A Cat in Paris (2010) ☆☆☆(3/4) : One charming night adventure in Paris

Posted on April 11, 2012 by kaist455

“A Cat in Paris” is an enjoyable lightweight animation – and I had a good time with this breezy entertainment. Though it is pretty short(the running time is less than 70 minutes), but that is enough for its simple adventure tale of an adorable mute girl, a good-hearted criminal, and one likable pussycat which happens to be shared by them without their knowledge.

Zoé(voiced by Oriane Zani) has been mute since she lost her father, a cop who was killed in the pursuit of one of the most notorious criminals in Paris. Her mother Jeanne(voiced by Dominique Blanc), who is also a cop and worked with her husband, is also still hurt by her husband’s death, but she must work to support her little daughter. While her mother goes out for a work, Zoé is taken care of by her nanny(voiced by Bernadette Lafont), whose perfume seems to smell far more nauseating than its soft purple color suggests.

Zoé spends her daytime mostly in her bedroom, but she has one black cat as her close friend. It has a rather unpleasant of hunting lizards outside the house and then giving them to Zoé, but she is not disgusted about that, and we see the box full of carcasses of those unlucky lizards. Well, because this is the animation film, so it is less disgusting to look than you think, and at least it is certainly far less disgusting to appreciate than my childhood pencil case full of slimy snails or cute wood louses.

We know from the beginning that the cat has been leading a double life. Besides spending some time with Zoé during the afternoon, it has a secret night life with a young burglar named Nico(voiced by Bruno Salomone). He and the cat swiftly move above the rooftops without being noticed, and then Nico smoothly sneaks into his target building while evading the watchful eyes of night guards with the flexible agility probably only possible in the world of animation.

Through the cell animation drawn with care and details, the director Jean-Loup Felicioli and Alain Gagnol provide the beautiful and lovely background for their story. The streets and buildings of Paris are drawn with a broad, warm pastel style, and it is especially wonderful to look at when it shows the night landscape of Paris. Sure, we have encountered Paris many times through other movies and animations before, but this case is as good as it can be.

The characters are also drawn like broad caricatures, so you can instantly sense which character is good or bad. Though he is not wearing a black hat or a mustache to be twirled, it goes without saying that the crime boss Victor Costa(voiced by Bruno Benguigui) is certainly a vicious hateful criminal you don’t want to mess with. This mean guy is also quite a megalomaniac, and he is determined to steal one big valuable artifact from Nairobi, Kenya, with which he alarmingly obsessed with. I may say his relatively short stature compared to his bumbling henchmen tells a lot about his obsession.

What is their plan, by the way? I don’t know, and the story does not waste its time on the explanation; they seem to have some plan, and Jeanne and her colleagues know well that Costa is determined to snatch the artifact by any means necessary like he was during the previous attempt in which he killed Jeanne’s husband. She becomes busier than before while having to deal with the serial burglary case, so she spends less time with her daughter. It’s hard for Jeanne because she is concerned about Zoé, but she has the works to do.

The second half of the story is about how the characters get involved with each other and how their encounters are led to the adventurous night to remember. At one night, Zoé gets out of her house to follow her cat out of curiosity, but she gets more than she wishes for unfortunately. She comes upon Costa and his accomplices when they discuss about their plan. She immediately runs away from them, but she is quickly cornered by them – and Costa does not like a potential witness.

Fortunately for her, Nico saves her from her imminent danger by chance, but they soon find themselves chased by Costa and his equally ineffectual gangs. In one scene, when they see Zoé getting away from them by the boat on the pond, they just go straight into the pond instead of going around it to the reach the other side. I really doubt whether they will really be able to steal that big stature even if they are not noticed by the police.

But they are not so bad at running along or jumping between the rooftops, so we get a couple of good exciting sequences where the characters do some stunts at the high places including that famous cathedral in Paris. There is indeed the danger with the Hitchcockian touches, but, because this is an animation film, they look less perilous, so we can enjoy them along with the outrageous but humorous end to its climactic moment.

Like “Chico and Rita”(2010), another charming cell animation, “A Cat in Paris” was a surprise nominee for Best Animation Oscar early in this year. Though I think its thin plot is stretched a little too much for the feature film length, this is a delightful animation on the whole, and I liked Zoé’s cat as much as its friends even though it does not talk. Now I wish the cats in my campus can be as sociable as that cat.

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A Better Life (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : A gardener and his son in LA

Posted on April 8, 2012 by kaist455

Some movies can bring me close to the life of the people I never have come across. “A Better Life”, a simple but heartfelt drama about one man struggling for him and his son in the world which do not welcome him openly, is such a case. Although I do not think I can talk or discuss about the issues it indirectly raises through his story because I am an outsider and there are the people who know more about these issues than me, I could feel a lot of empathy toward the human relationship at the center of the story while watching it, and it touched somewhere in my heart.

Carlos Galindo(Demián Bichir) is a gardener working in LA, and he can be a exemplar case of a hard-working American. He wakes up early at his home in the morning, and then, by his employer’s truck, he goes around several big houses for tending the gardens with his employer. This is a hard work, but Carlos is a man dedicated to his job and he is proud of what he has accomplished, a small but nice house for him and his son Luis(José Julián) with the backyard for growing plants for his works.

However, his daily life is very fragile, because he has been an illegal immigrant for many years. Even with one small wrong step, he can be caught by the police and deported back to Mexico. At least, thanks to his longtime employer/close friend who trusts him, he has a stable job unlike other illegal immigrant workers, who try hard to get the chance to work every morning in front of the potential employers like he once did before.

But his employer tells him that he decides to retire and he will move back to Mexico, so Carlos finds himself at the important decision point. His employer is willing to sell his truck and other equipments to him, and he can have the business of his own. He hesitates because it is a risky choice and he does not have enough money to buy them, but the offer is tantalizing, for he does not want to go back to where he was. Thanks to his sister, who gives him the money she has saved for her family, he eventually buys the truck, but, unfortunately, his happiness gets broken on his very first day as the employer – his truck is stolen right in front of his eyes.

Now, around this point, Vittorio De Sica’s great film “The Bicycle Thief”(1948) will immediately come upon your mind. Carlos is quite devastated by his misfortune, but, on the next day, he begins the search with his son. While looking at their quest to find the man who stole the truck, the movie shows us the shabby sides of LA such as a stuffy apartment where many illegal immigrants manage to live together while hiding from the authorities.

While following a familiar plot, the sincere screenplay by Eric Eason and Roger L. Simon presents us the small intimate moments between its characters. Carlos and Luis have been distant from each other mainly due to the difference of their daily life patterns(when Carlos wakes up early in the morning, his son is still sleeping in his bedroom; when Luis comes back to home late in the evening, his father, exhausted due to his work, is sleeping in the couch in the living room), but, through their search for the truck, they get the chance to reconnect with each other, and the movie observes the gradual change in their relationship with precision rather than pushing them along the plot.

Demián Bichir, who appeared in the TV series “Weeds” and several notable films including Steven Soderbergh’s “Che”(2008), was Oscar-nominated for his understated but resonating performance early in this year(I think that is the major reason for why this small film will be released at South Korean theaters earlier than I expected). Through one of the memorable performances in last year, Bichir gives his character lots of fine human details to make him far more than a stereotype, and Carlos comes to us as a human being with the strong sense of morality and the quiet dogged determination.

Bichir and his co-performers paint a realistic picture of the hard life in LA with the humane touches. When Carlos finally confronts the man responsible for his plight later in the story, they stare each other without a word, but what they respectively feel is clear to us. He is not a bad man, and Carlos understands that man’s motive well unlike his furious son, because, I guess, he had been there before.

The newcomer José Julián also does a good supporting job as the son who comes to understand his father more than before, who has raised him by himself since his mother left them when he was very young. Although he is almost close to joining the local gang in his neighbourhood, Luis is not a bad kid, and, through the journey with his father, he learns that the life is not as easy as he thought– and how much his father wants to give him a better chance.

You will be surprised that “A Better Life” is directed by Chris Weitz, who made a good debut with his brother Paul Weitz through their raunchy but sweet teenager comedy “American Pie”(1999) and then has filled his directing career with several diverse films including “About a Boy”(2002), “The Golden Compass”(2007), and “New Moon”(2009)(I heard that Bichir initially thought he would play a vampire gardener when he was approached by Weitz). This small movie movingly tells us how important the family is to some people on the fringe of the society, and how much they try their best for their family. It’s a sad, desperate tale with heartbreaks, but there are always hope and optimism – because they never give up.


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The Hunger Games (2012) ☆☆☆(3/4) : A feisty heroine in one deadly reality show

Posted on April 8, 2012 by kaist455

Now, Harry Potter series is over, so what is the next big thing to watch at the theater? While it was having its long, enormous success for ten years, many franchises had been attempted in here and there based on the other popular novel series, but, although some of them were good, none of them was as successful as Harry Potter while getting each own failure or success at the box office – and not many of them were continued after that.

“The Hunger Games”, based on the another famous novel series, is one of these latest attempts, and this is a promising start for the upcoming sequels to be produced. It is an entertaining blockbuster movie with a nice story and a good heroine, and, most of all, it is firmly anchored by the diligent lead performance even though it plods a bit during its third act and does less than what it can do with the potentials inside its intriguing futuristic setting.

The background of the movie is America in distant future, which was devastated by some catastrophe and then rebuilt as the dictatorial nation named Panem. America was divided into 13 districts, and they were dominated by the Capitol, the big city located somewhere in the Rocky Mountains. Poor people in these districts once rebelled against the powerful and wealthy in the Capitol, but the rebel was ruthlessly suppressed, so, as the punishment, 12 districts(District 13 was gone) now have to present a boy and a girl between the ages of 12 and 18 to the Capitol. ‘Tributes’ are picked through the annual lottery(“May the odds be ever in your favor.”) and then sent to the Capitol, where they must participate in the dangerous combat/survival game named the Hunger Games. The game will be broadcasted on TV and the show will go on until only one participant survives as the sole victor.

When I heard about its premise, my brain immediately reminded me that I have encountered the similar premises before. In Stephen King’s novel “The Long Walk”, 100 boys were picked and forced to play the game in which they have to keep walking until only one remains still alive and walking. And you have probably heard about that infamous Japanese SF horror film “Battle Royale”(2000), a ruthless story about the teenagers hurled into the extreme survival game where they should kill their colleagues for their own survival.

Anyway, regardless of whether the novel by Suzzane Collins was inspired by these novels or other sources, “The Hunger Games” has its own story and world to tell and show. Its heroine, Katniss Everdeen(Jennifer Lawrence), is a young girl living in District 12, which is probably around the Appalachian Mountains area. When her young sister is unluckily picked at the lottery, she promptly fills her young sister’s place for saving her, and she is sent to the Capitol along with her fellow tribute Peeta Mellark(Josh Hutcherson). They are accompanied by Effie Trinket(Elizabeth Banks), who supervises their procedure, and Haymitch Abernathy(Woody Harrelson), a former winner from District 12 who gives them the helpful advices for the upcoming the 74th Hunger Games.

The Capitol, where the advanced technology is flamboyantly mixed with the various styles from the past, is impressive to watch. Its huge architectures evoke the grandness of the ancient cultures, and, surrounded by them, the tributes for the Hunger Games are not so different from the gladiators of the ancient Rome era. As a matter of fact, at the big opening ceremony, they are presented with the showy costumes and the chariots in front of the excited audiences in the stadium. If you know the meaning of Latin phrase panem et circenses, you will be very amused by this(and now I wonder if there is any country on the Earth which derives its names from food).

The game Katniss and other tributes are subjected to is a twisted reality show. They individually talk with the host Ceasar Flickerman(Stanley Tucci with a slick hairdo) on the stage, and they have to impress the audiences for their advantages in the game while going through the training for their combat and survival skill. Once they complete the preparation stage, and they are sent to the outdoor area called the Arena, which is almost perfectly controlled by the producer Seneca Crane(Wes Bentley with villainous beard) and his staff. Katniss should be careful of not only other participants but also other dangers which can be unleashed by Crane’s staff at any moment. Like the TV producer in “The Truman Show”(1998), while watching everything happening within the Arena through the cameras hidden in here and there, Crane can do anything for the entertainment for his eager mass, and they love that.

There are certainly many killings on and off the screen while the plot is progressed, but, unlike the cutthroat approach of “Battle Royal”, “The Hunger Games” rather stays in the safe zone of PG-13. With the shaky handheld camera, the violence in the film quickly comes and then quickly goes, and the tension during the game is relatively flat compared to its build-up process. In addition, with the resolution a little too easy, the movie does not delve well into the dark, disturbing area where “Battle Royal” uncompromisingly hurled itself into.

But Katniss is a good character we can identify with, and Jennifer Lawrence admirably carries the movie for more than 2 hours as a strong-willed girl who knows a lot about how to survive and how to shoot an arrow. When you see Lawrence trying to hunt for food in the forest, some of you will be instantly reminded of her Oscar-nominated performance in “Winter’s Bone”(2010), and it is sort of amazing that they did not choose Lawrence right from the beginning, considering that Katniss is not so different from the heroine of that movie.

The movie is essentially Lawrence’s show, but some of the supporting performers surrounding her have some fun with their broad characters. Elizabeth Banks, Stanley Tucci, Wes Bentley and Toby Jones are as flamboyant as their attires and wigs, and Woody Harrelson slowly reveals a good man with the bitterness of lifetime inside the goofy appearance. Lenny Kravitz is a kind-hearted costume designer with some daring idea for Katniss and Peeta’s appearance, and Donald Sutherland gives the sense of authority as the president with increasing concern for the most popular contestant in the show.

Meanwhile, Josh Hutcherson and Liam Hemsworth, who plays Katiness’ boyfriend in her hometown, put Lawrence in the relationship reminiscent of the Twilight series. For securing the sponsorship and the popularity, Katniss reluctantly allows herself involved with Peeta, a bakery boy who has some crush on her even before being picked at the lottery, but her feeling shown in front of the cameras can be more than the pretension for survival – and, like other people in Panem, her boyfriend watches this whole development. But, don’t worry folks, we all know Katniss is an independent girl who always knows what she should do, unlike some passive, self-involved girl pathetically stuck between a handsome vampire and a hunky werewolf.

At present, “The Hunger Games” is responded well by the audiences with the impressive opening week, and the other two books by Collins are scheduled to be adapted into three sequel films. I think the movie is not as thought-provoking as it could have been, but its 142 minutes was not a tepid experience, and I liked its looks and, most of all, Lawrence’s performance. Overall, this is a competent first chapter for the upcoming sequels, and, even if they disappoint us, Lawrence will be our insurance.

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Take Shelter (2011) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : A man getting disturbed by apocalyptic visions

Posted on April 2, 2012 by kaist455

 One professor at my department, who studied neuroscience, once told us something you have probably heard from somewhere: if you think you are crazy or getting crazy, that means you are not crazy because crazy people do not know that they are crazy. Come to think of it again now, this sounds a lot like that famous dilemma from Joseph Heller’s “Catch-22”, but, at least, I thought at that time it was a nice advice for the students who had to deal with lots of pressure from the academic process and resulting stress.

It can also be a good advice to the hero of “Take Shelter”(2011), for he thinks at first something is wrong with his head. However, he cannot ignore what disturbs him deeply every night. He tries to quell the turbulence of his mind as far as he can, but, ironically, he is gradually transformed into a more disturbed man obsessed with the visions attacking him every night, and it is quite possible that he is the upcoming threat to the family he wants to protect, not the catastrophe of epic proportion he fears.

What Curtis(Michael Shannon) experiences in his dreams are very frightening indeed. In the opening scene, he sees the big storm clouds in the sky while the dark, thick rain droplets are falling from the sky. Many disturbing moments follow in the subsequent nightmares. His dog suddenly attacks him and bites his arm. He and his daughter suddenly find themselves attacked by strangers as if they were in some sort of zombie movie. His house gets impacted by some unknown force outside the house. And he begins to see and hear disturbing things even when he is really awake during day.

Though he keeps being agitated by the dreams with apocalyptic undertone, he tries to maintain his daily life in a nice little town somewhere in Ohio while searching for the solution to his problem. He knows it is possible that he is getting crazy. His mother was diagnosed to have paranoid schizophrenia, so it is possible that he is also being fallen into the same mental illness due to genetic factors. He checks several books on psychology at the library. He also meets the counselor to get more advice and help. He is prescribed with the medicines for alleviating his symptoms.

But these dreams still visit him and they continue to exert sinister effects on his mind. There are of course several ‘it was a dream’ moments in the film, but the director/writer Jeff Nichols makes these clichés into something truly terrifying with effective CGIs. The dream scenes look so vivid and realistic that we can understand why Curtis is frightened a lot by the possibilities they ominously implied to him. You know it’s not real, but you can feel how excruciating it is to him when you see his terrified face with his teeth clenched tightly in one of his nightmares – this is much scarier than what’s happening before his eyes.

Michael Shannon’s increasingly anxious performance, which was unjustly not nominated for Best Actor Oscar in this year, is crucial for the mounting suspense in the film. I noticed Shannon for the first time in Oliver Stone’s “World Trade Center”(2006), and he has been memorable as intense or disturbed characters in several films including “Bug”(2006), in which he and Ashley Judd plunge themselves into the pit of madness with no compromise, and “Revolutionary Road”(2008), where he shatteringly trembles his co-actors as a truth teller in the story.

In this film, you can easily imagine Shannon in the remake version of “The Dead Zone”(1983), where Christopher Walken plays an ordinary man unnerved by the disturbing visions only he can see. He deftly conveys us the seething instability inside his character’s mind with the quiet but uncomfortable intensity exuding from his face. Curtis is a nice family man we can like, but he finds himself helplessly unhinged by what’s eating him inside while barely hiding his torment from others near him. He wants to talk about his woes, but it is not easy for him to talk openly about them, because he has the responsibility to support his family as the husband and father. His daughter with hearing problem fortunately gets a good chance to have a cochlear implant surgery, and he is well aware that his mental problem may ruin this fortune.

He attempts to take care of his problems by himself through getting rid of the sources of the fears induced by his dreams. He builds a makeshift pen for keeping his dog inside, and then, still not satisfied with that measure, he eventually gives it to his brother(their brief conversation scene suggests the bitter mutual feeling about their unhappy past). Because he is afraid of the possibility of a massive tornado, which can really occur suddenly in his region, he begins to renovate and expand the storm shelter in his backyard. He worries about toxic gas, and then he purchases gas masks and put them in the shelter.

However, this does not give him any peace of his mind. Moreover, while his dreams move toward the fears more personal than before, his behaviors deteriorate the relationships between others. As a close friend, his co-worker Dewart(Shea Whigham) willingly helps Curtis when he wants to use the equipments from their construction company without permission, even though he can be fired with Curtis for that. However, like Curtis’ wife, he begins to sense something is wrong with his friend, and Curtis’s paranoid puts another wedge on their friendship, which eventually leads him to the breaking point where Shannon delivers one hell of overwhelmingly rampant moment which made my eyes wide open even during the second viewing.

In case of Curtis’ wife Samantha(Jessica Chastain), she is in lots of frustration because of her husband’s inexplicable behaviors. She is not mad about his trouble, but she is angry because he puts the family into the financially precarious position without any discussion with her. The horror in Curtis’ dreams may only exist in his head, but the horror of losing a job along with the health insurance is terrifyingly real to his family as well as him. When I learned about how scary it is to lose a job in US through a book around 10 years ago, it only came to me as a mere fact of American life, but now it becomes more real to me through several recent movies including this film.

Chastain had a dazzling breakthrough in last year with a bunch of her stellar performances in the movies including “The Tree of Life”(2011) and “The Help”(2011). In “Take Shelter”, she is a warm, understanding heart of the story like she was in “The Tree of Life”. Samantha feels hurt and angered because of her husband’s recklessness, and she does not hide her resentment from her husband when she thinks enough is enough. Nevertheless, she decides to stay besides him with a practical plan for their uncertain and messy future, although her husband’s mental disturbance now even casts a shadow of doubt over their relationship.

As a consequence, their mutual trust and love are put into the ultimate test after another frightful vision visits upon Curtis at one dark, stormy night. I will not describe what will happen in details, but let’s say the movie tightly focuses on Shannon and Chastain without giving any hint of what’s going on outside, and these two talented performers are superlative to watch in this claustrophobically suspenseful sequence which eventually elevates itself to one of the most moving moments I encountered recently.

Jeff Nichols previously impressed me a lot with his debut work, “Shotgun Stories”(2007), which was one of the small gems I watched in 2009. That movie was also a family drama both intimate and intense in many aspects. I instinctively realized what kind of the story was and then was surprised by how it was told. I fondly remember how that movie carefully established the bleak sense of ill fate over the wide field surrounding them, and, again, Nichols does an excellent job of setting the right tone and atmosphere for the landscape of his second film. The outdoor scenes are mostly sunny and bright with the occasional shots of the wide field, but, beneath the mundane atmosphere, there is the tense, uneasy feeling you cannot easily put a finger on, and we know something can suddenly happen at any moment. Is it possible that Curtis’ dreams are not just the delusions caused by a mental illness?

While observing Curtis being driven to near madness, I recalled Akira Kurosawa’s “I Live in Fear”(1955). In that film, so fearful of the nuclear war, a middle-aged man tries to move his family to Brazil using all the money he has, and his family thinks he is crazy. As he is reminded belatedly later, this is insane considering that the nuclear war will annihilate almost everyone on the earth, but the movie suggests that it may be also a little insane to live while not worrying about the potential of the catastrophe like that.

But I think that’s how our mind works for us. We know we live with the uncertainty in the world and its inherent dangers. We sometimes worry about the accidents and disasters whenever we hear about them from the media. Fortunately, they do not happen often, and our mind distances ourselves from the reality a bit even while accepting, or forgetting, that anything can happen. We can say that poor Curtis suffers because the mental barrier which has buffered his mind from the reality is broken.

The final scene of “Take Shelter” does not give any confirmation on my thoughts about Curtis’ problem. As many of you know, this kind of story usually arrives at the question of whether the answer is, say, A or B, or somewhere between them, and the movie goes with the third option which can frustrate some of us due to resulting ambiguity.

But it certainly leaves us something to think and discuss about, while slowly, and effectively, revealing its surprise to us. I am not so sure about what exactly happens or what it means, but all I can say is that, while musing on this scene, it comes to my mind that it has been a long time since I used that psychiatric term – folie à deux, or, more specifically, folie en famille in this case.

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Life, Above All (2010) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : This girl’s hard life

Posted on April 2, 2012 by kaist455

Looking back at when I watched “Life, Above All”(2010) in last December, I can discern that I am a more jaded adult than I think. At one point in the story, I wondered for a while if its heroine really had to do what she was determined to do. I understood her motive, but I thought it might be better for her and her family to leave the problem alone because it was possible that there was really nothing she could do for changing the circumstance. However, it was what should be done, and her heart knew that, and I was eventually moved by her determination while recognizing that she was right after all.

“Life, Above All” is a drama based on specific place and people on the surface, but its power comes from the universal aspects of the human life inside its specificities. While being basically a familiar story of a young but resilient girl who has to go through the hardships by herself while holding her family together, it tells us about the ramifications caused by a certain disease the people seldom mention in the movie, and the following pains inflicted on individuals.

The life becomes recently more difficult for Chanda(Khomotso Manyaka), a young girl living in some rural town around Johannesburg in South Africa. Chanda’s mother Lillian(Lerato Mvelase) is so devastated about her baby daughter Sarah’s death that it is Chanda’s job to take care of this sad family affair. Besides notifying her mother’s family of the funeral to be held and hiding Sarah’s death from her half-siblings, Chanda also has to visit a local mortician for selecting a nice little coffin for her deceased sister. Compared to this unenviable task, taking the stolen money back from her stepfather hanging at the local bar looks like an easy task.

With the help from Mrs. Tafa(Harriet Manamela), Lillian’s close friend and neighbour living next to Chanda’s house, the funeral is proceeded well with the town people showing condolence and support to her family, except Lillian’s relative still stern to Lillian because of her disobedience in the past. But it seems the people heard something bad about Chanda’s family and talk about it behind their backs. Though it looks like everyone accepts that Sarah died of influenza virus, they know, or believe, that there is a real cause which they do not want to talk about openly.

Anyway, the life goes on – for a while. Lillian gains her strength back, but it is becoming more apparent day by day that she is getting ill. She gets weaker, and there are several black spots on her legs. It goes without saying that she needs to see a doctor, but she does not want that, and the neighbours are already suspicious about what’s going on inside with their doubtful gazes.

If you have some common medical knowledge, you will immediately recognize what is happening even though most of the characters in the film do not mention about AIDS. AIDS has been one of the biggest social problems in South Africa since the 1990s, and it has been getting worse in the epidemic level due to that ridiculous AIDS denialism prevalent around the high-ranking government officials including the former president Thabo Mbeki. When I checked Wikipedia for getting more information about AIDS denialism, I found it is as hilarious as the global warming denialism(one magazine devoted to AIDS denialism was shut down because all of its editors died of… you know), but this is not a laughing matter, considering that it is estimated that around 365,000 people died in South Africa because they did not get the access to the anti-retroviral treatments thanks to Mbeki’s misguided belief. After Mbeki’s resignation, the South African government’s policy on AIDS has been changed, but the recent report from South African Institute for Race Relations (SAIRR) says there will be around 6 million HIV carriers in South Africa in 2015 (The current population of South Africa is around 50.6 million, by the way).

While never emphasizing the social issue it deals with, the movie shows how the lack of knowledge on HIV causes lots of damages not only to the patients themselves but also to their families. They can be stigmatized and ostracized by the community, and Chanda knows that well through her close friend Esther(Keaobaka Makanyane). One of the sad tragedies caused by AIDS in South Africa is that many young children are left without parents and then most of them resort to making a living through the prostitution, which will inevitably expose them to HIV. In a sad scene where Chanda discovers that what the adults say about Esther is true, both are well aware of what can happen, but there is a hard reality they cannot deny.

The movie is based on Allan Stratton’s acclaimed young adult novel “Chanda’s Secret”, and the director Oliver Schmitz gives his story the realistic atmosphere of rural South African town with unforced natural beauty. The sense of the community is clearly conveyed through the people in front of the camera. Chanda’s house looks plain and shabby at first, but it is not as bad as you think, and, judging from the exterior of the other houses including Mrs. Tafa’s, this is a relatively nice middle-class neighbourhood where they help their poor neighbours if that is required. However, there is also the dark side fueled by fear and superstition about AIDS, and it is sometimes quite ominous even though they do not say much but stare at Chanda’s house.

The cinematographer Bernhard Jasper’s handheld digital camera usually stays around Chanda while never calling the attention to itself. While gradually getting to realize the situation surrounding her, we come to see the story through Chanda’s view, and the remarkable performance by a young actress Khomotso Manyaka grips our attention to the story. While there is some naivety inside her, Chanda is smart and resilient enough to take care of her family instead of her sick mother and absent stepfather. She is certainly not fooled by the doctor who has probably extorted money from many illiterate patients while impressing them with his ‘degrees’, and the way how they negotiate implicitly in front of other characters is one of few humorous spots in the drama.

It must have been a difficult job for Manyaka because she had to carry the movie throughout the film as the lead actress, but she looks quite natural while never overplaying the emotions behind her disinterested face. I heard from others that Manyaka is a lot different from her character, and that reminds me of when I recently watched a small South Korean indie film “Lovable”(2011). I remember how much I was shocked to realize that its lead child actress, who played an autistic character authentically, was actually a charming ordinary girl. I know we also have to give lots of credits to the good directors who are able to pull the good performances from their young performers, but it is always amazing to see what they do in front of the camera.

The movie also has the other equally good acting by Keaobaka Makanyane, who is believable as Chanda’s best friend Esther. Esther does not like what she has to do for a living, but there is not any other option available to her, and, in one brief but sorrowful shot, she barely hides her desperation with forced smile while approaching to her potential ‘client’. Through the performances by Manyaka and Makanyane, the bond between their characters feels palpable; there is a moment when their relationship is strained, but they remain the best friend to each other. When Esther is in the dire situation, Chanda has no hesitation about helping her unfortunate friend, and that act propels Chanda to do what she thinks should be done for her mother no matter what other people think. Maybe she can continue her life without her mother as if nothing happened while accepted by her neighbours, but she can’t.

While Lerato Mvelase is good as the gentle mother who worries more about her children than herself even when she gets sicker, Harriet Manamela is memorable as Mrs. Tafa, who is the most interesting and complex supporting character in the story. In some way, the movie is also her story, and we can feel her drama turning its wheels nearby Chanda’s. Mrs. Tafa is sometimes abrasive or oppressive to Chanda, but she is a kind woman with good intentions who happens to collide with Chnada due to their difference of the opinions. Though she is scornful of Esther, it is implied that she may understand the friendship between Chanda and Esther although she openly disapproves of it. After all, their relationship is not that different from that long friendship between her and Lillian.

As a good friend, Mrs. Tafa does whatever she can do for helping Lillian, but she has stayed within her lines. She is afraid of being associated with her friend’s disease, and she hides some truth about her deceased son. However, finally, there comes the crucial time for her to decide whether she takes an action or not, and, in a calm but dramatic moment, she makes a brave choice of standing by Chanda in front of the town people gathering like a lynching mob in front of Chanda’s house. Instead of standing on the soap box, she persuades them in a practical way which would be appreciated by J. Edgar Hoover.

“Life, Above All” is a powerful universal drama about how its human characters struggle through specific hardships. Like many other good dramas with social issues, it draws us to the story and the characters first, and then it makes us think about the problems presented on the screen afterwards. Its last scene is rather implausible in contrast to its vivid realism but somehow it feels right in its story. It is warm and optimistic, but the camera eventually focuses on Chanda’s eyes which still look weary even with a little ray of hope. Her latest struggle with the world is over, but there will be another hard time for her and her family, and she knows that. And so do other Chandas in the world.

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Architecture 101 (2012) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : First Love 101

Posted on March 24, 2012 by kaist455

To be frank with you, I did not have much expectation when I read the synopsis of “Architecture 101”. Though the title sounds indeed different from other countless romance films we have encountered, the story is very familiar on the verge of being clichè; a boy met a girl – and a man meets a woman 15 years later. I bet you will get a pretty good idea about what happened or what will happen in 10 seconds.

However, surprisingly, the movie exceeds my expectation a lot in two ways. The story is exactly what I expected, and it is told exactly in the form I predicted, but it is handled with lots of care and sensitivity while never overplaying its emotions. I really cared about the characters, and their story has grown on me with wistful bittersweet feeling after watching it. Furthermore, this is one of few romance films where the occupation of characters has lots of significance in their story. In one of the important points in the movie, because they study architecture together, a boy tries to give a girl the model of her dream house constructed by himself. Isn’t that more refreshing than the routine declarations of love with flowers we have witnessed before in other romance films?

The movie begins with Seo-yeon(Han Ga-in) coming to the architecture company where Seung-min(Eom Tae-woong) works. She wants her family house in Jeju-do to be renovated for her ailing father, and she asks him to design the plan for this renovation job. Though he initially does not recognize her at first, Seung-min agrees to do the job because her appearance reawakens the old memory with her during their college days.

The movie goes back and forth between the past and the present while the plan for the renovation is concocted and then executed with several modifications added later. 15 years ago, young Seung-min, played by Lee Je-hoon at this point, was a college freshman who had just begun his study in the Architecture department. One of the lectures he attended was, not so surprisingly, Architecture 101, and that was how he had a Meet Cute moment with a charming girl from the Music department, who was none other than young Seo-yeon(Suzy).

As the lecture progresses, their romance plot gets thickened. Because they live in the same area, they happen to go around and observe the places as a part of their study, so we get several lovely intimate looks of Seoul while observing the feelings growing between them. I once complained to others that Seoul is full of bland concrete apartment buildings, but, when Seung-min and Seo-yeon gets the panoramic view of the countless apartments at the rooftop of an apartment building, it took me back to how much of abstract wonder these buildings brought to me when I was a kindergarten kid.

The director/writer Lee Yong-joo previously made an impressive debut with “Possessed”(2009). It was a fairly good horror film, and that shabby apartment building felt so spooky in the mundane rhythm of daily life that I even mentioned “Rosemary’s Baby”(1968) in my review while describing that plain but ominous building where something might lurks at the corner or that dark basement.

Of course, “Architecture 101” is far different from “Possessed”, but you can see how Lee Yong-joo is good at setting the scenes and their atmospheres through the places and the buildings from both films(no wonder that he once studied Architecture). Different times and places are imbued with distinctive feelings, so we do not get lost during the constant jumping between the past and the present. While walking along those narrow residential alleys of Seoul, Seung-min and Seo-yeon find one nice empty house with an old-fashioned style; when Seo-yeon cleans it as their special place, it looks nicer with lots of nostalgia brought on me. As the crucial part of the story, Seo-yeon’s house is located in the nice environment along with the calm beach scenery in front of it, and, when it is finally renovated, the result is really a good work with lots of cares and considerations to be appreciated behind the design. In fact, it is so good that you may wonder how much money Seo-yeon has received as the alimony from her failed marriage.

And I also like how architecture is connected not only its looks but also with its story. We can instantly see that the lecture itself is a framing device of the plot, and this storytelling device perfectly fits with the story itself. Like they look around the places to find something they have never looked at before, they also find something hidden in their hearts in the progress. While the story at the present is progressed, it becomes apparent that the renovation job is both professionally and personally a serious matter to Seug-min; how can he and Se-yeon deal with the memory of their half-built romance left in their past?

Though the plot becomes creaky at times despite its strength in many aspects, the performances of four principle performers are the firm foundation for the story to be built on. While Eon Tae-woong and Han Ga-in are good as jaded older characters, Lee Je-hoon and Suzy have a good chemistry between them as the center of the story. Because I was very impressed by Lee Je-hoon’s breakthrough performances in “Bleak Night”(2010) and “The Front Line”(2011) in the last year, I am very glad that the movie shows another different side of his immense talent. Like any other naive young men facing the first feeling of love, Seung-min gets awkward, nervous, hesitant, and tentative, and Lee Je-hoon always hits the right tone; his scenes with his close friend(scene-stealing Cho Jeong-Seok) who gives lots of amusing advices on the love relationship are particularly hilarious. I am not so familiar with Suzy, who is more known as a popular singer in South Korea, but I can say that she is simply beautiful as the emblem of first love; many of you probably recall such a girl like her in your life. You may complain that this young handsome couple is not connected with their plain adult counterpart, but, hey, isn’t that how you remember your younger days?

The movie has lots of nostalgic elements inside its story, and I think it will especially appeal a lot to the South Korean audiences who were in college around the 1990s. Though I was just a young teenager during that time, I remember many things, and I found the tiny details of South Korea during the 1990s shown here and there in the film are very enjoyable to watch. I remember how I was delighted to get a portable CD player – and it is quite amusing now to think that there was a time when I and others could live with the computer whose hard disk size was around or below 1GB.

“Architecture 101” is a rare romance film which can be described as both smart and sensitive. It knows how to establish the ground for the romance, how to build it on the ground, and how to furnish it with real fragile emotions inside its adult characters. Thankfully free of overblown melodrama which usually plagues around other South Korean romance movies, it has quiet, restrained but effective emotional moments, and it is rewarding to watch how it carefully constructs its story with them as the building blocks to the satisfying ending. There still exist some feelings inside their hearts, but the years have passed, and Seung-min and Seo-yeon are sensible enough to know what cannot be done in their present circumstance. But their memory of first love is precious enough to be remembered, and it is beautifully rendered into one good job – you may want to buy it, perhaps.

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Tyrannosaur (2011) ☆☆☆(3/4) : A violent man stuck in his gloomy world

Posted on March 24, 2012 by kaist455

Joseph is a pretty unlikable guy right from his first appearance. He gets furious because he has just lost a bet on some horse race, and then, his seething temper explodes and he savagely kicks his poor dog in its chest. He instantly comes to regret about his impulsive violence, but the water has already been split, and he becomes more miserable than before.

“Tyrannosaur”, an impressive debut work by the actor Paddy Considine, has little excuse or explanation for what kind of a man Joseph is, but, like other good gritty character studies about aggressive working-class protagonists, it makes us understand an unpleasant man and the gloomy world he inhabits in. Though not many things are changed at the end of story, there is a small dose of hope in the bleakness, and that makes a notable difference in the shabby life of a man who finally starts seeing what’s wrong with him through the incidental connection with a stranger.

It comes to him when Joseph(Peter Mullan) happens to hide in the shop owned by a middle-aged woman named Hannah(Olivia Colman) after making another violent burst of his temper. Their encounter is brief, but he comes to her shop again. Their initial interaction is rocky mainly due to Joseph’s hostile reaction to Hannah’s kindness motivated by her Christian belief, but he apologizes to her for his rudeness when he sees he hurts her sincere feeling, and they soon get a little close to each other.

The movie conveys their respective needs for each other to us while never emphasizing them. Joe has lived alone at home since his wife passed away, and now he becomes lonelier than before after he killed his dog. He has been acquainted with a boy living across the street, but they are more or less than neighbours, and Joseph is not of much help to that boy when he is in difficulty. Hannah lives in a more affluent environment, but her barren daily life always starts with torment thanks to her alcoholic husband James(Eddie Marssan) and their loveless marriage. Joseph is abrasive at times, but he is at least nice to her unlike her husband, who has lots of suspicion on what his wife does outside when he is absent.

So it is natural that Joseph and Hannah form the relationship between them while recognizing the weary loneliness from each other. They feel a little better than usual when they are together. When they spend the time with other people at the bar after the funeral of Joseph’s close friend, their faces are relatively brightened up, and it seems possible that they will help each other a lot through their budding relationship.

The director/writer Paddy Considine has been known to us mainly through his good performances in several films including “In America”(2003), “Cinderella Man”(2005), and “The Bourne Ultimatum”(2007). With this movie, Considine shows that he is also a competent director. The depressing tone shrouding the daily life of his characters is well-maintained, and we can sense the harshness and cruelty generated inside this environment through not only Joseph but also the other people stuck in this world. Joseph seems to like a boy living across the street, but he only observes the cruelties inflicted on that boy by his mom’s bullying boyfriend. I wonder if Joseph was not so different from that guy when he was younger; he later confides to Hannah that he was not good to his deceased wife in spite of her love toward him.

Because he is a good actor, Considine knows well about how to pull the good performances from his actors, and they do give good performances for this film. I came to recognize Peter Mullan for the first time as the husband of Tilda Swinton’s character in “Young Adam”(2003), and then I began to see him as one of the dependable British actors you can count on. Here in this film, he is terrific as a man with explosive temper and lots of bitter regret, and he never loses the edges of his character while subtly expressing the small transformation inside his character. His gritty performance reminds me of another hostile protagonist in South Korean film “Breathless”(2009). Both characters are very violent men, but they learn about themselves in their limits through other people surrounding them, and they try to find a way out of their misery, although there is always a harsh reality in front of them.

On the opposite, Olivia Coleman is equally wonderful as a battered woman struggling through a difficult life. Though her religion seems to be helpful to some degrees, Hannah keeps being frustrated about her life while becoming an alcoholic just like her husband. Through the relationship with Joseph, she gets the chance to be happy for a while, and her bruised but brightened face is one of few warm spots in the film. Eddie Marsan is good as an abusive husband and a flawed, self-loathing human being, and his scenes with Coleman are both intense and human. Like many abusive husbands, James later begs for forgiveness pathetically to her when he gets relatively sober, and then, with alcohol, he becomes a horrible abuser with jealousy again as usual.

“Tyrannosaur” is a bleak but touching drama about how two lonely people can connect with and help each other in spite of their respective problems. I do not think Joseph becomes a changed man, but I think he really learns something about himself and his hopeless world. He is still a man capable of brutal violence, but at least what he commits near the ending is not as impulsive as killing his dog. In this case, he does what he *thinks* it is necessary to do. That’s a progress, isn’t it?

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Chronicle (2012) ☆☆☆(3/4) : They’ve got the power, but…

Posted on March 17, 2012 by kaist455

“Chronicle” is an interesting SF drama working well as the mix of the two film genres which have become notably prevalent during the last decade. On the surface, it presents itself as one of those ‘found footage’ movies a la “The Blair Witch Project”(1999) and “Paranormal Activity”(2007) while doing a good job of presenting the convincing reality for its story and characters. Beneath the surface, we see the dark adolescent drama tragically amplified by the superpower from nowhere. It may be cool to have the superpower, but there is always the big responsibility attached to the big power, and they learn a hard lesson with heavy price in the end.

At first, the story is mainly told through the camera operated by Andrew(Dane DeHann), and we look at his daily life as a lonely high school kid. Except his cousin Matt(Alex Russell), he has virtually no friend in his school, and even Matt is not that close to him although they go together to their school every morning by Matt’s car. Now Andrew attempts to guard and express himself through the video camera he carries around, but that does not change his low status in the school much; he still finds himself bullied and alienated as usual while everything is recorded in his camera.

But a sudden incident happens, and that affects everything in his life. Right after becoming miserable again at one evening party held at the barn near the town, he reluctantly follows Matt and Steve(Michael B. Jordan), a popular kid running for the school president election, to some place outside. Matt and Steve found a dark, ominous hole on the ground, and they go down into the hole to find what’s inside it. This is not a wise choice; they would be the first victims of whatever lurks inside if they were in other films, but, fortunately for them, that does not happen in this movie.

After going deeper into the hole, they encounter a big, mysterious illuminating object, and then a strange thing occurs. It is neither explained nor shown well, but, after somehow managing to survive, the boys find that they have acquired the telekinetic power. They can move the objects when they focus on them, and there is more than that; like growing muscle, their power is growing step by step through several trials and exercises.


The movie handles its supernatural promise with realistic approach, so we get amusing moments while the boys in the film try to deal with it. Like any regular kids who happen to discover a new ability inside them for the first time, these boys have some fun with their superpower while getting close to each other through their shared secret. While pulling several pranks for their private amusement, they have a great time when they find that they can also soar up in the sky. As you know, it is quite high and cold up there(while watching this moment, I thought about how many times I was reminded of the low temperature outside after I boarded the plane), but they don’t care because it is cool to exert their power in the open space anyway.

Even while all these things happen, the camera is always near them. It is basically a genre gimmick for storytelling, but the director Josh Trank, who wrote the story with the screenplay writer Max Landis(he is John Landis’ son, by the way), has an interesting way of handling his camera around his characters who wants to demonstrate their new ability in front of their camera. Not just limited within Andrew’s camera, the movie moves more freely than we expected. For instance, there is actually more than one camera in the movie, so we get the scene where the conventional editing job with the two cameras is possible.

Furthermore, thanks to their growing power, the camera moves around them more deftly and flexibly than before like an unseen observer because now they do not have to hold it with their hands. Though I have no idea about how they can hold the camera or other objects high in the air while occupied with the other things, the result is thrilling enough to overlook its apparent contrivances, and the special effects are nicely incorporated into the raw quality of the video image. This is a low-budget film, so we can easily discern where they use CGI, but it is acceptable as ‘found footage’ and I could accept that they can really fly above the clouds.

And the movie has a serious coming-of-age drama to grip our attention inside its format. It is fun to play with the power for a while, but the boys soon face its dark side. They realize that they can cause danger to themselves as well as others around them if they are not careful enough. Steve and Matt think they need the rules to restrain their ever-growing power, but it is not that easy for the boys going through hormone-charged adolescent years. Especially in case of Andrew, he has lots of emotional issues not only at school but also at his home due to his dying mother and abusive alcoholic father, and the power given to him is like gasoline to his seething troubled mind. Even though his power makes his school life a little better, that does not change what he is, and he still feels inferior to his new friends. Moreover, probably inspired by Darwinism, he gets a different view on their power, so the circumstance becomes more unstable along with the crumbling friendship between them.

Three main actors, Dane DeHann, Alex Russell, and Michael B. Jordan, give the credible performances. All of them are relatively unknown actors(but maybe you can recognize DeHann as one of the patients in the third season of HBO drama “In Treatment”, and Jordan as one of the memorable supporting characters in another well-known HBO drama “The Wire”), so you can instantly believe them as your average high schoolers along with the dynamic in their relationship. They are smart, but they are thrown into a difficult situation beyond their control without anyone to guide or counsel them, so what eventually happens is rather inevitable.

While watching their story, I recalled what I observed from South Korean movie “Bleak Night”(2010). In that film, the teenager characters cause the irreversible tragedy because of their failure to be open about themselves and connect with each other, and only bitterness is left with sorrow and regret. The same thing can be said about “Chronicle”, except that the ramification of their acts is a far more disastrous because of what they are capable of. With more power, there comes a bigger consequence as shown in its destructive third act, and there is no way back as a result.

“Chronicle” does not change the superhero genre, but it tries something different and refreshing, and the result is compelling as a whole in spite of several notable weaknesses as ‘found footage’(by the way, who gathered and edited all these video images from various sources?), and I admire how it establishes the story and the characters succinctly in its limits and then flies over them with excitement and thrill during the running time of less than 80 minutes. In addition, the movie confirms to me that we are very lucky not to evolve to have a telepathic ability; it may be useful for empathy, but imagine how stressful it can be when you happen to be connected with a guy having a bad day. And I really do not want to sit on the ledge at the top of the skyscraper without any safety measure even if I could fly.

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John Carter (2012) ☆☆1/2(2.5/4) : A big old-fashioned fantasy on Mars

Posted on March 10, 2012 by kaist455

I enjoyed “John Carter” to some degrees. I liked its fantasy world on Mars, and I appreciated how it presented its world with an old-fashioned pulpy style on the big screen, and I’d like to see and know more about it. I have some reservation about recommending it to you due to several notable flaws, but maybe we should at least admire how the people behind the film maintain that innocent style prevalent in those pulp novels during the 20th century while making it into a standard blockbuster action film.

The movie is based on the first book of the fantasy series written by Edgar Rice Burroughs in 1912. The people around that time were less knowledgeable about the space than us, and they actually thought there were life forms in Mars(Some astronomers like Percival Lowell even believed that there were canals on its surface). Along with H.G. Wells’ “The War of the Worlds”, Burroughs’ novel was one of the stories inspired by such imagination which looks now quite preposterous to us after the Viking program and other space programs gave us lots of information about Mars.

Anyway, it cannot be denied that Burroughs’ novels have influenced the other works in the realm of SF and fantasy since its publication. I am not familiar with the novel, but, while watching the movie, I recognized many familiar elements I saw from the other science fiction novels and films. As a matter of fact, I even recalled Mel Brooks’ “Spaceballs”(1987) during its climax sequence coupled with a big wedding scene at the grand hall.

The story itself is also the one we have seen or heard about many times before. John Carter(Taylor Kitsch), a former confederate soldier looking for a hidden gold mine after the Civil War, comes across a mysterious cave which transmits him Mars which is called Barsoom by its residents. While there is not much explanation about the purpose or mechanism of this cave(that’s fine with me), I have to point out that the movie overlooks one interesting existential question when Carter learns about how he was sent to Barsoom, but this is not a hard SF from the start.

Not so long after he puts his feet on the ground of Barsoom for the first time, Carter is captured by the Tharks, one of the four Martian tribes. He later gets involved in the on-going conflict between Helium and Zodang, and that is how he meets Dejah Thoris(Lynn Collins), the princess of Helium who is being forced to marry Sab Tahn(Dominic West), the ambitious king of Zodanga, for saving her people. No matter how many times Carter says he won’t fight for anyone or any cause, we all know that he will eventually exercise his newly gained power spectacularly and gets the lady in the end.

While following a rather predictable plot and going through many action scenes, I observed the world on the screen with curiosity. Barsoom looks alien to Carter at first, but he quickly adapts to the new environment. After all, it is not that different from the Wild West geographically, and, above all, the atmosphere of Mars is oxygenic enough for him to breathe. But he is still a stranger in the strange world; there are alien creatures, including Tharks, four-armed humanoid aliens with the two big tusks on the both sides of their chin(I wonder whether they can kiss each other like we do), and the gravity is lower(Carter can jump and punch more powerfully on this planet because of that – but I needed some time to accept it), and they have two moons on the sky(never mind the scientific fact that Phobos and Deimos are actually as small as asteroids).

The director Andrew Stanton, the director of great Pixar animations “Finding Nemo”(2003) and “Wall-E”(2008), makes a competent debut as the movie director with this film. Its $250 million budget is spent well for creating a believable fantasy world with lots of things to draw my attention. The landscape scenes in Barsoom are impressive with lots of care behind them, and the civilizations on this planet are amusing to watch; even though they have guns and flying vehicles, their societies seem to be stuck in the ancient culture of the Earth. In fact, they fight with swords and lances during the climax scene. When your opponents have guns, that’s quite a disadvantage, isn’t it?

Compared to its background, what happens in this interesting world is less fascinating. The story is too weak to support its goodies, and the characters are so thin that they can change their minds and attitudes whenever it is necessary for the plot. I know that Burroughs’ novel is not a great literature work, but there are several moments I found pretty cheesy and dated, though other people may find them charming. In addition, although the novel came first long before “Star Wars”(1977) and “Avatar”(2009) arrived, I could not help but compare the movie to these films and it looks pale compared to them. I do not deny that its action sequences are well-made and exciting, but they try a little too hard; the story nearly loses its way at times while surrounded by these big actions during its second half, and I got tired, though maybe it was due to more than 24 hours of the work at my lab before watching the movie.

Some of the actors in the film manage to leave impression in varying degree while filling their roles. While Taylor Kitsch is fairly adequate as the title role, Lynn Collins is beautiful and attractive as a princess of Mars. There are recognizable actors like Willem Defoe, Ciarán Hinds, James Purefoy, Dominic West, Mark Strong, Thomas Haden Church, Samantha Morton, and Bryan Cranston in the credit, but you might find that Woola, a Martian dog whose face is a puppy dog version of Java the Hutt, is the most memorable supporting actor in the film. It looks not so cute at first, it surely has some kind of likeableness growing on me.

Though I am not satisfied with it, “John Carter” is not as bad as some claimed, and I got the entertainment along with some amusement worthy of a ticket price. Though I doubt whether there will be a sequel as its last scene suggests, I think I will probably be able to enjoy it as much as this one if they make it. Maybe at that time, I may be served with the things more interesting than CGI actions.

 
Sidenote: I watched it in 2D – again, there is no problem with that.

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The Yellow Sea (2010) ☆☆☆1/2(3.5/4) : Reconsideration of Chase, Chaos, and Mayhem

Posted on March 2, 2012 by kaist455


— I previously wrote the review for “The Yellow Sea” in late December of 2010. This is the second review written after I watched the director’s cut version in this week.

If you want to read my original review, click here.

Looking back at the Hollywood blockbuster action films of 2011 when the year was about to end, I found none of them could top the raw realism of the ambitious South Korean thriller “The Yellow Sea”(2010). When I endured “Transformers 3” in last summer, I had no excitement at all with those pointless loud actions decorated with weightless CGI. In case of “The Yellow Sea”, the real people and the real vehicles are put into the actions on the screen, and they are certainly far more visceral than those big, humongous CGI robots fighting on the streets of Chicago.

“The Yellow Sea” is the second work by Na Hong-jin, who made a stunning debut with “The Chaser”(2008). I chose that movie as the best South Korean film of that year without any hesitation for many good reasons. It provided me a series of very intense moments of suspense and excitement while its seedy hero racing against the time to save his ill-fated employee from the horrible serial killer with no remorse but a chisel and a hammer. It was so absorbing that, overwhelmed by its urgency, I and other audiences were really quiet throughout the film; I even could hear someone near me faintly uttering a gasp during the devastating moment when one supporting character made a fatal mistake of trusting a stranger.

“The Yellow Sea” is another chase story, but this is a tale a lot different from “The Chaser”. Its landscape is not only far bigger but also far darker; this is a ruthless world propelled by the destructive impulse of the human nature which only generates more chaos and mayhem, and it certainly makes the characters in the film pay dearly for their foolishness in the end. Without a doubt, this movie is a grim experience, but it excites us with its sheer power relentlessly pushing the plot to the ending even when it is getting exhausted and collapsed during its final chapter. And it also manages to have some bitter laughs from observing how its characters screw up their matters while struggling in its convoluted noir plot which I also struggled to understand a bit during the first viewing.

In the international version/director’s cut, the movie gives you the important information you need to know at the start. The story begins in Yanji, the capital of the Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture in China which is the border region between China, North Korea, and Russia. Lots of Korean people moved to this area during the 20th century for getting out of the oppression due to the Japanese Occupation (1910-1945), and many of them chose to stay even after the World War II ended. Most of Korean Chinese people, called Joseonjok or “Chaoxianzu” in Chinese, in this area can speak both Chinese and Korean while being assimilated into the Chinese society. When I saw “Dooman River”(2009), a cold but sad film directed by Zhang Lu(he is also a Chinese of Korean descent), one of interesting sights from its barren border town is the police station with the nameplates respectively written in Chinese and Korean hung at its front.

After the Cold War was over, China and South Korea have been no longer enemies since the 1990s, and Joseonjok people began coming to South Korea for earning money like other immigrant workers from Southeastern Asia and Africa. Some of them live and work legally, but the others do not, so they have been one of the social issues in South Korea along with the other illegal immigrant workers. They are not often treated fairly, and I heard the news about them from time to time.

Gu-nam’s wife also went to South Korea, but there has been no news or money from her for a long time. Gu-nam(Ha Jeong-woo), who works as a taxi driver in Yanji, has been frustrated about that. While living alone in a squalid apartment building(their only daughter lives at his mother’s home), he has been mired in the despair and gambling debt. The loan sharks, to whom he owes 60 thousands Yuan(around $9500), keep visiting his home, and they sarcastically remind him that even selling all of his organs will not solve his problem. To make the matters worse, he has recently been fired from his job.

On one day, the local crime boss Myeon Jeong-hak(Kim Yoon-Seok), or Myeon-ga in short, approaches to him with the offer he cannot refuse. If Gu-nam goes to Seoul and kills some guy, Myeon-ga will resolve his gambling debt problem. In addition, because there is some spare time before the deadline, he will also get the chance to search for his wife while he is in South Korea. Gu-nam accepts the offer; he takes a train to Dalian and then boards a small ship along with the illegal immigrants for going across the Yellow Sea to South Korea.

The story is divided into the four titled chapters. The first chapter(“Taxi Driver”) is focused on establishing its hero and his hopeless daily life, and Na Hong-jin does a good job of vividly capturing the gray, depressing feeling surrounding Gu-nam and others. Shot in Yanji and the surrounding areas, the places and the people feel authentic with the painstaking details on clothes and sets, and, above all, that harsh feeling of cold winter days(From my original review: “It may will make you want a big cup of hot coffee when you walk out of the theater.”). Gu-nam does not talk much about himself except the seemingly meaningless opening narration on the epidemic of rabies during his childhood, but the small moments with few dialogues tell a lot about his miserable life. There is a brief scene with his father-in-law who has nothing else to say except his short apology to him while Gu-nam is looking at the smashed glass frame of his wedding day photograph. They were probably happy at that time, but now he is frequently haunted by the dream of his wife having an affair with someone in South Korea. Does she really abandon him as the others around him say?

The movie takes a considerable amount of time in the languid pace while slowly building the tension with the approaching deadline. The second chapter (“Murderer”) is about how alien the South Korea society is to Gu-nam. He is mostly taciturn, but the people, including the guy he is supposed to kill, always see who Gu-nam is through his awkwardness and accent. While concocting a fairly clever plan for executing his hit job through the rudimentary night surveillance on his feet, he also searches for his wife, but, despite some helpful information about her, there is not much success in his search.

Finally, there comes the moment when he has to commit a murder as Myeon-ga demands, and here is a very good scene which is suspenseful in Hitchcockian way. It’s a quiet cold winter night again, and Gu-nam is waiting for his target while hiding at the place across the building where the target lives on the top floor. But an unexpected thing happens in front of his eyes before he is ready to go inside the building. The calm but intense suspense is meticulously presented through the motion-detecting light-bulb at each staircase of the building. Though it is merely observing these lights serially turned on then off from the outside, the circumstance is clearly conveyed to us and Gu-nam, who must do something though he knows the situation becomes more perilous after the target eventually arrives at and goes inside the building.

The bloody incident happens, so Gu-nam soon finds himself hounded by the police and others. One of the best moments in “The Chaser” was its exciting chase sequence along the narrow alleys, and Na Hong-jin does not disappoint us in this case. He tries to top that with the rapid sequence in which our unfortunate hero has to run as fast as he can through the alleys and streets while attempting to evade a bunch of policemen and several patrol cars. In this movie, the people are really running, and the vehicles get clashed or crashed with the real impact on the screen, so you may wonder how Ha Jeong-woo went through all these situations while still in his character. We can discern where they used stunt men and special effects through shot-by-shot analysis, but he might actually have survived through them, perhaps.

Right from the third chapter(“Joseonjok”), the plot gets more thickened and complicated. It turns out that a crime boss operating in Seoul, Kim Tae-won(Cho Seong-ha), is involved with the incident. He is desperate to cover his trails by any means necessary, so he wants to eliminate Gu-nam before the police catch him. However, the circumstance becomes more chaotic and confounding to him and others, and the story becomes more unpredictable when Myeon-ga enters with his gangsters into South Korea to take care of the problem in his own way. Tae-won is willing to allow that if Myeon-ga solves his trouble as he promises, but…

It is possible that you will be lost in the convoluted storyline. Three are several things left unexplained with big and small holes in the plot, and the relationships between the characters are a little too complicated; maybe I need a big diagram for your better understanding if you ask me to explain. Even Korean audiences like me can fail to get a barely audible but crucial clue when one character mumbles that out unconsciously before he dies, but most of you will probably watch it with the subtitle, so you will easily understand what he says.

Nevertheless, the movie has enough power and ambition to drive its complicated story on the high-tension level, and it is darkly exciting. In its nightmarish circumstance, anything can happen, so the story sometimes goes against our expectations while holding our attention tightly even when we are a little confused. There is the terrific extended action sequence where one kind of chase is quickly followed by the other kind of chase. This is quite intense because we can see the two cars are not CGIs and they are clashing with each other really hard while avoiding the other cars on the road in spite of choppy editing and shaky camera work – and the movie even has a real big container truck for a big moment to impress us.

Like “The Chaser”, the movie is a grisly violent film, and many characters, mostly criminals, get killed or injured in the process. You will probably recall Takeshi Kitano’s recent film “Outrage”(2010), a mathematic exercise of violence about the bloody meaningless war between Japanese gangsters. The gangsters in “The Yellow Sea” are no wiser than them; they try to solve their problem, but they remain stuck in the same position while wasting their time and efforts. Their foolishness makes their mess bigger and bloodier and more chaotic, and the movie has a morbid fun with their stupidity. The biggest irony in the story comes from the fact that the urban South Korean gangsters are quite unprepared for the beastly brutality of Myeon-ga and his less sophisticated men. Besides a hatchet and a knife, Myeon-ga also wields a big animal bone, which incidentally comes handy to him during one cringe-inducing fight scene, with no mercy to the guys who dare to stand on his way. While it is quite horrific to watch its frank, realistic handling of violence, the movie mercifully leaves some of his brutal rampage to our imagination.

Because it is the chase story and has more distinctive characters, “The Yellow Sea” does not lose our interest despite the distant attitude toward its mayhem. In addition, it cares about some of its characters. Gu-nam becomes sympathetic to his target’s wife as he faces the possibility that his wife may be murdered. When he comes across her by coincidence, he promises to her that he will find who is responsible for her husband’s death and his misery. The problem is, Gu-nam is no more clever than cops or gangsters in the film, and, even during the last chapter(“The Yellow Sea”), there is nothing much he can do except staying alive. He later arrives at the quiet revelation scene where he stares at two characters from the distance at some place while saying nothing. Certainly there is the sense of betrayal and disillusion in the air, but it seems there is a lot more than that in Gu-nam’s disoriented mind.

The main performances are crucial in holding the film amid the violent carnage. Ha Jeong-woo, who scared the hell out of me with his chilling portrayal of a sadistic serial killer in “The Chaser”, is now a flawed noir hero writhing in the confusion beyond his control. Gu-nam is not entirely likable, but we come to feel sorry about his plight while watching him grasping for anything to survive. On the opposite, Kim Yoon-seok, who chased after his co-actor in “The Chaser”, is subtly menacing and then strikingly merciless as the larger-than-life villain, and Cho Seong-ha also gives a solid performance with increasing panic behind his face as the crime boss who turns out to have a motive quite petty compared to all the troubles caused by it.

Several months after its original theatrical version (157-min) was released in South Korea in late December of 2010, Na Hong-jin made the director’s cut because the theatrical version was hastily edited during its hurried post-production. The director’s cut was introduced as the international version at the Cannes Film Festival in last year, and I saw it recently. My intial impression with the theatrical version is not changed much after watching this version, but this version indeed shows notable Improvements. The story is progressed more smooth and tighter in a shorter running time(140-min), and I could follow the plot more easily than before.

“The Yellow Sea” is a very compelling thriller crackling with its dark nihilistic force. Its ending is a rather anti-climactic compared to what it has built and smashed along the plot, but, the more I think about it, it works as the fitting finale for the story which ultimately turns out to be a tragedy of mistrust. When the movie came out, there were some discussions among the audiences on its ambiguous last scene – Is it real or imaginary? The sad thing is, that does not matter to poor Gu-nam anymore. He really should not have crossed the Yellow Sea.

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