Movie Review: Shower

Posted on March 26, 2007

I watched a pretty good movie last night, so here ’tis, a review for the 1999 Chinese movie, “Shower”. From IMDB summarizer jhailey:

Shenzhen businessman, Da Ming, goes home to Beijing when he thinks his father has died. He finds his father hard at work at the family’s bathhouse (the false message was a ruse of Da’s mentally-handicapped, exuberant brother, Er Ming, to get Da home). Da stays a couple days, observing his father being social director, marriage counselor, and dispute mediator for his customers and a boon companion to Er. Da is caught between worlds: the decaying district of his childhood and the booming south where he now lives with a wife who’s not met his family. When Da realizes his father’s health is failing and the district is slated for razing, he must take stock of family and future.

The movie opens up with an impressive sequence displaying a sort of showering autowash, quite similar to what you might drive your car through for four bucks with gas. “The future of bath houses”. It’s unusual to me, an American with American sensibilities, that these places still operate. They are few and far between here in the states, and generally are used for less honorable purposes. But it’s this sense of “otherness” that gives the movie a part of its charm. I’m just astounded by the fact that there are people that can use chopsticks properly and efficiently. But enough of that, on to the movie.

The focus of the movie is Da’s strained relationship with his father and his brother. Er Ming had sent a crayon drawing of him standing next to his sleeping father, making Da believe that his father was dead. His father quickly figures out that this is the reason for his visit. Da feels ashamed of his father’s occupation, thinking it to be a relic of the past, and of his brother. He later admits to not telling his wife that he has a brother. However, he comes around to his family, realizing that the bathhouse is a center for the community, and that his father is really important to those around him. His father mediates differences between two friends who compete in regular cricket fights (just what it sounds like), helps a young man who owes money to a loan shark (another difference between the movie and what I’m used to, when the tough guys threaten harm upon the debtor, the father stands in their way and tells them to get out. I have a hard time imagining the elderly being that respected here), and helps a man who’s marriage is falling apart.

There are lots of humorous moments in the movie, the aforementioned cricket fights, a chubby fellow who always sings “O Sole Mio” at the top of his lungs during his shower, and Er Ming’s childlike fascination and enthusiasm lend to some great scenes. Overall, the movie comes across as very touching, without being schmaltzy, which often happens with movies of these types. The only thing I can really ding this movie on is the subtitles. Occasionally the translation seems a little rusty or stilted, as if perhaps the meaning was conveyed, but not as well as it could have been done. This is a problem that can be troublesome for a lot of foreign films, unfortunately. However, it doesn’t detract from the overall enjoyability of Shower, so I would recommend renting it.

Movie Review: Dead Silence

Posted on March 19, 2007

It’s been awhile since I’ve done one of these. This is going to be a shorter review, I should think, because I saw Dead Silence in an actual theatre, so I didn’t have my notebook. It was Sarah’s birthday, and this is what she wanted to see. Nothing good on IMDB, so I’ll do the basic plot summary myself. Jamie Ashen finds a mysterious package on his doorstep, an antique ventriloquist’s dummy. He runs out for takeout and his wife decides to set the doll up and freak out Ashen. Upon his return, he finds his wife dead, her face disfigured. A homocide detective (played by Donny Wahlberg, the only name on the cast list that I’ve ever heard of) let’s it be known that he suspects Jamie, whilst Jamie returns to his hometown, where local legend, in the form of a childhood rhyme, tells of a woman who had dolls instead of children and if you screamed when she saw you, you would die. There he meets his estranged father, a cagey undertaker, the undertaker’s crazy wife, and finds that the detective has followed him there. Then a bunch of stuff happens involving ventriloquist dummies, local legend, and a pisspoor attempt at suspense.

I find dolls and ventriloquist dummies quite frightening, and the one in this movie was crafted to be quite so. My great grandmother in Butte has a room full of them that I had to sleep in on many occasions; these nights of terror remain burned into my memory forever. Aside from the creepy factor of the dummy, the standard cliches of trendy horror are there. The soundtrack is tense throughout, whenever the dummy attacks all sound fades out to silence except the breathing of the victim. Then there’s a simultaneous loud noise, orchestra hit, and something scary pops up on screen. Everyone screams and blah. The gore is kept to a relative minimum, which really surprises me, being as this movie was produced by the same group that puts out the Saw series, some of the goriest movies of recent times. The suspense is often drawn out far too long; scenes become more tedious than they are tensive. Really tedious. And than there is my least favorite trendy horror cliche of all. The blue color filter. All of these bad horror movies use a blue color filter during filming, that casts a sense of darkness over the print and removes the vividness of light and color. And it’s always done so heavy-handedly that it’s boring. As one IMDB reviewer so aptly described it, it’s “cinematic wallpaper”. I can generally tell I absolutely won’t like a movie just by watching the trailer to see if it’s entirely done with the blue filter. Get a new technique, bargain basement cinematographers.

The writing is drab, the twists are not very surprising, or interesting. I was often checking my watch to see if the movie was done yet. It’s a bland way to spend 90 minutes. The characters are boring and hard to care about. The acting is unspectacular. Ryan Kwanten as Ashen is a generic good looking guy that are flooding Hollywood movies without being good enough to be considered leading men. And his accent kept switching from standard New England small town to New York City, which was confusing. Donny Wahlberg as the detective was just trying to hard. And for some reason the character is shaving. Always with the electric razor. That’s not a good character quirk, that’s just retarded and weird.

The high school crowd will eat this up like they do every other trite, poorly-produced horror film that comes out, but for lovers of the genre this movie will blow. For people that like movies, it will blow. For people that haven’t suffered serious head trauma, it will blow. Good day.

View the trailer.

Movie Review: La Mujer de Mi Hermano

Posted on January 22, 2007

A tale of lust and betrayal coming from Mexico, “La Mujer de Mi Hermano” (”My Brother’s Wife”) was an interesting high drama film that explores the boundaries of love and sexuality. Here’s a plot summary from IMDB:

After almost 10 years of marriage, attractive Zoe discovers that her marriage lacks passion and surprise, and is seduced by the possibility of finding those sensations already forgotten in her husband’s brother. From this premise a series of events lead these three characters to a dangerous game of revenges, secrets and passions. Two brothers and one woman: the triangle is outlined in a disquieting way. It is a bomb that triggers family secrets, the contained rage of desire and the unmanageable power of love. An exciting story that subjugates the viewer from beginning to end.

I’m not sure what subjugating the viewer was supposed to mean, but thanks, anonymous. Zoe, played by the insanely hot Barbara Mori is the wife of vain and uptight Ignacio. Zoe and Ignacio want to have a child, but are unable to concieve. Tired of their lack of a love life, (Ignacio will only have sex with her once a week, on Saturdays) Zoe begins to look to Ignacio’s free-spirited brother Gonzalo. Ignacio comes off as a real prick through out the movie, but he’s in a difficult position, and we soon learn that Gonzalo isn’t all that he seems. As a side not, Gonzalo shoots with a Nikon camera and uses an iBook, so awesome for him. Giving Zoe guidance throughout the movie is her gay friend Boris, who is perhaps a bit over the top, but supportive of her. Beto Cuevas, of Chileno band La Ley (iTunes link) plays a priest who is a friend of Ignacio’s as well.

Filled with lots of very slow camera movements, deep-field focus shots, and dramatic camera angles to create a lot of beautiful shots that build up the seriousness of the film. The love triangle theme is further represented visually throughout the movie, almost every scene in the movie is split into thirds. It’s particularly noticable in Ignacio and Zoe’s stunning house, where there is a blatant grid behind the characters, otherwise one character’s head will fill 1/3rd of the frame while another character, further off, will fill 2/3rds of the frame. These are the things you notice when you learn about design and cinemaphotography.

The movie is interesting in the way it handles each character’s sexuality, and everything is way more fucked up than you realize. The ending was kind of low, overall, and the slowness of the movie means I could only give it three stars. But it’s still worth a rent, so check it out.

View the Trailer.

Movie Review: Thank You For Smoking

Posted on January 15, 2007

Man what a great movie this was. Here’s a plot summary by Jim Beaver at IMDB (again).

Tobacco industry lobbyist Nick Naylor has a seemingly impossible task: promoting cigarette smoking in a time when the health hazards of the activity have become too plain to ignore. Nick, however, revels in his job, using argument and twisted logic to place, as often as not, his clients in the positions of either altruistic do-gooders or victims. Nick’s son Joey needs to understand and respect his dad’s philosophy, and Nick works hard to respond to that need without compromising his lack of values. When a beautiful news reporter betrays Nick’s sexually-achieved trust, his world seems in danger of collapsing. But there’s always one more coffin nail in Nick’s pack.

The movie was pretty much driven by Naylor, played by relatively unknown Aaron Eckhart. Eckhart does an excellent job as the seemingly untouchable smooth talking spinmaster. Very few scenes in the movie go without him, and he provides the narration to the movie as well. The cast is rounded out by some great character actors, including J.K. Simmons (Spiderman’s J. Jonah Jameson, who to me will never sound right unless he’s voiced by Ed Asner, as in the cartoon series) as Nick’s direct boss, Robert Duvall as The Captain, an aging and possibly not-altogether there big tobacco executive, William H. Macy (Fargo, State and Main) as a liberal senator with a vendetta against the cigarette companies and Naylor in particular, Sam Elliot (who is awesome in pretty much everything he does) as the emphysema-ridden Marloboro Man, and Rob Lowe (The West Wing, Tommy Boy) as a Japan-obsessed Hollywood heavy.

Visually, the movie is fantastic. They hired a great team of graphic designers to put the movie together, the title credits alone had me giggling with glee. Macy’s character wants a government mandated skull and crossbones with the word “poison” underneath put on every pack of cigarettes; the unspoken problem with this is that the logo looks really cool. There’s lots of cool little signs and graphics throughout the movie. The soundtrack (iTunes link) is a mix of old songs from the forties, fifties, and sixties about smoking and cigarettes, and the movie’s own score.

The movie is a look into the world of lobbyists, and particular the Merchants of Death (Naylor for the tobacco industry, and his two friends that represent the liquor industry and the firearms industry). At no point does it really portray big tobacco in a firmly positive light, instead skirting the issue much like the tobacco lobby itself. Much of the movie espouses a vaguely libertarian position that it is up to each of us to make the decision to smoke or not to smoke.

One thing about the movie that I found absolutely fantastic was a big plot twist that happens about halfway through the movie. In the push to get movies to the coveted number one spot, studios reveal pretty much everything about the movie in the advertising push. I’ve always thought that it would be much better to be surprised by what’s going to happen. However, this particular plot twist wasn’t revealed in the promotion of the movie. Which I think is great. That, in combination with the awesomeness of the rest of the movie, means I give it four stars. Worth a buy.

Get the trailer here.

Little Miss Sunshine

Posted on January 8, 2007

I watched Little Miss Sunshine, which recently came out on dvd, last night. From Jim Beaver on IMDB:

Olive is a little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them. Olive’s father Richard is a flop as a motivational speaker, and is barely on speaking terms with her mother. Her uncle Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. Her brother Dwayne, a fanatical follower of Nietzsche, has taken a vow of silence, which allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. And Olive’s grandfather is a ne’er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. Circumstances conspire to put the entire family on the road together with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California.

Olive is cute in her lack of cuteness, the kind of cute that people attribute to most little kids that are generally quite uncute. Apparently actress Abigail Breslin wore a fat suit to portray Olive; I did not know that fat suits came in 9-year old sizes. Greg Kinnear as a determined-not-to-fail failure is great, and his constant bickering with Frank was excellent. Toni Collette, the (hot) mom is the only relatively normal person in the family, and she acts as the anchor trying to keep everything together. I would have to say my favorite out of the family was Steve Carell as Frank, which is unusual, because normally I don’t like Carell. I’ve always found his over the top antics that are typical of him to be more annoying than funny, and even though I love The Office, I find his character to be only barely tolerable (which I guess is true that the others in the office only barely tolerate Michael Scott as well.) However, in LMS, he was able to make funny an extremely humorless character, a morose and post-suicidal Proust scholar. Rounding out the cast is Paul Dano as Olive’s half-brother Dwayne, who is mute for 3/4ths of the movie, screams a whole bunch in one scene, and then doesn’t say a whole lot after that; and Alan Arkin as Grandpa, who swears too much, loves porn, hates Frank, and has a cocaine addiction (”Let me tell ya, don’t do that stuff. When you’re young, you’re crazy to do that shit. When you’re old you’re crazy not to do it.”)

Visually the movie is great, bypassing the slick look currently popular and going with a more traditional filmstock. There’s a lot of interesting framing in the shots, and you can really see the golden mean at play in a lot of scenes. The highway shots are beautiful, combining the breathlessness of the American southwest with the mundane reality of roadtrips with your family. The score is also fantastic, with influences ranging from indie, folk, western, latin, and even French music.

The movie maintains an air of tension throughout, without being overbearing or annoying. When a scene is set up for a joke, you’re never quite sure if it’s going to end up being over-the-top or mundane, which is true for the whole movie. A lot of movies, you’re pretty much knowing the entire time that everything is going to turn out alright, but this movie really keeps you guessing how things will turn out. I’m not going to say too much, but I will say that the ending is basically the most awesome thing that could happen.

Overall, I’m going to go with 3 ¾ stars, definitely something to rent or Netflix.

Get the trailer here.

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