July 2005

Feeling dirty never felt so creepy!

There comes a time in all of our lives that we have to face the fact that life can be unbelievably cruel. Since good art should express the wide range of human experience, it is necessary for artists to sometimes explore the darker side of life, including the unbearably cruel events that people put each other through on a daily basis. However, there must be a purpose in explicitly showing this cruelty and that is where viewing disturbing art can become difficult. Does watching horrible events unfolding on a movie screen make us think about our own lives and how we treat the people that we come into contact with? I believe that in addition to exploring the darker side of human nature in his film Oldboy, director Chan-wook Park wants us all to think about our everyday actions and how they may affect those around us.
In Oldboy, seemingly regular guy Oh Dae-su (Choi Min-sik) is kidnapped and held captive in an apartment for fifteen years. He never sees his captors and has no idea why he has been imprisoned. While in his unusual cell he watches TV, racks his brain about who he could have pissed off to get him in this situation, and eventually trains himself for revenge if he is ever to be released. Without warning he is released and then given five days to find out who his captor is and why he was imprisoned. Oh Dae-su meets up with sushi chef Lee Woo-jin (Yu Ji-tae), who takes him in and helps him with his quest. Oh Dae-su leaves a trail of blood in his wake as he scours the city for clues and sweet vengeance.
Let me just start out by saying that this is a very beautiful film as well as one of the most truly disturbing movies I’ve ever seen. Bad things happen to the main character from the beginning and continue throughout the movie’s 120 minute running time. Any bit of happiness that any of the characters seem to feel is immediately immolated and castrated on the spot. Hatred, spite, depravity, and rage are the order of the day and most events are played out with extreme violence and anger. Yet, Chan-wook Park has managed to present this in a very eye-pleasing and well-constructed thrill ride of a movie, and for that he should be congratulated.

From the outset you will realize that this film is masterfully made and inventively put together. The whole first portion of the movie documenting his fifteen years of captivity is very schizophrenic, reflecting the fragmented state of the character’s mind as he deals with the madness of not knowing why he is suffering in this way. The rest of the movie features some great action scenes including one where Oh Dae-su fights off what must be a hundred guys armed only with a hammer! The film looks great and was made by a director who truly knows his craft.
I just want to warn you, by the end of this movie I felt like my soul had been raped by a jackhammer. Ok, maybe that’s a bit dramatic, but still, it left me feeling deeply disturbed and exhilarated. However, there’s a real beauty to be found in all of this tragedy; a beauty made all the more poignant in the film’s finale where Oh Dae-su has to make an impossible moral choice just to be able to live what he’s discovered about himself. It is one of the biggest and most powerful emotional payoffs you’ll ever see in a movie, and one you’ll not soon forget. Oldboy is definitely not for the faint of heart, but those who enjoy involved storylines, gritty fight scenes, and explorations of the seedier side of things will find much to appreciate here.

Great horror movies keep an audience on the edge of their seat, engaged, wondering what could possibly happen next.  Good horror movies keep you interested through bizarre plot twists, gruesome death scenes, and lots of blood.  This movie made me want to pee.

Dark Water
1 & 1/2 Stars

Great horror movies keep an audience on the edge of their seat, engaged, wondering what could possibly happen next.  Good horror movies keep you interested through bizarre plot twists, gruesome death scenes, and lots of blood.  This movie made me want to pee.  Dark Water is the latest Japanese horror movie to be remade by Hollywood.  I have never seen the original Honogurai mizu no soko kara, but I will assume it was better than this.  It’s really quite a shame considering how much this movie had going for it that the end result is a tangled ball of missed opportunities.

In the midst of a messy divorce and custody battle, Dahlia (Jennifer Connelly) moves with her daughter Ceci (Ariel Gade) to a rather strange apartment building owned by Mr. Murray (John C. Reilly).  The building appears relatively old and rundown, and the caretaker of the place Veek (Pete Postlethwaite) tries to keep everything working while blaming any accidents on a pair of kids who live on the tenth floor.  There’s also a strange stain in the corner of the bedroom ceiling that seems to fascinate Ceci.  Immediately after moving in odd occurences start to happen.  The numbered buttons for the elevator are burnt off and the elevator that often has a small wet spot in the corner likes to move to the top floor all on its own.  Dahlia’s ceiling begins to leak, Ceci begins to be talking to an imaginary friend with the same name as the girl who once lived in the upstairs apartment and makes her do bad things.  Dahlia ‘s life quickly begins to fray as she can’t get anyone to take care of the leak in the apartment, which is caused by all the faucets in the room above hers being turned on, her husband is suing her and citing examples of her unfitness as a parent, and Ceci starting to have episodes at school.

Sounds kinda’ interesting,right?  Well, it’s sad because it really could have been.  All the elements are here for a very tight intriguing psychological drama, but the movie decides early on that it would prefer to be your standard run of the mill Hollywood ghost story.  Very early we see Ceci talking to our ghost and we hear the ghost talking back.  This really takes the wind out of the sails as they keep playing the “is she crazy” storyline even though they have already told us there is a ghost.  The problem is the psychological parts work far better than the ghost scenes.  If you are going to do a ghost movie in the horror realm, which this movie claims to do, then you have to have a scary ghost.  A little girl who starts water leaks around the building isn’t too scary to me.  Nothing that happens justifies the effect it has on Dahlia so they had to write in a back story halfway through the film about her being abused and abandoned by her parents.  I guess this is supposed to explain why all these inconveniences scare her when they wouldn’t scare a four year-old child, but I’m sorry I couldn’t buy it.  Water just isn’t scary.  The big special effects sequences are far from impressive.  We get water running down floors, water dripping, water shooting through pipes, water shooting out of sinks and toilets, and water running down walls.  I’ve seen effects on Sesame Street that are scarier, and more impressive.  An odd note, most of the water is a very dark color almost like blood which is a nice touch, but is wasted because no one in the movie, even though it is everywhere, seems to notice or comment.

So they abandon the suspense angle early on, the horror angle never pans out, is there anything that works in this movie?  Well yes, it does have some nice performances.  Reilly is very good as the apartment owner/slum lord who resembles more of a used car salesman.  There are good performances by the Ariel Gade as the child and Tim Roth, who has a very interesting turn as Dahlia’s lawyer who works out of his SUV.  Connelly is very good in the opening quarter of the movie, but her performance becomes strictly one note as the odd occurences begin, which isn’t helped by the script calling for her to self medicate herself continuously through the end of the movie.  Postlethwaite’s character never really is defined.  He’s either the mean and creepy old guy who lives in the basement, or he’s a nice guy who fixes problems for the tenants, depending on the scene.  Dougray Scott is fine as the ex-husband, though he’s a little too nice and concerned for us to understand Dahlia’s anger at him.  Camyrn Manheim has a nice role as Ceci’s teacher, but there’s really not much for her to do in the movie other then tell Dahlia something might be wrong with her daughter.  The apartment building is very strange, but never really scary.  The director never takes advantage of play on the oddness of the surroundings.  In addition, it does seem rather empty.  We only see three other tenants from the building throughout the entire movie, Veek’s two michievious teenagers who could have been much creepier, and a man Dahlia meets on the elevator.  Considering the huge building and Murray’s need to sell apartments fast, fast, fast this doesn’t seem to make much sense.  The director might have been going for a ghost town feel, but we are told and shown that this is a thriving town with one of the best schools in the nation.  Maybe the studio ran out of money and couldn’t hire any more extras.

This movie just doesn’t work.  I could see what the director and the writer were going for in different scenes, but the choices they make never pan out.  To give you an example, without explaining too much, the last scenes in the movie are supposed to be moving.  I laughed out loud.  The ending doesn’t seem to translate well, while it might work well in the Japanese version, here it just looks contrived.  The opening sequence with Dahlia as a little girl, which we see again and again in flashbacks, does nothing to add weight to the character or the storyline.  The movie is beset with countless boneheaded decisions are made simply because of the need to advance another ghost scene in the plot.  The movie wastes a great cast and a very intriguing set up for a psychological drama for what amounts to a pretty lame ghost movie.  If you want to see a good suspenseful movie about a kid that talks to dead people I’d recommend you go out and rent M. Night Shyamalan’s The Sixth Sense, unless water scares you.

This Danish film about a POW is good for the icing, but not the cake.

The story of Brothers is unoriginal nearly to the point of cliché, but the masterful performances and beautiful cinematography make the movie interesting. Indeed, the familiarity of the story squarely plants the focus of the film on the art of those making it and on the underlying theme of betrayal and forgiveness.

Michael (Ulrich Thomsen) is a major in the Danish army who is being deployed to Afghanistan; his brother Jannik (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) was just released from prison where he served time for robbing a bank. When Michael is taken prisoner by Afghani fighters and is presumed dead, Jannik must summon the maturity to hold his family together while caring for Michael’s wife Sarah (Connie Nielsen) and her two daughters. As Jannik and Sarah grow closer, Michael endures unspeakable horror to survive.

The tension between Jannik and Sarah is palpable as they each long for the other to dull their grief. As the two fall into an uneasy friendship, the audience is left wondering what really happened between them, an issue further complicated by exposition by unreliable characters later in the film. It’s unfortunate that the character of Jannik makes little sense as he seems to pluck responsibility out of the blue when his brother goes missing, then loses it just as quickly when Michael returns. In fact, once Michael is rescued Jannik takes a back seat, nearly disappearing from the film altogether, making it clear that Brothers is really about Michael and Sarah.

When Michael returns home, he finds it impossible to accept what he did to survive and chooses instead to hide it. Odd behavior and unprovoked outbursts spiral into a drunken rage in which he tears his house apart, meanwhile Sarah must hide the growing fear of her husband from her daughters. I would have liked to see more of Michael before he is deployed to Afghanistan so that the effects of his imprisonment stand in greater relief.

Director Susanne Bier’s minimalist style is unobtrusive and serves to showcase the talent of the actors. The use of no additional lighting draws us in as we get a sense of the locations without the need for long scenery shots, and the use of handheld digital cameras lends the film urgent intensity. Color subtly evokes the mood of the characters, with pale blues after Michael’s supposed death warming as Jannik and Sarah draw closer, as well as providing a visual clash between Denmark and Afghanistan. On the other hand, the unnecessary images of waving grass that signify the next scene will be in Afghanistan seemed amateurish. All in all, the film takes the best elements of Dogme 95 while retaining familiar elements that make an audience comfortable, like a soundtrack.

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