Change Your Image
Tintin a Tokyo
Reviews
Kenny (2006)
Better than most, still not quite great
After the media hype about this film comparing it to The Castle, and the recommendations of a number of people online, I went to see Kenny today.
First of all, the good: the character of Kenny himself is wonderful and truly Australian in its portrayal of a genuinely nice, unambitious, stoic bloke who enjoys his life and goes about his business with a sense of humour and forbearance. No-one respects his job (including his father and brother), his ex-wife is a harridan, his workmates are unreliable - but still Kenny does his thing and doesn't give in to cynicism or negativity. The relationship he begins to develop with an airline stewardess on his first flight overseas is wonderfully gentle and understated for an Australian movie. Some of the dialogue is quite subtly clever in a homespun, down-to-earth kind of way.
The bad: Kenny and his stewardess friend are about the only two positive characters in this story (with the possible exception of the Sushi Cowboy). The negativity and pessimism of every other incidental character, and the rather negative portrayal of Australian culture in general, are rather wearing. Although clearly meant to highlight Kenny's innate goodness, I'd feel ashamed to have this movie shown overseas and be represented as a culture by hoons setting fire to portaloos and well-dressed women after the Melbourne Cup urinating in the street. Fair enough, maybe we have people like this and it's a fair portrayal - but it's not the uplifting, feelgood celebration of Oz culture suggested by comparison to The Castle.
Overall, I couldn't say this is a movie you *have* to see, and I wouldn't turn you away from it either. I cringed throughout a lot of it, I chuckled a number of times and, despite seeing it coming from a mile, I couldn't help but laugh out loud at the finale. Never push too far a man in control of a sewerage tanker.
Kaun? (1999)
If you can sit through the first half hour, this is a great movie.
The story is very simple: one afternoon a young woman (who just happens to be beautiful) is alone in her luxurious home. She learns from the TV news that a killer is on the loose and becomes nervous at being alone in the house. A heavy storm begins and a man turns up on her doorstep asking for shelter until the rain stops. Being far wiser than the average Hollywood heroine, she politely refuses to let the stranger in as long as she can. When she does let him in, his odd and threatening behaviour convinces her he is the murderer... until another odd and threatening man also turns up.
In any movie, the film-makers have an unspoken contract with the audience. For example, high-pitched violin music at a moment of tension in the story signifies that moment and reinforces it. Either something happens, or the director subverts expectations when something pointedly does not happen. Another example regarding camera technique is when all shots are from a very low angle looking upwards at characters, as in the Shining where the technique lends the constant apprehension that someone or something is about to strike from behind. Directors can play with such conventions and invent new ones, but the fact remains that there are rules as to their use, and abuse of those rules alienates the audience.
This is the reason I nearly didn't make it past the first half hour of Kaun without walking out. The first 30 minutes consist almost entirely of the young woman looking in closets, flinging open shower curtains and looking under the bed, while the musical score is reminiscent of the moments of greatest tension from movies like Aliens or 2001: A Space Odyssey. In those movies the score rises to a thrilling crescendo as, respectively, Ripley et al escape from the exploding terra-forming site, and Dave encounters the Monolith and it transports him to parallel universes. In those movies, the directors used the score to heighten the images and move the audience in conjunction with the story - they played by the rules.
In Kaun, the young woman has no reason to be scared (yet) and her behaviour is as psychotic as the murderer she fears (notez bien!). To have a blaring soundtrack raise and disappoint expectations so many times in a row outside any real plot context so early in the movie - it was tiring and annoying. In addition, first person shots of the "camera as murderer", racing up the stairs, in this part of the movie also failed to play by the rules when the young woman looks directly into the "eyes" of the camera, then still doesn't see and has to look under the bed. Tiring and annoying.
However, the movie begins to take off when the first stranger arrives. He doesn't look like a murderer, bespectacled and in his business suit. He could be a young Indian dotcom businessman the way he spouts English catch-phrases casually inbetween his Hindi - but then what does a murderer look like? He asks after a name the young woman doesn't know, although the address is correct. The woman tells him there is no-one by that name and he goes away, to come back in a couple of minutes, knocking again. And then again when he says he has locked himself out of his car. And then again for something to eat. And then again to complement the lady on her cheese sandwiches. And then again to watch MTV through the window, passing comments all the while. His behaviour becomes more and more hilarious and disturbing at the same time.
When he tricks his way inside, the audience, like the young woman is kept wavering between the two ideas that he is in fact the murderer, and that he is simply a man who wanted to get out of the rain. Is his increasingly erratic behaviour simply a response to hers, feeding off each other's paranoia? When the young woman is certain he is he murderer and runs from him to flee out the front door - there is another man waiting there. This one is somewhat dishevelled, butwhen she says the other man is a murderer, he reassuringly, and oddly, immediately levels a gun at the other man. This second man claims to be a policeman.
After the humour of the business-man standing outside in the rain asking to come in, then the fright once he was inside, the interaction of the two men, neither of whom can account for themselves convincingly, is once again a source of humour to the audience. Until, after both being held at gunpoint by the woman trying to argue their case, convinced the other is the murderer endangering himself and the woman, a brutal attack takes place, convincing the other one remaining that the attacker is the murderer and leading to a further circle of horror.
Without giving away the story, other facts become apparent, other attacks take place and another person, asking for the same name as the businessman asked after comes and goes. From a poor, overblown and heavyhanded beginning, Kaun (subtitled in Japanese as "Who?") develops into a fine pyscho-thriller which keeps the audience by turns amused, terrified and grasping at straws..
It's fair to compare Kaun to the original Scream in that they both add a new self-reflexive dimension to the horror-genre. However, what Scream accomplishes with improbable plot twists and snappy Friends-like characters and writing, Kaun achieves in a completely credible story with only three unfathomable characters and a single set.
This is a movie well worth watching on a stormy night with the lights out.
A Sense of History (1992)
British short film at its best.
A Sense of History is a brilliantly funny short.
Purporting to be a documentary on a member of the British landed gentry, the 23rd Earl of Leete himself tells his august (and not so) family's story, stretching back to the Norman conquest.
A Sense of History mimics a peculiarly English documentary style with beautiful subtlety- the camera angles and movement as the Earl shows the viewer his estate, his Attenborough-like aristocratic tones and speech mannerisms, his smoothly flowing dialogue in contrast to and yet in effective tandem with numerous cuts to various parts of his woodland estate significant to his story. Even the Earl's encounter with one of his awkwardly deferential workers reinforces a particular sense of reported social reality.
At the introduction, with the Earl walking through a ruined arch and in an oh-so BBC tone talking about how he has always had a "sense of history" (exit right Earl, focus moves up to arch, cue title, trumpet intro music), it's difficult to tell that you are not watching a genuine documentary.
Without giving away the story, the audience is gradually made aware that all is not what it seems. This is achieved so cleverly and artfully, employing all the conventions of the "serious English documentary" that every successive cut to a new morsel of narration and revelation adds cumulatively to audience enjoyment without requiring an unbelievable climax. The tag after the credits puts the finishing touch on a truly marvellous short film. See it if you can.
Janice Beard 45 WPM (1999)
Hilarious, quirky, light Brit movie.
I saw Janice Beard yesterday at the 2000 Tokyo International Film Festival and took part in the Q&A section with the director Clare Kilner afterwards.
Like the other reviewer has said, Janice Beard: 45 Words Per Minute isn't an especially profound film, but it is good fun and it is better than the majority of what passes through the cinemas.
In the film, Janice Beard is a 20 something young woman whose life began unusually when her father died in childbirth. This causes her mother to be the world's first sufferer of post-natal-post-mortem syndrome. She has never left the house since her daughter's birth, and Janice spends her entire life concocting stories to entertain her mother and entice her into the world. Like the director, I've also known adult compulsive liars and think they're not generally sympathetic people. However, the explanation provided to us of her mother's illness succeeds in endearing Janice The Underdog to the audience.
In the hope of being able to find and pay for a cure for her mother, Janice, equipped with her minimum level 45 words per minute typing rate, leaves Scotland for temp work in London. To some degree this reflects the experience of the director/writer Clare Kilner who has said the idea for the movie came to her while doing temp work - being in but not part of the work place and being able to observe others closely from that unique position.
Janice ends up working at a British car manufacturer (this is a work of fiction after all) through her school friend - the one who was faking a seizure at the beginning of the film to get Mrs Beard out of bed. The car company is about to launch its make or break product and tension in the office is high when Janice joins the typing pool headed by beautiful, bitchy Julia (Patsy Kensit).
From there on in it's a story about Janice toning down her outlandish stories (or living up to them - the salsa dance scene) and fitting in with the typing pool women, and finding someone along the way in the shape of Sean (Rhys Evans from Twin Town [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0120394] and Notting Hill [http://us.imdb.com/Title?0125439]). It's not Janice' fault there's industrial sabotage afoot and she's caught in the middle.
This is a really good, light and enjoyable film. If a director's first film most embodies the nature of their work to come then I look forward to seeing more of Clare Kilner's work. Answering questions on stage after the movie she was lovely.
Brokedown Palace (1999)
Far better than expected.
Brokedown Palace wasn't a great success and passed through theatres in Japan quicker than a bullet train. There might be several reasons for this.
I doubt it affected audiences in Japan, but Claire Danes became persona non grata in the Phillipines where the movie was filmed because of some of her none too complimentary remarks concerning the cleanliness of the country. Also, like The Beach at first glance, the story looked unconvincing and formulaic - wealthy American kids caught up in events beyond their control while partying in third world Asia.
However, like The Beach, this is actually quite a good movie. In the case of The Beach, I think many reviewers canned it because the whole story looked like it was constructed around DiCaprio. In reality however, the Beach was amazingly true to the multiple threads of Alex Garland's novel, and I felt had significant resonances with those of us young foreigners living and travelling in South East Asia. Brokedown Palace though doesn't require that kind of experience or identification with the subject matter from the viewer.
Contrary to expectations of a movie where you can tell the plot twists a mile off, Brokedown Palace keeps the audience guessing. There were a fair number of surprising dramatic twists which actually served to carry the story along rather than simply to maintain interest eg. Darlene's father's prison visit, the luxury hotel staff member's sudden appearance in court and the ending.
Beyond this, there were also moments of poignant drama: when the girls' friends, who've gone on to college and are getting on with their young lives, come to visit them in prison. What can the two groups, yelling at each other from behind wire across a divide to make themselves heard over all the other prisoners and visitors, really say to each other?
There were a couple of loose ends I would have liked to see tied up. The primary one being how the drugs got into Alice's backpack. Surely it was the cheap hotel clerk in league with "Nick Parks" when he put the girls' bags in the back of the taxi - the camera sure lingered long enough with the car boot hiding him to suggest as such. The question is never answered. Alice's background and the character of the lawyer Hank Green could also have done with some filling out.
As for the movie's comment on Thai justice and perhaps the bureaucracies of such SE Asian countries in general, no-one seems to have come forward to protest, and the system as portrayed in Brokedown Palace has been the subject of a number of other films, the best of which is undoubtedly Bangkok Hilton (1989) featuring Nicole Kidman (http://us.imdb.com/Details?0096540). I even thought that the women's prison portrayed in Brokedown Palace seemed rather benign compared to reports of the true conditions of such places.
Overall this was an entertaining and convincing movie which steered clear of expectations. It deserved better treatment at the cinemas, although the best of the genre I would recommend is Bangkok Hilton.
Thumbtanic (2000)
Not as amusing the second time round.
The Thumb idea isn't such a winner the second time round. ThumbTanic wasn't as good as Thumb Wars for a number of reasons. Primarily, I think, Mr Oedekerk had far less to work with in the Titanic send-up. Unlike Star Wars, the movie Titanic hasn't (yet?) become a cultural myth and there are far fewer references to be made which will resonate with the audience.
In ThumbTanic, the holes are filled by one-off jokes which don't really seem related to anything. For example, the hero's insinuation that the heroine isn't clean during the "jump off end of ship" scene - it's not funny. Rather, you just think to yourself, "Did I miss something in the original movie?". There were too many of these type of baseless jokes (cf. arachnid).
By contrast, the send-up of the smarmy ship's designer had meaning and was funny. Also very funny was the send up of the bloke in the movie who wanted to go "faster" as a maniac running around demanding *everything* be "faster" including the sinking of the ship and himself being the first to die. These sort of jokes meant something in the Titanic context and lent meaningful humour to Thumbtanic.
The thumb "media", the faces and the voices, are still amusing. The props and sets and the CG animation are worthy of appreciation. Overall, although ThumbTanic proves that quirkiness alone won't work, this filmette still keeps you amused and chuckling to the end.
Space Probe Taurus (1965)
Abominable, appalling and a general offense.
I fear the only other reviewer at this point, Mr "van Polasm" from Antarctica, is having us on.
As the schizophrenia of the various titles of this movie suggests (The First Woman in Space, Space Probe Taurus and [in Japan at least] Space Monster), the makers of this movie had no clue and were making it up as they went along. This movie, even considering it's TV movie status, deserves to be especially damned given that only 3 years separates it from Kubrick's 2001.
They crammed in so many 1950s sci-fi cliches that they didnt have time to follow any single one through to the end, and they filled the cracks with preposterously ludicrous scenarios and acting. As for special effects, think toilet paper rolls wrapped in foil and suspended from string.
What you have is 3 paunchy overweight blokes and one beautiful young woman as the "astronauts" on your typical early sci-fi "outer space rocket". What they're meant to be doing is anyone's guess until about two thirds of the film has elapsed.
Is the story about the feisty young woman vs. the crusty ol' sea dog cap'n? Well, no. That story is killed off after about 5 lines of dialogue when said crust forces said babe to admit her true feelings for him with a forcible kiss or three. Those were the days, when the man didn't even wait to hear yes or no, right? There's also a dream scene which looks like it was put in specifically to satisfy another paunchy old blokes desire to snog the young woman in a bathing suit.
Is the story about mankind's first encounter with alien life? Well, no. They come across an alien "outer space rocket" - no-one seems terribly surprised - go in, meet predictably humanoid and hideous alien, scuffle, kill it, blow up the alien ship. End of that story.
Next, flaming marshmallows, in the guise of meteors, knock the ship's computers into overdrive (we are told belatedly) and send the ship hurtling way off course right to a conveniently located earth-like planet. At this point in the story we find out that the mission was to explore another distant planet marked for colonisation.
Finally, just before the average viewer slips into a coma, there's time to fit in the following cliches:
* everyone losing their cool in a marooned ship, * narcissist sacrifices himself for good of all by being killed by predictably humanoid and hideous sea creature, * small scale model "outer space rocket" in fishtank attacked, well... harassed, by alien marine creatures everyone pretends not to recognise are ordinary crabs.
Just before the average viewer expires, the remaining paunchy old blokes and beautiful woman escape, declare the planet they just left good enough for colonisation (ahem,.. predictably humanoid and hideous sea creatures? Giant crabs?) and proclaim the planet be named after the dead paunchy old bloke.
This movie is awful, awful, awful with not a single redeeming feature - not even camp value. I spent more time, thought and effort in typing this comment than went into Space Probe Taurus. Avoid at all costs.
Thumb Wars: The Phantom Cuticle (1999)
Amusing
Thumb Wars is a nice, odd little parody on the now culturally mythical original Star Wars. The short interview/making of sequence following the filmette added to the enjoyment when you saw the number of people and the amount of effort which went into filming some thumbs (and one foot).
It's true that some of the jokes made are pretty much standard fare (Leah is Princess Bunhead - with cinnamon buns for hair, a Stormtrooper comments on Darth Vader's "cool" voice). However, the curious effect of faces superimposed on thumbs, some of the attention to detail and references to the original (the bar scene), and some of the just plain whacked out humour (the naked X-wing pilot) are what maintain the pace.
2 minutes longer and I think I would have begun to lose interest, but for something different and a good laugh Thumb Wars does the job. The preview for Thumb Tanic looked good too.