Excursions in Film Illiteracy

You can't make a triad film starring Jordan Chan and Ekin Cheng without thinking of Young and Dangerous. Felix Chong's Once a Gangster wears that heritage proudly, but make no mistake: this isn't a story valorising the life of crime; it's a story making fun of it.

Roast Pork (Chan) opens a chain of restaurants with the help of his gang boss Kerosene (Alex Fong); years later, a successful businessman, Kerosene tries to force him to accept the Dragon Head Baton and take over. But this is no Election: Pork doesn't want the job. Nor does his rival, Sparrow (Ekin Cheng), who discovered economics during his 20-year murder stretch and wants to study at HKU.

The only candidate who does want the job is Scissor (Conroy Chan Chi-Chung). His chief lieutenant, however, is (in a nod to Infernal Affairs) an extraordinarily incompetent undercover cop. The others all know and deliberately feed him bad information; Scissor is oblivious.

All up, a very entertaining triad farce that pokes fun at many of the genre's conventions.

Five of the greatest detectives in the world -- Dick Charleston (David Niven), Milo Perrier (James Coco), Sidney Wang (Peter Sellers), Jessica Marbles (Elsa Lanchester) and Sam Diamond (Peter Falk), respectively parodying of The Thin Man, Poirot, Charlie Chan, Miss Marple and any number of Bogart characters -- gather in the home of Lionel Twain (Truman Capote) for dinner and a murder.

I've never seen a Neil Simon script I liked, but this one comes close. The interaction of the characters is marvellous, and Alec Guinness's blind butler provides a number of excellent routines. (You are? Benson, ma'am. Thank you Benson. No, no, no. Bensonmum. My name is Bensonmum. Bensonmum? Yes sir, Jamesir Bensonmum. Jamesir? Yes sir.)

Altogether less enjoyable are Truman Capote, who cannot act and does not fit, and the absurd five-twists-in-a-row ending. Still, great fun for mystery fans.

Much has been made of the way Scott Pilgrim "mimics the structure of a video-game": to win Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), the girl of his dreams, Scott (Michael Cera) must defeat the seven villains who make up the League of Evil Exes. I think it's better to say that it pays homage to classic videogames -- highlights include the theme from Zelda and enemies exploding into showers of coins -- along with film, TV and music.

There are explicit references to boss fights and leveling up, but the lack of those same references in a film like The Matrix made them no less appropriate. (The NES is the new Joseph Campbell.) Which is to say, I think most critics are taking it a little too seriously.

Even what appears to be terrible sexism -- Ramona is a chattel to be traded, is she? -- is belied by her eye-rolling cynicism: why won't these freaks leave her alone already? Part of what makes the film so much fun is the shock of the straight-men.

To some extent, Edgar Wright uses the Family Guy approach to comedy, where a pop-culture reference is assumed to be amusing purely by virtue of its presence. It's funny when the theme from Seinfeld plays over a mundane scene at Scott's apartment; I don't think it will be funny if I watch it again. The sheer absurdity of the vegan sequence certainly won't hold up to repeated viewings.

But as a once off, Scott Pilgrim was the most fun I've had in a cinema since Turkey Shoot.

Mitchell is now the (unwilling) leader of the Bristol vampires; George is the focus of much relationship drama; Annie is pursued by the Men Behind The Door who want to drag her, kicking and screaming, into her afterlife. Oh, and a psychopathic ex-priest is out to kill all of them.

The series has better legs than I'd have given it credit for, but it's more like a soap-opera every minute.

With all the hubbub over Inception, it seemed time to revisit Memento. After all this time, it's still likely Christopher Nolan's best film -- an enjoyably inverted structure, fine performances, a narrator who doesn't even know he's unreliable, and best of all (for Nolan) a clever twist that doesn't feel like a big reveal, but natural.

With all the hubbub over Inception, it seemed time to revisit Memento. After all this time, it's still likely Christopher Nolan's best film -- an enjoyably inverted structure, fine performances, a narrator who doesn't even know he's unreliable, and best of all (for Nolan) a clever twist that doesn't feel like a big reveal, but natural.

Hard to describe this film -- it starts as an homage to 70s martial arts flicks (replete with crazy combatants) but ends up a nostalgic look at ideals of community and the true value of martial arts. Funny in places and with some great combat, it's both more and less than I expected. Worth a look.

Alien was one of the greatest suspense/horror films of all time, Aliens one of the greatest actioners. Alien³ and Alien: Resurrection were sad testaments to promising ideas undercut by poor execution or studio interference, but they were at least interesting.

With Aliens vs Predator: Requiem the series has plummeted to what I can only hope is rock bottom. It's irredeemable: Aliens meets Varsity Blues, high school romance plus rednecks plus xenomorphs.

Avoid.

On Sunday the National Film and Sound Archive screened a rare colour print of this "Jane Bond" spy spectacular, borrowed from the Hong Kong Film Archive and translated at short notice by someone at the university.

The sequel to the 1965 heist film Black Rose, about two sister thieves in Irma Vep catsuits, the English title proves rather puzzling. This one is also about sister thieves in catsuits; it features no spies. A man's identity is stolen -- he is an insurance salesman.

But even if it isn't really a spy film, it's very much a James Bond film, with the same stirring 60s colour palette and the same ridiculous villain (this one dressed head to toe in gold sparkles). His minions are given explosive badges which he can detonate to ensure loyalty. They seem shocked (shocked!) when our heroines think to take theirs off.

It's pretty dull, and poor directorial decisions undercut its strengths; the first major fight scene, for example, while better than anything James Bond ever did, has the black-clad thieves barely visible in a large, dark room.

An interesting glimpse into a subgenre I didn't know existed, but on its own merits not so hot.

So this is what an Italian Ealing comedy looks like. Instead of a scheming Alec Guinness, we get Antonio Buonocore (the legendary comedian Totò), a residential building custodian. He does not set out to craft a nefarious plot; rather, shortly before learning that he will be forced out by the new owners, a tenant passes on the plates and paper he stole, long ago, when working at the mint.

The resulting "band of honest men" perpetrate their forgery, with predictably farcical consequences -- many of them deriving from the fact that Michele, Antonio's policeman son, is promoted to the anti-forgery squad.

Amusing, but didn't really work for me. The farcical elements are rather muted and I got the sense there was some Italian wordplay that did not translate.

The critical reception for Christopher Nolan's latest everyman "masterpiece" seems excessively effusive given the film's problems -- notably its lack of subtlety. Nothing is ever left for the audience to infer, not even the surprise/twist ending, which had been not just hinted at, but explained in detail not fifteen minutes earlier.

It's slick and enjoyable, and judging it a superior version of The Matrix seems fair: the same sort of light-weight philosophy, coated in chocolaty action/adventure/explosions so it goes down easy. Ultimately it fails in the same way; there is less there, not more, than meets the eye.

As a follow-up to City of God, City of Men disappoints. At its most ambitious it feels like The Wire of the favelas, but the rest of the time it's like a bad sitcom -- what zany antics will Acerola get up to this time? -- shot like a kids' series made by a third-rate film school dropout.

It's a shame that such (occasionally) interesting content could be so ruined by a series of dreadful stylistic decisions.

Guy Ritchie making a stylized gangster film? You don't say! Another Lock, Stock redux that falls far short of his previous efforts.

Unlikely circumstances leave Bud (Kevin Costner), with the one vote that will decide the presidential election between right-wing incumbent Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammar) and left-wing challenger Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). As stupid as it sounds, but ends up soaring to predictable heights of patriotism as Bud's daughter Molly (Madeline Carroll) teaches him the true value of Christmasdemocracy.

Before Shaun of the Dead, Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg collaborated on Spaced, a sitcom that starts with an odd-couple premise -- Tim (Pegg) and Daisy (co-writer Jessica Stevenson) pretending to be in a relationship to get a flat to share -- and ends up as two seasons of gaming/comics/pop-culture references and psychotic neighbours.

I don't understand the wide acclaim of the series (the current IMDb review is titled "Possibly the best thing to ever happen to television"). It has the muddy, jumbled, fast-cut look of a comic book movie shot on a budget and apparently without lighting, and the characters are generally unsympathetic.

Good, but not great.

Another day, another franchise installment. Like the other films in the series, Nimrod Antal's entry suffers badly for showing too much.

The film's introduction sees a half-dozen dangerous earthlings (mercenary, peacekeeper, yakuza, assorted murderers etc.) deposited in an alien game preserve. They're stalked through the wilderness by invisible hunters; it's tense, mysterious and rather exciting.

And then the predators are unveiled, their big mandibles and bigger helmets giving the impression of giant-sized killer bobble-heads. They're ridiculous, and Lawrence Fishburne's turn as a deranged survivor is, somehow, worse.

If you liked the original, you're in luck: this is an action movie torn straight from the summer of 1987. No matter how much the world changes, some things apparently stay the same.

A perilously inconsistent third season -- the dull filler episodes (e.g. "The Fly") are only the most obvious symptom of the series' decline; more troubling is the inconsistency of the characters, who seem to bounce between emotional extremes entirely at random.

Not bad, but if not for the cliffhanger ending I would not return for the fourth season.

Remember that movie Jumper? You might not know that the books it was based on were quite a lot darker; the protagonist's teleportation powers weren't rooted in the fun sort of escapism you might imagine, but the sort that you get when an abused child is terrified of their imminent death.

The Sword Bearer is like that, Witchblade by way of European art cinema, about a young man with "special powers" rooted in pain and childhood trauma. That does not excuse Sasha (Artyom Tkachenko) for generally acting like a pyschopath, but does explain why the film is more concerned with love found and lost and found (and lost) than with cutting people in half with sword-hands. Though that happens too.

If you can excuse the dodgy script and sometimes clumsy editing, it isn't too bad.

South Korean agent Lee Han-kyu (Song Kang-ho) and North Korean spy Song Ji-won (Kang Dong-won) meet for the first time during an arrest operation -- bungling it into a massacre loses Lee his job. Six years later they are reunited: now a private detective, Lee offers Song a job in hopes of using him to uncover the rest of his spy ring; Song accepts in hopes of helping his wife and child escape the North.

Though bookended by two smart, tense action sequences, the centre mass of the film is part comedy -- the sort you would expect from two spies pursuing opposing agendas in the same studio apartment -- and part drama; Lee does well as a sad old cop clinging to past glories, and Kang is convincingly torn between loyalty to his home country and to his own moral compass. The whole thing is set to a political backdrop of North Korean nuclear tests and illegal Vietnamese immigrants: life isn't perfect on either side of the border.

Not in the same league as JSA, but good entertainment with surprising depth.

Fun adaptation of the 80s TV show into a modern action movie, replete with large CG explosions. Mr. T, the original Baracus, came out against the film on grounds that it isn't family-friendly in the way the series was -- indeed, there's a lot of killing. But it's not excessive or gratuitous.

The ridiculousness of the action reaches the point of hilarity (e.g., flying a tank), and the running gags -- like Murdock (Sharlto Copely) being a complete lunatic -- are surprisingly good at getting laughs.

All up, this is the best popcorn action-fest in years.

One of the few Bond films I'd seen before, it's held up quite well: Messrs. Kidd and Wint (Putter Smith, Bruce Glover) provide the menace, Blofeld (Charles Gray) and his cat an absurd plot involving a diamond-focused laser, Plenty O'Toole (Lana Wood) the sex appeal and comic relief. It's a lot of fun.

Slick, offbeat Korean romantic dramedy about an assassin and the suicidal girl who hires him so she can go out with a bang. Good entertainment.

Fairly early film from Shinobu Yaguchi (Swing Girls) is cut from a similar cloth as his previous film, My Secret Cache. Satoru (Masanobu Ando) accidentally hits a yakuza's car and, through a very unlikely set of circumstances, ends up on the run with Shizuko (Hikari Ishida), a quiet nurse, and 1.3 thousand million yakuza yen.

Unfortunately, as a farce it's a slow, plodding one, more interested in the leads' developing romance than in the comedy. Worth it for fans.

The second of the Mesrine duology (after Killer Instinct) is more of the same, though rather more engaging and exciting than the first. Worth continuing with.

The first part of a stylish action-biopic of Jacques Mesrine (Vincent Cassel), the French John Dillinger. Cassel is excellent, but it's not a great film; the narrative arc just isn't strong enough to justify cleaving it from part two.

Another day, another Bond. Like most of the others, it doesn't hold up very well as anything but an exercise in cheesy lines -- still, amusing.

It must have come as something of a surprise that a martial arts action-biopic of the titular Wing Chun master would be a smash hit, but Ip Man was, and a sequel became inevitable.

Like the first, the film is blatant in its patriotic nationalism. Now settled in Hong Kong, our hero (Donnie Yen) has escaped the oppression of the Japanese invaders -- to face the smothering corruption of the British Empire.

Happily, however, there's a bit less politics and a lot more action, including a spectacular tabletop fight with the master of a rival school (Sammo Hung).

This is as good as it gets.

A rather dull political thriller about Danish party infighting and media influence. I probably wouldn't have watched it if I'd realised it was adapted by Nikolaj Arcel and Rasmus Heisterberg, the team also culpable for The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. This time Arcel also directs; the result is no better.

Part of what makes Steig Larsson's novel Men Who Hate Women (sold internationally as The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) so good is that it's a solid, slow procedural. When Blomkvist (Michael Nyqvist) begins investigating the disppearance of Harriet Vanger, he knows nothing; the eventual solution is discovered with painstaking slowness, one faded photograph and historical newspaper report at a time.

At the same time, of course, the novel is devastatingly visceral, particularly in its treatment of the titular men and the women they so painfully abuse. This is where Lisbeth Salander (Noomi Rapace) comes in, assisting Blomkvist after handling her own set of unfortunate circumstances: part victim, part rebel, vaguely sociopathic.

Unfortunately, I've only ever seen two films any good at the first of these, and only one -- David Fincher's Zodiac -- which adequately handled both the excitement of dry paperwork and the excitement of serial killers stalking a dark house.

Niels Arden Oplev's adaptation is not such a film. The script competently extracts the salient plot points, but in the process discards all the details that made the book worth reading. Not bad, but never good.

The second adventure of Boris Akunin's 19th century detective Erast Fandorin, The Turkish Gambit sees him hunting a Turkish agent, Anwar Effendi, on the battlefields of Bulgaria during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-88.

Quite entertaining, apart from the awful tradition of doing monotonic voice-overs of foreign language dialogue instead of using subtitles.