Seongyong's Private Place

A cat in the theater (06/06/13)

Posted on June 9, 2013 by kaist455

I visited the arthouse theater in my city, and I met this cat again. It was chubbier than before.

Posted in Photos | Tagged Cat, Theater | Leave a comment

Side Effects (2013) ☆☆☆(3/4) : Something doesn’t feel right

Posted on June 8, 2013 by kaist455

Something doesn’t feel right, and you wonder what it is as you are drawn to the ambiguous tone during the first half of “Side Effects”. Its story is one of those standard thriller plots frequently going beyond the realm of plausibility if you look at them closer, but it is a well-made thriller supported by nice dialogues and good performances, and that is the main reason why I should be very careful about describing the story and what you will get from it.

After the ominous opening scene reminiscent of that mundane introduction scene of Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho”(1960), we are introduced to Emily Taylor(Rooney Mara), a young woman whose life has been completely changed since her husband Martin(Channing Tatum) was arrested and then jailed for insider trading. Under such a circumstance like that, it is no wonder that her face looks moody, anxious, and depressed, and it looks like she really needs help although she has been managing to live and work without her husband for last four years.

And then a good news comes to her. Her husband is finally released from the prison, and, despite his tarnished reputation, he is determined to resume his career with any chance given to him. While watching him starting over his normal life with his wife, I was a bit amused by how he rehabilitates himself more easily than other kinds of criminals. Although he has not been employed yet, he and his wife are soon invited to a luxurious restaurant, and nobody particularly minds about that. It is said in the movie that insider trading is regarded as something as bad as murder nowadays, but I guess you can be easily forgiven and then re-accepted in this business field as long as you did not screw up big time like Bernie Madoff.

Everything seems to be going back to normal for them, but Emily does not look happy, and she keeps showing alarming symptoms which can be interpreted as the classic symptoms of depression. She suddenly gets an emotional outburst. She suddenly drives her car into the wall as if she tried to commit suicide. Martin is naturally concerned about her as her husband, but he does not know what to do.

She eventually has sessions with Dr. Jonathan Banks(Jude Law), a British psychiatrist who moved his practice to US because it was convenient for him to work in US than UK. While he can deal more openly with his patients in US because of the different view on mental illness, he can also prescribe drugs to them more easily because every pharmaceutical company in US is eager to get their latest drugs tested and then sold through him and other psychiatrists. At one point, we see him dining with his fellow psychiatrist and a woman from some big pharmaceutical company, and he is very willing to participate in the upcoming trial of the new drug from that company. It looks like a win-win situation for Dr. Banks and some of his unhappy patients; he will earn extra money for supporting his wife and his stepson, and his patients will get a possibly better help for their problems with no charge on their medical bills.

When Emily, who has experiences no improvement during the serial trials of various antidepressant drugs, shows a more serious suicidal tendency, Dr. Banks eventually decides to try that new drug. It seems to work, and Martin is glad to see his wife becoming livelier than before; they enjoy each other’s company outside during afternoon, and they also have a terrific time at night in their bedroom. In addition, Martin gets a good chance to restart his former career although everything is still not certain for them.

But he is a bit concerned about his wife’s progress. While she shows the signs of improvement, there are also the signs of the possible side effects from the drug. Like any good professionals in his field, Dr. Banks told them in advance about its possible side effects including nausea, decrease of appetite, and dry mouth, and he is not that surprised to hear that Emily sleepwalks during night, but he becomes concerned about his patient’s condition. Something is not right, but he cannot tell what it is.

I hope I have not revealed anything to spoil your entertainment so far. As the plot gets slowly thickened through the director Steven Soderbergh’s cool handling of Scott Z. Burns’ screenplay, the movie introduces more supporting characters into its story. There is Emily’s former psychiatrist Dr. Victoria Siebert(Catherine Zeta-Jones), and there are also Martin’s poor mother, the law authorities with whom Dr. Banks work as their adviser, and Dr. Banks’s colleagues and patients who negatively react to him after something terrible finally happens as announced to us at the beginning,

The actors in the film efficiently serve the story with their performances. Rooney Mara is especially good in the role which is far different from her electrifying breakout performance in “The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”(2011); she captivatingly and convincingly looks unstable and terrified as the main source of the tension below the screen, and we come to worry about what’s inside her mind as much as the people around Emily. Jude Law is also excellent as an ordinary guy who suddenly finds himself trapped in a very difficult situation which may cost his carrier, and Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones are adequate in their respective functional roles.

Soderbergh has recently talked about retirement, and “Side Effects” will be the last theatrical feature film in his illustrious career if he sticks to his words. Regardless of whether he is really going to quit directing, the movie is a slick psychological thriller Hitchcock would admire; many things in the story do not look plausible when you look back at the plot after watching it, but this is a compelling thriller which can ably pull your attention here and there around its plot through its mood and the suspense behind it. It is not great, but it is an engaging experience without side effects.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Husband and Wife, Mental Illness, Pharmacy, Psychiatrist, Thriller | 1 Comment

Sleepless Night (2012) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : Now here comes their anxiety

Posted on June 7, 2013 by kaist455

“Sleepless Night”, which will be one of small surprises from South Korean cinema of this year, really knows how married life feels around its beginning. Although I am not a married guy, its depiction of the early stage of married life comes to me as something quite real. During my viewing, I saw lots of things which I witnessed from several married colleagues of mine, and I could easily imagine them and their spouses having the private conversations not so different from the ones shown in the film.

The movie honestly looks at where married life begins to demand something more than romance as the anxiety about future crawls beyond the comfort at present. They are happy, and it has been a good life for them for several years, but now they face a crucial point of their relationship, so they naturally start worrying about it. Can they move to the next phase? And do they really want to do that?

They are Joo-hee(Kim Joo-ryeong) and Hyeon-soo(Kim Soo-hyeon), and we can clearly discern how much they have been accustomed to each other since their wedding day. While their romantic heat may be gone now, they are still affectionate to each other, and, above all, they still feel young about themselves. When we look at them spending their evening on the couch, they look more like good roommates rather than a husband and a wife.

They can go on like that because they can take of themselves well to some degrees. Hyeon-soo works in a dried anchovy factory, and Joo-hee works as a yoga instructor. They do not earn much, but that is enough for them to live in a small apartment and to lead a cozy life together, and their occasional night event at the bedroom is above average in case of warmth and intimacy.

But, like any young married couple several years after marriage, they begin to wonder whether they can really go on like that. Observing an older couple with two kids during one summer afternoon, they see their possible future from that family. He will probably be more occupied with his work for supporting their increased family, and she will probably be more occupied with taking care of domestic matters including their children. As reflected through a little too symbolic but effective shot, they will probably be more distant to each other – with their increased familiarity to each other as the barrier between them.

They later have a private conversation about having a child, and they conclude that they are not ready for that considering the serious responsibility coming after it. They may look like a couple of little kids who do not want to grow up, but you can identify with how they feel about their matter. Children make your life more stable than before as they fill your household, but, as shown during one intense moment in the film, they also make your life more fragile than before because they will entirely depend on you until they grow up enough to lead their own life.

While the movie mostly consists of the conversation scenes under mundane atmosphere, the director/screenplay writer Jang Kun-jae and his two main actors did a splendid job of presenting a plain but real couple who may be at the turning point of their life right now. Nothing much happens throughout the movie except one unfortunate incident throwing discord in their relationship, but, as the movie keeps observing their daily life closely, their unstable emotions beneath the calm surface are slowly revealed before our eyes, and we are drawn to them as watching them closer.

The movie was released in South Korea not long after the local theatrical release of “Before Midnight”(2013), and, not so surprisingly, the movie is frequently compared to that fabulous film because it is also a talky movie revolving around a couple feeling anxiety and discontent. Joo-hee and Hyeon-soo are less sophisticated and less witty compared to the couple of “Before Midnight”, but they are still an interesting couple who deserves our attention. They are well aware of the fact that they should accept the change in one way or another, but they become more uncertain about their future with no clear answer given to them, and it becomes harder for them to sleep well at night as they respectively come to anguish over their matter without discussing it with each other.

The movie exposes their feelings on the screen in a rather unexpected way, and its two lead performers Kim Joo-ryeong and Kim Soo-hyeon deserve praises for their simple but well-rounded performances. The movie also pays some attention to a handful of supporting characters around them, and I like a small scene in which Hyeon-soo drinks with his senior who has eventually divorced his wife despite their long relationship nurtured through 10 years of romance before their marriage. Hyeon-soo jokingly says his senior’s failed married life is a solution book for him, but people are usually unwise and clumsy in dealing with their own problems even when they know what to do, and we are not so surprised to see that one small misunderstanding is led to a spiky argument between our couple at one point.

Jang Kun-jae was previous praised for his debut feature film “Eighteen”(2009). I have not seen that film yet, but I can say that he shows here that he is a talented director who can effortlessly pull us into his story and characters through the vivid sense of reality. Although it shows that the budget was low(many scenes were shot at the director’s apartment), but the movie feels both smooth and real while subtly pulsating with the rhythm of daily life, and we willingly follow its slow but absorbing tempo as Joo-hee and Hyeon-soo’s leisurely summer days pass by.

The running time of this small gem is only a little more than an hour, but we come to know and care a lot about its main characters through its succinct storytelling, and we are left with satisfaction around the end credits. Their night still feels uncertain and sleepless for them – but we can also see the faint possibility of better things to come.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Husband and Wive, Romance, South Korean Film | 1 Comment

Cosmopolis (2012) ☆☆(2/4) : A long limousine ride for haircut

Posted on June 6, 2013 by kaist455

After watching David Cronenberg’s latest film “Cosmopolis” in last December, I briefly commented that “It is the most boring work from Cronenberg since “Videodrome”(1983).” After giving it a second chance for writing this review, I still think it is one of few unfortunate misfires made by one of the most intelligent and fascinating directors of our time. It is so cool that it feels dispassionate and distant throughout most of its running time, and the narrative feels sluggish as going somewhere or nowhere. Its dialogues are so abstract and apathetic that it would not feel much different if they were delivered by dot matrix printing operated by artificial intelligence.

Its beginning suggests that some big global crisis is coming, and it is implied that its hero Eric Packer(Robert Pattinson), a young billionaire who runs some influential financial company, has lost considerable amount of his money as being in a danger which is never clearly explained in the story. While paranoid about his current circumstance, he just wants to get a haircut at a barbershop located in the other part of the city, so he suddenly gets into his big limousine and leaves the meeting place with other powerful financial people while escorted by his ever-watchful bodyguard.

Like the limousine in Leos Carax’s “Holy Motors”(2012), his limousine is an interesting vehicle to behold. Its interior is upholstered with expensive materials and equally expensive electronic equipments, and this is certainly a small but comfortable place to spend your time – especially if you are stuck in a traffic jam which looks like it will continue all day long.

While it seems things are getting fallen apart in their world, most of the characters in the movie look as disaffected as the characters of J.G. Ballard’s SF novels. Angry mobs occupy the streets, and some of them hurl or brandish dead rats in front of others as riots are initiated everywhere, but nobody seems to be particularly shocked about what is going on around them.

And Packer remains disinterested all the time as he occasionally watches the world outside his limousine. He looks so consumed by his obsession for control that he does not care anything in the world besides his business and his health, and that is how we come to get a weird sight of prostate examination carried out in the limousine. Robert Pattinson has been criticized and ridiculed a lot for his stiff, emotionless performance in the Twilight movies, but, in this time, he gives a detached performance which is exactly required by the film, and I think he had a more fun time while being stuck in the limousine than when he was stuck with a shiny, uninteresting vampire hunk.

As his limousine is being very slowly driven along the streets with other more plain vehicles, Packer encounters various people one by one. There is a young system analyst who keeps confirming to Packer that nothing is wrong with the system in Packer’s company. There is a woman who has a rough sex with him and then has a long intellectual talk with him before getting out the limousine. There is also his fiancé with whom Packer spends some impersonally personal time outside the limousine, and then there are also a doctor visiting him for medical examination and a theorist adviser who zealously tells him what is wrong with the world and how Packer is directly, or indirectly, responsible for the crisis.

As the limousine approaches to the destination(it won’t be much of a spoiler to tell you that our plutocratic prick eventually gets a haircut in the end) and more odd sights are shown, the narrative of the movie keeps spinning its wheels while throwing various ideas and thoughts in the air without success. They may sound interesting to hear during the first few minutes, but the characters frequently talks as if they were exchanging passwords, and we remain baffled, confounded, and disoriented amid their metaphysical conversations which feel increasingly enigmatic and elusive.

At least, you can clearly see that “Cosmopolis” is a Cronenberg film. While I was confused about what the movie is about or how it is about, its abstract dialogues scenes took me back to Cronenberg’s previous works such as “Videodrome” or “Crash”(1996), which was based on a dystopian SF novel written by J.G. Ballard. Regardless of whether you end up liking his movies or not, they always have the sense of cool fascination toward their subjects, and that aspect is again reflected well here in this film through its cold, distant attitude surrounding ominous ambiance.

In spite of my admiration toward the director and its technical aspects, I was neither fascinated nor entertained by the movie itself on intellectual or emotional level. Pattinson is effectively aloof as demanded, and he is surrounded by the good cast comprised of dependable veteran performers including Juliette Binoche, Mathieu Amalric, Samantha Morton, and Paul Giamatti. The actors in the film do their thankless jobs admirably, although I frequently wondered whether they really understood what they were saying in front of the camera.

The movie is based on the novel written by Don DeLillo, and, as far as I heard from others, the book had been considered to be a difficult one to be adapted into a feature film. Cronenberg is no stranger to challenging materials and he was successful in some cases, but, unfortunately, this slick but hollow work only fizzles slowly to our boredom and subsequent disappointment. In “Holy Motors”, I did not understand what the hell it was about, but I became dazzled and fascinated with how it was about. In case of “Cosmopolis”, I did not understand what the hell it was about either, and I only became disinterested and distant about how it was about.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Crisis, Finance, Limousine | 1 Comment

Ruthless avian campus gang in summer afternoon (2013/06/03)

Posted on June 3, 2013 by kaist455

It is hot, but they are very active and ruthless none the less.

Posted in Photos | Tagged Geese, KAIST | 2 Comments

Dear Dolphin (2013) ☆☆☆(3/4) : Guilt and illusion they have

Posted on June 1, 2013 by kaist455

They are still grieving over their loss with guilt inside their hearts, and their confused hearts don’t know what to do. They are pretty clumsy when they grasp for consolation or redemption, and they remain as confused as before. In such an unhappy circumstance, it is no wonder that they begin to see an illusion which constantly reminds them of what they had painfully lost.

“Dear Dolphin”, a calm South Korean character drama about loss and grief, shows us in the beginning a young lively couple who is about to have a dinner together at their small but cozy apartment. Hyeok-gun(Lee Hee-joon) and Cha-kyeong(Han Ye-ri) are deeply in love, and we instantly sense their mutual affection as they warmly and playfully interact with each other. Their life is a bit hard as both of them have to work to support their household, but they are happy in spite of that, and it looks like nothing can possibly separate them.

But something suddenly happens to separate them forever. When Cha-kyeong goes to her close friend Gi-ok(Lee Yeong-jin) because of her floristic work she has to deliver to Gi-ok and then returns to the home by Gi-ok’s bicycle at night, she is killed in an unfortunate car accident, and her death is a devastating blow to both Gi-ok and Hyeok-geun.

A year has passed. Although they try to move on with their respective daily lives, Gi-ok and Hyeok-geun do not seem to recover from their loss at all. Hyeok-geun looks particularly troubled; as the people around him begin to notice from his blank face, he always looks tired and deprived of sleep, and that sometimes affects his work at the physical rehabilitation center. The memories with Cha-kyeong always hovers over his mind, and he is tormented by the fact that he could have prevented the accident if he had just let Cha-kyeong stay at her friend’s house during that night.

And then, he begins to see Cha-kyeong around him. He knows it is not real, but he willingly accepts this hallucination because he has missed her so much. Is she just a hallucination or a real ghost? We see Cha-kyeong going around a local aquarium for watching dolphins at one point, and she comes across a maintenance guy who later functions as her therapist listening to her in his office. The movie does not tells us what exactly is going on, but Han Ye-ri and Ki Joo-bong, who plays a maintenance guy, make their scenes engaging, and we listen to them even while we feel baffled about what the hell they are doing.

Meanwhile, the movie slowly reveals an odd triangle between its main characters. Like Hyeok-geun, Gi-ok feels lots of guilt about her best friend’s death because she was also indirectly responsible for the accident. She casually lent her bicycle to Cha-kyeong even though she knew it needed repair due to a brake problem, and that fact has been gnawing her heart even though she had admitted her fault during the investigation. To make the matters worse, Cha-kyeon’s frigidly gentle elder sister(Lee Eun-ah) still cannot forgive her; she frequently visits Gi-ok to remind that to her, and that hurts Gi-ok a lot – and she has no one to talk with about her pain.

When Gi-ok visits the cemetery for remembering her friend, she happens to meet Hyeok-geun. They are pretty awkward to each other at first, but, when they later have a dinner together with several glasses of alcohol, they begin to open their mouth, and they talk a lot about Cha-kyeong while sharing their feeling of loss. In the end, they find themselves having sex in a hotel room during that night.

Now you may think you know where the story is going, but the movie defies your expectation, and it does not push its characters into predictable plot. Because they have no idea about how to deal with their difficult situation, they continue to struggle with their respective problems, and the lack of communication between them brings more troubles and hurts to each of them. Hyeok-geun keeps being haunted by his hallucination, and his ‘affair’ with Gi-ok makes him all the more miserable. As watching Hyeok-guen haunted by his wife, Gi-ok feels frustrated about the lack of response from a man she has secretly loved for long years, and, with the increasing guilt of her own, she also begins to feel what Hyeok-guen has been seeing.

The movie is based on the director Kang Jin-a’s short film made in 2009. I have not seen it, but I can say its feature version is a good film to be appreciated. There are dreamy moments occasionally appearing in the movie, but there is always the realistic atmosphere of mundane daily life, and Lee Yeong-jin, Lee Hee-joon, and Han Ye-ri all give convincing performances. Their characters come to us as the real people dealing with the real problems we can identify with, and their human behaviors remind that we are sometimes not that wise in case of handling the matters of heart.

“Dear Dolphin” is a sensitive story about dark and gloomy moments of loss and grief. The movie is not a pleasant experience, but this is an engaging drama none the less, and I must point out that it is not entirely devoid of humor and laughs while quietly observing the pain and sadness inside its characters. It is difficult to let your loved one go, but, as some of you have experienced, we eventually do that regardless of whether we want it or not – and we move on as the living.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Car Accident, Friend, Romance, South Korean Film | Leave a comment

Star Trek Into Darkness(2013) ☆☆☆(3/4) : Vigorous calisthenics within its playground

Posted on May 31, 2013 by kaist455

“Star Trek Into Darkness” does its calisthenics vigorously within its playground. After the decent start with “Star Trek”(2009), J.J. Abrams goes all the way again with crashes and bangs, and it is certainly thrilling to watch, but it remains within its familiar playground with a very little sense of awe and wonder. While the movie seems to be not ready for boldly going into the undiscovered territory outside its playground, it does show the attitudes and the potentials to do that while mostly concentrating on its busy full-blown actions, and we come to expect more as entertained enough in the end.

The movie starts its story several years after the first big adventure of Captain James T. Kirk(Chris Pine) and his friends/colleagues depicted in “Star Trek”(2009). The opening scene features a massive active volcano threatening not only the planet in which it is located but also a primal civilization near the volcano, and Kirk and his friends’ latest mission is preventing the approaching eruption and preserving the local civilization without being noticed by them. This can be executed well without any troubles, but our reckless young hero gets himself into trouble again, so we see him and Dr. McCoy(Karl Urban) running hurriedly from the chasing natives as if they were in a new Indiana Jones movie on high caffeine mode.

Meanwhile, our ever-logical Vulcan Mr. Spock(Zachary Quinto) is dutifully carrying out the dangerous mission deep inside the hot volcano while being assisted by Uhura(Zoe Saldana) and Sulu(John Cho). Even though the probability of his death is pretty high amidst the tumultuous magma which may engulf him sooner or later, he goes down to the bottom of the volcano with no hesitation, and he is even ready to die if that is necessary for accomplishing the mission. You’ve got to admire his unbending logic and following logical commitment.

The mission is eventually accomplished, and all of the Enterprise crew manage to get out the planet safely, but Kirk violates the primitive directive for the eleventh hour rescue of Spock. Mainly due to Spock’s inflexible sense of principles, he is immediately demoted to the first officer, and he is pretty pissed about being ‘betrayed’ by Spock, but there is not much time for reconciliation because they are soon hurled into a big threat thrown upon Starfleet. A rogue Starfleet officer John Harrison(Benedict Cumberbatch) has declared a personal war against Starfleet with the shocking terror incident in London, and this ruthless guy promptly strikes his targets with a sudden ambush on the emergency meeting at the Starfleet headquarter in San Francisco.

For catching Harrison and then bringing him to justice, Kirk, who instantly regains his former position after a personal loss, and his Enterprise crew go after Harrison, who is found to be hiding in a planet in the Klingon Empire region. Of course, as already suggested in the trailer, Harrison is not a simple villain easy to handle, so Kirk and his friends find themselves entering another perilous test of their strength and intelligence as facing Harrison and what is behind his scheme.

The director J.J. Abrams fills his film with lots of excitement through the constant serving of massive action sequences, and the movie never feels boring thanks to that. The camera movement and editing are a little too hyperkinetic to appreciate the actions on the screen, and I had some urge during my viewing to shout “lens flare!” instead of “fruit cart!”, but the pace is quick and brisk, and I managed to overlook many contrivances in its imperfect story line which Spock would surely disapprove of because he would find them illogical(for example, how can a big space action near the Earth be undetected by the Starfleet headquarter until the people in San Francisco finally see what is crashing through the sky toward them?).

While the movie is too busy with its action at times, it has some fun with its playground it previously deconstructed and then reconstructed. If you are familiar with the previous Star Trek films including “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan”(1982) and “Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country”(1991), you will be amused by the homages and references sprinkled throughout the story, and the movie even has a scene directly derived from one of the most emotionally devastating moments in the Star Trek series.

But, in my opinion, the movie is still like a young kid merely having a boisterous fun in his comfort zone while not so sure about what he can do for himself outside. There are several bold moves in the story along with some thought-provoking aspects associated with 9/11 and subsequent problems in our world, but the movie still has its foot moored in the previous Star Trek series as it keeps making homages and references, and, above all, it has not yet gotten its own sense of awe and wonder as space drama.

Nevertheless, it has all the right stuffs to get that quality someday, and the actors show us again they are perfectly cast for their respective roles. Chris Pine is fine as a younger and more reckless version of Captain Kirk; he sometimes looks like an arrogant jerk as unwise as Captain Zapp Brannigan in TV animation series “Futurama”, but at least we can sense that Kirk comes to learn hard lessons through his adventure. As watching him becoming a little more principled in the final scene, I could not help but think of one of the famous lines from “Citizen Kane”(1941): “Only you’re going to need more than one lesson. And you’re going to get more than one lesson.”

Spock was one of the best things in the previous Star Trek films, and Zachary Quinto ably stands on his own place while giving a solid performance as an outsider between humans and Vulcans. Quinto masterfully conveys the inner emotions firmly suppressed behind his cool alien facade, and it is rather a shame that the movie is too busy to delve deeper into his personal feelings on what happened to his home planet in the previous film. When Older Spock(Leonard Nimoy) briefly appeared at one point in the film, I recalled how miserable it must have been for him to get his entire history wiped out while there is no one to share his loss with, but that aspect has not been fully explored in the series yet.

Other cast members are exemplary as the parts of the team. Zoe Saldana is attractive and feisty as a young lady who courageously tries to deal with one of the most hostile races in the universe, and John Cho gets his own moment when he rises to the occasion as a temporary captain of Enterprise. Anton Yelchin and Simon Pegg flexibly move around both comic and dramatic moments, and Karl Urban is excellent with his gruff charm and sarcastic lines which would please DeForest Kelly. Benedict Cumberbatch, who could have played a Vulcan as convincingly as Quinto with his sharp looks, is an effective villain fueled by good reasons, and there are also adequate supporting performances from Peter Weller, Bruce Greenwood, and Alice Eve, whose character may return as a love interest for Kirk in the next sequel.

“Star Trek Into Darkness” is a competent blockbuster film fairly successful in satisfying both Star Trek fans and average audiences. It wants to go boldly, but it is still preparing itself through its busy calisthenics with actions, and it does not reach to the height of the best Star Trek films in spite of its overall success. The final showdown involving a precarious fistfight around the skyscrapers of San Francisco feels relatively anti-climactic compared to other action scenes, and the screenplay resolves several situations too easily as it keeps hopping for another action to serve. It almost throws a big emotional punch around the finale, but it eventually takes an easy way out, and, while that choice does not damage that crucial dramatic scene considerably, you may feel a little bit cheated.

Despite its shortcomings, it goes without saying that the movie is one of the better entertainments for this summer, and you will not need 3D glasses to see that. Excited by Michael Giacchino’s vibrant score exuberantly played over the fancy end credit, I came to wish for better things to be shown during the new mission of Enterprise, and, despite some grumbles, I admitted to myself that I had a good time with the movie. All moorings are cleared, and now it is really the time for this series to go boldly to somewhere outside.

Posted in Movies | Tagged action, Alien, SF, Spaceship, Terror | Leave a comment

After Earth (2013) ☆☆(2/4) : A survival camp with dad – on the Earth

Posted on May 30, 2013 by kaist455

My demand is not that big when I enter the screening room for reviewing SF film. Regardless of the level of my expectation, I merely want to be entertained or excited by what it wants to show and tell us, and I always try to find something worthwhile to watch or muse on while checking whether my time and money are not wasted on the whole.

As watching M. Night Shyamalan’s SF movie “After Earth”, which will probably be chosen by many as one of the worst blockbuster films of this year, I sincerely tried to find anything nice to talk about, but my mind was quickly numbed by its tedious blandness. I kept finding more flaws and holes here and there in its shaky premise during its first half, and I felt more boredom as the movie sluggishly lurched toward the predictable finale with a subatomic amount of emotional payoff during its second half, and I was not impressed by anything shown on the screen during its 100 minutes even though they looked well-made in technical aspects.

At the beginning, we get obligatory background explanation. At some point in the future, the Earth became no longer suitable to live for the human race due to environment pollution, so humans got out of the Earth and then settled in some planet probably outside the solar system. The planet, which was named Nova Prime, does not look so different from the Earth, and I sometimes wondered whether they settled near the Grand Canyon(the movie was partly shot in New Mexico, US).

Not so surprisingly, they were not alone in Nova Prime, and there have been a conflict between humans and an alien race which is just barely mentioned and shown once and then never appears again in the movie. As some sort of living biological weapon against humans, a bunch of hideous creatures named Ursa were released, and most humans were helpless in front of these big eyeless creatures which can smell the fear from their main preys even though they lack visual sense. I think having one or two eyes will be more helpful to their hunt, but it seems these ugly beasts had done a pretty good job for a while only with smelling human fear near them.

Anyway, the humans eventually found a way to fight against Ursas. A heroic soldier named Cypher Raige(Will Smith, who looks as stoically wooden as he can) found a technique called ‘ghosting’, which enables soldiers to shut off fear even while recognizing danger to deal with. They can approach to the Ursas without being smelt by them, and then they quickly take care of these beasts with a weapon stick/spear which looks like a high tech version of Swiss army knife. I noticed that their technology is quite advanced enough to build fancy spaceships and travel around the universe faster than light, but, as far as I can remember from the movie, it looks like that stick is only weapon available to them. Seriously, can’t they think of any effective or more advanced ways other than dashing into a beast and slitting its neck?

Without getting any good idea about how it has been to the humans living in Nova Prime since the conflict, we are thrust into the story immediately. Cypher’s teenager son Kitai(Jaden Smith) has been trying to distinguish himself among the older cadets in the military academy as the only son of a man who is now a living legend among soldiers. Always maintaining the attitude of an overachiever, he tries hard, but he is not promoted again, and his relationship with his distant father remains as estranged as before despite the gentle presence of his mother Faia(criminally underutilized Sophie Okonedo) at their home.

Father and son later board a spaceship with others (and a caged Ursa) for going to a training site, but the spaceship unexpectedly crashes on the planet which is none other than the Earth. As the only survivors, Kitai and Cypher have to depend on each other; Kitai has to take a perilous journey through the mountain forest surrounding them instead of his injured father and retrieve an unbroken beacon for calling rescue team, and Cypher has to guide his son unprepared to this unforeseen circumstance while helping him overcome his fear and learn ghosting.

As the restored world from which the humans left 1,000 years ago, the Earth looks like, well, the Earth we know except few things. While the forest looks as big and green as those forests in South Central America region(did I mention that the movie was also shot in Costa Rica?), and the sights are pretty bland to say the least; there are a bunch of baboons and boars in the forest, and there are also many birds flying in the sky including a huge eagle, and none of them looks particularly exotic or alien. I hopefully expected big alligators or any other water animals to appear in the river, but, to my disappointment, the movie only presented small fish and one poisonous leech.

Stuck in such an uninteresting and uninspired background, the story is flat and pedestrian as it goes through predictable process, and that makes a more tepid experience for us. Will Smith and his son Jaden previously appeared together in “The Pursuit of Happyness” (2006) and they played together nicely in that film, but there is not much chemistry here in this film. Mired in bland dialogues and weak characterization, they try hard, but they fail to generate the required emotions inside the screen, and the frequent flashback involved with Kitai’s dead sister, played by Zoe Isabella Kravitz, does not help much either. I have forgotten to mention about a runaway Ursa lurking somewhere in the forest, but I do not think you will mind about that because it is no more than a plot device which does not work as well as intended.

The director M. Night Shyamalan, who wrote the screenplay with his co-writer Gary Whitta based on Will Smith’s idea, previously made “The Last Airbender”(2010), one of the worst cinematic disasters in 2010. I blatantly said my anoscopy was brighter than that awful film at that time and that movie indeed was less enjoyable than my anoscopy for many reasons, but I also remember that he made several good films such as “The Sixth Sense”(1999), “Unbreakable”(2000), and “Sign”(2002) before his recent quality descent. I am sort of glad that he does not hit the new bottom in “After Earth”, and I can only hope that he will rise again someday, though I felt like watching a sinking ship being risen momentarily and resuming its descent.

“After Earth” is a boring movie full of lost potentials, and the responsibility must go to Shyamalan, Smith, who produced the movie with his wife, and others behind the film. Few days before watching the film, I happened to read an interview article on how Smith and his family had a nice time together while shooting the film, and now that article takes me back to late Gene Siskel’s famous question my dear friend Roger Ebert used to quote: “Is the movie that I am watching as interesting as a documentary of the same actors having lunch together?” If the home movie of the Smith family was shot during the production and is planned to be included in DVD or Blu-ray, I bet it will make a pretty good DVD supplement far better than the film itself.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Alien, Crash, Earth, Father and son, SF, Survival | 1 Comment

Chicken with Plums (2011) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5) : Last week of an artist

Posted on May 26, 2013 by kaist455

“Chicken with Plums” is a film which would not have worked at all if it had been without its own distinctive style and humor. Its story is so old-fashioned that the movie is frequently on the verge of looking silly and ridiculous as it looks around its melodramatic tale chapter by chapter, but its stylish approach makes us accept that its broad characters are living in an artificial world based on nostalgic romanticism mixed with a bit of magic realism.

The story revolves around the last week of a violinist named Nasser-Ali Kahn(Mathieu Almaric). He is living in Teheran in 1958, and the city looks far gentler and more European than it has looked since that turbulent era of the 1970s. Some of you may tell me that the country at that time also had a fair share of problems, but you cannot possibly expect something realistic from the film when its production design is full of nostalgic ambience and some of its landscapes are drawn in animation.

Nasser-Ali Kahn has been recently distraught because his bitter and angry wife Faringuisse(Maria de Medeiros) broke his beloved violin during their another quarrel. He has been trying to find a perfect replacement violin for him, but none of the violins he found has satisfied him. The latest one looks like a good one, but he quickly returns it as soon as he plays it just because it does not feel right to him.

On one day, he hears that there is a very good violin in the region far from the city. He immediately goes there to buy it, and he eventually gets it after some talk with a strange shop owner who owns it. After returning to his home with the violin, he plays it in private, and, after he senses that his problem is not from violin, he decides to die. After considering several suicide options, he concludes that the best way for him is just confining himself in his bedroom and not eating for days while waiting for death, so he instantly starts his slow walk toward death as he decides.

This may sound grim or ridiculous, but the movie sets a playful tone from the beginning, and even a dark subject like suicide is presented with an ample amount of humor while Nasser-Ali ruminates on each option during one humorous montage. As his body is weakened day by day, his mind looks around his life in the past, his family at present, and the future after his death, and there is even a sinisterly cordial visit from Azraël(Edouard Baer), the Angel of Death. As Azraël, a dark hooded dude with a good sense of grim humor, tells him an ironic tale about his fateful encounter with a rich man, the movie digresses into full animation mode, and it is another visually pleasing moment to watch in the film.

The movie introduces more characters into the story as the memories from Nasser-Ali’s life are unfolded in front of us. We see his left-wing brother Abdi(Eric Caravaca) and their school days during their childhood. We see how Nasser-Ali’s mother(Isabella Rossellini) forced him into a loveless marriage with Faringuisse, who had actually loved him since she set her eyes on him and had quietly waited for his love. She looks like a mean wife on the surface, but we come to see how she has been suffering from the fact that her husband has not shown any love to her while only caring about his art and his violin(An useful lesson: living with a good artist is never easy for you especially if he is too self-absorbed in his art).

It is turned out that his heart already went toward a young, beautiful woman named Irâne(lovely Golshifteh Farahani). He was fallen in love with her when she passed by him, and, not long after he officially introduced himself to her, their romance was quickly blossomed in front of purple/pink sky with white flowers slowly falling from a tree in the wind. They were really in love, but they faced the reality because of Irâne’s father, who would not allow a nameless artist to marry his precious daughter. The heartbreak followed, and, while we get a classic example of how an artist is sometimes inspired by a broken heart rather than a fulfilled one, we come to learn more about Nasser-Ali’s choice to kill himself through one heartbreaking sequence which wordlessly shows the passage of the time and accompanying bitter sadness.

For their picturesque story, the directors Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud shot the film at the Babelsberg Studios in Berlin to create their beautiful world of memories and fantasies. I have to mention a fantastic moment when the cigarette smoke from Nasser-Ali’s dying mother flies away from her bed and then hovers above her grave later. This surely looks unrealistic, but the movie has enough imagination to make it feel real even though it looks outrageous(this scene even has a weirdly looking savant appearing out of nowhere and explaining that the smoke is her soul), and we are amused by it rather than disbelieving it.

The actors play their caricature characters with broad touches; their exaggerated performances are a little too distracting, but the movie is not the story requiring realistic characters from the start. With his ever-widened eyes, Mathieu Almalric somehow makes us care about Nasser-Ali and his sad tragedy even though he is unlikable in some aspects(In objective view, he is actually pretty lousy as a husband and a father). Chiara Mastroianni is fun to watch during the segment showing an imagined adult life of Nasser-Ali’s little daughter, and Maria de Medeiros shows a sympathetic side inside her shrill character; as we know more about Faringuisse, we feel sorry for her, and it is poignant to see her at one point where she tries to change her stubborn husband’s mind through her chicken with plums.

Some notable animation directors have recently tried to direct live action film, and Satrapi and Paronnaud, who previously made Oscar-nominated animation film “Persepolis”(2007), make a nice transition here with this film. It does not have a strong focus unlike their previous film, but it has many wonderful scenes to be appreciated where sadness comes with quirky humor, and I found it a charming film in the end. It’s surely old-fashioned, but it comes with style and humor to show the magic inside.

Posted in Movies | Tagged Artist, Family, Husband and Wife, Lovers, Musician, Romance, Violin | 1 Comment

Before Midnight (2013) ☆☆☆1/2(3/5/4) : It’s still wonderful to meet them again

Posted on May 25, 2013 by kaist455

After long years, they live together as a couple. They are no longer two young students who accidentally met each other for the first time in “Before Sunrise”(1995), and they are more jaded than when they came across the possibility of second chance as two older and wiser adults in “Before Sunset”(2004), but it is still wonderful to meet them again and we find ourselves drawn to their thoughts and feelings as they talk and talk.

As the third chapter of ‘Before Trilogy’, Richard Linklater’s “Before Midnight” looks beyond where its predecessor “Before Sunset” ended. Again, we observe them talk with each other or others during most of its running time, and the movie slowly reveals how much they are changed or not changed through its superlative conversations scenes shining with humor and intelligence. They can still have a fun while they are together, but, as an adult couple coping with reality everyday, they are now far different from who they were 18 years ago. They are again reminded that they cannot be as romantic as before, so anxiety and discontent naturally seep into their relationship, and they begin to wonder: is this the end of their romance?

As we look at them, we come to learn some bits about what has happened to Jesse(Ethan Hawke) and Celine(Julie Delpy) during 9 years since the last shot of “Before Sunset”. Jesse eventually missed his plane and stayed at Celine’s apartment, and, according to his second novel inspired by that time, they seemed to have a very passionate moment together after that. As a consequence, Jesse was divorced from his wife several years ago to live with Celine, and now they have lovely twin daughters at present.

They are spending their summer vacation in the Peloponnesus of Greece, and Jesse is glad that his son from previous marriage had a great time with them during last several weeks. The opening scene at Kalamata airport shows Jesse sending back his son to Chicago, and we see them having a short father and son talk before departure. Although his son feels not bad about being separated from his dad again, Jesse regretfully feels that he should have spent more time with his son, and he wants to be with his son more if he can.

While he drives his car back to their vacation spot with their daughters sleeping in the backseat and Celine sitting next to him, Jesse and Celine talk with each other on several things including how Jesse’s son enjoyed the vacation with them. This scene is virtually a longtake scene with a few interruptions and we only stare at them for a while, but Hawke and Delpy, who wrote the screenplay with Linklater and also improvised their dialogues during production, handle this scene with natural spontaneity, and we willingly listen to their conversation with interest. Still feeling regretful, Jesse considers moving his family to US(they have been living in France), but Celine does not like that idea because she is at a crucial point in her career – and she is concerned that this trivial argument may initiate the dissolution of their relationship.

But they look happy to be with each other as a loving and pleasant couple, and they continue to spend nice summertime at a cozy place for writers near the sea with their Greek friends who invited Jesse and Celine. While Jesse talks with other guys on what he is soon going to write, Celine talks with other ladies as they prepare dinner in the kitchen, and, as they are enjoying the dinner together later, the conversations on many various topics such as romance, marriage, and the future of modern civilization go around between them. This scene is so exciting that I would have not have complained at all even if the movie had spent all of its running time to this terrific moment.

Anyway, the story eventually converges on Jesse and Celine. They get a chance to spend their private night together at a hotel nearby by the courtesy of their friends, so, as they walk alone together to the hotel, another long but very interesting conversation begins. Even though they are older, they still can have a fun talk as they did in their shared past, but they also recognize that they are not young any more. More reflective about their life, they see their past from a young couple at their dinner, and they have wistful feeling about their past moments which had already fleeted by them a long time ago.

And then, as they freely talk more with each other, we come to see that they have problems like any normal couples. Not long after they check in the hotel room ready for them, the mood between them approaches to those tense and hurtful moments in Ingmar Bergman’s great chamber drama “Scenes from a Marriage”(1973). Mainly due to their flawed personalities, they have been frustrated about each other a lot despite their mutual affection, and the barbed words are exchanged between them as frustration and discontent erupt on the screen. They say honesty is the best way, but honesty sometimes hurts a lot especially in case of the conversation between spouses, and its destructiveness can threaten even a long, stable relationship no matter how much they care about each other.

Sometimes it feels a bit stagy, but Linklater and his two performers keep this very long scene, which takes at least more than 20 minutes, both lively and intense. Jesse and Celine try to resolve their sudden conflict and then have a good night sex, but they reveal their unlikable sides to each other more during their heated argument. Jesse is a caring father and husband, but he can be a self-absorbed writer at times; Celine is a kind mother and wife, but she can be a little too reactive on small matters as a woman who wears her heart on her sleeve. As their flaws clash with each other within a small place, the situation becomes quite suspenseful because it is possible that their night is not the only thing to be ruined. They might have gone through similar fights at their home, but now they have more doubt about their relationship than ever.

With his plain, unobtrusive approach, the director Richard Linklater effortlessly shifts the tone between drama and comedy throughout the film, and Hawke and Delpy give well-rounded natural performances as the performers who have literally aged and matured along with the deep knowledge on their characters. Because we have known them through previous films, their present appearance has the poignancy generated from our memories with “Before Sunrise” and “Before Sunset”, and we feel the passage of the time along with them. I was 21 when I watched “Before Sunset” after watching “Before Sunrise”(I was a little too young when the movie came out, you know), and now I become 30 as an adult as jaded as they were in “Before Sunset”. I have experienced my own share of disappointment and disillusion during last 9 years, and I am also frequently regretful about lost time and lost opportunities like they were when I look back at my life of 30 years. After another 9 years, I will probably have more regrets just like they do in this film.

In spite of its bitter moments, the movie ultimately comes to me as a hopeful film about love and relationship. Watching the movie neatly leaving Jesse and Celine as the previous films did, I was reminded of how the couple of “Scenes of a Marriage” arrived at a peaceful point in the end. Despite so many hurts inflicted on each other and their marriage, the couple in that movie came to understand and learn more about each other, and their last moment had a tender romantic feeling in spite of the irony inside it.

As the fictional characters leading their life with free will in front of us, Jesse and Celine will continue their life story for themselves, and I think they will also learn more about their relationship and themselves no matter what happens after their midnight. They are not that romantic any more, but unromantic films are sometimes paradoxically more romantic than average romantic films, and the movie touchingly presents their imperfect but heartfelt relationship as the satisfying third chapter for the exceptional romance trilogy which was incidentally begun 18 years ago.

“Before Midnight” is a small gem to be appreciated, and I think it is one of the best films of this year. Like many good human dramas, it shows us that genuine human interaction is far more interesting and absorbing than soulless CGI spectacles, and we smile or nod as we watch it from the beginning to the end. I have no idea about whether Linklater, Hawke, and Delpy are considering making another movie about their characters, but I will certainly welcome it if they plan to make it.

By the way, although I recently quoted it in one of my reviews several months ago, I feel the urge to quote again what great film music composer Alex North said at the 1987 Oscar ceremony after receiving the honorary award, for I think what has been captured in Before Trilogy resonates with North’s sincere wish to filmmakers.

“I would like to make a humble plea to all of us involved in the movies. That is to encourage and convey hope, humor, compassion, adventure, and love, as opposed to despair, synthetic theatrics, and blatant bloody violence. And sex, sex, sex, by all means…. indeed, but with a bit of mystery, a touch of charm and elegance, and lots of imagination.”