He Doesn't Like You Watching Us: Paranormal Activity 4 (2012)

For someone who might have either actually read this blog since its inception, or happens to have trolled through all the posts I have made, will know that I am a huge supporter of the original Paranormal Activity film, citing it both as one of the major works in the horror genre, while also defending it as one of the best films of the year of its release.  Now, since then, I have managed to keep up with the franchise, not counting its foreign spin-offs, although I plan to hunt them down eventually and while I did not blog about them due to time restraints, or more likely a lack of an internet source during their respective viewings, I have decided to return to this film, for what I thought would be the final installment in the series, but as I have come to realize there is purportedly a fifth film in the works, one that seems to be focused n a family of color, which is both revolutionary in terms of sub-genre horror filmmaking, but also ripe with the possibilities of poorly executed narrative.  Either way, Paranormal 4 is a moderately successful addition to the franchise, paling in comparison to the original and falling short of the VHS based restrictions of the third film, but certainly trumping the second film which is outright the least realized of the series.  Here, in what begins to be an obvious set up for the next film, viewers are rushed through a narrative that is at times genuinely scary, but still wraps together far too quickly and manages to build upon nothing established in the first films, aside from the continual connections of one character.  The tricks are minimal and aside from a rather visually stunning use of the Xbox Kinect sensors playing heavily into the plot this was a surprisingly simple and predictable entry into the series.  This is particularly a shame since the extra heavy reliance on digital here in this film could have provided for a new level of paranormal invasion, perhaps even a complete destruction on the panoptic, surveillance like look at the movement of evil through a fractured household.  Paranormal Activity is certainly not a bad film, I was thoroughly scared throughout, but in the same sense I was always aware of how uninspired this film proved to be.

Paranormal Activity 4 begins by showing the through line of all the films Katie (Katie Featherson) playing with her infant nephew, whose name in the earlier film is Hunter, also showing her stealing the child before a card explains that the two remain missing to the point where this narrative jumps off.  The film now beginning on October 31st of 2011 looks at the life of a family, most specifically the daughter Alex (Kathryn Newton) who is attempting to deal with the fracturing relationship of her parents Doug (Stephen Dunham) and Holly (Alexondra Lee) while also proving a decent big sister to her younger brother Wyatt (Aiden Lovekamp).  Furthermore, Alex is also interested in a neighborhood boy named Ben (Matt Shively) despite his rather obvious one-track mind and the condemnation of his presence by her parents.  When new neighbors move in however, things get a bit unusual when the young boy Robbie (Brady Allen) begins showing up inexplicably at their house at all times of night, first scaring Alex when he appears in the corner of their tree house late at night.  What follows is far more disturbing, when after an accident Robbie stays with the family for an extended period of time.  It is during this time that unusual events occur, things such as weird spectral presences emerging, or Wyatt and Robbie staring blankly for hours before talking to what appears to be nothing.  It is not until chandeliers begin nearly killing Alex, or knives that had gone missing begin falling from the ceiling that the remainder of the family takes notice.  However, at this point, Wyatt has become fully involved with the entity that has invaded their house, a small child that is indeed captured on the laser projection.  When attempting to uncover truth about the events, at the neighbors home, Alex runs into Katie who begins inquiring about Wyatt and his well-being.  This moment leads to Wyatt explaining that he is actually named Hunter, an issue that when brought up by Alex to her parents leads to them chastising her inquiries as being in bad taste, and when she has a final traumatic encounter with the paranormal while her parents are at dinner, things become irreversible as her mother and Ben are attack while she is at dinner with her father, upon returning and discovering the problem, she quickly runs to the neighbors home, only to find things far more disturbing than she could have imagined.

If, as I suggested, the first film is about the fall out of a relationship between two people played out as a metaphor of paranormal haunting, then this the fourth film is the first to truly look at how such a extended issue might affect a child.  Alex is a person suffering from finding an identity and certainty in the face of her parents failing marriage, always hyper aware of how things might affect the sensitive Wyatt, but also using this protection to mask her own insecurities, which are played out rather brilliantly in her relationship to Ben, one that is awkwardly sexualized, but never one of forced consummation.  It is clear that she is initially hesitant to embrace Ben, because he does not support her fears regarding the paranormal invasion of her house, or by extension understand her suffering at the sight of her parents fighting.  With this in mind, it is interesting to see how things shift when Ben is made aware of the reality of the paranormal, or by extension comes to understand the tense relationship between Doug and Holly and is particular witness to the incredibly unhealthy relationship between Wyatt and Robbie.  In fact, the invasion of Robbie into the space of the film, also takes on a shade of the metaphoric as many relationships attempt to fix their domestic issues by adding a child to the equation, here, as is usually the result, the act fails miserably.  The metaphor goes to the somewhat implausible by making it result in incredibly violent events, but this does serve as a nice parallel to the traumas faced by children born into such divisive households, ones where argument and anger prevail out over mild temperament and well-reasoned dialogue.  One could read Alex as the figure capable of doing precisely this, however, her inability to speak against the emotive is double through her being incapable of proving the presence of the paranormal to her skeptical and detached parents, each having their own mocking indifference to her concerns, perhaps because they refuse to validate the existence of the paranormal, or, more likely, because they are far too preoccupied with their own marital sufferings to create a space of dialogue for Alex and Wyatt.  As such, Alex finds herself forced to be a maternal figure to her younger brother a burden that weighs heavily upon her and is evidence very intensely in the last few seconds of the film.

Key Scene:  The real surprise her is how well Brady Allen, the child actor playing Robbie, delivers his performance.  Usually creepy kids rely on looks alone, but when Robbie stares into the camera in this film, it is all the more intense by Allen's great delivery.

This is on Netflix in both an R and unrated version, I am uncertain as to the difference in the two, perhaps a few less boob-based pieces of dialogue.  Either way, watch this and the other films in the franchise, which I believe are all currently available for streaming.

I Think That's Illegal, Even In Amsterdam: Hostel (2005)

I am going to begin this post with a bold assertion.  Eli Roth is the David Mamet of horror films.  This would require some heavy defense were it a statement to suggest that Roth's works have the rapid fire impossibly on point dialogue of Mamet's works, but instead, suffer from the same sickeningly "post-feminist" belief that to be a male of well-to-do status means that you are in some notable way suffering and that the entirety of society, or the forces of nature are systematically working against their diminishing privilege.  Think about the absurdity of something like The Edge, wherein Anthony Hopkin's character must fight off bears and severe weather all because he had a foolish notion that he could tame the wilderness, never mind the overarching suggestion that he feels quite guilty about the killing of Native populations (in that he does not).  I want to suggest here that while far less keen with its dialogue, and decidedly less gripping than say Glengarry Glenn Ross, Eli Roth's Hostel wants to make viewers suffer and relate to a group of individuals who for all intents and purposes have not point of suffering aside from placing themselves into rather foolish situations.  Indeed, they are incredibly exploitative and perfect images of unchecked consumerism.  In fact, I want to extend my frustrations with this film a step further and suggest that this is a quantifiable reason to be concerned with providing a filmmaker like Quentin Tarantino unadulterated praise.  The producer of this film, Tarantino also suffers from his own problematic relationships with justifying white male privilege and, with the exception of Jackie Brown, his attempts to challenge this tradition often fall flat and become wildly ill-conceived.  It is only fitting that he would jump at an opportunity to produce this film, it is narratively in line with his own act of making the absurdly impossible suffering of the well-off seem palatable.  Hostel is not a good movie, it is not even really a decent movie.  It is not because of its choice of graphic material, it is actually surprisingly tame in this respect, but is purely frustrating because at no point does this violence or exploitative nature move into a realm of considerable social critique.  Hostel is a textbook example of everything that is wrong with contemporary horror films, precisely in the belief that a narrative deserves justification by existence alone.

Hostel focuses on a group of young men who have taken it upon themselves to backpack across Europe for no other apparent reason than to smoke a lot of pot and have as much sex as possible.  Paxton (Jay Hernandez) is the unofficial leader of the group, using his suave nature to help them navigate spaces, where as Josh (Derek Richardson) seems more inclined to simply passively move through the various spaces, spending much of his time in Amsterdam bemoaning an ex-girlfriend and starring at the scenery.  The duo also gains the friendship of the Icelandic wild man Oli (Eythor Gudjonsson) who helps them to gain access to spaces previously deemed inaccessible.  It is through Oli and the help of a Russian man named Alex (Lubomir Bukovy) that they are made aware of a hostel in Slovakia known for its libertine ways.  The three jump at the opportunity taking the very next train to the country.  On the way there they meet an unusually friendly gentleman with a penchant for eating with his hands, who also sings the praises of the town, before becoming a bit too intimate for Josh's liking.  Upon arrival the space is exactly as described, a veritable land of sex and drugs, wherein the trio immediately find women to hook up with in their very own room at the hostel.  However, after a night of drug use, Oli goes missing, leading to a quest to find him, one that reveals that the Slovakian town is a bit darker and less welcoming than initially believed.  Yet, it is not until Josh goes missing that Paxton truly becomes worried and when he is taken to an art show, by one of the women he had been sleeping with, he discovers a dark underbelly to the idyllic space, wherein individuals pay large sums of money for the ability to torture, then kill, living humans (Americans fetching a higher amount than other persons).  After being maimed via having a few fingers cut off, an accident on the part of the torturer affords Paxton a chance to escape, saving a fellow member of the Hostel in the process.  Using his masculine privilege he is able to escape the space and eventually make it to a train station, at which point the woman in tow realizes the damage done to her face, thus leading to her committing suicide on the tracks, incidentally not proving enough to stop the trains from running.  On this train, Paxton realizes a member of this torture group is present, leading to his killing the man before returning to the train for an assuredly long ride home.

One of the major elements of any survival horror film is the necessity of having a character for with which the viewer can empathize.  At times this can work on a very specified level, as is the case in the always problematic sub-genre of rape revenge horror films, such as I Spit On Your Grave or in cases the nature of the film affords many survivors of varied identities in the case of most zombie films.  In even rarer cases the nature of the filmmaking and the earnestness of the performance allow for a reliability to a hyper-specified identity as occurs with Jamie Lee Curtis in Halloween.  I would argue that this really does not work for Hostel, because the characters created by Eli Roth are merely extensions of Eli Roth, or the very selective set of filmmakers who seem to have taken an unwelcome control over the horror genre over the past decade.  The male characters in the film, again are inhibiting their own demise by entering spaces riddled with drugs and crime and, assumedly, engaging in rampant and perhaps unsafe sex.  If the threat of their demise at the hands of maniac murderers is intended to be jarring to viewers, it is only in a sense that a person watching the film would not find all of their previous behavior absolutely disgusting.  Indeed, they move through the space of the film consuming and taking as they please at no point seeming even slightly apologetic, but that does not stop Roth from distinguishing his characters on some moral high ground, either making them vegetarians to denote their higher sentience, or giving Paxton the ability to be bilingual as to make him slightly "less American" when it proves absolutely beneficial.  Furthermore, to make the degree of empathy work, there really has to be a build of suffering and a moment of realization on the part of the protagonist that never comes at any point within Hostel.  Paxton is always a bit too aware of the situation and fortune really favors his every endeavor, never once getting caught in a truly threatening situation once he is able to free himself from without a challenge.  Mind you he breaks out of a chained chair, saves a half-blinded woman and dodges a ton of guards and torturers without even a semblance of trouble, only to use previously threatening village children to his advantage, never mind a lack of authority and explanation to the outcome of any events.  Roth seems aimed at shocking viewers into intrigue, but manages to forget that intrigue must be established at all points, before any sort of disgust or jarring work might emerge.

Key Scene:  The eye removal scene may well be the only well-executed thing in this entire film, in that it was completely grotesque.

AVOID THIS MOVIE, not because it is gross, but because it is bad.

So...How About Some Coffee: Ninja 3: The Domination (1984)

The kung fu marathon, in its inception, included me glancing at my seemingly unending pile of "to be watched eventually" films which are usually things that I have a mild interest in or figure, I might need to be aware of for future projects.  It also includes things that are passed my ways as gifts, recommendations, or in a very recent case a benefit of providing some research for a documentary.  As such, getting around to these films can seem like a chore, often times proving to be middle of the road films that do not fall in a particular way, while in other instances, as was the case recently with The Woodsman and Finding Forrester, proving to be cinematic gems that would never have come into my radar were they not in the pile I just mentioned.  Ninja III is such a film, in so much, as I had never seen  its prequels, nor as I aware of its existence, until it was passed along to me as a partial payment for some work I did for a friend.  As such, it was one of the first things I sat aside for this marathon, because I knew that its prominent featuring of ninjas, at least in the plot description and title, would be more than enough to suffice for inclusion in a month devoted to the martial arts genre.  Shout Factory is clearly marketing Ninja III as a bad-movie that happens to be embraced for its absurdity and in this aspect it is hard to deny, particularly considering some of the narrative choices, as well as some grade A terrible acting choices.  I, however, assume that given its non-studio status that Ninja III did not possess a very high production budget.  This is an aspect where the film really shines, particularly, since the cinematography is often composed in a manner that gives scenes a pictorial nature, playing heavily with shadowing to add ambiance.  Mind you, this is a film about a dead ninja possessing a woman's body and making her into a killer, one would not really expect anything in the way of soundtrack, editing and filmmaking to matter, instead all reflecting the same issues as those shown in the bad writing and acting.  Ninja III is a well-made movie, that just happens to be really ill-conceived in the elements that least reflect the "architects" of the frame.  Had the director given a second thought to demanding more out of his performers and had those same performers questioned their character's motives even slightly, Ninja III could have move from terrible to slightly above average.  Of course, this is not all bad because in its existing as a terrible film it has obtained a new life that is often not afforded to better films that are decidedly middle-of-the-road.

Ninja III begins with a ninja entering a cave and grabbing an assortment of what one would assume to be the assassin's tools, ranging from katanas to the most extensive variety of shuriken imaginable.  One would assume with such a setup that the ninja will be the film's protagonist, but this proves to be far from the case when only moments later the ninja shows up during a round of golf, quickly killing his guards, the women with him and the man, only to result in his being chased down by the police.  The police with their various cars and even a helicopter prove no match for this ninja, as he destroys all in his path.  Even after being repeatedly gunned down by a set of police, the ninja manages to escape, at which point he runs into Christie (Lucinda Dickie) a woman who works as a telecommunications engineer.  Realizing he is wounded Christie attempts to help, only to have the ninja flail about in an attempt to attack her, yet in his last words he appears to cast something upon her in desperation before finally keeling over and dying.  Thrown off by the entire endeavor, Christie heads to the police station after reporting the dead body, where one cop, Billy Secord (Jordan Bennett) moves out of his job as a officer and immediately begins hitting on Christie.  Initially, Christie is dismissive of his advances, yet when she has a bizarre vision of him being involved in the shooting of the ninja she agrees to begin dating him.  After some unusual misuse of tomato juice and a lot of body hair, the two become a couple, despite Christie continuing to have visions of the various officers involved in the killing of the ninja, many of whom seem to smoke cigars while on the job.  Concerned for Christie and worried as the members of his police force begin disappearing, Billy takes Christie to a spiritual advisor in the Asian area of their town, who explains that she has indeed been possessed by the dead ninja, thus explaining her quest for revenge, offering to perform a sort of exorcism of the spirit, although warning that it is an incredibly dangerous.  Furthermore, considering the dangerous nature of ninjas, a warrior named Yamada (Sho Kosugi) arrives, aiding Billy and Christie in the endeavor and fighting off the nina's resurrected spirit.  However, given that it primarily occupied Christie, her involvement in the slaying of the spirt is much more hands on than Yamada might have expected.

I could do a critical reading of the film, but it would almost become flippant and mocking of the work and its clearly misguided attempts at being a cool film in terms of characters and narrative, which in most cases fails miserably.  Furthermore, while it does bend gender assumptions a bit throughout, it almost seems coincidental as opposed to well reasoned and revolutionary.  Instead, I want to consider a few of the cinematic choices that make the film sound from a production aspect, since it will likely never receive mention in contrast to the film's terrible elements.  Firstly, the opening shot of Ninja III depicts the villain stepping into a cave and cinematographer Hanania Baer situates the camera inside the shadows of the cave, thus allowing the figure to exist in a cloud of dusty light as he moves into the darkness of the space, nicely juxtaposing his movement from a suit and assumed simplicity, to the villainy of his black ninja suit.  This was clearly a production choice that looks absolutely stunning, almost as though it could have fit into one of The Dark Knight films, perhaps the third of the franchise which could have benefitted greatly from the addition.  The second element that is worth considering is the scene in which Christie becomes fully possessed.  The scene shows her playing a video game, which appears to consist of breaking up bar fights, nonetheless, when she steps away and returns moments later, the arcade begins smoking and the screen explodes releasing a series of laser in alternating patterns.  The lasers wash over Christie's face as she stands frozen, making for a visually stunning moment that could have been played up to a lot more absurdity, as is the case with her exorcism scene later.  I would posit that the difference between the two, undoubtedly, comes in writing.  Perhaps the possession scene was left open to the art director, while the exorcism involved dialogue and therefore described action.  There are great composition and editing tricks throughout whether it be the surprisingly well-done helicopter explosion early on, or the addition of action occurring in the background that are also worth considering.  I only call attention to them in this case, because they stand to be lost in the shadow of tomato juice-stained leotards.

Key Scene:  The best scene is easily the arcade possession, however, the wildest scene has to be either the hot tub assassination or the tomato juice seduction.

I mean, this movie is well made...really well made, but it is also not good in terms of story and dialogue.  If you want b-movie ninjas in an 80's setting go for Miami Connection...that is a certified gem.  Also, fun fact: Breakin' and Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo, both of which star Lucinda Dickie were released in the same year as this, leotards and dancing were at their height in 1984

We Knew The Box Was Empty All Along: Volcano High (2001)

If I have learned anything from the narrative world of cinema, it is that for anyone going to high school in a fictional world, things are especially tough, whether it be need to plan elaborately just to skip a day of school only to have Ben Stein repeatedly call your name a la Ferris Bueller's Day Off, or realizing that planning as something as simple as a house party for your friends requires deceiving your father, fighting a ton of high school bullies and then dealing with racist cops in the film of the same name.  Yet, in all their absurdity, these films manage to still exist within a state of normalcy, in the sense that the endeavors are understandable, while the obstacles might be a bit inconceivable.  This is not the case for contemporary South Korean cinema in the slightest.  While much of their output is already non-linear and narratively rejects a fictional world that fabricates a simulacra of the world viewers are to share, it is no more obvious then in the High School films being released by the country.  This is clear in the supernatural horror series that includes both Whispering Corridors and Memento Mori, wherein a ghost attack serves as a metaphor for a larger ridicule faced by a young lesbian couple.  In a more wild example, a work like Daesepo Naughty Girls looks at dealing with difference and high school cliques through a sci-fi invasion narrative that will have even the most expansive of cinematic tastes questioned and confused.  In the middle of these films exists a work like, Volcano High, which is very much in the vein of the paranormal high school narrative, while also being a film that exist within the martial arts and kung fu genre, although the fights in this film take on an psychic extension yet seen in a large degree during this marathon.  While the film is not absolutely stellar and often relies on the aid of style to negate from dealing with some of its more substantial narrative issues, it is a fun movie to look at and Tae-gyun Kim's high flying choreography paired with an industrial editing style and mise-en-scene do invoke a style of filmmaking that existed around the late 90's and early 2000's that plays very much off of the breakout cult hit The Matrix.

Volcano High, as the title suggests, focuses on the experiences of Volcano High School, a school riddled with authority problems as various leaders of clubs and organizations attempt to take back the Secret Manuscript, which holds unknown power.  The manuscript, however, is held by the heads of the school and has recently been seized by the power hungry Vice Principal (Byeon Hee-Bong).  Meanwhile a new student has come to the school in Kim Kyung-Soo (Jang Hyuk), who has been kicked out of eight schools previously for his "disruptive" classroom behavior, although the narrative seems to suggest that in every scenario it was a result of prodding and bullying by others.  Needless to say, when Kim comes to Volcano High he is instantly approached by various members of the earlier mentioned clubs to join their groups and it is made abundantly clear that these groups function as high profile gangs who engage in bouts with one another, whether it be Jang Ryang (Kimm Soo-ro) who is the captain of the weightlifting team and all around tough guy.  Ryang's willingness to assert his physical authority has led to his being labeled as the dark ox.  Furthermore, there is also Hak-rim (Kwon Sang-woo) the school's most powerful martial artist, who is framed for the disappearance of leaders after the Vice-President's move for power, nonetheless, agreeing to train Kim when he realizes his latent psychic abilities.  During his time at Volcano High, Kim also takes to liking the captain of the kendo team Yoo Chae-Yi (Shin Min-a) whose love for Hak-rim only has led to her being known as Icy Jade in that she refuses to acknowledge the advances of even Kim.  As the narrative unfolds it becomes clear that the students are being played upon one another while a push for wild power occurs by the Vice President, who hires a new set of faculty to deal with the skills of the various students, thus resulting in an authoritarian rule in the space of Volcano High that leads to a wild revolt and confrontation, which affords even the most unlikely of allies unity.  Kim, learning to harness his unique powers, becomes a hero in the school, but as the closing montage suggests, this also comes with the continued expectation that he defend such a title.

It is in this sense of contesting and reaffirming authority that Volcano High excels.  Indeed, much of the narrative is spent considering the power that words, symbols, age and gender play into who is allowed to assert their opinion or reject the ideas of a person in charge.  The most obvious sense of this comes through the constant reminder that the President of the school exudes the most authority, despite spending nearly the entire narrative in a stone like state, after being poisoned by the Vice-President.  In the case of this his age, masculinity and name have afforded him a place of unquestioned privilege and to a degree exploitation, since it is rather obvious that Volcano High is not the most well-run of high schools.  The lingering authoritative presence of the president is only one aspect of this authority, in so much as the collective of the faculty seem capable of exploiting the students based on threats of expulsion and punishment that are often vague and non-physical, which is interesting in that it seems to speak to a larger cultural issue of shame and identity.  The students at Volcano High are already a diverse group of individuals, either socially different for personal choices or physical abilities that are deemed almost that of a mutant and the thought of having a mark on their record that would suggest anything but positive would therefore ruin their career.  Knowing that once I graduated from high school and began college, everything I did in high school became irrelevant, I can still remember believing that even the smallest misstep might result in my future downfall.  It was authority working at its finest, in that its mere presence resulted in my paranoia to the point of acting far too conservatively for a majority of those years.  Foucault would have been ashamed.  While some of the students at Volcano High fear similar results, they seem far more concerned with the power possessed by the Secret Manuscript that affects the choices and movements of the main characters, despite it being revealed relatively early on that it is merely an empty box.  This empty box and indicative of rules and authority is perhaps the greatest of the filmic metaphors on authority, because it is grounded in nothing, in a very literal sense, much like many institutions of oppression and ruling.

Key Scene:  The first bamboo forrest fight is quite watchable, all be it highly referential and a bit of a rehashing of other fight scenes.

I would probably overlook this film, unless you really like Korean cinema or high school movies.  In which case you will probably adore this film.  Only thoroughly liking the former, the high school elements all seemed highly forced to me.

He Tied His Own Tendons!: Riki-Oh: The Story Of Ricky (1991)

Knowing that I would go through the entire month of kung-fu films missing some gems if I did not take suggestions from friends as to what I should watch, I decided to call out for suggestions via Facebook and the results were quite notable, many people offering a list of film while others gave a single affirmation as to what one work should be viewed.  I have a friend, who is very into comic books and all things comic related that also happens to have an excellent taste in film, although we find ourselves disagreeing about a lot of films, he, nonetheless, is a person who I find to be worthy of acknowledging when given a suggestion.  I am glad I adhered to his recommendation of Riki-Oh: The Story of Ricky, because it is a wild, wild film that exists in a cinematic world entirely of its own accord.  In fact, I have often wondered what a kung-fu film directed by David Cronenberg might look like and I now have my answer with this film, which takes body gore and horror to a place way beyond even The Fly.  The gore in this movie is excessive to be certain, but in its sort of over-the-top grandeur it becomes a statement on the nature of violence in action cinema, particularly when considering death and physical attacks upon the body.  Whether this is purposeful on the part of director Ngai Choi Lam is up for debate, but the product does exist and it can be dissected as such, indeed a viewer is offered plenty of flesh, intestine and blood with which to do so.  While this is only the second film is a thirty one film marathon I am wondering the the trope of body as vessel with which morality works through will come to be a larger theme within the genre, because it was certainly passively discussed in Enter the Dragon, and is pretty much the main focal point in this film.  Again, like Enter the Dragon, Riki-Oh also considers the various bodies that can occupy a challenging physicality, whether it be physically disabled persons or an individual whose gender is ambiguous.  The crazier thing about Riki-Oh is that this is only one of many social commentaries or narrative through-lines in the film, all of which seem so well-executed and realized as to be separate films working in some wonderful synchronicity.  It is a film to which I was quite surprised and am grateful to have been suggested.

Riki-Oh begins somewhat in media res with the introduction of a prison that has with the turn of the 21st century become privatized, meaning that large capitalist figures can use the institution as they see fit, exploit workers or affording favors to whomever they please.  The prison in this film is one such place and when recent murder convict Ricky (Siu-Wong Fan) enters the world, he is quickly deemed a threat with his ability to destroy the bodies of other with his intense martial arts.  This destruction is so honed in fact that Ricky can punch through bodies, while also using his own physical form as a human shield, literally deflecting the attacks of other whether they be by fist or gun.  Nonetheless, given that Ricky's jailing is a result of having killed a mob boss, he becomes a threat to the various crime lords working within the prison, many of which are martial arts experts in their own rights.  Ricky is a force that is unstoppable however, beginning immediately he becomes a protector to the persons in the prison, treating them as human beings, while looking at the warden and his group of lackeys as terrible entities bent on destruction.  Ricky begins a series of attacks that first deal with the lowest of the wardens bosses Oscar fending of an attempted strangling by the disemboweled mobster.  Yet, while Ricky is nearly invincible the impossibility of fighting three experts in various forms of martial arts leads to his being tied up by the warden and buried alive for a week, the warden promising that should he survive he will be given his freedom without question.  Yet when Ricky does exactly this, despite all expectations, the warden refuses him the right leading to a complete breakdown of the authority system by not only the other prisoners but Ricky who takes it upon himself to destroy all in his path, whether it be the use of cement to beat the aptly named Tarzan or a chop so intense as to sever a man's head in half, leading finally to his battle with the warden, who it is revealed fights with the same technique as Ricky, one that feeds off of strength.  As such, the warden evolves into a monstrous version of himself that initially gives Ricky challenge, but Ricky proves capable of the challenge and ends up shoving the monstrous warden into a meat grinder, thus destroying him completely.  Ricky immediately returns to the prison yard and punches through the concrete wall, exclaiming that everyone is free as he walks off into what one can assume to be the sunset.

The description I just gave probably makes the movie sound crazy, and I fully understand that, because it is indeed an insane film, one full of gore laden fight scenes and a complete rejection of all physical and biological possibilities, but just because Riki-Oh exists in a state of filmic absurdism does not mean it is not still full of critical possibilities.  There is a very well-executed Christ metaphor in this film, although it does get really on the nose in once scene, just as there are issues concerning body politics and morality.  Yet, what has to be the absolute most fascinating element of this film is the way it deals with the notion of a prisoner.  In fact, I earnestly wondered while watching this film if Angela Davis was aware of its existence, because despite its hyper violence and insane gimmick, it does ask viewers to reconsider their thoughts on the average prisoner.  I say average, because it creates a very tangible and stark difference between the career criminals depicted as vicious and lacking in ethical thoughts, whether it be the money hungry warden and his various lackeys who seem to have no qualms murdering and maiming to assure their advancement and those people who have been placed in jail for a minor or misappropriated offense.  The film introduces viewer to a man who was part of a traffic accident, in which he was allegedly not at fault, yet as others note he killed a police officer, therefore, resulting in his heavy sentence.  This jailing leads to him being physically beaten by the higher-ups for no reason than it is part of the world.  Similarly, Ricky is arrested for killing a local pimp, one that allegedly attempted to rape his girlfriend who dives to her death in order to avoid the defiling.  While killing is always a murky ground the narrative does seem to posit that it was a level of criminality that was being completely ignored by the warden and others who were presumably friends with the crime boss.  I give these descriptions, because the film seems to posit the criminality is often associated to people who are far from deserved of such negative monikers.  Angela Davis has written extensively on this topic and is particularly critical of a legal system that over-punishes for minor crimes and looks away at serious offenses with large scale social impacts.  The race and class elements are not necessarily dealt with in this film, but it is certainly a point of reference that could be drawn with the right lens.  Ultimately, Riki-Oh seems keen on noting the grey areas of criminality, while also warning of the serious dangers and human rights infractions that could emerge from privatizing institutions.

Key Scene:  With many wildly gory scenes to choose from, I guess I will have to go with the jaw-busting upper cut.  I think I actually let out a gasp paired with the screaming of WHAT when it happened.

The DVD for this is not super expensive and while I really really enjoyed this movie, I would suggest a streaming option first, unless you love either kung-fu films or David Cronenberg, in which case buy this immediately.

Time Never Stands Still, Especially Happy Time: Tears Of The Black Tiger (2000)

I am fully willing to admit that Thai cinema, amongst a ton of other regional cinemas has proven to be one of my most under viewed areas, and while I have seen at least one Thai film to date I do not recall being in the right frame of mind to appreciate its deliberate pacing and focused narrative, which is a shame because I am certain that with a different frame of reference I would have absolutely adored the work.  Nonetheless, when I discovered Wisit Sasanatieng's Tears of the Black Tiger hiding in the deep caverns of Netflix watch instantly it looked far too excellent to pass up as an inclusion on my entire month of westerns.  Of course, I fully expected it to be a traditionalist work within the framework of non-western bodies, but what I got with this film was something wildly its own and visually captivating, possessing what may well be my new favorite color palette for a film.  It is a highly pastel based backdrop, almost indicative of the sixties era east asian post-cards and album covers that involve light green and pink patterns to a high degree, a style that would become embraced by the punk movement only years later.  Furthermore, all of the love for Django Unchained, deserved as it may be, often forgets to remember that all Tarantino really does is copy and paste his films together based off of a ton of crazy things he has already encountered in his vast and surprisingly well-rounded film diet.  It is easy to see where a filmmaker like Tarantino, as well as many Korean and other contemporary East Asian auteurs would have borrowed from Sasanatieng's cult classic, both in its decided embracing of the non-linear narrative, while also making decided use of the glossy, high cinema respect that comes with the western genre.  Each rawhide fueled swelling of the soundtrack pairs magnificently with the simple, yet earnest, love story that emerges within Tears of the Black Tiger and never seems forced or repetitive, despite being a film that essentially recreates encounters between specific characters over a varied length of a couple of decades.  Suffice it to say, if this is what I have been missing out on by not engaging with Thai cinema, consider it a new point of reference and the next area of focus when I do one of my marathons reflecting on works that I have failed to catch up with up until this point.

Tears of the Black Tiger is not exactly the most straightforwards of narratives, but it nonetheless does have a degree of linear structure.  The film focuses on a rural area in Thailand that is subject to a particularly rough group of bandits that have been very frequently and very violently scouring the hillsides for money.  Their main figure is that of Dom (Suwinit Panjamawat) a reluctant bandit whose only real passion in life is to make a name for himself in order to assure a life with the upper crust Rumpoey (Stella Malucchi) of whom he has been quite fond of since childhood when the two took a canoe ride together.  In a particular shootout between Dom and a group of police officers, wherein Dom is attempting to make contact with his love, he is trapped by the  officers and dealt with personally by the lead officer, who indeed is slated to marry the young woman, per the bequest of her father who sees the upstanding officer of the law a much more ideal fit for his daughter than any lowlife, and impoverished thief.  Already facing the trouble of authorities down his back, doubly so when his intentions with Rumpoey are fully acknowledged, things are made far worse for the suffering Dom when his own gang members suspect him of engaging in duplicitous behavior and in the process turning their own guns against him.  All the while Dom is dealing with apparent deja vu as he finds himself defending Rumpoey against a group of wily men who mock him for his aspirations with such a woman, but the difference between their initial encounter in Dom's youth and their recent one is a decided disconnect from concerns for harming those antagonizing him and he proves himself an ideal match for Rumpoey in his willingness to sacrifice himself for her well being.  Of course, no amount of establishing his love for Rumpoey, nor her returning of such feelings, can allow for Dom to find solace, because he is still forced to deal with his maniacal gang members and in a poetic final shootout, Dom attempts to reach for a picture of Rumpoey to explain why his actions have been so unusual, only to be shot by a member assuming that he was reaching for his gun.  Dom dies and in the closing moments all that is left is a visual memory of the bond between the two star-crossed lovers, one that was never to be based solely on unjust class divides.

This film is a visual experience, between its heavy use of pastel colors and fiery, almost incandescent lighting, Tears of the Black Tiger fails to have any visual competitors, maybe with the exception of the equally stylized Pedro Almodovar, who films are very much cinematic pop art.  Furthermore, it is precisely in this comparison that I want to talk about the manner with which Tears of the Black Tiger deals with the trope of violence within the western.  Almodover, a well-established director, often uses his highly stylized and comic stripe style visual elements to suggest something humorous, if not out right absurd about sexuality and gender performance.  This sort of detachment allows for viewers to become comfortable with the topic only to have the director eventually slap a very real and ethically fueled dilemma into the discussion, one that refuses to embrace conservative values.  I would extend this frame of reference to Sasanatieng's film, especially considering that it is a film that makes heavy, if not excessive, use of egregious and gratuitous gore.  Although given the pastel wash that lays upon the film it is, like Almodovar, quite humorous and almost laughable when men's heads explode into pink ooze, only to be completely ignored and moved away as though a simulacrum or virtual experience completely detached from human loss.  The notion of death and loss is quite frequent within the western as a genre and what Sasanatieng does within Tears of the Black Tiger is not new per se, he is simply the first one to do it in such a sensational and absurd manner.  Yet, if this violence were to merely go unchecked I would find this film to be far more problematic, but that is far from the case and, again, like Almodovar, Sasanatieng makes sure to incorporate the reality of loss beyond the corporeal within the final moments of the film, depicting the images of both Dom and Rumpoey in picture frames and the credits begin to roll.  Sure viewers are allowed to revel in the excess and violence while the film rolls, but it is not a reality which one should subscribe to for any reason, and the closing credits suggest that violence in cinema, most notably westerns has a degree of falseness about it, but memories do linger and for many in the world they are very much a result of an insane and unwarranted act of violence.

Key Scene:  Shooting a bullet through coin.

Again this is available on Netflix watch instantly, you should bump it way of in the queue immediately.

You Need To Do Something Bad To Stop Yourself From Doing Something Worse: Stoker (2013)

Here goes my first in theater viewing experience for a film released in 2013, and boy could it have been anything more welcomed and wonderful than Chan-wook Park's English language debut Stoker.  I had already planned on viewing and blogging about this film given the skew towards Korean cinema that has occurred since my beginning graduate school, however, it works doubly in that it is also a film centrally focused on a woman, or in the case of this narrative a relationship between a mother and daughter, more than justifying its inclusion on this month of women in film.  Stoker, based solely on its trailer alone, promised to be an intense and gripping psychological thriller, with expert actors and all the insanity one would hope from Park's legacy.  I was admittedly worried that the American framework would actually hinder Park's sensibilities as he would be required to adhere to the expectations and safety of studio work, however, this is far from the case.  Stoker, while certainly no, Oldboy, manages to exceed in intensity, break the conventional frameworks of cinema, to the point of purposefully freezing frames, not to mention having a narrative so incomprehensible, multi-tiered and non-linear that it does not simply suggest a reviewing, but assuredly demands it occur.  It is a pleasure to see a Park film in English, not that I do not fully enjoy his work, even when I have to read subtitles, but the extra layers of humor, darkness and subversion that emerge merely within the way lines are delivered added to the experience of his work twofold.  In its decidedly non-traditional structure, Stoker rejects the traditional storytelling arc of cause and effect leading to a climax that is succinctly solved.   Instead, Stoker begins at a swelling point and expands continually, always seeming as though it is ready to burst at the seams, and even when viewers are led to the moment where they could assume the narrative has taken its last violent twist, they are quickly betrayed their comfort when the madness of the film pushes one step further.  If Stoker is an early entry into 2013, I am absolutely elated as to what else will emerge  to be its equal, and even surpass.

Stoker focuses on a family reeling from the death of their patriarchal figurehead Richard Stoker (Dermot Mulroney) after his apparent suicide.  While death never proves to occur at a good time, it is particularly problematic for young India Stoker (Mia Wasikowska) whose birthday also fell on the same  day.  An already reclusive girl, India goes into a full scale withdrawal, only worsened by her mother Evelyn (Nicole Kidman) and her attempts at overbearing forces of unity.  The two find it troublesome to navigate a world after the loss of their husband and father, yet when Richard's brother Charlie (Matthew Goode) appears the family adjusts to an eerie change, because this is the first time India has ever learned of Charlie's existence.  His impending presence is already problematic in his clear indifference to the absence of his late brother, as well as his immediately burgeoning relationship with the widowed Evelyn.  However, while it is clear that Evelyn is far more affectionate towards Charlie, he, nonetheless, engages in her advances half-heartedly, all the while making awkward passes at India. When various individuals go missing, particularly Charlie and Richard's aunt Gwendolyn (Jackie Weaver) India begins to grow suspicious, an act whose engagement leads to her growing disconnect at school, coming to head when she attacks a boy with a sharp pencil.  In the process, Charlie becomes even more protective and invasive in India's life, even saving her from a near rape, by choking the aggressor to the point of breaking his neck, something India reflects upon fondly.  However, when suspicions towards Charlie mount, India does more research, and discovers that Charlie's past is incredibly problematic, leading to Charlie attempting to convince that they should escape the house and move to New York.  However, Charlie realizes that, in order, to successfully move they must get rid of Evelyn, an act that India reacts to in an unusual manner, leading to her own movement out of the house into the world, closing the film in a baffling yet incredibly intense way.

I feel almost a fraud in my consideration of actually analyzing this film, because to be fair there is a lot going on, particularly in relationship to authority and undermining power.  Firstly, however, I want to make note of the ways in which Park is clearly borrowing from many of his predecessors, whether it be the tips of the hat to Hitchcock via Matthew Goode's inspired rendition of Anthony Perkins circa Psycho, or some rather clever reconsiderations of David Lynch psychotics laying right under the veneer of perfect middle class image.  What these two directors, and certainly Park share, is a deep-seeded resentment for unquestioned authoritative figures, particularly those of the patriarchal figure, in fact, it is no surprise that in all three directors' works women play key roles in plots alterations or doing away with negative forces.  However, Stoker takes the complexities of navigating such a world to new levels when he displays other women engaging in the oppression for their own selfish advancement.  I am, of course, referring to Evelyn who sees the emergence of Charlie as a perfect avenue for her to do away with the burdens of her dead husband, for whom she possessed very little love, as well as India, who she comes to loathe as a result of Charlie diverting his affections towards her.  India, unlike the other characters, seems always and at once aware of every vindictive and dangerous force in the world around her, whether it be some gross and easily enraged football players, or their friend who pretends to mean well, only to turn out to be equally violent.  India also sees symbols of authority as a threat, something that is initially foreshadowed with a cop who visits the Stoker home on a disappearance investigation, but figures again prominently into the film later.  It is, instead, when India must clearly make a statement about a person who is outright bad that she falters, yet, just as her father taught her when she was young, acts that may seem bad at the moment, could well prove to prevent something far worse from occurring.

Key Scene:  The shower scene...it is intensity taken to a new level.

This is the first real film of 2013 for me and it is quite excellent.  As I stated earlier, if this is a sign of the year to come, I am ready to embrace it passionately.

I Want My First Time To Be With Someone I Don't Love: Fat Girl (2001)

I was fully aware that by focusing on women in film for the entire month of March that not every single film I encountered would exist within the realm of the uplifting narrative, in fact, I will be admittedly more surprised to find films that are outright positive when handling such subject matter, especially considering the very nature of oppression and othering that exists within cinema concerning women and/or the female body.  However, Fat Girl takes intensity to another level.  I had been warned by a friend years ago about Fat Girl being a "brutal" film, much in the same way that say, Steve McQueen's Hunger is a brutal film, or Michael Haneke's...well pretty much anything is brutal.  That is to say that these works exist not to allow a viewer any sort of relational comfort or cinematic tradition to cling onto throughout the narrative.  Fat Girl, like the other films noted, exists to provoke, enrage and question all who view it, right down to the very nature with which one expects actions to occur within cinema, but, perhaps most importantly, to relate and manage the assumptions about what bodies are appropriate for occupying the spaces of film.  Fat Girl makes no apologies about its context and commentaries, absolutely, demanding viewers to accept that nothing shown is meant to be heartfelt or endearing, but instead blatantly terrible and factually unfortunate.  Clocking in at just over 80 minutes, to call this film a slow burn would be to overlook the very precise provocative scenes within the film, each intended to deconstruct romantic traditionalism, particularly one scene which shot with a stagnant camera comprises roughly a fourth of the considerably brief film.  It is as though the moment is a purposeful homage to Godard's Breathless, in which, gender politics unfold over a similarly lengthy bedroom scene, yet, in the hands of shock director Catherine Breillat, the scene does not possess even an ounce of the possible gender subversion of the French New Wave classic, instead it affirms all the truths and tragedies that manage to prove the completely illogical ideology of some theorists that society exists in a world where feminist discourse and politics are redundant and irrelevant, as Fat Girl shows, this is decidedly and absolutely not the case.

Fat Girl, titled A ma souer!, or To My Sister! in its original French translation, focuses on the experiences of two young, relatively well-to-do children on vacation to the French seaside.  Anaïs Pingot (Anaïs Reboux) is a obese young girl of twelve who is clearly the proverbial black sheep within her family, compared to her ethereal and sprite-like sister of fifteen Elena (Roxane Mesquida).  Realizing that Anaïs rather flippant attitude and less fortunate looks will cause individuals to take pause when approaching Elena, the parents demand that they always spend time together, mostly as a ruse to assure that Elena, whose promiscuity is openly acknowledged, avoids any engagements that might tarnish their family name.  Elena, of course, takes this assumption and runs with it, simply ignoring the presence of Anaïs when possible, even going so far as to push her out of the way when she is approached by an Italian tourist named Fernando (Libero De Rienzo), instead; swooping in to become the object of his affection.  A scene the displays Anaïs moving back and forth between the swimming pool pretending two polls are different lovers that she is entangled with in a fiery affair.  This unusual scene is followed by Elena and Anaïs getting ready for bed, where Elena explains that no matter what happens that night, she must ignore it and be quiet so much so, that when Fernando shows up attempting to have intercourse with Elena, only succeeding in anal sex, Anaïs is forced to deal with the very loud aftermath of the acts, condemning them both the following morning.  Yet, given the guidelines of their parents, the two must hangout together, this time with the presence of Fernando who is still attempting to win over Elena.  While Anaïs lays on the beach defeated, Fernando proposes to Elena, which, in turn, causes her to agree to having intercourse with him, an act that is shot from an angle to display Anaïs crying the entire time. Fernando's mother then comes to the Pingot beach house demanding that Elena return a valuable ring, which leads to a revelation about what has occurred between her and Fernando.  Frustrated the girls mother demands that they return home, even if it means a non-stop drive on a deathly busy and occupied French highway.  Exhausted their mother decides to pull into a rest stop, leading to the, extremely intense, closing sequence of the film, that defies logic, but, ultimately, undermines the larger filmic metaphor.

I was surprised to find out that a heavy amount of male support has been directed towards this film, particularly from a sect of French male filmmakers known in the past for their misogyny.  A heavy amount of the disdain is a result of issues with the manner in which Anaïs affirms an event the ends the film, a rape to be specific and spoil the ending, some suggest it results in a degree of victim blaming, yet I cannot help but think that it speaks to the larger issue of character ignoring narratively.  The title Fat Girl, as Breillat suggests in an essay that came along with the Criterion release, was her original choice and only changed it, in order, to help actress Anaïs Reboux be at ease with exactly why she was cast in her role.  The fact that Anaïs speaks out at the end seems heavily a call to attention and her denial is a larger metaphor for the denial that is very much placed of non-traditional bodies within media.  It is simple to assume that nothing happened to her, because society says she does not fit the traditional norms of beauty, therefore, is not the normal victim within the context of such a rhetoric, one would be quicker to assume that such actions would happen to Elena than to Anaïs.  Of course, since the final moment is necessarily and inextricably tied to sex, viewers are left to take Anaïs word on the entire event, as the way in which acts are shot, we are only shown faces.  It is possible that given the lies she heard earlier spouted by the sex-craving Fernando that she may not have indeed believed herself to be a victim of certain sexual violence.  Since she only knows sex as defined by films and by the lies spouted by sex crazed teens she may have been raped in a non-vaginal manner, still rape, but not within the limited vocabulary of Anaïs young mind.  It is audacious to think that a misogynistic group would embrace such a film, because it is very much about the very real woes and problems of male based oppression emotionally, mentally and especially physically.  Like the small family car weaving through the unrelenting trucks on the highway, Anaïs, and to some degree Elena, find themselves navigating a treacherous, unyielding world of larger, dangerously oppressive objects.

Key Scene:  While the film is all visually intense, the car ride is so heightened in tension that when it ends you assume the worst to be over, however, it is far from the case.

This is a visually audacious film that cannot really be explained verbally, what I can say, however, is that it is deserved of a bluray purchase without hesitation.

It Won't Stop Bleeding!: I Spit On Your Grave (1978)

Considering that it is Women's History month here in the beloved United States I have taken it upon myself to dedicate the blogposts this month to all things related to women in film.  I, of course, realize that this task will shape up much differently than the manner in which my horror film fest did, since the topic is far more obtuse and certainly more problematic.  I will use this time to explain what I mean by women in film, in the cases of some of the films I plan to view, they will be considered for their place in cinema history as "women's films," while others will specifically focus on films directed by women or involving pivotal moments in the history of women in films.  In many other instances I will look at a film for its positive portrayal of women as cinematic subject, and as will be the case with the first film I review, I Spit On Your Grave, I will also consider the problematic moments in the realm of women in film, specifically the rape-revenge film, a genre that lasted far too long in the late seventies and all too unfortunately appears to be making a come back in the past few years.  This is not to say that rape is always problematic in film, considering that it is often used as a political statement, or as a reflection of historical realities, so much so that it is necessary for viewers to be made viscerally aware of its existence.  I picked out I Spit On Your Grave specifically, because it has proven to be a decidedly divisive film within film theory circles, some stating that it is an absolute story of radical feminism destroying the patriarchy, while others are certain that it only exploits female sexuality at the expense of real rape victims, in so much so that the main character is naked for most of the film and seems driven by sexual desire to engage in the violent acts.  I would argue that, while the film is certainly not void of problems, it also manages to tap into a few moments of truly revolutionary cinema intended to vilify, and deservedly so, the act of rape and make clear its context as a means of power politics and not sex.  The X rating slapped on this film is both unfortunate and understandable considering that its graphic nature is absolutely necessary for the subject matter and were it not for the existence of Cannibal Holocaust I would say this is one of the most captivatingly grotesque films ever realized.

I Spit On Your Grave centers on Jennifer Hills (Camille Keaton) an aspiring writer from New York who finds herself a cottage in a reclusive small town with the hopes of churning out her first novel.  However, her arrival as a single and considerably attractive young female sparks the interest of a handful of young men, particularly the mentally troubled, Matthew (Richard Pace) who becomes obsessed with the sexual openness of Jennifer.  Matthews three friends begin to mock him for his clear infatuation with the girl from New York insinuating that he only likes her because she flashed her breasts at him.  Regardless, the group sees this as an opportunity to help the troubled young man get laid and use their motorboat to trap Jennifer while she is canoeing.  What follows is a series of degrading rapes in which the individuals take their turns with Jennifer, allowing her moments to escape only to trap her again and have their way with her, even Matthew partakes in the activities, although he becomes embarrassed by the presence of his friends and becomes impotent in the process.  After the guys lose interest they send Matthew to attempt to kill Jennifer, but, yet again, he fails to do so leaving Jennifer to survive.  At first it appears as though Jennifer will just deal with her drama by internalizing it and putting it into her writing, yet something changes when she discovers a gun, leading her to exact her revenge out upon the various men, beginning with the hanging of Matthew, followed by an intense castration of another in the group and eventually ending by running one of the men over with the motor of the boat.  Jennifer is then shown using the motorboat to ride away from the entire event, likely as a means to escape, but also a means to move beyond and transcend her terrible past.

The statement of this film is considerably hard to navigate, because it is very much about destroying the act of rape by making the individuals engaging in such acts disappear, but as any humanist would argue the answer to acts of violence is not another act of violence, which clearly seems to be the suggestion within I Spit On Your Grave, hell, a solid hour of the film is committed to these violent moments.  Yet, the film also draws attention to the lack of fulfillment Jennifer receives from simply pouring her pain into writing, especially when she is aware that the men, for all intents and purposes, are walking the streets capable of doing the same acts.  It is at this point that one must carefully make a statement about what the metaphor of the film evokes, it is possible that the murders are to reflect a activist stance, in that action is always more viable than words, however, the larger reaching effects of Jennifer's actions are called into question, when one man's wife and children dismiss him, completely unaware of his being castrated only scenes earlier, perhaps it would have been better for Jennifer to simply make his wife aware of his terrible behavior, at the very least, the film offers that venue as a viable alternative.  I am not completely prepared to give this film a pass, because it does have a heavy degree of exploitation within its narrative, the amount of time Jennifer is naked is somewhat unnecessary and aside from a few moments of brilliant cinematography it is uncomfortable, the film fails to provide an equal amount of male nudity as a means to disavow the exploitative element.  Where I do want to focus praise is in the films very real acknowledgement that rape is classless, in so much, that Jennifer is a considerably well-to-do individual and even her class safety does not afford her sexual protection and the domineering, working class men, will use their masculine, phallic privilege as a means to contest her empowerment.  It is one of the few blatantly well-done moments in the film and at the very least deserves mentioning.

Key Scene:  The cleansing scene about midway through the film is both disturbing and masterfully shot and causes a dismissive viewer to pause in their refusal to embrace the controversial narrative.

I Spit On Your Grave is a Netflix watch instantly film and is probably the best means with which to view this film, although be warned, the volume is awful.  Also, I promise some of the future installments for the month will be more in the positive.

If They Don't Offer Us Justice, Then They Aren't Laws: Machete (2010)

A blind buy through and through, I had very little in the way of expectations for this relatively recent Robert Rodriguez helmed film, despite being quite adoring of El Mariachi and rather embracing towards his From Dusk Till Dawn, during my Halloween marathon.  I am rather certain that much of this preconceived notion towards this film exists in it coming out during a time when I was still entrenching myself within a certain degree of cinematic pretension, only viewing the established classics and barely making room for any film with an established cult status that was not also part of the canon.  Of course, as I noted earlier I absolutely adored El Mariachi and must simply have not made the connection while this film was originally making its way through theaters, for which I am quite regretful, considering that Machete is a bit of absurdist cinematic brilliance that one could and really should only expect from Robert Rodriguez.  Knowing everything I could no about the film going in, I was not prepared for two things, first being the magnificent bit of over-the-top acting on the part of Robert De Niro who both plays against his typecast, as well as into it when it proves beneficial.  Secondly, and perhaps more importantly, I did not expect Machete to be such an astute reflection on the  state of immigration in The United States, especially considering that this film is pushing the discussion to the forefront well before it became a popular topic in last years elections, as well as an underlying theme within Casa De Mi Padre, perhaps the most overlooked comedy of last year.  Of course, one cannot overlook Rodriguez's clearly vested interest in such a subject, especially since border crossing has undoubtedly proved to be a theme within so many of his earlier works.  Regardless, the ways in which the maniacally driven director incorporates the best and worst of both sides of the trafficiking and sneaking between borders into a film that clocks in under two hours is to be praised and shared, hell, I would have to revisit the directors works, but as it stands this could well be my new favorite work by Rodriguez.

Machete follows, all be it somewhat loosely, the experiences of ex-federal agent Machete Cortez (Danny Trejo) a vengeful Mexican man whose dead wife fuels such an impassioned desire for revenge that he proves a nearly unstoppable force.  However, Machete's world is a tricky one considering that he has lost his status as a federal agent as is subsequently given the status of a Mexican citizen, making even the thought of crossing the border illegal.  In fact, his only source of forward momentum appears to come from Luz (Michelle Rodriguez) a food truck vendor who also appears to be running an underground Mexican rights group cleverly named Shé.  The border also proves a treacherous place regarding drugs and the trafficking of any illegal substance, much to the apparent disapproval of one Michael Booth (Jeff Fahey) who hires Machete to exact an assassination attempt on the hyper-racist politician John MacLaughlin (Robert De Niro).  However, it is during this assassination attempt that Machete discovers he is simply being placed on a rooftop as a scapegoat for a larger political action with some intense ties.  Fortunately for Machete, Booth's drug consuming daughter April (Lindsay Lohan) is more than an easy target and actually serves as a point of blackmail against Booth on the part of Machete.  Within this already twisted web, Machete also encounters Sartana (Jessica Alba) a fiery customs officer with a lot to prove and while the two initially butt heads, they eventually become romantically involved.  Finally, the infamously mythic anti-immigration vigilante Von Jackson (Don Johnson) plays a huge part into the plot as he is a person whose gun seems to do his talking, not to mention his having close ties with the controversial MacLaughlin.  In fact, it is MacLaughlin who is injured at the border between Mexico and the United States leading to his being killed by the very vigilantes whom he associates with, all the while Machete survives the insanity and is assumedly to return for more violence at a later time.  A convoluted plot without a doubt, but one cannot forget its inherent ties to the exploitation genre, not to mention its clear consideration of the immigration issue.

Rodriguez seems quite intent on harping on the issue of immigration, not only as a problem in which American officials are ignoring a human rights issue, but also a narrative chiefly concerned with drawing attention to Mexican citizens own willful involvement in the continual exploitation of their peoples.  Characters like Machete, Sartana and Luz clearly exist to battle the injustices occurring on both sides of the border, while pretty much every other person in the cast of characters exists to show one of the many barriers or complexities existing as a means to defeat the possibility of a free flowing border.  Of course, drugs are a huge portion of this narrative, particularly the means with which they cause oppressed individuals within America, in this case the powerless April, to become addicted and, subsequently, involved in the oppression of Mexican citizens tied into the trade involuntarily.  MacLaughlin and Jackson represent figures of ivory tower privilege who see the "illegals" crossing the border as invaders of some glorified vision of America as a puritanical place of perfection, in which every job is to be possessed by a hard working citizen of The United States, yet Rodriguez is brilliant in showing that it is perhaps the lack of ethics concerning labor as a means of earning a living that is most troubling Americans (opening up an undeniable Marxist approach to this film that is best suited for another day).  In fact, Luz's attempts to properly make a living, including obtaining papers and a clientele are equally criticized, not because she is doing so illegally, but because she is engaging in the public sphere as a woman as a person of color.  It is no accident that Sartana constantly criticizes her, because their dueling identities as women of color prove to be a point of distrust as opposed to unity, due to the fact of internalization.  This idea of internalized oppression helps to understand the seemingly implicit role the Mexicans in the narrative play in their own inability to prosper, they have grown to fear the MacLaughlins and Jacksons of the world, when in reality as the closing scenes show, when the roles are reversed identity politics become quite arbitrary.

Key Scene:  Granted De Niro plays a bad guy, but it is such an absurd performance that anytime he shows up it proves to be one of the highlights of an already excellent film.

Buy a copy.  While I have a DVD version, it is vibrant and lively enough that I imagine paying an extra buck for the bluray version is more than worth it.

Documents Never Lie: Memories Of Murder (2003)

For somebody who has become a self-proclaimed academic on South Korean cinema, it has been quite awhile since I have reviewed or even watched anything from the country, which led me to dive into Memories of Murder, an early offering from one of my favorite South Korean directors Bong Joon-ho, probably best known for his massively realized monster movie The Host, if not for his spastic and cinematic Mother.  The later, as well as Memories of Murder, focus heavily on violent crimes and catching the culprits, however, where Bong avoids reality and grounding in his later work he seems completely at ease with depicting an uncomfortable amount of realness in his early work.  Memories of Murder is wickedly funny, while never failing to remind viewers that rape and murder are real acts, often, if not always, leading to the untimely death of those attacked, in this case every one being woman.  Bong is such a stellar director that even when noting that the film is based on true events, he manages to create such a gripping and melodramatic narrative that it is hard not to get lost in the spectacle and execution of the film, its elaborate nature and seemingly layered element of deception cause viewers to justifiably assume the work to be entirely fiction.  However, one may feel about the events depicted in the film, or whether Bong was even justified in portraying such freshly given wounds on screen, one cannot deny the means with which he uses this narrative to paint a picture of divides in Korea that still haunt the continually progressing nation.  Set, for the most part, in 1986, the film represents a rural area of South Korea, clearly affected by colonization, but not via a physical presence.  Bong, in Memories of Murder, creates a film that contests notions of identity and assumed privilege, particularly as it relates to notions of masculinity, age and education.  So very realized is this film, that one often has trouble situating its time period, as it is clearly not intended to visually represent contemporary Korea, yet the visual realm is not archaic either, instead existing in some area of transcendent cinematic space where metaphor and meaning are undoubtedly universal.


Memories of Murder begins, as should be no surprise, with the discovery of yet another raped and murdered body, in what has become a string of violent attacks in a rural South Korean community.  The main figure in the investigation proves to be Detective Park (Kang-ho Song) a traditionalist as far as detective work goes, although he is not adverse to twisting the words of suspects to assure the moving along of his investigations.  Park's partner Detective Cho (Roe-ha Kim) on the other hand seems to resort to violence at the flip of a hat, assuming that he can beat a confession out of any person he assumes to be guilty.  There wily tactics yield little results, mostly because they lack proper higher police education, which leads to the calling in of a Seoul based detective named Detective Seo (Sang-Kyung Kim) whose main objective appears to be linking the crimes into a series of murders enacted by a single serial killer.  Seo and Park constantly but heads, mostly as a result of Park's pride and desire to retain an alpha dog status, something Seo's intelligence seems quick to threaten.  However, as the clues begin the collect and the dueling detectives realize that one another possess some undeniable investigation skills, they slowly piece together a list of legitimate suspects and even chase down a variety of other criminals in the process.  Yet when they come to a standstill as a result of waiting for the FBI, who possess far better technology, to analyze some DNA, another murder occurs, driving Park specifically to chase the assumed culprit down himself.  Park, Seo and the assumed criminal meeting an an intense semi-shootout at a train tunnel entrance, only to be forced to let the suspect go when it is shown that they only possess inconclusive evidence.  The narrative then moves to the present as Park revisits a crime scene, only to be told by a passing girl that another man had been there only moments earlier, perhaps the killer whose whereabouts remain unknown even today.

It is hard to make any definitive statement about Memories of Murder in regards to critical theory, as so much of Bong's intent is clearly a result of his personal conviction in calling attention to the fact that this  killer has yet to face justice.  The clear choice of the camera to linger on the beaten and bruised bodies of the victims is an all to visceral call to demand that justice be sought with little rest during the process. Of course, to overanalyze this element of the film would be counterproductive, because the very act of Bong making the film proves this argument valid.  Instead, it is far more interesting to consider the way masculinity serves as a point of contention in the film, especially between Park and Seo whose desire to catch the killer seems more to do with selfish pride than with proctoring justice, especially for Park who has his communal identity to maintain. It is then no coincidence that all the victims in the film are women, one's who cannot defend against an intensely aggressive masculine antagonist, ultimately, causing Park and others to serve as saviors to a weaker sex, a problematic underlying issue of internalized oppression invariably emerges.  It is also interesting to consider the suspects when reading it through a masculinity critique, as it is clear all of Park and Seo's suspects appear to engage in varying degrees of gender betrayal/transgression, whether it be one culprit who dons women's underwear for sexual gratification, or another suspect whose telling feature is his unusually soft hands, something which is the result of his job in clerical work.  The final confrontation of the train emerging from the tunnel as a means of losing their assumed victim then takes a clear phallic meaning as it explodes out of the entrance severing any possibility of apprehending the suspect.  Masculine oppression is at the root of crime in this film, however, it is also the barrier that results in a killer never being found, in fact, the only persons who seem to be able to clearly identify the perpetrator are females, unfortunately, their voice in the narrative is relegated or ignored even in the closing moments, a masterful and biting commentary by Bong no doubt.

Key Scene:  There is a confrontation between Seo and Park in a karaoke bar in which they are both peeling bananas.  The biting nature and satirical composition of this moment hand me bursting at the seams with laughter.

This is certainly one of the premier films in South Korean cinema's history and it is somewhat pricey on Amazon, yet purchasing a copy is well worth the money, it is seriously a spectacular film.

With A Rich Husband Cheating Is Part Of The Package: The Housemaid (2010)

With all the intensity of a New Korean Thriller and the subtle paranoia latent to some of Steven Soderbergh's more experimental narrative films, the 2010 offering from Sang-soo Im titled The Housemaid is something to be seen.  However, probably the most rewarding element of this film is that those watching it are given another fantastic performance by Do-yeon Jeon, the actress I praised lavishly in my review of Secret Sunshine, which has proven to be my favorite viewing experience of this year, as well as one of the better films I have ever seen.  This film is an adaptation of sorts of an earlier 1960's version of a film with the same title.  While I have not personally seen the original I have had the pleasure of watching Beasts of Prey, another film by Ki-young Kim, who did direct the original The Housemaid.  As such, I expected a vivacious, sexually driven film that would blow up with cinematic fervor and stop at not point to excel at being a forceful work.  The Housemaid is an exceptionally great work of cinema, one that is thankfully seeing larger audience at the hands of IFC, who has, along with Magnolia pictures, proven the most reliable source in expanding awareness regarding Korean cinema.  The Housemaid while certainly engaging in some of the tropes and themes we have come to expect with New Korean Cinema, like hyper violence, multi-layered unconventionally formulated narrative and some degree of fear with modernity, nonetheless, manages to exist within its own new conceptualization.  While The Housemaid is not the first film from Korea to severely reconsider gender roles and identity to a lengthened degree, this film is particularly unique in its approach, particularly through the ways it reconsiders domestic spaces.  The film also considers some of the latent issues in female distrust and deceit, especially when these negative interactions seem to stem from a problematic male figure, something certainly and undeniably present within this film.  While intense from beginning to end, The Housemaid is a thrill to watch and something I look forward to revisiting in the future.

The narrative of The Housemaid begins rather unconventionally with an opening of various women of different classes traversing the streets of what we can assume to be Seoul during the night hours.  A woman who has been standing on a ledge unexpectedly leaps to her death, at which point we begin what could be defined as the narrative proper in which Eun-yi (Do-yeon Jeon) takes a job as a nanny and maid for a wealthy family headed by Hoon (Lee Jung-jae) a wine guzzling man who takes an instant liking to Eun-yi, despite his wife Hae-ra (Seo-woo) being pregnant with twins.  Eun-yi by no means dismisses the advances, despite being led to assume that she is at the very least bi-sexual, and is at one point caught by a fellow maid in the act of sleeping with Hoon.  Part out of personal advancement and guilt the second maid Miss Cho (Yoon yea-Jeong) informs Hae-ra's mother of the incidents which lead the worried woman to take out her concerns on the unsuspecting Eun-yi, causing her to fall from a ladder on the second story of the mansion in which she is working.  It is revealed during her recovery that she was pregnant, a thing that looms over the state of the house until she is troubled by a miscarriage, one, undoubtedly, connected to her intense accident.  Despite Hae-ra's misgivings her mother demands that she enjoy living a lavish lifestyle while her guilty husband is at her every whim, it is during the birth of the twins that she dismisses her feelings for Hoon and leaves it his job to fire Eun-yi, a task that causes her a great deal of frustration.  After a discussion with Miss Cho about her motives for ratting her out, Eun-yi hatches a plan to exact revenge upon the family, an act which involves her committing a grandly grotesque suicide within their foyer.  The film then closes with Hoon, Hae-ra and their daughter speaking in English as the daughter appears to be painting a picture.

This film could be read as a point of problem as it relates to female distrust and envy within upper class society and, of course, this would not be a completely ungrounded reading of this dense work.  However, I would argue that the film is a heightened state of realities in which women find themselves blaming one another for their own unhappiness or anger, when, in fact, it is certainly a figure of patriarchal oppression causing issues.  This is clearly the role that Hoon plays within The Housemaid, he is an alcoholic, sex crazed maniac who clearly holds little concern for the world around him unless it can provide him some degree of pleasure.  While it is certainly clear that Eun-yi welcomes the advances of Hoon, one cannot deny that her degree of submissiveness can be tied to her lack of power in relation to Hoon the wealthy patriarch.  The film is also clever enough to pepper in a few feminist theory commentaries and ideals as a means to push further a notion of unity, as opposed to distrust.  We see this first with Hae-ra's reading of The Second Sex as a reminder of her othering, in relation to a male of power, something based almost entirely on her sexual being, which is further emphasized by her being pregnant.  However, I find the most telling example of a need for unity to occur in the conversations between Eun-yi and Miss Cho, particularly their closing one, in which they both realize that their divisive ideas were tragically misguided and despite a clear age difference the two had far more to share  and celebrate than ignore and destroy.  Finally, with this conceptualization of the film in mind, one cannot help but read Eun-yi's suicidal act as a means of feminist martyrdom, in that it causes Miss Cho a moment to escape from the traps of patriarchy and most importantly for Hoon's daughter to see the effects of the current establishment on a woman's sanity.

Key Scene:  There are a few scenes set up in front of a fireplace that are cinematically perfect and metaphorically masterful.

This movie is available on Netflix Watch Instantly and well worth checking out, as for me I will be saving up to snag the ultra expensive bluray version.