I Saw the Devil (2011) dir. Jee-woon Kim
Starring Byung-hun Lee, Min-sik Choi, Gook-hwan Jeon
****
By Alan Bacchus
Call me a masochist, but I want the movies I watch to beat me senseless. Enjoyment of film comes from the ability of the filmmaker to manipulative one's emotions, be it through laughter, sadness or fear. I haven’t been pummelled this hard in a while. And damn does it feel good. Jee-woon Kim’s audacious I Saw the Devil is a thriller/action/horror film for the ages.
This is a two-and-a-half hour relentless car wreck of a film, so grisly and disturbing, but something you can’t help but rubberneck your head around to watch.
Soo-hyun (Lee Byung-hun) is a cop whose wife was murdered in a particularly brutal fashion. Her body was pummelled to unconsciousness in her car, then brought back to the killer’s layer, then brutally chopped up with a meat clever, then deposited in the river. There’s no question in Soo-hyun’s mind that he will make it his life’s goal to exact proper revenge for this crime.
This is also Korean cinema – which arguably redefined the revenge film genre with the Chan Wook-Park films in the 2000s – and director Kim plays into our expectations by ramping up the energy early on for some ass-kicking vengeance.
Soo-hyum systematically goes through the four likely suspects, beating confessions out of each of them. And surprisingly he meets the real killer, Kyung-chul (Old Boy’s Choi Min-sik), with relative ease and less than half an hour into the film. After beating him to near death, he stops and lets him go. Why? This is just the first act of Soo-hyun’s and director Kim’s grandiose plan of vengeance. An eye for an eye is just the tip of this iceberg.
The film then becomes an intense battle between serial killer and cop with Soo-hyum following Kyung-chul, who is still compelled to continue his exercise, including his need for rape, murder and torture. Each time the killer finds a new victim, Soo-hyum is there to save the day and administer more beat downs. Kyung-chul proves to be a wily opponent and one not to be messed with, and the tables are turned magnificently.
The lesson in this film is not subtle, as violence begets violence, a contagion that spreads from the guilty to the innocent, blurring all lines of good, evil and human decency. By the end, both opponents become sadists to the extreme, a quid pro quo of blood curdling torture taken to the extreme.
Kim leaves nothing off screen to infer. He boldly shows Achilles tendons being ripped apart, as well as fleshy stabbings through the hands, cheek and neck. We quickly become desensitized to maimed body parts as each scene becomes more gruesome than the next. The scene to end all scenes occurs midway through a suspenseful and near-insane knife fight in a taxi cab. This is a scene to be seen before it can be believed.
Kim’s filmmaking skills are of the highest order, elevating the picture above mere torture porn. His pacing and ability to create a visceral impact to not just the gore, but also the intense urgency at play for both characters is remarkable, resulting in a picture that is more impactful than anything I’ve seen on screen this year.
Blue Velvet (1986) dir. David Lynch
Starring: Kyle McLachlan, Isabella Rossellini, Dennis Hopper, Laura Dern
****
By Alan Bacchus
Early on in this film, after we see Kyle McLachlan’s character, Jeffrey Beaumont, find a human ear just sitting there in the pristine high-cut grass in his small Midwestern town, David Lynch’s roving camera magnificently pushes inside the ear. As we move in, Alan Splet’s delicious sound design drones louder and louder, morphing into the prickly sound of insects munching on grass, all of which is amplified and engrossed to creep us out. It’s perhaps the most signature image and sounds of David Lynch’s career, expressing his career-long fascination with finding nightmarish evil behind the fronts of purity and innocence.
After suffering the indignation of failing to deliver on the big budgeted sci-fi franchise in waiting, Dune, in 1986 Lynch seemed go back inward, summoning latent fears and closeted fetishes for inspiration. The result is one of his three or four masterpieces – and the film that first defined the term ‘Lynchian’.
Blue Velvet lays the stylistic and thematic groundwork, which he would expand upon in his later films. Of course, the Lumberton locale, which Lynch opens up and, like his rotten apple visual metaphor, becomes the environment for his seminal Twin Peaks TV series.
The actual plotting of the film, lead character Jeffrey Beaumont's investigation and the movements and motivations of the nefarious elements of the story, quickly fall to the background once Lynch starts the film’s headlong cinematic momentum. Starting with the third visit to the apartment, the film goes deeper into Lynch’s subconscious, and by the time Jeffrey’s fateful night is over we don’t care about who the ‘well-dressed’ man is or who the 'yellow' man is.
The wonder of Blue Velvet lays in Lynch's amazing control of tone. And it doesn’t take him long to hypnotize us. The opening credit sequence is masterful. An ominously dark and brooding music cue laid over his flowing curtain of blue velvet is enchanting. The film then segues into a dreamlike melancholy of the slow-moving rural life in Lumberton.
Throughout the picture Lynch moves us back and forth between these two extremes with supreme confidence and command of the medium.
The performances are typically subdued. Jeffrey isn’t so much a developed character as another pawn for Lynch to use to express his mood. His love story with Sandy allows Lynch to craft his grandiloquent melodramatic set pieces. The house party dance scene, for instance, set to Angelo Badlamenti and Julee Cruise’s swooning dream song, could melt butter. It’s a scene that takes us out of the accelerating criminal plotting for a brief pause of delicious melodrama. Why? Just because. And we love David Lynch because of it.
Sit this scene next to one of Dennis Hopper's maliciously over-the-top sadistic fuck-tirades and it's the cinematic equivalent of bipolar syndrome.
Before Quentin used pop music as a counterpoint to violence Lynch did it masterfully here. Who ever thought Roy Orbison or Ketty Lester could be made so frightening?
Looking back, the reuse of Lynch’s motives in his subsequent films arguably tempers the effect of this film. It’s debatable, but few would doubt the combination of all his motifs reached its zenith in Mulholland Drive – a film more powerful, cynical and therefore haunting than Blue Velvet. And so, watching Blue Velvet for the first time versus watching Blue Velvet after seeing Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, Mulholland Drive and Inland Empire is not the same experience. Thankfully, I still have memories of that first viewing. To this day if I ever here Bobby Vinton crooning Blue Velvet again, it now brings a spine-tingling sense of danger, which, in combination with the sound of nitrous oxide hissing from a gas tank, will likely have me running out the door.
Blue Velvet is available on Blu-ray from MGM/20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
Cars 2 (2012) dir. John Lasseter, Brad Lewis
Featuring voice talents of: OwenWilson, Larry the Cable Guy, Michael Caine, Emily Mortimer, Eddie Izzard, John Turturro, Bonnie Hunt
**
By Alan Bacchus
The first Cars film wasn’t that great, yet after repeated viewings at the behest of my toddler I learned to appreciate the tender message about the feelings of obsolescence and being left behind in an increasingly fast-paced world. In the first film Lightning McQueen, the pre-eminent cocky race car driver, represented the exciting yet superficial life of celebrity and the aw shucks folks of Radiator Springs, a small dead town on Route 66, represented the value of growing roots and staying true to home.
Years later, after Cars arguably became one of Pixar’s most popular ancillary profit centres (after Toy Story), there arose a need for a sequel. In this film, John Lasseter (Pixar’s co-founder/creative leader and director of this film) expands the Cars world, creating an international spy story barely even related to the previous film.
The star of this picture is actually Tow Mater (Larry the Cable Guy), the rusted tow truck/country hick who loves to tag along with the fancy-pants McQueen. After seeing the revered Italian racer Francesco Bernoulli disrespect his buddy on TV, he challenges him to an all-star race of sorts with McQueen. This takes McQueen, reluctantly bringing along Mater, to far flung international locations like Japan and England.
Lasseter derives some typical fish-out-of-water hijinks exposing the country bumpkin to the extravagance of Tokyo. While gallivanting around town, Mater accidently gets recruited by a James Bond-type spy, Finn McMissile (Michael Caine), to help stop the maniacal world domination plot of a clandestine organization.
Racing is secondary to Mater’s stumbling around with the international British spies. If you enjoy Larry the Cable Guy's self-effacing white trash humour you’ll at least tolerate this film. Lightning McQueen is barely in it – same with those delightfully warm characters of Radiator Springs, including Sally and Mack.
Even the visuals leave much to be desired. Usually with each Pixar film we can see a noticeable step forward in technical achievement in computer animation. Cars 2 is a step backward, less impactful visually than any of the recent Pixar films, and even less so than the original movie. Most of the action is presented in an over-the-top hyper reality, whereas the original film was mostly photorealistic and contained in the physical geography of the Nascar racetrack, the desert highway or the small town of Radiator Springs. The opening action scene in this film, which takes place on a freighter barge, features overly produced gunfire and explosions. Most of this film is painted with this type of brush.
As such, Cars 2 feels like just a cartoon instead of a movie. In fact, it feels like simply an expanded version of the accompanying Pixar shorts, Cars Toons – Mater’s Tall Tales, bite-sized morsels of Cars-action featuring Mater and Lighting in fun adventures.
Cars 2 is the only across-the-board uniform failure from Pixar. Still, after 15 years and 12 movies, that’s a pretty good run.
Cars 2 is available on Blu-ray from Walt Disney Home Entertainment.
Europa aka Zentropa (1991) dir. Lars von Trier
Starring: Jean-Marc Barr, Barbara Sukowa, Udo Kier, Eddie Constantine, Ernst-Hugo Järegård, Jørgen Reenberg, Erik Mørk and Max von Sydow
****
By Greg Klymkiw
In 1990, Canadian filmmaker Guy Maddin was directing his tragedy of the Great War Archangel which told a tale of lovers afflicted with severe mustard gas apoplexy who forget, at any given moment, who precisely they are in love with. To ensure his actors were always in a trance, he secured, with my deft finagling (in the spirit of full disclosure I was the film's producer) the services of a renowned hypnotist (who, due to a binding non-disclosure policy cannot be named) to place Maddin's on-camera charges in a state of waking and walking sleep during the entire shoot of the film. Complete and utter submission was the goal. Archangel was in black and white, occasionally colour tinted, replete with post-dubbed dialogue (also performed under hypnosis), a cornucopia of in-camera special effects including double (and triple) exposures, matte paintings, rear and front screen projection, as well as a series of optical shots. At the same time, across the pond from the Dominion of Canada, one Lars von Trier was making Europa (renamed Zentropa for its North American release) which, like Maddin's film, was set in a strange never-never land of historical revisionism (though in post-WWII Germany as opposed to Maddin's WWI/Russian Revolution cusp period). It too was in black and white (though with dollops of full-blown colour rather than colour tinting) and was, like Maddin's film, bursting at the seams with wild in-camera and optical effects.
Where they differed, and yet existed in the same zeitgeist, was this: Maddin hypnotized his actors whilst von Trier rendered a movie that literally hypnotized the audience. The results were identical. Much like any living subject of hypnotism, audience-members who opened themselves willingly to both cinematic experiences were, in fact, under the power of suggestion.
Upon first seeing Europa back in the 90s, I was initially coaxed into the alternately pleasurable and disturbing states of waking and walking sleep and as such, became so obsessed with Lars von Trier's vision that I fought hard on subsequent viewings to deflect the hypnotic power in order to fully experience his dazzling, sumptuous genius in all its glory. Twenty years after my initial exposure to his great film, I am not only happy to report that it holds up magnificently, but has deepened for me to such dizzying degrees that I am convinced it is one of the most stunning works of cinematic art I have ever seen.
Over the years, both von Trier and Maddin have been fêted with screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival and its Cinematheque. This month, the work of the Danish bad boy genius of cinema is being featured in a TIFF Bell Lightbox retrospective entitled "Lars von Trier: Waiting for the End of the World" running until November 19. Europa is just one of several pictures in this series (including his latest masterpiece Melancholia) and this movie in particular, (playing Saturday November 12, 2011 at 8:00 PM and Thursday November 17 @ 9:15 PM) will be screened as it MUST be seen - on a big screen and projected in glorious 35mm. This is especially important given the special quality in-camera and optical effects have over the much colder digital approach to rendering screen magic today. It is, finally, the warmth of cinema in the format of its birth that allows us to be enveloped in fluffy white blankets of forgetfulness (in Maddinesque parlance) and the sheer joyful terror of being forced into a unique, trance-like state of both yearning and forgetfulness that is, indeed, TRUE magic.
Europa begins with the hypnotic tones of a voiceover belonging to Max von Sydow (The Exorcist himself and longtime Ingmar Bergman star), whilst we slowly cascade over train tracks engulfed in darkness, save for the soft light beaming gently over the centre of the frame. Lars von Trier plunges us into the black tunnel that is Germany just after World War II. Leopold Kessler (Jean-Marc Barr), an American of German descent has come to his expatriate father's homeland and taken a job as a railway employee under the tutelage of his persnickety, alcoholic Uncle (Ernst-Hugo Järegård). He meets and falls in love with a fetching film-noir-like femme fatale, Katharina Hartmann (Barbara Sukowa) who is the daughter of the German rail magnate Max Hartmann (Jørgen Reenberg). He is taken into the family with open arms. Max, in particular, is drawn to the notion of Germany becoming more international and is impressed with Kessler's desire to bring his North American, yet German-influenced know-how to the reconstruction of the country.
This is in vast contrast to the American armed forces occupying the Fatherland. The American commander mysteriously presiding over all matters of a reconstructive variety is Colonel Harris (played by the brilliant, gravel-voiced American expatriate tough guy actor Eddie Constantine, he of Lemmy Caution fame in numerous French movies like Alphaville). Harris knows all too well that Max used his train company Zentropa to transport Jews to concentration camps, but he also realizes that a vast majority of Germany's populace had been, to varying degrees, complicit in the activities of the Nazi regime. He seeks to protect Max since he believes this guilt-ridden rail baron is ultimately important to the American goal of reconstruction. Harris is also embroiled in a secret fight against a mysterious group of German partisan terrorists called Werewolf and while the young American Kessler trains on the railways and romances Katharina, his services are secured to delve into and expose the forces of evil.
Europa is both important and original on numerous fronts. In terms of theme and content, it is one of the most indelible screen portraits of post-World War II Germany ever committed to celluloid. Delivering a narrative which, I think, more than ably points a finger at America's complicity in the evils of Nazi Germany, especially in terms of making it clear how many Americans owned munitions factories IN Germany and did business with the Nazis under the radar. The overwhelming sense that we are in a nightmare world where an occupying force bullies the occupied, yet represents the corporate interests of the occupier is precisely what Lars Von Trier exposes. For all the lip service paid to the needs of assisting Germany with reconstruction, he presents a portrait of American military goons exercising the same sort of encroachment upon basic civil liberties as the Gestapo. While he does not veer away from Germany's rightful guilt in supporting one of the most foul regimes in all of recorded history, his film is not afraid to point a finger at America's military regime and its fascistic defence of America interests - in particular, the corporate interests - using reconstruction as a thin veil over basic greed. Unrestricted sovereignty was not ultimately granted to Germany until reunification in 1990 - a point not lost on von Trier. Both the narrative and mise-en-scène etch a chilling portrait of occupation - juxtaposing the German adherence to bureaucracy with the American adherence to back-door dealing and how both are equally flawed, but also at odds with each other within the context of the political situation.
Mixed into this heady brew of conflicting ideals, von Trier never neglects the thematic elements of complicity, betrayal and redemption. The Americans - in particular, the character of Colonel Harris - are complicit only in their exploitation of the situation while on the German side, complicity is a heavy cross that all the other characters must bear. Betrayal runs rampant throughout the narrative, though von Trier wisely explores this theme within the tropes of film noir elements and melodrama. I place an accent on "wisely" here because at the time the film was made, Germany was on the cusp of reunification and the issues he deals with had repercussions on a world wide scale, but by placing them within this stylized framework, he created a work that is not ephemeral in its power, but is, indeed, truly universal. In this sense, Europa feels less a film of its time, but rather, a film for all times. For example, while I feel the best works of American cinema in the 70s more than adequately capture the overwhelming paranoia of the period WITHOUT feeling dated, these are films directly from the periods of history and culture they represent.
Making a film in any contemporary context and looking back upon a period of history with contemporary eyes, requires an emphasis upon recreating the past world with indelible historical accuracy on as many levels as possible. However, when placing works dealing with historical issues and made during different historical periods - especially a film about the beginnings of occupation in Germany made at a time of German reunification - framing its narrative and themes in an almost post-modern aesthetic allows the artist a context to create a work that's truly visionary. This, is what Lars von Trier accomplishes. Reading reviews from the time of Europa's original release, one sees how even the best of the best acknowledge von Trier's visual gifts, but dismiss and/or outright ignore his narrative and political savvy. This, of course, did not keep the film from finding an audience at the time, but what's phenomenal to me is just how ahead of its time the film actually was, and in a sense, still is. Certainly viewing the film in the context of the current situation we face in terms of the economy, terrorism, the corporate imperialism of America, the domination of the New World Order and the horrendously obvious notion that war is ultimately all about money, Europa is without question a film for our times and, no doubt, will be so in the future as well.
The idea in certain circles, a confederacy of dunces to my way of thinking, that there's something wrong with melodrama is both myopic and elitist. There is, to be sure, good melodrama and bad melodrama, but it is a worthy genre and one that can work quite perfectly when presenting important historical and political themes. I suspect that von Trier and Maddin might well be cinema's leaders in understanding the importance of utilizing melodrama within stories dealing with political, historical and/or humanist subjects. Neither are afraid of filling their work with retro melodramatic devices and doing so, not with tongue in cheek, but playing them straight. When this approach sings ever-so sweetly, it is the humour - both natural and satirical - that comes to the fore - sans the empty spoof-like manner which is the domain of the holier-than-thou, the better-than-that and all the other head-nodding-eye-winking purveyors of mediocrity.
Europa is deliciously blessed with both the crazed big emotions of Douglas Sirk and the humanity of Carl Dreyer. Most amazingly, there are several moments of suspense that even owe their existence to the feverish qualities of D.W. Griffith - notably, several sequences involving the arming of a bomb and the subsequent attempt to disarm the bomb. Von Trier throws in everything including the kitchen sink to extend our dread and anticipation. Our desire for relief to said tension hits stratospheric heights. In addition to the visual flourishes reminiscent of another age, the score is sumptuously derived from a variety of original and pre-recorded pieces - most notably and pointedly from Bernard Herrmann's haunting music from Hitchcock's dreamy expressionistic thriller Vertigo. The stylized performances - aided further with the use of hollow dubbing - are a marvel and in particular, Jean-Marc Barr as the addled protagonist delivers what surely must be one of the bravest performances I've ever seen. He runs the gamut of emotion, but often in a controlled and intentionally stiff manner. He allows himself to be the puppet of Lars von Trier and as such, takes the thankless, but often surprising and engaging task of representing our (we, the audience) point of view. He is our way in to this world and for an actor to expose himself and yield so uncompromisingly to a filmmaker's vision is brilliantly, stunningly, delightfully foolhardy and ultimately, what makes his performance and the film itself so great.
This is razzle-dazzle filmmaking at its best. The bonus is plenty of food for thought and the cherry on the sundae is the occasional laughs and tears von Trier elicits from us. Some have charged that von Trier's approach is, in this, and other films, cold.
Ladies and gentlemen, I give you - once again - the aforementioned confederacy of dunces.
One of the more extraordinary achievements of Europa is the narration. It works two-fold. First, it is a hypnotic device - literal hypnotism and I'd argue that anyone open to the picture on a first viewing will, indeed, succumb. Secondly, it's a wonderful use of the great, though rare literary tradition of a second person point of view. In contemporary American literature this was popularized by Jay McInerney in his brilliant 1984 debut novel Bright Lights Big City. The book announces its bold style and brash approach in these extraordinary opening sentences:
"You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. But here you are, and you cannot say that the terrain is entirely unfamiliar, although the details are fuzzy."
The idea of a detached voice speaking directly to its central character in order to relay the narrative was, even in the 80s, not a new approach, but it was one that thrust the pelvis of its literary conceit in the faces of readers all over the world and frankly, proved to be an ideal way of telling the story of a young man in the midst of a cocaine-addled phase of his life. As von Trier's central character Kessler is plunged into a similarly opaque world, we constantly hear Max Von Sydow's "you-are-getting-sleepy"-styled hypnotic offscreen orders to both the character and viewer. In 80s New York, it's coke-fuelled headlong dives into nightclubs. In Post-World War II Germany, its the strange, dreamy, addled world of occupation.
Certainly William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! is replete with both second person point of view and narrative techniques and is, in a sense, very close to the territory von Trier explores in Europa. Where Faulkner's novel is rooted in myth, one in which its central character is representative of the myth of the deep South and resulting in his ultimate, almost inevitable demise, von Trier's Europa seems similarly rooted in myth - in particular that of the Greek goddess of Europa who is seduced by a horny, old Zeus. That Europa herself, in mythic terms, was from a long, noble lineage is also a fascinating element in von Trier's film. We have Kessler, for example, seduced by his German roots and his American need to "do good" (or, one might even suggest the deeper American need to "meddle") and his attraction to the female heir to the Hartmann's rail empire.
In Faulkner's words:
"You cannot know yet whether what you see is what you are looking at or what you are believing."
Beat by beat, shot by shot - this is Europa. Images we will never forget rush by - Kessler dashing in silhouette in front of a huge illuminated clock, a scarlet ocean of blood rushing from under a door, a harrowing walk through mysterious cars on the Zentropa train full of caged Holocaust victims, corpses of "werewolf" partisans hanging from knotted ropes round their snapped necks, exquisitely composed Josef von Sterberg-like shots of Barbara Sukowa resembling Marlene Dietrich come-to-life, the desperate flailing of a drowning man as he seeks life and instead finds redemption and finally, the most gorgeous of all - a midnight Christmas mass in a bombed-out cathedral as puffs of snow gently fall upon the devout.
We cannot know yet what we see is what we're looking at, or what we're believing.
Melancholia (2011) dir. Lars Von Trier
Starring: Kirsten Dunst, Kiefer Sutherland, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, John Hurt
**½
By Alan Bacchus
Lars Von Trier is back to titillate us with another meta-spiritual film featuring a tortured woman on an emotional downward spiral to oblivion. Last time it was Charlotte Gainsbourg battling the obsessive therapy of her despicable husband in Antichrist. This time it’s Kirsten Dunst as a bride on her wedding day, which rapidly goes from the highs of nuptial bliss to utter despair and humiliation – all the while another planet in the celestial skies has been approaching Earth on a collision course.
It’s another bold conceptual stroke from the same hand that dared to make a three-hour movie on a soundstage with no sets (Dogville). Immediately we get the same kind of feeling we got from Von Trier’s Dogme 95 films in the late ‘90s. We’re introduced to Justine (Dunst) and Michael (A. Skarsgård) in a limo on the way to their wedding taking place on a spectacular mansion estate. It’s an affable scene showing the inability of the driver to fit the lengthy car into the entranceway to the grounds. Von Trier’s handheld camera and jump-cuts recall his work in The Idiots, Dancer in the Dark and Breaking the Waves. The film also shares the optimistic tone that opened those films compared to the eventual trough of depression that ended them. As such, this scene induced a certain excitement about where Von Trier would take us this time.
The film is structured formally into two distinct halves, titled appropriately using the two sisters’ names, Justine (Dunst) and Claire (Gainsbourg). Justine’s story depicts the wedding, which, after the fun romp at the entranceway in the opening, devolves through the petty family squabbles of Justine’s divorced parents and the obsessiveness of her brother-in-law, John (Sutherland).
From the get-go, something is wrong with Justine. Everyone treats her with kid gloves and walks on eggshells around her. For no apparent reason she starts to exhibit signs of manic depressive behaviour. Instead of comfort, everyone from Claire to John, and even her new husband, rejects her. It’s a deeply tragic ending to this chapter, but it sets up her eventual redemption in the second half. Unfortunately, we never get to the cause of Claire’s melancholia, or at least we never receive the satisfaction implied by Von Trier’s very mysterious setup.
Claire’s story begins in the fall-out after the wedding. After the guests have left, Claire finds herself babysitting Justine in the estate with her rotten husband who obsesses about the encroaching planet in the sky. Although John is convinced that the planet will pass by Earth safely, Justine is not. When it’s clear to Claire that Earth is doomed, including her and her son, Von Trier moves into the heightened realm of cinematic existentialism.
A powerful reversal occurs for Justine, as she rises up from the depression of her wedding to accept her fate with grace. For Claire, the realist, she can only see death and destruction, which enables her own breakdown.
Melancholia works best on this conceptual level. Unfortunately, Von Trier leaves much to be desired in execution. Sadly, his film is bogged down by a heavy running time (134 minutes) without a full narrative to support it. To put it simply, not much happens, and since we know where the film will end it becomes a struggle to engage in the journeys of the characters when they’re drawn out to such an excessive length.
It’s a shame because like Antichrist, Melancholia features some of Von Trier’s most beautiful and profound moments. His use of Wagner, which conveys the sad tone implied by the film’s title, fits perfectly. His expressive use of extreme slo-motion in the opening scene is stunning, and the actual ‘disaster’ moment is a climax of extreme power leaving the viewers awestruck at the end.
Melancholia opens this Friday in Toronto via E1 Entertainment.
What can we possibly expect from a film entitled Harakiri, that terrible act of ritual suicide that brings honour in death to dishonoured Japanese samurai? It promises to be a grisly movie, and indeed in the opening we’re witness to a gruesome botched suicide. It’s a horrific scene, which sets up Kobayashi's intriguing story of redemption and revenge.
Harakiri finds Hanshiro Tsugumo, a wandering ex-Samurai (aka Ronin), arriving at the estate of the wealthy Iyi clan looking to commit suicide via harakiri in their honourable courtyard. To the clan leader the visit reminds him of a similar request from a younger man, Motome Chijiiwa, who, like Hanshiro, wanted to die by his own sword in their courtyard. Unfortunately, Motome's death, as told by the elder, was less than honourable – a grisly, drawn-out death due to his dull 'bamboo' blade, a fact that does not sit well with Hanshiro.
Recalling the flashback structures of Rashomon, Citizen Kane and All About Eve, for most of the film the backstory of Motome is revealed while Hanshiro is sitting down in the courtyard recounting his story to the elders. As we learn the details of how Hanshiro came to be at the same place as Motome, Kobayashi opens up his remarkably tragic story – the fall of a once-great warrior clan, victims of the country's dismissal of its warrior heroes, the Samurai, who, as with Ronin, in their obsolescence would resort to such painful forms of self-mutilation.
The film, which won the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes, has been hailed as one of the great films made during this 'Golden Age' of Japanese cinema, a time of Kurosawa, Ozu, Mizoguchi and Ichikawa. Thematically, the film is filled with Japanese cultural touchstones of death, dishonour, authority and rituals, themes that connect the feudal system to the then state of Japanese politics in the post-war period.
The modern metaphors require some digging or knowledge of Japanese political and cultural history, but the pain and suffering inflicted on Motome, and Hanshiro's innate need for vengeance, resonate loudly.
Harakiri was made in 1962, arguably one of the greatest periods of cinematography in film history. It comes at the end of the black and white era, when cinematographers absolutely mastered the medium. In comparison to the lesser quality colour film stock at the time, a film like Harakiri stands out as a masterwork of visual art.
Kobayashi's use of his 2.35:1 widescreen frame is maximized, using wide angle lenses and deep-focus photography to open up the audience to the world in his frames. The exacting nature of the lighting complements the precise camera movements. Kobayashi's elegant camera creeps in and out of his characters, expressing all the intrigue and suspense of the film's clever plotting while expressing the heightened emotions of the characters.
It's a long picture, running two hours and fifteen minutes, but by the final bloody fight scene at the end, which pits Hanshiro against the entire Iyi clan, the film pays off with maximum flare. It’s an awesome display of carnage, as bloody-lust satisfying as any of the great action sequences in Akira Kurosawa's oeuvre (i.e., Sanjuro, Seven Samurai, Ran).
Harakiri is available on Blu-ray from The Criterion Collection.
Super 8 (2011) dir. J.J. Abrams
Starring: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, Kyle Chandler, Riley Griffiths, Ryan Lee, Glynn Turman, Noah Emmerich
***
By Alan Bacchus
J.J. Abrams’ painstaking love letter to the Steven Spielberg films of old couldn't live up to the true magical experience of say ET or Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but he’s not allowed to try and damned if he doesn’t come really, really close. Abrams does such a good job of aping the kids vs. adults theme Spielberg popularized in the ‘80s, it brought me back to those summer days as a suburban kid playing guns in the backyard, blowing off firecrackers illegally and just about getting into any kind of dangerous shit I could think of. Super 8 is not perfect, but it makes for the most highly entertaining summer film of the year – a genuine love for film, filmmaking and just being a kid.
That said, the film doesn't quite hold up on second viewing, especially on Blu-Ray - thus losing a 'half-star'. Much of the retro-freshness is lost on the small screen, and the deficiencies in plotting show their wear. It's no less an admirable third film from JJ Abrams though, gradually improving his big screen filmmaking skills.
We’re in a classic small Midwestern American town in the ‘70s, an idolized working class suburban world where kids can ride bikes safely without helmets and without adult supervision. The kids in this film are not unproductive brats but highly motivated pre-teen geeks who have channelled their love of horror and monster movies into their own filmmaking coterie. Joe, Charlie, Preston and their 10-year-old friends are in the midst of shooting their latest 8 mm zombie film for the Cleveland Super 8 Film Festival. Charles (Griffiths), the fat kid, is the director and Joe (Courtney) is the special effects guy. After roping the unattainable blonde Alice (Fanning) into the mix they have their full cast and are ready to film their big emotional scene at night at the train station. The joy of having a real train pass behind the camera to achieve ‘production value’ turns to tragedy when the train derails and crashes in a spectacular accident.
After the accident, funny things start to happen in the small town. Mysterious military men show up to take scientific samples, mysterious electrical disturbances cause power outages and a gnarly beast seems to be chasing away dogs and abducting people from the town. Joe and Charlie have a theory that it’s an alien experiment gone wrong and a government cover-up. Like ET, it’s the kids versus the adults, using their guile, ingenuity and naiveté to save the town and the kidnapped townsfolk from both the beast and those despicable military men.
J.J. Abrams is so reverential to Spielberg it was almost mandatory that Spielberg be involved to shepherd this project as producer. Abrams cherry picks plotting and character elements from Jaws, ET, Close Encounters, Goonies and even Jurassic Park to create a fun, thrilling and supremely entertaining chimera of a film. The town hall scene in which the police deputy answers the questions of the people apes similar scenes in Jaws and Close Encounters. The sharply paced montage scenes pay homage to the great preparation scene in Close Encounters. And a confrontation with the beast in a control unit trailer reminds us of the same scene in The Lost World: Jurassic Park. The list could go on and on, but none of it feels like theft. The genuine heart brought to the picture by the fine acting of the children relieves Abrams of crafting a purely technical exercise. Such was the case with the awful steroid-infused Star Trek reboot a couple of years ago.
It’s not completely a Spielberg film either, as Abrams’ own stylistic hallmarks are in full effect. The train wreck, for instance, feels remarkably like the plane crash scene in the pilot episode of Lost. If anything, the wreck is almost over-produced. Lasting minutes, it’s a bombardment of explosions and flying cars tumbling continuously for much longer than what would happen in reality. But he can’t be faulted for pulling out the stops to create a spectacle. As usual, he shoots the film in wide-angle anamorphic and along with it, more lens flares. Though distracting in Star Trek, they actually fit the mood in this film and reference Spielberg’s own play with light to highlight emotion and create a tone of magic escapism.
The film threatens to fall apart in the final act, where the plotting fails us. For example, we see a huge army firing guns and attacking what feels like an army when it’s really just the one beast. The beast, which the kids learn is actually benevolent, never develops into the sympathetic character we’re meant to believe. And the creation of his spaceship just doesn’t make sense. That said, there’s a surprisingly profound moment between the beast, Joe and his treasured pocket watch that hits all the right emotional buttons. Again, it’s not at the level of ET’s dramatic departure from earth, but it’s touching nonetheless.
Super 8 is available on Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
It’s a Wonderful Life (1946) dir. Frank Capra
Starring: James Stewart, Donna Reed, Lionel Barrymore
****
by Alan Bacchus
The timeless classic It’s a Wonderful Life is essential viewing for the Christmas season. It follows the life story of humble family man George Bailey, who, throughout his life, gave more than he received. And in his moment of deepest despair he’s allowed to see the effects of his goodwill. Though known as a holiday film, it’s a perfect piece of cinema on its own and legitimately one of the greatest films of all time.
Existentialism courses through the veins of this picture. Capra and his writers give us a full hour and a half of story before revealing the heart of the film. We see George at the benchmark moments in his life when his selflessness has furthered the lives and careers of others. There’s his brother’s sledding accident, during which George saved his life but caused irreparable damage to his own ear. Before going off to college George stays in the town he desperately wants to leave so he can bail out his father’s old Building Savings and Loan business. On the day of his wedding George forgoes his honeymoon so he can stem a potential bank run against the business – and he personally loans $2000 from his own savings to help the community. But most importantly, he sacrifices his hopes and dreams of becoming an engineer in order to help prevent his community from falling under the power of the monopolistic money baron, Mr. Potter.
These events are carefully written and planned out in the screenplay so they will pay off in the famous third act, which most of us are familiar with. The angel we heard talking to us at the beginning of the film comes to Earth like the ghost of Christmas past to help George see the good he has brought his friends and family. The film is existential because despite the divine intervention, it’s George’s direct and indirect actions in his life that ultimately save him from financial ruin. Although the benign angel, Clarence, allows George to see the effect of his goodwill on the community, there is no magic button or pixie dust thrown into the mix. The revelation and resolution are not religious or a miracle, but rather the result of a life’s work of goodness.
In many ways the film is also a direct shot at extreme free-marketing. Bailey’s credit union battles Potter’s evil economic takeover throughout the film. I’m surprised the film wasn’t blacklisted because the allusions to socialism are clear. Frank Capra, though, is such a talented filmmaker that his righteousness and common wholesomeness trump any economic or political agendas.
It’s a Wonderful Life is timeless not because of its Christmas themes but because there’s a bit of George Bailey in every one of us, including his dreams, aspirations, guilt, insecurities and neuroses. And the purpose of the film is not to spread Christmas cheer but to make the audience look inward and rediscover their own personal faith in humanity and the value of the smallest, seemingly insignificant actions in our lives. Such optimism is rare for films today.
It's a Wonderful Life is available on a Special Edition Blu-ray from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment along with a memento to hang on your Christmas tree.
Beginners (2011) dir. Mike Mills
Starring: Ewan McGregor, Melanie Laurent, Christopher Plummer
**½
By Alan Bacchus
The story of a late thirty-something graphic designer grieving the passing of his father who recently came out of the closet as being gay, in indie film circles, is one of the most adored films of the year - a critique which might just illicit some angered responses from the devoted fan base. With only a slight narrative to hold on to, the ambling tone and seemingly improvised quirkiness compares to the cinema of Sofia Coppola. It’s heart-on-your-sleeve filmmaking, with unnecessary stylistic idiosyncrasies, that unfortunately wears out its welcome.
There's not much of a story here, but to make up for it director Mike Mills splits his running time between three periods - the present, which has the designer, Oliver (McGregor), during his grieving period finding true love with a whimsical French gal (Laurent); the immediate past with his dying father (Plummer) still living out his new gay life like an energized teenager; and Oliver's oddball childhood and the relationship with his artsy mother. None of these periods seem like the present, past or future, instead a revolving door of time, the combination of which forms the slice of Mills' own life.
Most of the dialogue feels completely unnecessary to tell this story. Instead, it becomes just part of the background sound as important as the street noise, the eccentric jazzy piano score and McGregor's intermittent and random voiceover ramblings.
The deadpan stylish flourishes, such as the subtitle musings of Oliver's dog, I could live without. Same with the use of Oliver's scratchy drawings shot in close-up with a jump-cut montage effect, or the idiosyncratic editing, or the annoying faux-profound pronouncements, which seem more at home in a Levi's or Microsoft ad than in this film. The gentle tenderness thus morphs into some kind of grand lesson of life, which never really connects to the emotional core of Oliver's experiences.
Cherish Beginners for Christopher Plummer's youthful performance as an old man in the midst of his sexual liberation. Everything else is window dressing.
Beginners is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Alliance Films in Canada.
Crazy Stupid Love (2011) dir Glenn Ficarra and John Requa
Starring: Steve Carell, Ryan Gosling, Julianne Moore, Marisa Tomei, Emma Stone
***1/2
By Alan Bacchus
Oh, how refreshing it is to be surprised by a Hollywood studio genre picture these days - a film about love, which doesn't need to play into the familiar overplayed romantic comedy template overpopulated by 15-year-old Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts movies or new millennium Richard Curtis dreck.
You probably know the story by now. Steve Carell plays an emasculated husband who's just found out his wife has been cheating on him. Now separated, he finds himself on the market, back on the dating scene. Ryan Gosling, a handsome playboy/barfly takes Carell under his wing for a male makeover of sorts, bringing out Carell's own inner pick-up artist.
Ficarra and Requa's film is filled with well rounded and interesting characters beyond the star casting of Steve Carell and Ryan Gosling. At its heart, the film tracks the experiences of love for a 13-year-boy infatuated with his babysitter, the babysitter who is infatuated with the kid's father, the father who is still infatuated with his wife, his wife who is no longer infatuated with him and Ryan Gosling's game-changing head-over-heels infatuation with a recently-dumped woman. Other lesser ensemble romantic films like Valentine's Day and He's Not That Into You have tried this revolving door approach, but none of them work better than this.
While other rom-coms revel in the plight of the protagonists, here Steve Carell's pathetic geek chic character, which is well used in roles from Date Night to The 40 Year Old Virgin, gets well tarnished in this film. He gets it in one of the best scenes in the film during a parent-teacher meeting with his ex-wife, as his son’s teacher happens to be the woman he slept with. Marisa Tomei, Moore and Carell create a marvellous scene which is both comedic and emotionally moving.
This scene is indicative of the intelligence of this film, playing each character with shades of grey and mixing broad comedy with edgy raunchiness and earnest life lessons. Everyone makes mistakes in this film in the name of love. It’s a difficult, nebulous fog to navigate through and with comedy and pathos the filmmakers find the right mix to make us laugh and move us to new places.
A heavy dose of strong cinematic style helps as well, bringing to mind the eccentric flourishes of John Hughes in his heyday. Crazy Stupid Love is one of the most satisfying studio commercial films this year.
Crazy Stupid Love is available on Blu-ray from Warner Home Entertainment.
Like Crazy (2011) dir. Drake Doremus
Starring: Anton Yelchin, Felicity Jones, Jennifer Lawrence, Charlie Bewley, Alex Kingston, Oliver Muirhead
***½
By Alan Bacchus
Reposted from Sundance 2011
It’s been three days and us writers waiting in line at the P&I screenings are constantly trying to figure out the ’it’ film of the year. It may have just arrived in Drake Doremus’s epic, romantic, bittersweet journey of love.
Anna and Jacob are in love. They meet in the first scene in a college class, follow each other home, hang out, giggle, hold hands, eat, play around, maybe they kiss, maybe they don’t. Either way they are hopelessly in love. Oh what bliss. What could possible separate them? Well, Anna is British and on a school visa, which of course will run out. But she’s a romantic and nothing can stop her from being with her man. So she remains in the US to stay in bed and make love for two months.
She can’t escape reality though, and it comes crashing down when Homeland Security detains her for violating her visa after a brief trip back home to the UK. Now it’s a long distance relationship with the US government separating them. Thus begins the rollercoaster ride of love including the ups and downs of Anna and Jacob – like Going the Distance made by Michael Winterbottom.
After the opening act, Doremus puts his cynical hat on and tests our ability to believe that these two should be together. So are we watching Blue Valentine? Or (500) Days of Summer? Doremus keeps us on edge at all times. Anna flirts with other boys back home, and Jacob does the same with girls, but their iPhones always connect them. Doremus constantly oscillates between these extremes of lovestruck pit-of-your-stomach romance and the agonizing missteps and miscommunications that create roadblocks to finding love. Just when we think they’re splitting up for good, all it takes is a short text across the ocean to jumpstart the rollercoaster ride once again.
Anton Yelchin and Felicity Jones are close to the last word as recent on-screen romantics. Doremus’s frequent close-ups connect the characters like intertwining vines. Whenever they’re in the same space together on screen they seem to engage in a graceful sensual dance.
Pitch perfect hip music complements the new millennium courtship in which these two are engaged, not to mention the Winterbottom/Boyle visual aesthetic employed by Doremus. And so, just as I’m close to shooting myself after having to constantly hear about the authenticity in the highly overrated Blue Valentine, I can latch onto Like Crazy, the superior antidote to that other film.
Captain America: The First Avenger (2011) dir. Joe Johnston
Starring: Chris Evans, Hugo Weaving, Hayley Atwell, Dominic Cooper, Stanley Tucci, Toby Jones
***
By Alan Bacchus
The announcement that journeyman visual effects guy-turned-director Joe Johnston was attached to this project wasn’t really a cause for celebration. His body of work consists mostly of adequate, though ultimately unmemorable, ‘effects’ films (Jumanji, Jurassic Park 3, Wolf Man). Johnston’s been around the block and so we wouldn’t even get a fresh new voice into the mix.
However, after watching the first few scenes of Captain America I started to come around. The WWII setting of this picture under the faux war effort propaganda filmmaking style of Hollywood in the ‘40s brought back memories of the underrated comic book film from 1990, The Rocketeer, which was directed by... you guessed it, Joe Johnston. The pieces of this puzzle were now fitting together.
Captain America is the last of another puzzle, the Avengers Saga, an ambitious undertaking by Marvel Entertainment that began in 2008 with Iron Man to create a series of independent feature films that fed into a ‘super-group’ movie, The Avengers, due out in 2012. Iron Man was a fantastic film. The Incredible Hulk that same summer was decent and a sign that this might actually work. Next came Iron Man 2 in 2010, which was a dreadful quickie sequel that betrayed the inspiration of the first picture. And then Thor came out earlier this year, which, like IM 2, was mostly awful. But now the series picks up a bit of its mojo with Captain America, a rousing actioner with spirit.
It’s 1941 and America is recruiting soldiers to fight abroad. One of the hopefuls is Steve Rogers (Chris Evans), a meek, scrawny weakling who gets denied service. But through perseverance and a bit of cheating he will not take no for answer. After witnessing Rogers’ steadfast patriotic belief and determination to stand up for himself, German ex-pat scientist, Dr. Abraham Erskine (Tucci), recruits Rogers into the military to be a guinea pig for his experiments in body enhancement. And at the first act turn, the meek Rogers is transformed into a beefcake ubermench with super strength and lightning speed.
But instead of going to Europe, Rogers becomes a spokesman for war bonds and is prostituted in recruitment revival shows, ads and USO concerts. When Rogers’ best friend goes missing in Italy, Captain America goes AWOL and arranges a secret rescue mission. All the while, Dr. Erskine’s old rival, Johann Schmid (Hugo Weaving), is conducting similar experiments on his own with his splinter Nazi group called Hydra. Rogers quickly recognizes Schmid as the real enemy he needs to excise, thus sparking a battle of the ages, one which will likely spill over into the present and involve the other superheroes from the other movies in The Avengers.
In many ways, Captain America feels like the G.I. Joe movie that never was – a rousing story of triumph over adversity with a strong American patriotic spirit that actually works for the picture. The origin story, like the beginnings of Iron Man, contains the best moments. Chris Evans' digitally enhanced underweight alter ego is a fine bit of invisible CGI. We know it’s not Evans' body. In fact, we know it’s 'face replacement technology' used by Fincher in Benjamin Button and The Social Network, but it works so wonderfully, especially when acted with such earnestness by Evans. Stanley Tucci also does a wonderful turn as Rogers' kindly mentor
Unfortunately, what fails the picture is Joe Johnston’s action scenes. Once Cap’n America gets to Europe and is engaged in Nazi-fighting, Johnston curiously chooses to show much of this action in montage form. We’re deprived of a few set pieces and full-length scenes with a build-up and payoff. Instead, we see a series of random shots of jumping, punching, motorcycle riding and explosions without anything tying it all together.
Johnston, though a special effects expert, uses too much of it. As such, we get the feeling that during most of the action Evans is in front of a green screen on a soundstage and NOT in the forests of Western Europe or the snow-capped Bavarian mountains. This takes us out of the anchored reality in which we were placed in the first act.
But what Captain America does better than Iron Man, Thor and The Hulk is set up The Avengers movie and tie together some threads from the other pictures. Dominic Cooper's Howard Stark character, thus Robert Downey Jr.'s father, is a clever link-up. It’s the same with the other worldly motivation of Hugo Weaving's character, which suggests a link-up with the alien gods of Thor. And with the Easter egg clip and trailer at the end of the credits I'm sufficiently teased. That's all I wanted and Captain America delivered.
Captain America is available on Blu-ray and DVD from Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment.
Il Divo (2009) dir. Paolo Sorrentino
Starring: Toni Servillo, Anna Bonaiuto, Giulio Bosetti, Flavio Bucci, Carlo Buccirosso
**
By Alan Bacchus
The story of seven-time Italian prime minister Giulio Andreotti's controversial leadership in the latter stages of his 50-year service, which saw him accused and tried for having an alliance with the mafia, as well as being an accomplice to several murders of his key rivals, is an impressively stylized and cinematically inspired take on what could have been familiar and morose subject matter.
Comparisons of director Paolo Sorrentino to Martin Scorsese were made after its Cannes premiere and were not unfounded, as the film works best in its numerous, energetic, pop culture-aware montage sequences. Scorsese's style never trumps his substance though, which can't be said about Il Divo, whose dense and near-incomprehensible narrative is neglected in favour of Sorrentino's cinema gymnastics.
If anything, the film comes off like the Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels of political films. Nicolas Winding Refn's Bronson also makes a good comparison. Like Refn's film, Il Divo works best as a subjective expression of a man as opposed to a traditional narrative story. Unfortunately, Sorrentino wants to have his cake and eat it too. Even up until the last moments of the film we're still meeting new characters, so many in fact that each person has to be introduced with a graphic describing his/her name, title and relation to Andreotti. Granted, the design and use of these graphics are incorporated with wicked hipness into the composition of the scenes, but it's just too much information to keep track of.
Style aside, Il Divo suffers most from Sorrentino's direction of lead actor Toni Servillo. His performance, which has been lauded by other critics as an enigmatic, Yoda-like, Zen master portrait of political savvy, comes off as un-expressive, robotic and dull as cardboard while under cover of a bad wig that wouldn't pass muster on a Saturday Night Live sketch.
To each his own, as the virtues and failings of this picture will likely divide audiences. It's a shame foreign releases like these don't get the Blu-ray treatment because for a film that relies so heavily on its stunning visuals, the boring old standard definition DVD just doesn't cut it. The DVD contains just the movie with no special features.
Star Wars: The Phantom Menace (1999) dir. George Lucas
Starring: Liam Neeson, Ewan McGregor, Jake Lloyd, Natalie Portman
***
By Alan Bacchus
Yeah, I don’t hate this movie, and sure it’s a slight disappointment, especially when compared to the first and second original films. But The Phantom Menace successfully puts us back in the tone, style and pacing of the original series, however cartoonish and wooden most of these new characters are.
Like everyone, my expectations were high. Not only for the return of the characters I grew up with and loved, but more for George Lucas’s return to the directing chair – the first film he directed since Star Wars (1977). Unfortunately, it’s marred by a strong feeling of laziness on his part. But more on that later.
Let’s start with the good stuff. The main reason this film succeeds is Liam Neeson, the guiding force (pun not intended) of this movie. He’s a commanding physical presence, which lines up perfectly with the powerful and Zen-like existence of the Jedi knights. I’d argue that it’s the best performance by any actor in a Star Wars film.
Lucas also sets up a strong political plot, laying the seeds for the eventual takeover of the galaxy by the evil Emperor whom we got to know only briefly in Return of the Jedi. While in the previous films the journey we’re taken on is a relatively simple trajectory from the point of view of a naïve country boy-turned fearless Jedi Knight, these new films, based on Phantom Menace, promised a complex chess games of sorts.
The character of the Phantom Menace, as referred to in the title, unfortunately fails to provide any tease or mystery. The man under the hologram cloak looks and sounds exactly like the Emperor in Return of the Jedi, who looks and sounds exactly like Senator Palpatine, the wily seat-filler who engineers most of the action. By the time Revenge of the Sith comes around there’s almost nothing to reveal.
The laziness referenced above is the over-reliance on computer special effects, which moves beyond a mere technical aid and overwhelms the drama. Lucas accomplished some remarkable achievements in technology, but he also pushed it so far as to show its seams. Most of everything in this picture is shot on a green screen soundstage, a process which is more invisible to its technique than ever before. But it’s still not 100% photorealistic. Unfortunately, our human eye can tell even the slightest variance from reality, thus creating a barrier between us and the characters on the screen.
Lucas also overpopulates this film with non-human characters, seemingly caused by this same overconfidence in the technology. He did the same thing with Return of the Jedi, using more alien creatures as main characters than in Star Wars or Empire. Unfortunately, in any of these films the best characters are always the human ones. Yoda might be the exception, but he was operated as a physical hand puppet by the great Frank Oz. In these new episodes much is lost in the transition from human to puppet to CG. As such, Jar Jar Binks, Anakin’s Tatooine slave master Watto and the Japanese nose-less Trade Federation boob Nute Gunray are ineffectual supporting characters that can’t match the heart or soul of human actors.
That said, Lucas has also crafted what is arguably his best villain, Darth Maul, the red-faced acrobatic Sith warrior who looks absolutely menacing with his Maoris-style face makeup and snarling teeth. Lucas is smart to tease us with Darth Maul's abilities until the film’s absolute best scene at the end (and probably the best scene in the entire 6-film series), that is the Qui-Gon/Obi-Wan/Maul lightsaber battle. This trump card, which he keeps in his pocket until the last 20 minutes, is enough to make up for any ill-feelings from Jar Jar, the over-reliance on CG effects and the usually stiff human acting.
