Musa

Directed by Kim Sung-su, Musa is the kind of lavish production you rarely see done in Asian cinema. At least you rarely see it done this well. The rather simple story is of a group of Korean envoys who are exiled from 14th Century China. Freed by a serendipitous attack the Koreans lead by a young general decide to cut across the Chinese desert and go back to Korea. When they meet a princess being held by a Mongol general the group concoct a plan to ease their progress home.

While the story is somewhat simple it is the pacing and characterisation that drive the film. Musa is certainly now a quick film, clocking in at just over 2 and a half hours, and it uses this time to gradually build up its central characters. Due to the low numbers of characters each is given a comprehensive, if slightly clichéd, character. Everyone has a reason to be there and everyone is fleshed out just enough for their lives to mean something to the viewer.

Generally speaking the three main characters are the young General, a newly freed slave with spectacular fighting ability, and the princess held by the Mongols (played in a typical erudite fashion by the eponymous Zhang Ziyi). The supporting cast do exactly what a supporting cast should do and at times come across even more sympathetically than the leads.

The meat of the film is provided by a series of blisteringly choreographed and brutally gory battle scenes. While at first the skirmishes are difficult to keep track of it soon becomes easy to keep track of the beat of the battle. The battles themselves range from riotous free for alls to cunningly planned strategic ambushes and a final siege which is as harrowing as it is thrilling.

Backed by a beautiful anachronistic score and some stunning visuals, which keep the style of and add practicality to Modern Wuxia, Musa is a great film which is both massively entertaining and desperately bleak.

9/10

Lone Wolf and Cub: Sextet Review

Sword of Vengeance

Ogami Itto and his infant son Daigoro are demons. Once a faithful servant of the Shogun, Itto has now abandoned his oath to the Shogun. He had served as executioner to the Shogun, assisting enemies of the Empire in ritual suicide. This prestigious honour was coveted by a rival clan, whom through subterfuge lose Itto his honour, his home and his wife. Serving no master they travel Japan as mercenaries for hire, taking jobs for a fee of 500 gold coins. While the main plot concerns a job to take out a group of bandits who have taken over a spa town, the meat of the film is found in the flashbacks.

Essentially Sword of Vengeance is the origin story for Ogami Itto and Daigoro. Unlike later films in the series the plot is somewhat lacking in momentum, content to focus on establishing a back story at the expense of any real threat to Itto. Certainly it’s easy to see the film as part of a series, the main villains of the piece are left unscathed, the finale staged against a bunch of cipher like bandits. But it’s this methodical set up which allows later films, particularly the two films that immediately follow, to get to the meat of the story. By the end of the movie the primary villain has been introduced, the character dynamics have been set in place, the back-story has been settled, and Ogami Itto has been shown to be an irrefutable badass.

While the film feels incomplete at times it works with the rather rudimentary plot to create a series of nicely designed character moments and set pieces which builds up to a finale which has plenty of gore and grisly effects to make up for a general lack of emotion. The secondary villains of Sword of Vengeance are a bunch of largely generic brigands who seem destined to die from the moment we lay eyes on them.

But some beautiful cinematography, brutal fight scenes, and some interesting characters make up for the lack of forward momentum in the general plot.

Audition

To call Audition a straight Thriller would probably do it a disservice. In many ways, it follows the basic plot archetypes of the fidelity thrillers such as ‘Basic Instinct’. That is to say, that it plays on the fear of early relationships, that gnawing uncertainty as you slowly get to know someone. Nevertheless, in many ways Audition breaks out of that genre easily. Namely because it only really becomes a thriller in the third act.

Indeed if anything, the first two acts of audition play like the social love stories that sprang out of Japan in the late 90s. Using frosty relationships as an allergy for an increasingly isolated and introverted society. However while the first and second act are wistful ruminations on life and romance the third act is a kick to the side of the head that few can be prepared for…

Ryo Ishibashi plays Shigeharu Aoyama a widowed Japanese man living with his son after his wife’s death from an unknown illness. When he mentions to a friend that his son saying he should meet somebody else an idea is hatched that is cold, calculated, ruthless and extremely human. Using a reformatted script from a previous production Shigeharu and his friend set up an audition for a fake movie. The sole intent of this being to find Shigeharu a new partner without the ordeal of actually meeting people in a normal setting.

The audition attracts many applicants but Aoyama finds himself drawn to a young woman named Asami Yamazaki. Following a serendipitous coffee spillage Aoyama takes a closer look at Asami’s profile the night before the audition and finds himself rapt by her. This is largely due to several hardships she has suffered in her life, namely an accident that forced her to quit her dream of being a professional dancer.

The following day Aoyama seems fairly disinterested as a bevy of talent parades in front of him. He does not speak to any of the applicants or really react to what they say or do. Indeed, at several times he quite pointedly checks the register to ascertain when Asami is going to do her Audition. Despite his friend’s urge to view all the girls equally, it is clear that something about Asami has struck a deep cord with Aoyama.

Unlike other interviews where he was silent and unresponsive, he actively takes part in Asami’s interview. He asks her several questions and seems almost in awe of her, a point hammered home by his praise of her strength following her accident. After the interview, Aoyama receives a call from his friend saying that Asami’s reference does not check out completely. Her referee, a record executive, has been missing for months. Aoyama merely shrugs off the implications. However, this information does stop him from calling her for a while. When he finally does, give in Miike gives us the first and only clue to what is lying ahead. Asami back arched in an inhuman manner over her phone, smiles coldly and menacingly as Aoyama finally phones her. The sound of the phone prompts the contents of a mysterious burlap sack to move with the most disturbing sound affect imaginable.

A few dates follow and over the course of these Aoyama grows ever fonder of Asami but still bends the truth when he his broached on the subject of the audition. After these dates, the fledgling couple retreat to a seaside shack and following a night together things take a turn for the worst. It is here where the narrative becomes hard to explain as due to circumstances explained later the third act of audition is played out almost like a surrealist dream.

What follows these initial scenes, which are tender and gentle and understated, is a descent into a hell of one man’s making. A glimpse into a mind where all the fears of getting to know a new person are played out in their most outlandish forms. Aoyama unable to find Asami when he awakes meets her stepfather who turns out to be a wheelchair bound pervert with a fondness for seared flesh, played with usual relish by regular Miike collaborator Renji Ishibashi. Having already displaced the serene narrative of the film with scenes of a young Asami having her thighs seared with hot sticks Miike slowly starts to ease on the tension with a visit to the bar where Asami works several days a week.

At the bar where Asami is supposed to work Aoyama is confronted with the news that it has been vacant for months. The reason for the vacancy being the sudden and brutal murder of the owner. What happens next is once again hard to explain. Having arrived home Aoyama finds himself drugged and falls into a bizarre dream world. His earlier dates with Asami are played again, images of Asami gaining vengeance against her uncle are shown, and we are offered a glimpse into the contents of the burlap sack as well as a glimpse into Aoyama’s subconscious. Finally awaking from this nightmare Aoyama finds himself about to undergo something far worse than his overactive imagination.

Completely paralysed but still able to feel sensation Aoyama is subject to horrific acts of torture. Needles are first drilled into his abdomen, Asami singing a sweetly psychotic ditty as she does so ‘kiri-kiri-kiri’, and then his face before sawing his foot off with wire. She is interrupted halfway through sawing his other foot by Aoyama’s son and just as Asami prepares to disable him we snap back to Aoyama waking up at the beachside resort Asami sleeping serenely beside him before we have a final flash back to the house where Asami fails to disable Aoyama’s son and finds herself plummeting down a stair way.

Part of the joy of Audition is the ultimate uncertainty of what is fact and what is fiction. It is my personal view that everything that follows Asami and Aoyama’s trip to the beachside resort is just a particularly violent dream. While that may seem ultimately inconclusive, it does make a skewed kind of sense. His uncertainty about a new relationship manifesting itself in a grim vision of a psychotically jealous lover determined to punish those who have wronged her. Indeed, before the unveiling of the bagman, which could be an allegory for his fears of becoming kept by a woman again, we see his mind morphing Asami into the objects of his desire and his past indiscretions.

Audition is perhaps a perfect showcase for Miike’s talent as a filmmaker. The movie is shot in a wonderful style that apes the pseudo documentary style of contemporary Japanese social dramas and puts it together with his own eye for aesthetics. An example of this would be the clash between the desolate and sparse interview sections and the sumptuously coloured date scene shots. An interesting aspect of the movie is that during the torture scene the film snaps from a dreamy soft focus style of filming to an almost polarised and deep style to showcase Asami’s particularly grusome bloodletting.

And it is grusome indeed. While you may argue that this film is really, a statement about isolationism in Japanese society there is no escaping the fact that the last half of the film is a demonstration in pure voyeuristic delight. The scenes of torture are both uncompromisingly hideous, Aoyama desperately trying to move his prone hand is almost heartbreaking, and darkly hilarious, the cold mannered way that Asami dispenses of a severed foot and her chilling fun suggest an uncomfortable humour in these scenes.

10/10

One Armed Boxer vs. The Master of the Flying Guillotine

There is something refreshingly awesome about a film that starts with a blind monk practicing kung fu, decapitating chickens, and exploding his house after receiving a brail message, by carrier, informing him of his student’s death.

Such is the start of Jimmy Wang Yu’s One Armed Boxer vs. The Master of the Flying Guillotine. A sequel to the largely forgettable 1971 movie ‘One Armed Boxer’ this 1975 film is probably the best film that Wang Yu would make even surpassing 1976’s One Armed Swordsman in terms of sheer ingenuity and style.

Set in a time of political turmoil an imperial decree has created a sect of rebel hunters who use a peculiar weapon which is essentially a hat on a leash with teeth. This unique weapon when thrown lands around the victims head and cuts it off at the neck.

The blind monk, Fu Sing Wu Chi, introduced at the start is one such rebel hunter and is out to avenge his fallen students who died at the hand of famed one armed boxer Yu Tieh-lun. Unfortunately for the armless populace the monk doesn’t have a name and as such is inclined to kill anyone missing an arm.

Such a simple framework would undoubtedly be enough for a solid Kung Fu movie, but it’s only through the introduction of a second element that the film manages to make even the most violence obsessed a little bit kung fu fatigued.

Amidst all of the decapitations a martial arts tournament is taking place which pretty much dominates the 2nd act of the movie and is essentially eight or so fights with little or no gap between them. As well as showcasing a plethora of martial arts styles and weapons, including some pretty nice Naginata work and monkey kung fu, it sets up the fodder for later on in the movie.

Amongst the entrants are a Thai knife fighter, an Indian fakir who can extend his arms, and a Japanese karate expert with the name ‘Wins Without A Knife’ who uses tonfa batons and rather bizarrely a knife.

These characters serve as ‘sub-bosses’ in the movie, forcing the one armed boxer to ply his trade while withholding the confrontation between him and the monk to the last act.

Jimmy Wang Yu not only directs but stars as The One Armed Boxer and in my view he is probably the one weak link in the movie. His prowess as a martial artist is visibly lacking and despite some nice techniques and some great editing it is very apparent that his lack of skill, in comparison to the rest of the crew, is being worked around.

The real star of the film is of course the Monk played with chilling ruthlessness by Kang Kam. The monk is essentially the kung fu variant of the terminator, unstoppable in his quest and unbeatable with his guillotine.

However despite Wang Yu’s fighting chops his invention is top notch as is his direction. The major fights are not your typical kinds of fight, again probably to accommodate his less than graceful movements, and are largely about invention than lightning quick moves. Key examples are a fight in what is essentially a room sized oven and the final battle in a coffin shop complete with spring loaded hatchets.

His talents as a director are far more impressive and even on horrible versions of the movie you can still see his flair for set design and iconic imagery. Special mention must be made to the music, in particular the monk’s theme which is both iconic and wonderfully fitting.

I’d call this film a guilty pleasure, but I think it transcends that to be honest. The film is really well made, the fights are fun to watch, and the characterisation warrants at least a little respect.

8/10

Akira

It always seems odd to me that Akira is now used as the lynchpin for elitists to dismiss other anime enthusiasts. It seems to me that if you say your favourite anime is Akira, Spirited Away, Monokoke, or Ghost in the Shell you will most likely get laughed at in some circles. The reason is that Akira is seen as something of a lowest common denominator, the fact it was internationally popular meaning that no ‘true’ anime fan can hold it as their favourite.

Which brings attention to myself, an anime lover for the last decade or so, a person whom I respect very much, and whom will quite proudly state that his favourite anime is Akira. Despite having seen some of the less well known anime films, the ones that ‘elitists’ gush over, such as Graveyard of the Fireflies, Millennium Actress, Love Hina, Naruto, Spiral, Geneshaft and Full Metal Alchemist, I still think that Akira is possibly one of the greatest films ever made.

Essentially Akira is an anime conversion of Katsuhiro Otomo’s Manga from the 1980s, a Manga which was as insidiously large as it was groundbreaking. The 2000 page Manga was converted into an animated feature in 1988, six years after its initial release.

Akira starts out with Tokyo devastated by a nuclear blast, an explosion of darkest black highlighted against a clinically white background. From this point onwards we are thrust into a near future world, where a sprawling new city has been built on the ashes of the old. Neo Tokyo.

I am not going to go into too much detail about the plot, it can be basically surmised as follows; bikers find out about rivals and stage attack, during the course of the attack one of the bikers is involved in an accident due to a freaky kid in the middle of the road, biker is taken to military research institute and has his latent power and desires enhanced, he breaks out and is recaptured, goes mental and kills tons of people, turns into a homogenous blob and essentially implodes.

Where Akira succeeds more than anything else is a sense of visceral energy that is generated, everything from the biker wars to Kaneda and Tetsuo’s final standoff is brutal and almost barbaric. A sense of violence pervading every scene as revolutionaries are beaten to a bloody pulp by totalitarian police, a man is gunned down in the middle of a crowded street, soldiers are ripped limb from limb by Tetsuo and his growing power, and Tetsuo’s girlfriend is raped by a rival biker gang.

Everything has a tangible desperateness to it and often displays a level of nihilism which is only comparable to Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance. In the end the film can largely be seen as a parable about human failing in dire situations, Tetsuo turned into a vicious monster through his lust for power being a major example. Kaneda is another interesting character, as he is in a conventional sense the hero of the piece and yet he is motivated either by his affections for Kei or what appears to be a jealously at Tetsuo’s power. Indeed the final standoff seems to be a product of Kaneda feeling his position has been usurped rather than through any heroic principles.

What sets this apart from other films is a level of art design which is still not beaten, there are scenes in this 16 year old movie that are still as powerful as they were when the film was released. Chief in my mind is the opening biker fight (the standoff between Kaneda and the Clown Chief being a particular favourite), Tetsuo’s nightmare scene, and the military satellite blasting off Tetsuo’s arm with silent menace.

This is all aided by a simple fabulous score by Geinoh Yamashirogumi, a vocal troop which give what is essentially a cyberpunk parable a does of almost mythological grandeur through their use of chanting and traditional instruments. Particular standouts include Battle Against Clown, Shohmyoh, and Requiem.

All in all Akira is a classic movie which is possible the best anime film ever made, the only really bad points is that in condensing the Manga down they miss out on some of the more subtle plot points and some of the more interesting aspects (in the Manga for example Tetsuo becomes the leader of the Clowns, gets hooked to drugs to stop the headaches, and has a full on biker war against his old gang…)



But that doesn’t stop this from being a film of almost poetic majesty, and one that any anime fan (or movie fan for that matter) should be proud to call a favourite.

10/10

The Wicker Man

Oh God! Oh Jesus Christ!

When Sergeant Howie, a mainland police officer, receives a letter detailing the disappearance of a young girl on the isolated Scottish island of Summerisle he launches an investigation to find young Rowan by himself. However upon arrival the righteous police officer finds himself dealing with obstructive locals and practices which shake his Christian core.

Made in the winter of 1973 The Wicker Man still stands as one of the finest British films ever made. Mixing a stunning script and tight plot by Anthony Shaffer, stunning direction by Robin Hardy and two central performances which have yet to be topped by either Edward Woodward (Sgt. Howie) or Christopher Lee (Lord Summerisle), it is an ingenious and peculiarly British film.

What is the central crux of the film is Howie’s rigid clash with the pagan ways of the islanders. From the moment he arrives on the Ireland Howie views himself as a bastion of moral and ethical superiority, his religious convictions putting him squarely at odds with the locals who flaunt their old ways with reckless abandon.

Howie finds himself in a world of pagan song and dance from which he is completely isolated. Saving himself for marriage he encounters a community who use sexuality as their way of worship, girls jump naked over fires, the maypole is declared a sign of fertility, boys are ritually matured, couples engage in romps below the stars, and the denizens of the pub break into rapturous verse about the Landlord’s daughter, Willow (a truly stunning performance by Britt Ekland).

Taking its practices from St James George Frazer’s ‘The Golden Bough’ and incorporating the works of Robert Burns into its 13 songs the Wicker Man is a wondrously energetic and spirited glimpse at a neo-pagan community left to its own devices. Created by Lord Summerisle’s grandfather as part of an experiment in artificial crop production the practices of the island were assimilated from the very real mythology of ancient Britain, albeit a hodge podge of different customs.

However despite the initial frivolity it soon becomes clear that Howie has landed himself in a trap of epic proportions, a fatal game devised by Lord Summerisle and played by the entire island leading Howie, seemingly by his own freewill, to his brutal appointment with the Wicker Man.

The Wicker Man is a masterful horror movie largely because it mixes a general sense of unease with a vibrancy and playfulness that lures the viewer into a false sense of security. Sgt. Howie is not much of a sympathetic character and his reactionary response to the pagan practices does little to endear him to the audience. Standing against the rigid, pious and narrow minded police officer is an ensemble of characters that seem to bear the officer no ill will on the surface.

That the conclusion, despite being the only natural end to the story, is tragic and upsetting is down to Woodward’s performance who gives Howie an innocence that offsets his less than friendly reaction to the islanders. For all the possible accusations of anti-Christianity levelled against the film the last minutes, when Howie accepts his fate it can be seen as a powerful depiction of Christian martyrdom.

If I have not mentioned the finale in any great detail it is because I wish not to surprise the sheer cataclysmic horror of the initial reveal and subsequent end.

The Wicker Man is a movie that has been with me for 10 years now and despite the horror elements it is a film that I find to be constantly uplifting and enrapturing. Aided by a wondrous folk score, provided by Paul Giovanni, and beautiful location shooting it is by far one of my all time favourite movies.



It is a great crime that the original negatives of the film have been lost, seemingly forever, but as it stands this is one of the great British movies and without a doubt the pinnacle of Christopher Lee’s career.

This film is an iconic masterpiece which should be essentially viewing for any person interested in movies.

10/10

Survive Style 5+

The sound of spade on flesh fills a cold winter night as a man rectifies a simple mistake, trying to bury his victim while she was still alive. The man played by a mesmerising Tadanabou Asano, heads back home, day of the dead dolls dangling from his car's mirror, and discovers his recently deceased wife waiting for him patiently at the dinner table.

Thus begins Gen Sekiguchi’s series of five interconnected vignettes which focus primarily on Asano’s attempts to kill his seemingly immortal wife, a trio of robbers who like each other a little too much, a narcissistic commercial maker, a salaryman hypnotised into thinking he is a bird and a hitman who growls through his interpreter a simple, but often fatal, question: What is your function in life?

These five stories, told in segments throughout the whole film, cross and collide at several key junctures with characters from different arcs being used in a variety of situations. An example would be the English hitman, played by a scarily convincing Vinnie Jones, who doesn’t actually have his own story, but acts as a catalyst for one story, murdering a hypnotist before he can reverse his hypnotism, and serving as end points for two of the other stories.

In a lot of ways it’s like Magnolia if Magnolia was technicolour and demented. It’s probably a little lazy calling a film ‘insane’, ‘demented’ or ‘crazy’ but Survive Style 5+ is almost dependant on those verbs. Coming from an advertising background Gen Sekiguchi creates a film that is positively buzzing with surreal energy.

What is impressive however is that amidst crazy commercials involving kappa and men with upside down faces, esoteric hit men, reincarnated murder victims with powers relating to how they were previously dispatched, a primary school teacher admonishing children for making boring paintings, Sonny Chiba as an electronics president instructing his wife how to change a light bulb during a meeting, and a father trying to teach himself how to fly there are moments of tenderness.



Survive Style 5+ is truly an anarchic movie but is also craftily designed so that even if characters are little more than ciphers you end up empathising with them by the end of the film. One perfect example of this is Asano’s unnamed character who rarely speaks and frequently murders his wife and yet becomes almost sympathetic by the end of the film. This is of course largely due to another excellent performance by Asano who has the gift of being a perfect physical actor. He can tell you more with the furrow of a brow and the dart of an eye than any other actor could with a 12 page soliloquy.

In fact Survive Style 5+ is blessed with actors who seem to know exactly how to treat the material. While no one will win awards, except maybe Asano, the cast gives the hugely surrealistic film a thematic grounding by playing everything big. The hypnotist Aoyama is a cock thrusting truly over the top monstrosity who is played with such gusto that it’s hard not to connect with him, and the same can be said for all the actors whom just inhabit their characters perfectly.

The movie seems to be what the medium of film was made for. I don’t think I have seen a film that was as meticulously designed or impeccably sound tracked as Survive Style 5+. The sets and costume designs are simply fantastic with every aspect of the production undergoing the same hyper stylised approach as the story, the standout being Asano’s home a mansion with rooms of various colours and tones which seems to morph, like his reoccurring wife, to suit the situation.

Combined with a soundtrack that is at times overbearingly hilarious, the tale of the three robbers would be monumentally dull if not for the thumping electro pop song that blasts whenever two of them make eye contact, but always perfectly serves the moment, one of the last Asano scenes has a song which perfectly demonstrates his characters desperation and the futility of his efforts to avert the impending situation.

In all Survive Style 5+ is one of the most stylish films of the new millennium which does have an emotional undercurrent which while not pervasive gives the movie just enough weight to make it a sure fire modern classic.

9/10

Notes on the DVD

I watched Survive Style at the cinema first and subsequently ordered the version below

Survive Style 5+

The DVD comes with the movie and a 2nd disc jam packed with features, which are unfortunately not subbed.

The picture quality is stunning, matching the impeccable print I saw at the cinema, and the sound quality is fantastic. While there are occasional glitches with regards to subtitles they are infrequent and amount to little more than “It’s is”.

In all it’s a fantastic package and if you’re thinking of getting a copy I’d go with that.