Check your expectations at the door
I feel like I need to check my expectations at the door with the Kerberos films, because Stray Dog has now made it two for two in terms of what the saga promises being vastly different to what it delivers. A voyage of self-discovery and an almost complete inverse of the claustrophobic and highly contained surrealist tone of The Red Spectacles, this film is instead slow, meticulous, delicate and at times insanely beautiful, almost as if Mamoru Oshii is attempting to channel the works of Takeshi Kitano. Scenes breathe, conversations feel incidental, and the camera observes rather than dramatises. It offers brief glimpses and hints to the wider armour-clad world of this tantalising dystopian universe, never fully delivering like its earlier companion piece. Instead, we get a slice of life holiday road trip, cosy and melancholic, usually encompassing a silent exploration of local scenery and Kenji Kawai's wonderfully relaxing musical score, in an attempt to find meaning in downtime. Oshii's direction is remarkably relaxed, the cinematography filled with bustling moments in dense urban environments, a dedicated segment in the portrait of a life. However, the tone frequently shifts between slapstick comedy and over-the-top gags, which ultimately makes the serious moments harder to realise, especially the incredible final act shootout, which felt so rewarding to see, bookending a long stretch of near-idleness. I need more of that in the next films because I don't think I could take being blue balled like this for a third time. While there are definitely elements to Stray Dog I liked, being so quiet, strange and disarmingly casual, it all feels in service of a saga that squanders its awesome setting. Here's hoping Jin-Roh delivers...Was this review helpful to you?
A neon-soaked cyberpunk-infused drug trip
A feverish, neon-soaked descent into a cyberpunk-infused drug trip at its most excessive and imaginative, Tsui Hark's adaptation of The Wicked City is less concerned with coherence than with spectacle, atmosphere and a restless sense of urban dread. Playing exceptionally fast and loose with its source material, the pacing is absolutely relentless, opting for a mafia-style soap opera with a doomed love at its core, rather than the political ramifications of its origins. The visual insanity of the film feels almost unearned in the grand scheme, with Hark and director Peter Mak unleashing a barrage of practical effects, grotesque creature designs and kinetic action sequences that are truly chaotic. It all oscillates between horror, action and dark fantasy, delivering sex, violence, bizarre sensuality and outrageously colourful lighting. Yet, beneath the excess lies a familiar Tsui Hark preoccupation: anxiety about modernity, urban alienation and the hidden rot beneath a glossy metropolis. There's a deep-rooted obsession with transformation permeating throughout, bodies mutating, realities slipping, identities dissolving, creating a sense of constant instability. At times, this works brilliantly, evoking a city on the brink of moral and supernatural collapse; other times, it overwhelms the narrative, which can feel fragmented and rushed. The performances from the central cast are entirely serviceable; they function well within Tsui Hark's heightened, stylised universe. Leon Lai operates as the brooding protagonist with stoic restraint. At the same time, Michelle Reis brings an alluring, tragic presence that fits the film's noir-inflected tone. A fascinating artefact of unrestrained creativity, where ambition matters more than polish, seductive, violent and perpetually on the verge of completely losing its sanity, there's a method to The Wicked City's madness. Its storytelling is messy, its mythology underexplained, and its indulgences plentiful, but if you're willing to meet it at its level, it's a wild, flawed and ultimately unforgettable ride.Was this review helpful to you?
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Beautifully bittersweet
A wonderfully bittersweet update on the classic Chinese Opera, The Lovers thrives on overdone romanticism, but one that consists of lots of muted slapstick, opulent visuals and unbearably cute moments that are impossible to hate. Foremost, this iteration of The Butterfly Lovers is very adorable, wacky, and endearing until it suddenly turns horrifically tragic. One where our doomed lovers cry tears of blood, the sky is tinted pink, purple and orange, with the earth swallowing them whole. It all builds with incredible emotional power as it progresses, largely thanks to Tsui Hark's trademark style and his excellent eye for beautiful imagery. The visuals for the film are utterly luscious, with stunning art direction, production design and cinematography. The performances and chemistry between Charlie Yeung and Nicky Wu are truly breathtaking; you can't help but fall a little in love with them yourself. The music is simply beautiful, elevating the events of the film and immersing it in a dreamlike atmosphere. Sometimes the music alone can make you feel like you're floating in a state of infatuation, or mourning a tragic situation with much sorrow and tears. While The Lovers plays on some rather familiar and dear emotions, it also succeeds at being perhaps the most self-indulgent romance ever heard of, but equally compelling and utterly watchable.Was this review helpful to you?
Typically lush and compulsively idiosyncratic
A wonderfully warm blend of fantasy, romance, and Looney Tunes-style comedy, don't be fooled by Love in the Time of Twilight's sappy title; it's all a mask for what is ultimately a nifty time travel murder mystery period piece. The setup for this elaborately staged romantic fantasy screams Tsui Hark from minute one. To bring his protagonists together, Tsui uses a series of overdone comedic coincidences which make American slapstick seem like slow-paced melodrama. There's muggy shtick, unfortunate puke gags, horribly dated effects and romantic misdirections aplenty. While it all seems agreeable, the alternate reaction may be one of bemused exhaustion. Sure, everything in this world is cute and silly, but it can also be tiring due to the bizarre leaps of logic which seem to operate as a sort of shorthand. The film is incredibly opaque story-wise, but Hark infuses his pictures with a kaleidoscopic energy and cinematic charm that's infectious and even beguiling, causing you to look past so many of these issues with a smile on your face. Helped wonderfully by the magnetic chemistry between Charlie Yeung and Nicky Wu that shines throughout; even when the duo are bickering nonstop, they make for an incredible onscreen pairing with performances to match. Typically lush, compulsively idiosyncratic and eclectic, but put together with the usual Tsui Hark panache, Love in the Time of Twilight is an entertaining little film that accomplishes more in its 100 minutes than most films can ever aspire to despite a truly bizarre series of plot devices and an occasionally incoherent narrative.Was this review helpful to you?
A master even without violence
I'm continually amazed by Takeshi Kitano's batting average, his ability to fashion both laughs and heartache in a single instant is unparalleled, Kikujiro is no exception to this rule. A film imbued with serene beauty, presenting a series of increasingly poignant tales, yet so enamoured with itself that it had me wiping away tears of both laughter and sorrow. The film risks tipping headlong into sentimentality more than once, but every time it comes close, Kitano quickly gets the film back on track, leaving us with the emotional effect but effectively stripping it of sugary excess, filtered through his distant and deadpan touch. It's a film that prompts real emotional engagement because it cares for characters that it is happy to paint in imperfect colours, allowing us to warm to them throughout the story rather than pushing them on us in a cheap hard sell. Kitano structures the film as a collection of almost stand-alone vignettes, narratively linked sketches whose comical thrust is sometimes underscored by a touching element of sadness, each of which contributes to our understanding of the two lead characters and their fitfully evolving relationship. His direction is sublime, capturing the loneliness of its two main characters with beautiful ease, his playfully surrealist leanings even more pronounced here than in his previous films. Combined with another enchanting score by Joe Hisaishi, with its gorgeous blend of strings and piano, Kikujiro paints a beautiful take on alienation and guardianship. Brilliantly acted, well-written, achingly hilarious and featuring some truly stunning photography, a bittersweet symphony of unaffected profundity and voluminous emotional depth that hits all the right notes.Was this review helpful to you?
Ending on a high note
Despite Police Tactics ending on a high note, I guess Toei thought there was still more to tell with this story and mandated that we get a definitive ending with nothing left unresolved. The fittingly titled Final Episode maintains the series' exceptional quality, one that doesn't feel tacked on in the slightest, easily the talkiest of the series and burdened with the task of wrapping up dozens of loose threads, it's a testament to Kinji Fukasaku's incredible talent that he and his crew were even able to fashion a film out of so little material and on such a tight schedule. Though the incidence hasn't been perfect all along, five pictures deep, the trajectory of the ongoing narrative mirrors, at the first and the last, how the instalments are approached in terms of both film-making and storytelling style. The progenitor explored the violence of the yakuza in the early post-war years as Japan rebuilt, and it's quite fitting that as both written and executed it would bear wild, chaotic energy that was a veritable shot in the arm for the genre. Granted the pacing of this one is filled with stops and starts due to the loose structure of its script and the big players are mostly kept to the sidelines for the majority of the runtime; I'll be damned that it follows in the same vein as Deadly Fight in Hiroshima thanks to some exceptional performances from its cast, all of whom deliver fantastic performances. As compelling for its performances as for its historical detail, Final Episode keeps the energy level high, its technical aspects strong and its cast thoroughly engaging right up until the last body falls and the Battles finally end, one age of the yakuza fades to be replaced by another.Was this review helpful to you?
Power plays and ticking time bombs
Returning the focus to Bunta Sugawara's gangster Hirono and the ongoing brutal power plays after the events of its predecessor, Proxy War ups the betrayal, scheming and chaos akin to that of a ticking time bomb, counting down to detonation. Alliances are formed only to be broken the next second, rival parties are reconciled only to go at it again the next day. It's definitely the most deliberately paced entry so far, a slow burn and a convoluted one at that to be sure, as the yakuza get richer and expand, they also grow more cautious, preferring to handle situations with mediators at a dinner table instead of in a dark alley with a knife. A real testament to Kazuo Kasahara's meticulously crafted screenplay. Kinji Fukasaku attempts to show some semblance of restraint in the chaos this time, taking his time to build the field of play before it all erupts in sudden assassinations and gangland violence, there's not as much blood as in previous instalments, but when violence erupts, you feel it. Fukasaku's use of widescreen filming techniques is on full display here, filling every inch of the frame with movement and colour. You could watch these scenes multiple times and each time focus on something different because every actor is doing something, unwilling to go unnoticed even when the scene is being powered by someone else. Everyone fights for your attention and thanks to the continually strong performances from the cast, they all demand it. Backed by another exceptional score by Toshiaki Tsushima, it's hard not to appreciate just how well Proxy War tells its story. It has enough going on to fill out a three-hour film but the fact that Fukasaku delivered that story in under two hours is rather amazing, a tight film with not a single wasted scene or subplot. While the film may lack some of the chaotic madness seen in the first two films it more than makes up for that with a clear vision and a deftly plotted screenplay.Was this review helpful to you?
Tokuso Sentai Dekaranger 20th: Fireball Booster
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Low key and laid back reunion
As a 20th anniversary celebration of one of Super Sentai's best teams, Fireball Booster is a surprisingly low-key little outing, granted the Dekaranger squad already had their big emotional reunion 10 years prior so I wasn't expecting anything on that level. For the most part, this plays a lot like one of the series' more traditional adventures, one that doesn't strive to tell a more "mature" story, instead opting for just another day in the life of our favourite Space Police. It helps that main series writer Naruhisa Arakawa returned to pen the film, alongside veteran Super Sentai director Katsuya Watanabe, the writing is hilarious and production values are to the same high standard I've come to expect from this era of tokusatsu filmmaking, it doesn't miss a beat. However, the main shake-up coming into Fireball Booster is the introduction of Rui, whose addition proves to be another example of a V-Cinema film putting forward a good idea but not having enough time to let it properly develop. Regardless, it's always a joy to see this cast together again; although I get the suspicion they must live rent-free in Toei's basement given how they are almost always ready to swing into action whenever asked, even coming out of retirement in Tomozaku Yoshida's case. It's something Saban would never be able to do with Power Rangers, even if the cast of SPD is more than up for it, he's too tight-fisted to ever let that happen.Was this review helpful to you?
One of the Shaw Bros' finest hours
I've often seen The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter ranked as one of the Shaw Brothers' finest productions. Despite the troubled production that the film endured after the tragic loss of Alexander Fu Sheng, this swan song to the old-school martial arts epic is every bit as great as I'd ever hoped it would be. It captures the viewer's attention from the beginning, as it shifts from the introduction of an eerie prophecy to a scene of betrayal to the Battle of Jinsha, a delightfully surreal action sequence that was unquestionably filmed on a barebones Shaw Brothers soundstage, from the unbelievably choreographed, ferocious and opera-like opening battle scene to the teeth-ripping finale, everything in this film worked. The interwoven contemplation of Buddhist ethics gives the film a thematic hook that goes beyond the typical 3 stage revenge drama plot mechanics that typify many of these films, the extended debate operates as a thinly-veiled metaphor for the monks' position with the outside world. Themes of loyalty run throughout with revenge never far from the surface. This certainly ranks up there as one of Lau Kar-leung's best-directed films, even with the significant loss of Alexander Fu Sheng, the film rebounds well, the choreography is frequently fantastic and the ever-reliable Gordon Liu delivers an outstanding performance as the lone lead with Kara Hui in a welcome supporting role. Not all Shaw Brothers films are created equal, but The 8 Diagram Pole Fighter could very well be considered the staff bearer for the studio, it really is fantastic.Was this review helpful to you?
An ethereal tapestry
Upon this ancestral stage, even the most virtuous are drawn in by the temptations of Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong. A rich ethereal tapestry of stunning colour, kitsch illusionism and slow-motion eroticism, Green Snake has been on my radar for a while now but little prepared me for how vividly imaginative it would end up being. A profound metaphor for the frailties of humanity and the fallacy of religion, Tsui Hark's take on the White Snake folk tale left him plenty of time to ruminate on what would happen post-1997. The snakes are depicted as creatures simply seeking to live their lives in the human world, but they face denial and persecution from strict societal norms and overzealous individuals enforcing the so-called "natural order." The primary enforcer of these rules is devoted monk, Fa-Hoi, who is also shown to be just as susceptible to desire, anger, and even hypocrisy as the snakes. While the snakes seek love, family, and hope, Fa-Hoi and his Buddhist enforcers are denying the very humanity that they claim to be upholding. Fate, love, sex, hate, religion and desire all play a role in eventually bringing down the world the two snakes attempt to build. The allegory here is obvious, Fa-Hoi’s large red surplice only means one thing: China. Beyond the film's fangs with its messaging, it's directed with all of Tsui's usual flair for the kaleidoscopic that's part art-house wuxia, part softcore smut but all beauty. Bringing weight to the proceedings are fantastic performances from its central trio with Maggie Cheung and Joey Wong turning in gorgeous performances as the sister snakes, while Vincent Zhao gets an equal opportunity to shine when the two ladies aren't bathing in the limelight. The art direction, outstanding musical score and beautiful costume design all add to the spectacle, really I only have slight niggles with the hilariously charming rubber snakes and horrendous early CGI which are thankfully kept to a minimum, other than that, Green Snake is a must-watch.Was this review helpful to you?
A fable of human love caught in the current of nature's wrath
An adaptation of the 1913 play of the same name, Demon Pond blends theatrical artifice with cinematic surrealism offering a compelling lesson in the power of superstition and mythology; defined by a pervasive tension between the ancient and the modern, superstition versus scientific reason, an aquatic tale of life and death. We live as long as we have it, but if we lose it, we die, except the film's true subject is love. We can live without it, but is that really living? In Masahiro Shinoda's lush, romantic, bigger-than-life take on Izumi Kyōka's text, the answer is a resounding no. What starts as a folk horror fantasy with a psychological thriller vibe gradually shifts into full-on action-adventure-meets-disaster film mode once all watery hell breaks loose. Shinoda's is extraordinary in its dreamlike decadence, it's the kind of film that could get by strictly on aesthetic terms, such a feast for the eyes and ears, that it almost wouldn't matter if the story didn't make much sense or even had one to begin with. Set to the swirling strains of Isao Tomita's utterly hypnotic synth score and bolstered by some great acting from its cast, Demon Pond is a fascinating experience; one that arguably runs a little long at two hours, but which remains endlessly captivating thanks to its beauty, elegance, and portrayal of a fable of human love caught in the current of nature's wrath.Was this review helpful to you?
Certainly better than II
Rather than offering a retread of the original film as the first sequel did, A Moment of Romance III goes in an entirely different direction. Don't expect motorcycles racing down the streets of Hong Kong, Taking the basic set-up of the first and transplanting it into a romantic period piece under the cover of a Spielbergian visual aesthetic. Despite the overly hackneyed set-up, the film proves to be decent fluff, jettisoning director Benny Chan in favour of the series' producer, Johnnie To who provides the film with plenty of lavish production values. While the script and story may be pretty generic, To makes the best of it and provides some nice war action and plenty of tear-jerking drama. Although he's seemingly set in brooding mode for most of the runtime, bringing back star Andy Lau was a great move as the chemistry between him and the returning Wu Chien-Lien, also on top form throughout, is undeniable. Eventually, everything gives way to your standard "choice of love" type deal with one of our two parties running to a romantic reunion. Ultimately A Moment of Romance III is extremely sappy but anyone chasing pretty stars and heart-wrenching pathos will not be disappointed, it's certainly a more worthwhile time investment than II.Was this review helpful to you?
Disappointingly unfocused
Right out of the starting gate, it's hard not to be disappointed and perhaps even slightly insulted by A Moment of Romance II. It's horribly unfocused, sharing very little of the original film's excitement or romance along with contrived plotting that doesn't add up to more than manufactured pathos. While the first film at least had some thematic and dramatic justification for its tragic resolution, this one seems to follow a similar pattern to get a rise out of this audience. It doesn't work; you have to care about the characters first. Johnnie To certainly didn't ghost-direct this one... That being said, this is far from a poorly made film, Benny Chan does a more than decent job in the film's direction. The actors all do a decent job with the material given even if Aaron Kwok isn't a real replacement for Andy Lau, the real highlight is the typically slimy Anthony Wong, and the music by William Wu does evoke some form of emotional resonance. Sadly, A Moment in Romance II spreads itself too thin; one that doesn't work as a romance or a thriller, a tragic case of a film trying to be everything to everybody, and ending up as a bit of nothing to no one.Was this review helpful to you?
A celebration of love
Falling in love is easy; falling out of love is harder. This is where Comrades, Almost a Love Story succeeds; its tragic beauty is undeniable. It's a heartfelt story of two mainlanders caught in fate's grand design, an incredibly moving film full of soulful looks, lingering glances and averted eyes. Director Patrick Chan and writer Ivy Ho throw every romantic convention imaginable into the film, Chan's direction remains restrained and respectful, holding back from too much sentimentality; while Ho's script is rich with wonderful details, drawing upon the culture and the history of recent Hong Kong. Although she eventually falls upon clichés to bring the film full circle, the plot devices don't feel like plot devices but combined with a beautiful piano-laden score means its no deal breaker. Maggie Cheung is wonderful here; her luminous screen presence just lights up the film, while Leon Lai turns in an admirable performance of his own, although occasionally wooden at times, it's lovely to see him inhabit such a real character. Destiny is a force that fascinates Hong Kong, which is understandable as they've felt themselves swept along by the river of history, with little or no control over their eventual fate. Yes, there's a certain drag to it and sometimes it's even a little melodramatic but ultimately Comrades, Almost a Love Story is a wonderfully beautiful celebration of love and all the challenges it brings.Was this review helpful to you?
