DVD review: Julia's Eyes

Blind girls and unseen tormentors.

Another interesting scary movie from Spain. There’s not a lot that I have to say about it.

On a production and direction level is all very well done, Spain is still a guarantee of quality when you talk about scary movies.

Guillermo del Toro produced this movie, another guarantee of quality. It’s not Hollywood style, and level, of production, but this for many could actually be a bonus point.

For the story I have some reservations. It certainly works during the movie, a lot of ominous situations are nicely set up without having to resort to that dreadful cliché of the protagonist blindly, pun not intended, walking into obvious danger. Stuff happens, thing move along nicely and we are fed a lot of info about the evil forces at works. To sum it up, it’s very nice to follow.

The problems starts when you get to the end, after the big final revelation, and watching back it’s all so incredibly contrived, it must be the most picky and bizarre evil force ever to grace my screen…

Conclusion: A very competent thriller. It will not leave a very lasting impression afterward but certainly works on every level. Recommended viewing.

DVD review: 13 assassins

A group of samurai set out to kill a sadistic lord.

This is a fairly peculiar movie. The first part is all preparations and drama, the second part is entirely occupied by an extended battle scene.

The movie is very Japanese so it can be off putting to people not used to eastern cinema.

The first part is a throwback to those classics black and white samurai flicks that maybe you glimpsed late at night. It’s fairly interesting material although it doesn’t engage a lot a modern viewer, most probably alien to the web of traditions that directed those people lives.

This is a Japan set movie from Japan by a Japanese author, Takashi Miike, so don’t expect any explanatory aside, or too much comic asides by the way. These samurais are very serious people and they don’t smile a lot.

The second bit is an incredibly lengthy battle sequence, I wasn’t joking when I said it is practically the whole second half of the movie. It’s all very well set, crafted and choreographed.

Probably I’m a true believer but I had no problem with such a lengthy battle, I actually enjoyed it quite a lot. It’s strange but the very length of the battle lends gravitas to it. It means that it is not a secondary event, like those random shoot outs in action movies. Instead it becomes a life changing event, a true moment of life and death.

Miike, regarding the action sequences, is of the “blood and guts” school so expect an incredible amount of bloods with severed body parts flying around. It’s so bloody that I’ll advise against seeing it if you are in any way easily impressed.

Conclusion: A nice old school samurai epic, the first part can be boring but the battle sequence alone is worth the price of admission. Only for katana heads anyway, certainly not recommended to the general public.

DVD review: The American

A professional killer hides out in a tiny Italian Village.

The critics all loved it; it sits on top of many top ten movies of the year lists. I think you can already guess where this is going the end…

I rarely watched a more boring movie in my life. I’m not starting from the position where if there is not an explosion every 10 minutes I fall asleep. I actually enjoy more cerebral fares, but still I actually need something to be happening and somebody to relate to.

Everybody lauded the “restrained” acting by George Clooney. Now I got where they got the ideas, I understand the subtle pleasures of all the tiny signs. The revealing gestures, where the gaze goes and all that related stuff but still it all should lead to something, to somewhere. And moreover the really great restrained performances are not the impenetrable ones, are those where you can actually glimpse behind the face, those where the eyes actually tell a story.

The overall impression is of a long extended vacation. A very American view of Italian life. Yes they inserted some killing shenanigans pretending to be more “realistic” than the normal Hollywood fare even if in the end they just invented a different kind of fake “professional killer” job.

Conclusion: A pretentious movie by a pretentious director, to avoid at all costs.

DVD review: The resident

A girl moves to a new flat. Sinister things start to happen.

After a long wait I’m back and the next movie on the list is “The resident”. Never saw so much misguided effort.

It’s very hard to not spoil the big concept. Suffice to say that it’s the kind of thing that sounds very scary if it would happen in real life but doesn’t translate so well filmically.

It’s not like they didn’t try. The cinematography is suitably moody thank to Guillermo Navarro, a long time collaborator of the other Guillermo, Del Toro of Hellboy fame. The movie itself is professionally done with a lot of talented actors. Hilary Swank is the damsel in distress, Jeffrey Dean Morgan the strange neighbor, there is even a cameo from Christopher Lee himself.

Yet they don’t manage to make it work. We couldn’t help but feel kinda sorry for the bad guy, probably the least threatening bad guy in recent horror history.

With this I don’t want to say that it is terrible. We waded through the running time with no effort and the concept is still interesting enough that our attention was kept awake.

Conclusion: This will probably end up in those late night reruns. Good to keep insomnia at bay at least.

DVD review: The Adjustment Bureau

An upstart politician runs afoul of the forces that control destiny to save his love life.

A fair representative of the recent wave of “high concept” movie, “The Adjustment Bureau” got a splendid jumping point of a concept and some crazy visuals to accompany it.

It all starts with a Phillip Dick short story but as it often happens with those it is more of an inspiration than a straight adaptation. It’s that paranoia sensibility that translated so well in movies.

The love story bit is the main original addition by writer director George Nolfi. It’s certainly a good idea, it gives us a reason to care about the whole thing and position this movie in that awesome category, the Metaphysical Romantic movies, also known as Meta – Rom.

Matt Damon is perfect as the everyday man with the weight of the world on its shoulders, many argued that he was born to play average Joe in extraordinary circumstances. Emily Blunt as the love interest is as good as usual. She always manages to communicate some kind of intensity, even though the cheesiest lines.

The main strength, the high concept, sadly becomes the main weakness. The filmmakers clearly feared that they would lose their audience trough if the movie becomes too bizarre and so they played their hand incredibly tight.

A concept like this want to be expanded, played with, at least a little bit. Think of the final act of “Groundhog day”, that is the high mark on how an high concept movie should develop.

Not only they didn’t dare, they also filmed a very contrived finale that basically solves the entire conundrum with a literal Deus Ex Machina.

It looked so promising coming in.

Conclusion: An interesting little movie that doesn’t deliver on what was promised.

DVD review: Ip Man 2

Ip Man moves to Hong Kong where he fights rival martial arts masters and corrupt officials.

Ip Man 2 builds on the foundations laid out by the first iteration delivering a better, smarter product on almost any fronts.

The story is still spot on and also, very refreshing. The quiet, unassuming, Ip Man is light years away from the conflicted heroes of Hard Boiled cinema or the slapstick protagonists of Jackie Chan fame. It’s strange how martial arts movies still have to get Ip Man as a character.

Although they swiftly produced, not one, but two copycat movies about Ip Man in less than two years. This prompted Donnie Yen, our titular Ip Man, to declare that Ip Man as a subject is over saturated therefore shelving any prospect for Ip Man 3. Please think about that Donnie! We need some more Ip Man!

Pleads to Donnie yen aside, let’s get back to the movie.

The narrative is more coherent, the story may be very tiny, it can be summarized as “Ip Man is looking for a job”, but it works well. The various characters just work, with a stand up in Sammo Hung as a rival martial arts master.

Speaking of Hung, who also choreographed the fights, the martial art in this movie is just spectacular. The mid movie fight between Hung and Yen is the material of legends, is the kind of fight that can convert a non believer into martial arts cinema.

The ending fight, although still nice, is comparatively a letdown. Maybe it resonated with the Chinese but for us westerners martial arts vs boxing isn’t that interesting.

Conclusion: A masterpiece, so good in his genre that it transcends it.

Cinema review: The Amazing Spiderman

Spidey’s origin story told yet another time.

As the rest of the internet I was annoyed by the announcement, back in 2010, of this Spiderman reboot. I wasn’t at the level of the death treats throwing masses but I must admit that I declared loudly many many times that I didn’t want to see this movie.

The very idea of a reboot always annoys me. Maybe it’s a psychological thing, the subtle message “All that you watched before didn’t count because we are starting again”, the “You gonna pay to see the same story twice”, I think you got the drill.

Of course there is the argument that with enough time technology gets better, that a new era could approach the same story from a different angle, and here is where they rubbed everybody wrong.

It was like 1 week after Sam Raimi Spiderman 4 was canned that they announced the reboot. It was, for us unwashed masses of the internet, too soon.

Well, I’m happy to say that I was proven wrong. The smart heads up there at Sony Headquarter really had another take of the character.

The big trick was to focus on Peter youthness. This Peter never leaves school, neither he gets that job at the Daily Bugle, he remains an awkward teenager during the whole movie.

It works, Sam Raimi version breezed through Peter Parker life losing many nuances in the middle. This Peter Parker is a much more relatable character.

A lot of the merit of course goes to Andrew Garfield, an incredibly youth looking guy, at 29 plays believably a teenager. He and Emma Stone develop a rom com style romance that is in many ways better than the boring offerings from fully fledged rom coms. The director, Marc Webb, whose debut feature was the critically lauded “500 days of Summer” probably was also very important in this regard.

The fight and the various special effects scenes, a point where Sam Raimi’s version was groundbreaking, are also very good. All done in a very professional and engaging way.

The plot is that famous origin story so they can’t escape that feeling of déjà vu, but enough things where changed and remixed that it’s watchable even for us old comic book fans. There are many plot points that don’t hold water if watched too closely but they are all hidden fairly well so it’s not too hard to pretend they are not there.

Conclusion: An excellent superhero story able to hold the interest of the non fans.