Street of Shame

Japanese director Kenji Mizoguchi's favorite subject was always prostitutes, and for his last film, that's what he burrowed into. STREET OF SHAME tells of a whorehouse and an ensemble of prostitutes working the street surrounding it. Each one of them has a specific and desperate necessity to be a hooker, but the Japanese government is considering banning the practice. The head of the whorehouse tells the girls that he and the 'missus' are the ones that really care about them, and that the government considers them less than people, even though they provide a social service. One of the women works to send money to her son, who is ashamed of her. Another seems to do it for fun, but later this develops into a dark greed. Another is raising money for sick husband, and her starving son. And yet another flees the whorehouse to look for a better life, but is told at the employment office that she might as well just become a whore. The necessity that Mizoguchi implants into his characters is essential, and he shows scenes broken up from each other so that the head of the whorehouse can applaud his workers in one scene, and cheat them while calling them merchandise in another. Mizoguchi's masterful use of mis-en-scene is at play here as well, fathers of whores enter and speak to their clothed daughters about the elephant in the room while pictures of naked women adorn the walls. Mizoguchi's composition is naturalistic, and yet evocative of the shame that the women face, and what they are forced to do. STREET OF SHAME is a fine film, although perhaps a little long or under-plotted.
Street of Shame: ★★★

Crash

Like many other films, CRASH is so upsetting that second viewings are hard to come by. Its counterparts of this syndrome would be Darren Aronofsky's REQUIEM FOR A DREAM, or Lars Von Trier's ANTICHRIST. These films each have something within them that is either so revealing of raw humanness that to re-see such harrowing things would file under masochism. But, then again, many American films exhibit how masochistic the audience is. Any horror film, where an audience becomes frightened, is an act of semi-masochism. Tension is too. But CRASH is a special case because it varies from the expected horrors within a film. CRASH is, at its heart, a fantasy, but one that parades itself as existing within the real world. It tells of a man (James Spader) who crashes his car head-on into an oncoming vehicle. The man in the car (who is presumed to have not been wearing a seatbelt) flies out and dies immediately, but the woman (Holly Hunter) survives, and as she escapes the car, her breast pops out which Spader's character looks at in surprised pleasure. Later, the two are at the hospital. Scars and scabs adorn their bodies, and Spader's character still gets turned on by his predicament, screwing his wife, and later the woman whose husband died in the crash. He later discovers more people who share his fetish: car crashes, which turn him on sexually. He gets involved with all of these people because of the love of cars, and that the story sometimes doesn't make sense only supports the idea of sexual compulsion. Many who hate this film, I fear, would take it's ideas of cars turn people on seriously. But this is merely a substitute for any number of odd turn on's and its creepiness only serves to support how creepy some turn on's are, and what they lead to. CRASH is a brilliant film, although it is occasionally upsetting. It's a porno, but instead of naughty nurses entering as foreplay, the car crashes are the foreplay.
Crash: ★★★★

My Neighbor Totoro

MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO is one of the most beloved family films. Its creatures alone are iconic and beloved. It comes from Hayao Miyazaki, a great animator / director who has made many a great film. SPIRITED AWAY stands as his best in my opinion, for it fully flaunts its mythological, spirit premise, and is visually layered. MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO however, is subtle in its visual spectacle. It briefly shows its creatures, and creates an anxiety around them. In the film, two kids, 4 and 10, move to a new house in the country with their dad to be closer to the hospital their mother is in. The first time they enter the house, strange black soot sprites scurry about, and please the two girls (voiced by Elle and Dakota Fanning) rather than scare them. They both want to see these creatures, as they stand more as cherished guardians than creepy ghosts. There isn't much actual tension in the film, and its amazing how slowly it takes for the actual plot to develop. Miyazaki instead emphasizes the tone in his film, building an array of family truisms, country bumpkinism parading as wiseness, and fantastical imagery. The wonder of MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO also undermines it, because the spectacles are so brief that we, the audience, want so much more of this. In his other films, like SPIRITED AWAY for example, the creativity just flows and continually surprises. I understand the point of the brevity in MY NEIGHBOR TOTORO, but it feels rather minor, if not surprisingly an entertainment for the restless.
My Neighbor Totoro: ★★★1/2

13 Assassins

There's so much misplaced hubbub made about "serious" films, and their antithesis, CGI spectacles, but the major point of cinema is lost on these: that an extremely fun film is better than the decently profound film. By this real standard, INDIANA JONES is a better film than, say, THE KING'S SPEECH because it is more fun than THE KING'S SPEECH is profound. Japanese director Takashi Miike understands the importance of outstanding fun or outstanding anything within the realm of cinema, and thus he makes outstanding films, whether that be an outstanding action movie, or an outstanding art house film. With 13 ASSASSINS, he accomplishes this. Although it's a remake of a 1963 film of the same plot, Miike's film is fresh. It consists of two parts. The first arranges the action by introducing the assassins who must inevitably show up and have a reason to be assassins. They are samurai at the end of their age, but are enlisted by a politician to assassinate a brutal royal member: the brother of the Shogun. This man is pure evil, going about the worst acts imaginable that surpass evil and enter sadism. Because of this we get completely on the samurai side, as they spout phrases about honor and duty. The samurai come up with a plan for their assassination. They are only 13 men, facing 200 guards. They set up a town for their ambush, but Miike smartly keeps what they're doing under wraps, revealing only a bit of their intents. When the ambush finally comes, after we have been compelled to care about the various characters, and even given some comic relief, Miike brings on the surprises, joyously showing comprehensive, believable sequences of absolute brilliance. Furthermore, after he has already proven his storytelling prowess, he continues to develop his characters even in the second act. Even his statements about samurai warriors is a smart and worthy one of the rest of his film. 13 ASSASSINS is a terrific action movie.
13 Assassins: ★★★★

The Tree of Life

Much has been said of this film, and most of things sound like they came from inattentive people. To say that this film is complicated is true, but to say that it is hard to understand is not only a different statement from "it's complicated", but also, untrue. THE TREE OF LIFE is quite straightforward, even though it's done in a fragmented way. But for a film that run 2hrs 12min, at the end of it, if I didn't know what I'd watched, I'd have been pretty disappointed in myself. Furthermore, the film is quite the spectacle, the photography in the film is outstanding, making THE TREE OF LIFE one of the best looking films ever. I fear that this strength, however, and the complex nature of the film, has prompted many to stamp the film with a clean bill of health, an A+ in filmmaking, without considering the many flaws of the film. Just because so many parts of THE TREE OF LIFE are brilliant, that does not make the film as a whole brilliant.
The film tells the supposedly semi-autobiographical story of its director, Terrence Malick. In his hometown of Waco, TX, a family grows up, and tension is astir. A father, Mr. O'Brien (Brad Pitt) treats his children sternly in the tradition of demanding nature, and a mother, Mrs. O'Brien (Jessica Chastain) treats her children with grace, attempting to protect them from penetrating forces. The film begins with the O'Brien's receiving news of their son's death. They lament, and so does their son (Sean Penn), who thinks back on his childhood in personal, fragmented memories that are dreamy and etherial.
The film then goes off on a tangent, which attempts to place the trivialities of the O'Brien family against the force of the universe. This cosmic tale begins with the big bang, trillions of galaxies, and finally earth, boiling magma, dinosaurs, and ends with the O'Brien's. Mrs. O'Brien has countless voiceovers in a whispered, pathetic voice that is at times laughable, but when contrasted with the cosmos, seems endearing. The Book of Job is referenced here (not as well as in the great Coen brother film, A SERIOUS MAN), but to the effect that the lives of the O'Brien's are trivial.
Malick then takes us back to the O'Brien children when they were children, showing them grow from infants to young boys, fighting their father, fighting each other, and becoming concerned with simple objects that are obviously personal and reminiscent to Malick. This is also a well photographed sequence, but not as strong as the others in its obvious personal nature: which feels foreign to many who haven't experienced things the way Malick has.
Finally, the living son as an adult is still lamenting, and the earth is destroyed when it is enveloped by the expanding sun. In a scene so obviously akin to 2001's last sequence, the son discovers his parents, and his brothers on a beach: the world ends, but some solace has been found.
Terrence Malick's film is an obvious work of genius when it comes to the photography, but in terms of sheer storytelling, it is a great failure. This is still not a bad film, for this is a film of ideas and of memory: not of plot or story. Images and sounds have the ability to entrance, and by the end of the film, it is not Malick's tributes that matter, but the bits of humanity that, cherrypicked, show a man working to encompass mankind. His filmmaking is flawed, occasionally bilious as he is frantic and restless, but his ideas are sound.
The Tree of Life: ★★★1/2

The Iron Giant

THE IRON GIANT could almost be called the first Pixar movie. It comes from Brad Bird, who later directed THE INCREDIBLES and RATATOUILLE. Unlike the Pixar films, the animation is pretty indiscernible, but in story content, it stands above. The film begins with a raging meteor from space plummeting towards earth and falling into the sea. A local fisherman is lost in the sea, and as he radios for help, he spots a couple of lights, which reveal themselves to be eyes. The film has already established a sense of familiarity, placing the Iron Giant of the title, who had to inevitably reveal himself, in a low-key setting. Rather than playing everything up with a monster in a large city, rampaging through skyscrapers and city streets, the giant is placed into a small town, with smallminded people. The fisherman who saw the giant is dismissed because he's a drunk, but the giant becomes a mysterious figure of schoolboy lore in his short time in town. One boy, Hogarth, who watches monster movies late at night while his single-mom is at work, decides to investigate. He goes off into the woods, and discovers the giant. Because this is a children's film, Hogarth befriends the giant, hiding him from G-Men who invade the small town in search of the giant they view as a weapon. But the Iron Giant is no monster, and from the kindly Hogarth he discovers that he has a choice over who he can be, despite his prerequisites. This is a simple moral, but one that is handled with ease. It's a fine film, never preachy or patronizing to any of its characters.
The Iron Giant: ★★★1/2

Monster

The 2003 film, MONSTER, raises the question of whether we should sympathize with murderers. This is a bold question to raise considering the emotion within that subject, and in the film a naturalism allows it to be asked cleanly. It tells of Aileen Wuornos, spectacled as "America's First Woman Serial Killer" back in the 1990's. Here, she is played by Charlize Theron, who, in real life is quite beautiful, but in MONSTER appears as a grotesque creature. She is certainly a victim of circumstance, having been abused as a child, and being so impoverished she was forced to become a hooker. She talks to her buddy at the bar about how people don't understand the situation society puts people into and he, a Vietnam veteran, agrees, talking about how at some point, you have no choice and no other way to go. This seems overly-sympathetic, but the film doesn't shy away from ugliness, showing Aileen as an atrocious, amoral person, well-substantiated by the astonishingly natural performance by Theron: whose performance is not only a metamorphoses, but irrespective of the camera and the audience by simply conveying the persona of  Wuornos. As Wuornos creeps around town, she meets a young 18 year old living with relatives in order to cure her lesbianism, but Wuornos takes the girl in, promising fun times, money, and a barrage of fantasies. This is such an authentic look at a killer, that it is endearing in its truthfulness. It never does what so many other films have done with similar murderous subjects: glamorizing them. Take, for example, BONNIE & CLYDE, which took two real-life, trashy, ugly, murderers, and glamorized them with sexy actors: Faye Dunaway and Warren Beatty. MONSTER shows its subject for what she is: trash. And yet the film is not overcome but that, but works as an intriguing character study of not just Aileen Wuornos, but he people she managed to coerce.
Monster: ★★★1/2