Change Your Image
DustyKramKram
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Lists
An error has ocurred. Please try againReviews
Eikyû kazoku (1997)
Prescient but uneven, ETERNAL FAMILY is an enjoyable romp.
The opening text crawl of Koji Morimoto's ETERNAL FAMILY tells us about six strangers who have been gathered together, had their memories erased, and convinced they are a family. The reason? Science, natch. But in order to pay for the experiment's operating costs, the scientists sell the surreptitiously recorded footage of the fake fam to a television broadcasting company. The ensuing reality series is a huge hit, and these six deeply disturbed people become stars ignorant of their own celebrity.
Ben is the father; he is an actor by trade and the only family member who has not been brainwashed. Working for the broadcasting company, he carries around a blow-up doll with a hidden camera installed in its gaping mouth. A-ko, the mother, suffers from constipation, an affliction that will contribute heavily to the incident that sets the story in motion. Akiko is the elder daughter; she is a pyromaniac divorcée looking for love. Sasuke is the oldest son; he's a graffiti artist that huffs paint fumes and occasionally fires his machine gun. Sae, the younger daughter, speaks through a hand puppet. Michael is a baby; he's always carrying a pair of scissors. A dog named Tamasaburo and a chicken are the titular family's pets.
One day, after a bad bout of constipation, A-ko causes a plumbing disaster that releases her and the rest of her family into the "real world." The broadcasting company pulls out all the stops and offers a whopping 200 million yen per family member to whomever can find them. On their brief journey, the unknowing prisoners learn of their renown just before being captured and returned to a state of tabula rasa. In the final moments of the series, Tamasaburo helps his family escape the brainwashing machine. Ben gets fired over this and begins searching for these five strangers he now calls family.
In retrospect, ETERNAL FAMILY appears to have been much more prescient than a 1997 audience might have expected. Debuting a year ahead of Peter Weir's THE TRUMAN SHOW and right on the precipice of the reality TV boom of the late 90s, the series seems to understand the morbid curiosity with which TV watchers consume this most cynical of genres. The extreme propensities that each of the family members possess is an apt satire of similar casting choices in shows where the point seems to be "put these people in a confined space and watch them implode." Mercifully, Morimoto's story isn't quite as contemptuous as this. Ben's final actions cement a much more uplifting sentiment: that family doesn't necessarily mean blood.
The animation is pretty wacky — a visual cousin of works like Hiroyuki Imaishi's 2004 film DEAD LEAVES. A noticeably lacking budget leaves everything a little on the sloppy side, but the art direction by Hiroshi Kato manages to hide the brunt of these issues. The music is all over the place — from barely-there to bombastic, rhythmic action supplements — but nothing about it is very memorable.
In 1997, Studio 4˚C began releasing ETERNAL FAMILY in 53 30-second installments, and the episodes were collected for a DVD release in 2004. I know I've been calling it a series, which it is, but watching it compiled feels much more like a filmic experience. The 30-second segment serial is an experimental format, and just like in the scientific world, experiments can fail. In this case, the format's victim is undoubtedly the story's pacing. The need to have something "happen" in each segment makes the whole thing feel choppy and needlessly breakneck when watched uninterrupted. The limited runtime leaves little room for dialogue, therefore necessary exposition doesn't come across naturally — or at all. I imagine the expository text crawl was a late-game addition when someone on the production crew realized that the thing didn't make any damn sense. These problems really did a number on my viewing experience, and although it wants to be, ETERNAL FAMILY isn't a lot of fun to watch. The total runtime clocks in at just under 30 minutes, so you won't have to put up with it long.
Koji Morimoto's ETERNAL FAMILY is violent, misanthropic, and darkly prophetic. Despite this, it manages to strike a sympathetic chord in its final frames. However, its limitations — both involuntary and self- imposed — encumber its potential for success.
Kaze tachinu (2013)
THE WIND RISES is an empty exercise in dishonest self-appraisal for animator Miyazaki.
Art is personal. Creative self-expression is, by its very nature, a process of externalizing the internal. Many of your favorite movies, music records, and books were labors of love. But is there a point at which one's art can become too personal? Can dedication and focus breed myopia? In examining Hayao Miyazaki's latest film, I may have found the answer.
THE WIND RISES tells a fictionalized account of the life of Jiro Horikoshi, the man responsible for designing Japan's infamous Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter airplane. The aircraft is known for its use during World War II, particularly in the attack on Pearl Harbor and in kamikaze missions. We begin with Jiro as a child in the early 20th century dreaming of flying machines and idolizing seminal figures in the then-young field of aeronautical engineering. Since poor sight will keep the young man from flying an airplane of his own, he attends university in the hopes of building them instead. Each act is ushered in with a scene featuring a strong gust of wind — a nice bit of theming with the title. The first reel contains some of the best pacing in Studio Ghibli's entire oeuvre. After that, the story throws on the brakes and crawls through a slight, clichéd recount of the man's endeavors up to just before the notorious event in Hawaii that brought the United States into the second World War.
The movie is, as expected, an impressive visual outing by the legendary Studio Ghibli. The candy-coated look that has defined Miyazaki's work since 2001′s Spirited Away is on full display here. The interpretation of the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, in which the ground and everything upon it moves like violent ocean waves, is probably the most impressive scene in the picture from an animation perspective. In a departure from Miyazaki's usual fare, there are no cute, strange, or ugly creatures to break up the monotony of animated human beings, but the character designs are attractive and diverse enough to keep things interesting aesthetically.
With the knowledge that Miyazaki is somewhat of an aviation fanatic (he has said as much himself), it's surprising how decidedly no-frills the flying sequences are. The two main types of flying scenes are test flights of Horikoshi's designs and dream sequences where he has conversations with famed aeronautical engineer Gianni Caproni. What we get in the test flight sequences are a lot of long wide shots, as though the audience is watching from the ground. The dreams on the other hand are mostly medium shots, two-shots, and close ups that don't really show off the aircraft that the characters are riding. The two most impressive of these scenes is a dream sequence that opens the flick and, somewhat ironically, a scene involving paper airplanes, but nothing quite as exhilarating is ever revisited. We've seen much better flying sequences from the animator in years past, such as in PORCO ROSSO, NAUSICAÄ OF THE VALLEY OF THE WIND, and CASTLE IN THE SKY.
Joe Hisaishi has made a career for himself as a solo artist who happens to score Ghibli films and in doing so has composed some of the greatest scores of all time. The orchestrated soundtrack to this movie is simple in its melodies and assimilates into the emotional atmosphere of every scene. The vocal theme song is lovely but feels like it came out of a decade about halfway between the present and when the movie is set.
An astute ear will notice something interesting that has been done with the foley effects. They are, by and large, created with human voices. Things like the mechanical locomotion of a train and the roaring ground during the aforementioned earthquake are given a special kind of vitality that I don't think I've ever experienced in a motion picture before.
As Jiro dreams and draws and test flies his creations, we learn little more about the man behind the machine than we did at the title card. Horikoshi is reserved and zealous; this much is clear. A scene early on with his younger sister reveals that he is perhaps neglectful of his family in service of his aspirations. A poignant parallel can be drawn here to Miyazaki, who has been accused of allowing his work to detract from other aspects of his life. The animator even has Jiro smoke Cherry cigarettes, his own brand of choice. The scene with his sister is reflected later when she comes to visit Horikoshi as an adult and complains about his familial inattention yet again. Both scenes outline this character flaw in the engineer but are played for laughs as though 'little sister nags older brother because that's what little sisters do.' The filmmaker clearly admires and relates with his subject, but an abundance of adulation and a lack of honest self-appraisal weaken the core of his most personal work to date.
After a couple of aeronautic failures and an exodus to pre-war Germany, our hero finds love. The adroit development of Horikoshi and Naoko Satomi's fictitious relationship is managed over just a couple of scenes, including one mentioned earlier featuring paper airplanes. This portion of the narrative is the most captivating of the picture and is a truly touching depiction of young love. However, the whole thing takes a not-so-surprising turn for the hackneyed when Naoko confesses that she has tuberculosis. I suppose the void of dramatic tension elsewhere in the story forced Hayao's hand, and out popped this done-to-death (pun intended) contrivance. His devotion to his sickly wife plays in contrast to earlier scenes with his younger sister, but because those scenes never cemented the necessary character flaw, the turnaround doesn't feel like much of a redemption.
To read the rest of this review, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/l7tm7xu
The Comedy (2012)
THE COMEDY is darkly humorous and oddly cannibalistic.
Tim Heidecker's turn as Swanson in director Rick Alverson's THE COMEDY feels all at once like a departure from his absurdist Adult Swim television series and a role that plays to the very thing that makes his and his partner Eric Wareheim's unique brand of comedy work. The film is as black as any dark comedy I've ever seen, and watching it feels something like a test of fortitude at times.
Swanson spends his days and nights riding around on his boat, hanging out with his friends, drinking at parties, and indulging in various means of wasting time, all with a disdain for everyone and everything around him. An honest word from his mouth is a rare thing, and Heidecker's performance conveys a prevalent layer of sarcasm with deft cadence and body language. He is the definition of jaded, and the film paints hims as a very sad and lonely portrait of a modern young man. He seeks respite from his depression in vitriolic interactions with people who don't understand him. The ones he considers friends are those who are his cynical equals, and even those characters are bullied for breaking the group's synergy of darkly humorous, ironic rhetoric. Those on the outside of this vicious clique react to his antics in largely the same way — by ignoring him.
Swanson's family life is something of a mess. His father is dying, his brother is "on his way to the loony bin," and he has some type of a sexual relationship with his sister-in-law, although this is hardly fleshed out in the narrative. The film spends far more time jumping from scene to scene of Swanson's increasingly reckless flights of mischief. His lack of concern for those around him and his general ignorance of danger suggest something closer and closer to sociopathy as the film progresses.
The climax of the film comes in a character moment between Swanson and a girl he works with as a dish washer in a small restaurant, a job he doesn't need but appears to do for the ironic time waste that it is. The girl proves herself to be Swanson's discontented equal over a couple of scenes of irreverent and occasionally depraved discourse. While getting high and preparing to become intimate on his boat, the girl begins to have what appears to be a seizure. Swanson doesn't react. He stares at the half-undressed girl as she thrashes and gasps, mostly out of frame. The difficultly of this is knowing that these two characters lack any kind of perceivable honesty. Conflicting thoughts race through the mind watching this uncomfortably long moment play out. Perhaps she's faking it, or at least he thinks she is, or she's not and he's really this far gone. The scene brilliantly divorces the audience from any empathetic feelings they may have had for his character, and in a strange way, gives clarity and a sense of finality to his hopelessness. Finally, we feel about him the way he feels about himself.
The Comedy's indie film aesthetic and narrative sensibilities feel a little cannibalistic considering its character depictions. Swanson and his ilk are 'hipsters' by the contemporary definition of the word. The film goes to great pains to illustrate this. V-neck T-shirts, plaid garments, fixed-gear bicycles, Pabst Blue Ribbon beer, and a reference to Brooklyn's Williamsburg neighborhood are all present and accounted for. These elements fail at illustrating the emotionally empty Swanson and his small group of friends and only serve to indict a subculture with its most prominent stereotypes. To use a strangely apt analogy, like one of Tyler Perry's Madea comedies, the film seems to undermine itself by supporting potentially harmful generalizations of the very group it appears to be speaking to. In a particularly contradictory scene, Heidecker's character is further vilified as he generalizes a group of black men to their faces. The movie hates its characters and by association seems to hate 'hipsters' — whatever that means.
In an act of mercy on the audience, THE COMEDY closes with what is probably Swanson's only honest moment, a short scene of Heidecker's character playing in the ocean with a small boy. It's sweet and real and lends some hope to a man who feels hopeless before cutting to black.
Re-posted from my blog at http://dk421.wordpress.com
Ôkami kodomo no Ame to Yuki (2012)
WOLF CHILDREN is a gorgeous tribute to single parents.
Wolf Children is the latest theatrical outing by director Mamoru Hosoda, the talented filmmaker behind 2006′s THE GIRL WHO LEAPT THROUGH TIME adaptation and 2009′s SUMMER WARS. It follows the character Hana from the time she is a 19-year-old university student over the course of a decade or so.
While in university, Hana meets a young man with whom she begins a relationship. One night while taking a walk, the young man reveals to her that he can become a wolf at will. He proves his claim on the spot in a sequence that is a refreshing departure from the bone-cracking, brutally painful event that AN American WEREWOLF IN London so effectively popularized in werewolf fiction. His fingers and face quietly elongate, and his hair ever-so-gently grows until his metamorphosis comes to rest as a bipedal, anthropomorphic wolf, somewhere between man and beast.
The sex scene that follows is implied, but as the two naked silhouettes come together for a kiss and slowly descend onto the bed, you can't help but wonder why the werewolf hasn't transformed back into a human. The movie insinuates that this is the first time these two have engaged in intercourse with one another, and what it says about Hana's character (i.e. that she prefers it this way) feels unintentional and all for the sake of a little furry fan service. Whether or not this is the goal, as someone who doesn't find animals sexy, it's an uncomfortable moment to watch and feels wholly out of place in this story.
The products of their repeated love-making become the titular wolf children, a girl named Yuki and her baby brother Ame. After a tragic hunting accident claims the life of the children's father, Hana is stuck trying to raise these kids, or perhaps tame these wild animals, alone. The father's driver's license is Hana's lone reminder of the life she once had.
WOLF CHILDREN is entirely about the difficulties and triumphs of raising children, specifically through the experience of a single mother. The genre fiction elements serve only to enhance the drama of such highs and lows. When the rambunctious Yuki throws a temper tantrum, her wolf side takes over, allowing the destructive potential of her feral characteristics to match the emotional instability of the toddler she is. When she gets into a pack of silica gel and becomes very ill, Hana struggles with whether to take her to the hospital or the veterinary clinic. Although this particular scene plays out with a bit of a dramatic contrivance (the two medical facilities are conveniently right across the street from each other), it does a good job of illustrating the difficult decisions that single parents must make for their children when they don't have a partner to consult with. It's a lonely kind of desperation, and WOLF CHILDREN knows how to hit those chords in a thoughtful and effective way.
Hats off to Hosoda and his co-writer Satoko Okudera for not falling into the trap of having Hana need someone to help her raise the kids. At a turning point in the film, she decides that moving out to the countryside will be safer for everyone as the threat of Yuki and Ame's strange abilities being discovered is much more severe in the city where they were living. At this point, Hana blossoms into the strong independent character she is meant to become — cleaning up an old house, learning to farm and grow food for her and her children, and doing it all without the need for a father figure. When a local patriarch teaches her how to make the most of her food garden, it only strengthens her resolve to raise these kids on her own. She may not know how to sow or reap, but she knows how to be a mother.
We are treated to a lovely montage of passing years and growing children. The once rambunctious Yuki has become somewhat of a serious student, preferring human interaction to catching snakes and myriad wildlife. The far more reserved infant Ame has become an adult — an adult wolf, that is. He's 10 years old now and ready to go out on his own and explore his savage alter ego in the wooded mountains near his home. Hana has issues with this, as any parent would, but the film uses this to paint a very apt analogy between Hana and real-world parents who have trouble coping with the decisions of their adult children. Hana must learn to let him go, and when she does, she becomes stronger, which is maintained as a constant theme for her character.
The animation is absolutely stunning. Some of the backgrounds, especially in the city, are so impressively detailed that you wonder if they weren't painted over photographs. The simplicity of the character designs and animations almost makes them feel out of place in such a meticulously crafted world — almost. Ultimately, everything fits together so beautifully that you hardly care when some third-act CGI threatens to visually derail the whole thing. Don't worry; it doesn't.
What feels like mostly two to three piece arrangements fill Takagi Masakatsu's score with a simple, beautiful canvas for the narrative to be painted upon. The few moments of action or tension allow for brief but refreshing swells in the musical backdrop. It's a lovely soundtrack, and compliments the visuals well.
To read the rest of this review, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/qhd76xf
Kaguya-hime no monogatari (2013)
Takahata's latest is beautiful but disappointing.
I'm conflicted about folktales. What began as bits and pieces of oral literature, before someone had the good sense to put them to paper, are owed some amount of respect for being among the first stories that humans told. However, so many of the principles that we consider essential to the telling of a "good story" were developed — and are still developing — many generations after the birth of these yarns. Ancient storytellers didn't have the benefit of thousands of years of literature to lend them a detailed understanding of structure, character development, conflict, or how to make these elements compelling. I don't mean to be so hard on the awkward adolescence of modern literature, but folktales tend to be pretty bad stories. The process of adaptation can inject modern storytelling sensibilities into an otherwise crappy narrative, but in the case of the 2013 Studio Ghibli film KAGUYA-HIME NO MONOGATARI (The Story of Princess Kaguya) filmmaker Isao Takahata was unable to give this fable the contemporary touch it needs.
KAGUYA-HIME NO MONOGATARI is based on the oldest known Japanese narrative, "The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter," believed to be written in the 10th century. It tells the story of a poor man who finds a tiny girl in a stalk of bamboo. He takes the girl home to his wife, and they decide to raise her as their own and name her Kaguya. As she grows, Kaguya's otherworldly beauty becomes more apparent, and suitors begin to ask for her hand in marriage. She turns all of them down, rejecting the concept of marriage outright. At the end of the story, Kaguya must return to where she came from — the moon.
As is clear from the premise of the tale and the opening scene of the movie when she is found, the titular character is not your average girl. Aside from her unusual discovery, we are first made aware of this in the scene where her adoptive father brings her home. She suddenly grows from a well-proportioned little person like Thumbelina or one of the Borrowers to something like a human infant. Considering that Takahata has always been the teller of more realistic stories compared Hayao Miyazaki (Studio Ghibli cofounder and legendary animator) and his flights of boundless imagination, this moment is one of the first instances in the movie that showcases Takahata's unique ability to blend the fantasy of this tale with the realism he is more experienced with crafting. It's so understated that it borders on unsettling.
The first act of the movie is top-tier coming-of-age type stuff. The main character makes fast friends with some local boys and begins exploring the world around her home. Her father wishes to refer to her as hime, or "princess," but her new pals dub her takenoko, or "bamboo," to his chagrin. Her micro adventures cement one of the central themes within the film — the Buddhist ideal that a simple life is a good life. Once her father begins discovering piles of gold inside his bamboo harvests, it is only a matter of time before he whisks his little family away to an expensive palace where Takenoko will get the grooming she needs to become the princess the bamboo cutter intends for her to be. It is here that Takenoko — now referred to as Kaguya — begins to really develop as a character. At first, she openly basks in the luxuries of an affluent life but quickly begins to reject the expectations of one at her station — that is, etiquette, physical alterations, and eventually marriage.
The story arc with the suitors is what I have the most problems with. They show up and boast all of the treasures they could lay at Kaguya's feet, but each boldly proclaims that Kaguya would be the most prized possession were she his. The princess rejects the notion of being objectified like a rare gemstone or precious metal and sends the suitors away. A few of them return later to prove their love through deception, but the young girl sees through their lies and sends them away once more, even refusing the proposal of the emperor of Japan. All of this is important to Kaguya's growth as a character. It proves that she is still the self-reliant tomboy she was as a poor bamboo cutter's daughter, despite all her pampering. The problem is that it lacks any of the understated magic that's so pervasive throughout the rest of the film and quickly begins to feel like a stuffy period piece instead of the fantastical folktale that it is. In a scene where the princess is doing something as uncomplicated as learning to play music, there is a mysticism surrounding her affinity for the instrument. All of this mystery and intrigue disappears as soon as these hopeful husbands show up. It bogs down the film to the point that by the time it's over, the audience has already been checking their watches for almost half an hour.
To read the rest of this review, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/lylp5pz
Genius Party (2007)
A few bright spots despite pointlessly being gathered under a common banner.
When it comes to analyzing anthology films, there is always the question of how to approach them. Should each entry be examined based on its own merits, or should the collection be discussed as a singular entity? In short film anthologies where multiple filmmakers are gathered to create pieces under a unifying theme or idea, one should expect that each work will vary greatly in narrative, tone, style, and even the artists' personal interpretations of that coalescing concept. This encourages the analyst to consider the entries independently. But then what is the point of gathering them under a common banner? Is it simply for convenient consumption? In this piece I will take a look at Studio 4°C's presumptuously titled GENIUS PARTY, a collection of seven animated shorts by Japanese filmmakers, and ponder whether its entries need to be seen as an undivided unit or if they are better cherry-picked from the lot and enjoyed as standalone projects.
GENIUS PARTY
The film opens with Atsuko Fukushima's GENIUS PARTY, which lends its title to the anthology as a whole. The short begins with what appears to be a man dressed in a makeshift bird costume wandering through the desert. When the bird-man finds a stony sphere with a face admiring a flower, he snatches the little stone's heart and eats it, causing him to grow fiery wings. Another stone witnesses the strange transformation and decides to eat its own heart. A tall, iridescent flower sprouts from the rock creature, develops wings, and flies into the sky to the amazement of all the other smiling boulders who are now exposing their own hearts. A bolt of lightning descends from the sky and bounces from heart to heart taking us to our title screen, which serves to bookend this collection of films. We briefly return to the bird from the beginning who is staring blankly at a massive, fleshy, pulsating film projector surrounded by a floating ring of stone creatures. Thus ends the first segment of the movie.
Although undeniably strange and kinetic, this introduction doesn't serve to establish much of an overarching concept or idea for the films to follow. Sure, I could wax intellectual and pronounce the unifying nature of cinema appreciation as the central theme of this opening segment, but the short barely gives me enough to make such an assessment. Moreover, the films that follow don't seem to share this message. Apart from the animation, the best thing about this segment is its percussive, electronic soundtrack.
SHANGHAI DRAGON
Next up is Shoji Kawamori's SHANGHAI DRAGON. This film follows a bullied Chinese boy who finds a glowing device that will bring into reality whatever he draws with it. Soon after this discovery, the planet is invaded by space ships and robotic war machines. The boy must exploit his newly acquired equipment to save the Earth from destruction. After becoming a superhero in the vein of popular super sentai series and saving the world, the boy learns that the invaders came from a star far away and in the distant future. He sketches and summons a dragon to travel there and, presumably, fight on.
Perhaps the strangest thing about this portion of the anthology is how inconsistent the animation quality is. From top to bottom, it constantly wavers between top-tier production values and the stuff of TV budgets. One of the more interesting aspects of the animation is how the elements drawn with the device never look like they are totally part of the surrounding world but actually like what they are: haphazard doodles come to life. Despite the issues and an ending that feels tacked-on, SHANGHAI DRAGON proves too charming to dislike and is among the better segments in GENIUS PARTY.
DEATHTIC 4
The cute-but-grotesque DEATHTIC 4 breaks up the mostly traditional animation that fills out the rest of the anthology. We are introduced to a world full of zombies and monsters living out run-of-the-mill, day-to- day existences. When a strange storm brings a living frog to this morbid place, a zombie boy recruits his friends to help him return the frog to the living world before it is discovered and killed.
An interestingly produced piece to be sure, director Shinji Kimura appears to have digitized hand-drawn textures and layered them over computer animated characters and backgrounds to create a world that exists visually somewhere between CG animation, claymation, and traditional animation. Outside of action sequences, the frame rate suffers. The stop-and-go vibe doesn't work quite the way it does in claymation and ultimately only distracts the viewer. This derivative story about the subjectivity of "life" and whether it is worth protecting is no where near as successful as its stylistic cousins by filmmakers like Tim Burton and Henry Selick.
DOORBELL
Comic book artist Yoji Fukuyama's DOORBELL tells the story of a high school student who must outrun ghostly clones of himself to his daily pedestrian destinations. If the apparitions beat him, they commandeer his life, making him — the "real" version — invisible to friends and family.
Perhaps more than any other animated film I've seen, DOORBELL is noticeably the work of a manga artist. Fukuyama, who had only worked in comics prior to this project, has made a distinctly static animated film. Impeccably framed and kinetically stunted, this segment is an excellent example of how a medium can perform outside your limited expectations. Not above or below them, mind you, but in a different space than you might envisage given the chosen art form. This is not to say that the short is a series of unmoving images; the shots that the director chooses to linger on define what the audience will take away from the experience when it cuts to black. What ends up being a cogent allegory for self-improvement is a standout in this collection.
To read the rest of this review, please visit: http://tinyurl.com/lhp8trl