Wicker Park

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
6/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7/10

Year made: 2004
Runtime: 114 minutes
IMDB page: here

Quite a tragic love story. I usually don't go for the romantic movie, but this movie is almost unromantic. It's a thriller, it's a mystery, it's psychological, it's obsessive. It's kind of Shakespeare rehashed. Themes from Twelfth Night peek through the sometimes chaotic (in a good, metaphoric way) narrative.

It's also another American remake. Haven't seen the famous French original L'appartement yet. Will do so soon in the future.

I also don't usually like heartthrobs, but something about Josh Hartnett (playing the protagonist Matt) is simply beyond heartthrobs. Diane Kruger, the German model/actress playing Lisa, Matt's lost love, is also slightly beyond your usual pretty girl. She is also the ex-wife of the young and talented and handsome director/screenwriter/actor of Tell No One.

Basic plot: Matt, a young man rising in his career of advertising, catches a glimpse of Lisa in a restaurant. Lisa is his long-lost dancer lover who disappeared out of his life without a word 2 years before. Matt begins an obsessive search for Lisa, going into her hotel room and her apartment, where he meets "Lisa", a completely different girl whom he had apparently mistaken for his Lisa back at the restaurant. But the real Lisa is indeed in town. How are the Lisas related, and what exactly is "Lisa" hiding? Meanwhile, Matt's good friend Luke is dating a moody theater actress named Alex who seems awfully interested in Matt and Lisa's story. How does she figure into the plot?

No one is murdered, no one is badly injured physically, there's barely any blood in the film, yet it's still an intriguing mystery. I'm a bit surprised at how much I liked it, given it's about love at first sight and all this crap I don't really believe in.

The acting is... eh, believable. Special props should be given to "Lisa," played by Rose Byrne, who has the most depth and versatility in the cast. She's one of the reasons I liked this movie, she and her character.

The way the movie is put together is reflective of the confusion people suffer while in love. The sequences of scenes are quite creative. Everything is a bit jumbled, and things are peeled back from different angles to slowly reveal the whole story, kind of Memento-style. What you see, what you think happened depending on what you heard, can be so different from what really happened.

And man, the soundtrack is pretty awesome. Mostly just mid-tempo ballads, moody yet yearning, in a subdued, confused way, like Matt. He knows there's something out there, he trusts Lisa wouldn't just leave him, yet that is what seems to have happened. But he knows there's an answer.

***************Spoilers Alert*******************


I try hard to avoid spoilers now because ... well, not everyone wants to read spoilers and I want to maximize my readership. But there are some things in this film that can only be discussed with spoilers.

Like who "Lisa" really is.

Yes, "Lisa" is Alex the actress. She fell in love with Matt way before Matt set eyes on Lisa and fell in love with her. She's Lisa's neighbour and a kind of confidant. But all she could do was watch silently as Matt went after the pretty girl, the dancer, and the two fell madly in love with each other. It's oh-so-unfair, but... what could she do. Until Lisa had to leave immediately for Europe for a dance gig and left her with a letter for Matt. Matt had asked Lisa to move in with him, Lisa got super excited but was too nervous to say yes and now she had to get on a plane for Europe before they meet again. So she explained everything in a letter and said yes to his request. Alex did not pass on the letter. She also told Lisa that she found Matt in bed with another woman when she tried to pass on the letter. She broke them up.

Now she's panicking that they might find everything out and she'll lose a friend AND any chance she might have with Matt, so she tries her best to keep the two from ever knowing the other person is in town. She does an excellent job to explain away the little details that Matt found suspicious. She's such a convincing actress, it's heart-breaking.

Ironically, she is playing the role of Viola in a modern version of Twelfth Night at her theater job. The make-up she wore was painfully fabulous, a mask that helps her keep Matt from knowing "Lisa" is Alex. I sympathize greatly with her suffering to be the intermediary between the man she loves and the woman he loves, to be the unwanted middlewoman, to have both their trusts and try to keep them apart. You have to understand that Alex is not an evil, contriving woman. She's just caught in her unrequited love. She made all the wrong choices under impulse and by the time she truly realized what she was doing, it was too late and too much to fix anything.

Well, in love it is never too late.

A Tale of Two Sisters (aka Janghwa, Hongryeon) + The Uninvited

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
9/10

Year made: 2003
Runtime: 115 minutes
IMDB page: here
Rewatch value: through the roof



Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
4.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
4.5/10

Year made: 2009
Runtime: 87 minutes
IMDB page: here


American remakes. Can't live with them... can't live with them. They drive me slightly nuts. I understand that they introduce American audiences to the original film, and may very well actually do a lot to generate publicity for the original film. But they RUIN a lot of things.

I will talk about The Uninvited first because A Tale of Two Sisters has so much more insight and intrigue to offer, as you can see from the very high ratings I give it.

The two only have a similar basic premise. They take the premise to completely different places. So if you have watched one, do not overly worry about spoiling the ending of the other one.

Still, I was quite upset after I watched The Uninvited when I learned it was a re-make of a classic I haven't seen (my oversight, I know). It still takes quite a bit from the original. So, definitely watch the original first and... skip The Uninvited if you don't have the time.

Okay, basic Cinderella premise. A teenage girl (we'll call her A) gets picked up by her father from the mental hospital after suffering a break-down after her mother's death. She re-unites with sister B at the creepy isolated lake house the family owns. She also meets someone she doesn't want to see: her stepmother, who was her mother's live-in nurse when her mother was sick. A and B don't get along with the stepmother at all, who seems evil and contriving. The father seems strangely distant and impartial in the conflict. There seems to be some sort of vengeful female spirit haunting the place, which seems to indicate foul play in the mother's death.

I have to give some credit to the American remake because the writers worked hard to make the story quite different (albeit a lot less fascinating and ... downright boring and cliched sometimes) from the original. (I always develop sympathy for the filmmakers after I watch the special features...) Loose ends tie up a lot more neatly, with a lot less room for speculation and ambiguity and interpretation. That is as well, because that is the style of Western movie-making. According to the "making of" featurette, anyway. I rather think a lot of Western horror movies don't make sense at all. Loose ends are flapping in the open in the end and are never mentioned again.

The Uninvited at least doesn't have that problem. Things are properly eerie and ... predictable. I think that's what's bothering me about it. And it's not ... that hard to get. It's not intelligent enough. It's not dumb, but it's not that brainy and complicated either. I'm not too in love with the Sister A actress, Emily Browning, who was Violet in A Series of Unfortunate Events. I liked the more free, more daring Sister B a lot better. A was just too bland. And annoyingly weak. Just gives off this whiny vibe. At the end you sort of get it and she's redeemed a bit (she does have a reason, after all), and I suppose she's not a bad actress at all (vulnerable, forgetful, traumatized properly).

On to A Tale of Two Sisters. The original Korean name is 장화, 홍련 (Janghwa, Hongryeon), which means Rose Flower, Red Lotus, which were the names of the two sisters in an old Korean folktale. The film is a variation of this folktale about two sisters and their evil stepmother and their distant father and what the stepmother did to ruin the sisters' lives.

In this movie, the sisters are actually named Su-mi and Su-yeong. Su-mi is the one committed in the mental hospital. Su-yeong is really timid, and their beautiful young stepmother seems to be mistreating her. Su-mi tries to stand up for her sister, most of the time to no avail.

The Korean version is so much more complicated and ambiguous. There are points in the film that you think are totally irrelevant (random shots of things that don't seem to make sense or don't relate to the plot), but these tangents are precisely what make this film so great-- they all make sense when you view them in the right light (which is the light of hindsight). And depending on how you piece together these bits, you can get different conclusions about what really happened, what was real, what was not-so-real. You can pick what you want to believe in, but keep in mind that the strongest conclusion is the one that takes into account all the different pieces.

Oh, not everything will make sense at the end of the first viewing. In fact, I was so puzzled at the end of my first viewing that I looked it up on the web. I was sure that someone would get crazily hooked on this film and try to explain every single detail and inform everyone what exactly went down in the film. I was right.

This link is ONLY to be used AFTER you have seen the film. This is way too great a film to waste by spoilers, and you probably won't understand or care about half the things mentioned in there until you have seen the film. User Opiemar on IMDb has really gone to great length to explain everything after many many viewings, and his/her explanation makes great sense with the support of evidence he's unearthed from the film.

The acting, it's heart-breaking. The two sisters' love is so tender and fragile (they love each other greatly, but there's often very little they can do to defend each other). The stepmother's desperation, her smiles and immediate narrowing of the eyes toward the girls as soon as the father's not looking. The father's impassive, tired stare, to both his daughters and to his new wife/girlfriend (whom you would think he's crazy about),

Visually, the colours are dazzling, in a very dark, gloomy way. Asian directors often use a wild colour pallet for visual effects; Ji-woon Kim (the writer and director, definitely thumbs-up) exhibits a mastery over colours matching the mood and themes of the movie as it goes along. The dizzying myriad of wallpapers, the old wooden colours of the house itself, the vibrant colours of the girls' and the stepmother's dresses and shirts.

AND the soundtrack. Absolutely haunting. Deeply melancholy, emotionally damaged, vulnerable, with a slight tinge of insanity that may go deeper than it appears, just like the film itself. The theme song, Crying Moon, is featured on the right side. If you are reading this a long time after June 16, 2009, then you can find Crying Moon in the Global Music Tour section on the right.

Orochi

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
6.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7/10

Year made: 2008
Runtime: 107 minutes
IMDB page: here


There is a thing in the world called SUBTITLE. Do not fear it; it is your friend. It allows you to watch so many more movies than you can otherwise dream of. And most of these movies are quite interesting, if only for the fact they are made in a language you cannot understand.

"Orochi" means snake/serpent in Japanese. It's actually the mythical 8-headed giant serpent. But don't worry, this little specimen in Japanese supernatural thriller (notice I did not say horror) does not showcase any appearance of any snake whatsoever.

Quite a few famous names are associated with this film. The director, Tsuruta Norio, has been very active in the Japanese horror scene, directing pretty excellent films like Yogen (Premonition). The screenwriter, Takahashi Hiroshi, adapted the script of Ringu and subsequent sequels and American copycat versions from the original novel. The original form of Orochi is a comic of the same name by the very famous horror artist Umezu Kazuo. My favourite horror artist will always be Ito Junji, but Umezu Kazuo will certainly be second. Umezu's work has a deep psychological chill to it, a big question mark on human nature. Some of the themes include the quest for youth, especially among women, what they are willing to do to stay young, and how jealous they can get as they age. I haven't read Orochi, but I have read Baptism by the same artist and let me tell you, I finished everything in one night. Maybe I should say one morning, because technically it was morning.

The cast is also ... The three main female leads are all very beautiful, each in their way. The male lead (though he's barely a lead... this is definitely a female-dominant film) is Yamamoto Taro, the tough guy from Battle Royale. The whole film, I was going like "is it him? No it can't be. But it looks like him. Now it doesn't." Well, it is him.

The story is told from the point of view of Orochi, a young girl in red. She is basically immortal and goes into hibernation every 100 years, so she's been around for quite a while and has seen her share of interesting things. She's mostly an impartial observer and usually doesn't interfere in anything. She takes an interest in the Monzen family, which consists of a beautiful movie-star mother and two beautiful 9-year-old daughters. The mom is very vain and rich and seems unnaturally concerned with aging (or maybe naturally?), the daughters are very close but also vying for the attention and love of their mother. She wants them to be famous performers and makes them take voice lessons. Risa, the younger one, soon gets favoured for her great voice while Kazusa, the older one, is scorned for her lack of rhythm and talent. Conflict arises and Kazusa realizes she can't win at singing, so she switches over to acting. She watches her mom's films over and over and repeats the lines.

Meantime, something seems to be going wrong with the mother. Warts start growing on her forehead and hands. She stops acting or appearing at all publicly. She's drunk all the time and seems to have a death wish. One day she drives off drunk and crashes, but Orochi protects her and gets badly injured while she's knocked out but sustains no injury. Orochi has to enter hibernation early because of the near-fatal injuries.

Years later...

I'll have to leave that for me to know and for you to find out. This movie is worth it.

There are a lot of girl-on-girl fight scenes. Hair-pulling, slapping around, that's all common. I'm impressed with how heavy and real the slaps seem. Women are really quite as capable of violence as men.

Hogfather

You wouldn't see too many Books entries because... frankly I just don't read that much. Don't have the time for movies AND comics AND books. I don't know, I used to be crazy about books. Now... I still read them, kind of just making sure I know how to read still.

Someone's been telling me to read Terry Pratchett for ages. Guess I never got around to it. Now I have.
Title: Hogfather
Author: Terry Pratchett
Year: 1996
Genre: Fantasy, satire
Wiki: Yes

Terry Pratchett wrote this whole world of novels, loosely called the Discworld series. They are all about this alternative universe where earth is flat, balanced on the backs of four elephants standing on the back of a giant turtle. The novels are more or less stand-alones, but they do feature some recurring characters and they elaborate on occasionally overlapping aspects of this Discworld.

Being the fastidious bastard that I am, of course I wanted to start with Book 1, titled The Colour of Magic. The books are not in chronological order, but I figured the order he published 'em is good enough for me. At least it must makes sense to him.

But also being a cheap bastard, of course I'm just gonna go to the library and check the books out. And that's where I run into the problem when it's summer and all the little buggers get out of school and some of the ones (perhaps with glasses) who like to read go crazy at the library (I know; I used to be one of them). So I end up placing holds on a bunch of books that I just know I wouldn't get before the summer's over and my window of reading time closes.

So I was forced to grab whatever Discworld novel they had available and read them all out of order. Which is a tiny bit frustrating to a mentally neat freak like me, but ... sometimes life doesn't give you lots of options.

First to be sampled is Hogfather, the 20th Discworld novel (DON'T say anything about it being out of order). I've read Good Omens co-authored by Terry Pratchett (with Neil Gaiman) and found that to be quite entertaining. I was quite charmed by the character Death, who only speaks in capital letters, so I decided to first hunt down the novels that showcase this character.

I'm not going to get bogged down with a synopsis of the novel. You can just wiki that. But just in a gist, Hogfather (an alternative version of Santa Clause) has gone missing because the Auditors have hired a completely psychotic Assassin from the Assassin's Guild to kill Santa... I mean, Hogfather. Death picks up Hogfather's reins and carries on his job for a good cause while his granddaughter (a human... Death's adopted daughter's daughter) investigates what happened to the Hogfather.

WHAT?!

What are the Auditors, in the first place? Well, that's where I wish I could start from day 1, book 1, first sentence. Even though the book is a stand-alone, these recurring characters are not explained fully because parts of them are mentioned in each novel so to get the real, big, complete picture, you should read all the novels. Otherwise you only get a general idea, a vague feeling of what the characters are supposed to be like.

The Auditors are like... laws of physics. They make sure things like gravity work, they file paper work for every chemical reaction, things like that (examples shamelessly copied from their wiki page). They like order, because free will makes them fall behind on their paperworks. Thus they hate life, with its randomness, and they hate humans in particular because any sentient being with an imagination makes things messy. Thus they scheme to eliminate the humans, but they cannot do so directly because it breaks the Rules. So they have to do so indirectly, hiring humans and manipulating other beings to do their dirty work.

It's certainly an interesting philosophy.

The book is really a hoot. Such fun. I really enjoyed it. Now, I can't make sense of everything either, because despite the fantasy genre, the family-friendly book cover, this IS not a children's book. Not even necessarily young adult. There are a lot of things that take a certain degree of maturity to understand fully. Otherwise they are just passages you read over and go like, "isn't this supposed to be funny? But there's nothing funny here!" In short, you just have to get the references.

Highly recommended.

Ne le dis à personne (aka Tell No One)

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
8.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
8/10

Year made: 2006
Runtime: 125 minutes
IMDB page: here

Some pretty high ratings, coming from me. I really enjoyed this French little gem. Yes, it's in French so if you don't speak it (like me), you'll have to watch with subtitles (like me). It takes a tiny bit away from the film, yes, and sometimes the interpersonal relationships can be lost a little bit, but COMPLETELY worth it.

The film is based on one of Harlan Coben's thriller novels. One of my mentors has been recommending Coben to me for years but I just never had the time to pick it up. After watching this film, I'm completely sold. Will read some Coben casually... soon, after I get through Terry Pratchett (maybe it's time for a book review?!).

Alex is a pediatrician and loves his wife, Margot, very much. They spend a fun weekend at a lake (his family's property... so he's pretty well-to-do) where he gets clubbed in the head and goes into a short coma and she gets killed. Eight years later, he's still missing her, but his life is somewhat back on track. Until he gets an e-mail from Margot with a video link that shows her alive and older. WHAT?!

That's about all you are gonna get out of me about the plot. Really, you need to see the thing for yourself and any more you get from someone else will just reduce the fun as you dive into the story.

Some background information: Alex's family is into horseback riding. His younger sister is a rider and his dad is a trainer. His sister is also a completely normal lesbian, married to Kristin Scott Thomas's character (the American actress who spoke perfect French in the film... amazing). They are just such a... normal couple, their lesbianism is not emphasized or downplayed. Lesbianism is not focused on or evaded as an issue at all; it's just there, like any other married couple. Which is why I didn't work out their relationship for the longest time. I mean, Alex and Margot have this ensemble of friends and people from the stables and that's where things go a bit murky for me (maybe just because I'm that not into socializing). For a while I thought kristin Scott Thomas was Alex's sister, and her wife was actually her daughter. And I even thought it was weird because they casually kiss ... in the mouth when they say hi or goodbye. Man, I'm just really dense sometimes.

Superb acting, great cinematography, very well-handled, very refined. The plot moves along at the right pace, never boring or frantic. The relationships are so insightful and full of little details, which usually doesn't happen in thrillers. It has basically everything going for it, in terms of both visual art and storytelling.

Note of interest: very nice, moving, emotional soundtrack, mostly songs in English. It evokes a certain feeling when you hear it, a feeling that matches the movie so closely that you cringe involuntarily. It complements the movie so well.

The director and scriptwriter, Guillaume Canet, is a relatively young man (born in 1973) who plays a minor but important character in the movie, someone who links everything together. Apparently Canet is a very successful heartthrob actor with real talent (well, he can write and direct very nicely), quite famous in France and all over Europe. Now go watch the movie.

Happy!

Japanese: ハッピー!
English: Happy!
Chinese: 网坛小魔女
Artist: Urasawa Naoki 浦沢直樹
Status: Complete
Volume #: 23
Wiki page: Yes


Yes, complete with the Exclamation Point. Happy!

Right in time for the French Open. But this series almost ruined me a month ago. Now, 23 volumes is a lot to finish in one night, and somehow I got this idea that I should finish it THAT night. I didn't. Ended up going to bed at 7. IN THE MORNING. After I finished 8 volumes.

After that I vowed I wouldn't pick it up again until summer. Well, guess what time it is.

Urasawa Naoki, famous for masterpieces like Monster and 20th Century Boys, both of which I have read and revered (one day I might want to re-read them and review them, but they are such a massive effort). Urasawa Naoki's gotta be my top 3 favourite artists. Some of his earlier stuff (like Yawara, which I started reading too) is less interesting. The art style is also less round and refined.

Some people have said his comics are like movies. They got perfect camera angles that narrate the story smoothly. I gotta agree. His work is like combining two of my favourite things in the world-- comics and movies.

Monster and 20th Century Boys are both thrillers, mysteries, stories that dive both into the past and the future. That's one of my favourite genres, so naturally I liked them better than...

Happy! may be the first sports comic I've read through. When I started it, I had absolutely NO clue what it is going to be about. I didn't even read the back of the book to get the synopsis. I trusted Urasawa-san that much.

Well, it's about sports. Tennis, in particular. I don't think I could have finished all 23 volumes if it was about any other sport. Tennis is the one sport I actually like to watch on TV.

Actually, it's not about the sport as much as it is about the girl, the main protagonist. Umino Miyuki. Miyuki has 3 younger siblings (2 brothers and a sister) and an older brother. Her parents died a few years ago. Her older brother always has these fanciful business schemes to make money, schemes that always crash and burn after he puts a good amount of time and money into them. As a result, he owes a huge debt (250 million yens, or 2.5 million dollars) to some nasty yakuza loan sharks.

He runs away, and the yakuza sends a collector, Sukurada, to Miyuki. They want to force her into prostitution to pay off the debt. She says she has another way to pay them back and goes to the tennis club owned by the family of her senpai (a slightly older guy who went to high school with her), Ohtori Keiichiro. There, she beats a just-turned-pro player, Okiku Kaku, and reveals her plan: she is going to turn pro and pay off the debt with the prize money she wins at various tournaments.

Aha, how can a poor girl who seems she's never had tennis training have this lofty goal? It turns out both her parents were tennis coaches. She herself was a very promising young star who won the national junior championship. But then her parents died and she had to leave the tennis private school and go to a public school because the family no longer has money for her tuition. She had to quit tennis altogether because now she has to help raise her younger siblings.

Keiichiro is a star tennis player (though not pro) himself and has always had feelings for this very special and resilient girl, but his tyrannical mother, a grand dame of tennis in her days, Madame Ohtori, has a grudge against Miyuki's father and forbids her son to help her. She also forbids Keiichiro to turn pro because she says he lacks the intensity, win-at-all-cost attitude necessary for the pro players. Instead, she has the huge club and associated business lined up for him to inherit. She believes he can be very successful as a CEO using his tennis star charisma.

As luck (or misfortune) would have it, Madame Ohtori's tennis club has a fierce competitor, run by Madame Ryugasaki, Madame Ohtori's biggest rival on the court in the old days. Ryugasaki's daughter, Choko, is also a rising tennis star. She does NOT lack the competitive edge and is quite successful on the court as a pro player. She tries her best to seduce Keiichiro, though often it's not clear if she really loves him or she just loves his fame and social status (she definitely thinks only he's got the bloodline and the looks and the talent to match hers).

Madame Ohtori wants to have someone from her club defeat Choko, so she gives Miyuki minimal and highly reluctant aid to help her become pro. Choko tries to sabotage Miyuki every step of the way, both contemptuous of her low status and jealous of the fact she is Keiichiro's true love.

It can be quite heart-wrenching at times, because all odds are constantly against Miyuki. She is so talented and kind-hearted and innocent, and she works so hard, but people (especially Choko) just make her life so unnecessarily hard for her. Of course she also gains some loyal friends along the way. Most male characters also have this habit of being moved by her and falling in love with her after they see how hard she fights against the unfairness of life.

Every time something works out, some obstacles immediately rise. But every time you think she's going to lose it all, she fights back and wins the match in a huge upset.

But it can't be an upset if it happens every time. So yes, that's one of the shortcomings for the series. It gets predictable and unnecessarily frustrating after a few volumes in. Miyuki is a very nice human being, a rare specimen, so she deserves to have all the glory and riches. At least she deserves a break. But no, life (or the author) is constantly beating her down; after a while you are filled with a bit of anger, at the characters, at the author, and at yourself for wanting but not being able to stop reading this thing.

Near the end, I kind of just wanted the thing to be over. I already knew the general direction for the ending (in an upbeat, moral story like this, how could the lovely girl not get a happy ending after all those trial and tribulations?!), but I wanted to see this through. I wanted to see the details but at the same time the details frustrated me.

To be fair, like Urasawa-san's usual works, Happy! is filled with colourful characters (recurring character identities: a homosexual/transvestite, a prostitute, a sagacious small figure, a rich girl who does a lot of evil but may be good or just lost deep down... all these make an appearance in Urasawa's longer works), each with their own background stories. And the plot development is filled with ups and downs.

But as a sport comic... I don't know. It's more about the humanity, the motives of the characters than tennis itself. I dare say I know a bit about tennis, it's about the only sport I play, and I found the tennis part of the story to be lacking. No glaring errors, it's not like the author doesn't know the first thing about tennis, but there's quite a bit of unevenness that a real, long-term tennis fan/player (as opposed to someone who did the research just to write a comic) would notice. Like how it is like to really compete in a match, how much can your life outside of tennis really affect how you perform in the match (if your brother's in jail and your opponent whispers she saw him in the stands right before your match, would you really lose that much concentration?).

Also, there are limits. Miyuki is a very nice girl, she hangs on, but still, there are matches that are just impossible. You can come back from 0-6, 0-5 to have a third set maybe once in your life, if that. It can't happen every other match. If you are tired, you become slower and lose points. As the match drags longer and you lose more points, you don't suddenly have random epiphanies, see the movement of the ball clearly all of a sudden, and come back to win the match. And composure, keeping your cool, can be more than concentration, especially during changeovers. At one point, Miyuki is said to be so concentrated that when the changeover ends, she dumps tea over her head and walks toward the court with a banana in hand, thinking it is her racket. This concentration, this total immersion into tennis, is said to win her that match. But honestly, what is there to concentrate so hard on during the changeover that you would mistake a banana for your racket? I would take that as a sign you've lost your head and forgot about your most important weapon: your racket.

The weights on the tournaments are also misplaced. Wimbledon and the US Open seem to be the ultimate battlefields. When still training for Wimbledon, Miyuki wins the French Open and it is not a big deal at all. The author treats it just like another small win, though a very heartening one. It's a grand slam, dude, and clay is a tough surface.

I guess if I don't know tennis at all, this may be a pretty good sport comic. I really don't read the genre and I especially don't read about sports I don't play or have no interest in. This is more of a human interest story. Perhaps I'll finish reading Prince of Tennis (another one I've started but couldn't finish due to time (and slight interest) issues) someday and have a better comparison.

What Doesn't Kill You

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
5.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
5/10

This is based on the life story of the director and writer, Brian Goodman. Which made me have a new respect for the movie. Man, I'm always gaining new respect for movies through the "making of" special feature.

But I didn't like the movie a lot to start with. It's bittersweet, to be sure, more bitter than sweet. But I was expecting something else. I was expecting a crime thriller, but the movie offered more reflection, more inflection, more contemplation, more emotional content than I thought. It was not exactly preachy but comes dangerously close.

Mark Ruffalo, Ethan Hawke, Amanda Peet, some of my favourite actors. Especially Ethan Hawke. Has this gaunt, sharp, almost broken but still resilient quality to him. Mark Ruffalo is usually sweet in the romantic comedies, but he's going into new territories with films like this one. Amanda Peet, well, I've liked her since Identity.

The story... eh, two small-time criminals, Brian (Ruffalo) and Pauled (Hawke) are best friends, always doing something petty to chase after a buck or two. Paul is a playboy while Brian has a wife (Peet) and two sons. The story is set in South Boston, where Brian Goodman was a small-time criminal in real life in the early 90's.

Brian falls through some pretty hard times, picking up a drug and alcohol addiction. His marriage kind of falls apart and his relationship with his sons are shot to hell too. Then he and Paulie get picked up and sent to jail for 5 years for stealing a truck full of goods.

5 years can be a long time. When Brian comes out, his sons have grown but his wife has decided to stay with him. He vows to not lose any more time with them. He tries to get a job and be straight. He fights the temptation for drugs and alcohol. For a while it looks pretty good, but then reality kind of hits hard. He's a convicted criminal, it's hard enough for people who haven't been in jail to find jobs. He's behind on his sons' tuition fees and the utilities bills. He is almost dragged back into a downward spiral again.

Paulie comes up with the idea of robbing an armoured car. If they succeed, they succeed big time. If they get caught, they get put away for life, basically. What is it going to be?

The movie is about a man's choices, and life can be ever so unforgiving toward a man with a past. And I respect that entirely. But the movie is almost entirely drama and no crime. I mean, there's plenty of theft and robbing and shooting and crack smoking, but that's not crime when you are talking about movies. There is no thrill. I just wish I wasn't sold on something and then given something else.

As to the human spirit aspect, I'm with the director 100%. Obviously I don't know him personally, but I feel really glad that he was able to find his way around the world again. After he got out of jail, he started doing small gigs for TV shows and movies, to bring the gritty reality to those pretend sessions. Along the way, he wrote a script of his life and gave it to Donnie Wahlberg (who has a small detective role in the movie). They got the film going eventually.

I guess I was looking something along the line of The Departed (Boston setting, someone with the last name "Wahlberg" attached to the project) and that is why I was disappointed. If I was a bit less biased, I might have enjoyed it more.

In Tranzit + Jeepers Creepers 1 + 2

Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
5/10

WWII movie, quite a few recognizable faces, foreign accents, love, oppression, defiance, suicide. Shouldn't this make a great film? Apparently not. In fact, it's hard to even find a decent-sized poster for this movie online.

A group of about 50 German POW's are sent to a Russian camp where all the guards are female. Vera Farmiga (The Departed, Nothing But the Truth) plays Natalia, the female doctor at the camp while John Malkovich plays the sadistic superior officer, Pavlov. Thomas Kretschmann (you may know him from the Nazi officer who is kind to the titular pianist at the end of The Pianist) is Max, the prisoner who keeps his head down most of the time but is secretly sweet on Natalia.

For any of the female guards and staff members, falling in love with the prisoners is obviously a bad move. For a reason, too. This is where the movie is vastly unrealistic. There are some sentiments that cannot be that easily overcome, especially when the war was barely over. Having a ball (literally, a dance ball) with prisoners who may have killed your husband on the battlefield... think again, filmmakers.

As to the plot, well... Pavlov wants Natalia to gain the prisoners' confidence so they would tell her which ones of them are war criminals who lied about their identities upon capture. The rest is just moral dilemmas. Should you forgive your old enemies, are they even your enemies (because they surely aren't the same ones who shot at you during the war), should you treat them with kindness or despise because they are Germans who fought against you but also have wives and children at home, that kind of stuff.

So, if you are going to watch this movie, watch it for the people, not for the story, because the story is just ridiculous.

And now...


Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
3.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
4/10

Fun, campy, over-the-top acting. I've always wanted to see Jeepers Creepers. Heard there's a third one coming out in 2011.

It did not disappoint. Maybe my expectations were low to start with (rightfully so). The Creeper is an ancient creature who wakes up every 23rd spring to feast on humans for 23 days. He has wings and really sharp teeth. He scares humans and selects among their body parts by smelling their fear (he only eats one part from each human), kind of like his way of selecting premium meat. He can regenerate damaged body parts by eating the corresponding part of a human. He is really fast, both on his rusted old truck and when he is flying/running. He has some sense of aesthetics, judging from his gruesome but fascinating wall art (he sewed bodies together in poses on the wall around his lair).

In the first movie, a brother and a sister driving home for spring break are preyed on. In the sequel, it is a high school football team traveling home on bus after winning the state championship.

It's always fun to marvel at how much the special effect department is growing. The first movie was made in 2001. Looks ancient. Everything (the blood, the bodies, the Creeper) looks so fake that you want to laugh at some points. The sequel, made in 2003, is only slightly better. But look at horror movies now. I'm so happy I'm alive at this time in history to witness the growth of horror movies.

Rainbow Eyes + The Machinist

Okay, finally got a chance to get to the second half of the original quadruple entry...

Introducing Rainbow Eyes:


Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
7.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
8/10

I can count the number of Korean movies I've seen on one hand. Not a huge Korean fan because for the longest time, I couldn't place the style of Korean movies. It's stuck somewhere in-between the traditional and the modern. Of course, I mostly watch horror movies and thrillers, so I can't say much about the drama or comedy genres. Korean horrors often suffer from a severe case of Japanese-copying syndrome. Indeed a lot of American or even Japanese horrors suffer from the same disease. The stereotypical Asian horror movie was so successful that so many copycats sprang up, only to exhaust the genre and the horror-watching population. So now the genre has become sad, sad history.

Alas, "Rainbow Eyes" did not redeem the genre because... IT'S NOT A HORROR MOVIE. It's a thriller, it's a drama, it's eye candy. I don't exactly mean the actors. The male protagonist is fine, the two female leads (especially the right one in the poster) are very pretty, though two completely different types. But no, the eye candy is the shots. Everything is so colourful, so drunk on euphoria and melancholy, so saturated and rich. Pure visual pleasure.

I'm gonna give a straight-forward synopsis without spoilers first. The protagonist is a young cop investigating a gruesome murder. A rich gym owner is found dead in his apartment, sitting in a pool of his blood, stabbed over 20 times. Cops find a hair in his nail and some blood at the crime scene that are not his. From this, the police deduces the suspect is a male with blood type AB. Since the murder occurred late at night and the victim's voluptuous jazz singer lover left his apartment an hour before the murder, the police suspects he had a male lover who killed him in the heat of the moment. But none of his friends and certainly not his lover can picture him being gay. One of the trainers at his gym comes under suspicion when pictures surface of them being intimate at a party . The trainer is also the jazz singer's lover and denies being gay. When he is brought into the police station for questioning, it is revealed he served in the army with the victim and a third person (a rich club owner). Together, the three might have done horrible things to a fellow young soldier, who is the protagonist's childhood friend's younger brother.

Meanwhile, the protagonist is having problems with his beautiful nail artist girlfriend, whom he loves sincerely. She wants to break up because he's been saying another person's name in his sleep. He goes to meet the childhood friend whom he hasn't seen in 10 years. She is now a single mother. Long ago, she had asked him to look for her missing younger brother. Now he tells her that he never looked because... I guess you should find out for yourself.

I don't understand exactly why the movie is named "Rainbow Eyes." I have a suspicion that in the original Korean, the movie's name has a meaning that does not translate to "Rainbow Eyes." But I'm not Korean, and I can't read Korean, so I'm just going to let it go.

I'm also not going to burden you with the Korean names of the cast and crew (forgive me if you can read Korean and will not be burdened at all). If you wish to find more about any of them, just google "Rainbow Eyes movie" and you'll know all about them.

The emotions in the movie are very complex. It all boils down to love, but it is also a mystery case, cops trying to solve multiple bloody murders. How the victims are connected to each other and to the protagonist drives the movie. Who committed the murders may not be clear, even at the end. (Maybe I just need a re-watching.) A lot of clues and a lot of internal emotions are ambiguously hinted and different interpretations are possible at multiple points in the story.

The movie has a lot of layers. Perceptions of things -- who is the murderer, what is the motive, the character of the characters, their desires -- constantly change as more information is revealed. At each step, you form rational theories to explain what is going on, theories that are then shattered as contradictory evidence appears and new theories form. Very complex.

Homosexuality and gender identity are surprising themes. I mean, the movie is about murders and love and not about gay rights, but the gender issues add another dimension.

You may also be surprised to learn that the mystery person is one of the characters you meet really early on in the movie.

All in all, very satisfying and intriguing at the same time.


On to The Machinist


Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
7.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
8/10

Christian Bale is disgustingly skinny in this film. On purpose. Weighed somewhere in the 120's range. Scarily skeletal. Part of the character description.

This is also a very intriguing thriller. Bale plays Trevor, a blue-collar worker who operates machines in a factory. From conversations and the way people treat him, you learn that the chronic insomnia and the weight loss started about a year ago. He's pretty friendly with the guys at work, he is a good tenant and always pays his rent early, he is a good customer and a regular of Stevie's, a prostitute who develops a genuine love for him. He also spends a lot of nights sitting at an airport diner, with Maria, the kind waitress, keeping his company.

One day, he meets an unfamiliar co-worker named Ivan. During machine operation, he gets distracted by Ivan and causes an accident that costs another co-worker an arm. He gets the blame, and when he brings up Ivan, no one at the factory has heard of him nor does he have any records there. Trevor becomes more and more paranoid and becomes convinced that the whole world is playing a sick joke on him by hiding Ivan's existence. Thus begins a gradual downward spiral that results in Trevor's physical and mental deterioration until he discovers the truth.

The film is full of allusions and symbolisms. The shirts that Trevor wear, the rides at the amusement park, the conversations... like "Rainbow Eyes," this is definitely worthy of a re-watch. But I've got so many movies to get through so the re-watch will probably not happen any time soon.

Quarantine + Cloverfield

Another double entry. Was gonna do quadruple, but that can get out of hands and bore you to death too quickly.

First off...



Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
6.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
7.5/10


There was an original Spanish version called "Rec". Pretty original zombie movie. I know, there is no such thing as an original zombie movie, but "Rec" was refreshing. And this movie is basically the exact same thing as "Rec" with minor changes.

The female protagonist is one half of a TV crew shadowing firefighters for a night. The other half of the crew is the cameraman, whose camera is the eye that shoots this whole movie (so yes, it's first-person, which makes it more real for the audience).

They follow two firefighters to a call to an apartment building. Apparently there is an old lady who has been screaming. There are also 2 cops present, and some of the residents of the buildings have come down to the atrium due to the disturbance. The cops and the firefighters followed by the TV crew open the old lady's door and see her standing in her nightgown covered in blood and groaning "no." When they approach her, she bites a cop in the neck.

All heck breaks loose. And worse, the government has sealed the building so no one can get out, including the TV crew and the firefighters and the cops. Anyone who approaches a window or any other exit is threatened with a bullet from the outside. Plastic sheets seal all the openings. And everyone who is bitten by the infected shows rabies-like symptoms, becomes really aggressive and attacks everyone else. Let the human drama commence.

I have to say the original Spanish version plays much more into the human interest aspect. The tenants are a diverse group. Racism, sexism, selfishness, possible homophobia all have a part. The American version downplays all except for the selfishness.

But upon watching the story a second time, I did get some things out of it that I missed before. The extra features helped greatly. For example, the ending used to not make any sense to me, but The Thin Man (no, not from "Pan's Labyrinth") at the end is the progressive stage of the disease, what all the people will look like if they stay infected and alive long enough. (You won't know what I'm talking about until you've seen the ending, so this doesn't count as a spoiler.)

The "making of" featurette also shows how hard it is to shoot a movie first-person. I thought the thing could be low-budget, since they can just cast a real cameraman as the cameraman and he can just shoot the whole movie that way. But NO, was I wrong. It's extra hard because the shots are all really long in terms of time (multiple 5-minute shots in one movie can kill any movie crew) so if you screw up, it's all the way from the beginning. Again. So this means all the actors have to spend more time rehearsing together to make sure they get it right in as few takes as possible.

It's hard to arrange for lighting. It's hard to do all the special effects (e.g. blood spewing) because the camera is constantly moving so you can't have a blood tube running to a tank 10 feet away out of the camera's view. So now I have a new respect for this movie. And then...


Objective Rating (How much merit I think it deserves):
5.5/10
Subjective Rating (How much I personally like it):
4/10


The idea is good. The imageries are sharp and memorable. The plot and camerawork.... suck.

This is a much bigger-budget movie than "Quarantine." MUCH bigger. But the end result is so disappointing.

What's-his-face is moving to Japan so his friends are having a going-away party for him in NYC. His best friend is documenting the party with a video camera. In the middle, a monster hits NYC and wreaks havoc. He and 3 people decide to go downtown TOWARD the monster to rescue his bittersweet girlfriend who has just broken up with him. His friend decides to document the trip, and the movie results.

A lot of fancy CG fireworks, the monster, a wrecked NYC, the trashed Lady Liberty on the cover, missile fire, etc etc etc. I'm impressed with that. Producer J.J Abrams ("Lost") said he got the inspiration for a monster movie from Godzilla in Tokyo. But this monster is too vague. You do get a close-up of the monster near the end, but it's supposed to be giant, 30o-foot tall and all that. In the shot it looks about 10-feet tall, if that. Inconsistencies like this really ruins the movie.

And the camerawork. "Quarantine" had the good excuse for the somewhat steady camera because the character is a cameraman. "Cloverfield" has no such excuse so they made the camera really unsteady, really amateurish (not even amateru, just downright shaky and horrible). Gives you headaches and makes you dizzy and basically makes you miss all the shots of anything you'd want to catch, like a glimpse of the monster.

The plot is very chaotic. There is basically no plot. There is no plan, no train of thought to follow through. And the characters are mostly... either jerks or wimps. I know it's harsh, but it's just very hard to care about them at all. Live, die, why am I watching you again?

I got a really bad review of the movie from a friend at the time it came out in theaters. Which is why I'm a hard-core horror fan and I haven't bothered to see this movie any sooner. I would never have seen it, but this was a family rental so I might as well. The DVD's extra features kind of explained the things a bit better, how the monster is actually just a baby and is lost and scared, which makes it more dangerous because it doesn't know what it's doing and it's cornered so it will do anything. But if the creature creator didn't say these things in words, I would never have gotten them out of watching the movie.

Really, for such a great idea (monster in NYC! Like King Kong but more bloodthirsty and having less regard for a particular blonde) and such a great location, this movie really should have delivered more.