Sunday, August 28, 2011

Love Exposure Review


Love Exposure (2008)
Dir: Sion Sono


How can I even begin to describe Love Exposure? It’s a film that feels very unique yet familiar. This four-hour epic masterfully combines Quentin Tarantino’s and Takashii Mike’s appetite for the bizarre and violent, Shunji Iwai’s dark touch and Akira Kurosawa’s humanity and social commentary.  It may also be the best movie to ever come out of Japan.

Writer/director Sion Sono builds a story that is as bizarre as it is human. The movie deals with the life of three young individuals living in the modern day Japanese society who have been emotionally and physically abused by their parents and find themselves in a love triangle that begins during a fateful street fight: Yuu, a Catholic boy struggling with the passing of his mother and his father’s ridiculous choices that lead him to become a worse and worse person just for the sake of it. Yoko, a misfit who finds every man disgusting and falls in love with a mysterious woman who turns out to be Yuu in drag and Koike, the leader of a cult and who manipulates nearly all the events through the course of the movie.

Sion Sono is a visual poet, as he has proven so many times before with his other movies, and this one is no different. Within its running time he manages to tackle issues like teenage alienation, religion and its various effects on people, fetishism, marriage and obsession. This added to the fact that each of the three main characters are developed individually before they finally connect makes for a dense and complex plot, but it’s made in such a way that it doesn’t feel hard to get and it never tires, it’s not a minute too long.  And while Sono expresses his opinions on these subjects very clearly through the course of the movie, in the end he leaves it to the viewer to decide what’s right or wrong.

With its four hours running time, Sono manages to develop absolutely every character, allowing the audience to build a connection with them as the story progresses. Very rarely do characters evolve in movies the way they do in this one, that’s part of the magic of it, the viewer cares about the characters, we care about their decisions and we care about what’s going to be the result of their actions, these feelings are something very few movies are capable of building. The story takes all sorts of different paths along the way, ranging from ridiculous to touching, from dark to funny, all of this with an incredible emotional balance, it’s also never predictable and it stays with you long after you watch it, these are the reasons why the script is so fantastic.

Even though it’s a very long movie it never bores, this is thanks to the amazing script but also to the editing, which keeps things moving at a steady pace without allowing us to miss anything. It’s also a marvel to watch as the cinematography is absolutely beautiful and stylized, taking full advantage of every location, sometimes it’s very unconventional but still manages to be great, meeting all the requirements from its story.

 While the acting might be rough in some places I found it to be overall pleasing.  Nishijima does and effective job as the lead in a great debut, though his delivery sometimes lacks impact it still satisfies. Sakura Andoo stands out as Koike, transforming herself into a love-to hate villain that is depraved, decadent, obsessed and borderline crazy; it’s a truly astonishing performance. My favorite performance of the three leads is Hikari Mitsushima’s, who shows the most range with her character Yoko, which is probably the one who changes the most through the story; she can be strong, crazy, in love, weak and more and can do everything amazingly well, her monologue during the last act has got to be the best performed and one of the best moments of the movie.  It also helps that she’s eye-bogglingly cute.  The rest of the cast also does a great job and al have memorable moments.

Another thing that is absolutely fantastic is the soundtrack, which is complements the action really well. The main theme is the stand out as it’s one of the most memorable in recent history. I can honestly say that this is my favorite soundtrack of all time and would not be out of place next to other classics.

Love Exposure is a lot of things: touching, dark, satiric, exciting, unpredictable, funny, bizarre, action-packed and more, it’s truly incredible how it manages to balance all these aspects and deliver a movie experience like no other. It’s a unique film, a masterpiece that remains memorable long after it’s over. It’s one of the best films to come out of Japan and I can go as far as saying one of the best of all time, it’s truly deserving of that praise.         


 




Tuesday, August 16, 2011

Your Highness (2011) Review

Your Highness (2011)

Dir: David Gordon Green


Ever since I saw the trailers I’ve been interested in this film, they looked really funny and it had a great cast to boot; besides I really liked the Pineapple Express and this looked like a great follow up of sorts. Also Zooey Deschanel.


The concept of this film is actually pretty original and as far as I know hasn’t been done before: taking an R-rated stoner comedy to a medieval fantasy land, a concept which the writers never really take full advantage of, becoming a mostly tedious collection of “suck my dick” jokes.


That’s not to say there aren’t any funny bits in the movie, most of them brought by Danny McBride who once again plays an unlikable asshole who turns out to be useful in the end (which has sort of become his on-screen persona) and Justin Theroux. The problem is that most of the jokes are dated and have been done before in better, funnier movies. They also never use the setting to their advantage, this movie might as well have taken place in New York or something like that, and the difference wouldn’t have been noticeable.

The biggest fault however is that it’s not focused, the movie throws many subplots that come out of nowhere and feel unnecessary and most of them are not funny. One in particular is when the heroes are kidnapped and put into a gladiatorial battle against some hand-shaped monster and the result is not only unfunny but also stupid, (hahaha they cut every head but the middle one, it’s like it’s giving the middle finger, get it? ”. Scenes like these feel like they’re catering to 5-graders instead of a mature audience.


The actors all do a good job for the most part, the only notable exception being Natalie Portman who seemed to be taking it way too seriously, even in the scenes that are supposed to be funny; maybe she just thought she was in a different movie? Justin Theroux is the only one who excels in his villain role, providing a great balance between ridiculous and evil to work. The biggest disappointment from the cast however, comes from Zooey Deschanel, who despite doing a good job and being funny enough in her damsel in distress role is not given nearly enough screen time as she deserves .


To make matters worse, the movie isn’t even technically competent, the special effects are crappy, and there are really bad audio synch issues and worst of all some really noticeable and unforgivable continuity problems. All of this detracts from the experience.


To be fair the movie does have quite a bit of funny moments and is recommendable for anyone who enjoys the Apatow brand of comedy. However, it underutilizes both its concept and its cast and it never quite fulfills the promise that the first half-hour establishes, after that it just veers into the realms of predictability and stupidity. And that’s why it’s such a big disappointment.