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Horror Master Takashi Miike (Audition / Detective Story / Masters of Horror: IMPRINT )  interview from JAPANORAMA

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle penned some amazing stories involving the amazing detective Sherlock Holmes and his good friend Dr. Watson. The stories were involved, smart,well written mysteries that had people clamoring for more.

This film isn’t that. It’s Guy Richie. It has slow motion. Things explode. It’s not all that complex or smart. However, it’s a lot of fun!

I don’t go to Disneyland, jump on a ride, and complain about there not being enough storyline development when I get off of it. It’s a thrill.

SHERLOCK HOLMES‘ plot is a little light and “action” based. There are some scenes that play for the scenes sake alone and don’t tie into the plot where they could, but the scene in and of itself is fun and worth watching and the missed opportunity isn’t all that hard to overlook.

I wanted it to be something other than it was in the beginning, but I came around 15 to 20 minutes in and was fine with the action movie pace and plot.
Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law are great together and the chemistry between the two of them is fun to behold.

We do get some fun Sherlock moments like 221B Baker Street, Sherlock getting into trouble when he doesn’t have something to work on and Mrs. Hudson being exasperated with his antics which were enough to keep me happy.

Great set pieces and fun fights keep the movie moving forward at a good clip, so the film’s 128 minute runtime flies by. There were some scenes where I found myself wondering what went into the planning and production from a technical standpoint due to their complexity and execution.

Don’t go into it thinking your going to see a Sir Arthur Conan Doyle book unfold before you – it’s Sherlock Holmes lite and a lot of fun to watch.

SERVING SUGGESTION:
Pair this movie up with 1985’s YOUNG SHERLOCK HOLMES for a fun Holmes fest! I think the two films would make a fantastic double bill one Saturday afternoon. (Young first, of course.)

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1193138/
Directed by Jason Reitman

Put simply, UP IN THE AIR encompasses the trifecta of movie production: Plot, structure and character development.  It blends everything together expertly and makes for a fun, thoughtful and interesting drama-comedy-romance.

On simple level –
A man travels for living. He has systems in place to make it all work for him 100%.
He’s alone, free and enjoys what he does for a living.  He’s even writing a book about living out of your suitcase for a living while being happy with your situation and free from the baggage of life. His physical needs are met by setting up free and easy meetings with fellow free spirits and that’s working out well for him, too.

All that changes when he’s pushed into dealing with work situation which is going to change drastically. The situation is going to strip his joy from his job. Not only that, but the person responsible for setting these wheels of destruction in motion is paired up with him as a travel partner. No, this isn’t a wacky, traveling buddy film a la PLANES, TRAINS and AUTOMOBILES, though it sounds like it could be. It s a film about interactions and emotion and how people choose to deal with them and NOT deal with them in life.

Comedy mixed with drama emulates the way life is – laughing one minute and crying the next. The performances are fantastic, which helps when dealing with subject matter like this. George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, and Anna Kendrick dance around each other like leaves in the wind and the plot lines complement each other very well.  The characters never become cartoony, which was a relief. There are times where this format can create flat, cardboard drama and bad dialog that kills my interests. This film dodges that completely and manages to be a “dramedy” that can please a wide audience

This is a fantastic follow up to Jason Reitman’s THANK YOU FOR SMOKING and JUNO. He shows a lot of growth as a director.

Grand!

REPO! made me sit up and take note as soon as it began. It was interesting stylistically and managed blend film and opera-like presentation very well. It split me down the middle, however, and had me liking it and disliking it all along the way, which managed to hold my interest even more and solidified my feeling that watching it was a good idea on the whole.

In the plus column we have things like the overall interest created by the use of computer graphics, neo-Victorian costume designs, post-modern dystopian cityscapes and a strong operatic plot line with classic elements of deceit, love, and revenge that spun up to a fantastic crescendo. It was a delight to see the film unfold.

The sets and environments were a grand mix of computer generated graphics and practical stage set designs and worked really well together to set the scene.

The acting talents of Anthony Head, Paris Hilton, Bill Moseley, and Paul Sorvino blended and mixed very well and created a strange cocktail that was quiet tasty. They twisted around each other like snakes and kept things interesting and kept me involved as a viewer.

The plot structure was fantastic and had things wrapping around and circling back expertly to drive the characters forward to their ends. The dark humor and ghastly events were wild and fun to watch. It translated very well from it’s stage play origins.

Gore is like another character in the film. It’s done in an over the top way, which worked with the “opera” feel of it. Opera itself is big – big makeup and movements. They used “big gore” in the same way. One  surreal moment has one character use a dead man like a hand puppet to sing through. Strange, gross and fun.

The downsides that I saw were not show stoppers and may just be a matter of personal taste. REPO! Is,  in fact, an opera. And opera is singing story. I’m not a fan of singing in films unless they were made circa 1965 or involve Kidman prancing around in garish costumes. So, when the actors break into song in REPO!, it’s a hit and miss affair. Some of the songs moved the plot along and were well written and fun. Others…not so much. I just waited out the few misses and things were fine.

If you can take singing  and gore in your movies and like stage play style acting, check out REPO! It’s different and interesting.

One last thought – How did the makers of Repo Men get away with this direct lift of the plot? REPO! was created a long while ago. I’ll take some comfort in knowing that REPO! had a lot of buzz about it while the only real buzz around Repo Men was the sound of critics grinding their teeth together as they wrote about how bad it was.

In the ‘Guilty Pleasures” department…

Remember the 80s?
Remember ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic?
Well, put the two together and you get the strange little film UHF.  Follow along through the stream of consciousness of ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic as he parodies movies left and right in Walter Mitty style.

Not that it matters at all, but Yankovic is tasked with running his uncle’s UHF TV station. They are up against “Big TV” and have little to no hope of doing well in the business. Things seem hopeless until Al stumbles into a winning TV show hosted by Michael “Kramer”Richards who turns in another show stopper performance. Richards is a janitor who manages to entertain the masses beyond what Al could imagine and soon the station rockets to the top of the charts. With additional TV shows added to it’s lineup – all insane and filled with “yucks” in Yankovic style.

In 80s style, they need to earn money to save the station in a certain amount of time and have to fight the evil big TV owner to save a friend. Classic 80s. None of that matters, however. We just need to move along to the parody pieces that Weird Al excels at.

When I put this movie on, I just wanted some mindless background noise while I worked. Mindless it is, but it manages to serve up some silly, wacked out moments that I really enjoyed. It’s a fun giggle fest that rolls along a one track goof, but slips in a lot of funny along the way. It’s also a fun “80s movie” complete with Suit Villains, Little Guy getting even, and a race to a finish towards the end that ends in nameless masses clapping and cheering. (I found myself laughing out, “Where did all these people COME FROM!”)

Good, goofy stuff! Slapstick, clown humor that’s fun and entertaining.

First, let’s start with this.

Steps to follow to enjoy the movie:
1. Remove brain. 2. Make popcorn. 3. Sit back and enjoy!

Based on a comic, WANTED delivers on it’s trailer promises. Things blow up, people get shot, cars flip, and action abounds.

Angelina Jolie is…well…herself as usual. She slinks around in her post Sky Captain, “too skinny” body and plays tough with James “Who Are You?” McAvoy and, honestly, you really don’t give a crap about either of them or anyone else in the film for that matter. I watched as bullets were fired around corners and cars were destroyed and all the while I thought, “Hmph…who says a movie needs a plot you care about? This is fun!” I also wondered what the bet was that Morgan Freeman lost in order to have to take a role in the film.

With that said, I enjoyed this Matrix-like romp. They tossed tons of computer generated goodness in and I found myself laughing out loud more than once as I was rocked into a blissful state of “Don’t Care” I giggled as people flew through the air and killed without seeming to care at all.

What does the taste of bubblegum look like? WANTED.

Check it out. It’s fun.

I had the pleasure of seeing this film without knowing a thing about it. If you have not read the book, like mysteries and have managed to avoid hearing reviews and the like, stop reading right now and go see it. For the rest of you, read on.

I loved this movie. I settled into it’s Swed-goodness and was pleased with what I saw.

To sum up in brief as not to give too much away, a girl has gone missing and is assumed dead. A star reporter named Mikael Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) who has been sent to jail for wrongful accusation, spends his few remaining weeks of freedom  searching for her at the request of her Uncle.  The mystery is laid out before him very plainly. She went missing and the Family – a strange, sad, and angry group of people – are all on the list of possible suspects. As the reporter dives deeper and deeper into the mystery, his investigation starts to stale and get confused.

Enter the dragon tattoo girl, Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace). She’s great with computers, smart as a whip, and digs up secrets on people for a living – including the reporter himself.

Together, the strange team takes on the mystery head on. Even Sweden itself plays a part in the development of the films tension and overall tone. It’s winter, dark grey and brooding, which slips the viewer into the darkness of the situation itself.

‘Nuff said.

Now, this is not your standard, Denzel and Julia mystery from the US we’re talking about here and you should know this before seeing it. The movie deals with some extremely dark subjects and is, at times, hard to watch without wincing. However, it also remains coherent, lucid and truthful during the process. There are few gratuitous scenes even though I would have cut some of them down a bit in all honesty.

The film packs a punch, presents some fantastic actors turning in some grand performances, and serves up a classic mystery that’s fun and twisty in all the right places with a few dashes of suspense and thrills to round things out nicely. It’s a detective procedural with strong plot and character development that seems worth of it’s novel roots. They did a good job of editing the book down to fit the movie structure. It was a deep, dark film about relationships, the hunt for information and who you can trust and who you can’t.

A must see for mystery fans.

A Wedding (1978)

As a Robert Altman fan, I have to say that this strange little view of weddings, families and all that they involve has to be one of my personal favorites.  WEDDING is quirky, happy-sad-silly movie makes me smile every time I see it. As viewers, we are invited in as guests to the wedding and reception of two eccentric and quirky families. (Too bad we’re the only ones who bothered to show up.)

The cast is an amazing assortment of talent of the day including Mia Farrow, Lillian Gish, Desi Arnaz Jr., Carol Burnett, and Geraldine Chaplin. The family of the bride – Margaret ‘Muffin’ Brenner – and family of the groom – Dino Sloan Corelli – try to hold it together and keep up appearances, but…of course…things break down as the day wears on to it’s wondrous conclusion. Anyone who has been to a family gathering involving over five people knows what goes on during them. There are people who get along and people who don’t. There’s infighting and old wounds. WEDDING uses all of this to present a darkly humorous view of family.

The Altman style is fantastic. Conversations overlap as they do in real life.  People slip in and out of their own, self centered lives and try to keep up appearances, but the mask of coolness breaks away leaving everyone exposed and on edge.   This is a style that really hits the mark with me and helps to sell the film as a whole.  All the dark comedy and confused interactions are played close to the hip and in a dramatic style with a music bed of trumpets and pompous overkill which adds to the comedy at every turn.

Fans of dark humor need to see this film at once. It holds up really well and is a lot of fun.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0455407/

THE CRAZIES delivered some fantastic scares, fun thrills and took the original to new heights! Now, don’t get me wrong – I really enjoyed the original. But, the old school pace and budget made it challenging to watch at times. This revamp of the original amps things up to 11 and grabs you right out of the gate.

Minutes in, the movie takes it’s first turns for the horrid with the baseball scene shown in the trailer. It cuts the buildup short and it works perfectly. No need to get an overabundance of backstory here – we all know where we’re going!  Shaken and tossed around like rag dolls, the audience yelped and squealed at all the right moments. It was a relentless thrill ride that I was very happy with start to finish.

Before we go any further – we’re not dealing with zombies here. It’s a recent development. The non-zombie zombie film. 28 Days Later faced the same issues. People complained about running zombies and the like. Well, just like in that case, these are not zombies we’re talking about. It’s a viral issue. I’m a huge zombie fan, but I know the difference between the sick and the dead. The movie is called THE CRAZIES, not the zombies.

People are doing very bad, very odd things. Things they REALLY should not do. And yes, the government is up to some shenanigans…again. Is it a new plot? Oh, hellz no! However, here it’s all about execution.  Proper pacing and acting make this movie enjoyable and fun. It’s a creepy action/horror film that delivers the fun scares that seem to be lacking in many films – especially remakes – these days.

Grab some friends, popcorn and a soda, and enjoy!

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