Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Milocrorze

NYAFF has been coming across as less and less inspired since their move to Lincoln Center, resulting in a corresponding decrease in attendance. This year, Milocrorze appeared to be one of three films worth seeing (Yellow Sea and Foxy Festival  being the others).

The films opens with a gaudily-dressed kid (picture the Dead Man suit in full color) living with his badly CGIed cat, in his own house as if he were an adult. He meets an adult woman in the park. They fall in love. Eventually she leaves him. He's a child at heart, see? Get it?

The story is replaced by a spotlight on a guy giving love advice to young men. Sure, he's a bit of a prick, and a bit of a misogynist, but the dance numbers are reminiscent of Zebraman 2. Quite fun, and takes a couple of nice shots at introspective-obsessive teenage boys.

After this, there's a samurai story with a somewhat confused and conflicting sense of what period it takes place in (let's take a guess... a "steampunk" setting?). Best to just assume post-apocalyptic and move on. This is the meat of the movie: lots of crazy, fast-slow-fast, gleefully entertaining swordfights. As much a send up of the slashing-katana genre as the previous two segments were of anime and chat shows.

Finally, the wrap-up. The kid from the first segment has "grown up" (still dressing badly) and encounters  the woman he fell in love with, and finally achieves closure. The whole thing has been a metaphor, see? A childlike heart falls obsessively in love, is hurt, becomes a ladykiller, fights an entire lifetime to regain his love, then gets over it.

The middle of the movie was certainly enjoyable, but really, the entire thing was too deliberately quirky and too vapidly symbolic to really take seriously.

* * * R A T I N G * * *

Milocrorze (NYAFF)
MirokurĂ´ze (IMDB)

 Wince : [***__]
 Flinch : [**___]
 Retch : [*****] (* if you are colorblind)
 Gape : [***__]

 Beerequisite : [****_]
 Pornability : [**___]
 Obscurity : [**___]
 Explicability : [**___]

Crossover I'd like to see: Kumagai vs Zebra Queen, dancing on the ground-up corpses of the Black-Eyed Peas.

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