A Letter To Momo: Light Fare From The Man Who Gave Us Jin-Roh.

I like anime.  Now that we've cleared that hurdle, I have to clarify that I am not the type of person who just likes ALL anime.  I have taste.  I have a standard for the quality of the animation, the story, and the seiryu (voice acting).  I've been known to be harsh on quite a few shows and films that many of my peers deem excellent.  When I discovered that the theater I work at was going to be screening the first film of director Hiroyuki Okiura since Jin-Roh: The Wolf Brigade. I jumped at the opportunity to watch it.  It is called A Letter To Momo.

The film centers on Momo and her mother Ikuko who have returned to a small island town of Shio to live with Ikuko's parents following the death of Momo's father.  She caries a piece of paper with the words "Dear Momo" written on it, but the rest is blank.  Throughout the film we discover more about Momo and her father, but more specifically the film is about adapting to life after trauma.  That being said, this film is still a rather lighter take on such subject matter and plays well within the realm of magical realism that most people have become familiar with in Studio Ghibli films.

Momo is somewhat of a typical young girl.  City born and raised, she has a very closed off attitude to her new environment.  She's not dealing with her trauma at the beginning of the film, rather, she's holding it inside.  This is a key plot factor to much of the film as both she and her mother are very much alike in how they deal with their grief.  What makes Momo's situation unique, of course, is the presences of three goblins who follow her and her mother around.  The problem?  Only Momo can see them.

The animation is stellar, most of it is hand drawn with a few cg bits for background and special devices, but they are not distracting in the slightest.  This is only Okiura's second film as director, but his list of credits as a key animator, animation director, and storyboard artist range across some of the greatest Japanese Animated Features ever made, including Akira, Ghost In The Shell, Roujin Z, Coyboy Bebop: The Movie, and Paprika.  I'd also like to pay a special note of attention to the 5.1 Sound Mix which was incredibly good.  There are scenes where I felt like I was in the setting of summer with cicada's noisily singing all around me, enhancing the feeling of environmental realism.

While I liked the film, I have to admit that there are moments of the story that were definitely geared towards younger audiences than I would typically be found sitting among.  However, I think that Okiura was very brave to tackle issues of emotional isolation, grief and trauma in the lens of a children's film.  There are obvious comedic elements to keep the film light, as it's intended audience are family, but that doesn't prevent the film from having an impact on the way we see and deal with grief.  The film culminates to a climactic race against time and the elements teaching us that no matter what we must cherish and protect the one's we love.

Good for families, this film with be screening at The Aero Theater on Friday, April 26th, at 7:30 PM in Japanese with English Subtitles.

I chose this trailer because the TiFF trailer is utterly pathetic.  Comic Sans font?  Really??

"Do you ever die in your own dream?": Shunji Iwai's Vampire

Often when a director comes from abroad to North America to make a film, the result is lackluster, panned by critics who previously screamed with praise, or misses out on wide release because distributors fear anything that smells remotely of monetary loss.  It's the age old battle of art versus product and Shunji Iwai's newest film is an English language piece that falls into the sad latter of the three.

Vampire opens with two people, a man and woman, meeting up in an undisclosed location with the express intention of committing suicide together.  They drive through the rainy Canadian weather talking about their reasons and their disconnects with life trying to have a good final day before ending it all.  It becomes apparent, however, that one of them has an ulterior motive.  The woman doesn't want to feel any pain so the man suggests blood draining.  He offers to assist in her death first before doing himself in.  Obviously we wouldn't have a film if they both die, so it's safe to assume that he's not going to kill himself.  Rather, he lives up to the title of the story.  Simon (the protagonist of the story) drains Jellyfish (her online name) of her blood via needs and bottles, and when the process is complete he gorges himself upon one of the bottles.

So is Vampire a horror movie?  No.  At least, not in the typical archetype of horror.  Is it then a story about a serial killer?  Perhaps, but the film is more than even that.  Any good film is multifaceted.  Rather than shoving meaning or ideology in your face, a truly good film with allow you to follow it on a journey and give you an idea to ponder.  It will inspire thought.  Everything else is just surface value.  I could pontificate on the ideas of spiritual isolation and addiction that are present in the subtext of this story, but I would also be giving too much of it away in the process and since I want you all to go out and find this movie by whatever means necessary and WATCH it, I think I'll take a break from that.

What I do want to talk about is how this film is a rare example of a director being capable of maintaining his artistic sensibilities while filming outside of his country.  It's debatable whether or not any Hollywood studio would fund a film like Vampire (the film was produced and shot in Canada) given Iwai's body of work.  Iwai is not a throw it in your face kind of film maker.  Rather, he is an artist, a poet, and a painter with a camera for a brush.  His body of work includes Love Letter, PiCNiC, Swallowtail Butterfly, All About Lily Chou Chou, and Hana and Alice to name a few.  These films are known for their intense emotional honesty, creative camera and editing work, and experimental poetic story structures.  They do not play on our more visceral senses, but speak more to our hearts and minds.

By all rights, Simon should be looked at as a villain, and yet by the end of the film, you love him.  Iwai takes us on a journey side by side with Simon in which we see that his fragile state of being is something he is out of empathy rather than a sadistic desire to feed on the blood of others.  It dares to ask a difficult question about human connection.  Is it possible, as Iwai stated at Sundance, for a victim and perpetrator to see each other in the light of moral understanding and acceptance? Food for thought.

Throw in superb lighting and honest performances and you've got one hell of a film.  Another striking thing about the film is that none of the characters remotely resemble each other.  They're all uniquely played by the actors.  Look for a strangely obsessive performance by Rachel Leigh Cook and an understated brilliance from Amanda Plummer, the two bigger names on the film, but there is something so arresting about Kevin Zegers' performance of Simon that I just couldn't part from him.

This film is a hard one to find.  It is in English but currently there are no official channels to purchase the DVD in America or Canada.  The only way to currently purchase it is through the Pony Canyon Shopping Club, which is linked on the film's website.  While Navigating the Japanese site may be a semi-daunting task, it is a worthy one.  This film, is easily one of the better films I've seen in the last couple of months.  Not for those who just want mindless fun and entertainment.  Vampire is an intriguing and captivating story that begs the question, are we all just waiting to die?

Evil Dead or Evil Dread?

NOTE: Normally, I do not review films that are so readily available as it is not part of the original intent of this blog.  However, I felt compelled to write this review.  It won't happen again.

I don't get to see many new movies that move me.  Call me a cynic, but most of the films that have come out lately have been rehashes, sequels, and prequels to films that were already good in their own right, but for some reason the big kids in Hollywood think it's a better idea to throw some modern glitter on them repackage and sell to the A.D.D. generation.  Why mince words, it's what we've become.  We're so busy posting on facebook and twitter, being constantly updated about what's going on miles apart that we've forgotten what it's like to read a newspaper in the morning or sip a cup of coffee while looking at life outside the windows.  I'm guilty of this behavior.  I think we all are at this point, so let's just jump right in and allow me to say that the Evil Dead remake, while filled with many things that I love about horror films is a continuing example of everything that is wrong with the Hollywood studios right now.

"But-but-but," you may be protesting right now.  "Isn't it a little harsh to say that THIS is everything wrong with Hollywood?"  No.  I don't think that's too harsh, but before I explain why, let me say that I did have a bit of fun watching this film.

"Wait a minute, didn't you just say-"

Yes.  I went into the film with low expectations.  I had eaten a delicious meal with some friends and then we drove off to Westwood Village where we bought our tickets and pricey concessions and took our seats in a wonderfully old single screen theater (complete with red velvet curtain), sat down and immediately took notice of the much YOUNGER audience surrounding us, complete with cellphones, loud voices, etc.

This also didn't really bother me, it's to be expected of the UCLA area.  So let's dive into it.  I went in with low expectations, because I'm an ardent fan of Evil Dead 2.  I've always been of the opinion that while I can respect Evil Dead (the original) for what it started off, that the sequel was a perfect blend of pulse pounding rhythm, creative story telling, horrific gore, and hilarious slapstick camp.  However, I knew that this was a remake of the first film so I accepted the fact that it couldn't really be what I was hoping for and leaned back in my chair to see how it would unfold.

The first big mistake the film made was by attempting to make an emotional back story about the two leads for the audience to care about them.  Mia and David (the brother and sister) had a crazy mom, David left Mia to take care of her while he went off to Chicago, she got hooked on Heroin from the stress of it all, she's trying to quit via isolation and cold turkey deprivation, everyone has mixed feelings because of their past BLAH BLAH BLAH BLAH, enough.  This is not creative storytelling in the slightest, it's just formulaic plot building coupled with bad writing.

Furthermore, the audience is at this movie for one thing and one thing only, to see 4 out of 5 teenagers (or 20 somethings in this case) accidentally unleash an evil upon themselves and get picked off one by one in increasingly creative ways.  So why are we wasting time with this over used back story?  You know how long it took until Ash's sister gets taken by a tree in the original?  Not as long as it took them to discover the "Book" in the remake.

While I should be applauding the effort to create anything outside what has become the norm of modern horror conventions this is the one place where I say: No.  Stick to the original.  Add poorly written dialogue, 4 rather wooden terrible actors, and the only thing left is the production value and the gore, which THANKFULLY, lived up to my expectations.

Jane Levy, ironically, was the only actor that I cared about seeing on screen, because she was capable of being subtle among a bunch of future soap opera stars and day time TV movie actors, when she's not being a crazy possessed demon creature or portraying the horrifying nature of quitting heroin cold.  The rest of the film manages to pander in semi-subtle ways to fans of the original while amping the pace up to 200mph for the new which brings us to the carnage at last.  The kind of carnage that should have started about 10 minutes into the film instead of the junior high "Where were you when we needed you?" dialogue that had me stifling laughter.

I like Diablo Cody, but she, like anyone else, is not infallible.  The same way that box office numbers only tell you just how easy it is to trick people into buying a movie ticket, or conversely, just how many people want to see some creative slaughtering in a safe environment.  So, okay, I liked the editing, I liked the gore, and there were a few times I felt genuinely anxious.  Why am I blasting this movie as hard as I am?

Ultimately, Evil Dead has taught us that remakes/re-imaginings/sequels/prequels will continue to flow from Hollywood rather than new and creative ideas from new and creative people like the bloody vomit in the above picture, right into our faces.  Some of my friends will tell me: Why can't you just shut that off and have some fun with the movie?  I need to remind you, I did have a little fun, I was laughing quite a bit through the film, but that doesn't make it good and that doesn't make the implications of it's success in the box office any brighter for the future of the Horror Genre.  Quite the opposite, it's spelling out a death toll to creative story writing and reminding us that all you need is good make up, editing, and a lot of fake blood.

"Aren't you contradicting yourself?"  A little bit, but life is built on contradiction.  Evil Dead is an escape film. The problem is that while I escaped during the viewing, I came back to reality and realized that I could have just watched the original and enjoyed it just as much, if not more.  Taste is subjective and THIS Evil Dead just didn't taste good.