Kamogawa Horumo – a lot of the films that early in the morning are Japanese, and while there was a time when my ultimate goal in life was to move to Japan and live/work for five years, the culture doesn’t appeal to me as much as it once did. This film, however, spends a lot of time focusing on the Japanese concepts of Oni spirits, training & fighting, and the control of proxy minions. Think Pokemon, or as I kept thinking throughout the film, Miyamoto Shigeru’s classic Pikmin game for the Gamecube. The story revolves around a club at a local Kyoto university and how it changes the lives of the protagonist. Who, in Japanese fashion, is a whiney pussy of man. This should be no surprise to anyone who’s seen Japanese material – as much as I love Evangelion, Shinji’s reluctance and selfish moping grate on your nerves. So is the case with Abe and his best friend. This fil was really slow to get going, with Peter Yoder and I both waiting anxiously for a corner to be turned. luckily, once it does, the movie becomes genuinely adorable and entertaining, regardless of it’s punkass protag. Ultimately, the movie is leaves you satisfied and happy, which is what you want, right?
7 out of 10 Stars/ 1 Sleepy
Anti-Christ – this Willem DeFoe/Lars Van Trier film is stirring up controversy wherever it plays. I will tell you nothing specific about the film other than it surrounds the death of a loved one and a husband trying to help his wife overcome her grief. I love and hate this film simultaneously. The artistry of the opening scene is fantastic, and wholly set the subject matter at hand. However, in a way eerily similar to Richard Kelly’s trainwreck Southland Tales, Van Trier is overtly pretentious when it’s unncessary, robbing the film of the seriousness and precious screen minutes it needs to truly tackle its subject matter. There are genuinely brilliant moments in this fil, characters and dialogue that anyone who has been in a prolonged, dysfunctional relationship will recognize. Not the exact words, but the exact progression of the conversations and the reactions/motivations behind them. This couple manipulates one another, and the film asks you to decide who is th villain (if one exists) and whether or not the course of events was deserved. Alas, you’re not given a picture of these characters outside the grief situation that serves as the inciting incident, so you are left feeling unsatisfied and potentially perturbed. Like the amazing film May, Anti-Christ could be an amazing character study into a particular type of psychosis, however, with the last shot of the film, it seems to be damning an entire group rather than a single soul, and that’s unfortunate.
6 out of 10 stars, huge points deducted for pretension/0 Sleepies
The Men Who Stare at Goats – I had never heard of this secret film, though many others had seen the trailer. Starring Ewan McGregor, George Clooney, Kevin Spacey and Jeff Bridges, the movie is about a reporter who haps into a supposedly true story of the US government funding a secret organization to train soldiers in psychic warfare. The subject matter is handled neither with 100% respect or significant comedic disdain, which seems to be what viewers are disliking the most. McGregor is stunt cast, and while I want spoil what starts out as an interesting joke, the whole schtick gets really old after awhile, maki g you wish another actor had gotten the part. Everyone turns in good performances and everything happens basically like you want it to. The fact that it wasn’t more extreme in it’s presentation or attitude leaves you with a lukewarm feeling, which was ok with me. The version we saw was early, no color corrected, without final sound or music, and with watermarked stock shots still present. So maybe some editing and music magic can add the teeth this movie needs to really grab audiences. I don’t think it’s too late to I fuse a little bit of style into this flick and get audiences more interested.
7 Out of 10 Stars/0 Sleepies
