Appaloosa (2008)

Feelings get you killed.

This is a very fine adaptation of the western novel Appaloosa (2005) by the late great Robert B. Parker, famed for his tough smart modern day private detectives (Spenser and Randall) and lawman (Stone).

In this story, professional gunmen Virgil Cole (Ed Harris) and Everett Hitch (Viggo Mortensen), who have been working as a team for a decade, are hired to bring order to the lawless town of Appaloosa. The town is being terrorised by local rancher Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons), who murdered the previous marshall and deputies.

The deal Cole makes with the city council is straightforward. As City Marshall, Cole lays down the law; people comply or are arrested; if they resist arrest, he shoots them or Hitch shoots them. Cole embodies the law; effectively, he IS the law. Beyond their obvious expertise with weapons, Cole and Hitch maintain the law by their public willingness to put their lives on the line. Facing a large group of armed men attempting to break a prisoner out of jail, for instance, Cole's stated readiness to die and to kill while dying breaks the resolve of the gang leaders.

Cole and Hitch are extraordinarily tough, pragmatic, straight-talking straight-shooting guys, laconic in the extreme, living according to strict codes of honour; supermen in a man's world. But into this world comes now a glamorous seductive flirty femme fatale, a beautiful piano-playing widow, Mrs Allie French (Renée Zellweger). Hitch spots her first, but she sets her cap at uber-male Cole. Hitch withdraws, but the stage is set for a difficult triangle, resting on one big question: what moral code, if any, does this woman live by, and will it be sufficient to keep her out of trouble?

I have read the source novel, and as far as I recall, the film sticks pretty close to plot of the book, and ably catches the distinctive unhurried pace and the flavour of the iconic characters of the main protagonists. The book is very filmic anyway, in the spare style Parker uses, with little description, mainly action and dialogue. "Stoic" is the word RottenTomatoes gives to the main characters, and that's right. That also means their actions are all very restrained, and their dilemmas are played out in a very understated low-key way, by inference, bizarrely, rather like a restrained social drama such as "Remains of the Day" (Merchant & Ivory, 1993).

Ed Harris is perfectly cast in the central role of Virgil Cole, believably tough and laconic, embarrassed at his limited vocabulary, which he constantly attempts to improve by reading books. Mortensen is very good as Harris's sidekick and Jeremy Irons is excellent in the role of the murderous rancher Bragg.

Unlike Ebert who says, 'Zellweger is powerfully fetching in this role,' the main fly in the ointment for me is Zellweger in the role of Allie French, the woman who takes up with Ed Harris' character. The quality of her acting is not in question, it's just that she seems miscast as a femme fatale. The role requires a woman able to bewitch and enthral men. I'm sorry to be ungallant, but in this particular film she simply isn't attractive enough, certainly not as attractive as the character in the book. In every respect she fits the part, except for her face, which inexplicably looks abnormally swollen.

---

• Director: Ed Harris
• Writers: Robert Knott and Ed Harris (screenplay), Robert B Parker (novel, 2005)
• Starring: Ed Harris, Viggo Mortensen, Renee Zellweger, Jeremy Irons, Timothy Spall, Lance Henriksen, Luce Rains, Tom Bower, Girard Swan, Ariadna Gil

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 09 Apr 2010, 01 August 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Barton Fink (1991)

Between Heaven and Hell There's Always Hollywood!

What a strange unsettling film, in tone, like a Mervyn Peake gothic fantasy novel, full of strange, compelling, appalling, disgusting details.

In 1941, a New York playwright, the eponymous Barton Fink (John Turturro), following his first major theatrical success, goes to Hollywood to begin writing under contract "for the pictures". He moves into a room at a downbeat hotel, Hotel Earle, and, in the sweltering heat, sets up his typewriter. He is asked to write "a simple wrestling picture" vehicle for the actor Wallace Beery (a real actor of the time, who we understandably never see) but appearing to have virtually no knowledge or experience of the movies, suffers from writer's block, and struggles to get past the opening paragraph.

He becomes distracted by noises from other rooms, including that of his immediate neighbour, travelling insurance salesman Charlie Meadows (John Goodman), a cheery if slightly troubled character, and features within his room, including the wallpaper, and a photo of a girl in a bikini, with her back to us, on a beach. Essentially, he seems to fall into a trance in which details of people, objects and events take on a hallucinogenically mesmerising intensity, which the Coen brothers brilliantly convey.

Apart from his neighbour, and a permanently quizzical hotel employee, Chet (Steve Buscemi), he meets a handful of strange Hollywood executives including his employer, the larger-than-life head of Capitol Pictures, Jack Lipnick (Michael Lerner) and his grovelling assistant, Lou Breeze (Jon Polito), and the film's producer, Ben Geisler (Tony Shalhoub), who sends him for advice to a legendary but aggressively alcoholic older writer, W.P. "Bill" Mayhew (John Mahoney), and his alluring secretary, Audrey Taylor (Judy Davis), who, along with Fink's neighbour, Charlie, pass for the nearest thing to normal in this distorted world.

Fink is an odd but sympathetic character, clearly driven by good intentions. He waxes lyrical in defence of "the common man", but more in the abstract than in the flesh, ironically but endearingly turning a deaf ear to the travails of actual working class people such as his neighbour, Charlie.

As distractions mount and deadlines loom, the fulcrum on which this story turns is the question of whether or not Fink will be able to meet his contractual duties and come up with an acceptable script.

The film is not comfortable viewing but compelling. There are stretches where the action drags a bit, but there are also some very dramatic stretches. Overall, it is a fine externalisation of the internal landscape of psychosis or mental breakdown, roughly parable in theme and scope to 2011's "Take Shelter", where Michael Shannon's protagonist wrestles with a similar rupture in the barrier separating fantasy from reality.

The cast is uniformly excellent, notably Turturro in the central role (two years later shining in a quite different supporting role in the Coen brothers' The Big Lebowski, 1993), Goodman as the good-naturedly supportive if troubled "regular guy", and Lerner as the archetypal Hollywood executive.

Not one of my favourite Coen brothers' films, but on repeat viewing, a very creditable work.

---

• Directors: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Writers: Joel Coen, Ethan Coen
• Starring: John Turturro, John Goodman, Michael Lerner, Judy Davis, John Mahoney, Steve Buscemi, Tony Shalhoub, Jon Polito, Steve Buscemi

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 10 Apr 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Departures (2008)

The gift of last memories

Daigo Kobayashi (Masahiro Motoki) just manages to land his dream job as cellist in a classical orchestra in Tokyo, Japan, when the orchestra is disbanded. Forced to sell his hugely expensive professional cello, he gives up on his idea of being a musician, and he and his young wife, Mika (Ryoko Hirosue), return to live for free in his late mother's house in his old hometown, where he falls into a well-paid job, cash up front, though not at all the job he thought was being advertised, but one with high social stigma.

Without revealing Daigo's actual job title, suffice it to say that the backbone of the film is the question of whether or not Daigo will continue with the job. Will he tell his wife the true nature of the job? Will he be able to withstand pressure from others to give the job up? Will he come to like the job or find it too distasteful? Quite a lot of the film details the duties involved in the job. Through Daigo, we get to know both the gut-wrenching parts of the job, and also the emotionally uplifting power of work well done.

This is a rather sweet, quiet, melancholy film, with moments of gentle humour and much real pathos. Much of the emotional impact of the film is doubtless cued by the music, classical pieces, cleverly included diagetically via the playing of Daigo himself.

The script, by Kundo Koyama, is on a par, say, with Colin Higgins' script for Harold and Maude, and the direction, by Yojiro Takita, is immaculate. Wikipedia says that both the lead actor and the director did significant research in preparing before the filming. Motoki is superb in the lead role, and among the main supporting actors, Tsutomu Yamazaki is extremely impressive as Daigo's boss. Other notable players are Kimiko Yo, as his colleague, and Kazuko Yoshiyuki and Takashi Sasano, respectively, owner and long-term customer of a local "sento" bath house.

The story addresses important issues relating to family ties and the social and personal worth of normally stigmatised jobs. There are some very poignant scenes (some involving stones!) and the air in my viewing room did rather fill up with dust towards the end.

---

• Director: Yojiro Takita
• Writer: Kundo Koyama
• Starring: Masahiro Motoki, Ryoko Hirosue, Tsutomu Yamazaki, Kimiko Yo, Kazuko Yoshiyuki, Takashi Sasano

---

• Rating: Exceptional
• When seen: 13 Jun 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

The Ramen Girl (2008)

In food as in life, sometimes the missing ingredient is love.

In this sweet comic drama of personal discovery, Abby (Brittany Murphy), a young American woman, moves to Tokyo, Japan, in order to join her itchy-footed boyfriend, Ethan (Gabriel Mann). She gets an undemanding office job and moves in with him. All seems well, but a couple of weeks later, she emerges from the shower to find him abruptly packing his bags to take up a job offer in another Japanese city, Osaka, and a new life that does not include her. Within minutes, he is on his way to the airport, leaving her on the pavement in her towel shouting angrily at the departing taxi, virtually friendless in a big foreign city.

Later, Abby, regretting her harsh words, tries to make up with Ethan by phone. While waiting for him to call back, she is drawn to the welcoming lights of a nearby family "ramen" (fast-cooking noodle broth) restaurant, where she weeps into a bowl of delicious ramen and has a mysterious but pleasant hallucination involving a china cat. On a second visit, with a different ramen dish, Abby's tears are somehow, almost magically, turned to laughter. Although Abby can't speak more than a word or two of Japanese, and the chef, Maezumi (Toshiyuki Nishida), and his wife, Reiko (Kimiko Yo), can't speak any English, Abby begins to frequent the restaurant and takes to helping out by serving dishes to the customers. When the chef tries to eject her, she declares that she wants him to teach her how to be a ramen chef.

I thought this was a really sweet funny film, not a rom-com as such, because although there is a little romance, that is by no means the main focus of the story. It really is a story of personal discovery, of finding a passion in life, and the journey to finding fulfilment along that path. Abby's story is contrasted with that of a young corporate Japanese man, Toshi (Sohee Park), whose personal ambitions are in conflict with his culture's work ethics, and also the story of her friend Gretchen (Tammy Blanchard) and Gretchen's drinking companion, Charlie (Daniel Evans), who show the seamier, more dissolute fate of those who give up their dreams and resort to sensual thrills and mind-numbing intoxicants. The emotional content of magic realism has as great an impact on me as on anyone else, so although from a rational perspective the spiritual element brought to the cooking process is mere wishful thinking, I was able to turn a blind eye.

As for the quality of acting, Murphy (excellent also in Sin City, 2005) projects endearing qualities of sweetness, uncalculated exuberance and vulnerability that make her perfect in the lead role. Nishida is brilliant as the grumpy tyrannical ramen chef, and Yo (so good in Yōjirō Takita's Oscar-winning Departures, 2008) is equally good as the supportive wife. The little coterie of local Japanese women customers in the ramen restaurant is also excellently played, and I was happy to see the great Tsutomu Yamazaki, so good in Departures, cameo as the master ramen chef.

According to Wikipedia, film critic Don Willmott describes The Ramen Girl as "a vacuous but atmospheric analysis of the redemptive power of a good bowl of noodles" in which "The Karate Kid meets Tampopo meets Babette's Feast." I haven't yet caught up with either Tampopo or Babette's Feast, but the comparison with The Karate Kid is apt and complimentary, especially the recent 2010 version with Jackie Chan. I didn't find the film vacuous at all, quite the reverse really, as it is about someone finding fulfilment in life through a demanding vocation, rather than simply through a relationship with another person, as would be the case in a rom-com. Abby's character, who, through passion for a chosen field (cooking), teaches herself self-discipline and a personal work ethic, is surely not a bad role model for anyone. It certainly reflects my path in life.

---

• Director: Robert Allan Ackerman
• Writer: Becca Topol
• Starring: Brittany Murphy, Sohee Park, Toshiyuki Nishida, Tammy Blanchard, Kimiko Yo, Renji Ishibashi, Tsutomu Yamazaki

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 7 Jul 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

The Grey (2012)

Live or Die on This Day

Seven survivors of a plane wreck somewhere between an isolated oil refinery in Alaska and civilisation find themselves in a desolate freezing snowy windswept landscape, with no hope of rescue, and under threat from a large pack of ferocious wolves. Luckily, wolf-expert and salaried protector of the oil workers from dangerous animals, John Otway (Liam Neeson), who we have seen shoot an attacking wolf at the start of the film, is among the survivors.

This is a fine film, about endeavour and courage and tenacity and despair, and about accepting death and letting go of life, and about the puniness of humans lost in a wilderness when pitted against the terrible overwhelming forces of nature, as exemplified here by the wolves, as at least one critic said.

As Neeson's character says at the outset, the group is made up of outcasts and renegades and no-hopers, without much immediate charm. Some of the characters are overtly annoying or unsympathetic. Somehow, though, we come to care about the fate of each of them.

There is a clever use of wallets as almost spiritual icons standing for the characters, and providing glimpses of the inner man.

Very effective use of flashbacks / daydreams, where people are brutally wrenched back from idyllic reveries into the nightmarish present.

Neeson does an excellent job as a man without hope and of uncertain faith who nevertheless finds himself the group's main hope of survival.

My wife commented that the technology used to portray the wolves was not quite as invisible and so convincing as it might have been, but in my opinion, the strength of the script and the quality of the acting and the stunning location work easily make up for any failings in the realisation of the "monsters".

There are tears along the way.

---

• Director: Joe Carnahan
• Writers: Joe Carnahan, Ian MacKenzie Jeffers
• Starring: Liam Neeson, Frank Grillo, Dermot Mulroney, Dallas Roberts, Joe Anderson, Nonso Anozie, James Badge Dale

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 26 May 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Attack the Block (2011)

Urban city vs outer space

This British comic science-fiction thriller kicks off with an exciting opening scene. Young nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), walking home alone along dark inner city streets, is menaced, then mugged by a gang of masked teenage "hoodies" from a big tower block, a crime interrupted by the nearby crash-landing of an extra-terrestrial. While investigating the crash, the gang leader, Moses, is attacked and slightly injured, and in the resulting hubbub, the nurse escapes. After triumphing over the extra-terrestrial, the gang return to their tower block, little realising that this is only the beginning of their troubles.

The tower block scenario is very well chosen: as civilian combatants in an alien invasion story, members of an inner city teenage gang are hard to better. They will already be battle-ready and will be able to lay their hands on weapons of some kind. They will also be used to handling challenges themselves, rather than calling on police and other officials. The rationale behind the invasion is very well thought out and credible, and the way informed exposition is brought in is clever. The script is admirably lean, with a running time of only 84 minutes.

The character arc for the main protagonist, Moses (John Boyega), is great. The nurse, Sam (Jodie Whittaker), functions in part as an avatar for the audience's developing point of view of these teenage gangsters.

Fast-paced, funny, quite frightening, this film succeeds as a window into the world of teenage gangs, and as a comic science-fiction action thriller.

---

• Director: Joe Cornish
• Writer: Joe Cornish
• Starring: John Boyega, Jodie Whittaker, Alex Esmail, Franz Drameh, Leeon Jones, Simon Howard, Luke Treadaway, Jumayn Hunter, Nick Frost, Danielle Vitalis, Paige Meade, Michael Ajao

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 6 Oct 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Horrid Henry: The Movie (2011)

Here comes trouble!

The eponymous books are great, essentially based on the premise that kids are totally selfish beings ruled by their desires, and that these desires are in conflict with what their parents think is best for them. (Henry is the junior equivalent of Fat Freddy in the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers comic books, ruled by the desires of his id: for food, drink, drugs and sex.) Kids like being on holiday, weekends, junk food, TV, computer games, lazing around, having fun, being rude, playing tricks on other kids. They hate school, homework, chores, getting up and going to bed early, being polite and well-mannered, eating proper meals, eating vegetables and so on. Their parents want them to do the opposite. With this conflict, kids are always in trouble. Perfect Peter, Henry's annoying younger brother, is essentially an idealised mirror intended, by contrast, to highlight Henry's character, who is in fact a pretty normal kid writ a little large.

What's good: the central kid's characters are well played: Henry (Theo Stevenson), Peter (Ross Marron), Moody Margaret (Scarlett Stitt) and indeed most of the other kids. Some of the adults rein in their performances sufficiently: Siobhan Hayes and Mathew Horne as Henry's Mum and Dad, Rebecca Front as the headmistress, Miss Oddbod, and Parminder Nagra as the teacher, Miss Lovely. Other adults portray their characters rather too large, too cartoonish, namely Angelica Huston (Miss BattleAxe), Richard E Grant (the head of Box Hill School), Jack Sanders as the gym teacher, Aerobic Al. Dick and Dom, talented comic creatives in their own TV shows (the "Mini Dick and Dom" shorts are brilliant), portray TV hosts so extremely unpleasantly nightmarishly styled that I wondered how they passed the censor for a U certificate.

There's quite a lot of breaking the fourth wall by Henry, which is OK, though used here rather lazily as a disguised voice-over to spoon-feed us backstory.

What's mainly wrong with this film, to my mind, is the script. The plot device of the kids having to save the local primary school is just so tired. And the idea that the head of the local private school would scheme to make money by getting the state school shut down and gaining fees from the desperate parents of kids from that school seems extremely unlikely. Also, the script is very laboured at times, with Moody Margaret metaphorically beating the audience over the head with key plot points that seemed obvious to me anyway.

Worse, the story betrays the characters of Henry and Peter at various points. The idea that Henry has had the self-discipline to become the lead singer of a fairly proficient pop band stretches credibility. And when Peter's rendition of the traditional canon "Frére Jacques" morphs into an extraordinary contemporary interpretation, it seemed like demonic possession. And when Henry, uncharacteristically altruistic, plots to save the school, it's as if he and Peter have swapped personas.

Annoyingly, the two ten-year old boys in my charge, though seemingly bored during the film, afterwards gave it 4 stars and 5 stars!

---

• Director: Nick Moore
• Writers: Lucinda Whiteley (screenplay) based on the books by Francesca Simon
• Starring: Theo Stevenson, Scarlett Stitt, Ross Marron, Anjelica Huston, Richard E. Grant, Rebecca Front, Parminder Nagra, Siobhan Hayes, Mathew Horne, David Schneider, Wladmir Klitchko, Vitali Klitchko, Noel Fielding, Richard McCourt, Dominic Wood, Jo Brand, Prunella Scales, Tyger Drew-Honey, Kimberley Walsh, Helena Barlow

---

• Rating: Rental
• When seen: 14 Aug 2011
• Where seen: Cinema
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Fast Five / Fast and Furious 5: Rio Heist (2011)

This is the best of the franchise so far. Within its genre, this film achieves all its goals fantastically well: Great non-CG special effects. Great action set pieces. Good characters with clear strong stakes. Good "Mission Impossible" style story-line. Actors with the chutzpah to carry it all off. The suspense of waiting to see if / when the two alpha males on each side of the law, car thief Vin Diesel and DEA agent Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, will face off. What's not to like?

As Betsy Sharkey, Los Angeles Times Film Critic, enviably quipped, "Who knew that the best place to put Vin Diesel would be between the Rock and a hard place?"

The film kicks off where number 4 left off, on a deserted US highway, with the rescue of Dom Toretto (Vin Diesel), sentenced to life imprisonment without hope of parole, by rolling the prison transport coach off one end of Brian O'Conner's (Paul Walker's) car, in a mind-boggling display of timing and bravery.

The action shifts to Rio, Brazil, where Dom's sister, Mia (Jordana Brewster), and Brian and Dom agree to take part in an equally amazing theft of several hot-rod cars from a moving train. Again, the pure mechanics and logistics of the equipment and techniques used to pull of the crime are in themselves fascinating and thrilling. Throw in the human drama that emerges as a double-cross is revealed and lives are put in peril, and the result is pure cinematic joy.

The aftermath is that the trio are blamed for the deaths of three US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) officers, and a team of DEA DS officers, led by legendary Captain Luke Hobbs (Dwayne Johnson), arrives with an arsenal of weaponry and a mission to arrest Dom, Brian and Mia, and enlists the assistance of local rookie cop, Elena Neves (Elsa Pataky), as an interpreter.

Meanwhile, the trio discovers that the brains behind the double-cross is Hernan Reyes (Joaquim de Almeida), a drug-running local crime lord / politician in virtual control of all the favellas (slum areas) in Rio. Dom decides to take on this crime lord, and assembles a team of specialists, very much in the style of a classic heist or modern Mission Impossible scenario.

To come is a great chase sequence across the roofs of the favellas; a well-orchestrated unarmed combat sequence between two of the principals; a very well staged and bloody fire-fight in the suburbs, and last but not least, a brilliant breath-taking extended chase sequence through the streets of Rio following the heist.

The heist elements are cleverly written, with more than one unexpected turn. The car chases are brilliantly filmed, partly using a very effective rig that allows the director to shoot cars driving head on into the path of the camera, as is explained in a DVD extra documentary short.

The principals are very sympathetic. Dom is a career criminal with a strong ethical code in which loyalty to family and workmates is paramount. Brian, in previous films as an undercover cop torn between his sworn duties and his love of Mia and his liking for Dom, is now an out-and-out renegade cop on the run from the law. Dom's sister, Mia, once again in a relationship with Brian, as we have seen in previous films in the series, is clearly a "good" girl. Hobbs is given no back story but has a strong onscreen presence. His police interpreter, Neves, is given enough screen time and back story to make her sympathetic. The villains, Reyes and his lieutenant, Zizi (Michael Irby), are given just enough character and show of villainy to make the audience welcome their come-uppances. The characters of the heist team that is assembled, including Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Tyrese Gibson and Sung Kang, are much more perfunctorily sketched in, and are little more than one-note performances. High full price.

---

• Director: Justin Lin
• Writers: Chris Morgan (based on characters by Gary Scott Thompson)
• Starring: Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson, Jordana Brewster, Chris "Ludacris" Bridges, Tyrese Gibson, Sung Kang, Gal Gadot, Matt Schulze, Tego Calderon and Don Omar

---

• Rating: Full price
• When seen: 31 Dec 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

Chocolate (Chokgohlaet) (2008)

Taste the fury.

A Thai martial arts action thriller, where an autistic young teenage girl, Zen (JeeJa Yanin), learns to fight by copying moves used in martial arts classes next door and from TV shows and movies. It is a B-movie graced by a series of beautifully staged fight scenes between the girl and different groups of gangsters.

As for the plot, I was not entirely clear about people's roles or relationships but, in essence, Zin (Ammara Siripong), her Thai mother, and Masashi (Hiroshi Abe), her Japanese father, were mixed up in the world of organised crime, and her father had to return to Japan before she was born. She grows up autistic, becomes transfixed by people doing martial arts training, takes to working out herself.

Her only friend is Moom (Taphon Phopwandee), a much-bullied fat kid, who discovers she is able to catch anything thrown at her from whatever direction, and uses this as a money-making scheme, getting her to perform in public for donations. When somebody throws a knife at her and she catches it, he realises he has something special, and when a gang of teens attack them, her fighting ability is triggered.

Then Zin, the girl's mother, falls ill with cancer, and they desperately need large amounts of money for treatment and medicine. The boy finds a debt book amongst the mother's possessions, with names of local debtors and the sums that they owe, presumably as protection money to a gangster organisation. The boy realises that this money would pay for the mother's treatment, and he takes the girl with him to start collecting the debts...

Compared to Kill Bill 1, for example, for me, this is preferable. This is grittier, more authentic in setting and feel. The boy Moom is a believable and interesting character, and in the lead role of Zen, JeeJa Yani is very sympathetically portrayed and has amazing athleticism. The stunts are very well staged, and the end credits includes, Jackie Chan like, a series of injury clips, showing how arduous the stunts were, and how they were done in real life, not with digital effects, The villains, however, crime boss Number 8 (Pongpat Wachirabunjong) and his henchwoman, Priscilla (Sirimongkol Iamthuam), are completely two dimensional, with little plausible motivation, and a laughably foolish set of henchmen and henchwomen, who insist on throwing themselves into the fight despite the piles of bodies of their colleagues already littering the floor.

The very definition of a well done genre movie.

---

• Director: Prachya Pinkaew, martial arts choreography by Panna Rittikrai
• Writers: Chookiat Sakveerakul, Napalee
• Starring: JeeJa Yanin, Hiroshi Abe, Pongpat Wachirabunjong, Taphon Phopwandee, Yanin Vismitananda

---

• Rating: Matinee
• When seen: 15 June 2012
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro

The Seven Year Itch (1955)

It TICKLES and TANTALIZES! - The funniest comedy since laughter began!

What would any normal guy give to be one-to-one with Marilyn Monroe? What are the chances? Wouldn't even a happily married man with a kid get the "seven year itch"?

It's summertime in Manhattan, and like many men, publishing editor Richard Sherman (Tom Ewell) sends his wife Helen (Evelyn Keyes) of seven years and young son Ricky (Butch Bernard) up north for a 2-week vacation in Maine, while he stays and works in the city. Back at his apartment that evening, awaiting a phone call from Helen, Richard determines to keep on the straight and narrow during this time: no cigarettes, no drinking, and settles down to work on the patio with a manuscript. But out of the blue, literally, he is almost killed by a falling flower pot accidentally dislodged by his new upstairs neighbour, a stunningly gorgeous blonde bombshell played by the wonderful Marilyn Monroe.

Against the dictates of his rational mind, Richard, mesmerised by his neighbour's beauty and overcome with desire, can't stop himself inviting her to his apartment, and Monroe's character is so ditzy (innocently silly and scatterbrained) that she seems to have no idea what objective Richard's instincts are driving him towards.

So, will Richard be able to withstand the range of temptations available to the married man left alone in the big city, and in particular, to any male neighbour of Monroe? How will Monroe's character respond?

This is pretty much a two-hander between Ewell and Monroe. Though creepy like a lizard at some points in the film in his lust for Monroe, overall, Ewell's performance is magnificent. A great deal of the script has Richard dialoguing with himself, which is quite an unnatural thing to do, highly stylized, and could have gone disastrously wrong. Ewell pulls it off pretty well though, so that it is mostly very acceptable. Richard is a bit of a Walter Mitty, highly imaginative, and a lot of the fun consists of his imaginings coming to life, and delighting or scaring him. Monroe plays her rather challenging ditzy role very well, simpering like a small excited girl in a grown woman's body, highly desirable in a sexual way, but not slutty, managing to stay pure and chaste in herself.

The lack of political correctness in this film goes well beyond current socially-sanctioned norms, with Wilder commenting on the audience's fascination with beauties like Monroe, for instance, in the way Richard's publishing house markets their books, pandering to our men's objectification of women as sex objects. It is this film that includes the justly famous scene where Monroe stands over the air vent in the white dress, innocently enjoying the cooling breeze that pushes the skirt of her dress up in such a revealing flutter. Talk about objectification: Monroe's character does not even merit a name, for pity's sake, being labelled "The Girl" in the credits.

The peeping Tom aspect of cinema audience's appetite to watch actresses like Monroe is clearly paralleled in Richard's relationship with Monroe. The fourth wall is even broken at one point, in the third reel, by Ewell referring explicitly by name to Marilyn Monroe. This makes the story quite a meta-experience, but also makes one feel quite queasy while watching, as you come to understand that this is the true subject or target of the film.

The element of psychology is included in the person of Dr. Brubaker (Oskar Homolka), the author of the manuscript that Richard is editing, and whose writing is used to introduce statistics about temptations for married men in the summer and the "seven year itch" in particular. Ewell externalises the conflicts within him in the form of an itch on his chest, near his heart (geddit?), and a nervous twitch in one of his thumbs (presumably with phallic connotation?).

Apparently, the film is based on a three-act play by George Axelrod. In Wikipedia's entry for this film (see link below), there is an interesting discussion of the restrictions put on the film, compared to the play, by the studio's adherence to the Hayes Code of the time.

Five years later, in "The Apartment" with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine, Wilder revisited the temptations-of-summer-affairs-in-Manhattan scenario introduced in "The Seven Year Itch" and created a human drama of great warmth and darkness and resonance. This film, while interesting, and a great showcase for Monroe's talents, does not approach those heights.

---

• Director: Billy Wilder
• Writers: George Axelrod, Billy Wilder
• Starring: Tom Ewell, Marilyn Monroe, Evelyn Keyes, Marguerite Chapman, Robert Strauss, Oscar Homolka, Sonny Tufts, Donald MacBride

---

• Rating: High matinee
• When seen: 1 July 2011
• Where seen: Home
• More information: IMDB | RottenTomatoes | Wikipedia

Written in WriteRoom, formatted using HyperEdit, posted from my MacBook Pro