), certainly nowhere in the league of anything Kurosawa or Kobayashi
pulled off. Lots of stiff talk and even stiffer performances, a nap inducing
two-and-a-half-hours.
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SAMURAI PART 1: MIYAMOTO
MUSASHI (1955). For some reason this won the Academy Award for Best Foreign
Picture and has become a perennial home video release. I’ve never been able
to figure out why, it’s a terribly mediocre production lacking in every
respect. Loosely based on the exploits of folk hero Miyamoto Musashi, who
wrote the famous martial arts treatise A Book of Five Rings, this is a by-the-book
chambara with nothing to distinguish it. Toshiro Mifune plays Musashi (first
called Takezo), a brash young swordsman who fights on the losing side of
the last battle of the feudal era, Sekigahara and becomes a fugitive wildman
before being taught a better way by the usual stern, but sensible Buddhist
priest (Kuroemon Onoe). There’s a lot of “action” in the first half, but
it slows down intolerably later on. The whole thing is so poor that its
no surprise at all that Hiroshi Inagaki, Japan’s biggest hack-for-hire directed
it. I suppose only the somewhat primitive color photography (by Jun Yasumoto)
makes it stand out at all.
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SAMURAI PART 3: DUEL
AT GANRYU ISLAND (1957). Out of the hundreds of chambara films from Japan,
only the three parts of this distinctly poor series have shown up in America
(then again, that’s not too surprising). The thankful finale of the series
finds Miyamoto Musashi (a seriously dull Toshiro Mifune again) and his famous
duel with Sasaki Kojiro (Koji Tsuruta), an ambitious longswordsman, who
is nearly Musahi’s equal. Musashi postpones the duel and heads to a small
village to farm. The two women in his life (Mariko Okada, Michiko Saga)
show up, and he has to fight off a gang of brigands before his climatic
duel. While one may be tempted to excuse the film’s many deficiencies as
part of “aging”, one should remember films like The Seven Samurai, Sansho
the Bailiff and others were released during the same period, and still seem
perfectly vital today. Maybe the problem is Eiji Yoshikawa’s source novel,
a hopelessly melodramatic and stilted mess, but probably most of the blame
lies with Hiroshi Inagaki, the bete noir of chambara cinema, a mediocre
craftsman who, contrary to the limits of common sense continued to have
hit after hit, mostly due to the iconic Mifune’s participation, but his
cardboard characters and decidedly wooden direction (and in this case some
awful continuity gaps) doesn’t exactly endear him. While the climatic duel
is rather good, the faded color photography, death march pace, and awful
performances (Mifune’s one-not stoicism being especially grating) create
quite an endurance test.
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SAMURAI REBELLION (1967).
This is, along with Hara-Kiri, the prototypical revenge movie. Its
an intense and devastating look at the inherent inhumanity of the samurai
system from Masaki Kobayashi, whose career was filled with movies that took
a long hard look at the sometimes senseless nature of male self-sacrifice.
This movie also contains what is probably the best non-Kurosawa performance
from Toshiro Mifune, as an aging samurai with a shrewish wife who’s ordered
to marry his son (Tsuyoshi Kato) off to a disgraced former concubine (Yoko
Tsukasa) of the local warlord. At first Mifune tries to decline, but his
son forces him to go along with it, and eventually they learn that the woman’s
dismissal was due to her revulsion with the cruelty with which the concubines
had to deal with, when she sees a woman who obviously revels in her role
as concubine, she reacts violently and is cast out. The warlord already
has a son, but when he dies Tsukasa is recalled to the castle to care for
the second heir, her son with the warlord. Mifune, Kato and Tsukasa then
decide the unthinkable (at least to people of that time) and defy both the
warlord and their “code” by refusing to give her up. Essentially this is
about the dissolution of the entire concept of “samurai”, as warriors during
the long Tokugawa period of piece they served no purpose (except to keep
the population in line), yet none-the-less had to deal with the arbitrary
whims of their corrupt masters, who hold them in conditions that are little
better than slavery. Essentially Mifune discovers this, and rather than
taking the usual Japanese route and accepting it, he decides to fight it.
Kobayashi uses the basic set up of the chambara film, and the sword fights
here are among the best ever filmed, but exchanges the chambara’s cardboard
characters and dime-store plots for deeper concerns and characters. For
Kobayashi, no matter how superhuman the swordsman, he still cannot defeat
the hypocrisies and evils of an inhuman system. Also with Tatsuya Nakadai,
who is superb as Mifune’s doomed friend.
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SANSHIRO SUGATA (1943).
Akira Kurosawa’s debut is a wonderful masterpiece, a small, unpretentious
movie about a spirited young fighter is as moving and surprising today as
it no doubt was during its initial release. Susumu Fujita plays the title
character, a young man who wants to study the new martial art of judo, but
seems more interested in brawling than learning the real meaning of the
martial arts, a mastery of the very wild characteristics that he revels
in. Eventually he learns the proper way, but must face off with a man who
hasn’t learned his lessons, a Westernized dandy (Ryunosuke Tsukigata), whom
he fights on a windswept hillside, a finale that has been copied innumerable
times. Even in his first film, Kurosawa displays a great deal of technical
assurance and maturity, from his typically brilliant editing, slow-motion,
and an ingenious manipulation of time to illustrate Sugata’s learning process.
In fact, the scene in which Fujita leaps headlong into a pond and while
contemplating a lily comes to an inner understanding remains one of the
most unexpectedly moving scenes in any of Kurosawa’s films. Takashi Shimura,
who plays a jujitsu master here, made his final Kurosawa performance in
1980 's Kagemusha.
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SATAN'S BED (1965).
Finally, the movie you've been waiting for! Yoko Ono is raped and abused!
It's too bad it's all off camera. This is an awful sex film made from two
different movies, the first, by "Tamijian" features Ono as a Japanese woman
(forever in her kimono) who comes to America to marry an ugly American guy
(as opposed to an ugly British one) but gets all caught up in a game of
cat and mouse, mostly cat raping and abusing mouse as an ugly fat-ass with
pock marks kidnaps Yoko and rapes her. Hurrah! The other film is worthless
and has a trio of greaser punks chasing a woman around. Ono gets run over
at the end, which makes up for her music and art, though I am in her debt
since she broke up the Beatles and has spent twenty years destroying John
Lennon's reputation.
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SCORE (1995). This
is a ridiculous action movie from Japan that rips of John Woo's Hard Target
gratuitously as well as a few pages from Quentin Tarentino, even though
Asian filmmakers basically own the copyright to Tarentino's dubious "works".
Hitoshi Ozawa (who was the bullying Yakuza in Takeshi Kitano's Boiling Point)
plays a bank robber named Chance (you can see where this is going already)
who's sprung from prison to pull off a jewelry store heist. Everything goes
well until a pair of highway robbers/lovers highjack the jewels and all
hell breaks loose. If you didn't know it you'd never think this was from
Japan, it's a pumped up and kinetic action film, people jump, flip and die
in outrageous, energetic shootouts. Director and co-writer Atsushi Muroga
keeps things simple and to the point, everybody shoots everybody else and
the blood flies in gouts, though anyone expecting an old school Japanese
action film will be disappointed, this one is probably worth seeing for
its open and unapologetic stealing from other films, unlike Tarentino, who
denies denies denies and then admits only to a "homage". The titles are
in English, and there's even some English dialogue, which is mostly limited
to "shit", "fuck you", "asshole", etc.
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SEVEN BLOWS OF THE
DRAGON (The Water Margin, 1972). An excellent kung-fu fantasy/epic with
the mysterious Mountain Bandits going after a ruthless warlord who murders
their leader. They enlist the help of a wealthy governor and his reckless
bodyguard, played by David Chiang. This is Chang Cheh and Shaw Brothers
at their best, featuring almost non-stop fighting and general strangeness,
bizarrely named characters and ridiculous dubbed dialog like, “watch out!
the double kick of death” and the classic, “Men don’t fight…with women”/”In
that case, watch out for your manhood!”
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THE SEX LIFE OF FOUR
BEAUTIFUL WITCHES (19??). Don’t ask me about this movie, ‘cause I dunno.
I’d guess it’s related to such oddball Chinese (weather Hong Kong or Taiwanese
or neither I’m not sure) pornos as Ghoul Sex Squad, since there aren’t
that many, and they all seemed to be made around the same time. The credits
are all in Chinese and badly cropped, and there were no English subtitles,
so as to what the whole thing was about, or who was in it, I dunno. Four
“witches” (not exactly “beautiful” though) have sex with four bozos, but
they turn into various barnyard animals during the act (which is actually
pretty amusing). The usual scholar shows up and the witches try to seduce
him but he rebukes their attempts. A guy gets a woman to sleep with a rich
fellow so he can rape the man’s soon-to-be wife, but he rapes her to death
(?). The scholar has sex with a woman. Oh, and he chops a woman in the neck
accidentally. Like I said, I dunno. Actually it wasn’t all that bad, and
hardly a traditional porno at all, there’s some nice Chinese music, and
some oddball sexual stuff. Hardly great art, but I suppose that’s not the
point.
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THE SHAOLIN KILLERS!
(19??). An obvious retitle (when the real title is about to come up there’s
a cutaway to a poorly generated video title), the plot deals with some sort
of inner-triad power struggle. Not particularly good, the first half has
a lot of nudity (some pretty graphic) and sex, the second has lots of poorly
choreographed fights. The credits have been removed, but the box credits
Chen Ching, Chang Wu-Lang, and Chen Chang as being in it.
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SHAOLIN POPEY (1994).
This was directed by Chu Yen-Ping, but don’t let that fool you, it’s a really,
really idiotic comedy. Lam Chi-Wing plays a love struck teen that falls
for the girlfriend of a rich bully and trouble ensues. Our hero has a female
friend whose sexuality remains questionable until the end (things aren’t
helped when she says things like, “I don’t like boys”). Lam also has an
archetypal obnoxious kid brother who has a shaved head and wears mirrored
shades, I’m very glad these horrible little child actors don’t appear in
too many Hong Kong movies anymore. If you’re curious like me you’ll wonder
where the Shaolin comes in, it happens when Lam and his brother are
taught kung-fu by a precocious little Shaolin monk/brat (the sort of kid
who appeared in about 99% of Hong Kong comedies from the period). Pretty
disappointing all the way around.
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SHE-DEVILS
ON WHEELS (1968). What could have been the dingiest, grimiest, most downbeat
and depressing biker film ever is, under the dubious direction of H.G. Lewis,
pretty average stuff. Under the motto of “Sex, Blood, Guts and All
Men Are Mothers!” the Maneaters are an all-girl biker gang who spend
most of their time having races to see who'll have first pick of a bunch
of Neanderthals that sit around waiting for these girls to come over and
screw them. There is no real plot as such until the very end, when a gang
of grease-monkey guys challenge the girls and lose. The Maneaters are lead
by a scary chick named Queen who wears lavender boots, and has a big Valkyre
sidekick named Whitey. The girls all smoke cigars constantly and have motorcycles
of varying quality (one just rides on a little scooter), and they all wear
an atrocious looking vest with their logo on it. One of the girls lives
in “suburbia” and has a nice boyfriend (who drives a great Stingray)
who finds out about her double-life and tries to help. Everybody here is
ugly and a loser, and a better director would've exploited that for all
its worth. Unfortunately Lewis had the directorial ambition of a lab-rat
and makes this a middle of the road exploitation flick that has no nudity
and only very drab bloodletting. There's lots of hateful dialog (“she'll
be praying with her knees in the air”) and double entendres, and the
cast looks like they're having fun. I could have done without the limericks
(delivered straight to the camera after the end credits no less), though
I liked the fact that one of the street-racer guys has a car with bondo
on it and another has a banged-up front end (not to mention the “leader”
who looks like Jim Carrey!).
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THE SMUGGLER (Contraband/The
Naples Connection, 1980). While Lucio Fulci had directed many films in many
genres, after 1980 he concentrated mostly on horror, with this being an
exception. It is an Italian crime drama with the added bonus of graphic
bloodshed. Fabio Testi plays a smuggler who brings in contraband cigarettes
into Naples along with his older brother, when a perfume reeking French
gangster (Marcel Bozzuffi) tries to muscle in on their territory all hell
breaks loose. While things are slow to get started, eventually the violence
starts to kick in and the movie gets interesting, heads are blown off, bodies
are blown apart, a woman’s face is burnt off with a blowtorch, and, in one
of those only-Fulci moments, a gangster’s entire throat is blown out. This
is actually a lot better than most of Fulci’s horror films, with a slightly
plausible plot (well, one that makes a bit of sense anyway), and the camerawork
is a bit more assured than usual. Fulci had a prolific 1980, making Zombie,
The Beyond and Gates of Hell.
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SNUFF (1976). One of
the most ridiculous films in human history is Snuff, a film made
in South America by the venerable husband-and-wife team of hacks Michael
and Roberta Findlay. The film was so awful that it went unreleased (and
considering the crap that came out in the 70s that's saying something) until
the head of Monarch Releasing decided to cash in on the urban legend of
"snuff" movies by releasing a phony one. The "snuff" footage is laughable
to say the least, as an unwilling actress is dismembered by a diabolical
film director and his cronies. The usual idiots (meaning feminists) protested
the film as the ultimate in violence to women, which I think is actually
the Oprah show. Of course the protests made the film profitable which is
too bad, because the film that became Snuff, Slaughter, is
such a piece of trash that nobody should see it. Actually it has its moments,
mostly from the dubbing that's always too loud, and the bizarre soap-opera
theatrics and performances, and the color photography is nice, but the Findlays
never exactly burned up the screen with their beautifully made films, so
this one stinks like a dead cat in the garbage can.
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SOLDIER BLUE (1970).
A slam-fisted Vietnam allegory starts with a message straight out of H.G.
Lewis, warning us of a graphically violent conclusion, and ends with what
it promises: the American cavalry slaughtering Indian women and children.
In between this you’ve got a basically unwatchable movie featuring an embarrassing
performance from Candice Bergin (who should be giving the movie going public
of the late 60s and early 70s a refund for pawning her horrific acting on
them) as a white woman taken by Indians and made the wife of a chief, but
she runs away and while being taken back to civilization by a cavalry escort
the escort is slaughtered save her and bumbling private Peter Strauss (before
his days as Lifetime rapist of the week). There is absolutely no spark at
all between the leads (since Bergin gives off as much life as a doormat)
and the light tone seems more suited to Preston Sturges than Sam Peckinpah.
Donald Pleasence helps by showing up as an eccentric trader, but Ralph Nelson’s
shoddy treatment and hammerhead politics make this something of an endurance
test. Bergin’s presence disgraced another violent Western flop, The Hunting
Party, the next year.
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SONATINE
(DVD). I won't bother to review the movie now, since it's a classic and
easily Takeshi Kitano's best to date. After searching and searching and
coming close to throwing in the towel and buying a British PAL version of
this, I finally found a Chinese all-region DVD on Ebay. It has the same
packaging as the recent Japanese DVD re-release, with the advantage of not
forcing you to spend $300 on an all-region DVD player. The menus are in
Chinese and English (or at least Engrish), though the only extras (if you
can call them that) are a bio on Kitano (that cuts out rather suddenly)
and audio commentary, which is all well and good, but its in Cantonese only.
That hardly matters, after the pathetic Miramax full-screen VHS release
a few years back (under the Tarentino “Rolling Thunder” label, which does
all it can to make it look like a Tarentino movie), this is a welcome release
(considering too, the rather lacklustre Fox-Lorber versions of Violent
Cop and Boiling Point).
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SONNY CHIBA’S DRAGON
PRINCESS (1981). Very Hong Kong inspired Japanese chop-socky epic with Chiba
as a karate teacher who is blinded and crippled by rival teacher Jiro Chiba.
He teaches his daughter, Sue Shiomi, karate in order for her to avenge him.
The plot is practically non-existent (which is just as well, since I can
hardly ever follow the damn plots of Japanese action movies), but there
are a ton of fight scenes. The very underrated Yasuaki Kurata leaves his
usual role as resident Japanese baddie from innumerable Hong Kong movies
to act like Bruce Lee for 80 minutes. Shiomi is actually pretty good (considering
how pathetic most Japanese actresses look when they try and act tough),
and was pretty much on of the only female action movie stars in Japan (where
there is no tradition of female action stars like in Hong Kong). A very
fun movie.
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SOUL VENGEANCE (aka
WELCOME HOME, BROTHER CHARLES, 1975). Somebody bless Jamaa-Fanaka's soul,
because I don't think God will for making this utterly unbelievable movie.
Big Marlo Monte plays a guy arrested by a racist cop who tries to castrate
him because he found out that his wife was having an affair with a black
stud (I guess that's one stereotype black guys aren't too quick to quash).
He doesn't succeed, but poor Charles goes to prison anyway. Now, some people
say that there's a scene in which Charles hooks up with a voodoo master
in prison, who gives him magic powers, but I saw no such thing. After prison
Charles goes back home and gets with an ex-ho and tries to find a job, and
eventually gets around to avenging those who wronged him. He screws the
white wives of the villains and hypnotizes them (?). More importantly, Charles
also acquires a magic dick that grows and strangles the crackers. In a scene
that will make you scream and jump out the window you will see his dick
grow and strangle a man! What the hell was brother Fanaka smoking when he
came up with that? Maybe its all supposed to be an allegory. Um, I doubt
it. Say after me: "His penis has grown to frightening proportions!"
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THE
SPECTRE OF EDGAR ALLEN POE (1974). I don't know what the hell the story
behind this movie is. It looks like a TV movie (though the opening looks
suspiciously like an educational film), and the overall pedestrian quality
suggests it. More than that it is boring and sucks, but then again most
theatrical movies share that in common. I saw the video box that has a large,
full-color drawing of a guy getting an ax to the face and saw that Cesar
Romero is in it, so I decided to check it out. Robert Walker Jr. plays Poe,
who loves the beautiful Leonore, who dies hilariously (making porno noises,
I swear) and then somehow awakens in her coffin right before she's buried.
This drives her insane, so she's taken to the nuthouse of Dr. Cesar Romero,
the Joker himself. Blah blah blah. This movie interested me somewhat slightly
not at all. Basically Poe walks around and finds Romero is experimenting
on the nutcases, etc etc etc. There is really nothing to recommend it, but
it's well enough made that you can't really even make fun of it. The worst
kind of movie dammit!!!
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SPIDER-MAN
(2002). Ah yes, I remember the summer I discovered my superpowers. After
eating a bean and cheese burrito that had accidentally been dipped in a
vat of RADIOACTIVE WASTE I found I had acquired god-like flatulence. After
the death of my parents in a freak Gallagher show accident I dedicated my
life to fighting crime as Flatuous. My main ability was offensive odors.
Unfortunatly I was easily defeated by the evil Doctor Bionic Freeze, who's
patented meta screen© technology rendered my Mega Farts useless. That,
and the fact that I could only recharge my awesome abilities by staying
up all night eating Rolberto's Bean and Cheese Burritos caused my weight
to balloon up to 350lbs. A superhero slightly lamer than Flatuous is Spider-Man,
Marvel Comics' ode to dorky teenage comic fans everywhere, as slightly gay
Peter Parker is endowed with SUPER POWERS after being bitten by a radioactive
spider. Because radiation is now thought to cause horrible cancer and mutation
(which is why Arab terrorists will DEFINITELY in the FORSEEABLE FUTURE use
nuclear weapons on somebody, even Jaime Farr!!) the "filmmakers" decided
to change the pesky spider to a genetically mutated one. Why genetically
mutate a spider? Why not is what I say. All sorts of things can be mutated
for no reason, dung beetles, kangaroos, duck-billed platapuses, grubs, mealworms,
small yapping dogs, chinese, even elephants. All of this is necessary to
fight Zionism!!! Tobey Maguire plays Spider-Man/Peter Parker (because some
people in the audience might not know they are one in the same) and uses
an interesting tactic here (James Lipton, take note!) he plays Pete as a
boy totally devoid of personality and life, in fact, its safe to say Maguire
comes from the Roger Moore school of non-acting, and just look, Moore was
James Bond and Maguire is Spider-Man, so it must be working! Maguire's main
competition for the lack-of-personality hour is Kirsten Dunst, playing,
*gasp* an airhead teenager. Like, ohmygod!!! Gag me with my gag reflex!
In an ironic twist of fate, Parker is friends with the leech son of mult-googleaire
Willem Dafoe, who becomes bad villain Green Goblin. First of all, if Willem
Dafoe was my father I'd just assume that he was evil. Unfortunately Billem
actually attempts to act and thereby becomes an outcast among our young,
supple leads. Did I mention that Dunst has big breasts? Yes, big, round,
bouncy ones. Oh, sorry. Also appearing is Cliff Robertson, who looks to
be roughly 700 years old as Parker's caring uncle, who is of course killed
off as soon as is necessary to convince Parker to become a crime fighter.
Did I mention the fact that Robertson looks fucking awful? I think its good
to see old-timers like Cliff in a quality motion picture, but wow, talk
about aging "gracefully". Here's a quick question: how the hell does Parker
make his Spider-Man costume? First he runs around like some retard backyard
wrastler in a lame realultimatepower.com outfit, then after Cliff bites
it he turns up in a spandex, expertly tailored outfit. Is Parker, on top
of being a superhero, a top-notch seamstress too? He's Andy Milligan I tells
ya! Ok, and how the hell does Green Goblin get that mask? Is Willem Dafoe,
on top of being the fucking ugliest man ever to appear in motion pictures
(hey, don't get me wrong, I love Willem Dafoe, the more ugly people to appear
in movies the better I say) an expert Halloween costume designer too? And
is it just me, or is the scene of Parker's semen-like webs all over the
place in his room incredibly disgusting (and not at all like anything in
my own life, no, not ever). Oh, and Kirsten Dunst has big breasts. There
was also a preview for a new Chris Rock movie! At that moment Stepn Fetchit
was thinking to himself in hell, "that asshole, everybody calls me an uncle
tom and he's a millionaire!" Sam Rami is credited as the "director" but
since 2/3s of the movie takes place inside a computer I'm not too sure what
he did, but I'm sure he was paid several shitloads of money to do it! God
bless America!!!!
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SS HELL CAMP (aka THE
BEAST IN HEAT/NAZI HOLOCAUST/SS EXPERIMENTS II, 1976). I can't believe there
was actually an audience for concentration camp exploitation films. But
then again, its not surprising that they were made in Italy, since the Italians
are pusssies who went along with the Nazis and then switched sides as soon
as they were invaded. This was probably spliced together from two movies
to make one shitty one. A female SS officer (Macha Magall) creates a slobbering
mutant who rapes women to death and eats pubic hair (Sal Boris, who looks
like an average Italian to me). The other film has Italian partisans fighting
the Nazis. There's stock footage and no filmmaking skill in sight, courtesy
of director Paolo Salvay.
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STAR OF DAVID: BEAUTY
HUNTING (1979). In his book Mondo Macabro Pete Toombs used Yukio
Mishima’s comparison of Yasunari Kawabata’s House of the Sleeping Beauties
of being trapped in a submarine in which the air is slowly running out to
describe this film. A more apt description would be hard to come by for
this glossily lurid sex film that transcends its potboiler roots and becomes
a disturbing, claustrophobic shocker. Based on a five-part animated film
(based, of course, on a manga by screenwriter Masaki Soto), it opens with
a lengthy prologue in which an escaped sex-maniac (yakuza film regular Bunta
Sugawara) breaking into the home of a wealthy bourgeois couple; he rapes
the wife repeatedly in front of the husband then departs. The husband, as
usual for a Japanese guy in one of these movies, is convinced that his wife
enjoyed the assault and spends much of his spare time torturing her by screwing
whores in front her presence followed by a strenuous round of flogging.
She is pregnant, and the son may actually be a product of the rape, and
of course the husband is sure of it. The son grows up to be Shun Domon,
a supercilious sleaze (though on the outside he seems charismatic and engaging)
who is engaged to marry a pious Christian girl (Natsuko Yatsuhiro). But,
he of course lives a secret life, in the basement of the house his parents
left to him he has constructed a torture chamber where he abuses and kills
“bad” women. Eventually Sugawara learns that he may have a rich son and
shows up, and, well, like father like son becomes the order of the day.
The style and surface gloss helps to hide the cruel heart of the film, director
Norifumi (or Noribumi) Suzuki (who usually made hard-boiled action films)
gives the film a knock-out combination of the exaggeratedly sentimental
(clichéd lyrical scenes of beaches, parks, flowers, sappy music) with the
extremely grotesque and perverted. By the time the film’s final, horrible
plot twists have come into play one can only gasp as the air runs out and
watch this perfect example of cinematic pathology.
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STAR
WARS EPISODE II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES (2002). Uh-oh! Its Star Wars
time again, that means time to get geared up for the biggest film event
of the week/month/quarter/year/decade/etc etc etc. That means 45 year old
virgins who make puns involving Lord of the Rings and Star Wars
characters are camping out in front of theaters for months on end in order
to see the latest installment of the most important film series ever made
evar!!! When George Lucas calls we of the feeble minds shall heed the call.
And heed and heed and heed. Undoubtedly a few years ago Lucas must've thought
over sucking out the fun from everything that's ever been even remotely
connected to Star Wars, "oh shit! I need to make a few billion dollars
and quick, guess its time to drag out Plan B". Plan B being, of course,
his "vision" of more Star Wars episodes. I'm assuming this is what
happened since there was not a great amount of clamor for three more episodes
of THX-1138, or for that matter ten seconds of additional footage
from that film. I also have a TOTALLY ACCURATE feeling that, like the proverbial
High School student George still thinks he is, he forgot to actually write
a script for Episode I until right before his final was due, and
of course pounded one out over a long weekend. At least that's what I assume
must've happened, since it's the only logical explanation of just how shitty
Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace was. Who knew that
Darth Vader, who looked so cool in that all black getup would have been
such a piddling little shit of a boy. Now, of course, that piddling little
shit of a boy has grown into a piddling little shit of a whiny teenager
with a ducktail played by Hayden Christensen. Of course, its easy to see
how young Anakin Skywalker becomes the evil Darth Vader, since pouting and
temper tantrums go hand in hand with universe dominating evil. Here's a
question, how the hell does this little wuss end up getting James Earl Jones'
voice? Like Episode I, Episode II has a near-idiotic plot
that has something to do with renegade solar systems joining forces to form
some sort of alliance against our democratic republic (ha ha ha). Padmé
Amidala/Natalie Portman returns, somehow not looking any different at all
after 10 years has passed from the first film. 10 years brings many changes
in the life of a young adolescent, but improved acting abilities is not
apparently one of them, as Portman has even less screen presence in this
film. Has there ever been a worse actress in a major film (well, not counting
Sophia Coppola in Godfather III)? Of course the geeks really love her, but
then again most geeks don't know the touch of a real woman either (and no,
hentai games that are reviewed at Something
Awful don't count). Skywalker and his mentor, Obi Wan Kenobi (Ewan
McGregor, who tries vainly to act regal while spouting off the worst one-liners
imaginable) end up having to protect Her Woodeness (now a Senator, since
her term as DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED QUEEN has ended) after an assassination
attempt. This being Lucas, everyone just lethargically mulls about after
a bomb that kills about 20 people goes off. After the sheer inertia of all
this has nearly gotten too much to bear Lucas thankfully inserts a reasonably
exciting chase after another assassination attempt on Her Grand Tree Trunk,
which sends Kenobi off after bounty hunter Jango Fett (OMG OMG OMG!! he's
the father of Boba Fett, that minor character who freezes Han Solo and gets
killed 20 seconds into Return of the Jedi!!! OMG OMG OMG) and Skywalker
off to protect Her Royal Rockness. Unfortunately we have more of the latter
than the former. At least it seems that way, as Lucas gives us what we've
been waiting for: endless clichéd scenes of Amidala and Skywalker falling
in love. They even roll around in tall grass at one point. The romantic
scenes in Dr.
Gore were more exciting than this claptrap. So, let me get this
straight, Skywalker falls in love with Her Crowned Redwood when he's eight,
then sees her again 10 years later and proves himself to be a whiny self-indulgent
spoiled brat, and she falls in love with him? What gives here? Do Jedis
have large genitals? Is that it? I just loved scene after scene of Christensen
throwing a temper tantrum "I'm gonna be the bestus Jedi evar!! You just
watch! I'll hold my breath till I turn blue!" and so on. We all know you're
going to turn into Darth Vader already, start having some self-respect for
God's sake. At any rate this goes on and on and on, we find out that Jango
Fett is a New Zealander, who has made a clone army of New Zealander/Samoans
to serve some vague conspiracy (OMG OMG OMG!! those are the Stormtroopers
who accomplish nothing but dying in the other Star Wars movies, OMG
OMG!!) we also find that his son has developed an evil laugh. Finally after
about six hours of this, Christopher Lee shows up as Count Dooku or Poopie
or Dungbeetle or something and does lots of evil things like imprisoning
Obi Wan and forcing our young wooden heroes to fight to the death against
various exotic alien creatures in a Roman deathmatch. It all leads to a
big battle with clone army versus droid army for the title of Kegmeister
2002!! Oh, sorry. They and the Jedis fight and fight, and then Yoda shows
up and fights Chris Lee. Its stupid as hell, but pretty amusing/entertaining
to see Yoda flipping around like Jet Li while Chris Lee's double flails
about wildly. But wait, shifty Chancellor Palpatine looks a lot like the
Dark Emperor from the old Star Wars movies!! OMG OMG OMG, he's the
bad guy!! Obi Wan, look out!!! Wow, what a surprise. Is it just me, or do
the Jedi suck? I mean, for a bunch of all-powerful knights of the round
table they can't figure out the most obvious plots. A) Christopher Lee is
Count Dooku, he has a stupid name and is CHRISTOPHER LEE, obviously he's
evil. B)Chancellor Palpatine obviously looks like the Emperor, didn't any
of these jokers see the first Star Wars movies? 3)The bad guys are
building the Death Star. Can't these all-powerful Jedi figure out the bad
guys are building a planet? I'm no Jedi, but I think I could figure out
if a friggin PLANET was being built. Then again, when your Jedi savior is
just a dorky goofball teenager in love with a wooden former queen you're
in trouble. Hopefully Episode III will only run 16 and a half hours and
have 20 or 30 boring love stories in it. I CAN'T WAIT!!!!!!!111111111111
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STATE
OF SEIGE (1978). Like most "political" filmmakers, Costas-Gravas has a very
strong pedantic streak, and just cannot resist lecturing his audience. Of
course, like most lefty polemicists, he expands an enormous amount of energy
preaching to the converted. Most of his films are like his best-known effort,
Z, fast-paced, tightly woven films, part mystery, part finger-waging
political essay. Like all modern lefty storytellers his basic moral is "America
is bad, left wing third world is good". Based in part on the real case of
Dan Mitrione, an American spook who's Latin American gig consisted mostly
of "teaching" police forces who to torture dissidents, as well as paving
the way for various secret military incursions. Here Mitrione becomes Santori,
played by the least American actor imaginable (outside of Toshiro Mifune
maybe) Yves Montand, who is thoroughly French even in the English-dubbed
version. Santori is kidnapped by the Tupamaros, a revolutionary group that
had previously concentrated on schemes to embarrass the government rather
than terrorism as such (of course, in the parlaiance of junta speak any
and all criticism is terrorism). They kidnap Santori in part to get him
to confess his crimes, as well as to exchange him for political prisoners.
All of this is well and good, but by God, if a scene calls for twenty people
to be questioned about something or other, then Costas-Gravas will show
all twenty being interviewed. I had about enough of endless scenes of cars
driving about and roadblocks, which Gravas seems to think are aesthetically
pleasing or exciting. The real problem with the film, I think, and the problem
with most European political films is the simple-mindedness of their conclusions.
Rather than take the dramatic route Gravas portrays the enigmatic Santori/Mitrione
as a typical anti-communist, raving about commies and pinkos and Christian
values. The Tupamaros are of course earnest young people who can only speak
either in cliché or operational platitudes (perhaps it might be interesting
to suggest how quickly a stridently anti-military organization comes to
resemble a military itself, and perhaps provide a clue as to why every and
all "revolutionary" takeover ends up being as militaristic as the last).
There is no larger debate here, when Santori asks what sort of world the
Tupamaros want one replies, "a world in which people like you aren't necessary"
which is of course a cop-out. Gravas never once actually comes out and says
what would be better than the right-wing governments he despises, but one
doesn't have to be a psychic to know. Obviously The People would be better
off under Socialism, right, or better yet Communism. They can never be allowed
to earn an honest wage, or for that matter escape the slavery imposed on
them by the government. Gravas is so busy continually wringing his hands
over "fascists" and "right-wingers" he never once stops to examine the horrors
his own political philosophy has wrought on the world for the past century
or so. Gravas in his own way is as much a reactionary as the "fascist" characters
in his films, anything that doesn't have SOCIALISM in block letters, anything
that has nothing to do with MARX is inherently evil and hurtful to The People.
Perhaps if both those on the Left and the Right spent more time examining
their own lives and their own viewpoints we'd have no need for Mitrione's,
if the Gravases of the world stopped deciding how the rest of us can live
a Good Life and started living their own damn lives we wouldn't have so
much trouble, or at the very least so many pretentious movies.
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STATION [Eki] (1981).
Station is one of my favorite films, in fact, I think it's a masterpiece
of commercial filmmaking. It isn't an over the top action film, or even
particularly bloody, but it is a brilliantly realized and deeply tragic
film that plays itself out slowly and is full of the melancholy of life.
Ken Takakura's screen presence was rarely put to better use than here, as
a cop and Olympic sharp shooter. As the film opens Takakura is seen sending
off his wife and son, it seems the wife was unfaithful to Takakura and he
cannot forgive her. Later Takakura's coach sees through his action with
an almost shocking cynicism, it wasn't that Takakura was incapable of forgiving
his wife, but that he was more concerned with his spot on the Olympic team.
Later that day, while hunting for a ruthless cop killer, Takakura's coach
is gunned down, and Takakura is left with guilt and doubts about weather
or not he could have stopped the gunman or saved his coach. He goes to the
Olympics and wins, becoming a national hero, and years later finds himself
investigating a series of "ripper" murders in a small seaside town. Through
the long investigation he encounters the suspect's mentally defective sister
and finds himself pitying the suspect, when the man is captured he actually
sends the man care packages in prison before his execution. It seems now
that Takakura is overcompensating for what he perceives as his blunder,
not saving his coach, and his regrets about abandoning his wife and child.
He travels to Hokkaido, in the far, Artic north of Japan to visit his family
and is constantly reminded of his failures and the violence he's witnessed
as a cop, robbers shot dead (and the screams of "murderer" from the mother
of a dead robber echoing in his head over and over), partners butchered
in front of him; until almost accidentally he begins a romance with a virginal,
middle-aged bar-hostess (Cheiko Baisho) and begins to reevaluate his life,
but the past inevitably interferes, and Takakura's brief respite is destroyed.
Most of Takakura's films feature him as the immobile and stoic hero, who
never winces in the face of anything, and seemingly, Takakura is the same
here, in as much as his outward performance does not change, yet, due to
the remarkable direction of Yasuo Furuhata, and the script of So Kuramoto,
Takakura's immobile screen presence is shown as a cover for massive doubts
and fears. Takakura's character is a man who abandoned (literally) his most
important responsibilities, but cannot completely face up to those, so he
takes on countless other responsibilities that he is blameless of and in
the end creates an intolerable situation that he can never possibly get
out of. Station is not a literal tragedy in the sense of a tragic hero,
or even a tragic conclusion, it is almost a Yasujiro Ozu film with its heavy
sense of unavoidable melancholy and hopelessness. Station is a film where
every element seems to come together, the performances are uniformly excellent,
not only Takakura, but also Baisho as the lonely bar owner who finds herself
seemingly betrayed by all the men in her life; Furuhata's direction is outstanding,
it is quiet and immersed in small moments rather than large statements,
which fits the film perfectly, as well as Ryudo Uzaki's score, lush and
elegant, it seems to express the emotions that the characters cannot or
refuse to. As many bad films as there are a film like Station is remarkable
in the sense that it has no reputation, no hype, nothing for that matter,
it is a film that once seen imbeds itself into the viewer and becomes and
essential and unforgettable experience.
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THE STENDHAL SYNDROME
(1996). After his run of masterpieces in the 70s and early 80s, Dario Argento's
work, both in quality and quantity, trailed off considerably; from the heights
of Opera and The Black Cat to the ridiculous depths of Phenomena
and Trauma Argento has been a man who's hard to pin down. Hot
on the heels of the pathetic travesty Trauma comes this feeble offering,
in which Argento seems to glory in the rape and torture of his own daughter,
Asia, who had disturbing nude scenes in Trauma as well. The ugly and unrelenting
plot is hardly worth the Argento of old, as a police detective (Asia Argento)
tracks a serial rapist/murderer (Thomas Kretshmann) to Florence, where she
becomes overwhelm by the cities' art: a victim of the "Stendhal syndrome".
She is then raped by the sexual psychopath who then forces her to watch
as he rapes and murders another woman (embarrassing shades of Opera,
down to the close-up slow motion path of a bullet as it travels through
the woman's face). Henceforth Argento fils is stalked by the seemingly omnipotent
and unstoppable killer. The embarrassing parts of Argento's films: the childish
plots, indifferent acting and air of cretin sadism becomes apparent in his
bad films, and this one out-craps Phenomena, while it lacks a mutant
child and razor wielding chimp, it makes up for it with its constant scenes
of rape and torture: the killer slashing open Argento's lips with a razor,
or later sticking a razor in his own hand in order to slash Argento's face,
or for that matter the pointlessness of the killer's crimes, at least Argento's
previous killers had some moronic reason for killing, this one seems to
exist only as a comic book villain, bent on the heroine's destruction. The
ending is foolish to say the least, and after finishing this I began to
seriously wonder why Argento even bothers to make films if he's just going
to persist in making monstrosities like this.
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THE STREET FIGHTER
(1975). Shinichi “Sonny” Chiba had been in movies since the late 50s, and
was a real-life martial arts expert, and this was an attempt by Japanese
studios (in this case Toei) to cash in on the chop-socky crazy sweeping
the world. Unlike their Chinese counterparts, this movie focuses on down
and dirty, brutal fights rather than elaborate, balletic movements. Chiba
plays Terry Tsurugi, an amoral loner who’s a martial arts mercenary for
hire, and when he finds himself in the middle of an attempt to kidnap an
industrialist’s daughter he solves things by tearing apart the bad guys.
Eyes get gouged, blood is vomited, heads are smashed, and throats are slit
in this highly derivative and very entertaining, originally X rated movie.
New Line distributed the movie (billing Chiba, hilariously as “the chosen
successor to Bruce Lee”), and trimmed a bit of the violence to ensure an
R rating, though later on the movie was re-released to video with all the
violence intact. The best parts are the strange, constipated expressions
Chiba uses while fighting.
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STEREO (1969). Oh no,
another David Cronenberg student film! Somebody stick my head in an oven
please. If J.R. Bookwalter sat through these things, he probably wouldn't
feel so bad about his lack of film (oh, sorry, video) making skills. David
Cronenberg is a complete ass who made a couple of interesting movies (Videodrome,
Rabid, Dead Ringers, The Fly) and has basically coasted
on his rep for a string of the most unintentionally funny movies ever made
(hey, if you don't believe me check out Crash and eXistenZ).
Unfortunately this one isn't really all that funny, but it will probably
give you that final push you've been needing to commit suicide. Essentially
it makes Tarkovsky look like Ed Wood, which is to say, inspired, or at least
like old Andrei didn't walk around with his head completely stuck up his
ass all the time. The plot? Something to do with PSYCHIC RESEARCH done in
the most pedantic style imaginable, in fact, it's basically an education
film without the cheesy music and hilarious narration. You're free to watch
it.
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THE SUN’S BURIAL (1960).
The usual pretentious look at the slums of Japan from Nagisa Oshima follows
the exploits of the members of a teenage gang lead by an especially ruthless
girl (Kayoko Honoo) who makes money by prostituting herself and the buying/selling
of soldier’s blood. Add to this the rather odd (by which I mean having some
sort of symbolic underpinning that didn’t quite make sense to me) subplot
of a war veteran who seeks to re-establish the Japanese “empire” through
various gutter enterprises. Oshima’s early films, with their relentless,
in-your-face Marxist inspired bullshit make him seem more like Goddard at
his worst (which is, of course, saying a lot) rather than the more restrained
and mature filmmaker behind In the Realm of the Senses and Merry
Christmas, Mr. Lawrence. While his camera stylings are sometimes interesting
(especially in the gaudy widescreen color format) the heavy-footed lurid
symbolism is just too much.
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SURVIVAL: 1990 (1986?).
Shot on video Canadian “action movie” takes place IN THE FUTURE. I wonder
what the 90s will be like? People certainly won’t be wearing flannel and
listening to depressing rock music, that’s for sure! David Lee Roth forever!!!
Oh, sorry. Anyway, it’s a Road Warrior inspired mess about three people
fighting off “Vandals” in a POST APOCALYPTIC FUTURE. Oh wait, its not a
nuclear nightmare, but a financial one, and we learn, “it started with the
collapse of the economy in Mexico then spread!”, why, that makes perfect
sense, all the more reason to nuke Mexico! There are a lot of combat scenes
and camping, and not the good kind involving Liza Minelli (wait, I don’t
mean good as in “good” but good as in…oh forget it). There is also a sub-plot
involving clones. Watch this movie and think about it George W. Bush, which
might occupy your time better than planning what 3rd world nation to invade
next.*
*political reference
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SWEET MOVIE (1973).
Yugoslav director Dusan Makavejev is certifiable, and this movie proves
it. After lumbering epics like W.R. Mysteries of the Organism and
Love Story: Or the Case of the Missing Switchboard Operator
in which he satirized the Commie regime in such a way as to bore the censors
to the point that they gave up on trying to understand the movie, he made
this, a French, Canadian, and West German (when there was such a thing)
co-production that's an oddity of epic proportions. In the "future" Carole
Laure (who, maybe justifiably, later sued to halt the film's release) is
judged to be the perfect virgin and is married off to Texas billionaire
Mr. Dollars (John Vernon! who should put this on his resume if he already
doesn't) who, of course, has a gold-plated dick. Laure spends the rest of
the film in a variety of strange situations before being covered in chocolate
and masturbating for a TV commercial. In Makavejev's previous films he intercut
the fictional film with a "documentary" of some sort, only here there's
no documentary, only a communist who seduces little boys on a boat called
"Survival" and hangs out with her Russian boyfriend who speaks French. But,
get ready for one of the most revolting sequences in history, as Laure dines
with kraut freak Otto Muehl and his "commune" of idiots who all vomit, piss
and shit on camera (Laure spends most of the scene trying hard to hide herself,
and I don't blame her, I almost ran out of the room when one of these German
buttpluggers bent over and took a shit on the table!). Not surprisingly
this freak-show was hardly released, and it killed off Makavejev's career
until he returned with more subdued fare like The Coca-Cola Kid and
Montenegro. If you like crazy pretentious 70s sleazy art films like
me, then you'll be in heaven. Besides, did you ever think you'd see the
title card "avec le participation John Vernon"?
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SWORD OF DOOM (1967).
Mediocre chambara has the distinction of having the worst ending of any
film I’ve seen, actually its more of a non-event than an ending, and is
all the more frustrating since things are just starting to get good (in
typical Japanese style about 6 hours into the movie). Tatsuya Nakadai chews
the scenery with a passion as a ruthless swordsman (who manages to cut down
an old man) who becomes a wandering samurai when he kills a man in a duel.
He joins a group of anti-government samurai and so on and so forth. Toshiro
Mifune has a throw-away cameo as a fencing instructor (and has a pretty
impressive scene when he offs about 15 guys). The finale is actually pretty
good, with Nakadai going crazy and killing an endless stream of swordsmen,
and director Kihachi Okamoto (who did much better with Mifune vehicles like
Red Lion and Samurai) provides the stylish direction, but
two hours of vague melodramatics are just too much.
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SWORD OF JUSTICE (1972).
Undoubtedly the most outrageous chambara ever stars Shintaro “Zatoichi”
Katsu as Hanzo Itami, a criminal investigator. He’s a fair and honorable
man who’s also an expert swordsman, but his real talents lie in his, uh…endowment.
Itami’s got a big dick, and he uses it to “interrogate” suspects. Not only
is it an appendage of John Holmes proportions (yes, I know he’s Japanese,
it’s a movie, you have to suspend you disbelief), but it is harder than
the average bear, since Itami works it out relentlessly, he pounds it with
wood (no pun intended), sticks it in a bag of rice, and so on. Whenever
he needs to get to the bottom of a case he uses his special techniques on
them, first it distresses them, but soon they can’t get enough and spill
the beans (is that why black guys are so popular among Japanese chicks?).
The first of three episodes has Hanzo investigating the mysterious escape
of a hired killer from prison and finds some funny business in the Edo castle
and uses his highly developed tools to get the bottom of more things than
one. Directed by Kenji Misumi (Lone Wolf and Cub series), and co-produced
by Lone Wolf star Tomasiaburo Wakayama, who was Katsu’s brother,
this is a perversely funny and stylish effort.
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