The Offspring of Bruce Campbell and Kill Bill, or, A Weekend of Bad Japanese Movies

So...I'm incredibly glad that head colds and sore throats cannot be spread over the Internet. (As Felicia Day sings in the song "Avatar" from her hit webseries The Guild, "Here in cyberspace there's no disease!") Read as: You're all safe reading this, and you won't get my weird hybrid cold/ear infection thing. But between reading some books and some napping, I turned on my Wii, navigated to the Netflix channel, and streamed a few movies--two Japanese flicks that came up under the "Foreign" category. My cat, Miss Kaylee, and I settled down for an evening of film watching.

In today's session of "Meowsterpiece Theatre," Miss Kaylee and I happily present two terribly cheesy Japanese films highly deserving of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 treatment: constant interruption with snide remarks.

First of all, there's Man, Woman, and the Wall. The general premise is that this scruffy sleaze-bag of a guy moves into an apartment next to a strikingly beautiful woman. He listens through the wall to the different aspects of her life and eventually discovers that her boyfriend has been bugging her apartment and leading a double life: caring boyfriend but creepy stalker. Then scruffy guy who listens through the wall decides he needs to upset the boyfriend's reign of terror. This movie should perhaps be retitled "Why Mark Zuckerberg invented Stalkerbook." Because, believe it or not, Stalkerbook is far less creepy than this particularly Japanese flick (the cinematography of which appears to have been done on a rickety camera track).




Overall PitM rating: 1.5/5.

But wait--there's more! I also watched The Machine Girl, a paragon of cinematic cheesiness. Think of The Machine Girl as Kill Bill meets "The Complete Works of Bruce Campbell." Particularly Army of Darkness Bruce Campbell. There are tons of slow-mo battle sequences, replete with severed limbs that cartoonishly spray gore the consistency of cranberry juice. High school girl Ami Hyuga (that's actually Hyuga Ami, if you're putting surname and given name in the Japanese order) seeks to avenge her brother's death at the hands of a yakuza's heir. In her first attempt at storming the yakuza's headquarters, Ami loses an arm in a series of prolonged tortures; she manages to escape and stumbles into a few friendly mechanics, who build her a machine gun arm. Insert more ridiculous and gory battle sequences. Oh, and the villain kid's mother? She has a drill bra. A steel bar with giant drills for cups. Yes, it is that terrible.



Overall PitM rating: 2/5.

Save yourselves the time: Avoid these films unless you have somebody to help you make fun of them.

Friday Film Review: The Young Victoria (2009)

I was quite amused.

The Young Victoria is immediately engaging because, really, the costumes are just so darned pretty! The filmmakers obviously paid every bit of attention to convincing us that we were in England in the 19th century, and there's also the fact that in some scenes Emily Blunt, the young lady who's steely reserve and nerve make the film well worth watching, bears an uncanny resemblance to Queen Victoria with some of the hairdos and costumes that she wears.

So the costumes are convincing, as is the chemistry between Victoria and Albert (played with a sort of Hugh Grant affability by Rupert Friend), but the working of the plot doesn't always possess that spark. A few moments in the movie necessitate asking, "Wait, who's that guy?" and there's a particularly tricky moment in the middle of the film during a change in power in Parliament.

In short: If you don't know a decent bit about the relationship between the Queen and her majesty's government and the monarch's power to dissolve Parliament and force elections, there will be about ten minutes in the middle where you're utterly lost.

But that aside, the movie blends equal parts drama, suspense, good acting, and chick-flick cute romance between Victoria and Albert, and what dragged me into this film was that here, we're getting an image of a young queen who is passionate, in love, intelligent, capable, and affectionate. And it presages, as well, how Victoria would rebuild Britain's bureaucracy and lead a society through an identity crisis of science, faith, and advancement. She's not the dowdy old ma'am of the empire, the pouty woman who will tell you in a heartbeat that she is "not amused."

So watch The Young Victoria, and you will be quite amused.

Friday Film Review: Star Trek (2009)

To start off with a gem from Mystery Science Theatre 3000, "If you wonder how they eat and sleep and other science facts, remind yourself it's just a show and sat back and relax."

For being a science fiction flick made in the post-Michael Bay's Transformers deluge of massive machines and weapons exploding for three hours, Star Trek, which reboots the franchise with the iconic characters of Mister Spock and Captain James Tiberius Kirk, travels where few sci-fi filmmakers have gone in the past five years: into the cosmos of entertaining films, although Star Trek suffers from a few plot-wormholes that made this reviewer quirk an eyebrow in confusion.

The merits of the film, firstly, arise from the fact that Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine do not attempt to mimic Leonard Nimoy's Spock or William Shatner's Kirk, respectively. So it's not an imitation of Nimoy's expressive furrowed brows or Shatner's witticisms. Instead, we get a Spock torn between the two halves of his genetics--the logic of Vulcans and the emotion of humans--and a Kirk who keeps his laissez-faire attitude, albeit through throwing caution to the wind.

After the first twenty minutes of obligatory origin stories (since it is a reboot, after all), Star Trek accelerates into its plot's thrust...but here was an initial hangup. A Romulan named Nero (whose planet got engulfed in a supernova, so a psycho avenging a home lost in flame...that's not riffing off of ancient history) has traveled back in time through a wormhole, and he is, unbeknownst to our heroes, waiting to destroy Spock's home planet of Vulcan. Now, here's plothole the first: Why is the Federation spread so thin that its Star Fleet has to send cadets into space? Then, plothole the second: Why doesn't Nero take the opportunity to destroy the starship Enterprise--and importantly, Spock--when he has the chance?

Instead, he commits a classic bad guy blunder: not just killing the good guy while he has a chance. But no matter. There are some plot issues that arise from the timey-whimey premise (which I shan't go into here for the sake of avoiding spoils, except to say that somehow elements of parallel universes co-exist without destroying the entirety of the universe due to some implosion-causing paradox), but Star Trek is, first and foremost, fun--as any good sci-fi or fantasy flick should be.

And it's obvious that J.J. Abrams--the creative vision behind the reboot--still enjoys a few good Star Trek jokes. Firstly, there's a scene when Kirk, Sulu, and an ensign Olson have to disable a drill that's boring into Vulcan's crust. And Olson's quite obviously a redshirt, equipped with a red jumpsuit and parachute, and so when I saw them divebombing toward the drill, I immediately knew--just from the red uniform--that poor Olson was expendable. (Sarcastovoyance: Olson was, in fact, expendable.) There's also a witty trade-off between Kirk and Spock; when Kirk finally employs some logic, Spock finds fault with the ideas on an emotional level.

Star Trek doesn't have the most brilliant use of the time-space continuum; for that, I kindly direct your attention to Doctor Who. But what Star Trek does well is respecting the historic series while retooling the franchise for a genre that's used to too many explosions and not enough plot. And somehow, with all of the excitement, Star Trek manages to have an intricate--albeit flawed and slightly wormhole-y--storyline. It's an enjoyable film, particularly for sci-fi buffs, but it has enough action/adventure/why-is-Uhura-wearing-an-improbably-short-skirt-in-a-military-organization? elements to engage a broad array of viewers.

In short: ignore the timey-whimey plotholes. Watch it and enjoy the stuff it does really well, such as the interplay between Spock and Kirk.

Friday Film Review: The Visitor, starring Richard Jenkins

Professor Walter Vale (Richard Jenkins) has become a visitor in his own home and all of its aspects--the apartment he used to share in New York City with his late wife, his life, and his own country.

An instructor at Connecticut College, Walter has a diminished course load--teaching only one class--to focus on finishing a book, which he hasn’t worked on seriously since the death of his wife, a classical pianist. Walter’s existence lurches onward, passively and without passion.

With a character as detached and emotionless as Walter, The Visitor struggles to grab attention in the first quarter of an hour, but a series of sequences (ones that show Walter getting annoyed with a piano instructor, becoming irritated with a student turning in a paper late [although Walter is yet to distribute the syllabus for his class], and eating alone in the campus dining hall) reveals that something’s a bit off kilter with this stoic man.

His life is unoccupied by anything of value--friends, colleagues, or meaningful work.

The chair of his department approaches Walter to present a paper that he co-authored at a conference in NYC because the other author has been put on bed rest until she delivers her child. Peeved, Walter embarks to the city, which precipitates the rest of the film, as he discovers Tarek (Haaz Sleiman) and his girlfriend Zainab (Danai Gurira) living in his old apartment.

From here, The Visitor chronicles the rapid growth of Walter’s friendship with Tarek and Zainab, and contrasting shots in the beginning and end of the film--most notably Walter’s observation of a vase on the table--hint at the changes in Tarek’s and Zainab’s situation and Walter’s dreary life.

But the film is a parable, as well, of how paranoia and fear destroy the lives of innocents, and the hustle and bustle of our daily life--work, errands, travel, friendships--is a thin veil, easily yanked away even by the smallest of random happenstances. And yet, those of us who, by an accident of birth, have American citizenship remain unaware of the machinations of our country, of the great unfairness that’s structured into our political system. A detention center in NYC--which looks like little more than a whitewashed cinderblock gym--builds anxiety throughout The Visitor: The center is nondescript to naturalized Americans, terrifying to immigrants, and--to those who work in the building--nothing but a job, with detainees being migrated from one chamber to another through a chain of electric, sliding doors.

It is in encountering the costs of being emotionless, the price of passivity, that Walter unites with Tarek and Zainab; he alters his life when sudden challenges befall the young couple. The circumstances instill in Walter a vivacity that he has not experienced for years, and The Visitor leaves the viewer with an admonition, that we should not be idle in our own lives and that--regardless of laws and governments and borders--every innocent, good person deserves a life dedicated to pursuing happiness.

Friday Film Review: Two for the Road, Starring Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney

Below is the first of three film reviews based on last week’s blog post asking for nominations of must-see films! I’ll be doing these for the next two Fridays, as well. Films are being reviewed in a very strategic method—in the order the films were stacked when I opened the box from Barnes & Noble.

Two for the Road (1966):
Albert Finney (Mark Wallace) and Audrey Hepburn (Joanna Wallace) provide inspired performances in a film that reveals the complicated core of a marriage underneath a façade of travel and chance. Mark and Joanna--united by a chance encounter--seemingly hitchhike through their married life, and the movie deftly travels between events in their relationship in a manner that mirrors comedy against drama, the bliss of a starting relationship with the tribulations of a marriage stalling and circling, a marriage held in a holding pattern.

Although the film starts with a 1960s title sequence with Technicolor road signs and that was apparently funded by the font Helvetica, the narrative moves beyond the mere directing of road signs and tours us deep into the psyches of the characters as Mark and Joanna meet, fall in love, travel through Europe with another couple, have a child, and spend time together until they learn what their marriage truly means to them, as a couple.

Their ventures through their relationship twine together as they visit--in later years--the locations and the random chances that brought them together; they cruise French country sides and remember their previous travels there in an MG automobile that caught fire, but they also test the foundation of their marriage against infidelity as Mark begins doing architectural design for a man named Maurice, events that return Mark’s and Joanna’s thoughts to an enchanted time they spent at the Mediterranean.

But the most touching moment in the film--the memory of which saves their marriage at a pivotal point in the film--occurs when Mark and Joanna, in the midst of one of their characteristic spats, dine together in utter silence; Joanna laments, “What kind of people sit together in a restaurant in complete silence?,” to which Mark replies, “Married people.” But this emphasizes the role of silence, of the unsaid things in this film. These staunch silences are like those moments when, guided by a GPS in an automobile, the driver is between exits and wondering what’s beyond the highway when the voice providing directions remains mute.

It’s that Mark and Joanna make this journey together, which reveals their attachment and dedication to each other. And the small ways in which they continue to know each other--such as Joanna’s exploitation of Mark’s continuing to forget the whereabouts of his passport--that demonstrate that tie. I would recommend anything starring the incomparable Audrey Hepburn, and this elegant film lets the viewer, as a hitchhiker in the marriage of Mark and Joanna Wallace, embark on an intimate adventure into the complicated travels of two lovers on the traffic circle-turnarounds of love.

Film Selections, and Future Changes to Penguin in the Machine

I received three replies--two as comments and one via Facebook--to Monday's post. Since I'm awful at decisions, I've decided to pick one from each of my recommenders. The selected films are:

• The Visitor, because I have a thing for underdogs (that includes the cartoon superhero Underdog but not the dreadful live-action flick) and the underappreciated.
• Star Trek (2009), because I'm a geek and also because I should really take the initiative to see a movie that was made in the past two years that's not The Dark Knight or Twilight (the last film I saw in theatres, back in November 2008).
• Two for the Road, and the explanation for this one comes in two words: AUDREY HEPBURN.

But thank you all for your kind recommendations! I'll be acquiring the films sometime in the next few days, and then the next three Fridays will be film reviews here on The Penguin in the Machine!

I am going to hold onto all of the other recommendations, though, because it'll give me more things to look for in the future.

Next week, I'm going to start a new feature on this blog; on Wednesdays, I'll begin posting poetry, maybe some by me, maybe some by real poets (old stuff out of copyright, but good stuff, since I don't want anybody's estate suing the pants off of me. Though, I could post some bad poems and make fun of them. That could be fun, too.) I feel that poetry is under-appreciated because high schoolers are stuck reading John Donne's tense, sexually-repressed, subliminally violent poetry because it scans well, and this produces the idea that poetry is inaccessible. But it doesn't have to be, and it can still be incredibly emotionally compelling.

Returning on Monday, after I do some more marathon revisions!

Happy Holidays, from The Penguin in the Machine!

Happy holidays to all of you folks, from here at The Penguin in the Machine! This year, I’ve finally succeeded in convincing my family to carry through with a holiday tradition that I had intended to start several years ago—a reading of Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol on the nights preceding Christmas Day. It’s an alternative to watching any of the dozens of adaptations of the famous little story. Disney has their recent adaptation, with Jim Carrey voicing Ebenezer Scrooge, which--if I’d been able to finagle my way out to see it--I would have posted a review of that.

In that spirit, though, I’ll take a quick glimpse into the past to a few variations of A Christmas Carol that I’ve seen across the years. So, as a present to assist you with your holiday movie choice, I present several quick film reviews of Christmas Carol adaptations.

Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol (1962)
“Harold and the Purple Crayon” has a more vibrant color palette--and better animation, frankly--than this 1960s mash-up of poorly scrawled animations over bland, minimalist washes of monochromes. There is some bizarre desire that the characters all seem to possess for “razzleberry dressing,” perhaps the concoction that drugged the writers and artists into swirling together sub-par musical numbers and shallow characterization. As far as animated/children’s renderings of Dickens’s classic go, there are many renditions that hail to the original and still provide solid characterizing. Mister Magoo’s Christmas Carol is as blind to development as its titular character.

A Christmas Carol (1984)
George C. Scott produces an iconic performance of Ebenezer Scrooge--tough, austere, distant, and yet harrowingly soulful as the ghosts trawl this lost man through the snares of memory and personal history. The aesthetic of the film grounds itself in authentic, Victorian design, and the shots--which ground the narrative in a series of tight, dark shots--reminds the viewer of the political and economic constraints of industrializing London. However, the tight cinematography provides a sensation of impression, that we are trapped along with Scrooge in his crucible.

Scrooged (1988)
Billy Murray stars as the unsympathetic, grouchy network executive Frank Cross--a name square and taciturn as anything that Dickens could conceive. Karen Allen, as Claire Phillips, plays against Murray’s stalwart, capitalist exec; Allen’s character works in a homeless shelter, while Murray’s Cross proposes films such as The Night the Reindeer Died to a board of directors. The movie whimsically moves between layers of watching and viewing, mimicking the very medium with which it was produced--film. Viewed as good fun, Scrooged is a lighthearted, but entertaining, modern treatment of the Scrooge narrative.

The Muppet Christmas Carol (1992)
Surprisingly, director Brian Henson assembled a cast of Muppets in one of the most loyal renderings of the holiday classic. The greatest alterations are those inserted to account for the idiosyncrasies of the Muppets; the most obvious of these concerns Gonzo (playing Charles Dickens) referring to the Marleys (as opposed to just Marley) being “dead to begin with.” (Statler and Waldorf play the “Marley Brothers,” hence the change.) The Muppets follow the narrative closely, sharply, and combine much of Dickens’s original dialogue with voiceover narration provided by Gonzo/Dickens and an entertaining, memorable, and lively array of musical numbers. Michael Caine contributes a strong performance as Ebenezer Scrooge, in a manner that borrows heavily from George C. Scott’s deeply affecting portrayal of the character.