Late Phases

I've always been drawn to Werewolf stories.  My favorite of all time is The Howling, but I also have a special place for An American Werewolf In London and Wolfen in my heart.  The big problem, of course, with Werewolf movies is that the rich subtext of internal evils externalized is often shrugged off in favor of the carnivorous beast that stalks the night.  Over the years I've watched my favorite of the movie monsters turned into a boring stereotype of rage and fury, lusting after blood on the moonlit thrill of the hunt.  That or they're played by teenagers who are in love with triangle mouthed girls who can't decide between them or the vampire in their life.  Boring.  So, imagine how happy I am to be writing about Late Phases, a new Werewolf movie from the director of Here Comes The Devil.

Set in a rural old retirement community on the edge of a nondescript mountain town, Late Phases starts off with a bang, so to speak, when curmudgeonly blind Veteran, Ambrose McKinley (Nick Damici) is attacked by a Werewolf.  The story then follows Ambrose as he silently picks through his community in an effort to find out who the Werewolf is and dispatch it.  Sounds pretty straightforward, but where the film does a much better job with the genre than any of it's recent predecessors is by giving it the feel and attention of a true character piece.  By holding Ambrose up in the forefront we are allowed to examine the behaviors of those around him and at times we feel that he may be the luckiest one of all unable to physically see the ugly sides of humanity any longer.

The film still falls in the low budget horror realm, but it makes due with it's budgetary constraints by amplifying the story visually while also employing some excellent costuming and makeup befitting of the bi-pedal hulks of fur and fury.  The whole look of the film has a golden hue to it, visually representing a community of people who's golden years have now passed.  Ambrose, a gruff do-it-yourselfer, doesn't really belong here, but driven by a sense of duty, he stays to put an end to the story.  If I hadn't known any better, I would have guessed that Damici was actually blind, as he does a remarkable job of portraying the physicality of it.

I missed the film's one off theatrical run in Los Angeles, but luckily it can be rented, or even bought, on Amazon Instant.  It's not without it's cheesy moments, but Damici's standout performance is amplified by a good pace and visual element, that when you add in the gore and Wolves you've got yourself one hell of a good Werewolf movie.  Sprinkle in some great supporting performances from Lance Guest and Tom Noonan, what more do you really need?  Definitely on par with some of the greats, if not tugging lovingly at their tails.

"Let's Wage War": Beyond Outrage

When I was fresh out of High School and in my first year of college I used to go to this video rental in Old Town Eureka called Video Experience.  I was tuned into the place by the brother of my girlfriend (at the time) who was also introduced me to the insane world Takashi Miike.  I was hooked on this place.  I used to rent 7 movies a week from them and just eat up foreign films and gangster movies etc.  Then came that fateful day when they announced they had to close that location.  I was crushed, but we went to their going out of business stock sale and I found this little VHS tape of Takeshi Kitano's Sonatine pointing a gun at me on the shelf.  It was 2 dollars, I figured "What the hell."  Ever since I've been obsessed with Kitano's films, so imagine my delight one particularly sleepless night when I found Beyond Outrage as I scrolled through the netflix titles.

Picking up five years after the events of it's predecessor Outrage, the film chronicles the booming Sanno and Hanabishi crime families.  Opening with the discovery of a dead cop and a bar hostess in a sunken car, the police force determines that the Sanno have gotten too big for their britches.  They employ the skills of Special Inspector Kataoka, who has gotten close to the families under the guise of a corrupt cop.  Through suggestion and direct maniuplation, Kataoka uses Kitano's character Otomo and another disgraced yakuza, Kimura, to completely destroy the leadership of the Sanno family.

Kitano has had a tough time with critics following the release of his "Meta Trilogy" (Takeshis', Glory to the Filmmaker!, Achilles and the Tortoise) so when he returned to the yakuza film genre with Outrage it came as somewhat of a surprise as well as a delight to audience and critics alike.  While Outrage and Beyond Outrage don't quite have the meditative quality about them that a film like Sonatine or Hana-bi do, they still manage to pull in the audience and hold interest up to the final moments.  One of Kitano's best qualities when it comes to this genre is his ability to set up and expectation and then surprise the audience in it's delivery.  As a dramatic actor, he has a kind of new wave deadpan style, only showing emotion in the extremes which makes his violent explosiveness sudden and thrilling to watch.

The disappointing thing about this film is the incredibly straightforwardness of the plot.  It's very much an A + B = C sort of experience, which is not what I usually expect out of Kitano.  However, this is subjugated fairly well by the actors and cinematography.  Fumiyo Kohinata eyes everyone with the look of a Japanese Fox mask as Kataoka.  It's no surprise to the audience that he's manipulating the outcome at every step planting suggestions that the yakuza hotly act upon bringing their own doom upon them.  Even though we know that Otomo and Kimura are going to get these guys, Kitano manages to still do it at the moment when least expect it making the violence sudden and brutal.  I'll never be able to look at a baseball batting cage the same way again.

Not one of his best, but certainly not his worst either, Beyond Outrage is a solid yakuza film and the first direct sequel that Kitano has ever made to one of his films.  There are currently talks of a third film, which would make it his first direct trilogy of his career.  If you haven't seen Outrage watch it first.