Another one that I saw flying. I haven’t seen this movie play in any cinema in Seattle, but neither does it seem to be shown in Europe. But you don’t miss much anyway. Just a movie about knights in general and lance-fights in particular. Nothing special.
This film got very good critics, but I am not convinced. I wanted to see this film, but the note “by the makers of Lethal Weapon” made me doubt, but we rented it afterall. “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” tells the story of a smalltime thief who accidentally ends up in the film-business, where he meets the love of his youth, but mostly many many corpses. Harry Lockart is both the main character as the voice-over. Shane Black wanted to do something funny with the voice-over, but it isn’t very original or well-done. Lockart tells the story of the film with silly voice-overs and montage of the film (rewinding, etc.). The film supposedly has a ‘film-noir’ atmosphere, but I miss it. It is mostly a slightly funny crime-drama with some action. The film sure has its moments, Val Kilmer is great as gay private detective, but overall I see nothing but mediocrity and stolen ideas. I think the film is meant for the larger audience too much.
I didn’t have very high expectations about this film, but I wanted to see it anyway. Everything is as expected. “King Arthur” is a Hollywood adventure film with Gladiator-like fighting scenes. What I dislike most is that the makers made up their own Arthur story instead of taking one of the traditional ones. The creators want us to believe that their version is more historically correct. Arthur and his knights are Sarmatians. When the Romans conquered the near East, their group was so brave that they became a Roman elite-warrior group. Being send out to Brittain they fight for the Romans and eventually get the feel for the original inhabitants of Brittain and fight the Saxons.
Arthur comes out a bit whimpy. Moreover, he is extremely Christian, while his soldiers remain ‘pagan’. The battle scenes are not really special, the ‘historical context’ is in a way interesting, but I have my doubts about the authenticity. All in all “King Arthur” would have been amusing if the film had another title/subject.
A while ago I saw vol. 1. This is an amusing completely over the top martial arts action film that can only come from Tarantino. I had heard that vol. 2 is different. Well, it is, but not as much as I expected. There is more talking, more information than in vol. 1. You get to see what happened around certain scenes of the first film and of course “Beatrix Kiddo”s (Uma Thurman) quest to kill Bill continues. There is still action in vol. 2, but without the ‘Matrix-elements’ and a few thousands litres less of blood. Also there is the grim humour of Tarantino and of course his weird dialogues. However many people will not agree with me, I find the scene in which Kiddo kills Bill great. Of course I am not going to give you the details.
All in all I found “Kill Bill: vol. 1” amusing, but I found vol. 2 even more amusing.
The loudly anounced fourth film of Tarantino after the brilliant “Pulp Fiction”, the alright “Jackie Brown” and the also alright “Reservoir Dogs” (all too old to be reviewed here it seems). “Kill Bill” falls in the same catagory as the the last two film: alright. Uma Thurman is badly threat by a few people and so she goes out to kill them. Not a very original story, but of course you get a Tarantino-touch. Still, there isn’t enough humour to compare “Kill Bill” to “Pulp Fiction”, there isn’t enough grim violence to be a second “Reservoir Dogs” and overall I would say that Tarentino has either too much or too little of the elements that characterise the ‘genre’ that he started. “Kill Bill” could/should have been more over-the-top like “From Dusk Till Dawn”, also it could/should have been more funny (in violence) or there could/should have been more of the silly dialogues that we came to watch his films for. It is funny that when somebody is wounded, blood keeps squirting from the wounds and there are some other funny wounds, but just not over-the-top enough. I do like the Japanese anime parts that is perfectly in the atmosphere of the rest of the film. As you probably heard, “Kill Bill” is Tarantino’s ‘martial arts film’, but it seems that he could chose between real martial arts and “Matrix”/”Crouching Tiger” like elements, which makes the film too credible or too incredible.
All in all not what it could have been. Maybe part 2 is a bit better, this first parts just ends halfway the story.
Well, not my usual kind of filmreview, especially the link is ‘unorthodox’ because it isn’t to the Internet Movie Database, but to the site of the shop where I bought this DVD. “The Celts” is an English documentary of 12 episodes. I don’t know if it was broadcasted anywhere, but my eye fell on the 3 dvd ‘threefold digipack’ for a very reasonable price. There are two episodes per DVD and the box claims that there is 360 minutes of running time. The episodes are not 60 minutes each though, more like 50, so we don’t come to 360 minutes, but 300 minutes running time. Anyway, I got a Dutch version which is the documentary with subtitles that can’t be turned off. The documentary itself is alright. You get the general information about the Celts, especially on the Brittish islands and spanning a period of about 2000 years. Yes, it goes all the way to the present day. There is information about the beginning, the migrations, some mythology (very little though), daily life, etc. Nice images, not too much information, but about what you need to know for a first introduction. As I mentioned the documentary focusses on the UK. A nice element is that the information comes partly from images with a voiceover, but other parts are interviews with scholars. These scholars are sometimes Irish, Welch or Schotsmen with the most brilliant accents and especially their ability to pronounce the ancient Welch of Gaelic language without blinking an eye is great. Nice to get a sound to words that you usually only see in books. So, “De Kelten” is a nice documentary for E 15,-, but do not have too high expectation regarding the background information of the tribes.
infection
Japanese horror is getting more and more popular. Each and every film is compared to the first and most famous films in the genre that came to the west, “The Ring” (“Ringu”) and “The Grudge” (“Ju-On”). Unfortunately, quite a few of the films are actually nothing much more than copies of these films. Dark and gloomy films without the American horror effects, but a ‘story’ about a curse or some supernatural entity. Of course the same happens with this film and especially when I saw the cover I thought of yet another Jap-film in a popular fashion. But… things are not always what they seem! Actually “Kansen” is quite a relief in the flow of Japanese horror films. Not that it is completely original or totally unlike the popular predecessors, but at least it is somewhat different.
The film begins wonderfully with some kind of “Riget”/”Kingdom” style and story. Weird things happen in a hospital. There are only a few docters, just a handfull of patients and just six rooms. The patients are strange, the docters overworked and on top of all, some strange decease comes creeping in. This results in some gory scenes that we are not used to from Japanese horror, but still “Kansen” didn’t become an American slasher-horror with fright-effects. The atmosphere is built up nicely, (still compare it to Lars von Trier’s “Riget”) and at the end comes a total outburst of crazyness. A bit too much for me, because the end is a bit too typical, but the film in total is an entertaining Japanese horror that is not entirely like other films in the genre.
I didn’t know this film, but I was caught by the beautiful cover of a cheap dvd-version that I saw. I have seen other Japanese films recently and was curious about this one. The director proved to be the same as who made “Ringu 0” which I haven’t seen, but the story was interesting enough to see how this would be.
A “Kakashi” is a scarecrow and is the name of a festival in a small village where the film plays. Kaoru goes to find her missing brother and the trace leeds to a small village called Kozukata. Most inhabitents seem not too happy with Kaoru but she persists in her quest to find her brother. The village is preparing the anual scarecrow festival which proves to be a festival to raise the dead. A scarecrow (or any human figure) is suppose to contain a soul and/or the soul of a dead person. With the festival some will try to regain their loved ones by drawin their souls into a scarecrow. The village seems to be full of ‘living’ scarecrows…
Like “Ringu” a moody horror without the splatter, but with a nice dense and dark atmosphere. Not brilliant, but the Japanese horrors do have something nice about them. Especially on dvd by the way, because a lot of the atmosphere comes from constant subsonic frequencies from your speakers!
Ju-On: the grudge 1 is the better kind of Japanese horror, a Ringu but then scary. Now that there is an American version of this film, but filmeditions of Ju-On (there are also two TV Ju-On’s) are for sale cheaply, so I also got number two. It is alright, but by far no number one. A group of horrormakers goes to shoot a documentary in the house where part one plays and of course they fall under the curse. The boy is more prominent now, but I will not say more. The film is not as surprising as part one, but knowing too much will still spoil the fun. The film is alright when you have seen part one, but maybe it is better to only see that one. <5/1/05><2>
the grudge
The cover says “from the makers of Ringu (The Ring)”, but in fact the story is of Hiroshi Takahashi who wrote the story of the original Ringu, but as far as I know, the director of “Ju-On” had nothing to do with any of the Ring-films. Anyway, I suppose most of you know at least the first Ringu? Of course I am not talking about the American remake. Ringu was said to be the most frightening film ever and even though the atmosphere is indeed extremely pressing in comparison to Western horrors, I didn’t run out of the room in a fright. But didn’t you too love that scene at the end where Sadako crawls out of the television screen?!? Well in that case, Ju-On is at least 5x scarier than Ringu, because there are several scenes like the one I described from Ringu. Here and there the films are a bit too much alike, but Ju-On is definately very dark, pressing and pretty scary. Like in other Japanese horrors, the atmosphere is mostly created by the sound, so be sure to watch this on on DVD. Deep rumbling, weird sounds, vocal tricks combined with disturbing images, but not much blood. This sure is my kind of thriller/horror. Shimizu even managed to give me goose-flesh a few times. Maybe more of awe than of fright, but the atmosphere is so great!
Minor point: there is not too much story about Ju-On. Again it deals with a curse of a revenging ghost. The title “Ju-On” is explained in the beginning. It is the grudge (but “wratch” or “vengeance” would have been a better translation) of a person who died violently. This is all you need to know, and please keep this advice in mind: do not read the back of the box! because it gives away every surprise that there could possibly be. Oh, the story is a bit hard to follow and it is hard to say if it is given chronologically or if different stories/chapters play in different periods of time. This also comes from the fact that Japanese women are (at least for me) hard to keep apart anyway and when they also change haircuts during the film, I am lost.
Anyway, just like the four Ring-films and for example Kakashi, this film should be watched in a dark room on big speakers at high volume. Also for this film goes that you should watch it for the atmoshere, not for the cheap frights of Western horrors, because you won’t get any. So if you like that and you like the Rings, you will love this one!