KILLER JOE - in which Matthew McConaughey is, for once, not just a pretty face.

This review is brought to you by Alex:

Killer Joe’s US movie poster features a bloodied piece of fried chicken. This probably tells you all you need to know about what to expect from the latest piece by William Friedkin (director; The Exorcist, The French Connection). Based on Tracey Letts’ play and screen adaptation and exploring the seedy underbelly of American society, this film does not disappoint.

The Smith family are archetypal trailer-trash, bit parts straight from an episode of My Name is Earl or Eastbound and Down. The best thing that can be said about father Ansel Smith (Thomas Haden Church) is that he knows he is stupid. Gina Gershon is masterfully cast as his second wife Sharla, as feisty as she’s slutty, and no fan of Ansel’s hapless son Chris from a previous marriage. Juno Temple plays Chris’ younger sibling Dottie.  They concoct a plan to pay off debts owed by the hapless loser Chris to a local loan shark, by arranging for “Killer Joe” to rub out Chris’ mother Adele. Chris plans to collect her life insurance in Dottie’s name. Matthew McConaughey is counter-intuitively cast as Joe, a local policeman who moonlights as an assassin.

Surprisingly, McConaughey doesn’t disappoint and manages to step outside of his typical Rom Com repertoire to play the title role memorably, one part smooth-talking gigolo-cum-southern gentleman, the other part malevolent predator.

Of course, in true film-noir style the plan goes very wrong, and we see the family twist and swing, throttled by the Gordian knot of their situation as it worsens each time they try to fix it once and for all. It’s very enjoyable to watch, and tension builds to a climactic final scene where we learn exactly how sadistic and evil Joe really is.  Violence is unflinching but interspersed with humour, and characters turn on a dime, one moment charismatic, the next skin-crawlingly vile. Friedkin, who I was fortunate enough to hear in Q&A after the premiere, has said that his work is about the thin line between good and evil in us all. It’s a theme the film forces us to reflect upon.

His examination of the subaltern world of the South-Western United States, where even policemen are crooked and feared, suits the director’s tonal nod to Grindhouse cinema. In fact several scenes seem to have come with specific acting direction towards that genre.

Indeed, Kurt Russell’s unexpectedly good turn in Tarantino’s Grindhouse homage “Death Proof” is reminiscent of McConaughey’s role here as the eponymous Joe. Friedkin has really managed to bring something new out of the actor, and he is fun to watch.

The rest of the cast fits snugly into this hybrid noir-trash flick genre, especially the feral Emil Hirsch as Chris (worth checking out in “Into the Wild”). Relative newcomer Juno Temple (soon to be seen in “The Dark Knight Rises”) portrays Dottie superbly, Lolita-like in her innocence and subversive sexual power. It is Dottie’s control over Joe that is the lynchpin of the plot and as such Temple carries a heavy weight on her shoulders. She acquits herself fully.

Richly deserving of its NC-17 rating in the US, Friedkin’s oddball approach to directing will be called violent and misogynist by his critics. I’ll leave that to the reader to decide, but he has managed to imbue inanimate objects (a tin of pineapple chunks, a fried chicken-leg, a watch carefully removed and laid on a table as foreplay to brutality) with trauma in such a way that the viewer can’t fail to be reminded of the roles they play in this film long, after they have left the cinema. This is part of what makes Killer Joe refreshing. I’m sure I’ll be watching it again soon.

KILLER JOE played Venice, Toronto and Sitges 2011, and SXSW 2012. It opens this weekend in the UK, and on July 27th in the USA. It opens on August 10th in Finland; August 23rd in Russia; September 5th in France; September 26th in Belgium; and in the Netherlands on November 8th.

IRON SKY - Moon nazis!

There are lots of movie with hilarious titles, but few that live up to them. (SNAKES ON A PLANE, I'm looking at you.)  IRON SKY is, on the whole, a movie that's worth checking out.  After all, it would take a total bah-humbug kill-joy not to enjoy a movie who's concept is Moon Nazis!  The idea is that in the final days of World War II, the Nazis sent a colony to the Moon, which has since gathered strength and is now returning to invade a near-future USA run by Sarah Palin.

First off, for what is presumably a low-budget feature, the movie looks fantastic. All the space effects, space-station sets and costumes are superb, and the scenes on the moon are definitely the best in the film.   Second, the movie has a handful of absolutely on-point black-comedy moments. Like when the Moon Nazis use a highly edited version of Chaplin's Hitler spoof, THE GREAT DICTATOR, to make it look like its Hitler propaganda.  Or when the President's aide tries to tell her Moon Nazis are coming and she thinks that it's merely a WAG THE DOG like set-up to get her re-elected. Or when she totally identifies with the Blut und Boden values of the Nazis.   

That said, the movie has its weaknesses. Half the time the humour is just too broad for my liking, and veers from black satire to cheap lampoon. I guess that's just what you have to expect from an Udo Kier movie. I didn't particularly get or feel comfortable with the plot line that sees a US soldier turned white. And Sarah Palin is a pretty easy target. My suspicion is that there is a very funny, more intelligent 45 minute short film hiding underneath this baggy full-length feature.

IRON SKY played Berlin and SXSW 2012. It was released earlier this year in Finland, Norway, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Croatia, Poland, Australia, Slovenia, Montenegro, Ireland, the UK and Fiji. It will be released in Romania on June 22nd, in Singapore on June 28th, in Lithuania on June 29th, in the Czech Republic, Russia and Slovakia on July 12th and in New Zealand on August 12th.

THE DICTATOR

THE DICTATOR is hands down the funniest, cleverest movie Sacha Baron Cohen has ever made.  I was always a bit uneasy at films like BORAT and BRUNO. I felt it was somehow exploitative to frame ordinary members of the public, and the humour too often descended to the most base level. I'm thinking in particular of the scene where Borat hands his charming Southern hostess a bag of what she thinks is his own shit. That isn't satire or even good physical comedy. It's just cruel and crass. Luckily, Sacha Baron Cohen is now so famous that he can't get away with that kind of stunt-movie. The result is his first fully scripted feature - a movie that I feel is more tightly written, better performed, and more politically on point than anything he's done to date. 

Cohen plays a dodgy African dictator in the mould of Gadaffi called Aladeen.  In the opening scenes we see him lording it up in his home state to great comic effect, before journeying to the USA.  His evil sidekick switches him out with his body-double, in order to get at the oil reserves, forcing Aladeen to live a "normal" American life until he can regain access to his entourage.  This allows Cohen to simultaneously take the piss out of Western greedy capitalists and hippie liberals.  The capitalists don't care who rules, or what promises of fake democracy are made, so long as they can get the oil rights. The hippie liberals are so busy being nice and not offended that they can't even take offence when they should, or recognise a fake offer of watered down democracy when they see it.  Everyone has a price.  Love conquers all but doesn't really.  And America is the biggest joke of all - "a country built by blacks and owned by the Chinese" where it's recent history of democracy - wealth redistributed to the rich through the developed world's only regressive tax system; a presidential election decided by judicial fiat; where its ethnic minorities are incarcerated at disproportionately high rates; and citizens are held indefinitely without trial. The skill is that Cohen can make all these subversive assertions but still keep the tone of the film light-hearted and have us consistently laughing out loud.  Kudos.

THE DICTATOR is on release in Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Iceland, Ireland, Latvia, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Sweden, the UK, the USA, Croatia, Germany, Hungary, Kazakhstan, Portugal, Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Ukraine, Bulgaria, Estonia, Finland, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Turkey and Armenia. It opens in Hong Kong on June 7th, Singapore, Brazil, Italy and Taiwan on June 15th, France on June 20th, Spain on July 13th, Argentina, Greece and Colombia on July 20th, Cambodia on July 26th, Mexico on August 10th and Japan on September 7th. 

Takashi Iitsuka’s Super Organic Battle Action Adventure

The young filmmaker Takashi Iitsuka (飯塚貴士, b. 1985) wowed Nippon Connection 2012 with the international premiere of his short film Encounters (エンカウンターズ, 2011).  The half hour action adventure action figure drama has previously screened at festivals in Japan such as the Sendai Short Film Festival and the Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival.

Encounters uses neither stop motion animation nor any CG effects.  It is purely old school live action puppet action – a technique which Iizuka has christened “Super Organic Battle Action.”  Using handmade action figures and monster puppets, Iizuka carefully manipulates the characters either by hand or fishing wire.  The result is a loving send up of the great monster movies of Ishirō Honda (Godzilla, King Kong vs. Godzilla, Mothra vs. Godzilla).  The campiness of the film and the use of marionette effects recalls the “supermarionation” techniques employed in the UK cult classic Thunderbirds (Gerry and Sylvia Anderson, 1965-6).

The story centers on two buddies, Max and John, who have taken a trip to the countryside to help Max get his mind off his girlfriend troubles. Just as the countryside and a chance encounter with a friendly stray dog named Kifune seem to be lifting Max’s spirits, a furry super-monster crashes into the scene and has a confrontation with some armed forces.  The story then spirals into a pastiche plot line that throws in all the elements typical in a Japanese scifi action adventure: a mad scientist, fear of robots, love and friendship conquering all, and so on.

Talking to Iitsuka at Nippon Connection, I discovered that he did indeed play alone with action figures a lot as a kid.  He was an only child and did not have the means to buy too many toys.  He had a hero figure in Ultraman but lacked monsters – a problem he remedied by creating his own monsters using PET bottles.  His aim with Encounters was to transfer the fun and spontaneity of such child’s play into the film. 

His eyes lit up with delight when I mentioned the Thunderbirds and he added that he was also a big fan of Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons (1967-8), a dark scifi “supermarionation” also by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson.  In terms of action films, in addition to being inspired by the Ultraman franchise, Iitsuka is also a big fan of The Delta Force movies starring Chuck Norrisand Lee Marvin.  This would explain his choice of Waffen Film Studio for the name of his one man production company.  “Waffen” is German for “weapons”. 

All levels of production were done by Iizuka himself: cinematography, editing, sound, music, set building, costumes and special effects.  He made about 5 or 6 sets and manipulated the figures either marionette-style using fishing wire (which you can cheesily still see in some frames) or by hand (but without the hands being seen).  For one sequence, for example, he built the set on top of the bathtub so that he could manipulate the figures from underneath.  Some of the figures and sets were made using materials that he already had but others were built with supplies from the hobby shop.  Some of the most interesting designs were done using papercraft and based on photographs Iitsuka took himself. 

Iitsuka even does all the voices including a falsetto for Max’s girlfriend in a flashback sequence.  The subtitles are kind of odd – at times very inspired – as when a wordy curse in Japanese is translated to English simply as “Jesus!”  At other times the English subs are awkward and badly spelled  –  but that just adds to the fun. The subtitles, which were done by Naoki Suzuki of the Sendai Short Film Festival, complement the kitschiness of the film and the quirkiness of the Japanese dialogue.   Iitsuka designed the dialogue as a spoof of the unusual Japanese dub s done on Hanna-Barbera cartoons like Shazzan (1967-9) and The Fantastic Four (1967-9) when they were first imported to Japan.

See opening to Japanese dub of Shazzan here, and The Fantastic Four here:

The film was shot on a Sony Video Z5J and edited using Abobe Software, Premiere, Aftereffects, etc.  Iitsuka told me that he hopes that people will get a message of hope from the film.  He is working on his next Super Organic Battle Action Adventure and was planning to explore German hobby shops for materials after the festival.  An art school grad, Iitsuka has a natural eye for framing - doubtless honed by years of TV watching.  The concept could easily have turned out completely schlocky, but I found the result brilliant.  I hope that Iitsuka’s Encounters obtains the cult following that it deserves, and I look forward to seeing where his imagination takes him to next.  

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

You can follow Iitsuka on Twitter (JP only)
A 20 minute cut of the film is available on imdb (JP/EN)

ALL IN GOOD TIME

ALL IN GOOD TIME asks you to suspend your disbelief that a young couple could reach their wedding night as virgins.  It tries to make this easier by setting the film in a second generation Asian community.  As a member of that community, I was still incredulous.  Still, if you can force that issue from your mind, what you get is a genuinely funny, rewardingly spiky bittersweet drama about love - between husbands and wives, and parents and children.  These issues - miscommunication, the setting of boundaries - make this a movie with far wider appeal than a specialist Brit-Asian film. 

For the first half of the film the movie is a solid comedy and centres on the young virginal newlyweds, Veena and Atul, trying to get their end away in a cramped family home. But as we move into the second half of the film we the comedy dissolves into drama, as their marital difficulties prompt their parents to reconsider what their early married life was like, and what married life has settled into. I love how even in the early, explicitly funny laugh-out-loud scenes, we can always see the undercurrent of tension, and that even in the second half of the movie, which is far more emotionally tense, we still get wonderful flashes of humour. This speaks to the skill of the two playwrights - Bill Naughton of the original and Ayub Khan Din's adaptation. And I particularly admire the director, Nigel Cole (MADE IN DAGENHAM) choosing to end on such a conflicted, bittersweet note.

The casting is good all round. Vina (Amara Karan - ST TRINIANS) and Atul (Reece Ritchie - PRINCE OF PERSIA) are suitably gauche and sincere.  Meera Syal is brilliant as always, as Atul's mother Lupa. But it's Harish Patel as his father Eeshwar who steals the movie. As in BRICK LANE, it falls to Patel to play a character who is at once ridiculous but also deeply felt, and the emotional anchor of the piece.  He is quite simply outstanding.  

ALL IN GOOD TIME will be released in the UK and Ireland on May 11th.

Sundance London 2012 - SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED

I guess it was a sure bet.  Any movie based on a cutesy internet meme (see above graphic) was gonna rub me up the wrong way.  SAFTEY NOT GUARANTEED is the kind of hipster, quirky, indulgent comedy that I hate.  In fact, even calling it a comedy is a stretch given that it peddles the gentlest of gentle comedy.  I only laughed out loud three times, so on that basis it fails the Wittertainment 5-Laughs rule.  I predict that this will end up like last year's lauded hit, LIKE CRAZY. That was another movie the indie community loved and I hated. It too ended up in a bidding war at Sundance only to fail at the box office.

The problem with the film is that everything about it is so contrived that goofy that there's nothing to relate to - no point of entry unless you're also a wannabe oddball hipster.  It also contains precious few proper jokes (as mentioned above), and uneven tone, as it skirts past various genres. I blame Derek Connolly's pretentious script and Colin Trevorrow's lacklustre direction.  Performances are mostly so-so.  Aubrey Plaza (PARKS AND RECREATION) does her snarky, moody thing, but predictably melts when she meets Mark Duplass' oddball paranoid wannabe time-traveller.  They meet up because she an intern at a magazine and her boss Jeff is faking interest in the madcap scheme so as to write a funny story on the guy.  Jake M Johnson provides the only real laughs as Jeff, nicely playing against the "nice Nick" character in THE NEW GIRL.  As for Karan Soni's Arnau, it's nice that we people of Indian origin are starting to get more airtime in movies, but does it always have to be a clichéd geeky hard-working student? I'm starting to get offended.

SAFETY NOT GUARANTEED played Sundance 2012 where Derek Connolly won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. It also played Sundance London. It will play SXSW 2012 and will be released in the USA on June 8th.

Sundance London 2012 - LIBERAL ARTS

LIBERAL ARTS is a trite, cliché-ridden, entirely unbelievable movie that runs too long, and bores during its run-time.  Written by, directed by and starring Josh Radnor aka Ted in HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER, the movie reads as a mash-up of rom-com set pieces, with pretensions at saying something more profound.  

That profound insight is basically that most of us reach a point where we're happy in our small contained world, and once we leave it, life is basically a series of disappointments. For some kids, that'll be high school. For others, when they leave college.  For some lucky folk, it's when they retire. The point that the movie wants to make is that no matter how tempting it is to go back to that place of nostalgia, it isn't healthy. You have to move on and grow up.

All of which is fair enough.  I can relate. That could've been the backbone of an interesting movie. But what we get instead is half a film showing a soupy meet-cute and falling-in-love story between Radnor's 35 year old arrested development book-worm and Elizabeth Olsen's 19 year old Liberal Arts college student.  They share music mixes and feel uplifted by Schubert!  To make this bearable, Radnor needed to be a lot more self-aware and ironic with the material than he was. The second half of the movie zings all over the place, with one plot twist involving Olsen that rang hollow - another plot twist featuring a depressed student called Dean ( a very impressive turn by John Magaro - want to see more of him) that seems to come from another film altogether - and so many resolutions and endings that the film drags itself out worse than RETURN OF THE KING.

In the midst of all this, Richard Jenkins' reluctantly retiring Professor gets too little screen time. Allison Janney's brilliantly acerbic Professor gets just enough but steals the show. And Zac Efron has a charismatic cameo. But all this does is to reinforce the feeling that what we have here is an ill-written jumble of scenes, some of which work, some of which don't - a hammy sensibility aiming at something better. All of which is coupled with a pretty basic technical package.

Move along. There's nothing to see here. 

LIBERAL ARTS played Sundance and Sundance London 2012 and will be released in Australia on September 20th 2012.

iPad Round-Up 1 - THE BIG YEAR

THE BIG YEAR is a charming, gentle comedy about the importance of family and following your dreams.  Jack Black stars as a guy in a dead-end job who has a passion for bird-watching, and defies his father's incredulity to do "the big year" - a challenge in which US birdwatchers compete to see the most species.  He's competing against Steve Martin's successful executive, who's about to retire and spend time with his loving family.  And both the Steve Martin and Jack Black character strike up a friendship in opposition to their common enemy - Owen Wilson's slick, hyper-competitive, incumbent title-holder - a man who has sacrificed his marriage to his obsession.

There are no big revelations in terms of the performance.  Jack Black plays his typical loveable loser character.  Steve Martin plays his typical loveable cool dad character.  Owen Wilson plays his typical loveable rogue.  The direction (David Frankel - MARLEY & ME) is workmanlike and the script (Howard Franklin - ANTITRUST) is efficient.  But the movie had a genuinely warm tone to it, it successfully conveyed the madness and the beauty of birdwatching, against all odds, and I had a good time with it.

THE BIG YEAR was released in Canada, the US, Ireland and the UK in 2011 and earlier this year in Malta, Australia, Portugal, Lithuania and Romania. It opens in Germany on June 14th and in France on September 19th. It is available to rent and own. 

21 JUMP STREET

21 JUMP STREET is a bunch of fun whether or not you're familiar with the original 1980s TV show that it affectionately spoofs.  Judd Apatow regular Jonah Hill slims down to play Schmidt, a former high-school geek turned cop, who's sent back to school under-cover to undercover a drug dealer.  Schmidt teams up with former high-school jock, Jenko, played by the not unattractive Channing Tatum showing impressive comedy timing.  A lot of the comedy comes from the classic "fish out of water" trope, with Jenko now forced to hang out with the science geeks and Schmidty becoming the popular guy in a post-modern high school full of enviro-geeks.  The true joy for this capitalist bastard reviewer is that it's the hippie do-gooders that are really the skanky drug-dealers.  And Dave Franco (James' kid brother) does a great job playing the smug little shit who's dealing dope. There's also probably the best movie cameo since ZOMBIELAND. 

Goofy, buddy comedies like these, when they work well, can seem effortless.  But there's a lot of skill in scripting a story that pokes fun at its source material without ever descending into snide pastiche; that knowingly winks at the viewer but still has heart.  Moreover, there's something wonderful about seeing a comedy double-act really hit it off on screen. Tatum and Hill just work really well together, and I can't wait for the sequel. 

21 JUMP STREET is on release in the US, UK, Australia, Bulgaria, Canada, Estonia, Ireland, Lithuania, Romania, Israel, Russia and New Zealand. It opens in Sweden on April 20th; in Chile and India on April 26th; in Argentina, Hong Kong, Hungary and Brazil on May 4th; in Germany, Singapore and Spain on May 10th; in Slovenia and Colombia on May 18th; in Norway on May 15th; in Belgium, France and the Netherlands on June 20th and in Portugal on June 28th.

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (1999)

Takashi Namiki(なみきたかし, b. 1952) of Anido has been documenting the world of animation both at home and abroad since the 1970s through his writings, photographs, and by collecting materials for his private archive.  Last fall, I wrote about his book Animated People in Photo, which is a photo essay of his encounters with animators and animation festivals over the years.  His 1999 documentary film Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto (人形と生きる〜川本喜八郎の世界) screened on Day 3 of the Kawamoto-Norsteinevent at Forum des Images in Paris.  It was introduced by Ilan Nguyen (Tokyo University of the Arts), who said that he believed that it was the first time for the film to screen outside of Japan.

The subject of the documentary is not Kawamoto the puppet animator, but Kawamoto the puppet maker and puppet theatre director.  Starting in 1972, Kawamoto joined forces with his good friend Tadanari Okamoto to host a number of puppet animation festivals known as the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows.  As they did not produce enough animated shorts to fill a full programme, Kawamoto came up with the idea of including live puppet theatre performances.  Not only would this lengthen the programme, but live shows could also incorporate the humorous aspects of puppet performances.  Apart from his first independent animation The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Kawamoto’s animated works tend to be more serious and contemplative.  Yet everyone who knew Kawamoto personally speaks of his warm sense of humour.  The live puppet shows demonstrate this other side to his personality.

The Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows ceased in 1980, and with Okamoto passing away in 1990, a revival of the event seemed unlikely.  However, 27 years after the first Kawamoto + Okamoto event, Kawamoto decided to put on the puppet show one more time.  Namiki’s film documents the event from the cramped rehearsals in Kawamoto’s tiny Sendagaya studio to the one night only performance at the Mitsukoshi Theatre in September 1999.  The show featured a parade of the puppets from the NHK drama Romance of the Three Kingdoms (三国志/Sangokushi) as well as performances of four original theatrical works written by Kawamoto:

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso (人も磨き手後にこそ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  It features an old, tattooed man in a sentō (communal bath house).  When bathing in Japan, one first squats with a shower or water in a basin.  One must wash oneself thoroughly before entering the communal hot bath.  The tattooed man sits with the wash basin blocking the view of his penis from the theatre audience.  This is a wordless drama in which the comedy comes from the fact that the man’s movements are in time with the accompanying classical music.  As the tempo increases, so too do his movements with dramatic pauses being made comical by him tipping the wash basin towards his private parts.  At one point, the increase in tempo and volume results in him quite vigorously scrubbing his penis which caused a great deal of laughter.  Another uproarious moment occurs when he stretches out his arm and plays it like a fiddle – in the style of an air guitar performance. 

There is also the humour of familiarity in this piece, as public bathing is an important cultural tradition with etiquette that all of the audience members would recognize.  Thus another funny sequence involves the old man trying to get from the wash basin to the hot bath in a dignified manner by trying to hold the small white towel over his private parts.   He then sticks his toe into the bath and jumps back in shock at how hot the water is, before easing himself in.

If I had seen this puppet play before hearing Ilan Nguyen and Serge Éric Ségura’s lecture on the life and career of Kawamoto, I would have presumed that the old man was a yakuza because of his ornately tattooed body.  Nguyen and Ségura revealed that Kawamoto himself had elaborate tattoos on his back and upper arms that he acquired in the late 1950s / early 1960s in order to mark himself as an individual.  With this in mind, it is likely that there is an element of autobiography to this amusing piece.

Kurui toki no Kami da no mi (くるしいときのカミだのみ)

This puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  Like

Hito mo Migakite no Chi ni Koso, this puppet play is a wordless physical comedy set to music.  It features a salaryman going to the toilet – quite literally “toilet humour”!  The title suggests that the struggle that one sometimes has on the toilet can be a religious experience.

                                                                                                                                  

Good Night, I said!  (おやすみなさいったら！/Oyasumi-nasaittara!)

This comic puppet play was performed at the first Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1972.  It is also set to music.  All parents struggle with getting their kids to bed at night.  In this puppet drama the struggle is multiplied as a mother tries to convince four babies to go to sleep.  The piece is performed to the German lullaby “Schlafe, mein Prinzchen, schlaf’ ein” by Mozart.  The mother dozes off herself while waiting for her little ones to sleep and the babies crawl around under the blankets.  The large bed is vertical on the stage and leaning slightly backward so as to accommodate both the spectators watching the action and the puppeteers.

Scheming World from Inside and Out (世間胸算用近頃腹裏表/ Seken Munazanyou Chikagoro to Tatemae)

This puppet play was performed at the fifth Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Show in 1976 and was also a part of the reprise event in 1979.  In an  introductory interview Kawamoto explains that audiences found the subject matter of this play quite shocking when it was first performed.  Times have changed in the ensuing quarter century and he thinks that the audience in 1999 will find it fairly tame.

This puppet play does have dialogue and concerns the inner workings of a Japanese home.  Traditionally in a Japanese family, when the eldest son marries he becomes the head of the family.  This usually means that three generations of a family will live together under one roof.  Unsurprisingly, this often results in the new wife and her mother-in-law butting heads on the way in which the household is run.  Mother-in-laws tend to have very fixed ideas about how to manage the home having been in charge of their own homes for at least two decades.  The young wife may bring modern ways or even different ways of doing things learned from her own mother into the home.  No matter what one's cultural background, we can all recognize that this is a recipe for trouble.

This puppet play reenacts the strife that results from his scenario with the mother-in-law and daughter-in-law being sweet to each other’s faces but saying things to each other that are either sarcastic or have a double-meaning.  Behind each other’s backs they complain about each other and take out their frustrations with having to live together on the chores.  The mother-in-law takes out her frustration on the laundry.  She even goes so far as to spit on her daughter-in-law’s shirt before ironing it.  Her main complaint is that she things her daughter-in-law is lazy and unskilled in housework. 

The daughter-in-law is mainly upset at the restrictions her mother-in-law imposes on her life.  On this day,  her mother-in-law has chosen not to go out, and this means that the daughter-in-law must also stay at home at do chores when she would rather be gossiping with her friends.  She cannot allow the mother-in-law does not do all the chores and take all the credit for the housekeeping.  The daughter-in-law takes out her frustration on preparing supper.  She attacks the fish with all her pent up rage.  At the end of the play, the mother-in-law pretends to enjoy the food her daughter-in-law has prepared and the daughter-in-law feigns delight with her neatly shirt.  The masks of domestic harmony are back up again and the women continue in their struggle to live together for the sake of the family.

One only gets a taste of these puppet plays for the original theatrical performance lasted 3 hours and the documentary is a comfortable 40 minutes.  The puppeteers, in the tradition of Bunraku, perform entirely in black with the faces also masked in black.  It was hard to tell if they were also using 3 puppeteers for each puppet as I was so wrapped up in the performance that I forgot to pay attention.  The puppets were large and did have a minimum of 2 puppeteers – as you can see in the screencaps of the performances. 

Kawamoto wrote, directed, produced, and performed in the puppet dramas.  He talks at some length about the craft of the puppet theatre and the challenge of preparing the puppeteers for the performance – they were quite young and many were new to puppeteering.  Most of Kawamoto’s original collaborators had either passed away or had moved on to other things in their lives since the 1970s.  He mentioned one puppet master in particular named Koga who had passed away and whom he greatly missed.  They spent two months rehearsing for the performance.  In order to bring the puppet convincing to life, Kawamoto explained that the performers need to have mutual respect for each other and work towards being in harmony with one another.  Although they made a few errors during the live show, Kawamoto seemed content with the final result.

The documentary is a very low resolution video with amateur English subtitles.  However, the singularity of the subject matter makes the film must-see viewing for fans of Kawamoto and scholars of Japanese puppet theatre.  It reveals a very different side of Kawamoto as not only a puppet designer and creator, but also a comic writer, theatrical director, and media personality.  It is impossible to recreate the Kawamoto + Okamoto Puppet Anime-Shows of the 70s now that the key figures have passed away, but this documentary gives us a glimpse of what the theatrical portion of these shows must have been like.  There is also footage from a TV talk show that shows Kawamoto having a comical exchange with his good friend the actress and TV personality Tetsuko Kuroyanagi.  She teases him about how tiny his studio is and wonders how he could possibly work in such a cramped space.  Kuroyanagi did voice acting for several Kawamoto puppet animations: The Breaking of Branches is Forbidden (1968), Rennyo and his Mother (1981), and The Book of the Dead (2005).

Living With Puppets: The World of Kihachirō Kawamoto is available for loan from Anido.  Click here for more information.

Catherine Munroe Hotes 2012

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is a movie of questionable taste and worse political judgement.  It's a testament to its charming cast that it manages to slip down rather easily, all the same. 

The basic concept is that a bunch of middle-class English pensioners move to a ramshackle Rajasthani hotel and experience epiphanies. The recent widow (Judi Dench) learns independence; the retired civil servant (Bill Nighy) and his wife (Penelope Wilton) learn that they do not love or even like each other; the two desperate singles (Celia Imrie and Ronald Pickup) learn that are still sexually attractive; the racist (Maggie Smith) learns tolerance; and the gay high court judge (Tom Wilkinson) finds peace. 

The problem with the film is the typical problem that modern England has in viewing its colonial heritage. On the one hand, it simply has to acknowledge the dirt, disease, discrimination and general chaos of modern India. On the other, it is faintly embarrassed of this disapproval given its own guilt regarding the Raj, and still has a deep-seated love of the country whose culture, language and cooking have so influenced the home nations. The result is a depiction of India that is at once patronising and awe-struck.  India is the country of spiritual revelation and ancient wisdom.  But it is also depicted as a country of almost child-like innocents who believe in happy endings, ideally set to a musical number.  This absurd juxtaposition is best summed up in the movie SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE - marketed as a "feelgood movie" despite scenes of child beggars deliberately blinded, capped off with the obligatory song-and-dance number straight after a scene where the hero's brother has shot himself.  

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL isn't quite as crass as SLUMDOG MILLIONAIRE. And indeed, in one storyline, we see a reconciliation between ruler and ruled played out as a reconciliation between two homosexual lovers - one a colonial, one an Indian. That at least shows some self-awareness on the part of the film-makers, although it falls far short of the kind of self-examination seen in the novels of E.M.Forster.  But at the end of the day, this is just another movie in which India is a colourful, exoticised backdrop against which pampered Westerners can gain "self-knowledge".  There's no real concern with what life there is really like. And the self-knowledge is easily gained - in the case of Maggie Smith's character, the personality alteration so swift as to beggar belief. 

Still, as I said, the movie is a surprisingly pleasant watch, mainly because it's cast is top-notch and charming, partly because where the movie is on "home soil" it is actually quite insightful.  In other words, when focusing on the disappointments of old age, the movie actually has interesting things to say about the way in which the middle classes are seeing their pension income eroded - their healthcare costs increase - the shock to discover the welfare state and corporate pension simply aren't enough - the indignity of realising one's sex life might be over - the desperation of knowing that the chances to turn one's life around are limited, if they exist at all.

THE BEST EXOTIC MARIGOLD HOTEL is on release in the UK and Ireland. It opens on March 15th in Germany; on March 22nd in Australia; Norway, the Netherlands,  New Zealand, Russia, Estonia, Finland, Spain and Sweden; on March 28th in Belgium; on March 20th in Italy and Lithuania; on April 12th in Portugal; on May 4th in India and the USA; on May 9th in France; on May 11th in Brazil; on May 17th in Hong Kong and Singapore; and on May 24th in Argentina.

OKI'S MOVIE

Hong Sang-soo’s quartet of short linked films features three characters—a young man, a young woman, and an older man—who study or work in the film department of a university. Each short reveals a little of the relationship between these characters, from different viewpoints, and mostly in retrospect.

Running through the quartet is the theme of filmmaking itself and the accompanying uncertainty of being able to realise one’s intentions within the medium (and the world outside it). This draws us into the fourth film where the young woman, Oki (Jung Yu-mi), presents a movie she has made in an attempt to assemble her own experiences at selected points in her recent life.

Overall, the linked films are unadorned in style: quiet, minimal, observational (perhaps this reviewer looks on these qualities a little too favourably generally), but they do make for a good disguise when the tone becomes darker, or poignant, particularly during two separate instances of question and answer sessions.

It is partly in these last-mentioned, unassuming scenes that the threads running through the films reveal the skill and intricacy of their pattern—when they separate off into two snowy walks concluding the quartet, it is a gently reflective parting. For this reason and at this time, with all the dazzling pictures currently nearing the finishing line of their season, OKI’S MOVIE may well be a sight for sore eyes.

OKI's MOVIE aka OK-HUI-UI YEONGHWA played Toronto and Venice 2010 and went on release in South Korea in 2010 and in France in 2011.  

Wild Berries (蛇イチゴ, 2003)

There are many theories as to how the Asian variety of mock strawberry hebi  ichigo (Duchesnea chrysantha) – quite literally “snake strawberry” got its name.  The name is so old – the Japanese adopted the name from the Chinese – that no one knows its origin for certain.  This pretty little flowering plant of the rose family is found growing in the wild all over Japan.  It resembles a wild strawberry, but disappoints when eaten for it is bland.  After watching Miwa Nishikawa’s debut feature film Hebi Ichigo (Wild Berries/蛇イチゴ, 2003), I had to think of the English idiom “snake in the grass”, for in her film the members of the Akechi family  are like the hebi ichigo: on the surface they appear as lovely as wild strawberries but it is all a façade.  In fact, the more we learn about their true personalities, the more they appear to be a den of venomous snakes. 

The Akechi family have mastered the art of tatemae(建前,  the public face one is expected to uphold for the sake of family/work) to such a high degree that not even other members of the family are aware of each other’s honne (本音, one’s true feelings and desires).  The father, Yoshiro Akechi (Sei Hiraizumi), has lost his job as a salaryman but puts on a pretense of going off to “work” each day in the desperate hope of finding a job so that he does not lose face with his family.  His wife, Akiko (Naoko Otani) plays the role of dutiful housewife, taking care of the household and her increasingly senile father-in-law Kyozo Akechi played with terrific comic timing by the great rakugo storyteller Matsunosuke Shofukutei.  Akiko never complains, despite the fact that her situation has become intolerable. 

When their daughter, the straight-laced school teacher Tomoko (Miho Tsumiki), brings her boyfriend Kamata (Toru Tezuka) home to meet the folks, he is totally taken in by the Akechi family’s apparent normalcy.  Having been raised in a privileged family of inherited wealth, Kamata thinks that he has found a potential wife from the ideal family in which the mother and father selflessly sacrifice themselves by working hard for the good of the family.  This public façade (tatemae) comes crashing down at the grandfather’s funeral when one-by-one the members of the Akechi family begin to reveal their true selves (honne).  The greatest family secret of all is Tomoko's disowned brother Shuji (Hirayuki Miyasako), the proverbial black sheep of the family, whose unexpected return brings even more chaos. 

On the surface, this sounds like an absolutely depressing tale, but Nishikawa has written a brilliant black comedy on par, in my opinion, with the classic Alec Guinness vehicle Kind Hearts and Coronets (Robert Hamer, 1949).  It’s the kind of humour that has one cringing and laughing at the same time.  On the Japanese DVD release of Hebi Ichigo the acerbic dialogue has been excellently translated by Linda Hoaglund (director of ANPO: Art X War) for the English subtitles.  It is rare for a debut feature film to look and sound so terrific, but Nishikawa was fortunate to have the guiding hand of Hirokazu Koreeda (After Life, Still Walking) as her producer.  Not only did the film go on to win Nishikawa the Best New Director award at the 2004 Yokohama Film Festival, but it marked the beginning of a directorial career that has been brilliant so far with Sway (2006) and Dear Doctor (2009) bringing her much critical praise.

Hebi Ichigo is available via cdjapan:

Hebi Ichigo (English Subtitles)

iPad Round-Up 1 - THE CHANGE-UP

THE CHANGE-UP is a piss-poor reworking of the FREAKY FRIDAY/BIG body-switch movie genre.  In this instance, Jason Bateman's weary lawyer-father switches with Ryan Reynold's playboy soft-porn actor.  Despite the frequent cursing and references to explicit sex acts, this is basically a deeply conservative movie in which the father learns to appreciate his wife and children and the playboy learns to grow up and start acting like a responsible member of society.  The script, by Jon Lucas Scott Moore (THE HANGOVER) contains very few genuine moments of humour, but a lot of cursing and physical gross out humour that fails to fly. The direction from David Dobkin (WEDDING CRASHERS) is workmanlike. Reynolds and Bateman are actually quite good at mimicking each other's speech styles but in service of a weak script it's all for nothing.  Avoid. 

Script 

THE CHANGE-UP was released in late summer and autumn 2011. It is available to rent and own.

THE MUPPETS

The new muppet movie is, in the manner of THE BLUES BROTHERS, all about putting the band back together to play a benefit concert for a worthy cause - in this case, saving the old theatre from which the old beloved TV show used to be broadcast.  The movie drips with an earnest nostalgia for the days when kids TV was about gentle humour, song-and-dance acts, with a healthy dollop of liberal "rainbow" politics thrown in.  The Muppets was all about trying your best; accepting yourself for what you are; pulling together; and putting your friends first.  

It's obvious from the goofy smile on his face, that Jason Segel - the star and key instigator of the movie - totally buys into the Muppet ethos.  In a sense, he really is Walter, his character's muppet kid brother.  How sad then, that instead of trusting to that earnest charm, Segel and screenwriter Nick Stoller (GULLIVER'S TRAVELS) decided NOT to play it straight.  Rather, THE MUPPETS is a movie that constantly winks at the audience - it drips with post-modern ironic commentary on its core story and characters - knowingly pointing out through sight-gags and one-liners the hokiness of the genre.   

The result is a movie that wants us to believe that the world hasn't changed so much - that kids would still fall in love with the plain vanilla muppets franchise.  On the other hand, it clearly doesn't believe this to be the case, and feels it has to go for a post-modern snarky "SHREK" style of children's movie-making.  It rather smacks of trying to have it both ways. 

For all that, I still had a good time watching the flick. For sure, the first half is far too knowing - far too slow to build - far too reliant on commenting on its own montages and Chris Cooper saying "maniacal laugh" rather than actually laughing.  But by the time you get to the telethon and we focus on the old fashioned muppet vaudeville show, the movie settles down.  It's hard for anyone who grew up with the muppets not to enjoy seeing that famous intro, hearing the "rainbow connection" or just seeing Animal play the drums!  And yes, you do leave the cinema singing "Am I am man or a muppet".

That brings me to another point - the use of Brett McKenzie of FLIGHT OF THE CONCHORDS fame to write the songs.  I'm a huge fan of CONCHORDS but I found the use of McKenzie distracting.   Because as fun as it was to see Chris Cooper doing a rap pastiche; or Amy Adams doing a 70s disco pastiche; I just couldn't help but feel that it wasn't as fun as seeing McKenzie or Jermaine Clement doing the numbers. In particular, Clement should definitely have played the Cooper part. 

Anyway, all this griping is definitely not in the spirit of the muppets.  Problem is, neither was this film half the time.  Still, happy to see the old gang back on our screens. Let's hope the franchise gets reinvigorated - but hopefully on TV - it's proper and fitting format.

THE MUPPETS was released last year in the USA, Canada, India, Mexico, Brazil, Israel, Singapore, Kuwait, Chile and Estonia. It was released earlier this year in New Zealand, Slovenia, Panama, Argentina, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Germany, Hong Kong, Bulgaria and Poland.  IT goes on release on February 3rd in Italy, Spain and Portugal; on February 10th in the Netherlands, Denmark, Ireland and the UK; on February 17th in Belgium, Lithuania and Turkey; on March 16th in Sweden; on March 29th in Ukraine and on April 11th in France. 

GOON

I neither know nor care about ice hockey, but I loved GOON!  It's a wonderfully warm-hearted, foul-mouthed comedy, apparently based on the true story of a polite, sweet kid who couldn't really skate but could really fuck people up with fists.  This is apparently a totally acknowledged and accepted part of hockey -  a sport which is, according to this flick, as much to do with taking a pounding as mad skills with a stick and puck.  If only 10% of the violence on screen happens in real matches, I have new found respect for the mad bastards playing it.  Our particular mad bastard - the goon of the title - is Doug Glatt (Seann William Scott aka Stifler).  Patronised by his college-educated family, Doug stumbles into minor league hockey and discovers that, for once, he's needed and praised for doing what he does best. To be sure, he needs to come to terms with the fact that his parents will never really get it, and conquer the anger of his burnt out, mad-skilled room-mate, Laflamme (Marc-Andre Grondin), not to mention beat the crap out of retiring Goon Emeritus, Ross Rhea (Liev Schrieber).  But through it all, he remains the same sweet lunk he always was.

I love the script for its perfect balance of insane violence and right-on liberal intolerance for fag jokes. I love the way the sweet romance is balanced by plenty of gritty observations about life in working-class snow-bound towns and piss-stained tour buses.  Most of all, I love the counter-casting in almost every role.  Jay Baruchel, typically the sweet geek, becomes the wise-cracking, R-rated best friend.  Seann William Scott, typically the R-rated best friend, becomes the sweet-hearted hero.  Liev Schrieber - I mean, serious thespian Liev Schreiber - becomes the muscle-headed retiree.  And best of all, we have Alison Pill - who invests so much messed-up good-hearted flakiness into her role as Eva, that we can't but help routing for her and Doug.

Kudos to director Michael Dowse (IT'S ALL GONE PETE TONG) and screenwriters Jay Baruchel (TROPIC THUNDER) and Evan Goldberg (50/50, PINEAPPLE EXPRESS).  This movies was totally unexpectedly hilarious and heart-warming!

GOON played Toronto 2011 and is currently on release in the UK and Ireland. It goes on release in Canada on January 24th.  It is available on VOD in the US on February 24th and goes on limited released on March 30th.

iPad Round-Up 3 - HORRIBLE BOSSES

HORRIBLE BOSSES has a simple concept.  Three likeable guys have three heinous bosses. One is a coke-head arse; one is a nympho; and the other is an egomaniacal dick. And so, they hire a hit man to despatch them.  Of course it goes horribly wrong - cue capers, shenanigans and laughs. Only problem is, HORRIBLE BOSSES isn't funny - just embarrassing.  Directed by documentarian Seth Gordon (THE KING OF KONG, SHUT UP & SING) from a script by Michael Markowitz, John Francis Daley and Jonathan M Goldstein (all of whom have a background in sitcoms), the movie just never takes off.  And I'm not really sure why. After all, we know that the three likeable guys can be funny - Charlie Day (IT'S ALWAYS SUNNY IN PHILADELPHIA), Jason Sudeikis (HALL PASS) and Jason Bateman (THE SWITCH).   I guess maybe it's the way the horrible bosses have been drawn and cast that lets the movie down.  Jennifer Aniston is a talented comedienne, as her time in FRIENDS proves, but by now her media personality as the dumped and slightly desperate ex-wife has started to colour how she comes across in film, and her performance as an aggressive nympho is just plain embarrassing. Kevin Spacey, serious man of the London stage, just can't do broad comedy as written in this film. And Colin Farrell as the cokehead just isn't given enough comedic material to work with. It's as though the writers thought that just giving him a comb-over was enough. 

HORRIBLE BOSSES was released in summer 2011 and is now available to rent and own.

THE HELP - the Driving Miss Daisy de nos jours

Tate Taylor, director of the anonymous 2008 comedy PRETTY UGLY PEOPLE, somehow managed to get the studios to allow to write and direct THE HELP, a soupy drama based on the best-selling novel by Kathryn Stockett. Not having read Stockett's novel chronicling the travails in 1960s racist Mississippi, I don't know whether the emotional manipulation and superficial politics come from her of from the director.  Either way, the resulting movie looks handsome, and made me shed a tear in the final reel, but has all the genuine engagement with the issues of DRIVING MISS DAISY.  It's a bland feelgood movie about a topic that should make us angry and agitated.  It's a movie in which the main African American character's son is lynched and yet we come out feeling warm and fluffy.  Double plus not good.

The film makes the mistake of telling the stories of these African-American maids through the lens of a perky white wannabe journalist - Skeeter (Emma Stone) - a move that immediately tells us we're in a world where a harsh tale has to be made palatable for a mainstream audience.  Ironic, also, in a movie that makes such a big deal about going right to the source.  Skeeter serves as the vessel through which the maids will dish the dirt and get their story published.  The movie is scrupulous in telling us that Skeeter is sharing the royalties with her informants - but while she gets a cool job in New York out of it - they are at risk of being sacked, imprisoned or lynched. The risks and rewards are clearly completely asymmetric, but the film doesn't embrace and mine that fact - it would mess up the fluffy finale.

Worse still, there is no subtlety in the characterisation - no shades of grey. You're either a good-hearted liberal white (Skeeter, her shamed and reformed mother, Jessica Chastain's character Celia), or a nasty racist white (Bryce Dallas Howard's Hilly and her acolytes).  And as for the African-American women they are largely painted in tones of full-on heroism, with even the thief seen as a martyr to a mean mistress.   As for the subject matter, awful, horrible petty racism is seen on screen, but racial violence is referred to rather than shown.  Ditto the subject matter of domestic abuse.  And I couldn't help feeling insulted that the subject of vengeance against racism was reduced to a scatological joke. 

All this isn't to say that the production isn't handsome - with lush on location lensing from DP Stephen Goldblatt (JULIE & JULIA) and wonderful period costumes.  And the female cast is good quality and does the best with the narrowly written characters they are given.  In particular, it was a joy to finally see Jessica Chastain able to round out a character - rather than just being a virtuous icon, as in THE TREE OF LIFE and CORIOLANUS.  

But this movie, so hyped, so likely to win awards, is not a good movie. It's politics are dicey - it's reluctance to truly grasp the profundity of what it's tackling frustrating - it's emotional manipulation dishonest.  I have no time for it.  

THE HELP was released in the autumn in the US, Canada, Australia, Hong Kong and Sweden. It was released in October in Portugal, Finland, Norway, Lithuania, Singapore, France, Ireland, the UK and Spain. It was released in November in Spain, Hungary, Poland, Malta, Estonia, Denmark, Greece, Kuwait and India.  It opens on December 8th in Germany; on December 28th in Belgium; on Dcember 29th in the Netherlands; on January 20th in Italy; on February 3rd in Bulgaria and on February 6th in Brazil.  THE HELP is likely to be feted during awards season judging by the studio campaign and early indications from the New York Film Critics Circle and the Hollywood Film Festival.