Daily Archives: January 28, 2008
Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: In director Hayao Miyazaki‘s gentle, animated adventure, young witch Kiki (voiced by Kirsten Dunst) moves away from her family to practice her craft, but she finds that making friends in a new town is difficult. With her cat, Jiji (voiced by Phil Hartman), in tow, Kiki puts her broom flying skills to work for a baker’s wife by starting an express delivery service. She quickly discovers, however, that she can’t take her abilities for granted.
REVIEW: When John Lasseter (genius behind the Pixar films) provides the introduction for an animated film, you know it has to be good – and Kiki’s Delivery Service does not disappoint. It’s no secret that John Lasseter adores the brilliant animation master Hayao Miyazaki (he provides the intro to other Miyazaki films also). Kiki’s Delivery Service is the earliest Miyazaki film I’ve seen to date. As with many later Miyazaki films, the main character is a strong-willed, independent young girl, and the story revolves around her emotional development. I’m liking it already! Here, young Kiki is a “witch-in-training,” and per witch custom, she must set out at 13 years old to find a town that will adopt her so she can begin her training.
Accompanied by her funny and cynical cat, Jiji, and with her mom’s “more experienced” broom as her vehicle, she says goodbye to her family and friends and takes off to find a warm, welcoming seaside town. She happens upon the perfect town (after a big rainstorm causes her and Jiji to camp out in a train) and flies confidently into the town – only to cause several car accidents in the busy streets! Needless to say, the townsfolk aren’t too happy, and Kiki begins to rethink how easily the townspeople will accept her.
So she has nowhere to live and no purpose in the town, but she keeps her chin up and finds an opportunity to help the owner of the local bakery deliver something to a customer (by broom no less – bringing a new meaning to the term “air delivery”). Little by little, she begins befriending the townsfolk, but suffers setbacks too – namely caused by her own insecurities and lack of confidence. The movie, while ostensibly about a young girl, has themes that adults can appreciate as well and made me really root for Kiki, elated at her ups and sad at her downs. The music is a lot of fun and really adds to the scenes.
I really hate dubbing, being a big believer in the tenet that a film should be seen in the original language in which it was filmed, so I naturally watched this in Japanese and loved it. The subtitles lose nothing in translation and it was easy for me to understand the humor, the warmth, the insecurities. Great special features on the disc also.
The animation is early Miyazaki, so it’s not as blow-your-mind intricate as, say, Spirited Away or Howl’s Moving Castle. But that’s like comparing “excellent” and “more excellent.” The story is beautiful and warm, heartening and inspiring, funny in parts and touching in parts. The ending will put you on Cloud 9, like where Kiki is when she’s riding through the skies. Miyazaki sets the bar again very high in both animation and story.
4.5 stars
Audrey
Scarface (1932)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Mobster Tony Camonte (Paul Muni) seizes control of Chicago’s bootlegging racket in this classic crime drama, which also stars George Raft, Boris Karloff and Osgood Perkins (Anthony Perkins’s father). From director Howard Hawks and producer Howard Hughes, Scarface set the benchmark for future gangster films. Karen Morley portrays Camonte’s love interest and Ann Dvorak the gangster’s beloved sister.
REVIEW: Scarface marks director Howard Hawks’ first significant film after a string of mostly silent films. It has all the hallmarks of a classic Hughes production: witty banter between well-developed characters, a brisk pace and female leads who can do more than swoon and scream. Due to its notorious violence, Scarface was unable to pass many censor boards; producer Howard Hughes delayed the film’s release while making changes, including an entirely different ending. When the film still didn’t pass the censors, Hughes had the film restored (the alternate ending is included on the DVD) and released it to great acclaim in states without censor boards. The story of a young thug working his way up in the mafia is loosely based on the life of Al Capone (whose nickname was “Scarface”), and rumor has it he enjoyed the film so much he owned a copy. The film has certainly influenced every mafia film that followed (at one point, I heard the line: “how am I funny?”) although its age shows in the blurry and jittery cinematography and the worst Italian accents since Chico Marx. Watch for Boris “Frankenstein” Karloff as a mafioso who gets whacked at a bowling alley.
4 stars
HAWK
Brotherhood of the Wolf (2001)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Director Christophe Gans‘s luminously filmed horror tale — based on an 18th century French legend about a protean wolflike beast — has some bite to it. The beast’s bloodlust (it likes to devour villagers) sets the stage for a battle royal between it and naturalist Gregoire de Fronsac (Samuel Le Bihan) and his Mohawk Indian companion, Mani (Mark Dacascos) — two adventurers dispatched by King Louis to vanquish the terror.
REVIEW: I was expecting a werewolf movie, but was far from disappointed when it was not. The title of this movie is very apropos. The creature, a wolf of some type, contrived by man or created by magic, is protected by a brotherhood of men. An old man is the head caretaker of the beast. Our two heroes, Gregoire de Fronsac and his Indian friend Mani, are commissioned by the King to rid the French countryside of this beastly terror that is killing the dwellers in the vicinity. What befalls them on this expedition creates a capital movie.
When our adventurers begin to get close to resolving the issue they are called off and told to forget about their quest. This is extremely suspicious and leads the viewer to question why. You begin to get a feeling of an undercurrent by the French Governing Hierarchy. I can’t go further along this line without giving away plot lines. At this point the plot takes on a new and even more horrible slant.
This all leads to a great deal of action and bloodletting. The movie starts out slowly after the initial killing of a woman in the opening scenes, but does not take long to pick up momentum. The version I watched was dubbed in English and very enjoyable. It also had subtitles if you desired them. The performances of all the actors were excellent but could not be matched by the superior acting of the two main characters. Some of the landscapes were lush and spectacular. Those taken of the woods were primo-licious. There is a considerable amount of violence displayed and sexual nudity abounds. If it is true that this story is based on fact then it is a phenomenal retelling of the story. This is the stuff that legends are made of.
4 Stars
Ghost
Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience (2007)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Veterans who fought in Iraq and Afghanistan recount their war experiences in this Oscar-nominated documentary, which collects the writings of soldiers and their families to give a deeply personal view of American troops’ involvement in these conflicts. Various visual strategies complement the interviews and readings by such noted actors as Robert Duvall, Beau Bridges, Blair Underwood, Aaron Eckhart and writers Anthony Swofford, James Salter and Tobias Wolff.
REVIEW: In a sense, Operation Homecoming: Writing the Wartime Experience doesn’t really tell us anything that we didn’t know on an abstract level. But I think there is a lot of value in immersing oneself in the concrete realities of those who serve, and of coming to a more intimate understanding of the human cost of fighting any war.
The photography and the stories are very powerful, and it is very interesting to see many different points of view from several different conflicts. But more than anything else, this documentary has whetted my appetite to read the book. I’m a bit surprised that this received a Best Documentary Oscar nod, because it is only an hour long, and is clearly made for television, but I learned something about the soul of the soldier, so it definitely achieves its purpose.
Of the documentaries nominated for an Oscar this year, No End in Sight is clearly the best film. But this is a nice companion piece.
4 stars
Lori
Infernal Affairs 2 (2003)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: A veteran cop, Chan Wing Yan (Tony Leung), is given an enormous task: to go undercover within his own department and finger the detective who’s been deceiving everyone and leaking information to the criminal underworld. But the mole (Andy Lau), whose identity Chan doesn’t know, also has no idea who the internal investigator is, and the two soon embark on a dangerous and perilous game of cat and mouse.
REVIEW: “Complicated” is right. This prequel to Infernal Affairs left my head spinning at times trying to follow along. In many ways, IA2 takes on perhaps too much in its attempt to reveal the history of the Ngai crime family and its entangled relationship with the police. Clearly, the script was written after an all-night binge of the Godfather trilogy, with many direct and indirect references to the Corleone family saga. IA 2 has less action than the original, but maybe more intrigue. If you can manage to keep track of the plot, you’ll get paid off at the end.
3.5 stars
HAWK
The Memory of a Killer (2003)
NETFLIX SYNOPSIS: Hardened hit man Angelo Ledda (Jan Decleir) finds his career threatened by the onset of Alzheimer’s in this Belgian crime thriller. As Ledda struggles to complete his contracts, he must also contend with two detectives (Koen De Bouw and Werner De Smedt) who are hot on his trail for recent murders. Soon, the pressure of it all prompts Ledda to turn on his own employers. Erik Van Looy directs from a script based on Jef Geeraerts’s novel.
REVIEW: Set in Antwerp, this fast-moving thriller kept me thinking and one edge from start to finish. The film begins with an undercover investigation into a child prostitution ring via the case of 12-year-old girl who is pimped by her father. Things go badly wrong at the scene; the father is killed and the girl taken into protective custody. Next, aging hit man Ledda is engaged — through his agent — to clean up the untidy mess, which traces back to machinations of the local power elite. Ledda carries out his first hit on the son of local kingpin “The Baron,” and retrieves a strongbox of evidence requested by his employers. When he is assigned to kill the 12-year-old girl, however, it’s too much for his old-fashioned sense of honor, and Ledda refuses. His agent completes the assignment, kills the girl and attempts to kill Ledda, who then embarks on a single-minded odyssey of bloody revenge.
Ledda’s single-mindedness is threatened by his rapidly worsening Alzheimer’s disease. After seeing his future in the dead eyes of his institutionalized brother, Ledda accepts his likely fate and resolves to take down the most mighty by means of physical vendetta as well as the secrets contained in the evidence box. He establishes an uneasy alliance with a straight-arrow detective who is not afraid to contend with political corruption and the internecine rivalry between different branches of the police force. Exquisitely choreographed cat-and-mouse games ensue.
Jan Decleir offers a fascinating, nuanced and powerful performance as Ledda. Some of the effects used to signify his memory breaks take a bit of getting used to, but overall the film is stylish and streamlined, action- oriented but long on character as well.
Much better than many stateside efforts of similar ilk. I highly recommend this one!
4.5 stars
Kym
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