Massive International Review!

I can broadly estimate that every person I know has seen films from at least five different countries – one American, one British, one Australian, one animated film from France or Japan, and one Oscar-nominated foreign film or international meme film (Who Killed Captain Alex, for example). People may consider themselves less cultured than they actually are because they don’t realise how many different countries have produced the films they watch.

So I’ve decided to review a film from every country that has produced a film that I’ve watched, which means there are 16 reviews coming up (gulp). They have to be made in the country in question, partially in the country’s language and with crew members from that country as the rules.

Right, here we go, starting with none other than…

America – EVERYTHING

You know what? I’m not going to do a new American film review here. Instead, I’m going to link random words in this paragraph to random reviews of American films I made in the past. I don’t like many of my reviews (particularly my earlier ones), but they demonstrate my constantfamiliarity with this vast king of the movie market. Oh flibbidigibbet, let’s move on to the first actual reviewI wrote for this piece…

Australia – The Dry

A recent Australian entry, The Dry currently sits as the 14th highest grossing Australian film of all time having taken in $20 million AUD (not adjusted for inflation). Adapted from Jane Harper’s excellent book of the same name, The Dry presents a cool murder mystery, this time from the perspective of an outback town. How was it?

In the film, we’re introduced to Aaron Falk, a police detective who returns to his hometown after a brutal double-murder-suicide. Hated by the locals yet curious about the crime, Falk chooses to stick around to find out the full story, uncovering all of the typical secrets and evil that lurk between small time life.

The Dry certainly lives up to its title – the landscape is so devoid of water that it creates a stark sun-baked look for the film that provides a pretty backdrop without significantly adding to the atmosphere. The same can’t be said for the writing, which thankfully provides a rich tapestry of doubts and red herrings to frustrate its characters and bring a strong human element to the proceedings. Locations may be arid, but the character interactions certainly aren’t, and they elevate The Dry well above the underdeveloped mystery at the centre. But I’ll come back to that.

As for the acting, Eric Bana turns in a really strong performance as Falk, and everyone around him works to their best level, although none of them rising to outstanding levels or anything like that. That’s a common theme I’ll return to throughout this review – the film is strong on its own, but the individual parts don’t add up to anything outstanding, merely “really good”.

This is somewhat disappointing, given how brilliant the premise of small-town life turning suddenly vile can be. It can be a heart-warming classic like Chocolat, or the brutal misanthropic examination of Dogville or The White Ribbon, or any of the classic Christie mysteries. But The Dry works well enough as a story to stand up strong on its own, and I think it’s good enough to warrant at least one watch.

Where I think the film is really lacking is the central mystery. The film is 117 minutes long, but in that time, there’s not a satisfactory amount of information given about the accused murderer. He’s never seen in his adult life (he’s a friend of Aaron’s when they were younger) and we never understand why the townspeople would immediately think he committed a murder-suicide and leave it at that. Additionally, when we see the murder actually take place, we start thinking things like “fingerprints exist, right?” and “time of death also exists, yeah?”. It’s structured poorly and underdeveloped.

Nevertheless, The Dry is entertaining enough to stand on its own as a strong Australian murder mystery, admittedly not the best one you’ll ever see (like Breaker Morant). It could be better, but it could be much worse too.

The Dry receives from me a B.

Now onto another continent…

Brazil – The Little Panda Fighter (Ursinho de Pesada)

I’ve mentioned this film before on a review of the most obscure films I’ve ever seen (which included such hits as Happily Never After 2: #anotherbiteoutoftheapple). It is also unfortunately the only Brazilian film that I’ve ever seen (given that there are great ones like Bacurau or Aquarius out there), and – straight up – one of the worst films I’ve ever seen. Which is neat, given that all the others are American – any country can indeed make a repugnant piece of crap just like Hollywood does!

Everything about this movie seems to have been designed in a strange fever dream where David Lynch’s deliberately bad TV show Dumbland is treated as gospel. The voice acting is demonic, the character design is made out of pixelated blobs, the story is an unfortunate non-sequitur, the music never fits the film’s intention, and the animation would be embarrassing to child sock puppets. So of course, I watched it.

Made by the now defunct Video Brinquedo, who specialise in making cheap rip-offs of American animated films, The Little Panda Fighter is unsurprisingly a cheap rip-off of Kung Fu Panda with none of the heart or Jack Black that made that movie great. Following a panda with grand aspirations and his master’s manipulation of him as he doesn’t believe in the panda’s talents, the film tries to be an inspiring tale, a Guy Ritchie film and a cartoon at the same time.

It doesn’t work.

The best thing about the movie is that it’s mercifully short, at about 50 minutes in length. This somehow still causes problems in failing to develop any character or even provide significant motivation for anybody to do anything. But still a mercy.

In those 50 minutes, the film (in order) forgets about themes of capitalism, Care-Bears, romance, subterfuge, sport-fixing, healthy lifestyle, meekness, popularity and sexualisation of lady pandas in order to build to the final conclusion of nothing. It feels like the passages with Tom Buchanan in The Great Gatsby, jumping around with the anaphora and alliteration types so much that it’s impossible to lock the man or the film down. And I doubt that it was a deliberate homage.

Animation-wise, The Little Panda Fighter is overtaken by even utter dreck like Hunt Down the Freeman (notorious for its hilariously bad cutscenes). Characters typically only move one part of their body while talking, leaving the rest of their body immobile as though frozen in ice. Physics is a theoretical concept as characters phase in and out of props and fly through the air like a dropped sheet of paper despite having the bodies and personalities of a sack of bricks.

What makes the animation even stranger is that the lip-syncing animation is not changed between the Brazilian original and the English dub – so the poor English voice actors (including Yu-Gi-Oh and hentai veteran Dan Green) have to speak so awkwardly to match with the mouths of the characters, seeming as though they are simultaneously pumped with NyQuil and electricity.

All of this combines with the flat textures, stupid music, lazy direction, unintentionally hilarious dialogue and every single element of the film to create one of the most shocking films ever made, outstripping The Passion of the Christ in how truly it rocks the soul. How did any humans, let alone professionals, come up with this and sell it overseas?

Needless to say, this gets an F, and probably a few U’s as well.

Leaving South America forever, we move to…

Britain – Attack the Block

Literally ending with the main character hanging from a British flag, Attack the Block could only become more English if tea suddenly began raining from the sky. Full of British slang and stereotypes of British working-class life, it’s a film with a lot of heart and fun to be had within it as well. And also aliens with glow-in-the-dark teeth, which is awesome.

Before John Boyega and Jodie Whittaker were famous, they were the protagonists of Attack the Block, Joe Cornish’s grisly directorial debut involving a teenage street gang protecting their council block from a horde of invading aliens. Competing with police, a violent murderer/rapper rampaging through the building, and Ron’s weed room (a room filled with weed, and it’s Ron’s), the gang gets thrown through the ringer as monsters from hell come to ruin Guy Fawkes night.

As a directorial debut on its own, Attack the Block is remarkable. Cornish shows a confidence that many beginners simply lack (likely due to being a friend of Edgar Wright), piling on the violence and trusting his audience to stick with him as he follows this group of characters who only eventually become sympathetic. Additionally, it’s so stylistically self-assured in its B-Movie genre and gangland silliness that it’s impossible not to mentally join in on the fun.

Attack the Block may only cost $10 million, ludicrously low for a movie of this genre, but it uses its location and resources spectacularly well. Set entirely in one council block and the playground next to it, every single room of that building is deployed fantastically, shifting between gonzo action to brutal horror to stupid comedy room-to-room. Everything is presented in such a confident fashion that the low-budget nature of the film never particularly strikes you.

It reminds me somewhat of The Terminator or The Raid or similar low-budget films that have tight pacing and a ton of variety despite the limited number of settings available to the filmmakers. Everything is economical and efficient, straight-to-the-point and awesome, from the excellent yet simple monster design to the no-frills wired performances, especially a young John Boyega as a 15-year-old gang leader.

Beyond that, the movie is just a wizardry of characters and technical skill building to a perfect B-movie setting and design. All of the people in the film from the pyromaniac children to the stoner biologist to crazy rapper High-Hatz feel distinct and outlandish in a perfect 80’s-style way, backed up by zanily colourful cinematography and a delightfully quirky EDM score by Oscar-winner Steven Price.

Attack the Block is just so damn good as a B-movie, as a debut, as a sci-fi, as a horror, as a comedy and just as a film that it is recommendable to fans of all of those things. I seriously love this film, and I want all of you to experience it.

Attack the Block gets an A.

Damn, that was good. Now to good ol’…

China – Shadow (Ying/影)

Having seen this film for a previous comparison I did between Chinese and American cinema, I quite enjoyed it. But I didn’t review it back then, merely comparing the style of it to other American martial arts and action films in terms of its use of sound, cinematography and characterisation without ranking it. Well, here we are, so let’s get to it.

Director Zhang Yimou (Junk Emo, as could be said) has made his career out of stylish violent wuxia (traditional martial arts) cinema, with hits like Hero, House of Flying Daggers and the rather unfortunately terrible The Great Wall. However, he also began his career with character-driven, emotionally built dramas like Ju Dou or Raise the Red Lantern, and with Shadow, those two genres collide rather well.

Telling a story on both a grand Three-Chinese-Kingdoms scale and also on an intimate emotional level as well, Shadow is a saga of a man and his “shadow” (impersonator) who embark on a tale of revenge and bloodshed in order to restore his honour. Love and blood both rain from the sky as destinies clash and swords go through people – yeah, the whole wuxia shebang at this point.

What makes Shadow better than some of the more style-over-substance wuxia films out there like The Assassin (I’ll get to that) is its focus on the teacher-student relationship and the subtle romantic relationship occurring alongside it, weaving the defiance of gravity with the breaking down of walls between characters. It’s a ballet in the sense that the dance communicates the feelings instead of just looking cool, and in those fight scenes, the traditional formal and stately nature of Medieval China falls away to reveal something human not often seen as much in martial arts movies.

Additionally, Shadow adopts a style similar to a less-noirish Sin City, designing all to be black and white except for human skin and blood. It gives the whole affair this unique look, playing into the films themes of hiding and deception similar to how one must be stately in front of their master, only to fall and reveal the human/blood within. Striking and beautiful, it’s a must see just for the visual presentation alone.

Shadow is also beautiful in how it uses both its environment and its sound design in some scenes. The water droplets and the rain flying through the air in slow motion is breathtaking to see, but it’s also breathing to hear. Much of the action in the movie goes without a musical score, and all that can be heard is the clang of blades and the squeak of shields as warriors slide down on them through the streets. I wish more films relied on their sound design rather than their score, because that stuff is more emotionally authentic, and Shadow is proof of that.

Where I think Shadow fails is with its use of exposition. There are many scenes, particularly at the beginning, of characters just standing around and talking about the backstory of the land, and what’s going on, and who’s to blame, and such. There’s not much visual storytelling when it comes to giving us the life of the land, no huge wide shots of cities, and often a scene will begin in a small section of a place rather than establishing the whole place, making it seem more like a set and these actors just table reading rather than living their character. It occurs quite a bit, which is annoying as sometimes the film’s use of exposition is excellent.

But overall, I’d recommend Shadow as a strong wuxia film that stands outside of the regular crop due to the style and the use of emotion as storytelling, even if I don’t like the exposition as much. It’s not Zhang Yimou’s best film, per se, but it’s still pretty good.

Shadow gets from me a B+.

Moving back to Europe for a gander…

Denmark – Help! I’m a Fish (Hjælp, jeg er en fisk)

I haven’t seen this film in years, so I can’t typically review it per se, but can instead talk about my experience with it and what I can remember about it. Because it is one of the crazier animated films to come out in the 2000’s, which is just typical of Europe at this point.

From what I can remember, Help! I’m a Fish follows the adventures of a boy named Fly, his sister Stella, and his cousin Chuck (a then-unknown Aaron Paul in the English dub as a dickish genetics expert), who end up with a mad scientist when they sneak out of the house. Stella accidentally consumes some chemical that turns her into a starfish, so Fly and Chuck also drink it to go and rescue her. Meanwhile, the antidote falls into the ocean and turns a fish into a semi-human hybrid (Alan Rickman) who pursues the trio in order to return to the surface and start a revolution.

Having come out in 2000 well before films like Finding Nemo, I can’t call it a ripoff per se. I would more describe it as grotesque SpongeBob, dealing with sea life in a juxtaposition of its most beautiful form and its most ugly. I’ve never quite seen a film that depicts underwater environments this way, as everything else is either bright and joyful or painful and horrifying. It’s somewhat preferable, as it gives a diversity of life that really engages the audience, and the 2D animation (not so much the computer animation) has aged really well.

But what is perhaps most famous (or infamous) about this movie is the music. It is a film that contains Alan Rickman ringing rhymes about the virtues of capitalism (with a character design straight out of hell), as well as two Europop credits song that somehow remain stuck in my head 8 years after I last watched the DVD (it’s cracked to nothing now).

I mean, the songs aren’t inherently bad – they’re frickin’ amazing – but they’re so unconventional if you compare them to a lot of other animated films at the time, which went for a significantly more conventional, less Europop vibe.

What I can definitely say about this movie, however, is that it is memorable. The fact that I can remember the scenes in such vivid detail 8 years later speaks to the power of this film, and I’ve found many comments on both Letterboxd and YouTube singing the praises of this as an underrated classic.

If you have the opportunity to watch this film, please do. I’d like to hear more about it.

It’s disappointing that I was able to write so little about a movie, especially one which I watched a lot during my childhood, but this is the only Danish film I’ve seen – I’ve yet to peruse the Danish-language works of Lars von Trier, Nikolaj Arcel or Nicholas Winding Refn who have broken into the English-language world much more than they have the Danish one. I intend to watch some of their Danish-language films at some point, although I have seen the English-language Refn film Drive (which I hate) and Arcel’s The Dark Tower (just passable).

Moving Southwest a bit, we have…

France – Merry Christmas (Joyeux Noel)

I’ve actually seen a few French movies in my time, such as Persepolis (excellent), The Dinner Game (awful and kind of offensive) and Little Nicholas (a children’s movie where someone gets brutally murdered, most of the film is spent plotting the murder of a baby, a group of kids nearly kill a bunch of others with poison, and one of them literally sadistically tortures the others). But Joyeux Noel is special amongst them, as it’s neither awful nor trying to be artsy and unique, but instead trying to be a film about one of the most joyful acts of humanity in history, where enemies joined together in happiness instead of hatred.

Many familiar with the history of World War One would know of the 1914 Christmas Celebrations, where British, French and German soldiers all put down their guns to play soccer and celebrate Christmas before being ordered by their generals to return to brutal fighting. This film tells the stories of soldiers from all 3 perspectives, including a French barber, a German opera singer, a grieving Scottish brother, an uncertain French lieutenant and more.

Joyeux Noel opens with scenes of misery and violence, before settling into warmth and sentimentality and then turning back to misery once the troops are ordered to resume fighting. The contrast is quite stark, but the film makes those changes in tone work through a strong sense of character connection, allowing the humanity between these different perspectives to open up and be seen by the audience.

As the film has so many different characters and not quite enough runtime, it can’t quite develop them to the level that it should. But when those characters come together in conversation and song, it’s beautiful. It’s a unique perspective on war, usually depicted as nothing but grim bloodshed, to see small moments of humanity open up between enemies like in Joyeux Noel.

It’s a film built around little moments which are enchanting to see, such as two men discussing one of their future sons, or how their lives will change after the war, or how the generals back home will react. There’s plenty of sweet moments there which eventually build up to an incredible scene where everyone joins together in song, like it suddenly became a Christmas musical, before slamming the audience back down into the dour hopelessness of the war.

Unfortunately, it’s not all roses with this film – the opening act, which includes a vicious battle scene, is unfortunately quite dull. Most of it is setup for the grand payoff that’ll happen later, and not a lot that is interesting occurs for the first 30 minutes aside from the battle scene. Compare this to a war movie like Dunkirk or Saving Private Ryan – the first scene hooks the audience and never stops to rest. By comparison, Joyeux Noel doesn’t really punch until halfway through, and the character development also doesn’t hit until the halfway point either, making the film feel overlong.

Interestingly, I think that Joyeux Noel is one of the better Christmas films out there, because it understands the small human connections that make up the spirit of Christmas more than just the broader familial meanings behind it. It’s by no means a perfect examination, but I wouldn’t mind sitting around the fire with my family watching the second and third acts of this film, as it would help me understand and forgive others more easily in the vein of holiday spirit.

Joyeux Noel receives a B+.

I chose this over the other films because I felt that I would be too attached to Persepolis, and that writing about the other two films which I hated would kind of depress me as neither film is amusingly bad to write about. Additionally, I want this to be a broadly positive piece, so I try to include all the good reviews that I can – including the next one.

Indonesia – The Raid (Serbuan Maut)

I already posted a review of The Raid on this blog before in Indonesian, but now I’ll provide it (in italics) and a translated copy. Here you go.

Sering dianggap salah satu film aksi yang paling bagus, Serbuan Maut (pun disebut The Raid dalam Bahasa Inggris) juga adalah hanya film Indonesia yang kebanyakan orang tahu. Ini disayangkan, karena kebudayaan film Indonesia unik dan menarik sekali dengan film yang lebih hebat seperti Jagal, Tiling dan Apa ada dengan Cinta. Walaupun demikian, saya kira bahwa Serbuan Maut adalah film yang baik sekali.

Often considered one of the best action films of all time, Serbuan Maut (also called The Raid in English) is also the only Indonesian film that many people will ever know. This is disappointing, because the filmmaking culture of Indonesia is unique and quite interesting, with much better films such as The Act of Killing, Tiling and What’s with Cinta (one of the few Indonesian memes I know). Nevertheless, I think that The Raid is still quite a good film.

Jadi Serbuan Maut tentang seorong polisi bernama Rama (Iko Uwais), yang berikut kelompok polisi lain ke serbuan apartemen dengan banyak penjahat. Tetapi kepala para penjahat (Ray Sahetapy) tahu bahwa polisi akan dating, dan sehingga Rama musti mengunakan kekuatannya dan pengetahuan kesenian bela dirinya untuk menyelamatkan kelompoknya dan menghentikan kepala penjahat.

So The Raid is about a police officer named Rama (Iko Uwais), who’s a member of a police unit which raids an apartment packed with criminals. But the criminal’s boss (Ray Sahetapy) knows the police are coming, and consequently Rama has to use his strength and martial arts knowledge to save his team and stop the villain.

Film ini disutradarai dan ditulis oleh Gareth Huw Evans, yang berasal dari negeri Wales dan juga baik pada film gaya horor dan film gaya kriminal. Menurut pendapat saya, Serbuan Maut disutradarai baik sekali, dengan alat pemotretnya dan bunyian filmnya digunakan cukup bagus untuk membuat atmosfer pengetakutan dan perintensan. Sebagai penonton, filmnya begitu berintens karena kamu tidak tahu apa yang mungkin terjadi, dan karena letakan di film terlihat begitu kotor dan berjahat, kamu juga ketakutan selama setiap menut filmnya.

The film is directed and written by Gareth Huw Evans, a Welsh director also well-versed in the genres of crime (Gangs of London) and horror (V/H/S). In my opinion, this film is directed exceptionally well, with the cinematography and sound design used really well for generating an intense atmosphere of dread. For the audience, the movie is as intense as it is because it’s so unpredictable, and because of the dirty, almost rotten look of the film’s locations, you are struck by terror by every minute of the film.

Apalagi, adegan kesenian bela diri di film ini amat hebat. Para penonton selalu bisa melihat semua yang terjadi, dengan adegan diadakan supaya pengertian adegan sangat baik. Ini berbeda sekali dan jauh lebih baik dari pada film Amerika, yang sering punya adegan aksi yang kameranya bergoyong-goyong dan para penontonnya tidak bisa mengerti apa yang terjadi.

What’s more, the martial arts scenes in this film are excellent. The audience can always see everything which is happening, with the scenes laid out with the intent of ensuring total understanding. This is significantly different and much better than American films, which often have action scenes with the camera shaking around and the audience unable to comprehend what is happening.

Dan karena pemeran film ini semua ahli kesenian bela diri Pencak Silat, mereka bergerak begitu cepat dan terlihat baik sekali di adegan pertarungan. Sambil menonton, kita ketakutan oleh kecepatan adegannya, dan Evans menyutradari adegannya untuk paling banyak perintensan, termasuk bunyian patah tulang dan teriak penyakit. Ini pembuatan film yang hebat, dan moga-moga pekerjaan seperti ini lagi diterima Evans.

And because the film’s cast are all experts in the martial art of Pencak Silat, they move so fast and look amazing in their fight scenes. While watching, we are terrified by the sheer speed of these scenes, and Evans films the scenes for top intensity, including the sounds of the snap of bone and the cries of pain. This is fantastic filmmaking, and hopefully Evans receives more work like this.

Apa yang saya pikir adalah masalah terburuknya di Serbuan Maut merupakan pengembangan karakternya (sebuah pendapat yang sama dengan kritik terkenal Roger Ebert, yang benci film ini). Film sedemikian pendeknya sehingga tidak ada waktu untuk percakapan, persahabatan atau pengembangan di antara para karakternya, dan sehingga para penonton tidak peduli kalau seorang polisinya digugur.

What I think is the film’s biggest problem is the character development (an opinion shared by famous film critic Roger Ebert, who hated this movie). The film is so short that there isn’t any time for conversation, friendship or development between characters, and so the audience doesn’t care if one of the policemen die.

Saya juga kira bahwa beberapa adegan aksinya terlalu lama sedikit. Pada khususnya, ada pertarungan di antara Rama dan salah seorang penjahat yang bernama Mad Dog, dan adegannya selama lima menut. Sesudah tiga menut adegan ini, saya merasa lelah dan saya ingin bahwa adegannya selesai cepat.

I also thing that some of the action scenes are a little too long. In particular, there’s a fight between Rama and a character named Mad Dog, and the scene is a lengthy five minutes. After three minutes alone, I felt tired and I wished the fight would end quickly.

Selain itu, Serbuan Maut adalah film aksi baik, dengan adegan aksi hebat. Ini tidak film aksi kesukaan saya (karena ada film-film seperti Kereta Api ke Busan, Mad Max: Jalan Kemarahan dan Kecepatan), tetapi saya masih sangat menikmati film ini.

Other than that, The Raid is a pretty good action film, with great fight scenes. This is not my favourite action picture by any means (because there are films like Train to Busan, Mad Max: Fury Road and Speed), but I still quite enjoy this film.

Serbuan Maut menerima pernilaian A-.

Saya tahu bahwa ini ulasan yang pendek kalau dibandingkan dengan ulasar saya lain, tetapi menulis ulasan dalam Bahasa Indonesia sukar sekali dan saya tidak bisa tahu tentang keterangan lagi yang bisa dikatakan. Mungkin, ini merupakan satu-satunya kali saya menulis dalam Bahasa Indonesia (dan mudah-mudahan, pengataan dan perbendaharaan di sini cukup betul).

I know this review is short compared to my other ones, but writing in Indonesian is really hard and I cannot know any more information which can be said (well, that was bad grammar). Maybe this should be my only time I write in Indonesian (and hopefully, my vocab here was correct enough, although in retrospect, it and my structure certainly weren’t.)

Alright, let’s never do that again.

Japan – Howl’s Moving Castle (ハウルの動く城/Hauru no Ugoku Shiro))

What is the best Studio Ghibli film? Is it the sheer imaginative lunacy of Spirited Away? Or the swooning romanticism of The Wind Rises? Maybe the unrelenting brutality and darkness of Princess Mononoke? Or perhaps the combination of love, fantasy and unfettered comedy that is Howl’s Moving Castle. Personally, for me, it’s The Wind Rises, but I still think that there’s plenty to love within Howl’s Moving Castle, even if it’s not as good as some of the other Ghibli joints.

One of the few Ghibli films to be based on another text rather than an original screenplay (a book by Diana Wynne Jones), Howl’s Moving Castle follows Sophie, a young woman in a war-torn nation who is suddenly turned into an old woman by a witch, and so wanders off into the wastelands to be alone. There, she gets met by a monstrous walking castle owned by the wizard Howl, and makes friends with Howl, a boy wizard, a fire and a hopping scarecrow. Suffice to say, there’s a lot of imagination going on.

While I do love this film, I think that as a narrative, it is the weakest out of all the Studio Ghibli films, although it is not the worst Ghibli film either. The narrative doesn’t fully develop the character of Howl to the point where the film’s anti-war story can be fully effective, and so some of the potential impact of the movie is lost. It’s still a great film, but not living up to its full potential.

Thankfully, Howl’s Moving Castle makes up for this by being one of the most beautiful animated films ever made, with the hand-drawn and minor computer animations meshing together wonderfully. Other anime and Studio Ghibli films are also quite nice-looking, true, but this one is so detailed in its presentation and has the most life and movement in it out of them all. The eponymous castle, in particular, looks like a machine that could only be imagined in the minds of geniuses like Lovecraft or the absurd mind of Terry Gilliam. It’s easily the best part of this film.

Another thing I noticed when I watched this movie recently was how strangely hilarious it is. Ghibli films are often known for their moments of slapstick and exaggerated humour, but Howl’s Moving Castle fully embraces its crazy absurdist heart and makes jokes every few minutes about both the wonders and the disadvantages of being old. Jean Simmons as the elder Sophie is so goddamn funny that the movie immediately becomes better every time her voice appears on the screen, and her physical comedy is also brilliantly used.

And even if I don’t think that the development of Howl is as good as it could have been, all of the other characters feel fully fleshed out and are well acted. Every single one has an interesting and deep character arc that makes this film so broadly appealing and rewatchable, as you come back each time to focus on the different characters and re-appreciate their stories as well. It of course helps that actors like Billy Crystal, Lauren Bacall and pre-Batman Christian Bale are there.

The film’s anti-war themes also hit harder than ever as you get older and rewatch the film, as it dawns on you the pointlessness of it all and how sadistic and sad the situation becomes. Alongside themes of the beauty of old age as well as the connection of building love, the film strikes a nice balance between sadness and euphoria that helps to resonate with all reviewers.

It’s a mild shame that the development isn’t quite up to snuff as the art, acting and themes of the rest of the film, but Howl’s Moving Castle is still a beautiful film. It melds Western and Japanese imagery together amazingly to create a great story that can be enjoyed by audiences and all cultures vaguely familiar with either the horrors of war or the beauty of age.

This film gets an A grade.

Not my favourite Ghibli film, but still absolutely excellent. But now in a bit of comedown from that high, here’s a film I think is super overrated.

Mexico – Roma

Roma was one of those films I wrote about in the early stage of my blog, when I was essentially an angry edgelord who was sadistic and called every flaw in a movie an FU. I’m going to put that review down below as I don’t have time to write another one, but despite my aggressiveness in many of my early reviews, I still agree with every single point I made here. I mean, calm down me, but correct.

Roma is one of the most disappointing films I’ve ever seen in my life. It was from one of my favourite directors (Alfonso Cuarón), the trailer looked excellent, the premise sounded like a haven of drama and intrigue, and I heard so many good things about it. Then I watched it. And shrivelled inside.

I can only really identify one thing about Roma that I like, and that’s Yalitza Aparicio, the film’s lead actress making her feature-length debut. She acts with a very natural grace instead of the normal pompous speeches and indulgences, and she felt like a real person I could meet on the street and have a nice conversation with. Everyone else felt one-note, but Aparicio was gold. Anyway, back to the fire and fury.

Yalitza Aparicio, sitting in a car, acting her heart out, to little avail.

I hate almost everything else about Roma. I hate how it’s shot, I hate how it’s directed, I hate how some scenes clearly demonstrate an understanding of proper filmmaking skill while others don’t, I hate its pacing, I hate the goddamn opening credits! I mean, how can you make a boring credits sequence in a prestige movie? Shoot for three unbroken minutes in almost complete silence at a floor with water flowing over it, that’s how.

The main thing that I have a problem within Roma is that it barely feels like anything is happening. Everything the film shoots is just some mundane stuff that’s boring to watch. Whether it be cleaning, or going to a cinema, or doing martial arts, or whatever, Roma somehow makes it boring due to a lack of any sort of tension, music or grit. Hell, this movie even makes a massive riot with hundreds of extras seem boring, because it’s shot like it’s behind a museum case and the people within are just dolls. There’s no urgency or meaning to anything in this movie.

And the cinematography, oh my god, how can this movie make me hate black-and-white cinematography? How?!

How?!?!

Simple. Shoot everything with the slowest camera movements and shoot as though just nothing is happening, like a security camera. This movie is unable to make me feel anything for what is happening because the film is shot in a way that suggests nothing is really happening, like a camera in a Paranormal Activity movie. And Alfonso Cuarón knows how to make you feel involved as a director. Just look at Children of Men, probably one of the greatest films ever made, or his excellent sci-fi film Gravity, and in those the camera shakes, it moves, it glides roughly as though you are actually walking through this war zone/orbit. But Cuarón forgot all that and shot this movie like a supermarket’s security camera.

The choice to release this movie on Netflix only is inexplicable. I can see in some scenes that Cuarón is trying to go for the majesty and epic scale that you can only really experience on a cinema screen, so why force me to only see these things while having to squint at my laptop/TV? And even worse, Netflix is awful at subtitles (they didn’t even put any subtitles for the aliens on District 9, even though it’s a fifth of the total dialogue), so some scenes play out with no understanding of what the hell is going on (I had to google one scene to find out that someone was singing Happy New Year in Norwegian, as though that would be my immediate conclusion while watching the film). If I saw this in cinemas, I would have been briefly awe-inspired enough by the night-time scenes, which actually use light brilliantly and is the only time this films cinematography works, to maybe like this movie. But what the hell?

And also, there are poop jokes in this movie.

Yep.

Not in a good Persepolis/The Lighthouse sh*t joke good, where it's supposed to be a sign of innocence or a sign of vulgarity in these characters. More of a DreamWorks phoned-in poop joke.

In short? F^ck this movie. Alfonso Cuaron, you’re so much better than this. Even if Green Book didn’t deserve Best Picture, then give it to BlacKkKlansman, or First Man, or Into the Spider-Verse, or anything else beyond this slog.

This film gets a huge D.

Oh dear, that was a lot. But thankfully, back to the good…

New Zealand – Hunt for the Wilderpeople

Amazingly, I haven’t written about this before on the blog, but my friend Hamish did (here’s his review). Despite being one of the most-quoted movies out there at least in Australia and New Zealand, as well as one of the most acclaimed movies from this continent in the past decade, I still haven’t reviewed or written anything about it personally – until NOW.

Coming from Oscar-winner Taika Waititi, Hunt for the Wilderpeople follows his filmmaking trend of blending absurd premises and situations with grounded themes and dialogue in order to produce the greatest comedic effect. And just like Thor: Ragnarok, Jojo Rabbit and What We Do In the Shadows, the laughs come in full and hard as Waititi sends out zinger after punchline every single time without fail.

Most of these laughs come courtesy of the film’s leading pair, Sam Neill and Julian Dennison as a foster parent and his recently acquired child who are forced to go on the run after a series of complications prevent them from living their life properly. Neither one understanding the others life, the film is mostly devoted to the two learning to tolerate and navigate each other’s worlds and build an understanding of one another, leading to one of the best relationships seen in a film in a while.

This shouldn’t just be seen as a throwaway comedy, though – Waititi genuinely brings a lot of filmmaking love to the story that elevate it beyond a typical buddy-comedy. In particular, the film’s excellent cinematography by Lachlan Milne (Minari, Stranger Things) gives the landscape a character of its own, both coldly indifferent and yet bright and happy much like the key conflict between the characters of the film. Comparing it to other movies shot in the countryside, it doesn’t just make everything look pretty and touristy like, say, Legends of the Fall or Top End Wedding. There’s life here – not just happiness, but life.

Additionally, for those confused by why an independent filmmaker like Waititi was later given huge action movie jobs like Thor: Ragnarok, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is the proof why he was. This movie is tightly edited and paced, never slowing down during the action and always having the perfect cuts to milk all the humour out of the moment. It’s really great stuff.

And beyond all that, Hunt for the Wilderpeople is an emotionally rich and rewarding story, transforming its characters brilliantly over the course of the film. Normally, they would be characterised as unlikeable and unrelatable, but there’s a fresh perspective that really applies to the entire film – the life behind them is revealed in both its flaws and the flourishing positives in it. Guys, this film is amazing.

Hunt for the Wilderpeople definitely receives an A+.

Wow, that was great to get out. Now to something a little more intense, you might say…

Russia – Hardcore Henry (Хардкор/Hardcore)

One of the most awesome concepts in the history of action cinema collides with the crazy violence and architecture of Russian culture and the bizarre humour of How-To-Basic to create Hardcore Henry. And it is Hardcore indeed – no censor. No frills. No stopping. No clothing.

As you may know, Hardcore Henry is told entirely from the first-person perspective of the eponymous Henry, a cybernetically-enhanced man on the run from a crazed superpowered villain in order to rescue his wife. Meanwhile, he’s aided by a man who seemingly cannot die (Sharlto Copley) and who keeps following him and edging him along in his crazy mission.

While indeed many video games (e.g. Doom 2016, Titanfall 2) play entirely from a first-person perspective, but very few movies do so. This is because those types of video games typically don’t lend themselves well to scenes of conversation or communicating emotion, and many games have to use third-person scenes to emphasise the storytelling. This is, of course, unnecessary if there’s no conversation or emotion to communicate – which Hardcore Henry doesn’t have.

Ilya Naishuller (director) with his cameraman/Henry.

Instead, what Hardcore Henry has is relentless action scenes of gradually escalating violence and blood which are quite enthralling to watch. The stunts look amazing from the first-person perspective as they’ve never been done that way before, and the action is original and so much better than would be expected of a debuting director like Ilya Naishuller.

It seems to be heavily influenced by the work of Timur Bekmambetov, who serves as the producer of the film and is well known for films like Wanted and Nightwatch which indulge in ludicrous ultraviolence. What unfortunately carries over from Bekmambetov’s filmography is the lack of character depth or story depth, which causes the film’s final few action scenes to grind to a bit of a bore.

The only character with any kind of dimensionality is Sharlto Copley’s character Jimmy, who’s the comedic heart of the film. He’s genuinely incredibly funny and his characters is arguably much more interesting than the main plot (no spoilers) due to the stupendous nature of his arc.

Meanwhile, there are characters in the film who arrive in one scene for no reason multiple times and then just die. The villain of the film, as well as Henry’s wife, appears in three scenes and his motivations are laughably bad. As for Henry, he has no personality or speech at all, which I actually appreciate, because it’s a common trope in video game design to allow the player to project their thoughts into the character by keeping the character silent. Still, there’s little depth to be found here, and not much investment can therefore be pulled from the film.

I should note that the film’s stupidity could actually be interpreted as a subtle commentary on the constant idiocy of all action movie heroes. Pulled off a production line, placed with a basic stereotypical motivation and used for the easy pleasure of the people who own the heroes and the films themselves.

Or it’s just really dumb. That’s the paradox of this movie – is it genius or stupid? Is it entertaining or boring? Are the characters empty on purpose or by accident? It’s hard to tell. But I sure like the film.

Hardcore Henry gets a B.

Now onto the two Souths of this document…

South Africa – District 9

After the meh Elysium, the terrible Chappie, and the cancelled Alien 5, everybody forgets just how good Neill Blomkamp’s first movie District 9 was. Taking a time-tested story on racism and re-developing it for a video game/sci-fi loving crowd, this movie does not get enough credit just for the genius of its premise alone. And it gets a whole lot better from there.

District 9 is a mockumentary-style examination of a large group of aliens who arrive on Earth as refugees, and are subsequently taken in by the South African government. Eventually, they are forcefully segregated into a slum referred to as District 9, where one human social worker finds himself involved in a cross-race war.

Already with the film’s mockumentary format, there’s a vein of authenticity and realism immediately solidified around District 9’s tone. It gives the film a better atmosphere and depth than most other sci-fi films as it’s less trying to draw attention to its style and coolness, but instead trying to present itself as having no style, as occurring in real time. I really like this approach, as it’s been used for some fantastic films in the past, with District 9 being one of them.

Part of that realism also comes from the tremendous visual effects work pulled of on a relatively small budget of $30 million (by comparison, Avatar, also nominated for Best Visual Effects at the Oscars that year, cost nearly 10 times as much). The design of the aliens and their compositing in the frame is flawless, otherworldly and yet suitably empathetic as well with plenty of movement and character to be seen in every single one.

I really can’t stress how good the alien and the spaceship CGI in this movie is. It’s a result of clever, economical filmmaking by Blomkamp, a former CGI artist who knows how to do great results with no money. As a result District 9 is one of the best looking sci-fi films of the last decade, realistic and gritty in style and yet never flashing itself at us distractingly.

Having just covered Sharlto Copley’s hilarity in Hardcore Henry, he returns (this time in his feature film debut) as the lead character Wikus, a social worker who’s forced into the lives of the alien “prawns” by forces beyond his imagination. Wikus may be bigoted, but he’s an understandable and relatable character in his introduction, and Copley does a really good job of portraying Wikus’s arc of acceptance over the course of the film, alongside his pain and anger.

As a whole, the cast (full of first-timers) performs quite well, and they all contribute to give a proper view of South Africa rarely seen in films – it isn’t a white paradise of people with funny accents, but people of all walks living and working together in friendship with the exception of the prawns. Maybe it gets a little racist at points (although the Nigerian actors playing the racist roles apparently don’t care), but it does present a diverse and more realistic view of South Africa than most filmmakers try to do.

Finally, I’ll address District 9’s social commentary, as it’s the bit which is actually the most interesting part of the film despite all of the lasers and explosions and such. The interactions between humans and aliens in this film are masterfully helmed, perfectly encapsulating the condescending and terrifying life of the aliens. In particular, the conversations between Wikus and the alien Christopher Johnson who he eventually works with, while simple and direct, perfectly reflect the evolving dynamic with the actor’s performances and the tone of dialogue. It’s not a monologue film, but a dialogue film, communicating subtly rather than with a Green Book-esque speech.

And I’ll just take a moment to praise any movie that takes a premise about human rights and equality and turns it into an alien laser-gun movie. That is what we need now – genuine issues communicated in an awesome and inventive way so that every aspect of filmmaking and audience can co-operate to understand the message. It’s marvellous.

District 9, of course, gets an A+.

Seriously, this is one of those films that I think everyone should watch, whether for the action or the commentary, it’s marvellous. Not so much the next country though…

South Korea – Inchon (인천)

Another film I covered in a previous piece (this time comparing South Korean and American cinema), Inchon may have the dubious honour of being the most boring film ever made. A film where it feels like nothing has happened or that there are no consequences whatsoever, there’s no end to bashing Inchon for failing to live up the crazy story of its production or the real-life events which catalysed it.

So what would you think if I told you that a movie financed by a South Korean cult, apparently influenced by the ghost of Douglas McArthur, hired the director of a James Bond film to make a Korean propaganda movie about the battle of Inchon starring Laurence Olivier in a Mr. Magoo ultra-makeup role, was coming to your theatres soon? You would want to grab some alcohol, get your friends and gather in the theatres to roar your asses off.

Instead, you sit there sullenly for 2 hours watching an episode of M.A.S.H. with all of the humorous bits cut out and the only bit of entertainment is speculating how much money was required to get Laurence Olivier and Toshio Mifune to waste their time with it (it was >$1 million for Olivier, unadjusted for inflation). This film is so low-energy and so dull that it gives Ballistics: Ecks vs Sever a new sheen of enjoyment.

Why is this movie dull? Well, because the lead character (Ben Garraza) is a zombie. He has no charisma, maintains one facial expression throughout the movie, and seemingly doesn’t care about the fact that he’s in a warzone. The surrounding cast fare no better, with Laurence Olivier’s dialogue muffled under his heavy makeup and one of the better characters just disappearing before anything interesting happens (this is because actor David Janssen died halfway through).

Additionally, the battle scenes are edited without energy and are so metronomic in their style. It’s like walking past endless clones of the same shop in a mile-long street. Every scene feels the same, brown and without intriguing sound design or special effects (there are visible wires in some scenes for fake airplanes). I almost fell asleep during one scene even though it was a massacre of a village filled with women and children – it’s that boring.

Another thing I want to discuss is just how ludicrously one-sided this film is. The movie was funded by the South Korean Unification Church, a cult well known for their mass wedding ceremonies in America. It shows the invading Communists as evil heartless bastards, and the South Koreans as nothing but victims saved by U.S. intervention. As a history student, this film feels woefully underdeveloped in my opinion.

So much of the film is dedicated to white saviour kindness and the beauty of South Korea and how great Douglas MacArthur is. There’s never any kind of depth or examination of the event like Clint Eastwood did with his Iwo Jima films, and so anyone wanting more than literally 2 hours of endless exposition about American strategy and North Korean violence will be disappointed.

I should also note the title of this movie, Inchon. As well as being an easy joke about how this movie “inches on” like a dead worm, the actual battle isn’t even in the movie. The whole story is 2 hours of setup and exposition, followed by a minor skirmish at a lighthouse, and then a speech by Olivier about the U.S.’s role in Korea. It’s like Fant4stic – 90% of the movie is exposition and dry dialogue followed by a quick skirmish and then it just ends. I think they just ran out of money or (much more hilariously) they just forgot to shoot it and only realised it when they premiered it and went “oh, shit.”

Inchon is also often called one of the worst films ever made, and in a sense, I agree. It’s a movie without any redeeming qualities of unintentional hilarity, made with the worst of intentions and without a single interesting thing in its story. Laughing at a bad movie is one thing, but actively wanting to switch a movie off is a clear sign of being one of the worst. I can’t recommend not seeing this film enough.

F off, Inchon, you get an F.

Wow, cathartic. Onto the 2nd last one, with…

Taiwan – The Assassin (刺客聶隱娘/Cìkè Niè Yǐnniáng)

Taiwan is a fascinating country, because it essentially started as an act of “fuck you” to Communists, and is still essentially that in many ways. The Taiwanese film industry has produced a vast array of films, including some very Western-inspired stories like A Sun (a gorgeous film). However, Taiwan’s biggest filmmaking voice, Hou-Hsiao Hsien, is quite different from that, and his unconventional, aggravating movie The Assassin proves that wholeheartedly.

So The Assassin doesn’t really have a simple straightforward narrative or dialogue. Rather, it tells a lot of its story through visuals, with the main plot (I think) being an assassin sent to kill her cousin, lord of a rogue province in Medieval China. Really, that’s all I can summate for this film’s plot, and if you look on the Wikipedia page, they can’t really do a whole lot more.

This movie is a martial arts (wuxia) film from the aforementioned Hsiao-Hsien, one of the more respected filmmakers in arthouse circles around the world. He and his movies are so arty that he even makes films in French (Le Voyage du Ballon Rouge) and wrote the introduction to this film in French, despite my version being an SBS subtitling. So if you’re really into arthouse stuff, this movie could be right up your alley…but I am not that.

Let’s first get my praises for this movie out of the way. It is a gorgeous looking movie, so breathtakingly blocked and full of colour that it looked like a painting at many points. The production, the sets, the costumes – it all looked fantastic. I also really liked the use of diegetic sound without a lot of music.

Another thing I can at least praise for the attempt is visual storytelling. This movie has so little dialogue (I’ll get to that in a tic) as it is trying to tell a story like a silent performance, as to allow the audience to soak in the emotion. I like this approach to the filmmaking in theory, and it works intermittently.

And the actors are fine in their roles. But that’s weirdly where the praise ends for me. I was expecting a lot more from this movie (maybe my fault), but I strangely found a lot I actively disliked.

Returning to that visual storytelling, that only works if anything actually happens in your movie. Except nothing really does happen (at least onscreen). The vast majority of scenes in this movie are either wide shots of people sitting in silence staring at each other with the same slightly scowling expression. I couldn’t tell what emotion I was supposed to be feeling, and arguably the most important script elements – background context, dialogue, character chemistry – are only referenced in passing dialogue like deleted scenes.

Characterization in this film is utterly non-existent. I already said everyone maintains the same facial expression, but no-one actually goes anywhere in this film in terms of character development. There are two main characters who are supposed to have been in love at one point, but it’s never really communicated that they have a relationship beyond passing dialogue. And some people in this movie just appear and disappear without any story context whatsoever, like Irrfan Kahn in The Amazing Spider-Man.

As for that dialogue, if you took all the scenes with any dialogue and put them end to end, you’d get 5 minutes of movie. And none of it is interesting, funny or dramatically impactful (in English at least – if I knew Mandarin, they were probably all savagely roasting each other). Watching the lifeless visual storytelling and the nothing dialogue, the only conclusion I can really draw from this film’s story was that Medieval China was the most boring culture on Earth.

And pacing-wise, this movie is messy as hell. It’s 105 minutes long, short for this kind of epic, but it feels like 3 hours. The nothingness that pervades this movie makes the entire film a glacial slog, but the short runtime could easily have been extended with scenes that provide character context and break up the nothing.

So, this is a wuxia film, and I have to talk fight scenes. They are acceptable, with one great fight in a forest in the end, but they never feel immersed in the story. They feel like deviations, as the movie gives no solid context for what is occurring, and the audience has no idea what is happening. That fight in the forest is between the lead and a character literally seen once in the whole movie, in a scene where we learned nothing about her identity.

Before I conclude, I know what some may think. Because this is a movie that’s so unconventional, it could be argued that the movie is not a story, but merely something to experience like a VR game. I would argue in return that the inclusion of a story with dramatic elements undermines that argument, and that the experience is let down by bad pacing and poor storytelling.

I have to mention one last thing before my grade. In the final scene of the movie, before the end credits started, this weird music started playing (there’s not that much music in the movie). I can only describe it as…dubstep shamisen?

I fully checked out after that. It was bad music, and completely incongruous to the tone of the rest of the movie. It’s exactly like Event Horizon, where it goes from brutal horror to sudden EDM credits music (wow, I’d watch Event Horizon over this, that’s something).

I’m going to give The Assassin a C.

Not worth it. There are many better wuxia films out there, like Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, Shadow, Hero, House of Flying Daggers, Ip Man, The Grandmaster etc. Maybe the experience of this movie could be great in a big cinema, but on my laptop, the cracks in the construction really showed.

Uganda – Who Killed Captain Alex?

In addition to spawning 2 failed attempts sequels and the most bizarre meme you could imagine (Ugandan Knuckles), Who Killed Captain Alex? is also one of the most infectiously enjoyable films ever made, regardless of genre. I don’t even want to conventionally review it, so I’ll just link to the whole film on YouTube and leave it at that.

Who Killed Captain Alex? was made by a group of Ugandan amateur filmmakers who had a $200-dollar budget and computer software that would look like alien technology even in 2010. As such, all of this movie is entirely reliant not on budget, but on the sheer passion of its cast and director. And while it may be objectively incompetent, it is so cheesy and so magnificently crazy that you will end the film with a huge grin on your face.

With improvised martial arts scenes, 2-D explosion effects and a narrator whose only purpose is to troll the audience with crazy commentary, this movie comes across as a surreal fever dream. It reminds me so much of the stupid films I made in Grade 6 with my classmates, shot on an iPad and powered by hopes and dreams, and as such I love and emphasise with the filmmakers at every step.

While admittedly low-budget, Who Killed Captain Alex is incredibly entertaining as the passion of the director comes through in every shot. He’s not mechanically moving from frame to frame shooting from a leaden script, but improvising and encouraging life and movement from his performers like they’re about to run out of film (which they probably were).

The lack of stateliness to the film’s design is quite unique, and is often unable to be replicated by Western filmmakers, who think that comedic improvisation and shaky cam are all you need to give a film “life”, per se. If someone could replicate the feel with a higher budget and with an equal amount of passion, we may get the best movie of all time.

I understand that all of the bad elements of the film – the terrible lighting, poor dubbing, random plot points, flat CGI, stupid acting, non-sequitur plotting and unfinished editing – may turn off people without much of a sense of humour or with a penchant for deep analysis. But really, that’s the magic of Who Killed Captain Alex – it’s so insane that all analysis and seriousness flies out the window as we are entranced by the action onscreen.

The film veers between A+ in spirit and F in objective quality so often that it creates a whiplash effect. I personally think both grades are entirely applicable, so take that as you will. And watch the film on YouTube – it is a godsend that this film is entirely free and that the whole world can see it.

Well, that was a lot. I’ve clearly seen films from a lot more countries than I originally imagined (16 is more than 5), and hopefully, you realise you have too once you’ve read this. I think that reflecting on it makes you realise that all people gear towards the same type of filmmaking rather than the radically different stuff you’d expect form newspapers praising arthouse foreign dramas instead of the popular regular joe shows that come from all countries across the globe.

Can you figure out the countries where your movies came from? If so, leave your answers in the comments below.