Love & Anarchy Preview

Autumn's string of film festivals is about to kick off*. Espoo Ciné opens tomorrow with Michael Haneke's Palm d'Or-winning drama Amour (Love). But because there's plenty more time to discuss that film, and the European allstar lineup they serve at Espoo, let's turn our attention elsewhere. For today's also the day that The Helsinki International Film Festival published its annual tabloid paper, which also reveals most of the festival's films. Now, I've again done some work for the festival, wrote a few articles to both the tabloid paper and the festival catalogue. Thus, I might be a bit biased to recommend the festival, even though I haven't seen a vast majority of the films on display. But I'm willing to bet there's more than a few film fans that are anxious to hear which films are worth seeing this year. And I will be spending a lot of money myself for a chance to see many of these firsthand on the big screen, and with an appreciative audience.

Recommendations:
The films on this category I've already had a chance to preview.

Tabloid (USA)
Director: Errol Morris

There's no need to try to look for the festival's most incredible story among any fantasy films. It is told in Tabloid, acclaimed documentarist Errol Morris' latest film. It is a love story and a biography of a sort of the former Miss Wyoming, Joyce McKinney. The smart and headstrong woman fell in love with a mormon missionary and planned to get married in the 1970's. But the Mormon church heads had other ideas and the pair was separated. What Joyce did to get her fiancée back set the consequences for her to be sentenced to jail for years. The tabloid press was having a field day with the story. For it contained sex, kidnappings, a small-time celebrity, nudity, exotic locales, religion, sex, kinky sex and a whiff of conspiracy. And things kept on snowballing as soon as Joyce was released from prison.

Morris uses the same minimalist tricks employed in his several latest documentaries. Mostly he depicts just people talking, using only the minimal amount of archive footage, retro news stories and graphics to illustrate the story. But he doesn't need anything else, since the story is so captivating by itself and he rolls out interesting characters after another. He also tells more than just one side of the story, even if some realities have forced him to leave out interviews with several key persons of the events. But also, he has the skill to make his interviewees appear honest, talkative, interesting and sticking to the point. Morris also questions the Tabloid newspapers' enthusiasm for sensation, and the way that they themselves influenced the wrecking of a young girl's already-shattering life. In this case, it seems that they actively also prevented any kind of truths to appear about the thing. Whether this is the final truth, Morris leaves up for the viewers to decide. The story's modern twists include clones.

Killer Joe (USA)

Director: William Friedkin

I was pleasantly surprised to see the Festival Ministry gave one of the event's top slots, The Love & Anarchy Gala, to this small-scale gem. Although the film boasts with a movie star cast featuring Matthew McConaughey, Thomas Haden Church, Juno Temple and Emile Hirsch, and a world-famous classic director William Friedkin (The Exorcist, The French Connection, To Live And Die in LA), it is still a play adaptation that prominently features only five characters squabbling.

Basically, it's about an insurance scam gone wrong, and a hit man beginning to demand his fee from the family that hired him. McConaughey has started to finally choose proper film roles over cheap romantic comedy fluff, and the former pretty boy truly proves he has talents. His Killer Joe Cooper is at once a charming, smart and cautious professional, a dangerous psycopath, out for blood and getting laid by any means necessary, and a straight-backed character that has principles contrasted to a family of total scumbags and weasels that have none. But the dumb and mean Smith family also has earned audience's pity for being so darn dysfunctional, silly dumb people. They don't care what people think, as the family's mother may open the door without being dressed in anything below the navel. These hand-to-mouth people desperately need money but are too stupid to figure out an honest or even smart way of getting any.

The film has a down-to-earth aspect, yet some bizarrely delirious ideas, such as a pizza cook being the most notorious gangster boss of the town, or Juno Temple doing nude kung fu moves in the middle of the night for the hell of it. Not only is Temple's performance truly eye-popping, her character Dottie, a mentally limited teenager, is probably the only character in the film worth rooting for. Temple manages to make her a tragic character but at the same time, the most optimistic and cheerful one in a film full of rotten apples. Friedkin stages most of the conflict inside an extended trailer. The movie is at parts laugh-out-loud hilarious, at parts gut-wrenchingly vile and unrelenting. Friedkin hasn't eased his standards one bit while all these years have passed from his magnum opuses.

No Rest For The Wicked (No habrá paz para los malvados, Spain)
Director: Enrique Urbizu

I don't trust the police. This seems to be a smart thing to do, particularly in Spain since the country's films tend to warn me about it from time to time. First came Torrente, a corrupt, lazy, racist, sexist asshole of a policeman, that was also kind of loveable. But the bad cop in this newer Spanish flick,  Inspector Santos Trinidad (José Coronado), is altogether more determined and sinister by nature. Totally burned-out Trinidad spends his nights playing slot machines and drinking himself silly at bars. One night he tries to get into a strip joint after closing time by force. He ends up shooting the bar's owner, bartender and one of the strippers. Yet one witness manages to escape him. But lucky for him, he's also assigned to investigate the situation, so he can find all the leads to find the last witness and silence him forever.

That would be a grim enough thriller subject as it is. But there's also another layer in the film's plot. The fact that it's set in Madrid, 2004 should give you a clue, exactly what else are the police and agents seeking in the middle of the triple homicide investigations. Trinidad happens to stumble upon much more sinister plots than he himself has in mind.

So this is the kind of thriller that has violence bursting through quite unexpectedly. Some heavy symbolism and a pessimistic worldview questions the world which allows horrors to happen. The cynical film doesn't let any Spanish authorities off easy. Most cops are incompetent and wallovng in their own problems, the only one who can make things happen is a total psycopath. The slot machine is the most central symbol of things happening. Due to coincidences and chance, plot threads come together in the end. But this film at least it doesn't work randomly, but well-planned and executed, and does reward it's viewer handsomely in the end.

The Parade (Parada, Serbia/Slovenia/Croatia/Montenegro/Macedonia)
Director: Srdjan Dragojevic

Serbian films tend to look at some pressure points in the national psyche, caused due to the former Yugoslavia's violent recent history. But I'd much rather watch a gross-out comedy commenting it than another faux-artistic torture porn. This one deals with the male machoism and homophobia shared by many Serbian men. At the centre are the futile efforts to organize a Gay Pride parade, that won't turn out to be a massive violent brawl.

Limun (Nikola Kojo) is a violent but rich thug, who teaches a self-defence class, loves his bulldog and is about to marry his head-strong fiancée Biserka (Hristina Popovic). Several incidents make him come across the gay couple Radmilo (Milos Samolov) and Mirko (Goran Jevtic), a vetenarian and a wedding decorator, respectively. Mirko in particular is a fierce gay rights activist, while Radmilo is a little more subdued, quiet, shy and timid. They agree to make Biserka's wishes come true and give her and Limun the wedding she's been dreaming of, but only if Limun agrees to recruit a posse to watch over the upcoming Pride parade. So Limun and Radmilo head out to find the gangster's former army buddies that owe him a favor. On the way, Limun secretly figures he can make a man out of Radmilo. But the bachelor party/recruiting mission through Serbia it's natives in such an ugly light, that even Limun may be forced to change his opinions.

Not only is the film about a very sensitive and important subject of accepting everyone as they are, it is also funny enough to get away with such preaching. The key to the film's success are it's well-rounded cast of characters, who are goofy enough yet believably written and with realistic motivations and hopes. The film won't work out as a travelling advertisement to Serbia, although it's good that the nation can deal with its issues with some hearty black humor. The film has become a minor hit in the former Yugoslavia area. Some laughs are also to be had on Hollywood's conception of homosexuality, and how it affects our view on the subject. Limun totally misses the thick subtext in the early scenes of Ben-Hur and figures it's a film for the manly men. His affection for the western Magnificent Seven is also on the spotlight. A real, magnificent cowboy fights for what's right and stands up for the downtrodden.


Interesting films:

The Opening Film:
Beasts of the Southern Wild
Director: Benh Zeitlin

I'm actually trying to keep the information about this film as minimal as possible. All I know it several journalists who I know who went to Cannes all said it was easily the greatest film they saw there. And it was totally mind-blowing and incredibly beautiful. It seems it concerns the relationship between a boy and his father in the swamps of Louisiana. It says something that this debut direction from Zeitlin has been given such a prestigious slot on such a strong movie year. I bet this'll be cinematic fireworks!

The Angels' Share (UK)
Director: Ken Loach

Class-aware Brit director Ken Loach takes a look at low-class underdogs in his latest one. But it is also about a hobby for the gentlemen, whether rich or poor, whiskey. A group of former jailbirds are inspired by a trip to the distillery to turn over a new leaf in their lives. They start to make fine whiskey by themselves. The comedy is said to be bittersweet, so leave it to Loach to be cruel to his main characters.

Caesar Must Die (Cesare deve morire, Italy)
Directors: Paolo and Vittorio Tavine

This black-and-white drama won the main prize at this year's Berlinale, and it combines documentarist tricks with fictional settings. It's about the inmates at a rough penitentiary, that choose to stage a play and re-enact William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar. Although the film has been staged, the actors in the film are real inmates and the story is a real one. Can The Bard's immortal words bring comfort to hopeless thieves and murderers? I'm eagerly looking forward to seeing.

Grabbers (Ireland)
Director: Jon Wright

The Irish sci-fi horror-comedy is about an invasion of Bloodsucking Aliens on an Irish island. Since there's no escape, many locals board up in the local pub. But the aliens have a fatal weakness – hight promille alcohol levels in blood! So, the best way to defend oneself is to do what comes naturally for rural Irishmen, get totally shitfaced! Of course, it probably won't be so easy to get rid of all those pesky aliens. This clearly aims to be another Shaun of the Dead, which is of course hard to beat in the field of horror-comedies. But based on the giggle-worthy premise, it might have the chops to be a fun Friday night film with your mates.

Himizu (Japan)
Director: Sion Sono

With the two previous years, it has become almost a tradition to see a new Sono film every year in Love & Anarchy. And they tend to be a lot better than Takashi Miike's yearly efforts, too.  This one has the appetite-wetting (for me, at least) premise of combining modern socio-political issues to a violent genre film. In 2011 Tsunami-wrecked areas of Japan, two teenagers set out to be vigilantists by killing whoever they deem to be "bad". The Sonoan themes of the relationship between the triangle of love-sex-violence seems to be as sharp as ever. I'm eagerly awaiting to see how this manga adapatation compares to Sono's past work.

Into The Abyss (USA/Germany)

Director: Werner Herzog

I always love me some (documentary) Herzog, and this one is said to be his strongest film in years. Herzog never shys away from difficult subject matters and such is the case here, too. He's looking at the American Death Sentence and interviewing prisoners in Death Row. He's also trying to find justice for a case where an innocent man was executed, with his peasing german-accented voice. The version shown at the festival is shorter than the two-part TV mini-series Herzog also cut from his material. Nevertheless, I'm eager to see both cuts.

Marley (USA/UK)
Director: Kevin McDonald

It's about time we have an extensive documentary about the most essential reggae musician, and one of the major 3rd world icons that truly changed the world during the 20th century, Bob Marley. He made some pretty groovy records, too. This 2,5 hour biopic has been made with the blessings of Marley's family, and several members, such as the reggae musician Ziggy, have also been interviewed for this. The film has gained praises upon praises in almost everywhere it has been shown.

Pusher (UK)
Director: Luis Prieto

A British remake of Nicolas Winding Refn's instantly classic gangster film could be anything, a horrible flop or a proper kick in the balls and a feel-bad event of the year. Fortunatelly, the signs point that it won't be the first, since there are no vain famous actors involved, who would want to compromize the violent, relentless tale of a drug deal gone bad. But there is one familiar face, Zlatko Buric reprising his role as Milo. It just wouldn't be a Pusher movie without him, would it?

Savages 
Director: Oliver Stone

The acclaimed director Stone has fought against irrelevance since the 90's. But this time around he may have the most interesting new work in ages. And perhaps also the craziest. It's about a polyamoric relationship of three, where the happy threesome also grows pot together. But then Mexican gangsters kidnap the one girl in the trio, Blake Lively's O. For Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and Ben (Aaron Johnson) have to put their minds together to find a way to save their girl and face off against the ruthless criminals. Stone promises us a Savage battle of wills, and damn, if it doesn't look intriguing.


Shopping Tour (Russia)
Director: Mikhail Brashinsky

This one will probably be a nice curiousity for us Finns, and fly over the head of others. It's a horror-comedy about a group of Russians coming to Finland to buy, buy, buy. But they chose their travel date poorly since they come on Midsummer's Eve. But instead of stores being closed and Finns being at their summer cottages, the Finns have all magically turned into flesh-hungry zombies! Dawn of the Dead's consumer criticismflipped into dealing also with the difficult relationship between Russians and Finnish? I'm so wanting to see this.

The We and the I (USA/UK)
Director: Michel Gondry

The French visionary Gondry has stepped away from Hollywood blockbusters (The Green Hornet) to do a smaller-scale teenaged love story. And that's more than fine by me. The film takes place during a bus ride on the last day of school. How will the relationships develop between these modern teens? Will there be romance? I bet there will be romance.

The Closing Film:
Rust & Bone (France)
Director: Jacques Audiard

Audriard is one of the top genre-film making talents today, because he laces his films with so much subtext they hold for multiple viewings. This time it may look on the surface that he's gone soft on us. For his latest film is a love story between a whale-trainer (Marion Cotillard) and a street-brawling bouncer (Matthias Schoenenarts). But one can bet that the latter's violent hobbies come back to haunt the both of the lovebirds. This is a pulp film, set on the beautiful beaches of Southern France. This contrast itself would make this worth our interest, let alone it's directors confident style and knack for surprises.

* At least if you live in Helsinki, which I happen to do.

Ray Bradbury Presents

 
The acclaimed sci-fi author Ray Bradbury passed away June 5th at the ripe old age of 91. His contributions to the genre were huge, and he was rightly beloved. But I never read a single one of his books (Well, maybe I read a comic adaptation or two). Most of my knowledge of Bradbury's body of work, like with a lot of other stuff, comes from cinema. So I'll take a look at four motion pictures (like a 91-year-old would say) that were in some way made due to a contribution by Bradbury.

Moby Dick (1956)
Director: John Huston

Bradbury was a co-screenwriter with director John Huston in this adaptation of Herman Melville's metaphorical sea-faring novel. The film makes several of the novel's underlying metaphores painfully clear, but at least it recognizes that it's where the real meat of the novel is, rather than an adventure in whaling. It's a man-versus-nature story, or rather, man versus his own overwhelming negative emotions, hatred, rage, vengefullness and spite. For those sins, man also deserves God's wrath, which like the biblical whale that ate Jonah, comes Moby Dick, the almost diablocal whale, and an unstoppable force-of-nature.

A young man named Ishmael (Richard Baseheart) seeks to head out to the seas as a whaler. He meets and becomes friends with a Polynesian harpooner named Queequeg (Friedrich von Ledebur) as both men are seeking out work in the harbour. They finally strike luck when a vessel named the Pequod, led by Captain Ahab (Gregory Peck), hires them aboard. But as the young whalers will soon see, they won't be just hunting whales for a living, they are hunting a very certain whale for revenge. For Captain Ahab blames the huge white whale Moby Dick for the loss of his foot, and has since dedicated his life to slay the beast. His hatred for the natural predator grows so strong, that Ahab doesn't care about anything else, not even the safety and survival of his crew.

"From hell's heart, I'll stab at thee!"

It's the sort of classic film that looks almost comically theatrical by today's standards. Gregory Peck hams it up as the crazed Captain Ahab, and the film also features a cameo by Orson Welles as a fire-and-brimstone preacher. But because in essence the story is about man's worst feelings, it's not necessarily a bad thing that the film drips of pure emotion. The effects scenes are very convincing for the time, and the look of the film is an accurate representation of my preconceptions as a reader. It chops a long novel into a fairly short movie (115 minutes) and thus also simplifies it a lot, but as an adventure story, this is one that is both an intriguing adventure and something that gives one a bit to ponder about.

★★★★

Fahrenheit 451 (1966)
Director: François Truffaut

Fahrenheit 451, perhaps Bradbury's most famous novel, had a very artistically successful movie adaptation. The title refers to the heat in which truth burns. Thus, the story is a cry for the freedom of speech, the value of literature, imagination and individuality. It's a very functioning portrayal of a dystopia, in that it's threats are not underlined by an ominous score or a dark cinamatography. Rather, Truffaut's stylish film evokes the best in 60's design, the cinematography is colorful and beautiful. It undelines the fact that the dystopian future it depicts, with all modern comforts but books being banned, is little more than a gilded cage.

Montag (Oskar Werner) is the head of the future fire brigade, whose job it is to raid private houses, find hidden books and burn them to cinders, rather than to fight actual fires. Basically he's Gestapo if the printed word is the Polish Jew in 1940. He lives a simple life, with his wife staying home and watching television, and popping pills and being drugged out of her mind at all times. But in one case, Montag meets Clarisse (Julie Christie), a bibliofile hoarding books, yet he finds her attractive so he doesn't blow the whistle on her. Clarisse in turn starts to help Montag open his eyes and see that the things he stands up for are wrong, and people are only free if they are allowed to read, think and act for themselves. Montag in turn is caught between his past life, and a life with Clarisse, which is the life of a fugitive.

While the effects have aged badly, they are still oddly ominous.

Truffaut proves once again his skills as a true auteur, as he won't frame this as a simple high-tensioned thriller or an action movie. That's not to say there aren't any suspense, with several very Hitchcockian chase scenes included. But in the end, the film's a thoroughly cerebral affair. The film's plot moves along very slowly, and similar book-burning scenes follow each other. Truffaut also likes to show in closeup just what books are being burned at any times, and they also include a number of Cahiers du Cinema, and his own book about screenwriting. The TV shows he contrasts thinking with, are thoroughly braindead material, only meant to get the audience's obidience. Werner acts the main role mostly without any expressions. That's so we the viewers must figure for ourselves what is going through his head at all times. One should think, watching this, whether we've already taken a step to this direction. Will all printed words be burned soon and replaced with iPads, Kindles and other technology, which can be more easily controlled by those in power? There's also a good reason why the film's opening credits are spoken aloud.

★★★★

Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland (1989)
Directors: Masami Hata, William T. Hurtz

Perhaps a bit surprisingly, Bradbury also did some work on the script of this animated film based on Windsor McCay's classic comic strip. He is credited of coming up with the "concept". Another recently passed visionary, comic artist Jean "Moebius" Giraud, wrote the story with Hayao Miyazaki's trusted screenwriter Yutaka Fujioka, and Home Alone's director Chris Columbus wrote the actual script with, um, Journey 2's Richard Outten. As one can plainly see, the writing staff has quite a varied set of talents, and even cultural backgrounds. But considering this, the script holds together surprisingly well, and features call backs on many of McCay's most memorable fantasy segments.

Nemo (voiced by Gabriel Damon) is a young boy who has a vivid imagination and a pet flying squirrel named Icarus. At nighttime his dreams tend to come alive, and his bed starts to fly, taking him to adventures. One night he barely escapes a charging train with his life. The adventure only ends when he wakes from falling out of his bed. The next night, after eating a whole pie, he's visited by Professor Genius and his ward, who explain to him that he's been chosen to be the playmate of King Morpheus's daughter Camille. So, the trio flies off to Slumberland. On the way, Nemo meets the troublespme Flip (Mickey Rooney), a clown who tempts Nemo to join him on mischief and trouble-making. Eventually, Flip's uncontrollability and bad influence makes Nemo break King Morpheus's rules and open a door which releases Nightmares to Slumberland. But can Nemo tell the difference of what he's deaming and what's real? INCEPTION!

The subconscious aspect of the story is dwelled on briefly, but then forgotten along the way.

The film is a near Anime, in that most animators working for this are Japanese. Yet it has a certain western flavor to it as well, and the characters are expressful and move according to their physique. The film spends quite a lot of time lingering on the various wonders and big ideas that McCay might have based a single-paged strip with. It also takes quite a long time for the central conflict to come to picture. The central nemesis, Nightmare King, is also a bit too clichéd and underwhelming main villain. I prefer my favorite nemesises to pull the strings for a long while rather than just appear at the final fight. Also the film's songs are ear-piercing and I hate the "good goblin" comic relief that appear near the end. The show is stolen by the anti-heroic Flip and his hedonistic, fun-loving and cigar-chomping habits. Rooney does fine job as his voice, too. The main problem, as with McCay's strip, is, that Nemo himself is quite a blank and boring character, more a vessel than a real person with conflicts and such. Of course, during the course of the film he learns the value of responsibility and whatnot. But this is still a vivid, colorful and interesting animated movie.

★★★

A Sound of Thunder (2005)
Director: Peter Hyams

Sigh. It's sad to leave Bradbury's career in such a down note, but we must aknowledge that this abomination also exists. One of Bradbury's most famous short stories features time-traveling to meet dinosaurs in the past. Of course, since time-traveling is an unstable concept at best, even the slightest change in the past can have catastrophic consequences for history once the traveler gets back. The best adaptation of this story is The Simpsons' classic Treehouse of Horror segment Time And Punishment, where Homer travels to the past with a broken toaster, squashes a bug, and finds that in the modern day Ned Flanders is the unquestioned overlord of the universe. D'oh! But Time And Punishment this ain't, and I tell you, a Punishment it surely am.

So in 2055 there's a company that brings hunters to the Cretaceous era to hunt the Most Dangerous Game... Dinosaurs! All animals have long been extinct, but the very rich still have a strong urge to kill living things, which makes the business plan a success. But the "Time safari" goers must follow strict rules, stay on the given path and only kill game that would die soon anyway to prevent any effects to timeline. Of course one asshole has to ruin it for everyone and strays off the path. This sends "time ripples" all through history and generally messes evolution up all through time. Since all changes don't happen at once, a team of scientists and hunters must go back and prevent the catastrophy before all of the world is entirely changed.

All of the above may seem quite interesting and good, but it's only since I've reduced the movie back to text form, which came from the mind of Bradbury in the first place. Watching the actual movie is another thing altogether, and a painful experience. The complicated story, involving futuristic machines and dinosaurs would need high production values to be done properly. Unfortunately, the producers making this film have had a budget that even Asylum employees would find to be a pittance. Thus, the effects would look bad in a PlayStation 1 game cut scene. And there's nothing charmng about CGI effects this horrendous. There's not even the tiniest shred of anything interesting in the film's extended cast. All they do is run around, shouting exposition and getting killed in unpleasingly non-violent fashion. The film is dark and badly directed, so one can't make much of what's happening on screen anyway. Renny Harlin was reportedly considered to direct this. While I can't imagine he could've done anything good with a budget so small and a script so stinky, at least he could've delivered a fun action scene or two. Stay away!

★

Dragon By Name...

Dragons are majestic creatures (or would be, if there were any). However, the word itself is one of the most misused in motion picture history. I'd wager there are more movies with "dragon" on the title that don't feature any dragons whatsover, than there are those that do. I wrote about actual Dragon movies a while ago, and it seemed to go down well with the audience. That's also why The Last Movieblog is now ready to take a look at four of false advertisement Dragon-movies and tell what the Dragon in the title is supposed to symbolize.

The Last Dragon (1985)
Director: Michael Schultz

The nickname for Bruce Lee was "The Dragon", which is why his two movies were titled "Enter The Dragon" and "Way of The Dragon". Because of the classic status of these two so it's no wonder a significant part of Dragon-titled movies are kung fu flicks, made to cash in the impression. One of the weirdest ones (that was not Bruceploitation per se, at least) of them was this kung fu parody, produced by Motown records to sell some pop hits to the 80's youth. The premise is by far not the only odd choice in this cheesefest.

Say what?! Cheesefest?

The protagonist, "Bruce" Leroy Green (Taimak), is The Last Dragon. This in the sense that he is the last student of kung fu that still trusts to chivalry and being pure of heart, living in the notoriously seedy New York area of Harlem. This infuriates the local gang boss, Sho'Nuff (Julius Carry), who wants to challenge Leroy to a fight to the death. But Leroy escapes his clutches again and again, refusing to fight for no good reason. The would-be Bruce Lee also attempts to reach the final level of martial arts mastery, "the glow", yet is unsure how to reach it. But then he happens to save a famous VJ and aspiring pop star Laura Charles (Vanity) from thugs sent by greedy record mogul Eddie Arkadian (Christopher Murney). The pair begins to fall for each other. But can even Laura break through the tough shell of the stoic hero?

The film is at the same time one big pop video, and a parody of such. The odd style choices bring to mind the starlet Vanity's then-boyfriend Prince's fims and music video stylings. But Prince rarely seemed to be able to have as much fun in his own videos. The goofy fashions, the ridiculous dialogue, the colorful cast of characters... But overall, the film is also a bit messy, as it can't really decide on whether it wants to be a kung-fu adventure, a pop love story, or a parody of both. The jokes are from time to time oddly weak. There's also the matter of a super-annoying kid brother of Leroy's, Richie (Leo O'Brien). He belittles Leroy all the time, while thinking he's a street-savvy big-time ladies' man. Much of the plot hinges on his desire to get in Laura Charles' panties.

"I'm so ashamed at you right now."

Equally odd character is Arkadian's girlfriend, Angela Viracco (Faith Prince), a screechy bimbo whose music videos, set to replace Laura's from the TV, are hilariously terrible. She seems oblivious from all that goes on around her. But the film's biggest asset, one could almost say savior, is Carry's Big Bad, The self-appointed Shogun of Harlem. Carry chews the scenery with every scene he's in, dicking around in a movie theatre, killing non-chalantly burly attackers, and constantly seething with barely contained fury and rage, and cackling maniacally from time to time. He also gets all the best lines:
"Kiss my Converse!"

Maybe the time of dragons has passed and the time of mutant alligators has come.

★★★

Kiss of the Dragon 
Director: Chris Nahon

After Bruce Lee, "Dragon" in the movie title evolved into a word that generally means "Chinese", often with kung fu skills. This movie is also titled thus, because it features a romance between Jet Li's Chinese police officer and a caucasian woman, played by Bridget Fonda. As Jet Li's Hollywood films tend to be, it is sort of entertaining, yet contains little to nothing so special that would make the film memorable. I know I've seen this film multiple times, yet it's hard to remember anything from it without resorting to doublechecking, courtesy of IMDb.

The Chinese intelligence officer Liu Jian (Li) arrives to Paris to capture a notorious drug lord Mr. Big (Ric Young). But it turns out the Paris police force's Inspector Richard (Tchéky Karyo) has been working with the Triad drug trafficers. Now he attempts to capture the entire drug operation by killing Big, and blaming it on Liu. But Liu escapes with his life, and runs into Jessica (Fonda), one of the prostitutes Richard is also pimping. Jessica's daughter is kept by the gangsters to ensure her loyalty to Richard. So, the pair starts to plan a way to strike back and to get Jessica and her daughter free.

This is one of those Luc Besson-penned action movies, and it really shows. He is quite unrelentless in depicting Paris, since in his films they are always packed with higly armed gangsters at every corner. The parisian police are unwilling to stop the violent crimewaves, but rather encourage it by taking a lot of illegal activities of their own. Talk about an American tourist anxiety movie! Besson seems to want to cut down the flock of US tourists flowing into his home town. Besson is also quite shameless in repeating some of his own past glories for profit. The main bad guy here, Karyo's rotten-to-the-core cop Inspector is such a big clone of Léon's Stansfield that Karyo should send Gary Oldman a royalty check from his performance.

Jet Li's high-kicking stunts are fun to behold, and some daring escapes make this a worthy contender for a Friday night movie with the Boys. But at the same time, everything is paper-thin and clichéd. Like said, this is a 13-in-a-dozen bargain bin film, even though the production values are surprisingly high. There's absolutely nothing special about it.

★★ 1/2
The Year of the Dragon (1985)
Director: Michael Cimino

The director Michael Cimino has had to deal with his share of hardships during his long career. One of the biggest was the utter flop of his epic Heaven's Gate (1980). He returned with this hard-boiled crime/action story dealing with the Chinese mafia, the Triads. The end result is a true mixed bag. Cimino does have a string of tropes that make one figure he might have caused some of his problems by his own relentnessness for the content of his films.

The decorated cop, detective Stanley White (Mickey Rourke) is given a new assignment to keep peace at Chinatown, as a punishment for constantly breaking police procedures. White is a former Vietnam vet, which has caused him to hate all Asians with a passion. At the same time White's marriage is crumbling, since he only thinks about his work. But White won't have it easy, since Joey Tai (John Lone) is named the Head of the Triads. Tai is tough and ruthless, and ready to use quite a lot of the ol' ultra violence to reach his goals.

While trying to catch Tai red-handed and to stop all the blood-shed, White also makes aquaitance with an Asian-American reporter Tracy Tzu (Ariane). A fierce love-hate relationship starts. Tzu is the only major Asian character in the film portrayed in any way in a positive light. All others are either savage, violent, uncompromizing and all-around evil, or feeble victims, whether Chinese or Vietnamese. Cimino has had racial issues in all of his films, and they are not uncommon for screenwriter Oliver Stone, either, himself a Vietnam vet like White. And Tzu is a problematic character in her own right, an alluring would-be femme fatale, who is likely to hop in the sack with any man who roughs her up a bit. Thus, she exists in the film merely to be a rug for White to walk all over through this picture.

And in a pervy, voyeuristic fashion. Yet she insists on showing him her lady parts when answering the door.

The strength of the movie lies in the accurate setting, smart cinematography and big, big, big scenes! A lot of money has been used for the sets and Cimino shows this by setting his camera to any corner he can. When Cimino opens the flood gates, he can deliver gut-wrenchingly violent, chaotic and mind-bogglingly big action. And the impact is grown that they often come totally unexpected. The big shootout at a Chinese restaurant is only in the beginning of this film, and hundreds of people lose their lives in that alone. As the film goes on, the violence gets more and more intimate, yet still nasty and (deliberately) hard to watch.

Like many of Cimino's films, this one also starts up slowly, and by the end develops into a real sacrifice story for a misunderstood hero. You can see Christopher Nolan has been watching a lot of his films before making The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, in this case it's a bit problematic that the suffering Christ-figure is not only a huge racist, he's a big asshole from whatever angle one looks at it. Others are merely vehicles for him, and he doesn't respect neither authority nor common human rights. Rourke can play this kind of a conflicted character in his sleep. The problem is that while it's at times fun to watch him pigging it up, it's hard to really give oneself into a hero's journey when it's obvious that White refuses to develop as a character.

★★★

The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2011)
Director: David Fincher

This thriller is an adaptation of Stieg Larsson's famed detective novel, which originally was written as Män, som hatar kvinnor, "The Men Who Hate Women". Since the book introduces the hard-luck heroine Lisbeth Salander, who steals the spotlight from the protagonist Mikael Blomqvist, the translations seem to underline the strong female lead. This is a small, and weak-looking girl who will strike back like a tiger, if bothered or attacked.

Fincher improves upon the hugely overrated and uneven novel by spades. Yet it is very clear that this steamlined Hollywood thriller is only an in-between project to pay the bills and save some money for a truly inspiring project for him. But the film didn't perform as expected at the box office, most likely because cinema-goers have already had enough of Stieg Larsson's novels and couldn't be arsed to see another adaptation. I'm told the Swedish TV mini-series cut-into-a-movie is also a faithful adaptation, if not as flashy and cinematic.

The famed Swedish economy reporter Blomqvist (Daniel Craig) loses a court case against a seedy billionaire, and must withdraw from public life. He is hired by an oldindustrial patriarch Henrik Vanger (Christopher Plummer) to dig his family's dark and dirty past. To the outside Blomqvist tells he's writing a biography, when in actuality he's attempting to solve the 50-year-old disappearance of Henrik's granddaughter. Meanwhile, Lisbeth Salander (Rooney Mara) works as an information specialist at a computer security company. She is the best at what she does, since she's in actuality a world-class hacker. When digging for Blomqvist's records, she herself becomes interested in his case. yet she also has other problems to deal with, as she's deemed mentally challenged by court order and must check in with a guardian, the misogynist Hans-Erik Wennerström (Ulf Friberg) who's looking for a bit of young ass and not getting caught. But as he will see, Lisbeth is more than capable of defending herself.

Yes, they even meet at one point, nearing the end.

The film opens with a sequence with Atticus Finch's and Trent Reznor's cover of Led Zeppelin's Immigrant Song, while oily figures form symbols of the film's themes. It is fast-cut and jaw-droppingly awesome. It's also apt since it also gives an unrelenting feel of dread that surrounds the gloomy, melancholy cinematography of modern-day Sweden. The film follows suit, with particularly Larsson's forever-dragging opening and closing glossed over as quickly as possible. The only flaw is that Fincher also limits the time where the actual murder investigation takes place, which is the most interesting part of the book. Sure, it is a bit difficult to get across, cinematically, but Fincher has done it before, excellently, in his Zodiac.

Fincher doesn't just run through the book, however. He also gives suitably time to get to know it's main players. Craig is surprisingly good as an anti-Bond, a man whose more common and likely to think his way through than to go blasting. But the real star-making turn of the film belongs to Rooney Mara, who brings some vunerablity and sympathy to the hard-boiled cover of Salander. Critics have noted she has softened the heroine too much. Yet performing her as a straight-up sociopath as in the novel, would make it harder to root for her, even if she has to go through hell. Another thing criticized often is a certain rape scene. I think Fincher attempts to emphasize more of the humiliation connected to such a vile act, than the physical pain. It is not easy to look at, yet also not tastelessly explicit. As for suspense, Fincher also knows how to tighten the screws enough to make the ordeal exciting and anxious. It is truly a work of the modern master of suspense. Not even near his best, but it'll do more than well.

★★★ 1/2