Harsh Times
Director: David Ayer
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Like a weird amalgamation of the harsh street life portrayed in Training Day fueled by the psychotropic drug hallucinations of Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas, Harsh Times is a film brimming over with passion, enthusiasm, anger and intensity, but in desperate need of a rewrite or two.

Jim (Christian Bale, Batman Begins) is back from his tour of duty in the Middle East, and has returned home to South Central LA to reunite with his best friend Mike (Freddy Rodriguez, Six Feet Under) and celebrate with some serious drinking. Jim has always been the crazy one out of his group of friends, but the tour of duty seems to have affected him deeply. He has reoccurring nightmares of horrible atrocities and violence when he falls asleep, and the anger seems to be brimming to the surface more and more. After failing a psychiatric exam applying for the LAPD, Jim hits the streets, drinking, smoking up and lashing out at everyone around him.

When he unexpectedly receives a phone call from Homeland Security inviting him to an interview, things seem to be looking up for Jim, but he finds it difficult to get his life on track. Likewise, Mike is trying to get on the straight and narrow with his girlfriend and find a job, but Jim seems to be something of a bad influence, and the two spend most of their time getting messed up.

But when the government offers him a black ops assignment, Jim’s life is turned upside down. They recognize the violence that brims so close to the surface of Jim’s psyche is about to erupt, and want to tap its fury for their own devices. Jim’s life is thrown for a loop, and he begins to lose the ability to distinguish the harsh streets of LA from the battlegrounds of the Middle East, with horrifying consequences…

Director David Ayer (who, coincidentally, wrote Training Day) has constructed a deeply personal and intense film based largely on his own experiences living on the harsh streets of South Central Los Angeles. The film is hard and cold as a gun barrel, virtually overflowing with emotional outbursts of rage, guilt, Iraqi invasion politics and paranoia. The problem with such deeply personal films, of course, is that the film gluts itself on nostalgia and intense outbursts rather than focus on the best interests of the film itself.

Well directed, well acted and intense as all get-out, Harsh Times needs some tightening up, especially in the dialogue. I can’t believe that people actually talk like Bale and Rodriguez talk in this film – they drop more ‘duuuudes’ than Bill & Ted. Ayer as a scribe has the passion down (Training Day, Dark Blue, S.W.A.T) but the film left me oddly unfulfilled, like an argument that rages on long after the point where you have any emotional investment left. The endless barrage of alcohol, drugs, guns, violence (both mental and physical) comes together like something out of a nightmare, the intensity of which precludes any possible enjoyment of the film itself.

Harsh Times is aptly named, and probably worth a rental when it catches some distribution, but it didn’t sit very well with me. Intense and violent, it lacks the cohesion that drove Training Day to fantastic success, and instead focuses on sporadic outbursts of aggression for the sake of aggression.

Verdict: 70

Sympathy For Lady Vengance
Director: Chan-wook Park
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The final film in Chan-wook Park’s epic revenge trilogy (the formers being Sympathy For Mr. Vengeance and Oldboy), Lady Vengeance is nothing short of a tour de force, absolutely perfect in execution. If you needed further proof that Chan-wook Park is the most formidable director in cinema to emerge in the last twenty-five years, here it is.

At the age of nineteen, Lee Geum-Ja (played incredibly by Yeong-ae Lee) becomes South Korea’s most notorious killer, having kidnapped a five-year old boy and smothered him to death with a pillow. The senseless brutality of the crime and Lee’s picturesque beauty captivate the nation, and she immediately becomes an overnight legend. Flash forward a few years, and the public has forgotten all about Lee Geum-Ja… but Lee Geum-Ja has not forgotten about the world.

She has spent the last thirteen years as a model prisoner of kindness and generosity, all the while meticulously planning every aspect of her release. When she returns to the outside world, the friends she made in prison are stunned at the transformation that overtakes Lee. Overnight, she changes from a sweet, kind and generous woman into a cold, calculating and cruel mastermind of revenge. For Lee did not commit the crime she was charged with, and having spent over a decade in prison for the crime, she has developed something of a moral flexibility when it comes to exacting her revenge…

At the first screening, I heard that Chan-wook came out to greet his fans, but he was not present in the early morning screening I saw. It is a testament to how good this film is that I could care less about this fact. Seeing the film was enough for me. It was that good. Words fail when trying to describe how incredible this film is.

In almost every way I can think to grade a film, Lady Vengeance decimates my review scale. The acting is amazing; the plot is meticulous and calculating in its execution, balancing between the cold detached revenge motifs of Park’s previous films with an unexpected new emotion – heart. The film is a joy to watch from start to finish; it wrenches the gut as much as it makes the heart sing, with incredible cinematography, teeth-gnashing tension and hilarious editing and sight gags all seamlessly blended into uniformity.

Without a doubt, this is the superior film of the trilogy; the plot is more composed and crafted than Mr. Vengeance and the film has less violence and cruelty than Oldboy, as if taking the strongest elements from both films and crafting the perfect film, perfectly balanced between raw passion and calculated filmmaking at its highest caliber.

If there is a better film this year at the festival, I don’t want to hear about it.

Verdict: 96

Takeshis'
Director: Takeshi Kitano
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To say I am a fan of 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano would be something of an understatement. I like his films the way people like oxygen; which is to say, very much so. So it was with great excitement that I rousted myself from bed Saturday morning to sneak my way into Takeshis', Kitano's new film at the Toronto International Film Festival.

An absurd semi-autobiographical adventure of kinetic editing and nonsensical surrealism, the main star of Takeshis' is Takeshi, the actor himself, playing... well, himself. Sort of. Takeshi (the character in the film) is a famous actor who gets carted from movie shoot to movie shoot in a Rolls Royce. He has teenage stalker fans camping outside his hotel room, and travels with an entourage of publicists and drivers and middlemen. One gets the impression he finds his job rather tedious, and would prefer to be playing mah jong, and losing as usual. After every shoot, he is presented with a bouquet of flowers by the grateful cast and crew, which he finds lamentable ("Why can't they give me money?" he asks ruefully.)

One day on set, he is asked for an autograph by a meek admirer, a man named Kitano who is almost an exact doppelganger of Takeshi, save for a dyed blonde hairstyle (played by the real Takeshi of course). Though they look identical, he is the polar opposite of his hero; he is meek, unassuming and cowardly, he works in a convenience store, is a struggling actor who can never get a job because he looks too much like the movie star Takeshi.

One day, Kitano finds a bag of guns left behind by a dying yakuza in the bathroom of the convenience store. Suddenly, people start mistaking him for his idol, Takeshi. He finds the tasks that once appeared daunting, like ordering soup from 'Soup Nazi'-esque cantankerous cooks or securing a seat at the local mah jong parlor simple now, simply by waving his pistol around. So many of the problems in his life are now easily solved by simply shooting people that irritate him. The teenage stalker that had been camping outside Takeshi's hotel now begins lurking outside Kitano's small apartment, thanking him for his work. He nods, as if saying, "Well, it's about time."

This is the point where the film gets weird. To understand it, you must a) have seen most or all of Takeshi Kitano's films and know them well, b) have read the interview where Kitano states this will be his last 'Beat-esque' film he will ever make, and most importantly, c) be Japanese.

Okay, not really. But the reason for the last point is the absolute obscurity of the sense of humor put forth by Kitano in Takeshis', which is utterly incomprehensible to anyone not Japanese (and from some reviews I read, large portions of the Japanese public themselves.) If you have been (mis?)fortunate enough to see Kitano's comedic(?) Getting Any?, you should have a good idea of what I speak of. If not… well, imagine Mulholland Drive done by the Marx Brothers, like a perplexing blend of art-house incomprehensibility with juvenile slapstick gags.

Irritatingly repetitious, absurdly bizarre and totally random, Takeshis' is one part middle finger to Kitano's own celebrity, one part Fellini-esque self-indulgence and personal reflection on a cinematic career, and ten parts satire and mockery of every single film he has ever made. Archetypal sequences from every Kitano film are repeated ad nauseum in Takeshis', and virtually the entire cast are alumni from his previous films. Most of the actors play double and triple roles, and Kitano (the character) ends up killing most of them again and again, in slow-motion gun fighting sequences that stretch on endlessly.

The clash of genres and gun fighting is funny at first, and the cameos/references to previous Kitano films are amusing for his die-hard fans, but the film fails to expand on the surrealism beyond the irritating and the self-indulgent. If this is a parody, it is one only Kitano himself would find funny. Nothing more than an obnoxious exit from his current canon of work, Takeshis' attempts to sew close the career of a director who is obviously growing tired with both his celebrity and his cinema, as if trying to end on such a sour note that nobody would ever dare ask him to make another yakuza film.

Though amusing and clever at times, the sense of irony is so bitter and spiteful that it sours the experience for the viewer to the point of revulsion. In the interview mentioned earlier, Kitano mentions he wants to become the classic Japanese 'master' Ozu-style of director from here on out. If Takeshis' is the end of the 'Beat' Takeshi cinema as we know it... well, perhaps it is for the best.

God, I can't believe I just said that.

Verdict: 65

It’s that time of year again – the Toronto International Film Festival is back in town.

Every year I make it a point to spend as much time as possible standing in horribly long lines in order to see films that eventually come out in theatres in six months, except I get to pay twice the cost of a regular ticket for the pleasure. If this sounds absurd to you, then this is the sentence that separates people who love cinema over people who just sort of … you know, like it.

Don’t believe me? Roger Ebert’s on my side.

All joking aside, it really could be the best film festival in the whole world for the sole reason that anyone—be them layman, hardcore fan or industry type—can gain admittance to the same shows at the same time. If you have the patience. And get the time off work. And don’t mind the intensely complicated raffle procedure that may, or may not, result in you getting absolutely none of the films you wanted to see.

For the first time ever, I had a hard time with the TIFF this year. Due to a busy schedule of reviews and work, I wasn’t able to get my ticket choices submitted to the festival during the absurdly short submission window, made doubly inconvenient by the silly amount of time it takes me to get from the suburbs to downtown. As a result, the ten films I had planned to see were immediately trimmed to five.

And I may not even be able to make those five. I’m kind of… well, getting evicted. It’s a long story. When one has the choice of a) renting a van and moving ones possessions into a new home, or b) going to the Film Festival and coming back to town without a place to live, it has a way of re-prioritizing things.

Here's what's confirmed on the schedule so far:

Seven Swords - Tsui Hark
SPL - Wilson Yip
Sympathy For Lady Vengeance - Chan-wook Park
Harsh Times - David Ayer
Thank You For Smoking - Jason Reitman

And here's what I'll be working my ass off trying to sneak into:

Duelist - Lee Myung-se
Hostel - Eli Roth
The Great Yokai War - Takashi Miike

The plan tomorrow morning: stand in a two-hour rush line to try and sneak into Beat Takeshi’s new film. Can’t wait.

Ye olde Verdict was kind enough to send me a Bandai Fall Preview DVD to look over and get a sense of what the animation company has in store for us otaku kids this season. Here are some of the highlights:

The Good

Cowboy Bebop Remix
Newly re-mastered transfers and surround sound tracks of one of the best anime series of all time? You won’t hear me complaining. In fact, I’ll be first in line for this one.

Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex 2nd Gig
Anyone who has been keeping up with Stand Alone Complex will absolutely crap their pants in delight at the prospect of a second season. Take our words for it: this is a good thing.

Avenger
From the director of .hack//SIGN, this one looks promising – a bounty-hunting girl who kicks the crap out of androids in a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Kind of like Blade Runner mixed with Battle Angel Alita from the early look. I can live with that.

Fantastic Children
Now this could be good. Some Studio Ghibli alumni got together to create a weird Children Of The Corn inspired story of blonde-haired children who never seem to age and have been spotted appearing together over the last 500 years.

The Bad

Dan –Doh!
Good lord, they’ve finally made Hot Shots Golf into an anime series. It’s about golf. Golf! But at least it looks better than…

Hoop Days
Gun-touting Nicaraguan drug cabal leaders couldn’t make me watch another episode of this basketball-themed anime.

The Ugly

Dragon Drive
Since Pokemon worked the first time, might as well do it again: a boy competing in a CGI-virtual video game with his pet dragon battles the competition. Yawn.

Eureka 7
Let’s see… young disaffected boy sees giant mech falling from sky with enigmatic blue-haired beautiful girl inside, who set off to save the planet, etc etc. Seen it, done it, add another Neon Genesis Evangelion imitator to the list.

Dude, I'm moving too. In like, less than a month I'm out on my kiester lest my apathetic roomies and I find new lodgings. And considering the Toronto Film Festival is coming up, finding a new home is oddly second on my list of priorities.

It frightens me, looking at my DVD shelf, and imagining packing it up into banker's boxes - not the packing itself, but the sheer number of boxes required to house it. I have a problem.

Just watched a screener copy of Childstar, the new film by one of the few ubiquitous Canadian directors who can turn a profit, Don McKellar (Last Night, The Red Violin, Twitch City). This was a treat for me, having totally failed to gain admission to the fancy premiere this time last year at the Toronto Film Festival, where it received naught but positive reviews.

Cute film. Not quite as poignant or brilliant as everyone had made it out to be, but that’s film festival gossip for you – you could actually overdose on pretentiousness and be taken to hospital after sitting through a gala screening.

In a nutshell: Rick Shiller (Don McKellar) is an aspiring filmmaker in Toronto who, like all aspiring filmmakers in Toronto, are forced to do menial tasks in ‘the business’ like driving famous people around all day. His new charge is Taylor Brandon Burns, a twelve-year old child star who commands his surroundings with the icy control of a Hollywood veteran. His mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) soon recruits Rick for her own purposes, leaving the child star to run amuck in town… who soon decides he has had quite enough of the filmmaking business.

If the premise sounds corny, it is. But the film is so soaked in irony and parody that a simple blog review cannot do justice to the sarcastic biting tone of McKellar’s writing (fans of Twitch City or Kids In The Hall will no doubt understand – it would be like calling Brain Candy a medical thriller.) A self-satirizing take on the Canadian film industry—and the constant influx of productions from down south to deem Toronto the nickname ‘Hollywood North’—makes Childstar hilarious from anyone who a) is into film, b) lives in or around Toronto, and c) like Don McKellar’s sense of humor.

Personally, I quality for all three. I have a hard time putting myself in the shoes of say, an American who has never heard of Don McKellar, but I think they would like it all the same. Here’s hoping the film gets some recognition on DVD.

Watched an advanced screener copy of Memories Of Murder last night, which will be released by Palm Pictures in the next week or so. I’ve seen the film before, so it was interesting to get a sense of how Palm will be presenting the film to North American audiences. And right out of the gates, I am annoyed.

The disc I watched only had an English dub, and it wasn’t a very good one. The voice actors (or actor, as it may have been) were absolutely indistinguishable from one another, and I could have sworn they were all performed by the same person. This is probably incorrect, but whatever. I hate dubs—hate hate hate them—but I am learned enough in the realm of Asian films to know a good dub job from a bad. And this one was pretty corny.

Memories Of Murder is a South Korean throwback to the way partner cop dramas used to be – full of grit, determination, hard work… and more than a little bit of illegal police intimidation tactics. Based on the true story of the first widely publicized South Korean serial killer in the mid 1980s, a small town in the middle of nowhere is being plagued by a series of grisly sexual assaults and murders of beautiful young women, left strangled in empty fields.

Catching a serial killer in South Korea in the 1980s, when the country is full of social and political uprising and strife, and well before the days of DNA analysis and high-tech crime-solving methods is next to impossible. South Korea simply had not faced anything quite like this before, absolutely at a loss how to proceed. The local police are used to solving crime by a combination of fists, intimidation and outright frame-jobs, and are totally unprepared for the complexity of a serial killer case. A specialist from Seoul comes out to the backwoods to assist, but even he finds the killer’s movements too difficult to predict.

One of the best Korean dramas on the market today, this one is definitely worth checking out. Other than the lame dub, looks like Palm will be doing a great job on this fantastic film.

Me, I’ll be picking this one up when it hits the shelves …as long as they include the original language track. Oh, the jerks better include it….

Saw The Devil’s Rejects yesterday and it was all the terrible gaudy trash I envisioned it to be. That isn’t a good thing, mind you.

House Of 1000 Corpses was a terrible movie, despite being inherently nifty for kitsch value and the novelty of Rob Zombie at the helm. Plus, it had Captain Spalding. The Devil’s Rejects picks up where the previous film left off (directed by Rob Zombie, full of kitsch and Captain Spalding) but veers in different directions like a drunken hobo staggering dangerously down an interstate highway into oncoming traffic. Unlike the first predictable film, this one takes some chances.

Less a horror movie and more a road movie like Bonnie and Clyde or Natural Born Killers (the latter especially) the film is… is… well, better than Zombie’s first film. His skill behind the camera has improved dramatically. The music is great. The film is more enjoyable than 1000 Corpses, more more extreme in all sensory output, more violent and more sadistic. This is an improvement, but doesn’t elevate The Devil’s Rejects into the category of ‘good movie’.

It was trashy, silly, puerile, disgusting and mean-spirited – and yet, like Natural Born Killers, this time through, you actually find yourself rooting for the bad guys. That is a definite improvement. Zombie’s a decent director, and with the right material, he actually might be capable of cinematic greatness.

Never thought I’d ever say that. Weird.

Standing in line on Friday night well after midnight for the new Harry Potter book was an experience akin to rats queuing up in long, polite lines to flee a sinking ship. The well-established decorum of public decency force you in place behind three hundred odd chittering girls and boys between twelve and sixteen, but one cannot shake the nagging desire to start hurling elbows and stomping the vermin blocking your path.

But being Sunday afternoon, this is neither here nor there. The book is read; and many interesting things emerged from its telling, avidly discussed between myself and my girlfriend late into the evening.

I awoke today, fresh and ready to chronicle my observations and insights onto paper, until my girlfriend sent me a link to somebody who already had. (Spoilers within.) Which works for me, becuase whoever wrote that did a better job than I could have.

All I know is, if JK decides to have another kid instead of writing the seventh book, I may tromp up to her Scottish mansion and throw cold water on her until she gets with the writings.