L O V E E X P O S U R E

The four-hour hentai epic that the world didn't ask for but sorely needed. The son of a Catholic priest becomes obsessed with sin, while a religious cult starts to become a social problem in Japan.

Is it about sex? Pornography? Religion? Insanity? Yes! If this film doesn't have it, you don't need it.

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

Ai no mukidashi (IMDB)

Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [****_]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [*****]

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


Extra Points: The shortest four-hour movie in history. At last year's NYAFF, the 90 minute film Dream was twice as long as this.

Shamo

This adaptation of a manga about a fighter would have been better served by abandoning its source material entirely. The story (a young man gets sent to prison for killing his parents and emerges a tough martial artist) and the character (a vicious, wronged thug who lacks the wits or skill to win a match) are good enough to sustain interest, but the exposition and the lack of any cohesion to the scenes ultimately make the film a bit of a disappointment.

From the director of Dog Bite Dog, one would expect a gritty, grim tale, and indeed one is provided: Shamo must mean "shat upon by society". Nice touches abound throughout: the Johnny Walker-swilling sensei, the gaudily-dressed prostitute love(?)-interest, and even The Beast (Kung Fu Hustle) as the head of the top martial arts gym.

Ranks with Zebraman for one of the best martial arts finishing moves out there.

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

Shamo (NYAFF, IMDB)

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [****_]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [**___]

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

Mad Detective

A detective solves crimes by a combination of method acting and being able to see people's true selves. Of course, he can also see his former wife, and nobody else can -- but that doesn't mean he's crazy, right?

Things get interesting when the obvious villain of the piece appears, all seven personalities (played by some Johnnie To regulars) in tow. The Mad Detective teams up with a young, ambitious cop to help him solve the case of ... the Missing Gun. Well, the case involves a Murdered Policeman as well, but no-one seems to care, really.

Good crazy police fun, if a bit disorderly at times.

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

Sun taam (NYAFF, IMDB)

Wince : [**___]
Flinch : [***__]
Retch : [***__]
Gape : [***__]

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

Serenity

I never can put my finger on why I don't like Joss Wedon's stuff.

Maybe it's the unnatural dialog, or the poor direction given to the actors. Maybe it's the clumsy plots and the seen-it-coming-a-mile-away humor. Maybe it's because everything he does feels like it's fan service, even when it's a new show or film that shouldn't have any fans yet. One gets the feeling that the scripts are written purely for obsessives to pump their fists to and yell "yeah!" whenever in the 110th viewing their favorite character does something predictably within character.

The worst thing is, Serenity *should* work. It's got a Civil war analogy, different levels of technology, an authoritarian democratic regime, cannibals, a prostitute, a teenage girl who's a lunatic killing machine. What's not to like?

The writing, I guess.

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

Serenity (IMDB)

Wince : [****_]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [**___]

Beerequisite : [*****]
Pornability : [_____]
Obscurity : [_____]
Explicability : [***__]

Observatory Mansions

Edward Carey's Observatory Mansions is the story of a handful of neurotic misanthropes who live in a curiously isolated apartment complex in what appears to be London. A new tenant moves in, resulting in a sea of change, including a few deaths and a lot of reconciliation with the past.

The characters are certainly interesting and eccentric. The narrator, with his deep abiding distrust of humanity projected on the people he encounters and his meticulously cataloged collection of garbage, has the least redeeming qualities of any of them.

It is hard describe the book as compelling, however, even when events are building to a climax at the end. It was very similar to reading The Wasp Factory; the events that unfold are unusual and interesting, but ultimately one is left thinking "So what?".

The Last Winter

Ron Perlman struggling to keep his sanity in an Arctic wasteland. Actually, it's not much of a struggle

The movie is about a drilling crew out in the Arctic Wildlife Refuge determining the feasibility of drilling now that Bush has pushed through his drill-everywhere-you-like-guys oil legislation. You think the green political statements end there? Oh you just wait, pal. They're more persistent than the monsters in this film.

OK, so the head of the project flies back from a meeting with the boss carrying a mandate to get the trucks in and start drilling. Objecting to this is an eco-friendly bearded nut who's been attached to the project as a way to placate Green Party voters. People start going crazy and dying.

Or is something killing them? The film can't decide, and when it does it's too late. You've spent most of the movie believing people are going nuts, for whatever reasons, then the Ghost of Pleistocine Past appears to mop up the rest. In five minutes the actors are decimated and the world is being destroyed by Nature.

Or is it? You'll never know, because the CGI budget ran out before they could complete the final shot. I was waiting for an hourglass to appear and a dialog box saying "Rendering...", but instead the credits rolled.

The film is watchable for all that: the acting is good, the filming is good, and it does a decent job of building up a lot of tension. It's quite heavy-handed with the eco-political dialog, though, and the abrupt ending leaves one wondering what the buildup was intended to anticipate.


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

The Last Winter (IMDB)

Wince : [***__]
Flinch : [**___]
Retch : [**___]
Gape : [***__]

Beerequisite : [***__]
Pornability : [*____]
Obscurity : [*____]
Explicability : [***__]

What I would do different: Those CGI monsters have to go.

The Call of Cthulhu

I've been a big H. P. Lovecraft fan for a long time. I spent years scouring used bookstores for each and every book, only to feel foolish later when his work was rediscovered and mass-produced. Much like Phillip K. Dick. It's been awhile since I've read any Lovecraft -- I started with his work in high school, and there's only some many times one can re-read the entire canon -- but I'll always have a high regard for his tales of unearthly horror, often in near reach, that can shatter men's minds.

"The Call of Cthulhu" is not my favorite of his stories, and is probably overrated, but certainly lends itself well to cinematic adaptation. This half-length (45 min) black-and-white silent feature (filmed in MythoScope!) does not disappoint: the pacing, the props, the silent-era acting style all contribute to a unique, creepy-paranoid feel.

The story is simple and true to formula: man meets elder god, man loses mind, another man meets elder god. Everything is predictable, which is expected as the film is an adapatation rather than a new work inspired by the original mythos. I was at first disappointed with the cyclopean city set, expecting the 'weird geometry' to be more indicative of 4-plus dimensional space, but when guys started be swallowed up by corners I was greatly impressed.

The only disappointment in this movie is Cthulhu himself. While the directors rightly decided to use obvious stop-motion effects, they should have made his form much more difficult to discern, more shadowy. A better design artist and a better animator would bat the movie's climax right out of the bark.

A very good film, much better than any other Lovecraft adaptation and inspiration out there (with the possible exception of Cast a Deadly Spell). Let's hope the team behind this decide to team up with Giger and Svankmajer to do a full-length, modern-style Lovecraft movie that drives our brains screeching and keening right back down the stem to hide shivering at the base of our spines. Dare to dream, eh?

* * * R A T I N G * * *
The Call of Cthulhu (IMDB)

Wince : [***__] (** for the cultists, * for Cthulhu)
Flinch : [*____]
Retch : [*____]
Gape : [**___]

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

Scene I'd watch on endless loop: The crew exploring and fleeing Kong^H^H^H^H Cthulhu Island.

Memories I want to erase: The boat hitting Cthulhu's stomach.

What I would do different: Replace the Cthulhu model with Little Otik and bad lighting.