Tokyo Drifter Review

Tokyo Drifter (1966)

Dir: Seijin Suziki

Tetsuo walks through a deserted train cemetery wearing a white jacket, he stands next to a man who’s wearing a black jacket. Through conversation we find out Tetsuo was once part of a yakuza gang led by Kurata, who has decided to give up his life of crime and to whom Tetsuo is loyal to. The man in black works for Otsuka, a rival gang boss who’s trying to convince Tetsuo to join him. He refuses, is beaten up and earns Otsuka’s hate. This is the beginning of Tokyo Drifter, shot in black and white, which contradicts the color-filled story that follows.

Otsuka pushes them back into the crime life after he ties them up to a real state scam, which forces Tetsuo to leave Tokyo and live the life of a drifter while trying to survive the attacks of Otsuka’s men who are trying to get rid of him once and for all.

Many other characters come into play as the plot gets thicker and thicker, but none of them are as impressive as Tetsuo. He is a classic action hero, too smart, fast and strong to be killed; a bullet repellant that never runs out of bullets himself and a master marksman. He fights to survive and because of his loyalty, which makes him pay a heavy price later on. At first sight, this seems like any other yakuza/gangster movie, and story-wise it pretty much is. But the way the story is treated is what makes it truly special. 

Director Seijun Suzuki created a film that is very much a product of its era, but one that stands the test of time like few others. He seamlessly combines amplitude of genres to make this a complex and intriguing gangster drama, a silly comedy and sometimes even a musical.

The colors are vibrant and the visual motifs are endless and can be seen everywhere from the designs of the cars’ painting to the backgrounds and the clothes the character’s wear.  But they’re not only there because they look pretty; everything has a meaning to it, the clearest example is that through the movie Tetsuo wears a light blue suit while Otsuka, the villain wears a bright red one. The set design is also inventive as well as absolutely insane. This is one of the clearest examples of how colors and lightning can be used to enhance the story and our understanding of the characters and the director’s intentions.

The editing is also extremely weird. There are many jump cuts that happen right in the middle of the action and completely throw the viewer off. One example is when Tetsuo is being chased by one of Otsaka’s men on foot; he hides behind the pillar of a bridge, we see the enemy walking above the bridge without noticing Tetsuo hiding beneath, a fast cut to the train signals and then cut back to Tetsuo facing the man in the middle of the train track with the train coming dangerously close to them.  There are many more moments like this through the movie that are absolutely bizarre.

And yet, the movie is able to get away with it because it just adds so much to the whole experience of watching it. It’s not hard to connect the dots of what happened between one moment and the other which makes it really interesting because the director fully trusts his audience’s ability to understand the procedures and they actually help the pacing of the action sequences and make them feel less silly than what we’d expect from a 60’s movies.

But this is a silly movie nonetheless. One scene in particular exemplifies this better than any other; in the last half of the movie there is a ridiculous bar fight that feels straight out of the 60s Batman show, people start joining the fight for absolutely no reason, a group of girls play around with the fighters saying things in terrible English; tables, chairs and bottles are used and in the middle of the madness an exotic dancer saves Tetsuo by punching an attacker before turning to him and saying “better than French, English and American men together” with the stupidest expression that I’ve seen in my life before he throws her away. In the end, everyone ends up conveniently piled up outside the bar.The sound also plays an important role in the film, especially the song that gives the movie its name which is sung by Tetsuo to indicate his presence.     

This is one of the few cases of “style over substance” that work, a movie that embraces its style in such a way that it is completely defined by it. There might be deeper, more meaningful stories and characters to be found in other films in the genre, but Tokyo Drifter stands out because of how absurdly entertaining it is. 

Hugo Review

Hugo (2011)

Dir: Martin Scorsese

More than a great filmmaker, Martin Scorsese is a cinema lover and connoisseur, the man knows everything there is to know about movies; you can see just how big his passion is just by hearing him talk about them, so it’s only natural that we see him making a movie about one of the most innovative creators of the early days of cinema, after all, nobody is more qualified than him to do so and with Hugo he has perfectly combined his mastery of the art-form with his love and knowledge of film history. 

We associate Scorsese with films about religion and violence starring gangsters and psychopaths usually portrayed by Robert Deniro and Leonardo DiCaprio. But the truth is that he is an incredibly versatile filmmaker who has seamlessly transitioned over a variety of genres almost flawlessly. Hugo could be considered a kid’s movie; almost dismissible by those expecting something like Goodfellas or The Departed, but this can be easily and truly enjoyed by the whole family.

Hugo learned everything he needs to know about clocks and machinery from his father, who died in a museum fire, and his drunken uncle who took him to the railway station after his father’s death to be his apprentice and has been missing for months.  Rather than being taken to an orphanage he decides to avoid the guards and live deep within the station’s maze-like interior fixing the clocks and stealing food and pieces of machinery to repair a damaged automaton that he and his father were working on before his death.

His life is complicated by the cold-hearted but dumb station inspector who chases young thieves and sends them to the orphanage. He also meets a strange old man who works at a toy shop in the station and becomes friends with his goddaughter Isabelle. He and Isabelle discover that the old man is somehow connected to the automaton and through their investigation are able to find out that this man is actually George Méliès, one of the most groundbreaking filmmakers of the early days of cinema who has given up on making movies and is hiding his past from everyone.

This is a movie with bright, lively colors, childish innocence and a beautiful sense of wonder and yet it has those classic touches that make it a Scorsese movie like repressed characters who long for redemption. Its use of old movie clips and re-creations of important moments from cinema history are marvelous and almost educational, yet never cease to be entertaining.

The story is essentially divided in two parts: Hugo’s and Isabelle’s escapades and George’s story. They complement each other well and the tone is kept consistent between both so transition between one and the other is hardly felt.  It’s a fantastic-looking film no matter which character the story is focusing on.

Asa Butterfield and Chloe Moretz do a great job as the leads; very rarely do you see child actors who are so spot-on in their performances. Ben Kingsley has been seen lately in a ton of terrible films, but here he is back to form playing Mélièr in different periods of his life and doing a fantastic job at it. Sacha Baron-Cohen plays the Inspector, who provides much of the physical comedy by being rather dumb, but he never becomes a caricature and through his relation with the other characters we get to see his human and kind side. The rest of the cast is equally memorable and there are a lot of recognizable faces there, including a cameo by Scorsese himself.

 This movie about love for movies is made with the same care and love it preaches. It has an undeniable charm that attracts both young and old and stands shoulder to shoulder with the director’s best work.  

Tower Heist Review

Tower Heist (2011)

Dir: Brett Ratner

With the exception of his unforgivable entry in the X-Men series and the lackluster After the Sunset, I rather enjoy Brett Ratner’s movies. He is a director who is usually seen with much disdain because of just how basic his style of filmmaking is. But I’ve always found them fun in all of their glorious simplicity; in fact I’ll go right ahead and admit that Rush Hour 2 is one of my all time favorite movies. Tower Heist sticks to this simple-minded mentality; it’s a good piece of entertainment but in the end, the director’s most notable trait (keeping his movies as simple and digestible for the mass audiences as possible) is what hurts it the most.

The plot borrows heavily from other movies, specially the Ocean’s Eleven and Fun with Dick and Jane remakes, hell it even has Casey Affleck (from the Ocean’s movies) and Tea Leoni (from Fun with Dick & Jane).  Here, a group of employees of an upper-class, high-security apartment building lose all their money after a wealthy tenant to whom they had trusted all their savings is found to be involved in a ponzi scheme, so they do what every logical group of people would do in this situation: Break into his apartment and steal all their money back. 

The “funny” part of the ordeal is that they’re all pretty much stupid so they decide to hire an “experienced” thief who turns out to be equally, if not more, stupid than they are, not to mention selfish.  We are then presented with scenes such as the one with an old lady approaching the group mid-heist much to their shock and asking them to walk her dog apparently oblivious to what’s happening in front of her only to turn around and walk away as if nothing happened much to the relief of the group. This, like many others in the movie, is a scene that we’ve seen done countless of times in countless of other movies.  It’s a very cliché and formulaic plot.

Heist movies are usually divided in three segments: Set-up, planning and the heist itself. This film doesn’t make it as overly complex as we’re used to see; it doesn’t really demand the audience’s full attention and it doesn’t have a whole lot of factors coming into play, again keeping it all in the simple-minded mentality.  This is not necessarily bad but it keeps it from being a truly exciting and surprising story development. 

Ben Stiller, Gabourey Sidibe, Matthew Broderick, Eddie Murphy, Affleck , Leoni and the rest of the cast do a serviceable job here, never pushing for more than what their characters demand. They’re all equally charismatic and this represents the closest Murphy has been to his glory days. But with so much comedic talent it feels like a miss opportunity, they barely go out of their way to make a line feel special or funnier.

But perhaps we have the script to blame for that. This is a very basic type of comedy, very simple and accessible, but too innocent for its own good, with such a serious subject matter it could’ve been a lot darker and have some more depth to it or at least it should’ve gone full-on with the screwball and physical comedy aspects that are briefly touched here and there. I chuckled a few times but it wasn’t funny per-se. At least it doesn’t go the Adam Sandler “kick in the nuts, shit on the face” path and we have that to be thankful for. 

Brett Ratner and company’s lack of risk tacking is ultimately what hurts this film the most. But for what is worth this is not a bad film, it doesn’t bore and it’s technically competent. It’s a good time killer that will entertain and be almost immediately forgotten once it’s over.    

Brick Review

Brick (2005)

Dir: Rian Jhonson

Film Noir is almost a lost art today with very few directors tackling what once was the most popular genre in filmmaking. So it’s rather refreshing to see a film like Brick, one that is not only heavily inspired by Dashiell Hermet’s classic crime novels but also shares the near-perfect technical touches of Hitchcock’s best thrillers. And yet, despite being inspired by and sharing many elements with older novels and films, it’s a movie that still feels fresh, that’s mostly thanks to the great set-up and characterization. 

Brick begins like many movies of this type, Brendan (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) finds his ex-girlfriend Emily lying dead in a storm drain. We rewind two days to the moment he receives a call from a terrified Emily asking for his help, she has found herself immersed deep into their high-school’s drug-trading world and made a terrible mistake. She begs for his help, we see a black mustang passing by, she screams and the conversation is abruptly over. He then spends the next two days looking for her, which leads him to enter the drug world he avoided so much and that once caused his breakup with Emily.

And then she dies. Now the focus of the story changes. Brendan hides the body, he knows that if the police get into it they’ll only find the killer, that’s not enough for him; he wants the mastermind behind the whole operation. Like all good detectives he starts investigating, planning, infiltrating and playing with the other characters in a way that reminded me a lot of Kurosawa’s Yojimbo. 

The story is carried by the strength of its script, methodically constructed in such a way that lets the characters’ interactions with each other deconstruct every piece of the puzzle little by little and lets us uncover the mystery as it goes. The setting allows it to play around with the conceptions of the genre; it is a detective story but it’s also a well-made teenage/high-school drama with plenty of impeccably-timed comedic moments.  

This is writer-director Rian Johnson’s first film, made with an insanely low budget and a lot of determination. The lack of budget barely shows as there are many inventive camera tricks and practical effects that complement the amazing cinematography quite well. It’s a beautiful looking movie filled with interesting shots and great editing. 

The complain I’ve seen the most about this movie is the fact that due to its setting, the characters’ ages and rather dark tone it’s difficult to take seriously. I disagree, in today’s world I find it harder to believe that this type of drug-related business doesn’t happen in high-schools all over the world. And even if it wasn’t believable, it’s still an amazing piece of entertainment with great performances, near-flawless technical qualities and an inventive script that put it among the best modern films of its kind.  

The best and worst films of 2011

Before I start, here's a list of all the films from 2011 I watched during the year (with IMDB links):

• 1911, China
• 50/50, USA
• Another Earth, USA
• Attack the Block, UK
• Battle Los Angeles, USA
• Boku to tsuma no 1778 no monogatari, Japan
• Blue Valentine, USA
• Bridesmaids, USA
• Captain America: The FirstAvenger, USA
• Cedar Rapids, USA
• Contagion, USA
• Crazy, Stupid Love, USA
• Drive, USA
• El Chico que Miente, Venezuela
• Er Conde Jones: the movie, Venezuela
• Fast Five, USA
• Friends with Benefits, USA
• The Guard, Ireland
• Guilty of Romance, Japan
• Horrible Bosses, USA
• The ides of March, USA
• Jodái-e Náder azSimin, Iran
• Love for Life, China
• Martha Marcy May Marlene, USA
• Melancholia, Denmark
• Midnight in Paris, USA
• Nana to Kaoru, Japan
• Our Idiot Brother, USA
• Puss in Boots, USA
• Red State, USA
• Reverón, Venezuela
• Rise of the Planet of the Apes, USA
• Samuel, Venezuela
• The Skin I Live in, Spain
• Sleeping Beauty, Australia
• Submarine, UK
• Super, USA
• Super 8, USA
• Thor, USA
• The Tree of Life, USA
• The Twilight Saga: Breaking DawnPart I, USA
• Último Cuerpo, Venezuela
• We Need to Talk About Kevin, UK
• X-Men: First Class, USA
• Your Highness, USA

There are many movies I could not get to see and really wanted to like The Artist, The Descendants, The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, Winnie the Pooh and Shame. Perhaps the following list would've been way more different had I seen them. But either way, let's begin:

With the exception of Twilight, I mostly tried to stay away from bad films as much as possible this year (I did not watch Transformers 3 or any Adam Sandler films for example), but this one really caught me by surprise. Nana to Kaoru tells the story of two young childhood friends who find themselves connected by their S&M fetish.

Don’t get me wrong, I think sexual exploration of teenagers is a somewhat interesting subject, and many great films have been made about it. But this film gives absolutely no reason or depth to the characters so we end up not caring about their relationship at all, which is not helped by the one-note, cardboard cut-out acting. There’s barely any story to speak of, just being mostly a series of stupid moments after stupid moments.

It’s a movie that has absolutely no redeeming qualities;, it’s not sexy, it’s not emotionally interesting and it’s not funny enough to  justify itself as a comedy. It’s also really boring, even with its relatively short running time. It doesn’t qualify as anything but garbage. 

Maybe I’m being unfair because Taylor Lautner had so little to do in this movie, but the fact that even if he barely appeared he’s the most notable of the actors (not in a good way)speaks volumes of how truly terrible his performance is. His whole performance consists of being an ass-face and worrying about Bella, and Taylor Lautner pretending to be angry is just laughable.

And then there’s the imprinting scene, my lord, the fact that he’s so terrible in trying to be serious during the whole thing makes an already ludicrous scene even more stupid. In a movie full of terrible acting you have to be especially bad to be the worst, and Taylor Lautner is just that terrible.

After hearing so many things about how great and funny Attack the Block was it became one of the movies I was most looking forward to. When I finally got to see it I couldn’t help but being very disappointed. It’s not a bad movie; it does have some pretty fantastic action sequences. I just didn’t think it was funny, and considering most of the stuff was played for the laughs, it took away from the few things I thought were great.  The weed-based humor was pretty bad, most of the witty remarks don’t work and Nick Frost is absolutely terrible is his bit part, but that might be more attributed to the fact that I just don’t really like him as an actor.

I also think the filmmakers took a wrong approach with the characters. Not that I think that every alien invasion movie needs to have soldiers as its main characters but how am I supposed to root for or care about characters that totally deserve to die?  That kind of thing makes the great alien design and the well-done subtle moments of terror go to waste. Overall, I just didn’t think it was funny, exciting or entertaining.

The Fast and the Furious franchise has had a couple of terrible films and a couple of mediocre ones that are somewhat enjoyable the first time you see them, so naturally, there wasn’t much to expect from the fifth installment of the tired franchise. But holy cow did this one deliver. Director Justin Lin took the best elements from the four previous films, mixed them up and added The Rock and the result is an amazingly entertaining movie.

Don’t get me wrong, this movie is stupid, very stupid. But it knows it, and by not taking itself as seriously as the previous films did, it allows it to be incredibly fun. The cast is at its best, with The Rock being the stand-out and the action set pieces are incredibly well done. This movie entertained me more than I would ever suspect it would.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt is my favorite actor right now. Not only does he seem like a genuinely nice guy but he is also incredibly talented. In 50/50 he plays Adam Learner, a young man who finds out he has a rare type of cancer. Levitt anchors the film and takes us through an emotional roller coaster by showing his amazing range and giving us both funny and heart-breaking moments. With the exception of Ryan Gosling in Drive (my second favorite performance of the year), no other performance felt so true to life. 

My top 11 films of 2011

Ok, before I begin, I just want to say that 2011 was an amazing year for movies and it was incredibly hard to decide just 11 films as my favorites. So honorable mentions go to Thor, The Skin I Live In, Fast Five, Bridesmaids, The ides of March and Reverón. All fantastic films that sadly, did not make the list. 

So without further ado, my top 11 films of 2011:

At first sight, Drive seems more like a regular Hollywood action flick, but there’s so much more to it than what one could ever imagine from watching the trailer or reading a synopsis.  It’s an action movie whose focus is not the action, but the characters. The fantastic performances from every cast member makes them feel more real and charismatic and since it takes its sweet time carefully developing them makes us care much more about them.

There aren’t many action scenes and there aren’t many conversations. The many silent, kind of awkward moments, combined with the incredible soundtrack and beautiful photography gives it an almost hypnotic quality. It’s a very subtle film, with a great story that grabbed me and never really let me go, which is why it is my favorite film of 2011 and one that I feel I’ll be able to watch years from now and still be captivated by . 

Cancer is not an easy thing to portray in film. Most films that try to be funny end up being downright disrespectful and the ones that try to be emotional end up being melodramatic. 50/50 strikes a balance between comedy and drama in a way that no other film since has. Writer Will Reiser based the film on his own experiences, which makes for a film that feels real in both the good and the bad moments.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s tour-de-force performance drives the story and connects the bits and pieces to make a complete beautiful experience filled with hope, sadness and memorable moments.

Woody Allen’s latest film is like the city it takes place in: magical. It has what one usually expects from an Allen film: A love triangle, lots of talk about mortality, many funny dialogues, eccentric characters and more. But the added sci-fi elements (which are cleverly left unexplained) make it his funniest and more original work since The Purple Rose of Cairo.

The story takes our daydreams about meeting and becoming friends with our idols (be it literary, musical, cinematic, etc) and falling in love with beautiful women in beautiful cities and makes them true. It’s absolutely enchanting.

Life, what is it? That’s the question Terrence Malick attempts to answer through the eyes of a man reminiscing his childhood and everything in between. It’s a movie about creation, evolution, death and existence; it shows us how time and space define us and how life is so full of beauty and ugliness.  

But what the hell do I know? I can’t really say what the message of this movie is because it’s so incredibly baffling. Like Stanley Kubrick’s 2001, Malick leaves everything open to interpretation; we get what we want to get from this film. There’s not an absolute truth about its story, just like there’s not an absolute truth about life.

It’s also, without a doubt, the most beautiful film that I’ve ever seen. Every frame, every scene, every shot is crafted with such care and attention that I just couldn’t take my eyes off of it. The cinematography is quite simply sublime.

This bold and remarkable Iranian film is the best of 2011, obviously not my favorite, but without a doubt the best. Divorce stories have been done many times in cinema, but this is the first one that I’ve seen that explores the consequences in such a way.  As it moves it goes from being a family drama to a criminal procedure of Rashomon-like proportions. Along the way, we get more involved with the characters and we can almost feel their emotional baggage.

It’s a very powerful, deeply human story that will resonate with its viewers regardless of their nationality or social background.  It’s one of those films that will be looked years from now as one of the great classics of cinema.

I don’t really enjoy romantic comedies all that much. With a few exceptions they tend to be cliché-filled, predictable and unreal. They’re also mostly made in such way that completely alienates men. Crazy, Stupid Love has a lot of that, but it plays around with romantic comedy conventions and adds more variety and the result is a refreshing, hilarious film.

Steve Carell leads the cast as a man trying to move on after his divorce. His ex-wife (Juliane Moore) divorced him after cheating on him with a co-worker (Kevin Bacon) who she’s now seeing. The great Ryan Gosling plays a young womanizer who teaches Carell to get his manhood back by picking up women and Emma Stone plays Gosling’s love interest. There’s also a side story with the former couple’s young son who is in love with his babysitter. The film has better acting that what we could ever expect from the genre and manages to balance all the stories well and in the end they all converge into a hilariously absurd third act that has some of the funniest moments put on the screen last year. 

Melancholia is a tale about the end of the world, but it quickly makes us forget about that after showing us the destruction of our planet in the first five minutes. It works because by having us know that everyone is going to die we stop wondering if the characters are going to make it out alive and instead we focus our attention to what’s important: how these characters cope with their impending death.

Kirsten Dunts and Charlotte Gainsburg star as two sisters. Dunts is getting married, but she’s depressed, she knows the whole thing is going to be a disaster, Gainsburg knows it too but she wants to throw her a big party anyway. When Gainsburg finds out planet Melancholia is going to collide with earth she freaks out, she knows she can’t save herself or her family but tries to however way she can anyway. Like her sister, Dunt’s character knows she and everyone is going to die, but she accepts it, embraces it even. It’s both ends of the human spectrum and the beautiful story makes us wonder how we would react in such event. 

How far can a cult go to control every aspect of your life? This movie explores those ideas through the eyes of Martha, a young woman who escapes from a cult she was part of where she was known as Marcy May and tries to restore her relationship with her sister but fears the cult might be after her.

Elizabeth Olsen gives a fantastic debut performance, giving her character depth. Martha is depressed, she’s paranoid, she doesn’t know what’s good or bad anymore and we can see it in her eyes. Though the ending is rather disappointing, it’s still a haunting film.  

Sex, violence, Kafka. That’s Guilty of Romance in a nutshell. Avant garde director Sion Sono’s latest film is a story about repression, both sexual and social. As expected from him the story is bizarre and filled with social criticism that you can’t get with just one viewing.

This film is not pretty; in fact, it’s very, very ugly. It’s filled with sadistic, disgusting moments and there’s not a single redeemable character in it, but it’s oh so fascinating. 

Like Crazy, Stupid Love, Friends with Benefits is a movie with a lot of clichés but it is self aware so it barely even matters, plus the chemistry between Mila Kunis and Justin Timberlake (both of whom do a fantastic job) more than makes up for it. It’s raunchy, hilarious and sexy. It’s a movie that will become part of my go-to films whenever I need a good laugh.

On a side note, this is the third movie on the list, after 50/50 and A Separation where the protagonist’s father suffers from Alzheimer’s.

Originally, this was going to be a top 10 list. But I just couldn’t keep this film out, it’s too good not to be mentioned.

Usually, when we watch or read news about school shootouts and see how many people get killed we think “poor guys, they had their whole life ahead of them” or in rare cases “I feel sorry for their parents, having to deal with that”. But we hardly ever think about the parents of the killer, after all, they also lost a child that fateful day. This is what We Need to Talk About Kevin explores.

Tilda Swinton is amazing as Kevin mother’s as she tries to deal with the pressure of knowing she raised a killer and the anger of the parents of the teenagers Kevin killed. We also get to see her memories of raising her hostile child through flashbacks,  we know there’s something wrong, she knows it too, but nothing is done until it all ends in disaster.

This film is scarier that all of the recent “demon child” films, perhaps because it’s grounded on reality. There’s a weight to it that is hard to explain, it’s a magnificent piece of filmmaking.

So there they are, my favorite films of 2011. Feel free to comment on my list or of posting your own and thanks for reading.