The Host

Movies at Random is again at random! Hooray!

So, to celebrate, let's have Korean action movie.

Actually, in spite of the at random bit of Movies at Random, the Host is quite timely. With the paranoia about swine flu spreading all over the world, it's only appropriate that the movie that relaunches the random part of this little project deals with, at least in a small part, paranoia about a virus. There's also a big monster which, if you squint, might look like a pig, which people think carry the virus. You would almost think it's about swine flu if it wasn't for the fact that it was made a couple years ago.

At the very beginning of the movie, we're at a US military base, with a doctor who is paranoid about dust. In spite of the protests of his Korean helper, he demands a large amount of toxic chemical be poured down a drain and into a river, because we need an environmental message with our big monster movies. This is a rule, which has gone unchallenged for many a millennium, or at least since Godzilla hit film screens. So human - or specifically, American - short sightedness creates a monster.

So, of course, the Park family - lazy Gang-Du, who is not going to win any father of the year awards, his daughter Hyun-Seo, and his dad, sister and brother, whose names I can't figure out - gets caught in the middle when the eventual monster rises from the depth, terrorizes their snack shack and kidnaps Hyun-Seo. Also, people assume poor Gang-Du has a virus, so he keeps getting taken to the hospital whenever he tries to get out and rescue her. Eventually, the family has to band together and save the day, because neither the governments of South Korea or America can figure out how. Considering how dumb the Park family is, that's saying something.

This is a monster movie in the grand tradition of monster movies that aren't American, because America hasn't had a handle on the genre since King Kong (see, crappy American Godzilla, Cloverfield). There's a monster that is the result of some human flaw, and then people have to fight to save themselves from it. In this case, the film is tilted heavily towards the comedy side of the spectrum, with a lot of slapstick moments and a dash of satire. Americans are portrayed are stubborn fools, and South Korea is mocked because it lets them be that way.

The film is pretty openly a satire of American foreign policy. Apparently the opening scene actually happened, at least according to the internet which is never wrong. But the rest of it is pretty openly mocking America. The way they search for a virus even though there actually isn't one, and the way they take over from Korea when containing the monster by unleashing highly dangerous toxic materials. Americans in this picture are seen as big, stupid idiots who impose themselves on smaller countries because they think they know best.

But if you're not American, or if you are an American that can handle your country being openly mocked, there are some good things here. It's a fast paced action movie, and some of the slapstick moments are quite funny. Sure, the tone can be kindly considered erratic, leaping merrily between serious dramatic moments and wacky slapstick comedy, the most jarring tonal shift happening at a memorial. The ending is a bit of a bummer too, especially considering it's for the most part a crowd pleasing action-comedy.

Still, the monster bits are pretty great, and while it's made entirely of CG the monster itself isn't distractingly out of place, which is a rare achievement. It's fun and can even be a bit scary at times. It's got great stylish cinematography (like every single Korean movie I've ever seen, which is impressive for the country), the acting is mostly good, and as a Canadian I do like America getting taken down a peg. Sorry Americans, it's nothing personal.

I hesitate to call this a great movie though. It's fun, and often clever, but it doesn't flow that well and there are a surprisingly large number of lulls in the action. And there are also those tonal shifts, which are just a bit too random for their own good. The problem is that it's just not quite cohesive enough, about three or four script rewrites until it's properly good. Just being fun isn't enough to be quality.

Star Trek II: Wrath of Khan

Last time, I may have slightly dismissed Wrath of Khan a great piece of genre fiction, rather than the wonderful and important thing that was the first Star Trek movie. Today, since I'm not going to get my mail key in time, I feel as though I should clarify a little. There is nothing wrong with being a great piece of genre fiction.

After the first ST movie, people had decided they didn't want a 2 and a half hour long meditation on mankind's place in the universe and within trippy special effects made with a wave tank. Their loss, I maintain that movie is a wonderful film. They decided, for whatever reason, they wanted a space movie with spaceships fighting and obvious villains and Ricardo Montalban's frankly ridiculous chest. They also wanted costume designs where you couldn't make out the outline of a penis at any point, which I can agree with. So Nicholas Meyer, who also happened to direct one of the worst movies I have ever seen (Star Trek VI, seriously I can't watch it to the end, I get very angry about midway through) was brought in to direct the finest film about a ridiculous chest battling an overacting old man in space you have ever seen.

To be honest, I own this movie, and while at least part of the reason I bought it was its presence in a bargain bin at Superstore (oh so many stupid things bought in a bargain bin at Superstore) I generally don't take DVD purchases lightly (I say this, and yet it sits RIGHT BESIDE Thunderbirds, which I bought on ebay because I was curious and didn't feel like looking for it at the video store.) I picked it up because it's an enjoyable movie, and whether or not it feels like a big important event, I genuinely liked it.

So, the film is the sequel to a TOS episode I never watched called Space Seed. I have only actually seen the terrible TOS episode where they see Apollo for some reason, and the one with Abe Lincoln in space. These may have been the same episode, but for some reason if I randomly go and watch Star Trek, this is always, ALWAYS the episode playing. TNG has the stupid episode where Patrick Stewart's a little boy, and this has this stupid episode.

Anyway, previously on Star Trek, Ricardo Montalban was banished to a desolate planet because Kirk felt threatened by his manly chest. Since I haven't seen the episode I'll assume that's what happened. Anyway, many years later, there's a crazy plan to make a desolate planet into something lush and green that can bring a major character back to life if they promise to let the actor who plays him direct the next couple of films.

We begin with the Kobiyashi Maru (I bet I misspelled that, though I won't bother looking it up) scenario, a Starfleet test designed to set up the themes and foreshadow some of the events later on in the film. Kirstie Alley is taking the test, and this is ripe time for a Kirstie Alley joke but I won't do that. Anyway, due to the nature of the test, the ship blows up and everybody dies. Only not really since everyone was acting. With all of our relevant themes outlined, we're off to find the rest of the plot.

Luckily, Chekov is on the case, finding planet Deus Ex Machina and its devilishly handsome inhabitants. Turns out they're a race of supermen developed in 1996. I don't remember any supermen in 1996, but I was but a mere 11 years old, so I wasn't keeping up on current events. Turns out things went quite badly for him between that episode I've never seen and this movie, so now he wants revenge against Kirk.

Back to the Enterprise, it's being refitted again after TMP. I think this sequence was intended as a rib at the earlier film, since it borrows several shots while doing things much quicker. Now, the extended sequence works in the first film, and wouldn't work here. The quick pace sets the tone in both. The new quick pace is appropriate for the much quicker movie. And yet, I can't help but think having the enterprise starting in maintenance again is a bit ridiculous. This turns into almost a recurring joke in the series, with the Enterprise needing more updates than a Microsoft operating system.

Speaking of space seed, we also get to meet Kirk's son, who is a bit of an irrational jerk, though I suppose his dad decided he'd much rather run around the galaxy bangin' green chicks over playing catch and doing traditional dad things. Having an illegitimate child tells us a lot more about the character than driving a million ancient cars off of cliffs, giving a bit of an explanation of what he was like as a kid and threading that through to what he's like as an older man.

The sad thing about the movie is that it actually looks worse than the first film. The costumes are better, the set design mostly improved, but the special effects are a bit more obvious, and it suffers from the 80s film stock effect that all 80s movies suffer from. Why did filmmakers think that having stock that had slightly washed out color was a good idea? In a film with a lot of gray sets, it becomes much more obvious, with that slightly muddy color that the 80s suffered mightily from.

Crappy film stock or no, this is a tightly paced space action movie. It has nods to themes of aging, and revenge, but that serves mostly as a frame for a well made science fiction film, centered around a battle of wits between two extremely stubborn characters. It's entertainment, watchable well made entertainment, with the only problems being that it's made in the 80s and nobody knew how to make decent film stock back then. I know I mention it too much, I'll stop when it stops bothering me.

I have a feeling that Star Trek: The New One will be a lot like this, albeit with better special effects and worse camerawork, given the trendiness of shaky cam.Not so much a matter of the story being similar, but the general approach, a little bit of character development and fleshing out of backstory, but a lot of space adventure and little fanboy moments. I am mostly opposed to the idea of a prequel - especially for a supposed reboot - because there's a point where you can't go further forward anymore. Watching this, what else can you possibly do with the characters? We've explored their aging, and through that, many references to their youth. What more is there to know about Kirk? I'll watch it anyway, and I'll probably like it anyway if reviews are to be believed. It would be nice if I could see it, but such is life in a city with a one screen theater.

Star Trek, the Motion Picture

The odd/even rule of Star Trek films is rubbish.

I say this because the worst Star Trek film, without question, is Star Trek VI. If you disagree, you are wrong. The problem with that one is that it's an ineptly handled allegory that can't help but constantly point out how allegorical it is. If there was a gigantic flashing screen that said "SEE, THE KLINGONS ARE JUST LIKE RUSSIA IN THE REAL WORLD, DO YOU GET IT???" it would have been more subtle. The shocking twists are less shocking than stupid, frequently undermining characters. It's bad partly because it uses the Trek world as a cheap backdrop, never really understanding the characters in it. It's also bad because the story just doesn't work, and the creative team is really trying too hard to be relevant.

Yeah, the fifth entry was technically worse, but really, at least there's some amusement to be had. That was just bad, full stop.

Otherwise, it doesn't hold up for the rest of the entries as well. There was nothing really wrong with Star Trek 3. Not as good as 2, perhaps, but still a decent movie. The fourth was fun, but it was more of a comedy, and Trek usually fails at comedy, though that one turned out decent at least. The TNG films, apart from First Contact, all suffered from the same problem, that being poor writing by people who were distracted by other things.

But the biggest problem with the odd/even rule is that my favorite Star Trek movie, in fact one of my top 10 movies of all time (for those counting at home, that list includes City of God and Z, perhaps one day I'll mention them all!). And that's the very first Star Trek, the Motion Picture

ST:TMP gets a bad rap. It's accused of being too slow, and of being a regular episode stretched to feature length. The first part is somewhat understandable, as it is a methodically paced movie. I will explain shortly why this is a good thing. The second part is sort of half right. It's a Star Trek film, it should be recognizable as Trek, and it is. But it's far from a regular episode.

The film is about a mysterious energy cloud called V'Ger that's going around destroying crap, and Captain Kirk must overact his way back as the captain of Enterprise in order to stop it from taking out Earth. On the way, he has to learn, with the crew, the purpose of the thing and why it's out to meet earth. The answers surprise him, and possibly you, though not me because I've seen the movie several times.

The movie starts with a star field and a bit of orchestral music. An odd choice, but it lays out the ambition of the project. This movie is going to be more than a film, it's going to be an event, and it's going to be important. Only movies that are events can get away with having an opening like that, something that lets people settle down and prepare to have their minds blown.

It also prepares you for the pacing, which is not fast, and that is good. It's not an action movie, but it's tense, and the pacing underscores that. The extended sequences of passing through the cloud, for example, ratchet up the tension significantly. You don't know what this is, and you're approaching it ever steady. If things went quickly, there wouldn't be any tension.

There's also the extended moments of exploring the outside of the Enterprise. These are there to underscore how important the ship is. At the first moment when the head-on view is seen and the score swells, it's difficult to avoid some emotion, even if this is a ship, it's the main character, and the slow build makes that scene have more of an impact.

People accuse it of being boring, but if that was the case, how is it that when it's playing I cannot look away, and get completely absorbed in the film and the ideas it's trying to present? It's astonishingly immersive, two hours that seem like one.

The other great thing about the movie is that it deals with big ideas, and major parts of all the characters, while just shying away from spelling out what they are. Kirk is a bit of an arrogant ass. That's what makes him a good captain, and what makes him Kirk, but it also causes near disasters and almost destroys the ship. Spock's pursuit of logic eventually leads to a realization about the emptiness of it.

The main thing I like about this movie is how big it seems. This is something that no Star Trek film since has achieved. It uses the screen, and the budget, in order to just seem bigger than any other movie. It tries, and mostly succeeds, to bring up big ideas and important discussions on the nature of humanity. It does what the best Trek episodes do, bringing an opportunity to have discussions about the nature of man, while being mostly positive about humanity.

Yes, there are problems. The costume design is, in a word, unfortunate. It is tight in all the wrong places, leading to the outlines of the male anatomy being quite noticeable. Shatner is on top overacting form. Count the different inflections he uses while saying "Mr. Spock!" in just one scene. Not that any of it matters.

See, this is why I like Trek. Not the action, not the big space explosions, but the attempt to portray big ideas in a space faring concept. Wrath of Khan, the one all the nerds pick, was a great piece of genre fiction. This, however, is more than that. It's an event, an important movie, one that takes itself and its universe seriously. Because of this, it's amazing and easily the best film in the series. If you disagree, I'm sorry.

Another Heaven

In my dream of being a filmmaker, one that will likely go unrealized, but whatever, I've always wanted to remake two movies. One was a Chinese film inexplicably named Adventurers. It has nothing to do with adventuring, but it did have some fantastic action sequences I wanted to rip off, or pay homage to, and a twisty story that I wanted to change slightly. The other is this movie, Another Heaven.

Another Heaven is not a good movie, but I remembered distinctly enjoying watching it. I liked how the story starts as a serious police drama and then gets steadily dumber until the characters are battling an abstract concept (abstract concepts, incidentally, look exactly like bad CGI water).

So what is this movie about? Well, there's a murder case involving a man who had his brains cooked into a lovely stew. Then, there are more murder cases where people have their brains eaten. If this sounds like some sort of gourmet zombie, you're sort of right. Eventually, it is revealed that the villain is a hot chick, only it's actually some sort of strange being that can change bodies. This leads to a highly amusing gay kiss sequence. (He kissed you! Shoot him in the balls!) This also eventually leads to the final battle against CG water, and a female character constantly trying to kill herself and having the hero save her, which is much funnier than it really should be, primarily due to how increasingly ridiculous it gets.

In the good corner, there are two cops, one a young guy named Manabu, who has fashionable hair and no personality. The other is a crotchety old cop who seems to be a distant relative of Corey Hart, given his propensity towards nocturnal sunglasses. Manabu has a creepy stalker/girlfriend who fits the 'Manic Pixie Dreamgirl' archetype, and also is there to figure out things way before everyone else for no discernible reason. It's all very stupid, but fun! It also tries to teach a lesson about the horrors of violent entertainment, except it is violent entertainment so it doesn't work.

I don't think I ever thought this would be a traditionally good movie. The plot is too dumb, the characters really aren't terrible interesting, and it just gets steadily more ridiculous as it goes. But the first time I watched it, I enjoyed it so much, I thought it would be simply fun to remake.

Well, I watched it again, and as fun as it is, it's probably too stupid to make into a good movie. The characters are a bit too thin, and the story about the evil that lurks within the heart of men isn't exactly strong. I still like it though, and I appreciate how something so silly got made into a real movie. Bless you, Another Heaven, for being so enjoyably lame.

For various reasons, I forgot to write today's entry. Sorry. I promise to do something for Tuesday, really.

Biodome.

Curse you Superchannel.

Let me explain. Superchannel was a channel that played movies in my youth. It was like HBO or MovieCentral today, except with more strange Canadian short films. Not sure what happened to it, but if you were a kid in the middle of Saskatchewan, it usually came in relatively clear, and would often air good, recent movies. Said good recent movies, unfortunately, were always preceded by Bio Dome.

I have seen the last half of this movie at least 20 times.

Here's the thing, for some reason it was always on somewhere near the end of school. So, if you tuned into the channel, you would wait until the end of Biodome in order to watch whatever comes next. Sometimes you would watch the middle of Bio Dome, realize that it was a far way from the end, and turn it off. I think I even saw the beginning of Bio Dome once, though recognizing the lack of dome at that point I swiftly turned it off.

Bio Dome was terrible, but for a Superchannel enthusiast, unavoidable.

From memory, Paulie Shore and Stephen Baldwin find themselves in a dome, and proceed to get into wacky, dome-related situations. Then they find a secret dome exit, which as memory serves was a padlock on a glass door near a tree, and then almost ruin the entire project. Something happens, lessons are learned, and then you watched a horrible Canadian short film about black flies in North Ontario-i-o, which still gives me nightmares if I am ill with fever, and hopefully a good movie would start. Whatever it was, it was better than Bio Dome.

To be fair, I don't actually know how they got to the dome. I usually arrived to the party after the dome had been breached, and never stayed if I arrived before. I know that they had ridiculous bulk Cheetos hidden in a back room, and the reasons for keeping them in the dome were highly dubious. I imagine there were loads of stoner references that flew far above my innocent childish brain. It was instead the precise moment that people stopped caring about Paulie Shore.

I don't remember why, but people liked Paulie Shore, yet recognized his talent was limited and his performances were one note. I remember there being controversy over whether he could pull off a movie without his trademark long hair, as though that was where his talent lied, like Samson. I was never a big fan, though I also didn't hate him. Being 12 or so, I was easily amused and not easily disgusted. Shore was not an object of derision, just something of a nonentity. He was terrible, but in a highly uninteresting way.

Play one note long enough, and people get sick of it. I'm not sure Bio Dome was any worse than any other Shore movie. It is the one I've seen the most, of course, but due to Superstation's love of Paulie Shore, I've seen more than one. They were no different from Bio Dome. The dome just replaced an army base, or a Jury, or...a tractor? I don't remember. The entire genre rested on trapping Paulie Shore in a situation where he was ill suited for the task at hand, and square people couldn't just drop him in a dumpster.

Bio Dome is famous for being terrible, but that's giving it too much credit. It's just a cinematic nonentity. I still remember it, so I can't say it's forgettable, but it's just dull. It doesn't deserve hate, just disinterest. By contrast with the worst movie ever, mentioned previous, Bio Dome doesn't do anything worth hating. It could have been any Paulie Shore movie that killed his star, really. That this one is so uninteresting that you could watch it more than once says that it's not even the worst. The one on the jury, with its ridiculous ending and hateful premise, I couldn't tolerate more than once, for example. This was just dumb. Whoop de do.

Still, I've seen parts of it several times. I can recall images from it even now. Not a single line, of course, the dialog was that forgettable, and I often turned it down and read a book while waiting for the next movie to start, but I do essentially know the movie. What it does, more than anything, is make me wonder what today's kids are watching waiting for better things to start.

I have admitted to knowing more about Paulie Shore than anyone should feel comfortable with.

Favorite directors

Good news everyone! Regular random service will resume early May. This is great! Unfortunately, this means I have to keep thinking up other movies to talk about in the interim. I've got a couple Kitano movies that didn't get a domestic release that I can see stashed away on my hard drive, so maybe they will last me, but doing movies by memory is hard. So, instead, I will tell you all about my favorite directors in the whole wide world.

Takeshi Kitano: I mentioned this right? Kitano is fantastic because he's seemingly completely self taught. His movies don't worry about doing anything technically correctly, or following any formal structure or anything. He clearly just tells a story he wants to tell, in a way that he wants to tell it. You can tell a Kitano film pretty much from the first frame, with his use of static shots and odd yet clever editing choices. Nobody else makes movies like him.

Best film for the beginner: I don't think Hana-Bi has had a decent DVD release yet, but it is utterly fantastic. Plus, it gives a pretty good taste of his overall style and obsessions, and seems to be an early example of him actually moving the camera. A fascinating film.

Wong Kar-Wai: He's a Chinese director, who seems to film a bunch of stuff in a flashy style and piece together the story through the edit through voiceover. His films are often melancholy ruminations on love lost, with a couple exceptions. These are atmospheric films, and if you're willing, they can be extremely absorbing.

Best: I'll go with Fallen Angels. Again, an obscure entry, and mostly a silly story about an assassin, his boss, and a wacky mute guy, but it might be best to be eased into Wong Kar-Wai with a bit of goofy comedy, and this one is just endlessly entertaining.

Park Chan-Wook: Korean Filmmaker, famous mostly for Oldboy and is often marketed as an extreme filmmaker. His movies often have lots of gore, and the stories are usually messed up, but if you can handle that they are amazing in terms of cinematography and editing. Endlessly stylish, if a bit disturbing.

Best: Gotta go with Oldboy here. It's the one everybody knows, but it's shocking and stunning, a film that's completely unforgettable, for better or worse

Michael Mann: American, pretty well known actually. Like all the directors I like, very stylish, I have a feeling that I'd rip off a lot of his shots if I ever made movies on my own.

Best: Heat. I got into him through Collateral, but Heat is a fantastic movie anyway.

Michael Winterbottom: Not as familiar with him as I would like to be, but he directed to of my favorite comedies ever, Tristam Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, and 24 Hour Party People, both starring Steve Coogan, and both being gloriously self-referential.

Best: 24 Hour Party People has some odd tonal shifts, but it also helped me discover Joy Division. I still like Joy Division, thanks Winterbottom!

And those are just some of my favorite directors. Hooray for a filler post!