The Watchmen

I hereby officially nominate Zack Snyder for the coveted position of most annoying film director. There have been challengers to the throne, certainly. Michael Bay and his frantic continuity-be-damned style, J.J. Abrams and his inability to frame shots and obsession with lens flare, both were certainly contenders for the throne, but I think with The Watchmen Snyder has officially proven that as directors go, nobody can top him for sheer, distracting and inept direction.

The Watchmen was a highly respectable comic book made by the highly insane Alan Moore. While it's a bit too complicated to be summarized neatly into one paragraph, it's essentially about a group of mask vigilantes in a 1980s teetering on the edge of nuclear war. Opening with the death of the Comedian (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), the situation is investigated by Rorschach (Jackie Earle Haley) who is somewhat sociopathic, and he believes that these vigilantes are being targeted. Then, a bunch of stuff happens, it's quite good. Snyder, naturally, misses the point completely.

Much has been made of the film's visual fidelity to the source novel. Indeed, Snyder does frame his shots almost exactly as the graphic novel does. However, there's one very important difference, and that is that there's a sense of grittiness in the novel. The world is run down, dust seeps into the old superhero materials, and it's weathered, broken, and decayed.

But Zack Snyder doesn't do decay. He is confused by grime, or proper film speed (more on that in a minute), so in spite of the precise framing, it doesn't actually look like the comic. It's all given a CGI sheen, with the faults polished away until everything gives off an unnatural shine. These are real people who suddenly look fake, living somewhere in the uncanny valley.

Speaking of the uncanny valley, the acting is...not good. Much has been made of Jackie Earle Haley's Rorschach, but I'm not sure. It seems like a voice, rather than a performance, and while he's not bad, it is a bit distracting. At least he's acting though, unlike the rest of the cast. Casting seems to be dictated by who looks most like the book's characters, not who can actually turn in a decent performance. Special note needs to go to Malin Akerman as the Silk Spectre part 2. It's shocking, in fact. A group of people speaking in their second language in Sukiyaki Western Django had a more convincing grasp of the English language than she does, and she moves like someone who is unfamiliar with what we humans call muscles. The problem is, none of the other actors are exactly convincing as human beings. One wonders if Snyder is even interested anything other than CG and slow motion.

That neatly brings me to the next big issue here, and that's how much of the film is in love with changing film speed. In 300, which I also hated, Snyder seemed to be obsessed with slow motion, so much so that it seemed like the film was being played at the wrong speed. Now, Snyder has discovered the fast forward button, so he has discovered how to make things go fast too. The opening fight scene is a prime example of this, which makes it feel as though a small child is playing with a remote control behind you. Even worse, since regular dialog does not suffer from Snyder's usual slow motion flourishes, it creates a break between the dialog and the silly action scenes. It doesn't matter that going normal speed and without gratuitous CGI blood and injury it would have been a better action scene, Snyder is so obsessed with his tricks and silly speed altering that he ignores what would make a good film. There's no rhyme or reason to it, it just emphasizes how artificial everything is, an how Snyder is committed to ruin otherwise decent sequences with visual tomfoolery.

In fact, it's quite interesting how, for a film marketed as the product of a "visionary director" how his vision makes everything worse. The story here is good, the images are well framed, and some of the juxtapositions of image and dialog are quite brilliant. All of those good things? Lifted directly from the book. It's a good book, and much of the goodness of it does get translated on screen. I will say that the music is mostly good - and, unexpectedly, mostly what I was listening to while reading the book - though I'm not completely sure Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah was particularly well used here - it's behind a sex scene and just seems wrong somehow, perhaps it just doesn't match the rhythm of the scene.

Truth be told, when I was reading it, I thought it was a fantastic book, but would be difficult to effectively translate to film. It's actually not a very action packed book, more focused on the after effects and people uncertain of what to do with themselves, packing in much highly necessary back story and different visual tricks. Excellent, but not exactly effective for a concise picture. Here, it's 3 hours long, and it's hard to imagine it being shorter.

Honestly, script wise, it's mostly faithful - the ending is altered, though only one change was really annoying - and with a different director and different actors, it might actually be a pretty good movie. Three hours or not, someone here actually gets the jist of the book, and the point. The main problem is that the director does not understand what the point is in the least, and every decision he makes hurts the film on some level. That's why I nominate him for the most annoying director. He's obsessed with visuals and making things "cool", but his supposed vision just takes away from all his projects.

Sukiyaki Western Django

I think the first film by Takashi Miike - director of today's entry, Sukiyaki Western Django I saw was one Dead or Alive, which ended with an absolutely insane final battle, where the two characters grabbed increasingly gigantic weapons, culminating in a bazooka. It was bizarre, and I got the sense that Miike ended the film that way because he could. That impression translates to the entire movie with Django. Miike is doing things because he can, though we do get some indication of why.

While I once said that Yojimbo was what would have been a western had Japan colonized the Americas, Django takes that idea and runs with it. Yojimbo, along with other westerns, and about a billion different pictures, are all referenced and played with here. We've got the story of two warring factions, one in red, one in white. Into town rides a lone gunman, Hideaki Ito. He enters the elaborate conflict between the two sides with both barrels, in sequences that feel quite heavily inspired by Yojimbo. On the way, we get references to the Tales of the Heike - a Japanese story I don't know much about - and Shakespeare's Henry VI.

Really though, this film references 100 years of film history, connecting it all together with one simple truth - in film, you can do anything you want. This seems to be the guiding principal behind Miike's entire cinematic oeuvre, and here we see him dabbling in pretty much everything he can think of. There's slapstick, silly jokes, romance, inventive, allusive, allegorical, and sometimes just plain beautiful imagery, tragedy and pure action. Anything that has been, and can be done with film is done here, and one can't help but get taken away with it.

Not that it's perfect, in fact there's one glaring fault. See, we have a movie that was made in Japan, with a Japanese cast (and Quentin Tarantino, being less annoying than usual, but still pretty annoying). So, what's the language used? English. It's the ESL happy hour, and the actors are clearly very uncomfortable actually acting in the language. It's a bit awkward, and isn't really fair to the cast.

It says a lot then that the rest of the film continues to be quite entertaining in spite of the obvious language hurdles. The best thing about the whole experience is that we're taken for a ride by a director that knows, deep within his heart, that cinema can mean anything you want it to. In each frame, you can see how decades of watching and learning about film has informed his style and taught him the power of a good movie. Cinema can make you laugh, make you cry, shock, stun and awe. As any fan of film knows, cinema can be anything. Here, it is absolutely everything.

Public Enemy

Just when you think I'm talking about a recent Michael Mann picture, nope, that's a plural. This is Public Enemy, singular. As one might also expect from my obsession with Korea, which started long before this adventure, it's a Korean movie. It's also utterly, completely, amazing.

Truth be told, I was a bit worried when I popped in the DVD. First trailer? An ad for an Anime channel, seemingly bragging about how derivative all Anime is (several thousand gigantic robots! Hundreds of spunky magical girls! A billion kids with bad hair!). Second ad? An anime magazine, drowning in pastels and an unhealthy obsession with Japan. This is what they think people watching Public Enemy want? Derivative crap for people obsessed with Japan? Besides, this movie is Korean! Korea is not Japan! In fact, if one would to go by the quality of local cinema - and being somewhat obsessed with Korean cinema, I would do that - Korea is better than Japan. Though if one were to do that, Brazil would be the best country in the world, and that's not... accurate.

Another concern arose when I pressed play, and the default was an anime-quality dub. First off, dubs in live action? A definite no-no. I'm not one of those snobs when it comes to dubs in animation, but with live action dubs, the seams always show. Since we, as humans, can correlate the sounds coming out of someone's mouth to the motions, you can instantly tell something's gone awry. Not helping matters is that they got typical anime voices, which for some reason tend to be bottom of the barrel voice talent. Combined, you have a movie watcher scrambling to find the menu button.

But I forgive you, ADV, since once I got the settings in order and the movie proper started, I could see I was in for something interesting. When an hour was over, I was already wondering just how high in my all time lists of favorites it would be. In the last twenty minutes, I was literally on the edge of my seat. That never, ever happens. I can't remember the last time I was so excited to see what happened next I was nearly falling off the couch in anticipation.

So what is the story behind this 2 hours and 18 minutes of pure excellence? Well, in one corner, we have highly corrupt and extremely violent police officer Inspector Gang, brilliantly realized by Kyung-gu Sol. We meet him when his partner has killed himself, and he's being investigated for corruption. This is because he is corrupt, and has just stolen a proper crapload of cocaine from a group of criminals. In the other corner, we are introduced to Jo Kyu-Hwan - actually it's spelled differently in the film but I'm going by the IMDB - who is introduced as a likable family man who also happens to enjoy pleasuring himself in the shower. He's also played even more brilliantly by Sung-jae Lee, demonstrating unflappable calm and barely restrained anger. The scenes where he's trying to convincingly cry are absolutely amazing. Who do you think we're supposed to root for here?

From those introductions we start moving into the film proper, which can only be considered a black comedy/action picture. But, unlike many black comedies, this one is genuinely funny. Sometimes, it's absolutely hilarious, especially in every single scene where Gang has to do math. Gang's investigation of Kyu-Hwan is frequently fraught with difficulties, many of his own creation. While he might have a redemptive arc, he's objectively an ass. However, he's a likable ass, and you begin to feel for him as he gets steadily more obsessed with hunting down a man who he believes cut his face and made him get poo on his hands.

Helping his case is the fact that the audience knows from the outset that his suspicions are right. Our family man is quickly revealed to be not exactly a nice person, and our corrupt cop actually cares about the community as much as he enjoys beating up thugs. They're also presented roughly as equals in fighting style, which helps bring genuine tension to the action scenes. Almost as much tension as is brought to the table by the absolutely fantastic direction, staging, and everything to do with the action scenes. Director Woo-Suk Kang knows deep within his bones how to film a fight sequence, and he does some absolutely fantastic ones. The final battle is one of the all time great fistfights, I'm sure of it.

Seriously, I'm having great difficulty figuring out anything I wasn't absolutely enthralled by. Alright, if you have a crippling fear of naked men, you might want to be advised that, at the beginning of the film, we see a lot of men's butts. Of course, this could be a selling point for some people - Sung-jae Lee is very physically fit, and even gets a workout montage for all the ladies in the audience. It also doesn't start especially quickly, and the opening about what it's like to be police could be considered superfluous. But I'm just nitpicking because I don't want to say this is seriously the best movie I've seen in ages.

In fact, I'm stunned that there haven't been waves to remake this for American audiences. Americans love anti-heroes, they love it when wealthy psychopaths are beat down, and they love good old fashioned blackly comic action thrillers. Maybe American directors have secretly admitted they won't be able to top this, and there is absolutely nothing they could improve on. Seriously, while this isn't the best movie I've seen since starting this project - Z probably takes that - this is absolutely fantastic and everyone who enjoys a good dark comedy action thriller needs to see it now. Just ignore all that anime crap on the DVD, and be sure to switch to Korean w/subtitles.

Top Secret!

One of the great mysteries of our time is "Why does David Zucker suck so much now?" I mean, the guy recently made a movie making fun of Michael Moore. That's like shooting a morbidly obese, unshaven fish with questionable taste in hats* in a particularly small barrel. He also produced the Onion Movie. And a bunch of other crap.

See, this is a mystery, because when he started making movies, David Zucker didn't suck. In fact, with Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker, he made fantastic, clever parodies that probably broke rules and more importantly were quite funny. One of those movies is Top Secret!

The strength of Top Secret! is that it's a loving parody of old timey spy films - which explains some gratuitous Nazis, no matter how little they make sense in East Germany - with a real story to build gags around. Val Kilmer is a wacky rock and roll star in the vein of Elvis named Nick Rivers - and creator of the highly dangerous sport skeet surfing - who is going to be performing a concert in East Germany as part of some elaborate plot he's unaware of. He runs into one Hillary Flammond, as played by Lucy Gutteridge, who is a sexy member of the resistance, trying to save her father. Together, they have to save the world, one inexplicable dance routine at a time.

The humor of the film is often based on a quite simple formula, take a regular spy/Elvis/surfing/etc. convention and do something unexpected with it. It's an easy formula, but it often works. The gags aren't universally funny - there's a real stinker based around the Blue Lagoon that plays a bit larger role than is probably advisable - but they're often clever enough and well implemented. When they're not, they're easily ignored and the story can move on.

Since bad genre parodies have become a cottage industry for people who haven't got a clue, this is one of those lessons in why they're a good idea. It's a good spy film borrowing heavily from old spy movies, with a story that's often tense and characters you actually can give a crap about. Even better, the characters aren't in on the joke, and mostly just roll with whatever they're given. It makes the absurd humor stand out in contrast, because nobody realizes it.

Val Kilmer is, surprisingly, something of a stand out. The reason isn't because of his superior acting ability, or his ability to lip sync** - something which would serve him well as Jim Morrison - but his natural charisma. He's believable as a heart throb because he's just so likable and attractive, and he plays it up well. He works as a cocky sense of sanity in a world of ridiculousness.

More than anything though, it's 90 minutes of filmmakers just trying to entertain you. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't work, but that's fine, because you can tell that no matter what's on screen, they're going to brush that off and try to be funny again in the next few minutes. They try everything, from butt sex jokes to more cerebral humour to good old fashioned slapstick. That's why it's good, they put in a lot of effort to be funny.

So why is it that David Zucker isn't as funny now? Perhaps the three directors pushed each other to be funnier. Maybe he's not putting in that effort which is clearly necessary to be hilarious. Whatever it is, he should find his magic again, and kick the people making awful parodies right in the ass.

*I say this as a universal healthcare enthusiast.

**Reportedly he sang all his own songs. They're just really obviously studio recordings and not done on set.

Address Unknown

I know what you're thinking, Movies at Random has sold out. Films people have heard of? In English? From major studios? Where's all the obscure Korean movies? Well, here's Address Unknown, just in case you were going through Korea withdrawal.

I've made no secret of my special distaste for the pity movie. The films with a huge ensemble cast where all the characters are needlessly miserable, and then punished time and time again for being characters in the movie. Address Unknown is very much a pity movie, revolving around dog butchers - no dogs were ACTUALLY butchered, something the film makes special effort to remind people of - disgruntled widows, one eyed girls and horny teenagers. One even works in a hilariously named store called Homeboy Shop which sells, among other things, a painting of a white tiger in velvet. Oh, and it's implied that everything is the fault of America, sometimes subtly, sometimes less so.

The problem with these things is that there's no happiness and no levity, it's just all depression all the time. There is no happiness because happiness is forbidden in this universe. If someone finds it, they are punished. If someone exists who isn't there to, on some level, make someone else miserable, they are punished doubly. Ink is spilled calling this stuff bracing, and "real", but it's not real, is it?

There's also the matter of human kindness and empathy always being immediately punished. The only reason ever seems to be that the overall downtrodden crap needs to be maintained from beginning to end. This is not helped by my other big issue with pity pictures is that they are always filmed in a very dull manner. Kim Ki-Duk is normally a pretty good director, with a great eye, but here it's just workmanlike and deliberately uninteresting. The events on screen are so serious and dour that they can't be filmed with a modicum of panache. It's telling when a world is so bereft of anything good that even the strippers just shuffle around uncomfortably, like 7th graders at a school dance.

In an interview with the director, he said he wanted to both raise awareness about the relationship between Korea and America - symbolized by beating a dog, of all things - yet show some sympathy for American soldiers who aren't in a particularly good situation. That has the effect of making the worst character of the lot, one American soldier whose name and actor are not on the internet - the actor's Mitch something. It's a thankless role, because he's got to alternate wildly between genuinely sympathetic, kind person and a monster rapist girlfriend abuser, sometimes within a line. The actor does an interesting job with it - he's better at the sympathetic than the villainous - but why not just have a sympathetic character and a villain? There's an entire army base, if you need both a monster and a kind person in a situation they don't want to be in to illustrate your point, make two characters. Of course, he winds up shot in the balls after attempting to tattoo his name on his girlfriend, because that's the kind of thing that happens in a pity picture. So long, sympathy.

I have enjoyed plenty of depressing movies, and my best movie of all time is about people who are screwed from birth due to the situation they find themselves in. But there, and anywhere else that gets being downtrodden right, they balance the good and the bad. Characters aren't pushed down every time they try to better themselves, they aren't punished simply for caring, and they aren't there solely to be kicked around. They're people, and like all people, their lives have joy mixed in with the sadness. Take Kids Return, recently featured here. It had characters whose lives collapsed around them, but it also gave them time to have success. We feel more for a character when we can see them in their best light, not simply having life abusing them at every turn. The fall of the characters in Kids Return hurt all the more because they had potential, and because we saw a glimpse of the success that was possible. When it's all sad, all the time, it stops being real, and just becomes an unfortunate, unwatchable dirge.

The Onion Movie

I love the Onion

I love the cutting satire, I love the clever headlines, I love the deconstruction of newspaper cliches (and now, radio and TV cliches). The Onion has fooled foreign countries, and taught the world to laugh again.

So, naturally, I'm extra disappointed that The Onion Movie is no good.

The concept is 80-ish minutes of sketch comedy loosely structured around a fake TV network. This is also the rough concept of The Onion News Network, and it's clearly something that can work. The plot, such as it is, revolves around news anchor Len Cariou, upset that his newscast is being hijacked to advertise the upcoming Steven Seagal movie Cockpuncher - one of very few gags that actually works, culminating in a speech which echoes the end of On Deadly Ground. In the process, a whole bunch of gags happen, some ripped from real Onion headlines, others not.

There are several problems here, and I'm not sure what it is that kills it the most. First, it's very clear that every expense was spared. Production values are at a bare minimum, with clearly inexperienced actors, low rent sets (how many featureless rooms does one film need?) and special effects clearly designed by the filmmaker's cousin on his new Macbook. When one watches the real Onion's videos, one never gets the impression that it was made for no money. Here, one can't see a dime that has made it to the screen.

But, low budget wouldn't matter if the material was funny. Given that it's a sketch comedy film, one would expect it to be inconsistent. Even the mighty Monty Python let a few duds into the Meaning of Life, after all. It's more unfortunate that it's weighted so heavily on the miss side. Cockpuncher is funny, as is a bizarre gag about Peruvians having laser eyes - if only because it's unexpected - but for the most part it's all predictable. Even if there is good material, the film rushes through it like a nervous kid giving a presentation to the class. Gags flash by, never given a chance to develop, and if they are, the comedic timing and pure lack of acting skill kills it where it stands. When STEVEN SEAGAL is the best actor in your movie, you've got some serious problems.

That's it really, it's cheap and it isn't funny. In fact, it seems to share more with the ____ Movie series than it does with the Onion itself. Can there be a statement more damning than that?

X-Men

I've never been a huge comic book person - the only comic I've ever read is the Watchmen - but I'm generally a fan of comic book movies. While there might be something inherently ridiculous as people in tight clothing with super powers battling it out, they can be quite well written - as Solid Snake has proven quite ably with X-Men today - and can be a subtle take on a real world issue or moral conundrum.

Watching X-Men, it's no wonder that the generally reliable Bryan Singer has made a good film of it. For one, the character of Magneto (Ian McKellen) is a holocaust survivor, and Singer seems to be strangely fascinated by the holocaust. Witness Valkyrie, and Apt Pupil, which are both intimately involved with the third reich. Also, Bryan Singer is openly gay, and the X-Men share a lot with being gay.

It's subtle, but also somewhat obvious in the content. There's a senator (Bruce Davison) who wants to force all mutants - people who have superpowers, basically - to register themselves. He argues that you wouldn't want a mutant in your schools, and replace the word "mutant" with "gay" or "black" or "Muslim" or whatever else someone has been persecuted for being in the past history, and you've got a subtle critique on general persecution. After all, they're simply born different. It's not explicit, but you can tell that Singer is drawing from his own experiences, and those of his friends. As a critique on racism and persecution, it's well done, never drilling the message into your head but always having it there.

Of course, there's a violent uprising lead by Magneto, and a more peaceful sect lead by Professor X (Patrick Stewart). They fight about the proper way to handle their persecution, with Magneto advocating violently converting people to being mutants and sharing his way of thinking. Also, a plethora of X-Men are introduced, though the main characters are clearly Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) and Rogue (Anna Paquin), the former being a super healing mystery, and the latter draining whatever she touches. Their relationship is a backbone on which a wide variety of different ideas are built.

Possibly the big problem with this is that a lot of ideas have to be built on that backbone. The X-Men is an expansive series, with a ton of unique characters and a wide variety of different concepts to deal with. Worse, many of these characters and concepts are vital to having a clue to what's going on. So, as a result, there's often a lot of exposition in Patrick Stewart's soothing voice. It doesn't kill the movie, not by a long stretch, but it does bog it down.

The only other problem is that the forces of evil will always triumph, because good is stupid. The X-Men are comically awful in the climactic fight, having to overcome their own overwhelmingly poor fighting style more than the villains. Another detriment is the overall superhero movie pattern: Good, Great, Worse, Ugh, but that doesn't kick in until Bret "The Rat" Ratner takes over in X-Men 3, and doesn't hurt this movie.

Of course, I'm nitpicking because that's what I do. Those are minor faults in a film that is otherwise downright excellent. It's quickly paced, superbly well shot, and the action scenes are excellent no matter how stupid the heroes are. The characters established quickly develop their personalities and relationships, and even the more minor characters clearly have potential for future installments. Er...installment. One day I might get there.

So did I like X-Men? Naturally, and I dare say it's one of the best comic movies I've seen. More importantly, it's a perfect fit for Bryan Singer, and a lot of him can be seen in every frame. It manages to be very personal for a big budget action film adaptation, and that's a difficult feat to manage. It sure is a shame Singer didn't keep doing films in the series past the second one, it's one he was born to direct.

I just realized I'll have nothing to say when I hit the next one. Oh, I've written myself into a corner (though maybe it'll be a long way off, and everyone will forget and I can just do the same thing all over again).