Smilla Jasperson, a scientist who works in the study of ice and snow, born of maternal Greenlandic descent and paternal American descent, lives in Copenhagen, and on the way home, she discovers a young Greenlandic child, Isaiah, to whom she has grown closer more than anyone living, laying dead in the snow in front of her apartment building, apparently having fell to his death from the rooftop. Smilla doesn't trust the police's explanation of Isaiah's death (an accident) but trusts her own intuition, "her sense of snow," and begins to investigate the mystery behind the child's death in Bille August's Smilla's Sense of Snow (1997).
To begin with, bad pun intended, Smilla's Sense of Snow is cold. Its opening imagery of an Inuit fisherman in Greenland with dogsled in tow, who encounters a mysterious explosion, which leads to a furious snowstorm to the imagery of the film's primary location, a very cold Copenhagen, the film's coldness is literal. August's film style appears the same way: classically composed, close-ups, medium, and wide shots punctuated by smooth and flowing tracking shots, accompanied by minimal use of soft music. Nothing is colder, however, than the performances within the film, especially of its primary character, Smilla, portrayed by Julia Ormond. Smilla is a wonderfully drawn character (Peter Høeg, who authored the novel of the same name, is a personal favorite of mine. His novel is brilliant, as are his other works. I recommend giving all of his work a read.) Smilla's cultural heritage seems to be born from complete polar opposites: her mother was a Greenlandic hunter, who lived within and lived off the land with an extreme reverence. There are multiple words within her language for snow. Smilla relates, in a dinner scene with shy, stuttering neighbor (Gabriel Byrne) that after her mother's death and her subsequent move to Denmark to live with her father, that she would not sleep indoors. Smilla feels a kinship to the snow and its magic. Perhaps this kinship led her into her current career and obsession: the scientific study of ice and snow, of which she is an authority, unmatched really by anyone in the world. This logical and deductive side is born from her paternal heritage: her father is a American scientist (Robert Loggia), also well-respected and held in repute, who very much loves his daughter yet doesn't really understand her. Smilla's cultural heritage is unique, and she is a unique character: beautiful, complex, intelligent, obsessive, and very cold. Despite her cultural heritage, Smilla is very much a member of the human race and should have emotion. Of course, Smilla does, but the rendering of these emotions are not felt by the viewer, neither from August's direction nor from Ormond's performance.
For whatever reason, August does not want to let the viewer into Smilla's Sense of Snow. Smilla's angry and stand-offish (understandably, the viewer will later learn) and she often lashes out on the unsuspecting. For example, when Gabriel Byrne's character comes out of his apartment to offer something to drink or eat (really some company) shortly after the discovery of the child's corpse, Smilla angrily accuses him of preying on her supposed vulnerability: Byrne just wants to get her wrapped up in emotion and take advantage of her. Byrne's character sees behind her anger: he knows she's hurting and doesn't completely mean what she says. On paper this scene feels intimate and close; however, August's rendition is seriously lacking: medium shots from the two speaking from two different levels atop the stairs. The performance by Byrne is kind-of quiet and sweet but Ormond's performance doesn't resonate. Her emotion feels contrived, as if an actor is attempting to portray an actor's version of anger. Raw emotion from Ormond would have been welcomed but there is virtually none at all. Even her scenes with Isaiah, shown in flashbacks, are rigid and forced. The dialogue is unoriginal and trite: "Go away," Smilla says, "I'm not going to be your little friend." "Would you read me a story?" asks the small, sweet child. In a ridiculous, sing-songy mocking voice, Smilla says "No, I won't read you a story." Ormond's Smilla has similar scenes with the child: the real driving force for Smilla's obsession in the mystery is truly lacking: how is anyone supposed to feel for her?
To be fair, Smilla's Sense of Snow appears as if its director and its performers were intimidated and confused as to how to render Høeg's complex novel. His novel is filled with emotion but a lot of Smilla's conflicts are internal. August, taking film's visual storytelling too literally, is unable to crack the transition from page to screen. The overall feel of Smilla's Sense of Snow, beyond its coldness, is conservatism: succeed or fail, August and his performers aren't going to take any risks. It's almost as if August just wants to objectively film the action and gamble that his viewer will be intrigued. Well, first-time viewers perhaps will: Smilla's Sense of Snow is a very intriguing mystery and it's worth seeing to watch it unexpectedly unfold. Then again, Høeg's novel is an expertly-rendered mystery, so I would much rather recommend it. A missed opportunity, Smilla's Sense of Snow should fade into obscurity as a would-be curiosity.
The Chaser is a well-crafted thriller that takes places over the course of primarily one evening. Beyond its excellent plot, the film is also a searing portrait of its main character, Jung-ho, and his nemesis, Young-min. Hong-jin Na shoots his film objectively in the modern style, producing a very slick-looking and intimate film with some disturbing scenes of violence, some over-the-top yet grounded humor, and fantastic drama. 
The plot of The Chaser and the character arcs are seamless. Jung-ho goes through three revelations as to the condition of his missing ladies: runaways, kidnap victims, and [insert your best guess here after I set the plot up for you]. His first two beliefs as to the ladies' condition are based on his material nature while the final one is based in his hidden humanity. Jung-ho looks and acts like a modern business man: slick-looking clothes, drives a Jaguar, and has a well-structured business: his assistant, whom Jung-ho calls "Meathead," solicits business cards all throughout the city and Jung-ho holds multiple cell phones for prospective client contact and close-monitoring of his ladies whereabouts and accounts. Since Jung-ho is hurting financially, because his ladies are missing, Jung-ho believes the problem is financial: someone is ripping him off. Jung-ho sees his ladies as cash-producers, not people. When one of his ladies gets assaulted by a john, Jung-ho takes the opportunity to beat the would-be client and take all of his cash: he's going to make some money off one of his ladies, one way or the other. It didn't matter that she could have been brutally beaten or had another mundane and innocuous transaction: the bottom line is the almighty dollar. This is, of course, Jung-ho's most glaring flaw, and the viewer watches The Chaser asking "is Jung-ho diligently searching for Mi-jin, because she's the last bankable lady in his stable or somewhere, during the course of the evening, does Jung-ho soften and look for Mi-jin out of remorse and feeling?"
Young-min is a sick individual but he's slick. His operation is equal to Jung-ho's: well-structured and almost contingency-proof. Young-min knows how to play the system, as well. The police and the politicians are tied up for the night: the mayor of Seoul is making the rounds amongst the locals. An angry protester throws some feces his way. The police nab the "shit-thrower" but fail to prevent the embarrassment. Failing to efficiently take care of the Jung-ho/Young-min/Min-ji situation will make the police and its government appear amazingly inept. Watching Young-min interact over the course of The Chaser is extremely unassuming: it's only really towards the end of the film that the viewer is able to look backwards and see his motives in action.
It's difficult to write about The Chaser, because I believe the viewer really needs to know little about it and just experience it. Hong-jin Na's film delivers unexpected twists and turns amongst the backdrop of a masterfully-executed visual style. The streets feel real, because The Chaser is filmed that way: the viewer is never outside of the action, as all the locations feel authentic. Na's compositions are equally organic: nothing in The Chaser feels showy. The lighting is perfect. The minimal use of music is effective, as it only accompanies a few intense scenes. The performances rival the plot for which is better, and in the end, I'll take both. The Chaser is one of the best thrillers that I've seen in a very long time. See it.
Toshiharu Ikeda's Evil Dead Trap (1988) is a low-budget exploitation/horror film, which became quite (in)famous in the pre-Internet era, which is quite an accomplishment in itself. Its low-budget roots are glaring: its central focus is a genuine location, seemingly an old army base in Japan once used by Americans. Its main building and curtilage seem quite large. And spooky. It looks like the type of place where kids do not want to play, but film makers fall in love at first sight. Takashi Ishii, the screenwriter (and writer/director of many of an (in)famous exploitation flick, himself), pens his script around it. Nami and four of her colleagues decide to investigate the location, and within ten to fifteen minutes of Evil Dead Trap, the five have arrived, using the video that Nami received as it was intended: a map. The five immediately split up: Nami goes in one direction alone; Rei, Nami's stylist, and Kondo, a production assistant, also a budding couple, go in another; and Akio and Rya, the final two in Nami's production team, go in another.
Rei and Kondo begin squabbling. Apparently, during their first date, Kondo had a little too much to drink. Rei shrugs him off when Kondo apologizes. "It seems as if everyone stopped working," says Rei, "and just left," as she investigates the location's workshop. Kondo is nowhere to be found. In a closet, Kondo pops out wearing monster teeth and gives Rei a scare. She pushes him down and Kondo gets up excited. Whether its the location, Rei's aggressiveness, or their seclusion, Kondo and Rei decide to shag. Rei cleans up, and Kondo splits, leaving Rei all alone in the workshop.
Story, setting, and location are simple, but Ikeda's execution (and violence) are unique in Evil Dead Trap. The score by Tomohiko Kira is effectively well-done and evocative of Dario Argento's Deep Red (1975) and John Carpenter's Halloween (1978). Nearly every murder sequence is completely different; the killer doesn't have a particular motif, so each murder seems out of a different film. All are extremely bloody and very disturbing. Several shifts in tone and atmosphere are disorienting: slow and quiet in daylight, slow and quiet in a dark tunnel, fierce and intense and quick, one-time sensual and sexual, and often graphic and explicit. Ikeda's visuals are disorienting as well: his camera doesn't often match the action but goes against it: for example, one character will be seen going down the hall, while the camera is running the other way and capturing the action; or in a scene, where the crew spies something down a long corridor and the camera zooms in and pans out (making the crew and what it spies collapse together within the frame). Ishii ties the location together with as many exploitation elements as he can imagine, while Ikeda delivers an incoherent and multiple style visually, atmospherically, and viscerally. The ending is mind-boggling. Over twenty years later, Evil Dead Trap stands above most slashers which have come after, so its notoriety is unsurprising. As a caveat, Evil Dead Trap is still perhaps too much for a lot of viewers, so beware.
As I write this entry during the witching hour, I am glad that even with its most liberal definition, an amateur blogger cannot really be considered part of the media. Just writing about Evil Dead Trap gives me the willies, and it is a film "For those who suffer from sleepless nights."
Ichi the Killer is a film which truly defies verbal description. Words cannot do justice to Miike's parade of atrocities and perversions in one of this young century's most transgressive films. Based upon an infamous manga by Hideo Yamamoto (not one panel of which I've seen), Miike's film presents a cinematic Tokyo which few have seen: the most arresting and daring visual compositions, presented seemingly through a filter of filth, where the characters engage in Miike's words "an insane struggle between unsocial criminals" and a "film about love."
Night or day, Ichi has a soft look with a dingy hue. The city might not be dirty but Miike's going to make it look that way. Miike envisioned his film in manga form and making a movie directly from it. However Ichi's creator, Hideo Yamamoto, was unable to complete the task and relatively unknown Sakichi Sato was brought in to write the script. The origin of the images might have started in one mind and moved through others, but when the images were rendered by Miike, their power is felt by the viewer. Some scenes are just odd, as when a pants-less man is seen running through the streets, covering his manlihood with a newspaper, as two give chase, while passers-by act as if nothing is out of the ordinary. In one of the the best visual sequences, Kakihara, accompanied by Saburô (one of a pair of nasty twins played by Suzuki Masuo), go to one of Ichi's cohort's, Long, hideouts: behind a window, backlit by neon, is shown the shadow of the furry-eared outline of Saburô. Predator finds his prey when Long opens the window and cue Yamamoto's music and a frenetic chase begins in the dark claustrophobic house. Long falls fortuituously from the top floor to the bottom, where he exits to meet Kakihara watering a plant in the alleyway. The films slows when Long meets Kakihara, and the two have a small squabble that has to be seen to be believed. Scenes of Ichi walking the streets in his superhero outfit, black, heavily-padded, and with a big number one on the back, are disorienting-ly beautiful: the light fluctuates from underexposed to overexposed, while all the while the yellow one continues to glow. Ichi the Killer was shot by Hideo Yamamoto (same name and no relation to the creator of the Ichi manga) and is masterfully executed.
Much has been written about Ichi's perverse and perverted scenes of sex and violence, and I will forgo any description of those to save for Ichi's brave viewer. With a runtime of two-plus hours, filled with some serious kink and gory violence, beyond the visceral, does Ichi the Killer have any other appeal? Yes, Ichi is aesthetically beautiful and masterfully well-crafted. My favorite sequence of the movie (and Miike's most creatively rendered) has little violence and no sex. A man in seen kicking Ichi in an alleyway (played by screenwriter Sakichi Satô). Sabu's Suzuki is walking through and after noticing Ichi getting a beating, he shoos the man away. He picks Ichi up off the ground and buys him a bowl of noodles. Although they are looking for each other to kill, each does not know who the other is. Suzuki shows pity on Ichi and Nao Omori's Ichi is pitiful: very much like a child in an adult body. Suzuki's pity is shown, because before, after Suzuki had been kicked shamefully out of the police, Boss Anjo bought Suzuki a bowl of noodles out of pity. Anjo gave Suzuki a yakuza position and earned his undying loyalty. Despite the escalating danger and Suzuki's impending death by Ichi, Suzuki remains loyal to his boss for this act of kindness. The scene is rendered perfectly by Miike: seamlessly cut from present time to flashbacks showing Suzuki and Ichi to Suzuki and Anjo, with Kakihara in the background, to Suzuki with his small son, telling him about his new life with the yakuza. In fact, Suzuki and his dissolving relationship with his son gets quite a bit of screen time. What's the point?
Miike's film really is, as he said before, a "film about love." Behind the extreme and outrageous behavior is a story about the outsiders (a group of folks who get mad, crazy love in Miike's filmography), who, whether they like it or not, have human feelings. This is perhaps the most transgressive motif within Ichi the Killer: daring to show genuine human emotion from true real-life monsters. This motif brings the viewer in closer to the characters, while all the while, the viewer believes that he/she can sit comfortably outside of the drama but cannot. As much as Miike litters Ichi with sex and violence, he about equally litters his film with emotion. Like the scenes of sex and violence, the emotion is inescapable. Ichi the Killer is classic Miike: unexpected, irreverent, and playful: cinema's true court jester strikes again.
Now approaching a thousand words, I thought that I would not write about Crying Fist. The film is unlike anything Ryoo has done, thematically and aesthetically. His previous films stylistically are more contrived and artistic, but in Crying Fist, Ryoo shows his command of the modern style: handheld camera, natural light, realistic make-up, costumes, settings, etc. Choi and Ryu both give hearfelt, emotional, and wonderful performances. I actually got teary-eyed with more than a few scenes (I'm such a damn softie!). In a lot of ways, Crying Fist personifies the ideal Post-Modern film: aesthetically challenging and crafted yet heartfelt and emotional: a balance of the intellectual and spiritual. However, Crying Fist lacks greatness. The narrative choice of separating the two characters hurts: while watching both character's stories play out, each alone, lacks a compelling viewer interest. While personally I always feel for someone who is beset with tragedy, either because of external circumstances or of their own making. However, in art, I feel kind of cheated when the characters are beset by tragedies occuring outside of their own making, such as diseases afflicting the unsuspecting or the character who dies in a random accident. Tragedy such as this fills Crying Fist, alongside the characters' own created conflicts and problems. It feels to easy to pull a tear from me, and I think that is what Ryoo is doing. As a caveat, I will say to remember these eyes belong to the Western white guy and not from the culture from where the film was made: a lot of the dialogue in Crying Fist hints to the culture which once was and is now in Korea. Having the two characters represent two generations of Koreans perhaps speaks more to those within and is a stronger artistic choice than it appears. Cultural references, of which I am woefully ignorant, will be lost on me. Crying Fist has two great performances and is for the most part, compelling and interesting. Let's see what Ryoo has coming next.
The last time our antihero Chev Chelios (Jason Statham) was seen, he was falling out of a helicopter at a rapid rate, having dispatched his nemesis, Ricky Verona. A hit and a bounce off of a car (hospitalizing its elderly driver, as newsreporter Fish Halman (John de Lancie) relates) and Chelios lands in the middle of a busy intersection in downtown Los Angeles...only to get scooped up quickly, like roadkill, by a crew decked out in black and whisked away in a hearse-like van. Chelios is on the operating table where Chinese doctors are performing some back-alley open-heart surgery. Facially-pierced Triad, Johnny Vang (Art Hsu) enters and as a sign of respect flicks some ashes of his cigarette into Chelios's open torso. The doctors remove Chelios's heart and replace it with an artificial one. As he recovers on the operating table, in preparation for the Triads to harvest more of his organs, next one being his baby-maker, Chelios awakens and takes out a few foes, and it's time to hit the streets to find his pumper in Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor's Crank 2: High Voltage (2009). 
While Crank had some colorful, comic-book characters, the pacing of Crank 2 allows for more of a display and insight into some of these characters, including the addition of a few new ones. At the local "social club," Chelios rescues Chinese prostitute, Ria (Ling Bai), who is immediately smitten with her savior. Her outlandish broken English is often subtitled, and Ria is a kinetic addition of kink and nonsensical energy who helps Chelios out to find Johnny Vang. Poor Kaylo is no more, but his twin brother, Venus (Efren Ramirez), pops up. He's on a quest to avenge the death of his brother, but Chelios's tells him that he already taken care of that. Feeling a little pity for Venus (and getting himself some extra help), Statham's Chelios tells him that if he finds the guys that he's currently looking for, then Venus will get his revenge (albeit indirectly). Venus's mock heroics are hilarious and his character is a flamboyant and comedic addition to the action. How about Randy (Corey Haim)? Randy is the two-toned mullet-sporting boyfriend of Lemon. Who the eff is Lemon? Lemon is Eve (Amy Smart), who is now working the pole at a gentleman's club, since Chelios was supposedly dead. Haim's Randy is little more than a cameo character. However, in his few scenes, the opportunity to see Haim act like a buffoon, again, with some truly hilarious dialogue is priceless. I grew up watching Haim, and it's good to see him ham it up again. Smart's Eve is more than eye candy here, and she has some terrific scenes again with Statham. She has a fantastic scene later with Randy and dishes out some of her own wicked action and one-liners throughout. Hsu's Johnny Vang is a psycho straight out of the Kakihara school of thugs and he's an excellent foil and nemesis to Statham's Chelios. A very special actor, who recently passed away, is amazing in a small but pivotal role. Finally, Clifton Collins Jr. plays "El Huron," a new crime boss who steals all of his scenes. Statham, Yoakam, and the rest of the players from the previous Crank are just as excellent here. 
The characters who populate Videodrome seemingly would be too outside the norm to be accepted as real (or accessible) by the viewer, but Cronenberg, as he is often able to do with his films, is able to bring the viewer in to his created culture. As outlandish as the film's subject matter is, Videodrome's dialogue never sounds trite or ridiculous. Woods's Renn is an obsessive character who hides behind his commercial mask in order to plumb his dark desires. Harry's Nikki is a perfect match, and when she burns her breast with a lit cigarette, this act should be a cautionary symbol for Renn. The two actors have a strong chemistry, and their scenes together are terrific. Videodrome is a slow and methodical story that escalates perfectly: the viewer needs time to be in Renn's shoes and see the world through his eyes. As his reality begins changing, the viewer not only accepts this new reality but like Renn, wants to see more. Every subsequent scene is revelatory and engrossing: what was shown previously is grotesquely turned on its head and as the film unfolds, Cronenberg increasingly becomes less conservative and shows more in its visceral and sexual reality. 
What is so curious, though, about Videodrome is how wrong Cronenberg captured the culture in 1983 and its future: torture and murder would never become popular in any media; television would shrink in size both in outlets and in its audience; and viewers and seekers of a little kink and darker material would have less access to those sounds and images, because "overstimulation" has never really been our problem. Videodrome is a personal favorite by a truly unique and fantastic film maker. See it (and let it see you).
Juxtaposition manipulation and expectation: Harker's journey: welcoming (?) arms of local Gypsies, superstitious innkeepers and logical impracticability of traveling to Castle Dracula during the evening: Gypsies' stories of literal impossibility of traveling to Castle Dracula; and coachman's denial during confrontation: there is no road, there is no coach, and there are no horses. On foot, Harker walks dangerous and fearsome path protected by a guardrail, which must have been erected by a crew for some purpose (and not hidden from the camera), since the road is either well-traveled or construction crew was risky or needed a project; as he crosses over the mountains, the Gypsies' chasm is a beautiful camera capturing of cloud-covering in a natural sequence; and as night falls, a coach appears to comfort tired Harker and deliver him comfortably to Castle Dracula. 
