Blog From The Bench

The Lives of Others
Director: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck

East Berlin, 1984. The wall is still intact. Party-loyal Captain Gerd Wiesler (Ulrich Mühe) is a master interrogator and surveillance specialist for the Stasi, the GDR secret police. He gets up, goes to work, comes home, and lives within the boundaries of the Socialist machine, fiercely loyal to his party and to his government. He teaches a new generation of students the fine arts of interrogation, of the fine methodical breakdown of will and spirit that comes with being flagged an enemy of the state.

His newest assignment is to monitor the activities of the party’s leading play writer, Georg Dreyman (Sebastian Koch), a party loyalist, but inherently untrustworthy, being a writer. His team breaks into Dreyman’s apartment and bug every square inch. Wiesler begins monitoring the comings and goings of Dreyman and his actress girlfriend, Christa-Maria (Martina Gedeck) hoping to find incriminating evidence of anti-state behavior that can be used against the pair. Soon, Wiesler finds himself drawn to the vibrancy and creativity of the couple, privy to all the intimate details of their lives, and in doing so, begins to emulate some of their more controversial aspects unknowingly.

Beautiful and tragic, The Lives Of Others is an examination into loneliness, love, and the act of observing, and thereby connecting with that which you observe. East Germany is portrayed as a paranoid, dull and muted country, but one entirely inhabitable if you walk within the boundaries of a paranoid government. Step outside of these boundaries and the Stasi show up at your house to take you away for interrogation. The cinematography is flat, grey, yet hauntingly sparse and beautiful.

Mühe gives a fantastic performance as Wiesler, a fiercely loyal man who finds his convictions floating away in the breeze like cherry blossoms – he is so enraptured by the beauty of his subjects and the intimate moments of their lives that he utterly loses the ability to distinguish the boundaries in his own life. His newfound appreciation into life, literature and music given to him by observing the artists at work only serves to shine a spotlight onto the emptiness and hollowness of his own existence. Soon, he is irrecoverably changed by loneliness and his burning desire to connect with others, stepping beyond the boundaries of observer into a participant into the lives of others.

First time director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck gives a surprisingly mature and well-realized vision in his film, one that earned him a furious standing ovation at the North American premiere this year at the Toronto International Film Festival. Henckel-Donnersmarck (on-hand with Mühe) explained to the audience that the first non-German individual to see his film was the president of Sony Pictures Classics, whom after seeing it, immediately offered to buy it outright.

And with good reason; you’ll be hearing from this film soon. Already critically acclaimed in Germany, The Lives Of Others is too profound, too hauntingly beautiful and poignant to go unnoticed by the rest of the world for long.

What a marvelous film to kick off a film festival spree with.

Verdict: 90

The Toronto International Film Festival is gearing up for its thirty-first year, and having navigated through the myriad of pre-booking, booking, raffling, reserving, ordering, double-checking, long train rides on public transit, line-ups, more line-ups, and standing out in the street because the line extends out the building line-ups, I am now ready to attend once again.

What makes TIFF one of the best film festivals in the entire world is the, ahem, accessibility. Sure, the ticket ordering procedure is slightly less complicated than applying for a home loan with no credit, and just as likely to utterly fail, but it is a fair system in the grand scheme of things. All screenings, regardless of red carpet or celebrity attendance, are open to the public. Try doing that at Sundance or Cannes.

With a solid ten days of non-stop movies and over 350 films screening this year, you end up making some sacrifices when browsing through the daunting list. My first list of films I wanted to see clocked in at just over seventy-five titles, which was just silly, unless I had two weeks scheduled off work, a time machine and $1500.

I have none of those things. However, every year, I schlep on public transportation, stand in the cold, endure long lines, shell out hundreds of dollars just to get a seat at a movie that, in two months, I could see at the dollar theater.

Here’s what I have tickets for this year:

The Lives of Others

Fido

Stranger Than Fiction

The Postmodern Life Of My Aunt

Exiled

D.O.A.P

Quelques Jours en Septembre

You can expect to see reviews for all these films in the next few days, so keep tuned. I’m especially interested to see if D.O.A.P. lives up to all the hype.

And if I bump into anyone famous, I’ll try and tear off some of their hair.

The Science of Sleep

You had me at "A new film by Michel Gondry". If you thought Eternal Sunshine was out of this world, check out the trailer for Gondry's new trip, which builds on the foundation of dreams and reality colliding. It's like a music video all grown up into a feature film.

The Prestige

No matter how you slice it, this one just looks fantastic. It looks like a marvelous cross between "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell" by Susanna Clarke twisted up with Michael Chabon's "The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay" for good measure. And what a cast! Just don't confuse it with The Illusionist, which at first glance looks inferior.

The Fountain

I can't even tell you how long I've been waiting for this one.

American Hardcore

Here comes my high school straight edge hardcore ideology back to the surface. Man, I used to love this @#$%. It's about time they made a documentary about it. I can still remember what it felt like to have sixteen guys dance on your face after you trip and fall in the middle of a circle pit.

Children of Men

Like an Orwellian inverse of "A Handmaiden's Tale", this one looks nothing short of a spectacle. And at the very least, Clive Owen, Michael Caine, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Alfonso Cuarón sounds like a winning combination to me.

The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford

Greatest movie title ever. And quite the dramatic teaser.

Renaissance

Ever wonder what would happen if Sin City had sex with Aeon Flux? Wonder no more. I don't even know what to make of this one, but I bet it's going to be a heck of a cinematic experience.

The Descent

I still think this one looks like a bad knockoff of The Cave, but everyone who has seen it swears this one's for real - a genuine horror movie in a time of pasteurized remakes and dullness. Sold.

Fearless

I've already seen it on DVD, but that doesn't mean I'm not excited to see it on the big screen. The chance of Jet Li actually retiring from action films is about zero, but it's still an amazingly visual spectacle.

Just came back from the cinema, and here are some words to describe Richard Linklater's adaptation of A Scanner Darkly:

- wonderfully irreverent
- twistedly schizophrenic
- deliriously ambiguous
- perplexing
- hilarious

A Scanner Darkly is a magnificent film, full of vibrancy, delusion and comedy blended into a lavishly animated psudo-film that feels halfway between the introspective mind-trip of Waking Life and good old fashioned Orwellian paranoia. I'm going to need to sleep on it to really process the film properly, but I can say for certain that this one made it to the "Best Film I Saw This Year" shortlist.

Oh, and if you're interested? Watch the first twenty-four minutes of the film here.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa (no relation to Akira) is one of those rare and rewarding directors who you have to work hard at being a fan of. His films are multilayered, intertexual, complex, deep and genre-bending; but almost universally strange and alienating to the point of being, well, kind of annoying. David Lynch does kind of the same kind of thing, but Kurosawa does it on a really, really low budget, and in an extremely Japanese sort of way. He is one of my personal favorite filmmakers currently working in film today, but I admit that his material is often frustratingly oblique to appreciate, let alone describe to the curious.

Part of the Japanese horror revival spawned by Ringu in the late 1990s, Kairo aka. Pulse was esoteric auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s (Bright Future, Cure, Charisma) contribution to the newly created “technological anxiety” horror genre; a downright disconcerting thriller about the isolating nature of modern technology and the alienating affect it has on human interaction.

Another in a long, never-ending string of Japanese horror remakes, Pulse is scheduled be remade in 2006 for a North American audience (groan) but thankfully, Magnolia Pictures has been kind enough to scoop up the original for distribution in late February, which will no doubt delight us Kurosawa fans previously forced to turn to questionable sources on eBay to add it to our shelves. We received an advance screener, which is pretty neat considering the film is still playing theatrically in select cities, but probably not reflective of the final product on DVD.

A group of young friends are shocked by the sudden and unexpected suicide of one of their friends. When they examine a floppy disc in his apartment that he had been working on before he died, they are disconcerted to find eerie photographs of the deceased friend reflected in improbable locations. Things take a turn for the worse when the computers began dialing out into the internet unexpectedly, loading bizarre websites asking viewers if they wish to see ghosts. The strange lurching figures seem to peer out from behind the florescent glow of computer monitors, as if beckoning to escape upon the world.

The friends become convinced that their friend is trying to contact them from beyond the grave, but as the ghostly epidemic increases in intensity, they become fearful for their sanities. Everyone who encounters these odd ghostly figures in their computers seem to be driven to suicide… and the city is rapidly becoming exposed…

There is much to like in Pulse for first-time viewers, especially for those who failed to connect to the string of recent Japanese horror films like Ringu, Dark Water and Ju-On (and their ubiquitous and boring North American remakes that followed). Less concerned with being a horror film, Kurosawa instead pounds feelings of anxiety, isolation and loneliness into a framework of a technological thriller more David Cronenberg than Wes Craven or Sam Raimi.

Pulse is full of people who fail to communicate with one another in any shape or form, a group of friends in name only who seem unwilling or unable to form meaningful connections with one another. Dialogue is minimal, because there is no talking to be had between people. They are seldom on-screen together with one another, and when they are, they are usually anxious and sullen. During one sequence, a news broadcast runs in the background about a message in a bottle washing up on the shores of Malaysia, four thousand kilometers and ten years after it was sent by a ten-year old Japanese boy. The boy, interviewed on TV, seems incredulous that his message made it to a foreign country. Communication, in any shape or form, is not something that happens easily in Pulse.

Kurosawa is less interested in creating a technological menace that can come into our lives and destroy us, and more interested in exploring the notion that this may have already happened; that technology has fundamentally altered our abilities to communicate to one another, and how isolated and broken we become when we lose contact with the technology. Watch how insane people get when their e-mail goes down in an office building, and you get a glimmer of the truth Kurosawa hopes to illuminate. Out of these anxieties come the ghosts in the machine, as it were, in the form of a web site that connects to your computer and asks you if you want to see what a ghost looks like. The ghosts, once they get in, haunt the screens of their human inhabitants, driving them to suicide, and worse.

Genuinely scary, atmospheric and creepy, Pulse is as complex as it is disconcerting, and sure to delight those who do not mind putting the work into appreciating it. I am pleased as punch to add this one into my ever-growing Kurosawa collection.

To everyone else, be warned: if slow-moving psychological films give you the screaming heebie-jeebies, you will no doubt be better served by the North American remake due out in 2006, which I expect will pasteurize out all the elements that make Pulse a fascinating and rewarding film… leaving behind yet another puerile Ring rip-off – scary stuff indeed. Brr.

The early reviews are in, and they suck. Judging by the paltry performance on Rotten Tomatoes, Rob Marshall’s adaptation of Memoirs of a Geisha will be going down as a stinker with the critics, who feel the movie was shallow, simplistic and detached. As to what movies all the early critics were watching, I cannot say.

I got the opportunity to see a limited release screening of Geisha this weekend, and quite enjoyed the experience. A novel long on my “to-do” list, I had not the pleasure of exploring the subtle nuances of the critically-acclaimed novel prior to seeing the film. Despite this disadvantage, I quite enjoyed the film in almost every way possible – beautiful actresses, exceptional costume design and fantastic (if often apocryphal) attention to detail.

The film has its share of problems, of course. The phonetic Engrish dialogue by the majority of the cast is a perplexing linguistic muddle that can only result when a Mandarin-speaking actresses tries to speak English with a Japanese accent. Many critics complain about the lack of native Japanese dialogue present in the film. The fact that the three main female leads are Chinese, not Japanese, is worth noting. And yes, large portions of the film were filmed in every possible location but native Japan. But none of these problems kill the film. Far from it.

Geisha may lack all kinds of authenticity, but what Hollywood film doesn’t? Think of it like a flashback to a time that never actually existed, a highly romanticized and fictionalized account of a tumultuous time during pre and post-war Japan, by way of Broadway. Considering his boisterous and often garish take on Chicago, director Marhsall has exhibited restraint in Geisha, letting the vibrant costumes, explosions of colors in cherry blossom trees and other atmospheric elements provide lavish eye-candy at every turn. More a fable than a documentary, Geisha is an impressionist examination into a cultural tradition, not a historical re-creation.

The only real noticeable drawback to the film is the length. The subdued pacing means that you feel every single minute of the film’s 150 minute runtime. The material certainly supports the duration of the film, but just takes too long to get warmed up, and the film drags at times as a result.

There is nothing particularly authentic about Memoirs of a Geisha, but the experience was nevertheless extremely enjoyable, almost whimsical in its surrealism and sensuality. Yes, a Hollywood interpretation of a Japanese cultural tradition may be lacking in authenticity, but at least it’s better than our adaptation of Godzilla.

You have to admit... we’re getting better.

Hostel
Director: Eli Roth
-------------------------------------

What better way to end a film festival than with a horror movie? And even better, with an unfinished, edited yesterday, rough sound mix and non-color timed horror movie?

Eli Roth (Cabin Fever) stole the show at TIFF when his little indie film Cabin Fever outsold every other film that year at Midnight Madness, instantly putting young Mr. Roth on the map of hip independent filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Robert Rodriguez and Richard Kelly. So it was with great excitement that Roth debuted his new film Hostel on closing night of the 2005 festival, letting nothing stand in his way – not even the film being incomplete.

Embarrassed, Roth stood up on stage and explained how the film was being shown on a digital projector, burned to DVD because he just finished a rough edit last week, and threw together what he could in order to get on a plane to fly to Toronto to show his fans. You can actually hear Roth on a walkie-talkie at certain points in the film, issuing commands to his crew. That’s how rough we’re talking here.

Despite the hurriedness of the assembly, Hostel seemed as fully-realized a film as one would expect, a shocking foray into brutality and cruelty not often seen in North American horror films these days. The story: three backpackers traveling through Europe enjoying the finer things in life (beer, blunts and babes) catch wind of a hostel in Eastern Europe so remote and out of the way that the local girls go crazy when American accents appear. Lured by the prospect of loose women, the boys finally arrive in the most unlikely of locations – a virtual paradise of naked women ready to satisfy their every desire. But when the boys start disappearing one after the other, the curtain pulls away on the fantasy to reveal a very disturbing reality of dismembered bodies and sadistic torture straight out of a medieval dungeon.

If the plot sounds overly simplistic, it is. Doesn’t matter. The film isn’t here to make you think, only to scare the bejeezus out of you with bloody torsos and entrails. And believe it or not, the plot is half-decent, managing to avoid all but a few of the tenuous horror film clichés that plague the recent flurry of Hollywood horror remakes. Plus, Hostel has some serious weight being thrown behind it, as the executive producer is Quentin Tarantino – and say what you want about Tarantino, but the man knows a good bloody film when he sees it.

I am something of a horror film snob, so I found myself scoffing as much as I squirmed during Hostel, but it held up better (at least from a story and plot perspective) than Saw did. It was hardly the ultra-violent screamfest than the brochure advertised, but if the film survives the trip through the ratings board, there should be enough blood and guts to satisfy the most ardent Fangoria reader. The dialogue is sharp and witty, the film moves at a languid pace for the first two acts, keeping all the secrets deep in the box until the very end, the way a good horror film should. And really, the show was worth the price of admission only to hear Eli and the cast tell stories for an hour after the show – that guy is hilarious beyond words.

I am sure Hostel will do just fine when released, but when all the glitzy excitement of the festival faded away, I felt slightly let down, as if I had gotten myself carried away in all the excitement of five hundred sleep-deprived nerds screaming hysterically at dismembered eyeballs and naked teenage girls. It was a short, thrilling, yet oddly dissatisfying roller-coaster ride that I remember enjoying immensely at the time, but for the life of me cannot remember why the next day.

Oh yeah, now I remember. The naked girls. Freeow.

Verdict: 75

Let me tell you a little something about Square Enix’s new animated film based on the hit PlayStation game Final Fantasy VII, Advent Children: it rocks.

Well, sort of. I sat down this morning before work and watched that bad boy from start to finish, and peed my pants a few times in the process. Anyone who has played through Final Fantasy VII would be no doubt intrigued by a film that takes place two years after Cloud Strife and his band of adventurers saved the world from Sephiroth and the horrors of Jenova, and if any doubt remains in your mind, be sure and check out the trailer. Bring a towel.

Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is a slick melding of the esoteric existential ramblings of Ghost In The Shell joined at the hip by over-the-top kinetic battles of epic proportions a la Dragonball, the end result being a kaleidoscopic rush of state-of-the-art animation and huge sword-wielding leather-clad figures leaping nimbly from motorcycle to motorcycle, dueling at top speeds barreling down the highway. The film also rounds out some plot points left dangling after the cataclysmic finale of the game, which will no doubt intrigue the curious and/or the nerdy.

The only problem with the film is the unimaginable amount of fan service required to gloss over the films salient weak points, eg. plot, structure, dialogue and pacing, all of which, I am ashamed to admit it, stink out loud. They really really do. Had I not played through FFVII many a time as a young lad, I imagine I would respond similarly to the way people responded en masse to Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within - the sound of thousands of people all saying ‘meh’ at the same time. Pretty pictures, but total fecal matter.

If you have not played the video game, don’t even bother with this one – you will have absolutely, absolutely no idea what the crap is going on. This film assumes intimate knowledge of the lands of Midgar, so forget about picking it up as you go, as the film has enough plot holes of its own, thank you very much. As bodaciously awesome as Advent Children is on the eyes and senses, it threatens the brain and the logic at times, offering up fight sequences so absurdly implausible as to be outright insane, plot points that are baseless and totally unexplainable and a story so bland and uninspired it serves little purpose but to be a vessel for the forty-five minute final battle sequence, or however the heck long it was. My head was spinning by the end.

But did I love every freaking second of it? Oh lord, you bet I did.

The North American release date of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children is still up in the air, but odds are it will be on shelves within a month’s time. If you played the game even once, then you owe it to yourself to check this one out, for great animated awesomeness awaits you.

But if you, like so many, have no idea what a chocobo is? Then these are not the droids you are looking for. You can go about your business. Move along.

Thank You For Smoking
Director: Jason Reitman
-------------------------------------

I shall be succinct: this will be one of the best films of 2006. Or 2005. Whenever it gets released. Mark my words.

Nick Naylor (Aaron Eckhart) has one of the most hated jobs on the planet. He is a tobacco lobbyist in Washington and makes his fortune out-talking people on the benefits of smoking. He is deceptive, manipulative and worst of all, incredible at his job. It is this sense of satisfaction that keeps Nick coming back to work every day, despite the occasional pangs of guilt that plague his conscious. He is also trying to bridge a relationship with his estranged son, and his desire to be a solid role model begins to weight heavily on his shoulders.

Nick hands out with his fellow lobbyists from the alcohol and firearm industries and drink themselves silly nightly, arguing over whose products kill more people. Nick comes up with a plan to re-glamorize smoking to the youth market by paying movie studios to feature actors and actresses prominently smoking cigarettes in major films, like in the 1930s, and heads off to Hollywood to strike a deal. Meanwhile, an ambitious reporter (Katie Holmes) has her eyes on Nick in more ways than one. While Nick heads for a dramatic showdown with a Democratic Senator on the health hazards of smoking (William H. Macy), he receives a curveball for the first time in his profession – a death threat. And by the sounds of things, the caller is deadly serious!

Director Jason Reitman, teenage son of seasoned comedy director Ivan Reitman has written a fantastic adaptation from Christopher Buckley’s hilarious novel of the same name, has a masterful command of the camera and the comedic edit that belies his inexperience, and has assembled an impressive cast of performers for a first-time director: Aaron Eckhart, Sam Elliott, William H. Macy, Katie Holmes, Adam Brody, Rob Lowe, Robert Duvall, and more. This is a better group than most seasoned veterans are able to assemble.

The film literally had the audience howling with laughter, myself included. My sides still ache. Being familiar with the source material, I was pleased by how authentic the screenplay was to both the subject and tone of the novel, and amazed how every single joke landed with perfect execution. This kid has inherited his father’s touch for the funny, let me tell you. The film is as close to perfection as you can hope for a comedy in this day and age, a perfect blend between biting satire and old-fashioned sight gags, a harmonious blend of Daily Show sardonic wit and Arrested Development-style quirkiness. The film is visually striking, bright and vivacious, hilariously acted and… and…

On and on I could go. It gives me goose bumps just relieving it in my head. During the screening, Jason Reitman came out for the third consecutive sold-out showing of Thank You For Smoking dazed and overwhelmed, expressing his shocked disbelief that people like his film that much.

Oh, we did. And you will too.

Verdict: 97

Bandai was kind enough to send us a preview disc of Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2ND GIG, the second season of the incredible anime series based off the hit manga and feature films.

2nd GIG is a slight departure from the first season, more gritty and violent and less thought-provoking, but goes into a great deal of back story left absent from the enigmatic first season. The original series was sketched out by original creator Masamune Shirow, but the second season has been taken over by the series director Kenji Kamiyama, bringing a different visionary to the helm. The new series has a stronger emphasis on style and conflict, and takes a bit of getting used to, but I’d like to meet the person who finished Stand Alone Complex and doesn’t want to see 2nd GIG.

From the test disc, looks like Bandai will be giving the same excellent treatment to the second series as they did the first, with clean transfers, strong 5.1 audio channels and all kinds of goodness. I’ve seen part of 2nd GIG way back in the day as a fansub, and the intro is different than I remember – very interesting.

Unfortunately, all we got was a single episode, so it's hard to go into any more detail, but rest assured that fans of the first series will feel right at home here. The first installment of 2nd GIG streets today, and you’re going to want to check this out. Trust me.