LEPRECHAUN

This week's movie is the cult horror film Leprechaun.  This is really a rare occurrence, me watching two horror movies in the span of a week.  I think it helps that neither this or Proteus are really that horrorful.  I feel that it is important to make a distinction of the horror genera since it is nearly dead.  Typical movies that are called "horror" now a days really aren't that scary on their own.  Most movies that get the blanket term horror attached to them fall under what I like to call torture porn.  Movies like Saw and Hostel are scary because of the disgust you are supposed to feel at watching such gruesome acts.  They are designed to make you feel uncomfortable both by a transference of the character's pain and also by making you feel guilty for watching.  This is partly due to the naturalism attained by modern special effects.  Mostly this shift is due to the discovery of the Japanese horror genera.  Japan has a long history of publishing explicitly violent and gory material.  In modern Japanese history this dates back to the print artist Yoshitoshi and his projects such as 28 Famous Murders, which only passes censors for their historical relevance.  In 2002 The Ring, based on the 1998 film Ringu, became the first exposure to the style of Japanese horror that most Americans experienced.  This style of film making was so extreme that it forced film makers in the horror genera to shift tactics to keep scaring audiences.  This is the short story and I bring it up only to show that horror movies 20 years ago weren't that scary.  I'll come back to why this is important later.

So!  Where to begin with this film...  Let's begin with our protagonist Tory, the hip young teenager from LA, and her father driving through New Mexico and complaining about how it's the middle of nowhere.  We can already tell Tory is a winner because her father has to correct her that they are actually in North Dakota.  From scene one I already want her to die.  But it's not that kind of movie!  The most Tory gets in this movie is a scratch on the leg while the demonic leprechaun kills not one, not two, but three people!  Gasp!  Granted he tortures them before they die and another woman's death can be blamed on him indirectly, but as horror movies go very few people die and out of the survivors stitches are the most any of them would need.  Where I'm going with this is to say that Leprechaun is a tame horror movie.  It's a movie about a leprechaun.  Not much to it.  Somebody takes his gold and he wants it back.  He'll kill to get it back.  He'll also kill you if he thinks you took his gold or look at him funny but as far as monster motivation goes, it's just a short temper and a single-minded devotion to the protection of his personal property.  

The cast of victims runs the gambit of stereotypes.  We have the big city girl, the kind rednecky love interest, the bratty child, the retarded friend/uncle...  It's a varied cast of characters.  And it's a good thing too because most of the movie is just them talking.  Tory, the woman, is afraid of all manner of things and fulfills the shrieky woman in a horror movie stereotype, however as it was the early 90's they also had to establish her rugged feminist individuality.  I get the sense from this movie that the film makers really didn't like California because most of what comes out of Tory's mouth is ridiculous.  She complains about everything and constantly compares the current surroundings to LA.  This gets old very fast and only made me hope she would die all the more.  I did think it was cute how she was so nostalgic for beautiful LA, I don't think anyone checked a newspaper for about a year because the Rodney King Riots had been going on during filming.  She is also obsessed with her "portable phone" (how's that for a dated movie?) and a vegetarian, because its required for California state citizenship.  They pretty much slapped her with every California and horror movie heroin stereotype they could while still adding one scene to prove they are behind women rooting for their gender equality, it's just a really forced scene and you can tell they were laughing all the way through it.  The pair of characters, Alex and Ozzie, the kid and retarded man give the movie most of the comedic relief.  Alex seems to embody the bratty 90's generation kid who swears like a sailor and doesn't play by anyone's rules.  This would be really annoying much like Tory's character accept for the pairing in most scenes with Ozzie who is the 100% pure good character.  He's fat, stupid, and awkward, he always chastises Alex when he swears, he always tells it the way he sees it, especially when no one believes him.  This pairing of opposites actually makes their eccentricities interesting by giving a variety of extremes that is not too offensive to the senses.  Oh, and there's a cute Flower's for Algernon subplot.

Warwick Davis, who plays the leprechaun is a wonderful actor who got his start as one of the ewoks in Return of the Jedi.  Chances are you have seen him in several roles but most are small or only have him animating puppet like costume.  The Leprechaun movies really give him the opportunity to act crazy on screen.  For actors, being the villain is always more fun because you get to play eccentric.  Davis does not disappoint.  From the very beginning we know the monster is a leprechaun, we know he's going to kill until he has his gold, and we see him through most of the movie.  This is a major deviation from most horror movies of this type because the leprechaun, while magical, still seems to exist like a normal person, he uses a tiny car or a tricycle to get around, we see him wander around looking for things, he is not omniscient.  This leads to a hilarious scene where he is tearing apart the kitchen of the farm house looking for his gold when he comes across a box of cereal labeled "lucky clovers" even written in the same font as Lucky Charms.  On a side note, I feel like there was a scene cut right here or a scene changed from the original because later "Lucky Charms" was used in a one liner.  It was a clear reference to the cereal but when they had the chance to make a cereal joke they changed the name on the box.

On the subject of cereal this is a good time to explore the accuracy of this movie from a mythological standpoint.  Everyone knows that leprechauns are jolly little fellows from Ireland.  They wear green, hang out around four leaf clovers, and if you can catch one he'll give you his pot of gold.  Sorry to burst your bubble but that is a very American conception of the leprechaun.  Leprechauns of legend were far more varied based on the area of Ireland they were found and traditionally were dressed in red, something the movie gets wrong.  Leprechauns are also known for being shoe makers, something the movie directly references.  This is also used as a comedic plot device to slow down the little monster as if he comes across a dirty shoe, he must clean it before resuming his murderous rampage.  The real crux of the issue is are leprechauns evil, because this one sure is.  It really depends on the account your read.  The earliest written account of leprechauns is from a medieval story where the king of Ulster falls asleep on a beach and wakes to find three leprechauns dragging him into the sea.  Other accounts claim that leprechauns are neutral being neither good or evil.  Another film Darby O'Gill and the Little People features leprechauns heavily.  Here they are morally neutral but if you cross them they will ruin your life.  After several tries the old man Darby finally catches O'Brian, the king of the leprechauns, by tricking him into getting drunk, a little trick they pull in Leprechaun 2.  Another interesting feature of leprechauns are their wish granting abilities if they are caught.  This however is not addressed in the movie Leprechaun.  He is captured at the beginning but as the old man has already taken his gold it seems that he doesn't get his wishes, or something.  Added is the leprechaun's weakness against the magical four-leaf-clover, not a traditional characteristic, but a necessary plot device.

As I mentioned earlier the leprechaun is in many scenes in this movie.  In this way it deviates from the traditional monster movie.  Traditionally the creature, whatever it is, is not shown roaming the hallways of the house pondering where the dumb teenagers are.  This takes out a lot of the scare factor.  There are a couple cheap tricks this movie uses to generate scares.  First, the jump scare.  Second, the monster is always behind you trick, not used much but it still makes an appearance.  And Third, double takes.  I don't know what the technical name is for this technique but it is deftly achieved here multiple times.  It involves the characters doing something that the audience expects will lead to a jump scare or the appearance of the monster and then having nothing happen.  Then the next time the characters do the same thing the monster appears doubly scaring the viewer.  I had seen this done a couple times in the movie but it did not really solidify in my mind what they were doing until the end.  Earlier, Alex opened the refrigerator to get some ice and the camera did a strange focus shot on his hand opening the door, BAM! cut to the next scene, sorry folks nothing happened.  Then later he does the same thing but the leprechaun leaps out of the fridge when it is opened.  You may think this is just a bunch of strange stuff going on that has no rhyme or reason but there you are wrong.

Leprechaun spawned 5 sequels each more  ridiculous than the last, the strangest possibly being Leprechaun 4: in Space.  The ridiculousness of the series in general can be linked to two things, contemporary trends in horror movies and the background of the writer Mark Jones.

The genera of comedy horror has been around since 1820 with Washington Irving's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.  However, the comedy aspect of this was rarely blended well with the horror aspect.  This was tried in the 40's with Abbot and Costello movies where the comedic duo would have a crossover story with famous movie monsters such as Bud Abbott Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein or Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man or Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy.  These attempts however were far more comedy than horror.  Not until the 1980's did films start to appear that blended the two.  Gremlins and Evil Dead 2 are examples of how a monster movie or zombie movie can be turned into a family movie or psychedelic comedy.  Legendary B-movie star Bruce Campbell is forced to cut off his own demon possessed hand in Evil Dead 2.  A similar scene in Leprechaun is when the leprechaun gets his hand cut off in a door, and the hand crawls up the doorframe to open the door and get to the leprechaun in a quirky stop motion scene very reminiscent of Campbell's experience.  This movie is clearly going for the comedy horror genera and is very aware of its source material.  Interestingly, for most of the production and writing staff, this was one of their first movies, so it is no wonder that they drew heavily from recent films that did well.

For writer and director Mark Jones, this was his first movie.  He had however had a long career writing for television.  His filmography includes The A-Team, Riptide, and Mister-T.  However, soon after he got his start in television he gravitated to Hanna-Barbara where he was a long time writer for numerous cartoon series including What's New, Mr. Magoo?, Heathcliff, The All-New Popeye Hour, and 3 Scooby Doo series.  This last category is important.  Mark Jones had a career in writing for children's cartoons from 1977-1992.  He clearly understands comedy or he wouldn't have been doing cartoons for so long.  Also, his involvement in Scooby Doo is interesting in relation to a comedy horror film.  Scooby Doo is at heart a comedy but the team goes off to find scary monsters and mysteries all the time.  Mark Jones was drawing from his experience both writing for his Scooby Doo series, but most likely also drawing from other cartoon series as well when writing Leprechaun.  

So far I have only seen bits of the sequels and from what I have seen I would agree with the rumors I have heard that each is more ridiculous than the last.  I've also heard that this is a bad thing.  From what I can tell, Mark Jones, who has been on the writing staff for each film, but only directed the first is simply trying to apply the comedic aspects from his Hanna-Barbara career to live action horror films to imitate the success of comedy horror in the 80's.  I seem to be alone in this regard.  To date, Leprechaun has made back $8,556,940 of its $9,000,000 budget from ticket sales.  If you are interested in multiple genera movies or are just looking for a silly early 90's horror film I recommend Leprechaun.

Movies Referenced:

2002-The Ring

1998-Ringu

1997-Leprechaun 4: in Space

1995-Proteus

1994-Leprechaun 2

1993-Leprechaun

1987-Evil Dead 2

1983-Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

1982-Gremlins

1959-Darby O'Gill and the Little People

1955-Abbott and Costello Meet the Mummy

1951-Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man

1948-Bud Abbott and Lou Costello Meet Frankenstein

PROTEUS

Sorry for the irregular posting.  I'm still trying to work out a schedule that works for regular updates.  I would prefer 2 movies a week but we don't always get what we want.

This time we are once again shifting generas and delving into that great unknown called survival horror.  Survival horror is a subgenera of action or horror depending on which category it leans towards more.  Typically in horror movies the main characters are trying to survive but their survival is not the focus, their fear is.  Survival horror attempts to go back to some kind of Hitchcock inspired suspense based fear to elicit emotions from the audience.  Unlike your typical slasher flick, scenarios tend toward the ridiculous and implausible, thus removing the possibility for the viewer to find themselves in the situation.  Therefore different scare tactics must be used.  One of these is gore.  Several movies that fall under this category are Alien, The Thing, and Virus.  Movies like this prey on our fears of the unknown while the gruesome monsters and deaths can often come off as cartoonish.  In the true spirit of Hitchcock, these movies are far more terrifying when nothing is happening.

Our current focus is on the 1995 film Proteus, not to be confused with the 2002 Proteus about the love affair of a black man and a white man in a south African prison camp, or the 2004 Proteus which is a documentary about undersea exploration in the 19th century.  Apparently "proteus" is a generic title if you have no idea what to call your movie.  Proteus as it turns out was an early Greek sea god.  Unfortunately for him, he was also a lesser god getting beaten up by anyone who wanted his secret knowledge.  Oh, and his sons were killed by Hercules.  Clearly his name will strike fear into the hearts of women and children everywhere!  Let's name our terrifying movie after him!  And thus Proteus was born...

A little back story before I get into the movie.  Proteus was based on a book, Slimer, written by Australian science fiction writer John Brosnan.  This is one of 3 books by John that have been turned into movies.  This particular one by Bob Keen.  Never hear of the great Bob Keen?  That's because he's a special effects guy.  In fact he specializes in monster makeup.    Bob Keen has worked makeup, animatronics, and puppet fabrication for such films as Hellraiser, Event Horizon, The Never Ending Story, The Dark Crystal, and Return of the Jedi.  He has been nominated five times for the Saturn Award for best make-up.  But in 1993, sixteen years after being a model maker for Star Wars, he decided to try his hand at directing.  It was called Shepherd on the Rock.  I haven't seen it but apparently it was good enough to justify his directing job on the side of his continuing special effects career.  Proteus was his fourth film as a director and it shows he is a growing but still immature director.

Our movie opens on a man being questioned about what happens a glimpse of an action flashback and then an incredibly dull and boring opening about the worst bunch of heroin smugglers you've ever seen.  The actors come on set arguing giving off all the emotion of a high school performance.  One character has supposedly just lost a finger to the angered Triads, or something, but seems more annoyed that no one is sympathizing with him than traumatized by having a finger cut off, presumably with loads of death threats on the side.  It is here, as our heroes escape(...china?) that we have one of my favorite lines in the movie, "Lets pray for some strong wind(as the boat's engine starts in the background...)".

This begins the long process of figuring what was put into the movie because of the book, and what was put in by the film makers.  Off camera the six idiots sink their yacht with all their drugs, saves money.  They then have lots of pointless dialogue that only serves to show that they are in 3 couples and none of them get along.  This wasn't really necessary but its there anyway.  When you see scenes like this in a movie this is a telltale sign that the movie is trying to be faithful to its book.  Dune was infamous for this even including the interior monologues of characters.  Prince Caspian, as one of its many flaws, tried to make up for the inaccuracies by lifting useless blocks of dialogue from the book.  

Having not read Slimer I can only guess that this is true.  It seems that most of the detail was left out in favor of atmosphere and action scenes.  For instance, Alex and Rachel turn out to be undercover DEA agents.  What significance does this hold?  Absolutely none.  Did their police training help them at all?  No.  Did they have access to special knowledge that helped them fight the monster?  No.  Did it keep them from getting killed?  Only in Alex's case.  The only reason this is included in the film that I can think of is to find a reason for us to sympathize with the characters.  This is a common convention in movies.  No matter how bad your main character is, no matter what they have done, we have to sympathize with them.  This film chooses the route of "they were just pretending to be drug smugglers".  And I guess the other woman who survives was just going along with what her boyfriend was doing so it's ok.  Ladies, if you can blame a life of crime on your boyfriend your off the hook.  Great message Proteus!

On a side note about the gender interactions in this movie, women are incredibly helpless.  This is partially because the guys seem to just bring their girlfriends on all their drug running missions.  Like I said, worst drug smugglers ever!  Of course we have to have a happy ending but Alex's girlfriend/DEA partner (?) has just been killed.  He's brooding just a bit, but it seems like love is in the air as he and the last surviving woman from the original cast fly off into the sunset.  Just a bit strange since he was so attached to Rachel 30 minutes before that he couldn't shoot a monster that looked like her even though he knew she was dead.  Odd messages all around.

For all the bad acting, generic plot, and inconsistencies, there were several things this movie did well.  As strange as the situation was that the characters found themselves in it their reactions mostly made sense.  Especially when you considered that they were also drug users and their heroin supply was running out.  My first thought is the movie Sunshine where a group of astronauts have to fly to the sun to do something to make it not die.  These are the most important people in the galaxy tasked with saving not only humanity, but all like in the solar system.  Who do they choose, a bunch of emotional wrecks with interpersonal problems.  It's a little implausible that a group that important would have such a poor sampling of humanity, however when your characters are a bunch of drug dealers it kind of works.  They get easily distracted, they panic in the dark hallways.  The plausibility at the beginning is ok, a bunch of shipwrecked people getting onto an abandoned oil rig.  Ok that works.  However it is a bit strange when they find the secret genetics lab and suddenly have advanced knowledge of what everything is.  I'm sorry, I've been in advanced labs before and there is no way you can tell what is going on by looking at any of the machines.  

I hesitate to criticize any of the science since this is a horror movie, not even science fiction.  I will say though that if you want a monster that is trapped on an oil rig, don't say he has shark DNA.  Last time I checked, sharks can both swim and breath underwater.  In the last scene of the movie when the monster is revealed it has a shark head with gills.  One simple line like "it lost its tolerance to sea water" would have explained everything.  This could have been explained in the book, but it seems like it was sloppily handled in the movie.  Furthermore, if your monster having shark DNA has nothing to do with the plot, DON'T KEEP TALKING ABOUT IT!  The characters expound at great length that it's a shark but not once do any shark characteristics ever come up.  Since the creature, named Charlie, can take on the human form of its victims it would have made more sense to say it was from an amoeba or a chameleon, or if they wanted to stick to the oceanic theme, maybe an octopus, it had enough tentacles.  

Overall most of the complaints I have had can be chalked up to the old problem of converting a book to a movie, you have to cut out so much that often you leave out crucial details that make events understandable.  But none of that is really that important.  This is a horror movie, and it does pretty well at what it sets out to do.  For a low budget film with no theater release the horror quality is surprisingly high.  At one point while the characters are standing around talking there is a screen in the background showing footage from a security camera and a figure walks by.  No one notices but it creates an incredible jolt from the audience.  What I love about things like that is that it's not actually scary, but the atmosphere created by the movie makes it so.  Jump scares are the lowest form of scare tactics in a movie but to scare the audience without a jump and a loud noise is difficult.  There is also the convention of bodily takeover which is frightening.  Charlie basically sucks out everything a person is including their memories to impersonate them and find new victims.  This was the basic plot of The Thing however there the movie was about the mystery of finding the monster.  In Proteus, the movie is more about figuring out that you're in a horror movie.  This is why in The Thing the scare is that you don't know who the monster is.  In Proteus, if you have half a brain, you will know every time someone is the monster, but it's the suspense that creates the fear.  It's not as well done as Alien where you know everyone is going to die, you just don't know when, but for a low budget movie directed by a special effects artist the final product is quite enjoyable.  On the subject of Alien, there is a direct reference where the creature implants itself into a sleeping person and kills them from the inside like a facehugger.  Bob Keen also worked on that movie so its most likely not coincidence.

If you are not a fan of the horror genera this is still an enjoyable movie.  It's not really gory from what I saw, probably because the makeup budget was spent on animatronics and puppets.  These by the way are very entertaining.  The whole movie leaves so many questions unanswered that it's half the fun to tear it apart looking for any explanation.  I enjoyed this recommendation and I hope you do too.

Movies Referenced:

2008-The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian

2007-Sunshine

2004-Proteus

2003-Proteus

1997-Event Horizon

1995-Proteus

1987-Hellraiser

1984-Dune

1984-The Never Ending Story

1983-Star Wars: Episode VI - Return of the Jedi

1982-The Thing

1982-The Dark Crystal

1979-Alien

FIGHTER IN THE WIND

Bare with me as I get into the swing of things here.  I have a couple comments to make about last week's movie Rango.  First, the old armadillo is not the Spirit of the West.  This character is a mythological/fantasy archetype of a prophet or wizard.  In most middle eastern religions the desert held great mystery and power and those who went out into the vast expanse sometimes encountered their god.  Limiting this to a biblical context the armadillo is a prophet figure sending a message and foreshadowing the Spirit of the West.  Now whether you believe the spirit is real or Rango's hallucination is up to you.  The armadillo is a messenger of his beliefs and while he may have some sort of supernatural connection, there is no indication that he is the Spirit of the West in disguise.  That said, I welcome strange questions like this one, they often lead to interesting insights.  Second, I would like to acknowledge a Miss Helena for her great review of Rango.  As a film student and aspiring cinematographer she was far more adept at noticing all the cinematographic references and I applaud her for her skill.  You can find her review here: http://dpgirl.wordpress.com/2011/03/14/movie-review-rango/

And now on with the show!  This week's movie is Fighter in the Wind, a South Korean martial arts movie.  I recently gave a lecture on Japanese martial arts and have experienced first hand how difficult it can be to describe the feeling a martial artist gets when watching a movie like this but I can tell you that its different from the layman's experience.  A bit of historical background first.  The story revolves around the man Choi Bae-dal, based on the Korean martial artist Choi Yeong-eui, who later took the Japanese name Masutatsu Oyama.  Yes, it's a bit confusing.  The real man Choi was a Korean who joined the Japanese military to become an aviator and was assigned to a kamikaze unit.  After the war he had a difficult time settling down in Tokyo due to the racism against Koreans at the time.  However he persevered and started attending university.  He studied martial arts at various karate dojos around Tokyo for several years and achieved the rank of 8th dan.  For all of you who don't understand what that means, in Japan 3rd dan generally allows one to teach a martial art, and 5th dan certifies the practitioner as a master.  After several exploits, including beating up several US MPs, he retreated to the mountains to practice with a student who left him due to the solitude.  Choi stayed in the wilderness alone for another 14 months training his mind and body.  When he returned to civilization he dominated the Karate division of the Japanese National Martial Arts Tournament.  He then went on to create his own style of Karate.  He is well known for inventing the 100 man kumite (which the guy finished 3 times in 3 days!) and fighting bulls bear handed.  This man was truly a great martial artist and demands the respect of any martial arts practitioner.

Well! That was a lengthy introduction.  My point is this guy is amazing and worked hard all his life to perfect his art and share it with others.  Accompanied with his almost mythical exploits it no wonder there have been several movies made about the man and Fighter in the Wind is just the most recent.  For those who aren't familiar with martial arts movies there has been a serious shift in the genera in recent years.  For years Jackie Chan had a corner on the international market for martial arts films but as soon as The Tuxedo came out his career has been plummeting.  This is mostly due to studios not allowing him to do his own stunts anymore in favor of absolutely ridiculous special effects.  His name recognition also led him to mainly feature in children's movies which left a gaping void in the martial arts film industry.  This has been the greatest thing ever for fans...  Everyone and their mother has been trying to become the next international superstar and it has led to some of the best fight choreography ever as well as bringing new talent to the forefront.  Along with the change in tone in martial arts movies to boost the attention to new actors, there has also been a shift towards nationalistic films.  This was probably popularized by the Chinese film Hero staring Jet Li.  This film was based in the warring states period right before king Qin Shi Huang becomes the first emperor.  Since then films such as Ong Bak, The Protector, and Merantau have featured heavily nationalistic themes as well as supporting native agricultural societies over international industrialization.  There is also the trend of loosely based historical martial arts films like Ip Man.  Fighter in the Wind falls into both categories.  FYI, its not very historically accurate.

The movie starts out with Choi joining the military to fly planes, him and several of his Korean buddies are then inexplicably being punished by being left tied to posts for...not wanting to be kamikaze pilots...or something.  During an American bombing run they are freed by a Japanese officer who only releases them because he is to insulted that dirty Koreans are let into the great kamikaze unit.  And so the great racism spectacle begins.  True, Koreans underwent a lot in Japan and still do today, but its almost comical how everyone gets in Choi's way.  Oh by the way, did I mention he has no fighting skill and regularly gets his ass kicked by Japanese.  So they set up very early that the Japanese are awful people, accept Choi's  girlfriend.  As he learns martial arts slowly from his families old servant, he moonlights as a superhero beating up American GIs who prey on Japanese girls making him the most wanted man in Tokyo.  About half way through we return to the main plot of his rivalry with the Japanese martial arts expert who freed him at the beginning.  Events basically play out according to the historical account accept that he is represented as a uneducated day laborer who's only motivations are revenge and national pride.  This is completely contrary to Choi Yeong-eui's political positions as he integrated into Japanese society, but as this is a Korean movie, they really want to portray this amazing Korean as pro-Korea as possible.  Old wounds run deep.

Only after watching the movie did I look up Choi Yeong-eui and learn about his life.  Many parts of the movie get things blatantly wrong, he beat up some MPs, but he said it was because he was angry about losing his friends in the war, he wasn't very pro-Korea, he not only had a university background, but also studied at several Japanese dojos.  He did not leave Tokyo because he was afraid of fighting, and his second tour in the mountains wasn't because he killed a man.  The film makers have done something I find very annoying and that is change the character's motivations.  Over and over they refer to Choi as Musashi the great samurai who crushed all of his opponents until he died at 61.  Musashi was always striving to be the best and from the historical accounts I would say anyone who fights bulls is following a similar goal, or trying to kill himself, one or the other.  In this respect I think the movie probably captured Choi's obsession with martial arts, however it is so interspersed with his made up motivations it almost masks his motivation all together.  This is a problem when making martial artists the good guys, you have to give them a good and heroic reason to beat the crap out of people on a daily basis.  In the martial arts world personal achievement is good enough but to the rest of the world it looks like sadistic bullying, so you have to make your character very clearly good and have a clearly evil rival.  Choi's rival in this movie, Kato Masaya, the president of the Japanese martial arts federation, is very poor in this respect.  His fighting isn't impressive and he only beats Choi in the beginning because Choi knows no martial arts at that point.  Later he stands around looking ominous and representing everything that was bad about Japan from the era of occupation.  He sends out assassins and constantly torments Choi almost killing his best friend at one point.  This creates a strange paradox at the end when they finally square off.  Choi beats him duel style with a stopped punch to the face and Kato forfeits.  Choi walks off slowmo style.  No retaliation, no stab in the back, nothing.  Kato has been trying to have Choi killed the entire movie, they are alone in a huge expanse of tall grass, he has a sword, no one would find the body...  I understand he is supposed to be in awe of Choi's power but really they filmmakers work themselves into a corner with these characters.

One of the most surprising things about this movie is that the main actor Yang Dong-geun is not a martial artist.  From what I can tell he is acting through the whole movie with no outside experience.  He does have incredible coordination and beautiful movements probably from his break-dancing career.  Unlike actors like Bruce Lee and Iko Uwais who were actual martial artists who competed professionally in tournaments Yang Dong-geun is performing his role a la Jean Claude Van Dam (he's a ballet dancer, not a martial artist).  On a similar note, Tony Jaa's Ong Bak 3, his personal "look at how awesome I am" movie, was all about dance and how it relates to martial arts.  Yang Dong-geun has done no other martial arts movies however after he finishes his required military service he may return to us.

This movie suffers from two main problems.  The over arching theme of racism and the pure innocents of the Korean people in all matters is a bit ridiculous as is the near deification of Choi Bae-dal.  The characters for the most part come off as stereotypes.  The other problem is with the flow of the movie.  Several of the storylines they begin just end with no conclusion.  I understand that this may happen when making a historical movie, but with everything they changed I find it hard to believe that they didn't want to tell us what happened to the Japanese gangsters or the rest of the Korean circus performers or his outstanding warrants for attacking so many Americans.  Surely at one point a half clever policeman would have noticed the famous martial artist's picture in the paper and noticed an odd resemblance to the wanted poster on the wall.  Also it bounces from times and places with minimal labels as to the setting.  I've seen some movies like Tora! Tora! Tora! where the captions make sense but after a while they get a little annoying to the non-history buff.  This has the opposite effect and jumps from Korea to Japan easily enough but then we just accept several of the settings and awkwardly juxtaposed scenes.

Now I understand I have been a little harsh on the film making but I want to stress that this is a very entertaining film.  There are several goals a film can have and this one seems to have had a few.  The failed or more ridiculous goals were the historical portrayal of Choi Yeong-eui and a Korean nationalist theme.  The film succeeded overwhelmingly at having great fight sequences.  Fight choreographer Doo-hong Jung has an impressive filmography of action director rolls, most recently with Mongol.  These fight scenes will make you cringe as you watch Choi inflict horrible injuries on hordes of Japanese with his bare hands including fighting a sword wielding man in a duel to the death.  Typically in movies like this the action is severely broken up by plot based scenes, however in this movie, once Choi learns martial arts it is almost non-stop action or building tension up to the next fight. 

I highly recommend Fighter in the Wind to any martial arts fans.  Probably won't hold any interest to non-fans of the genera, but the main cast give relatively convincing performances which is refreshing.  Not as good as a straight up drama but pretty good.  I only hope Choi Yeong-eui can contain his zombie rage at the historical inaccuracy of this movie.

Movies Referenced:
2011-Rango
2010-Ong Bak 3
2009-Merantau
2008-Ip Man
2007-Mongol
2005-The Protector
2004-Fighter in the Wind
2003-Ong Bak
2002-Hero
2002-The Tuxedo
1970-Tora! Tora! Tora!

RANGO

As anyone who knows me can tell you I love westerns.  The first time I saw the trailer for this movie I had a mild nerd-gasm.  Gasp!  An animated children's' movie that looks interesting, doesn't seem to have any annoying jokes in the preview, and features in the title a reference to a great spaghetti western (that's Django for those who didn't know it was a reference)!  I went to see this with my girlfriend and as the movie started I could tell almost immediately what I was watching was going to be art.

To begin, you can tell a movie has class when it starts out quoting Shakespeare.  I'm not a literary snob but let's be fair, he was an amazing playwright who was able to create stories that appealed both to the common man and the queen of England.  Interestingly this is also a good parallel for this movie.  It features good storytelling, the pace is quick and never leaves the audience bored, the characters are genuinely interesting, and the dialogue is snappy and humorous.  All this makes for a good movie that most people can appreciate.  For those of us looking for a bit more in our movies this film is start to finish full of foreshadowing and movie references.  As I was watching I could barely contain my excitement as I heard the theme from Django in the main theme for Rango, or when Hunter S. Thompson, as depicted by Johnny Depp in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, makes a cameo appearance (Johnny Depp also voices Rango the hero of the film).  These are some of the more notable references to well known movies.  You can also add to the list A Fist Full of Dollars, Cat Ballou, Chinatown, and The Road Warrior.  I'd like to remind you that this is a kids movie with a PG rating and 3 of the 5 movies mentioned are rated R and the other 2 feature smoking, drinking, betrayal, murder, and downright cold blooded villainy; all things you wouldn't find in a kids movie but are in Rango.  In fact the only kids movie I noticed it referencing was Fival Goes West which...cough*...is another kids movie that rocks and has the drinking, smoking, gamboling, murder, genocide, etc...

For all its successes it has precious few failings.  There are minor inconsistencies in the style of movie they are going for.  Covered wagon chases are fair game in a western but being chased by an army of bat riding prairie dogs is pushing it.  Through the whole movie I noticed only a couple jokes that were out of place, mainly the prostate jokes, two of which were in rapid succession.  I don't know what kind of deal was made to keep that in but it must have been a doozy!  The only thing I can imagine is that they were going for a very immature middle school audience with a couple of these jokes, crude bathroom humor that's just embarrassing in a movie this good.  I walked out of the theater thinking that this deserved the academy award for best animated movie of 2011 and it may happen, but a couple of jokes like that could easily lose them that kind of recognition.  Especially when they have jokes about thespians (watch the movie, you wouldn't believe hillbillies could make a joke that funny).  Another thing that I loved about this movie was its pseudo-cult-like-religion.  I'm no stranger to Hollywood's aversion to putting any kind of Judeo-Christian imagery in a movie outside of a negative stereotype, but this movie's insistence of having an almost Christian religion with the word "God" replaced with "The Great Spirit of the West" every single time.  For a movie this clever I was praying to the Great Spirit of the West through the whole thing that there was a reason for such a bizarre word choice and wouldn't you know it, they actually did that for a reason other than to be PC.  Well done Rango, you made a tasteful joke involving a religious context.

Visually this movie beats everything you've ever seen.  Pixar has been the computer animated giant for years with DreamWorks lagging behind as a good but not as good animation studio.  Here, out of nowhere Nickelodeon, who has been wallowing in failure for years (most recently at the horrific failure of The Last Airbender), pulled together Rango with the help of Industrial Light and Magic to outdo any CG movie to date.
Imagine the rock crab scene from Pirates of the Caribbean 3.  Remember how you went ooh and aah at the pretty visuals?  Well imagine that for 107 minutes.  Ever since I saw the disaster area that was 9 (that's the movie 9) every time I watch an animated movie I look for where they cut corners or didn't animate something just right.  ILM does not make mistakes.  Every shot of this movie is beautiful and the processing power needed to animate this movie must have been staggering.  From the fur and feather to fabrics to particle effects, every frame is a work of art.

On the subject of naturalism in this film, I was surprised to see real guns depicted.  I'm a casual gun nut and a frequenter of the IMFDB (Internet Movie Firearms Data Base).  If you aren't familiar with guns in cartoons find a cartoon with 1930's gangsters or GI-Joe or some other cartoon with guns and then look up some pictures of guns on google and compare.  What's that?  They don't look anything alike?  Well that's because the only people crazy enough to fully animate guns accurately are the Japanese and only in a handful of cases.  The animators of Rango seem to have done their homework and found several historical firearms to base their animations off of such as the Henry Rifle and the Winchester 1887 shotgun.  When they animated the bullets they even showed them without any kind of jacketing on the projectile.  However they couldn't resist the convention of a swing out cylinder even though Rango's SSA style revolver is a single action and those models did not have that feature.  Realism was sacrificed for artistic license.  Normally I wouldn't even bring any of this nit picking up but the animators really knew their guns and I applaud them for their efforts of realism.

As I said earlier Nickelodeon has been a backwater studio for several years.  That they could pull of a movie like this astonishes me.  Not only that, director Gore Verbinski has only made one movie that I truly liked and that was Pirates of the Caribbean.  I think the real brains behind this project belong to writer John Logan who wrote such notables as The Aviator, The Last Samurai, and Gladiator.  This clearly explains the grittiness of the film as this is his second kids' movie.  Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas was pretty awful but Logan clearly learned from his mistakes this time around.

As usual Johnny Depp gave a brilliant performance as the chameleon with no name, who is also an actor, a brilliant metaphor if I do say so myself.  Depp's over the top performances have rubbed me the wrong way more than once but here his eccentric voice talent is perfectly cast as Rango changes personality constantly shifting from a British accent to a Southwest accent and back to normal American.  While the cast was amazing all around Bill Nighy also stood out from the rest giving a wonderfully sinister performance as Rattlesnake Jake, basically oozing confident evil and masking his British accent beautifully Hugh Laurie style.  I would also like to recognize Timothy Olyphant for pulling off an amazing Clint Eastwood impression.  He only has a couple lines but he played them well enough that I couldn't tell the difference from the real thing.

So far Rango is my favorite movie of 2011.  Its clever, shows incredible workmanship and artistic ability, and they clearly understood their source material.  I only hope that the movie going public will recognize the gem that has been placed before them and that this film gets the recognitions it deserves.

 Movies Referenced:
2011-Rango
2010-The Last Airbender
2009-9
2007-Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End
2004-The Aviator
2003-The Last Samurai
2003-Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Seas
2003-Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl
2000-Gladiator
1998-Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
1991-An American Tail: Fival Goes West
1981-The Road Warrior
1974-Chinatown
1966-Django
1965-Cat Ballou
1964-A Fist Full of Dollars

Welcome to all!

Hello out there,
And welcome to my shiny brand new blog about movies.  What's my goal here?  To impart some wisdom to the general internet public about films I have seen.  All too often I have seen wonderful pieces of film come and go without a nod from the general public or worse...disdain.  There are several problems with the general public when it comes to movies.  At its core, film is an escapist art form.  People don't want hard hitting close to home drama, they want something big and flashy that makes them feel good.  This is how things like Transformers 2 get the budgets they do, because the studio executives recognize money making patterns.  This leads to the next problem, film making is a business.  If something gets horrible reviews but makes buckets of money, you can bet its going to have a sequel with just as many bad reviews.  Third, for those who have studied art history this will make a lot of sense, almost nothing is original.  Everything has its influences and to fully appreciate some movies you have to understand its source material.  This raises the issue of a film standing on its own as opposed to being a tribute but that is a debate for a different time.  My point is, sometimes when you sit watching a movie you scratch your head and wonder, "why did they do that?" or more often you don't even notice the question should be asked.  My main goal is to ask why and educate you about the strange ways of film...

But what is the importance of movies you ask.  Its just useless escapism.  What is the importance of a multi-billion dollar industry?  What is the importance of art?  To quote Oscar Wilde "all art is quite useless", but however lacking function art may be it is representative of the culture and society that creates and accepts it.  Film just happens to be the major art form of our era.  Not only that it markets to the general public.  For all the faults in films, many of them can be attributed to the answer, "people like it."  Film is a constantly evolving art form that not only represents a story and characters in a specific time and place, it also represents the viewing public at the time of its creation.  If you couldn't tell already this blog will mainly consist of whatever random thoughts I have on whatever the movie of the week is.  Not terribly interesting, but I'm not actually talking about any movies right now am I?  So what will I start out this little adventure with? 

Rango...