Charming Monsters

I’ve been wanting to see this film for about 18 months now, ever since stumbling across the promo poster and a brief description. Sadly, even with my relatively high tolerance for cinematic cheese, Gothic & Lolita Psycho really wasn’t worth the wait.

There are some cool, fun ideas scattered through this film. The main character’s outfit is amazingly detailed, and the inventive use of parasol-as-combat-weapon gets more and more amusing as the film rolls along. There’s certainly no shortage of over-the-top Japanese gore effects, if that’s your thing (it’s not particularly mine, and the effects in this film go way over the line into ludicrous camp).

That said, it manages to draaaaag. The fights aren’t nearly as fast & furious as they look in the trailer; there’s a lot of awkward moments with the characters standing around, either before or mid-combat, and the general effect is pretty repetitive. Context is minimal and what little plot exists is both laughable and vapid, obvious from almost the first frame. Certain sequences, like an extended bouncer-with-noodles bit at the start, feel like they were included not for comedic or story effect, but purely to plump up the runtime.

There are a few saving graces: the fight sequence involving the gyaru girl (sort of Japanese sexy hip-hop style, very over-the-top) was pretty amusing, and again, the combat parasols rock. Overall, however, this was a disappointingly weak example of the usually entertaining Japanese comedic gore genre.

One way I console myself when my husband is off on one of his many work trips is by doing all the things he doesn’t especially enjoy doing. Mostly, this comes down to movies: I love a night of bundling up on the couch with some snacks and a pile of weird films, while Jim is more of a “one documentary and I’m done” sort of lad.

This is especially true with horror films. Jim has no taste for the genre; while mine has faded in the last few years, with increasing maturity and the rise of the torture pr0n films, I still do love me some good gore & chills for the Halloween season. So with Jim off in Maryland for a signing last weekend, I got down to catching up on some spooky stuff.

I remember quite enjoying the original version of Let Me In (Let the Right One In), although the review I wrote at the time suggests otherwise. At any rate, I’d been avoiding the remake due to a general distaste for Hollywood-ized foreign films and a desire to not taint my pleasant memories of the first film.

While there are some key differences between the films, both in structure and how specific scenes play out, the new version is faithful to the core atmosphere and tone of the original, and even manages to improve on it in spots. The basics remain the same: unhappy boy with an alienated mother and a bully problem notices strange new girl who moves in next door, they initiate a tentative friendship against the backdrop of a slow revelation of the girl’s true nature.

One thing that really worked for me in the revamp is that they don’t take too long to get to the vampire bit: you’ve already seen it in the trailer, so it’s not exactly a big reveal. The original film took quite a while to unfold the girl’s secret, which works only if you have not seen any of the movie’s advertising – in which case, it’s unlikely you would be watching the film anyway! Other little tweaks include having Owen, the young boy, see more directly the truth and consequences of the girl’s situation, making his choice to continue their relationship both more informed and more chilling. Rather miraculously, the producers managed to find two young actors who are just as talented and believable as the ones from the original movie, which is really what sells the film in the end.

Recommended, especially for those of you who prefer your horror a little less gory and a lot more moody and atmospheric.

To be honest, I am pretty much THE target audience for this film, given that I willingly read and enjoy non-fiction books about plagues and contagious diseases in my spare time. When I first saw the trailer for CONTAGION, I was pretty much the only person in the audience not rolling their eyes. It’s chock-full of fantastic acting talent and difficult choices.

And yet… and yet.

Contagion suffers from a desire to show too broad a scope, from an early immune patient worrying over his child to a far-flung global team working to track down the virus source and develop a vaccine. It’s an ambitious task, trying to cover all aspects of a global disease outbreak, and while it succeeds on that level, it doesn’t really gel on a storytelling perspective. There is a tad too much ambiguity over the fate of certain characters (one person I thought had recovered never showed up again, and I did not figure it out until the credits were rolling!), while others are left with little to do but worry and wait. While realistic, it’s not exactly compelling stuff.

Further, the disparate plot threads, and their core characters, don’t seem to interconect all that much. While handling that sort of interweaving can be tricky – too much comes off as fake – too little can leave the film feeling a bit like a series of not-entirely-related vignettes set in the same general reality.

Overall, while I did enjoy the performances, particularly Matt Damon & Kate Winslet, it’s not really a film I can highly recommend – unless you are, like me, fascinated by all things biological and deadly.

One of the films I most regretted missing at this year’s Toronto Film Fest was Micmacs, the latest from the fabulous French film director Jean-Pierre Jeunet, best known for Delicatessen, The City of Lost Children and Amélie. It’s opening for a limited run in Los Angeles and New York on May 28, and will hopefully be showing up in Toronto indie cinemas this summer (I’m fairly sure I could snag a DVD from Suspect Video already, but Jeunet’s visuals demand a big-screen appreciation). For more info, there’s the official movie website.

Numb from Thinklab on Vimeo.

Via Pretty Wonderland, NUMB is a charming ten-minute short blending animation, digital effects and punk cabaret styling to enchanting effect. Produced by Thinklab for the Seattle International Film Festival in 2007, I’m rather surprised I haven’t stumbled across this before – it’s got a charming Burton-meets-Brothers-Quay aesthetic complete with Elfman-esque soundtrack and creepy human puppetry. Plus, I’m a sucker for a good hair bow.