Fantasia ‘13: Bad Film

It was conceived and shot guerilla-style in the mid 1990’s, but its pitched rivalry between Japanese and Chinese street gangs seems timelier today.  Instead of the East China Sea, they battle on the streets of the Koenji and Shinjuku districts in Sion Sono’s Bad Film, which screens tomorrow during the closing night of the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

In 1995, 1997 constituted the near future.  Now it is alternate history, or whatever.  At that time, Sono was more or less leading the Tokyo GAGAGA art collective, whose 2,000 members were the cast and co-conspirators on what is now known as Bad Film.  Reportedly, Sono ran out of funds before completing his DIY epic, but not before shooting one hundred fifty hours of vintage Hi8 footage.  Years later, Sono edited it into narrative shape, so here we go.

With the backing of various criminal organizations, gangs of ethnic supremacists wage war on the streets of Tokyo.  The Japanese Kamikazes and the Chinese Baihubang particularly have it in for each other.  Much to the frustration Shiro (played by the director), things are going badly for the home team.  However, peace is eventually brokered, largely prompted by the romance blossoming between his emotionally scarred sister and Maggie, an apocalyptic pan-handler and part-time member of a lesbian Chinese girl gang.

At first, everything is cool, but some still prefer making war over love.  Complicating matters, Maggie and her comrades make overtures to the closeted Kamikazes, hoping to realign the gangs along gay-straight lines, with their faction on top.  The shiny-headed Kamikaze boss will not appreciate that.  Decidedly homophobic, his tastes run more towards pigs.

Right, if there is anything transgressive missing from Bad Film it is only because Sono forgot to throw it in.  There is also plenty of brawling madness and general eccentricity, but it is not exactly the lost masterpiece some would suggest.  Frankly, it mostly constitutes a street gang melodrama not all that different from a teenaged star-vehicle like Monga, dressed up with all kinds of broadsides against nationalism, traditional morality, and what Tokoyo GAGAGA might sneeringly term “polite society.”

Still, Sono is not bad at all as the flawed but redeemable Shiro and the TG member playing Maggie is quite impressive.  The deliberate echoes of Romeo and Juliet give the proceedings greater tragic heft and Sono’s subversive humor definitely takes no prisoners. Nonetheless, despite everyone’s clear commitment, the two and a half hour-plus running time is a tad excessive, hitting a pronounced patch of doldrums around the one hundred minute mark.

Sono is a bold filmmaker, whose go-for-broke-ness often leads to dropped jaws and/or infectious giddiness.  Bad Film cannot live up to the sheer power of a subsequent masterwork like Love Exposure, but it is a fascinating hybrid of cinema, street theater, and collective wackiness. Recommended for fans of Sono and long, strange cult cinema, Bad Film screens tomorrow night (8/7) at the Imperial Theatre, as this year’s Fantasia comes to a close.

Fantasia ’13: Go Down Death

It came from Brooklyn (a warehouse in Greenpoint to be exact), but it is set in a fantasy world unconstrained by narrative logic.  There is little employment in this shunned village, yet young Butler holds down a multitude of jobs, including grave-digging.  He will be busy.  Life is indeed poor, nasty, brutish, and short, but words hold great significance in Aaron Schimberg’s Go Down Death (trailer here), which screens tomorrow during the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

This is Jonathan Mallory Sinus’s world.  The celebrated poet not only created the sickly village, he also lives there as a character.  Sinus is the one who amputated both his legs for his own existential satisfaction. Disease and suffering are commonplace in this environment, as Butler soon learns—sort of.  It is hard to put much stock in his doctor’s diagnoses, given his shape-shifting and his stalker-like behavior.

Most of the men inside the hamlet spend their time playing cards and frequenting the working women upstairs, while two soldiers tromp through the surrounding forest like characters in a Beckett play.  It might not sound like much of an existence, but most everyone seems to find it preferable to the dreaded Gomorrah-like Big City.

Absolutely not to be confused with Spencer Williams’ morality tale, Go Down Death is essentially Hell’s sketch comedy show, stringing together macabre vignettes that share common characters and settings, but do not form a very cohesive storyline.  Sometimes they work and sometimes they just peter out, like post-1990’s SNL sketches.  At least, Schimberg maintains a thoroughly and distinctly weird vibe nearly the whole way through, as if H.P. Lovecraft took over as the show-runner for The Andy Griffith Show.  Unfortunately, he eventually breaks from his carefully constructed universe with a disappointingly flat bit of hipsterism.

Down is not the sort of film that serves as a willing showcase for the talents of its cast.  Instead of tapping into their deep emotional reserves, they simply mold themselves to fit Schimberg’s creepy tableaux.  Nevertheless, the quality of Rayvin Disla’s work as Butler comes through all the murky stylization quite clearly.  Sammy Mena also conveys the pathos of the outsider in a rather bold performance as Rosenthal, one of the gamblers, who has a rather complicated pseudo-romantic relationship with the club singer, Milda.  Although underwritten by conventional film standards, she is one of the few apparently humane figures in this world, played with a good measure of sensitivity by Simone Xi.

Wearing its love for its love for Tod Browning’s Freaks on its sleeve, Down freely mixes horror and surreal tragedy. Arguably, the key ingredient is Jimmy Lee Phelan’s timeless, otherworldly black-and-white cinematography. Yet, when it finally seems to get somewhere, viewers will wonder why it bothered.  The results are a wildly mixed bag—albeit one that is obviously the product of some considerable combined talents.  Recommended for those who favor style over substance, Go Down Death screens tomorrow (8/5) at the J.A. De Seve Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia Festival.

Fantasia ’13: The Tiger Mask

To give credit where it is due, the underground bouts produced by a shadowy criminal syndicate are not fixed. On the other hand, they often end with a fatality.  Three of their up-and-coming wrestlers have a distinct advantage.  After all, they are not wearing that headgear for Lucha Libre style points.  The cult 1960’s wrestling manga and anime series gets a darkly super-heroic face-lift in Ken Ochiai’s The Tiger Mask (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as part of the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

After watching the landlord bully the gentle director of his beloved orphanage, young Naoto Date resolves to stop being a victim.  Unfortunately, this makes him ripe for recruitment by the mysteriously powerful Mr. X, who whisks him away to train in the Tiger’s Lair to as a wrestler.  Most of the boys arriving with him will not make it, but the top three will be awarded Tiger Masks.  Either through science or black arts, these strange accessories amplify the natural powers of those who wear them, but leave them drained after their matches.

Ten years later, Date receives the Black Tiger Mask and duly triumphs over his first opponent in the ring.  His friend Dan will grapple as the Gold Tiger Mask and the final White Tiger Mask will go to Jo, the mean-spirited trouble-maker.  Obviously, there is a grudge match brewing between him and Date, especially when the disillusioned wrestler decides to go rogue.

Evidently, Tiger Mask is a beloved franchise in Japan that spawned a succession of real life Tiger Masks in Japanese pro-wrestling.  Even by cartoon standards, the ring action in Ochiai’s reboot is pretty crazy, with the Masks’ opponents looking more like Dick Tracy villains than underground athletes.  It definitely follows in the darkly stylized Sin City tradition, but it carried the seal of approval of its late producer Hisao Maki, the younger brother of Tiger Mask creator Ikki Kajiwara, who passed away shortly before the film was created.  Obviously, there must be hopes this will be the start of a new franchise, but uninitiated viewers might be somewhat frustrated by the limited ground covered by the narrative, basically giving viewers the temporary closure of a ninety minute TV pilot rather than a feature tent-pole.

Still, there is some unapologetically meathead action in Tiger, staged with relish. Yet, the film also has some heart, especially from Gantz’s Natsuna Watanabe, pleasingly upbeat and idealistic as Ruriko Wakatsuki, the grown-up daughter of the old orphanage headmaster.  Cross-over pop-star Eiji Wentz also broods decently as Date, but perhaps the considerable amount of time he spends masked it not such an unfortunate thing.

Ochiai keeps the energy level nicely pumped-up and never lets the quite presentable special effects overwhelm the human element.  In terms of tone and themes, it is like a fusion of Ender’s Game, Battle Royale, and Rikidozan.  Despite the more contemporary sensibility, Tiger Mask will probably still be best appreciated by those familiar with the original series, as well as Japanese (non-sumo) wrestling.  Recommended for fans of action films based on manga and anime, The Tiger Mask screens tomorrow afternoon (8/4) at the J.A. De Seve Theatre, during this year’s Fantasia Festival.

Fantasia ’13: The Great Passage

Remember when Microsoft was in the ink-and-paper reference business?  Now the Encarta seems like a relic from a past era.  In contrast, the new dictionary a diligent Japanese publishing team develops might just live up to its hype in Yuya Ishii’s quietly nostalgic The Great Passage (trailer here), which screens tomorrow during the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

In the mid 1990’s, the publishing industry had barely progressed beyond a stylus-and-stone level of technology.  CD-Roms were projected to be the next big thing.  Mitsuya Majimme, a socially awkward former linguistics student, performs poorly as a sales rep, but he finds his niche when he is transferred to his company’s sleepy reference imprint.  Obsessively detail-oriented, he is the perfect editor for the director’s ambitious new dictionary, The Great Passage.

Over the next fifteen years, Majime will compile a definitive dictionary of the Japanese language as it is truly spoken, identifying and defining scores of new words, while refining the definitions of words that have evolved over time.  It is an arduous, time consuming process, involving note-cards more than computers.  Frankly, it is not the sort of investment his publishing conglomerate is inclined to make.  Fortunately, Majime has a high-placed ally in Masashi Nishioka, a former dictionary colleague transferred to the corporate marketing department.  As Majime invests years of his life in the dictionary, he also slowly but surely develops a romantic relationship with Kaguya Hayashi, his landlord’s granddaughter.  An apprentice chef and compulsive knife-sharpener, she is the same but different from Majime in all the right ways.

Based on Shion Miura’s novel, Passage can stake a strong claim to be the great Japanese reference publishing movie we have all been waiting for.  Its operational understanding of the dysfunctional business is almost scary.  Yet, there is something aesthetically pleasing about its affection for language and book people.  It is also refreshing to see a film with a sufficient attention span to follow the in’s and out’s of the fifteen year editorial and production process.  While Passage’s one hundred thirty-three minute running time is not exactly breakneck, the consistently absorbing film never feels slack or padded.  Rather, it pulls viewers along with its own gentle rhythms. 

In a radical change-up from his work in I’m Flash, Ryuhei Matsuda is terrific as Majime.  Without the benefit of a big epiphany moment, he vividly portrays the editor’s subtle but steady personal and professional growth.  Likewise, Aoi Miyazaki is genuinely engaging as the spirited yet only somewhat more outgoing Hayashi.  Yet, it is Shingo Tsurumi and Kaoru Yachigusa who really lower the emotional boom of time’s passage as the reference director and his devoted wife.

Yes, this is definitely the sort of film that will choke viewers up.  Let’s face it, there’s nary a dry eye in the house when that blasted dictionary finally comes out.  However, Ishii never indulgences in cheap manipulation, earning his sentiment the hard way.  At every turn, he opts for small telling scenes over big melodramatic show-pieces.  The cumulative impact is deeply satisfying.  Highly recommended for fans of Japanese cinema and anyone connected to the book business, The Great Passage screens tomorrow (8/2) and Sunday (8/4) at the J.A. De Seve Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia Festival.

Fantasia ’13: The Dead Experiment

For too long, only mad scientists in the Dr. Frankenstein tradition have been bold enough to challenge death.  Finally, two respectably under-achieving grad students will strive to cure mortality.  The initial signs are promising in Anthony Dixon’s moody Canadian indie, The Dead Experiment (clip here), which screens tomorrow during the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Woozily staggering home, Chris looks like death warmed over—and well he should.  According to his hysterical fiancée, Maddie, he has been dead for two weeks. This is difficult news to accept.  Yet, his reincarnated presence makes a certain amount of sense.  After being cut from his post-grad program for general dodginess, he and his childhood friend Jacob started developing a radical procedure to rejuvenate cells.  It seems to have worked.  However, as Chris and Jacob start documenting his cure, complications arise.

By genre standards, Experiment is unusually idea-driven.  There is some really smart stuff in Dixon’s script’s and he blindsides viewers with one massive game-changing twist.  Unfortunately, his cast really doesn’t do his concepts justice.  At best, they are kind of-sort of okay.  Jamie Abrams is the class of the field as the ethically “pragmatic” Jacob.  (That leaves an obvious implication regarding the rest of the small ensemble.)

Indeed, independent filmmaking is always an adventure.  Nonetheless, Experiment earns points for its fresh take on the reanimation motif.  What is typically grist for horror and gore, Dixon essentially re-purposes into chamber science fiction.  He and cinematographer Fraser Brown also maintain the nocturnal atmosphere and mounting claustrophobia quite effectively.

While Experiment’s shortcomings are what they are, it is exactly the sort of inventive Canadian genre production Fantasia takes pride in supporting.  Based on its merits, Dixon ought to have a shot at bigger budgeted projects.  An intriguing indie, The Dead Experiment screens tomorrow (8/1) at the J.A. De Seve Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

Fantasia ’13: Bushido Man

Toramaru is like the Anthony Bourdain of martial arts.  Before challenging a rival, he first eats what they eat.  There is some wisdom to that approach, but there is considerably more mayhem to be found in Takanori Tsujimoto’s Bushido Man (trailer here), which screens tomorrow during the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Gensai, the sensei of the Cosmic Way school of holistic martial arts, has sent his number one student forth into the world to challenge seven specialized masters and hopefully claim their ancient scrolls of secret wisdom.  Things must have gone relatively well, since Toramaru has returned to tell his tales to his appreciative teacher.  Based on the details of his prep meal, Gensai is able to guess the identity of the master to be challenged.

While Bushido probably cost less to produce than dinner for one at Nobu, action director Kensuke Sonomura stages some epic mano-a-mano showdowns.  Sonomura himself starts things off briskly as Yuan Jian, the Chinese kung fu master and Kazuki Tsujimoto makes quite a memorable Zatōichi surrogate as the blind swordsman Muso.  Yet, the honor-stoked adrenaline reaches its purest, highest point when Masanori Mimoto appears as Eiji Mimoto, the Yakuza dagger master.  To his credit, Tsujimoto also has a good sense of fair play, allowing Miki Mizuno to rack up an impressive body count as the pragmatic arms-dealing femme fatale, M.

Bushido is all about fighting, periodically taking timeout for some goofball humor.  If you’re looking for narrative logic here, just don’t.  In one scene, Toramaru strolls through the sunny streets of contemporary Tokyo, yet the next moment he is trudging through the scarred wasteland of a post-apocalyptic Yokohama.  It does really matter though.  Everything in Bushido is there to facilitate the food and fighting.

Held together by Mitsuki Koga’s action cred and straight man persona, Bushido Man delivers the goods for martial arts-samurai-yakuza movie fans.  It nicely demonstrates how a scrappy low budget action production can overcome its budget constraints with energy and a clever concept.  Recommended for established genre fans, it screens tomorrow (7/27) at the Imperial Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia Festival in Montreal.

Fantasia ’13: After School Midnighters

The Scooby gang has nothing on these three little girls.  They will absolutely terrorize the supernatural beings haunting St. Claire’s Academy.  Sugar & Spice massively trumps the things that go bump in the night throughout Hitoshi Takekiyo’s animated feature After School Midnighters (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as part of this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

While touring their prospective new elementary school, Mako, Miko, and Mitsuko take a detour into the soon to be dismantled science room, where they basically have at the poor visible anatomy dummy.  However, after night falls, the uncanny dummy stalks the halls of St. Claire’s as the fearsome Louis Thomas Jerome Kunstlijk. Rather put out by the treatment he received from the terrible trio, Kunstlijk sends out a pack of gun-toting Mafioso rabbits to lure the girls back to St. Claire’s.  Of course, both he and the bunnies will get more than they bargained for.

Despite Kunstlijk’s efforts to scare the willies out of them, the innocent motor-mouthed Mako and the entitled elitist Miko are too absorbed in their own little worlds to fully appreciate the situation, whereas Mitsuko, the goth girl, is basically down with it all.  The girls are so unfazed, Kunstlijk’s skeleton crony, “Goth,” tries to recruit them for a supernatural scheme to save the science lab, sending them careening about St. Claire’s like pinballs.  Nevertheless, Kunstlijk still has a hard time letting things go.

Midnighters is so off the charts frenetic, it must be the product of a creative team consuming nothing but Red Bulls and Pixie Stix.  Sure, there is plenty of “girl power” in Midnighters, like the Power Puff Girls hopped up on amphetamines.  Frankly, by computer animation standards, Takekiyo’s characters have quite a bit of personality.  Yet, it is hard to judge how appropriate the film is for younger viewers.  Many of the supernatural elements are surprisingly sinister looking, but they only make the three girls giggle with glee.

Chocked full of goofy humor and strange little macabre details, there is never a quiet moment in Midnighters.  You really have to admire the sheer manic inspiration of Takekiyo and screenwriter Yōichi Komori.  Beyond breakneck, their hyper pacing allows no time for logic to ever kick in. Recommended for anyone up for a cheerful descent into bedlam, After School Midnighters screens this Saturday (7/27) at the Imperial Theatre as the 2013 Fantasia Festival continues in Montreal.

Fantasia ’13: The Burning Buddha Man

Where was the Seaddattha when the Bamiyan valley Buddhas were destroyed Afghanistan? Instead, the secret society is plundering Kyoto’s Buddha statues, supposedly for their own protection.  However, a young girl quickly learns things are not as they seem in Ujicha’s mind-bending animated feature, The Burning Buddha Man (trailer here), which screens tomorrow as an official selection of the 2013 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Young Beniko is suddenly alone in the world.  Her parents, or at least their torsos, disappeared while protecting their temple’s Buddha statue from an uncanny intruder, while the grandmother she never really knew remains in a mystical catatonic state.  Enju, a monk who claims to be a friend of the family, welcomes her into his retreat.  He explains to the baffled girl how the Seaddattha have perfected matter transference to enable their crime spree.  He also introduces her to his son Enji, a carver of Buddha statues, whose techniques might just prevent the sort of fusion tragedies that befell her parents.  Then things get really, really weird.

Rendered through a mix of the “gekimation” style of paper cut-out animation and live action (largely reserved for spurting vomit and blood), Burning has an absolutely bizarre look and vibe.  Think of it as equal parts H.R. Giger, René Laloux, and South Park.  You have never seen a film like this, particularly considering how seriously it treats its Buddhist subject matter, notwithstanding the scatological bits.  As Beniko raises her consciousness to battle her powerful nemesis, she seeks not to kill but to reform his corrupted soul.  That is a noble sentiment, so good luck with that.

In Burning, the themes and visuals trump bourgeoisie characterization and narrative cohesion.  It is a massively archetypal head-trip.  You would not consider it traditional anime by any stretch, yet one can see the hints of shared old school elements when the forces of good and evil fuse themselves into Golem like creatures for the final cosmic battle.

Even though Burning features a resilient young heroine and a respect for both religion and the sanctity of life, it is not exactly appropriate for family viewing.  Sure, an occasional head explodes, but the film’s motifs and implications would just be too challenging for mortal parents to explain. Recommended for fans of animation and cult cinema with a taste for the profound and the eccentric, The Burning Buddha Man screens this Monday (7/22) at the J.A. De Seve Theatre as part of this year’s Fantasia Festival.  Anyone remotely near Montreal who is in anyway intrigued should see it when they can.  Those attending the fest should definitely also check out Big Bad Wolves, Black Out, Confession of Murder, Drug War, Ip Man: the Final Fight, It’s Me It’s Me, The Last Tycoon, The Rooftop, Thermae Romae, and When a Wolf Falls in Love with a Sheep.  More to come.