Category Archives: Movies

The Suicide Shop

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2 stars (out of 4)

(Released 2012)

This TIFF entry is a French-language animated 3-D musical comedy based on a French manga (IIRC).  The story is about a family that runs a shop specializing in poisons, nooses, weapons and other means of committing suicide, and about what happens when a boy with an incongruously sunny disposition is born into the family.

The film was made with obvious love and attention to detail (the English subtitles for the songs were done in rhyme), but the story is ultimately too thin and predictable to provide enough interest.  The black humour was essentially one joke told over and over (a customer matter-of-factly choosing suicide and a shopkeeper helpfully providing him with the means).

Winter’s Bone

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3.5 stars out of 4

(released 2010)

Starring Jennifer Lawrence in a break-out, Oscar-nominated performance, this well-paced, hyper-realistic film follows Ree, a teenager left in charge of her impoverished family, as she tries desperately to find her drug-dealing father.

This film was adapted from a novel and its depiction of hard-scrabble life in the Ozarks feels real.  Ree is tough and shrewd, but she’s still young and not sure of the rules that the other characters play by, which makes each encounter suspenseful.  As a viewer, I really felt that I had been immersed into a foreign world.

Jennifer Lawrence, as Ree, appears in virtually every frame and is riveting.  You can see why the producers of The Hunger Games saw Katniss in her – actually the characters have a lot of similarities – but this performance is the one that really shows off her talent.

Midnight’s Children

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2 stars (out of 4)

Midnight’s Children is based on a celebrated book (which I have not read) by Salman Rushdie, who also adapted the story for the screen.  The story is about a group of children, born at the stroke of midnight on the eve of India’s independence, who possess magical powers, and whose lives parallel that of the fledging nation.  Apparently, the book has famously been considered too difficult to adapt to the screen, and now I know why.

The movie suffers from a surfeit of story threads, so many that there is simply no time to fully develop or finish any one.  Ruthless editing at the screenplay level would have benefited this film  immensely.  For example, some characters (even entire generations) could have been eliminated or at least amalgamated with the same narrative effect.  Better movie editing would have helped too, as some gaps and disjointedness in the storyline could have been easily remedied if the filmmakers had tried.  It’s odd that some scenes are shot with such charm and attention to detail and yet some storylines are just left hanging.  I do wonder if budget or time constraints forced this movie to be released before it was really ready for an audience.

You could see the potential for a good movie (at least a 3 star movie) in there, but, as it is, it felt unfinished and unsatisfying.

In-flight movies – quick review

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Recently travelled overseas. On the way there, I watched a Japanese film starring Hiroshi Abe (Thermae Romae) and a princess-themed Hollywood movie (Snow White and the Huntsman). On the flight back, I watched another Japanese film starring Hiroshi Abe (Cheers from Heaven) and another Hollywood princess movie (Brave).

Thermae Romae (2012)

  • 3 stars (out of 4)
  • An ancient Roman bathhouse architect gets magically and repeatedly transported to modern-day Japan; and a somewhat parallel story about a manga artist he encounters there.
  • Best parts were the fish-out-of-water scenes. Great camera work and expressions on Hiroshi Abe. Makes you appreciate the wonder of modern devices, but also pokes fun at the silliness of some of them. Hilarious!
  • Waaay too much censorship in the modified version that I saw; even a nude painting was censored!
  • Some parts at the end may have dragged on a little longer than necessary, but I might have just been starting to get tired at that point.

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

  • 3 stars (out of 4)
  • Thankfully, not really about romance at all. Really about Snow White’s plight to free her people from the tyrannical rule of her stepmother, the queen.
  • Elements from the original fairy tale were mainly cursory. For example, there didn’t need to be seven dwarfs, but hey, this is “Snow White”, after all.
  • Small airplane monitor didn’t do justice to the special effects.
  • Great nuanced performance by Charlize Theron as Queen Ravenna
  • Great costuming on Snow White. Even though Kristen Stewart spent the movie grimy and tattered, her clothes looked really good!

Cheers from Heaven (2011)

  • 3 stars (out of 4)
  • Based on a true story.
  • Bento caterer suddenly decides to build a music studio for the local high school kids, borrowing money and volunteering his own time and effort. Basically, one hell of a random act of kindness.
  • Well, there are no special effects, so it isn’t necessary to see this on a theatre screen, but it is well-executed, with solid scripting and acting and an uplifting message to boot.

Brave (2012)

  • 2 stars (out of 4)
  • Some superficial similarity to La storia della Arcana Famiglia anime – a princess wants to participate in the contest for her own hand in marriage.
  • The original marriage issue resolved relatively easily, though. This film turned out to not really be about romance either! Like Snow White, it’s actually about the conflict between mother and daughter; except, of course, in Brave they are learning to understand each other, not trying to kill each other…
  • Many scenes in the second half were so dark that I couldn’t see anything on the small airplane monitor. Admittedly, that might have contributed unfairly to my low opinion of the movie.
  • Maybe I expected too much from Pixar, but I found the whole film to be mainly a yawn. Merida was a pretty good heroine, but there was nothing particularly original or amusing here.

Batman: The Dark Knight Rises review

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–Reviewed by Bini, July 27, 2012

***1/2

(Spoilers within)

This was a good movie in general, but suffered by comparison with its superior predecessor, The Dark Knight.   The acting was solid throughout, esp. by Michael Caine, and there were no glaring holes in the storyline.  There were nice bits of humour, mainly in the first half of the movie.  I thought the villain, Bane, was appropriately menacing and I even thought his strange accent added to his menace (and I recall thinking that he didn’t seem to be a very scary villain when I saw the trailer).

I had some difficulty following the plot toward the end because I couldn’t make out what the characters were saying during several crucial moments (also may have been because I was sleep-deprived).  I thought the final assault by the good guys seemed somewhat uninspired –  the police officers just seemed to charge into battle without any apparent strategy.  Also, Blake’s (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) argument with the guard at the bridge seemed anti-climactic (esp. when intercut with the police officers being mown down in battle).

While I was watching the movie, I had trouble figuring out what the bad guys’ plan was – it just seemed weird that they would put enormous resources into keeping Gotham under siege for 3 months, when their ultimate goal is just to nuke it in the end.  I guess the whole purpose of the siege was to torture Batman?  And for 3 months they fed all the police officers trapped underground?  Even if they didn’t feed them (let’s say food was snuck to them by good guys), why wouldn’t they kill them?

I need to go back and watch the first movie because I can’t remember why Ducard (Liam Neeson) wants to destroy Gotham.  Wasn’t it because the city had been overrun with Mafia and corruption?  But at the beginning of this movie, those problems had largely been dealt with successfully…  Anyway, I’m willing to suspend disbelief on this one and chalk it up to madness on the part of the bad guys.

All in all, these were relatively minor quibbles in a creative storyline (especially for a super-hero movie).  I liked the references to the French Revolution and the statement Christopher Nolan makes by comparing current day America to pre-Revolutionary France (I certainly didn’t expect biting social commentary in a super-hero movie).  I will definitely miss the dream team of Christian Bale, Michael Caine, and Morgan Freeman in the inevitable future Batman reboots.