Stone Cold Pimpin'

Dir: Ole Bornedal
1997
Ewan McGregor plays a law student who gets a job as a night watchman in a very spooky medical center, where one of his nightly duties is to walk across the stiff-filled morgue and turn a key. If this building had been inspected by any state-run agency, it would have been shut down: faulty lighting, crummy-looking halls, and an open sewer nearby. Instead, this is a perfect place for a thriller. The best part of this remake of a 1994 Dutch film is the setup, where we are given a tour of the medical center and introduced to several upcoming plot points and red herrings. There's even an alarm just in case a corpse revives and needs to call for assistance. Being left alone in a big spooky place with nothing but your mind to play tricks on you guarantees some jolts, but this is a thriller, and--just as in the original--there's a serial killer out there, a number of bodies, and a young nightwatchman to frame for the murder.
There's far too much music in this film, especially when silence would have done the job, and alert viewers will guess the killer in the opening scenes. All that remains is an effective scene with a prostitute in a restaurant, Nick Nolte's weary cop (Nolte and weary like each other so much they should get married), and an early glimpse of John C. Reilly in a supporting role.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Paul Schrader
1991
Paul Schrader's film of a drug dealer trying to get on with life though he knows it's probably passed him by, is a lighter, NewAgey-er version of his Taxi Driver, with William Defoe keeping a diary and surveying the garbage that lies in his path, metaphorically and literally (there's an interminable garbage strike that threatens to swallow New York throughout. Susan Sarandon plays his supplier, who also plans to get out and go legit with a makeup company. Pushing him to find a way out is the random appearance of his ex-wife (Dana Delaney) who knows she shouldn't get involved again. This is a city of expensive apartments and restaurants, where even a ratty apartment looks nicer than anything in Taxi Driver. But, like that film, Light Sleeper will end in blood, something to wash away the streets.
It's a very sad, hopeless movie, though the characters are more in-control and nobler. It still doesn't help them out of the hole they've dug for themselves.
The film is marred by a lack of momentum and a bloody awful song that plays throughout, which sound like Leonard Cohen crossed with Michael Bolton. It truly was cold-turkey music.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Olivier Assayas
1996
I had forgotten how much of this film's ending I had ripped off for my film, so much that when it came I sat slightly embarrassed next to my wife, who just said, "hey, it's Nowhereland!"
But it's to the credit of Assayas' film that all it took was one viewing and I immediately absorbed the ideas and lessons that the last 3 minutes teach.
That said, the film is both a love letter to Maggie Cheung (in a rubber suit! looking gorgeous!) and French film. For most of the film is about the latter and the problems of advancing the state of film from those who either want to pronounce it dead and nothing like America (the dumb journalist who interviews Cheung) or the others who want it to rehash what has come before (the remake of Les Vampires that forms the movie within the movie). Various positions are staked out, nothing gets consummated--from art to sex, life flows on continuous, and what is left is the most personal kind of film of all, an oblique experimental art piece inside a film that mixes the avant-garde with realism. All that and Luna covering "Bonnie and Clyde." I love it.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Kuo-fu Chen
2002
Double Vision transplants a Seven-like serial killer tale into Taiwan and a strange Daoist cult. Victims believe themselves to be drowning or burning alive, and die appropriately. Could it be "pure evil" or some strange sort of science? Enter an American expert on serial killers (David Morse) and a workaholic cop (Tony Leung--the other one) who has been ostracized for exposing corruption. The buddy cop dynamics are out of an X-Files episode, as is the set-up, but Double Vision transcends its rather cliched beginnings and veers off into something dark and menacing. The truth here lies somewhere between science and religion, and both men are right in their own way while being wrong in more important ways (ie. those that would save lives).
I liked it more than I thought I would--a great pall of evil and corruption hung over the entire film, permeating even the police office where, supposedly, equilibrium can be found. There's even a bloody massacre of cops'n'cultists in the third act that I never expected, but which have done Peckinpah proud. Morse, who is best known for being in nearly every Stephen King tele-movie, but who I know as the cop that Bjork kills in "Dancer in the Dark," keeps his dignity throughout in a project that so desperately wants to compete with the West. But it succeeds on what makes it particularly Taiwanese: the Daoist angle, the audience's knowledge of Daoist visions of hell, and a lack of Hollywood structure near the end. Even in its sillier moments, it takes itself seriously, and manages to be chilling.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Sidney Lumet
1976
Dog Day Afternoon was one of two DVDs I bought for Abel's Christmas present (people always buy him food, not knowing what else to get him; Mom suggested DVDs), but being a used copy, we watched it before wrapping it up. Sidney Lumet's job was to take a sensationalist story (two incompetents try to rob a bank, one of whom wants the money for his lover's sex-change operation) and turn it inside out, making the outlandish universal. With Pacino, he succeeds, and then goes further into doom and despair. Sonny and Sal's attempts are funny at first, but as the day wears on and the AC and lights go out in the building, death seems right outside the door, cheered on by the bread'n'circuses New York mob.
The film now is a documentary glimpse into a New York that opened up to us only in the 70s, before being reformed and reshaped in the 80s. DDA's opening five minutes show life in the city, c. 1976 (set in 1972, nobody worries that 1976's film "A Star Is Born" hangs on a marquee). It was a move borrowed from the New Wave, and rarely seen these days, but sets up the wider context for a film that mostly takes place in two locations: inside and outside the bank. And look closely, for wandering among the crowd is Sonny's wife, who we won't see till much later--fiction intermingling with fact.
Pacino's performance is tempered here with equal doses of anger and passivity--and it's his star power that allows us entrance into the more disturbed or delusional aspects of Sonny's personality.
The film pulses along between slow pools of calm and thrashes of activity (the series of lightning fast cuts that follow Sonny's gunshot out the back window shows that you can cut quick and still be comprehensible). The script has time for dialog that exists apart from furthering the plot. And the supporting cast stand out as real people, not central casting drones (in particular the frizzy haired teller who is always doing something idiosyncratic when the camera passes over her.
Lastly, we come to identify with Sonny so much that in the end we feel his sadness when the hostages--supporting characters in Sonny's head movie--refuse to acknowledge us or him once he is arrested. He's lost his chance, his friends, his family--and mostly he's lost center stage.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: F. Gary Gray
20003
The Italian Job remakes the Michael Caine vehicle and though it keeps the MiniMetro, much to Austin's delight, it ditches Italy after the opening Bond-like sequence for less interesting Los Angeles and Pittsburgh. Throw into the mix some psychobabble thread about father issues (Donald Sutherland as masterthief--it's his death that must be revenged for the rest of the film) and some attempts at light humor (mostly Seth Green), and each sort of outweighs the other. Edward Norton hangs around for a paycheck, which he admitted as much in an article around the time of the film's release. His lack of joy at being on set certainly helps his dour character, and Mark Wahlberg and Charlize Theron have as much chemistry as an underfunded inner city science class.
Still, it proceeds at a quick pace and director F. Gary Gray knows how to shoot action for the most part. Don't expect any of it to make sense, though.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Corey Yuen
2002
At heart this is a rather silly film that tries to mix melodrama with spectacular violence in the grand tradition of John Woo, but has trouble keeping the two hanging together.
Hsu Chi and Vicki Zhao (the female lead in Shaolin Soccer) play sisters whose parents were murdered years before by thugs over their father's magical software. Now, they use the software--a program that can tap into any security camera anywhere--as assassins for hire. Lynn (Hsu) does the leg work, Sue (Zhao) stays at home behind monitors and guides her. After an opening sequence where Lynn kills off an evil CEO and jumps off a skyscraper to safety, rookie-but-brilliant cop, Hong, played by Karen Mok, is on the case and begins to track them down.
Just recounting the plot makes no sense. But for some reason it hangs together, as it's only a backbone to have the sisters in a cat and mouse with Hong, and, like Woo, set up a series of fight scenes where adversaries slowly become partners against a larger menace (here, the same corporation as seen in the beginning). Woo's homoerotic attraction here becomes thinly vieled (and barely explored) lesbianism between the cop (who wears slacks and smokes those silly long cigarettes) and the heavy-lidded Sue. Meanwhile, Lynn is involved with a drippy guy who may cause her to leave the business.
When the women have at it and bring the smack-down, the film comes alive. Nothing's as brutal as the Bride/Elle Driver fight in Kill Bill 2, but the scenes are well shot and cut, and nobody stops for a witty quip. There's also gratuitous shots of Mok's pantie-clad booty and lots of Hsu Chi flesh. Who can complain?
But seriously, if you're going to be an ultra-secret assassination team, why the huge summer house? Who pays for this? When Mok gets framed for murder later in the film, it makes no sense. Nor does a computer system that on one hand is so advanced it offered real time shots over the network of security cams, but on the other seems to take ten seconds to send a 1k email.
So Close is pure eye candy, and that's great, but it's hard to imagine the script making it out of development so quickly here. It's truly slapdash. It's to the credit of the actors, mostly Mok, who I find fascinating even when she's hamming it up, that the movie isn't a total stinker.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dirs: Andrew Lau and Alan Mak
2004
Infernal Affairs was the big HK blockbuster of 2002, and unsurprisingly enough, it still hasn't opened here (except for the big cities), so when I saw it in Taiwan, I bought it, 2-DVD version too.
Andy Lau plays a cop who is secretly a Triad spy. Tony Leung plays a Triad member who is secretly a police mole (but for so long he's perhaps crossed the line). Though we are informed they trained long ago at the academy, neither knows of each others' existence until Lau's character goes into the audio shop where Leung's character works to buy some speakers. To each other they're just regular guys. This, among other twists in this revved up genre flick, will also be the last time they meet until the end.
With such a simple premise that offers such complex conflicts (both men are suffering crises of character and identity) directors Andrew Lau and Alan Mak speed things along until it's hard to know exactly how either character will react. On the other hand the speed also undoes the finale, which resolves itself too quickly for my tastes. (There is an alternative ending which I have yet to watch.) It's not that I couldn't figure it out, just that the pace feels wrong.
Andy Lau is again good in this film, two in a row. When he's playing these sort of characters (authortarian types who may just be traitors--as in Flying Daggers) he's fine. When it's comedy or romance, he comes up short. Tony Leung's world-weary character, beaten down for years on an undercover assignment that will never end, walks through the film, skulking but sympathetic. When he salutes his commanding officer's passing funeral procession, hidden down an alley so nobody can see him, we fully understand his sad situation.
The double-DVD contains making-ofs, trailers, and other goodies, but all are in Chinese.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Dir: Zhang Yimou
2004
Zhang Yimou's Hero may have promised wuxia and delivered it in a Rashomon-style vehicle, but his follow up, House of Flying Daggers, is something different altogether: a classic love triangle playing itself out in a world of the Law and a band of secret rebels who plan to overthrow it (the titular House being the rebels' HQ).
Andy Lau and Takeshi Kaneshiro play Leo and Jin, policemen who go undercover to arrest a suspected member of the Flying Daggers, played by Zhang Ziyi, who is incognito as a blind dancer at the local Peony Pavilion brothel. These opening scenes, as Ziyi's Mei is put to the test by Leo, mark the film as a thing of beauty, as it trades in "Hero's" solid colors for extravagant, finely detailed silks of many colors and patterns. After her arrest, Jin breaks Mei out of jail and flees with her to the north, hoping she will take him to the group's hideout. Being undercover means Jin has to fight alongside Mei, even when his fellow officers, not knowing who Jin is, attack. And of course, meanwhile Jin is falling in love with Mei (when it's Zhang Ziyi, who can blame him?) while only pretending to do so for the sake of his cover. There are more twists and turns to come, and the film is so pure in its story (Salon rightly compared it to silent film and opera), that they still surprise.
The action sequences are finally, truly breathtaking, instead of us wanting them to be so (as in Hero). Jin undertakes some archery skills that would put Legolas to shame (with a motion technique that Peter Jackson would love), and the Flying Daggers get their due as well. Adding to all this is the excellent sound design: for a fight in a bamboo forest (a wuxia staple), Yimou drops out all the music and leaves just the strange sounds of bamboo, which are after all a forest of hollow tubes. A good 5.1 system should be required to appreciate what is done here.
Yet it's not all flash. In the center is a true romantic tale, free of irony, which few directors would get near in the west. Love is suffering, as my wife likes to remind me (physically sometimes). Yes, there's princesses and such in sword'n'sorcery tales here, but they're the prizes to be won after the battle, not the causes of the battle themselves. Plus, Zhang Ziyi's Mei can do fine by herself, thank you, if you give her some daggers. Andy Lau, who I've never particularly liked as an actor is really good here too, with all his character's repressed pain returning in the very last reel. Of course, maybe it takes a director like Zhang to bring out a good performance in Lau.
There was a period ("Not One Less") where I really thought Zhang Yimou had lost it as a director, and who's string of mediocre films were approaching than of his contemporary Chen Kaige. But fortune's wheel had turned again, and he's come back, in a surprising different style, perhaps, but he's rediscovered the emotional power of his earlier work.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I came back from my Taiwan trip with a lot of DVDs and VCDs. I'll be giving these a look soon enough...:

From Beijing with Love
Fight Back to School 2
Look Out, Officer
Street Angels 3
House of Flying Daggers
Goodbye Dragon Inn
The Missing
Dog Soldiers
Welcome to Sarayevo
My Name Is Joe
Time and Tide
Three
My Sassy Girl
Phone
Donnie Darko
So Close
Light Sleeper
The Warriors
Curry and Pepper 3
Double Vision
The Addiction
Viva Tonal
Sex For Sale

A lot of the Western films were for sale in a cut out bin where DVDs were something like $3 each. Total amount spent: $115. Nice, eh?

Posted by Ted Mills at 04:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)