Double feature of the week: When Nature Strikes Back

Man Vs. Nature is a very popular literary conflict that has always translated very well into the film genre. Sometimes these films are about man surviving hostel element, such as in “The Perfect Storm” or “Alive”. Other films are about man fighting against wild beast like “Jaws” or the much underrated “The Breed”. This week’s set of films similarly deal with that conflict. But more specifically, we are looking at what happens when nature says enough is enough and puts all of us in our place.

The first film of the week is a great South Korean creature feature. Joon-ho Bong’s “The Host” (2006) is about a giant crazy looking monster that is terrorizing the Han River area. The monster is a genetic mutation caused by a bunch of embalming fluids being dumped in the river. A young girl is snatched up by the monster and presumably eaten in front of her father and grandfather. Convinced that she’s still alive, her family then organizes a renegade mission to get her back and save the city. I fall in love with this film a little bit more every time I watch it. The execution of the monster scenes is flawless. Specifically, the first monster scene in the park is shot so brilliantly that I tend to skip back and rewatch it a few times. The characters are very well played and beautifully developed, each one with their own voice and quirks. And it’s surprising how much humor is fit into this film for as dark as it gets. If you haven’t seen it, I can’t suggest it enough.

I don’t think any director has explored humankind’s relationship with nature as much as Werner Herzog. His fictional films like “Fitzcarraldo” and “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” both take place deep in the South American jungle during different periods of European settlement. He has also directed quite a few documentaries on the subject like “Encounters at the End of the World” and his newest film, “Cave of Forgotten Dreams”. This week’s second film is one of his documentaries. “Grizzly Man” (2005) is the story of the life and death of Timothy Treadwell, an outdoorsman who spent a large part of his life living with and studying grizzly bears in Alaska. His gruesome death is also covered in this film. At some point, one of the bears decided that he didn’t want Timothy around anymore. This film is less about the bears and much more about the man. But that’s not to say that it’s a puff piece either. You will spend much of this film questioning (if not outright denying) the sanity of Treadwell. He seems to be borderline paranoid schizophrenic and definitely more than a little delusional. I suppose this film works just as well as a portrait of the human psyche after a very long a steady diet of zero human contact.

Enjoy.

The Cry Review

Directed by: Bernadine Santistevan
Starring: Christian Camargo, Adriana Dominguez and Carlos Leon
Running Time: 80 minutes
Rated: R
Released: 2007
Language: English

The Cry is a modern telling of an old Hispanic folk legend. La Llorana (the crying woman) is somewhat of a ghost in Mexico, Central and South America. In some versions of the story, she was a woman scorned, who got her revenge by drowning her children in the local river.

This movie takes La Llorana to New York City's Central Park, where an epidemic of missing children is putting the city into a frantic state. We follow a pair of detectives (Camargo and Leon) as they investigate the disappearances and a young mother (Dominguez) who has visions that drive her to investigate the legend and the abductions herself.

I don't watch a lot of horror movies and this one illustrates why. It seems to me that the line between cliché and parody keeps getting thinner and thinner. To clarify for any aspiring horror director reading this: Parody is an over-exaggeration of an idea or technique that is a serious attempt to be funny. Cliché is an over-exaggeration of an idea or technique that is a funny attempt to be serious. This film was full of the latter.

Any movie that has the typical (see cliché above), person drawing scary pictures while in a trance scene, is going to have to work pretty hard to regain my interest. I can't recall how many times I've seen this done and it is just getting sad.

The second cliché I saw was the ever-so-popular super scary whispering voices heard in the heads of the main characters. This too is neither original nor frightening. It has been done more times than the previously mentioned scary picture drawing scene and with less of an affect.

The third and most egregious stereotypical, low-rate horror tactic used in this film was the quick flash of scary images on the screen while no one is expecting it technique. This serves the film two purposes; it saves the budget when longer shots of quality gore special effects cannot be afforded and it also allows the editing to create the startling scene as a substitute for real suspense and horror.

When I received this screener, I was a bit intrigued by the folk lore of La Llorana so I decided to do some research on it before I watched it. There was nothing extraordinarily interesting about the legend but I did take note in the fact that throughout different parts of the Hispanic world, there are vast differences in the original story of La Llorana. I was very interested in seeing which of the several versions of the story this film decided to adapt. Unfortunately, I was very disappointed when, rather than picking one, it simply garbled all of the versions together. This really ate into the entire concept of the legend. The film makers even went a step further and added their own aspects to the legend. In one part, the detectives are explained, "she gets her power from the water." I think they borrowed this idea from another folk legend from the East, his name was Godzilla.

I can't really say much of anything good about this flick. The acting was not horrible, but it was not very good either. The ending was both disturbing and predictable, but not satisfying. I could point out that the character of Maria (Adriana Dominguez) was nice to look at throughout the film and I enjoyed the music performed by Del Castillo. But I won't. Overall, there was no aspect of this movie that made it worth the time I spent watching it.

You're Gonna Miss Me Review

Directed by: Keven McAlester
Starring: Roky Erickson
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rated: R
Released: 2004
Language: English

You're Gonna Miss Me is a documentary that profiles the career and subsequent mental condition of Roky Erickson, lead singer for the influential sixties band, 13^th Floor Elevators. Roky started his career at the top, gaining almost instantaneous fame with his band. He had a great rock and roll voice that is said to have inspired the stage presence of Janis Joplin.

With interviews from ZZ Top's Billy Gibbons, Sonic Youth's Thurston Moore, and Angry Samoans' Metal Mike Saunders telling the professional side of the story and Roky's five brothers, mother and two ex-wives telling the about his home life. You're Gonna Miss Me is much more of a story of schizophrenia it's debilitating effects on those who suffer from it than that of the lead singer from a psychedelic rock band.

I held on to this one for a while before I actually stuck it in and watched it. For some reason, the topic at hand and what I had read about it from the back of the case and other reviewers just didn't seem to grab me. I was really expecting much more of a "Where are they now?" rock-doc, (VH1 style) than what it actually turned out to be. I was never really interested in the psychedelic rock scene and much less in the music that it produced. I would typically rather hear a hip-hop remix of Jefferson Starship than actually listen to the original track. But, I digress, it is kind of interesting to take a healthy dose of culture that my parents were into when they were my age.

Roky's life was actually quite tragic. He was the eldest of five boys born to an eccentric mother and emotionally absent father. He went from the severely broken home to the sixties music scene which was filled with booze, acid trips and heroin syringes. Roky dove in head first, slowly and steadily acquiring paranoid delusions and very unmanageable schizophrenia.

It's really hard to tell from this movie which aspect of his life contributed more to his illness. His home life was obviously a recipe for disaster, his drug abuse definitely permanently fried his brain, and his retirement was spent with the same neurotic and paranoid mother that had probably screwed him up in the first place.

All of this is staged in the background of a bitter family feud being fought in court. His mother doesn't seem to believe he should be on any medication and his brother, Sumner is petitioning for the control over his trust so he can get him back on his medicine and attempt to stabilize his ever fragile mind. It is pretty obvious in this film that his mother's methods of helping her son with yoga and "good, healthy living" are not doing the trick.

The largest obstacle this film had to overcome was in attempting to tell Roky's story through Roky's point of view. Although I don't think it completely succeeded, I am not sure how it could have been done, considering his state of mind. I will say that the film may have been better if we could have heard from Roky directly a bit more. The time he spent in front of the camera was very limited.

Ultimately, a documentary's success is based mostly on how interesting the topic is. Much like in the case of Manda Bala, this one succeeds for one major reason: It took a topic that I knew little about and made me interested in it. I think that's all I really care to ask of a doc. Give me something to think about.

Calvaire Review

Directed by: Fabrice du Welz
Starring: Laurent Lucas, Jackie Berroyer and Philippe Nahon
Running Time: 94 minutes
Rated: R
Released: 2004
Language: French with English subtitles

Marc Stevens (Lucas) is a traveling entertainer on his way to his next gig in southern France. It's just a few days before Christmas and he finds himself stranded with a broke-down van in the remote, dark wooded Hautes Fagnes region of Liège. Begrudgingly, he has to stay in the only lodging available for miles and miles. There he meets the old innkeeper, Bartel (Berroyer), an old lonely man who confides in Marc about the wife that left him and the sad life of solitude he now leads.

Very soon, Marc realizes that he has stumbled into a nightmare from which he may never wake. Bartel's hospitality becomes less endearing and more and more psychotic by the hour.

I don't think I can fully express how utterly disappointed I was with this movie. There were certain aspects of it that gave it such a great potential that I think it actually made an even worse impression on me than if it had been awful throughout.

The concept of this film is quite scary. There are no fictitious monsters or demons roaming about the woods, just a bunch of scary, lonely, cult like, livestock-sodomizing, backwoods French rednecks. This film flows in the same vein as Deliverance and Wrong Turn in that: someone gets lost and the wrong people found them. I can't think of a much more frightening venture than that.

There were also a lot of really cool looking, stylish shots that gave this film a feel that was probably the only real reason I actually kept watching it. One of the more intense scenes was shot from a long overhead view that was pretty neat. It gave the viewer a more complete picture of the multiple things happening all at once.

Unfortunately, this movie fell short in such an important area that it left me completely disgusted. The main character, Marc was for all intents and purposes, completely unlikable and unidentifiable. At certain points in this movie, I found that I disliked him so much that I think I started cheering for the other side. You find yourself waiting throughout the entire 94 minutes for to grow a set and get Burt Reynolds on these freaks. Instead, he spends almost the entire second half of this movie crying and waiting for someone to save him

This film did a good job of filling itself with moments that make you feel uncomfortable watching it. I don't necessarily have a problem with that, as long as you give me something in return. I know that I can sometimes sound like a bit of a broken record when it comes to this. But, if you can't empathize with the character that you are spending the majority of this film with, the film is a failure.

Clean Review

Directed by: Olivier Assayas
Starring: Maggie Cheung, Nick Nolte, Martha Henry and James Dennis
Running Time: 111 minutes
Rated: R

Clean begins with the heroin overdose and subsequent death of a formerly successful rock star. This leaves his girlfriend, Emily Wang (Cheung) to serve a six month sentence alone and without the drugs she is so desperately addicted to. She is also left with a deep desire to reconnect with the son, Jay (Dennis) she has yet to build a relationship with.

The child has been raised by her deceased boyfriend's parents, Albrecht and Rosemary (Nolte and Henry) and they are more than apprehensive about letting his addict of a mother slip in and out of his young fragile life. If she is to have any chance of a meaningful relationship with her son, she must change her life. She must get clean.

I found myself very reluctant to give this film a bad review. There really was nothing about that I felt was terrible. And there were certainly a few points of it that I found interesting and well done. The problem with this movie is that it in spite of its good points, it was put together in a way that makes it very hard to hold an interest. It was slow paced by and large and it seemed that every time a new aspect (character, job, location) was introduced, it would quickly turn into a dead end, leaving the viewer frustrated and less willing to invest any emotion into the next direction.

Although I didn't think the camera work was anything special enough to spark my interest, I did like some of the longer shots in which we would follow the character through a house and in and out of several rooms without cutting. But again, these were not the types of shots that I would have taken note of if I weren't trying to think of something good to write about in this review.

I think the film maker left the characters a bit under developed as well. I may have had an easier time identifying with Emily, if I had known more about who she was before that fateful day. This could have been done with a few well placed flashback montages. The experiences she shared with her boyfriend, her first drug encounter, carrying the child and the decision to leave him to be raised by others are all scenes that could have made the viewer more emotionally invested in her and her struggles.

The one saving grace of this film was, without a doubt the acting. Maggie Cheung was nothing short of superb. She did not take this character and make it her own; rather she took herself and made it her character. It was her performance that, in spite of every thing I didn't like about this movie, kept me cheering for her. Nick Nolte was more than convincing in his role. His face showed the pain of a good man that couldn't help but to pull at your heartstrings. Martha Henry played his wife, Rosemary very well and I ended up wishing I would have learned more about her throughout this film as well.

In summary, I can't say that I would recommend this film to everybody. It was slow and sometimes frustrating and if you don't have a particular interest in the subject of getting sober and the struggles that come with, you may very well consider this one a waste of time. However, if you were looking for a female role that exemplifies the term great performance, look no further.

The Year My Parents Went On Vacation Review

The year referred to in the title of this film is 1970. Brazil is being held by a totalitarian regime. The great soccer player, Pele has just scored his thousandth goal and the national team is preparing for the World Cup.

Mauro (Joelsas) is like any 12 year old Brazilian boy at the time. He thinks only of soccer and girls. Unfortunately for him, his political parents have to leave him with his Grandfather while they go "on vacation.

I can't really say anything bad about this film. It seemed interesting from the box and I had pretty high hopes for it. I am very pleased to report: it did not disappoint. The only challenge I had to get past was the fact that I am not particularly familiar with the history of the backdrop of this film and it doesn't do much to fill you in. I believe I made a similar comment about Summer Palace, but in the case of this film, you don't really need to know the history behind the struggle. I actually think it may have worked out better knowing less in this movie. Keep in mind, you are trying to empathize with a 12 year old that knows and cares nothing about politics.

I tend to make a comment about the cinematography of every film I review so why should this one be any different. It was actually shot beautifully. We never see the same camera angle twice throughout this movie. And, I really liked a lot of the angles that this was shot from. Many times we see what's happening from behind an obstruction of some sorts, giving the viewer almost a mischievous "peeking in" feeling.

The acting was very well done as well. The lead character, Mauro was played by Michel Joelsas. I wasn't sure about him at first, but by the end of the movie, he had convinced me. This performance was by far the most critical to the film. On several occasions, he gets his heart broken and the audience really needs to feel that with him for the film to be even remotely successful. I also really enjoyed the performance of Hanna, as played by Daniela Piepszyk. She was the street wise, neighborhood girl that befriends Mauro.

One of the themes that runs through the veins of this film is that of a community pulling together when someone is in need. This is another reason that it felt unnecessary to get into too much depth in regards to the politics of the conflict. Within that neighborhood, it just didn't seem to matter which philosophy you subscribed to, everyone was in the same boat and the compassion they showed the new Mauro took precedent over everything. Well, everything except soccer of course. I think the country's passion towards the sport was the one true common philosophy of Brazil.

My favorite aspect of this film was that although the underlying plot was heartbreaking, there were plenty of subtle comedic moments designed to break the tension and keep audience light hearted. I laughed out loud at one particular scene in which Mauro is being served breakfast by one of the old women in the building. He has to constantly reposition his plate and cup because she is apparently blind as a bat and is spilling everything onto her kitchen table.

This is the type of film that grows on you as you watch it. At first, I was only mildly interested but as I got deeper into it, I fell more and more in love with the characters. I would give this one my full recommendation.

Summer Palace Review

Summer Palace is the story that follows a beautiful and rebellious young Chinese woman, Yu Hon (Hao Lei) throughout almost a two decade period. Her story starts in a small town in 1988 where she receives word that has been accepted to Beijing University.

We follow her and the rest of modern China through the next twenty years of political and emotional unrest. We are subjected to her struggles with love, life individualism and sexuality.

To be honest, I really have no idea how to review this film. It had every mark of a classic dramatic masterpiece. But alas, I like masterpieces and I really couldn't get into this one. It seems that for every separate aspect of this movie that I liked, there was something else about it that was much less desirable. But the overall flow of the film was at best a bit slow and confusing. At worst, this movie was convoluted and repetitive. But I digress; maybe I just didn't get it.

This movie actually felt like two separate films. The first ended when she leaves the college, then we fast forward several years and pick up her life in a new city with a new job, new friends, but all of the same old tendencies. It was kind of a disappointment when I realized the new direction the film is steered in. This film switched gears shortly after the Tiananmen Square riot scene and I was just starting to become interested in what the film seemed to be trying to say about that extremely important period of Chinese history. I sort of felt as if this was intentional, in order to keep the story fully engulfed in Yu Hon's personal struggles. Unfortunately, at this point, I was starting to get excited at the prospects of this film using the period to illustrate a philosophical parallel of Yu Hon's individualism versus the collective oppression surrounding her. I honestly feel that this was an opportunity squandered. But again, I digress; I'll try to review the film for what it was and not what I wish it was.

The acting, especially in the case of Hao Lei, was quite exceptional. She actually had a tougher job than what may have been apparent. I think that just a bit less tumult and personal struggle would have made her character seem more like a slut than a complex individual struggling with love and sexuality. The supporting cast was just as convincing but there were simply too much of them attempting to be crucial parts of her story. She was the only one that really mattered in this film and I think it could have done itself a favor by eliminating some of the support and shortening the running time of this movie a bit.

The cinematography in this feature was simultaneously artistic and awkward. I don't think there was a steady cam shot in this entire movie. For some of the more intimate scenes, this worked very well, while at other times, the scene was just too shaky to get a good grasp on what was really going on. I'm not a big fan of disorientating the audience and many times this technique is used in a cheap ploy to cover up the lack of believable effects.

There was one portion of this movie that I found to be particularly spectacular. The score was nothing short of fantastic. The music behind the individual scenes did every other aspect a favor. It emphasized the dreary and dramatic in ways that no camera angles or teary eyes could have accomplished. I am probably the last person to notice a movie's score, unless it was completely out of place and bad or really, really good. This one was quite moving.

In summary, I would probably recommend this film purely on the basis that I finished it with an overwhelming feeling that I had missed something. I would watch it again in hopes of finding it, but at 140 minutes, I simply don't have the time to take another stab at something that I may not like even more the second time around.

Manda Bala (With A Bullet) Review

I was a bit unsure of this one. Although I have found myself being drawn into them once I start them, I have never gotten very excited about watching documentaries. They usually seem to be the type of film that you would see when an interest in that subject already exists. Oh well, I digress, it had all the makings of something I'd be interested in: fascinating synopsis, good cover art, frogs and subtitles.

First and foremost about this movie had to be the cinematography. This is not a trait you would necessarily associate with docs but this one just set the bar. The overall scenery was gorgeous, and some of the angles they used with the high speed camera, especially at the frog farm, peaked my interest. I also liked the ear replacement scene in the dimmed operating room.

I liked the music selection as well. I did think the sound editing was a little confused. It seemed that parts had the background music so loud that you couldn't really hear the interviews. Of course, I don't speak Portuguese anyway so I'm not sure exactly what I'm complaining about.

This movie also has a bit of footage from ransom tapes that are mixed in. As the film progresses, this clips continue to get more and more graphic. It actually is a little surprising that the director chose to put some of the more gut-wrenching scenes in because it comes up so gradually. I didn't find this to be overly sensationalistic and if you are squeamish, you have plenty of time to close your eyes.

The problem I had with this documentary was that for the vast majority of it, I wasn't sure of its thesis. I believe that the filmmaker (Kohn) was attempting to make a dramatic philosophical point, but it ultimately became clouded by the many different directions the rest of the film takes you. I think that what he was trying to say was that, if S.U.D.A.M. (a government program designed to re-distribute wealth to poorer regions) would have not been taken over by corruption and greed, Sao Paulo would be a dramatically different place. This may very well hold to be true, but didn't we also learn that the same politicians who are corrupted by greed are staying in power by buying the vast majority of their votes with more social welfare programs in the slums?

I also was unsure about the message behind the part about the violent nature in which Portugal took over Brazil. Was his attempt to say that this type of behavior is so embedded into the culture of Brazil that the country's future is doomed by its history?

After seeing all of the different industries that exist in Sao Paolo as a result of the kidnappings, I couldn't help but to ask myself: How many residents would be out of work if the region became more secure. If people stopped bulletproofing their cars, hiring bodyguards, replacing their ears, taking helicopters to work, putting microchips in their body and taking advanced defensive driving courses, what would happen to that part of the economy? And more importantly, will we ever find out?

Regardless of anything I didn't like about the movie, I would still have to recommend it. It was everything that you should want in a documentary. It was gripping from the opening scene and it keeps you absorbed with it right up until the closing credits. Any documentary should aspire to do what this one did, it pulled my interest into a subject that previously, I had none in.