Reviews

I've never seen anything quite like this picture before - it's an amalgamation of suspense, supernatural, and social realist genres and is well worth seeking out.

The film chronicles the various goings-on in the lives of several tenants of a crumbling Seoul highrise, primarily through the eyes of a new leasee who becomes caught up in their morally compromised existences. As the film progresses, we come to realize we know less about our narrator then we thought, and that he may be as capable of evil as the other characters.

To sum this film up is difficult, and I haven't even scratched the surface here. It's beautifully written, acted, and directed (by a first-time helmer no less!) and worthy of attention.

I was lucky enough to catch this picture during a series on new Italian cinema at the Walter Reade in NYC. There doesn't seem to be an english subbed (or even dubbed) version out there, but keep your eyes peeled because an opportunity to see it should not be wasted.

This picture looks at the long-unraveling lives of a once-powerful mafia clan in Italy. Years of violence, neglect, and the shame of dark secrets such as incest have weakened their familial structure to the breaking point. The weight of this decay falls hardest of the shoulders of the family's new generation, raised to believe they would follow in their ancestors powerful footsteps but instead faced with cleaning up the messes made years before by others.

LUNA ROSSA ("Red Moon") seems on the surface very similar to David Chase's "The Sopranos" - it's about mobsters with mid-life crisises. In fact it is an entirely different, vastly superior animal. Artfully sidestepping the glamorous sheen dramatizations of organized crime have here-to-fore possessed, writer and director Antonio Capuano fills the screen with the despair and degradation of a family legitimately feeling sorry for themselves and those who will come after. It's a bleak film to be sure, but it's so well-leveled with humor and honest performances that it's easy to give yourself up to it for the better part of two hours.

From an aesthetic standpoint the film is equally compelling - characters sulk in and out of blackened halls and rooms as if to hide from each other and themselves, low frequency drones and white noise in the background of every scene up the sense of decay - Capuano makes wonderful use of numerous stylistic touches throughout.

All in all, an excellent film that deserves attention. Seek it out!

It's been over a year since I started searching for copies of the JU-ON films, and thanks to a few wild dealings with proxy bidding services for Japanese auction sites I was able to track down a copy of part 2. It was well worth the effort!

Although the copy of JU-ON 2 I viewed did not have an english-language option, a skeletal understanding of the story was easily discerned and was all that was needed to enjoy the proceedings. The film is a series of lightly-connected vignettes about the various inhabitants of a cursed apartment and the myriad of horrible fates that befall them.

After my initial viewing, I felt the film started very slowly and didn't really offer much until its final 20 minutes. The second time around however, I really found myself drawn in from the get-go. While the last 20 minutes do pack the strongest punch, the first 50 minutes build on each other quite well and set you up for what amounts to multiple drop-kicks to your psyche in the final sections. Director Takashi Shimizu conjures up some of the most frightening images yours truly, a fear film vet and the sort of person who scares none too easily, has EVER seen.

I recommend this film highly, and wish you luck in tracking down a copy. As for me, I'm off to find the original JU-ON...