The Youth of the Beast (1963)

Okay, awesome. The Youth of the Beast is a Yakuza movie from Seijun Suzuki who - according to imdb - has directed 50-some movies to date, and has one in the works right now. That's great, whatever, I haven't seen his other movies, but maybe I'll have to. This movie is also a Yakuza film, a genre I'm also not qualified to talk about as this was (maybe?) my first proper exposure to it. But, I am able to safely say that this movie is pretty rad. Here's why: 1) it's Japanese, 2) despite being Japanese it clocks in at only an hour and a half long, 3) the main character is pretty much of a badass (despite having hella chipmunk cheeks), and 4) it's from the 60's so everyone's dressed like Mad Men. No, seriously:



Anyway, listen: This movie is about an ex-cop who gets wind of an old partner's apparent suicide. He suspects foul play, so he does what any sensible person would: he beats the hell out of some Yakuza until they offer him a job. Once he's in, he can conduct his investigation. This movie's got shooting, double-double-crossing, suits, a car chase, comedy, everything. Ok!

7 out of 10.

A Serious Man (2009)

Brief Premise: the Coen Brothers made another Perfect Movie.


Oh, I'm sorry, did you want me to write a review? Maybe I will, after I've seen this a few more times. Until then, maybe you should just go watch it yourself because it's so good. The end. That's the end of this review.

Ok, no it isn't.

No, it is.

Micro Review: Violent Cop (1989)

Micro Review Disclaimer:

There will be times (frequently) when I’ll be unable to muster up the energy to take on the impossible task of using any significant amount of language to convey my ideas about something. This is one of those times. Please enjoy this micro review (people of the Twitter mindset can ignore the previous disclaimer as they will not notice anything out of the ordinary in what follows).

Violent Cop is the feature directorial debut of “Beat” Takeshi Kitano*, a man who does a ton of stuff, but of whose work I’ve only seen one other film. The film’s title also serves as a synopsis and as its own nano-review - imagine Dirty Harry only more violent, not as engaging, but more visually striking. Conclusion: It’s not a bad way to spend an hour and forty minutes, and we should all probably watch a few Takeshi Kitano movies.





*in this case the name in quotation marks is not an hilarious fake nickname, but a non-hilarious actual stage name.

Road Games (1981)

Brief Primer

Road Games is Rear Window except instead of taking place in an apartment it takes place on the highways of Australia, and instead of starring Jimmy Stewart it stars Stacy Keach. As is historically typical for Australia, someone is kidnapping and chopping up women across the outback. A trucker (Keach) becomes convinced that he's found the killer - the driver of a green van that's travelling along his trucking route. After picking up a hitchhiker (Jamie Lee Curtis) and explaining his theory, things go crazy - Rear Window-in-cars-instead-of-wheelchairs-style.

Before I say anything, I'd just like to remark on how difficult it was to write the brief primer without relying on the phrase "a dangerous game of cat-and-mouse," which I believe appears in every other written document concerning this movie. The entire time I was watching the movie all I could think was "damn, this is a dangerous game of cat and mouse." That said, Road Games is not remarkable - it's a lot like any number of thrillers from the late 70's/early 80's, but it has a number of things going for it, which I'll enumerate:

1. Stacy "Warden Henry Pope from Prison Break" Keach. This is the second Stacey Keach movie I watched this week (the first being Fat City), and I've decided I like him, officially. He spends a good portion of Road Games talking either to himself or his pet dingo (more on this later), and despite frequently being the only character on screen he's able to carry the (admittedly light) movie largely on his own.
2. Jamie "Lee" Curtis. She makes some pretty good jokes (especially at the end of the movie). She should have been introduced earlier though, so she could have had more screen time.
3. Australia. This movie takes place in Australia.
4. A pet dingo. Stacy Keach's character has one
5. Awesome closing shot. I won't ruin it for you, but it's completely the kind of thing one wants at the end of a movie like this.
6. It was mentioned frequently in this movie.
   

Breakdown

Road Games isn't winning any awards, neither on this site nor anywhere else in the universe, and while its ambitions are modest it succeeds at them entirely. It's not Rear Window, but it's like Rear Window, and if you like Rear Window you probably wouldn't dislike Road Games.

5 out of 10

Five Minutes of Heaven (2009)

Brief Primer

Alistair Little (Liam "Fallout 3" Neeson) is a murderer, he shot a guy 3 times when he was a teenager as a member of the UVF. Now he's a counselor who helps people who've done terrible things, or he talks to regular people about how much it sucks to kill a guy. Joe Griffen (James "Doesn't have an IMDB Photo" Nesbitt), the brother of the man Little killed years ago is still tortured by his brother's murder, being as he's felt responsible for it his whole life. As the movie begins we learn that these two men are going to meet one another on a televised special (Little is a minor celebrity, like Dr. Phil but less famous and more likeable despite being a murderer).

What a wacky scenario, right? Wrong. This movie is not wacky, this movie is serious. Directed by Oliver "I did the Oscar-nominated Downfall and followed it up with that Daniel Craig/Nicole Kidman movie disaster nobody saw but everybody hated" Hirschbiegel, Five Minutes of Heaven doesn't waste any time: After a brief narration from Neeson about how sucky the Troubles were, and a flashback to the murder the movie gets going - Nesbitt's character is on his way to meet his brother's killer, and damn if the man isn't agitated to all hell.

Trailers for the movie focused on Neeson, and while he's the Main Name in the movie, Nesbitt is the star, bringing a sweaty, anxious, bad-breathy pitifulness his character's every move. He switches from jittery, angry, terrified, and murderous like anyone with a halfway decent personality disorder might while still coming off as genuine. Neeson, on the other hand, plays it very stoic, which while appropriate given his character's role in the movie, is not particularly interesting. My biggest complaint is that the movie is so short (an hour and a half exactly) that we don't get to know either of these guys very well. We get glimpses of their home lives, and allusions to events that occurred in the decades since the murder, but I feel like knowing more about them and seeing more of them outside the context of their proposed reunion could have shoveled some more emotional weight onto the whole situation. Not to say that this movie wasn't good - it was - the climax is gripping and any moment that Nesbitt is onscreen is an engaging one, it just could have been better.

Breakdown

The Good: well paced, excellent performances, interesting set up, not subtitled (unlike the similarly Irish-y 50 Dead Men Walking).
The Bad: could have spent more time on character development, the murder Neeson committed was far less exciting than any one of the dozens he committed in Taken.

6 out of 10.

Reviews: some thoughts.

Listen: The worst part about reading movie reviews is also the worst thing about writing them - synopses. I don't mean to say that all reviews should assume the reader is already familiar with a movie's premise, but when I have to read any more than 4 sentences describing what happens in a movie then I have already closed the browser window 2 sentences ago. So, here's my promise: I will not waste anyone's (least of all not mine) precious fucking time going over the minutiae of a movie's happenings. Do you want to know what happens in Star Wars? Watch Star Wars, or read some asshole's breakdown on any one of millions (literally) of websites on the Internet. If a movie is good I'll tell you so, and then you can watch it and then you'll know what happens. If a movie is bad (more likely) you will know because I told you so, and you don't have to watch it anymore. If you catch me spending more than one lean paragraph exclusively telling you what a movie is about then either you've got a different idea of what a lean paragraph constitutes, or I've screwed up. No spoilers, either.

Welcome to the Media Center

Lately it seems like everyone and their friend from high school and that other person they know and that person's wife is blogging about movies and television and books and stuff. That's all well and good (usually), but what about what I think about stuff? For too long (forever) the world has been without a repository of my opinions about the media I've consumed. It's time to remedy this cosmic oversight. Hence, The Media Center.

Now you know.


P.S. another person might help me out here, more on that when it happens