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One of my favorite films of all time. The gritty, yet slick world Oshii constructs is a testament to the cyberpunk genre, down to the smallest detail. I think constantly about invisibility cloaks and machine guns coming out of briefcases. Criminality and politics in Oshii's world intersect in a way few films, let alone science fiction ones, do. The philosophy of the film hits you like a truck - even though there's plenty of action the quieter moments where discussions of humanity, memory, embodiment and reality take place are the real "ghost" of the film.
Certainly more confusing than its predecessor, but still a slick cyberpunk thriller that's as thoughtful as it is brooding. GITS looked great in 1995 and it looks breathtaking in 2004 - 20 years later few animated films come close to GITS 2. I do chuckle a bit at the absurdity of our cop characters nonchalantly discussing complex philosophical topics in between murder investigations. It seems at points half the film's dialogue is just quotation from esoterica. The politics, crime and action are still juicy, but perhaps a little overripe.
I don't have much experience with Korean cinema but it's obvious PARASITE is a winner. The most compelling and incisive class commentary film to come out in decades, this film is a Shakespearean tragedy disguised as a crime comedy. We might admire the artfulness of the Kim family but the underlying darkness of the film -- and its shocking and violent climax, underscore just how powerful it really is.
No country does action better than Indonesia. The grimy setting and stomach-churning brutality of the relentless melee combat blows near every other movie on the water, while the indomitable endurance of star Iko Uwais cements him as an all-timer titan of action. Sure, the gun combat falters in comparison to the hand-to-hand combat but the real focus is on the violent artistry of fist, blade, and whatever random object happens to be lying around. The Raid and its sequel prove definitively there can be a kind of artistry to violence.
It's a shame this failed at the box office because it's a great action film and a great cyberpunk film - hard to come by. The mundanity of Dredd's hyperviolence -- the fact that the raid on Peach Trees is just another day in the life of a Judge, is a narrative wrapper that perfectly encapsulates its confined, tense setting. Locking down an apartment building and just trashing it never gets old. Slo-Mo is a genius technical tool as well, allowing the creators to go ham on the violence. Lena Headey shines as the antagonist in over her head, but no star shines brighter than Karl Urban, perfectly cast as Judge Dredd. Just give him a sequel already, or the TV show I keep hearing about.
The Raid 2 ramps up the insanity of the first film, mostly by just adding more people to kill. Like a video game, The Raid 2 has levels, minibosses, power weapons. It's two and half hours of punching, kicking, shooting, stabbing, sometimes in verges on exhausting just how bloody this film is, but the sheer beauty of the individual fight scenes more than make up for any numbness it might induce. I'm always up for more Raid films - just put Iko Uwais up against increasingly larger hordes of criminals -- and larger criminals, for that matter.
Miyazaki holds life as infinitely sacred and precious, presenting every loss of life, every potential loss of life, as a tragedy. That doesn’t stop him from putting to the screen some of the most beautiful war machines ever conceived of. Miyazaki’s planes are penned down to the rivet, his weapons detailed down to the rifling of a barrel and the particular shine of a spent shell casing. Part of the wonder of watching Nausicaä as a kid was the allure of these machines, especially the hulking gunships bristling with turrets and missile launchers. For all my infatuation with Nausicaä and her dreamy idealism, I was equally amazed by watching futuristic flying machines shoot each other to pieces and go down in flames. I can draw from memory the gunship Nausicaä flies throughout the film, have memorized the antiquated, yet elegant profile of her rifle and still laugh at the chunkiness of the brass Torumekian tanks. Miyazaki’s craft is in machines just as it’s in people, and the way he’s able to imbue such beauty and terror into cold metal is a hallmark of his mastery of animation. Only Miyazaki is able to grieve over technology, the sheer waste of craftsmanship when something as beautiful as a plane is used to drop bombs, the waste of life when it’s shot down, death rippling through the skies as the grief travels like a shockwave from those aboard to the ones they loved. The effort Miyazaki puts into his creations proves everything has life, and everything can die. We’d best remember that.
British crime has always had a bit of a distinct flair compared to American crime. It has an air of refinement, and sophistication. Class. Gangs of London dispels this air with a gunshot to the head. Weaving a complex web of crime family politics and tensions that fracture on generational and racial lines, Gangs of London is a pressure cooker of a show. Created by Gareth Evans of The Raid, Gangs of London plies in brutal violence as much as intrigue. One sequence - almost an entire episode dedicated to one continuous gunfight, is particularly impressive.
The original Godzilla remains a fascinating post-war study of nuclear destruction and national tragedy. Even in the age of Oppenheimer which seems to be the definitive meditation on the atomic bomb, Godzilla's enduring legacy is a testament to the creature's cultural resilience and adaptability to metaphor. Godzilla's been a symbol for the atomic bomb, yes, but also government bureaucracy and, most recently, guilt. Even a film as old as this manages to capture the horror of atomic destruction and the sheer loss of a life a superweapon can enable with the wave of a hand - or claw, or foot.
I watched this on a whim after seeing it described in an a Polygon article about Korean action cinema. The film is slick to a fault - the colors are hypersaturated, giving the characters and environment an oily sheen fitting its grimy setting and gruesome subject matter. The action sequences are excellent, and dancelike, but not as elegant as the title suggests. Rather, the swerving and swooping melees take on the quality of a hip-hop music video, getting the blood pumping as it spurts from gun, blade, and fist.
If "The Raid" was your introduction to Indonesian action cinema, you would be excused if you thought that there was no way to make a film crazier and more violent than that. The Night Comes For Us would prove you wrong. Balls to the wall crazy, wincingly-painful looking action sequences where dirty combatants fight dirtier, taking up any random sharp or rusty object and using it to tear flesh. The fistfights are so gruesome the gun action seems almost tame in comparison. Eccentric assassins, yelling dudes with cleavers, Iko Uwais and Joe Taslim - this movie's got it all, if you have the stomach for it.
A beautiful and oft-overlooked companion to The Matrix, celebrating its 25th anniversary today. Decades later, most of the shorts still hold up. As with any anthology, you'll have your outliers, among them the dubiously erotic Final Flight of the Osiris and Matriculated among them. The rest, however, tell thought-provoking and gorgeously-animated standalone stories in The Matrix universe. My favorites are "Beyond" and "Detective Story," the latter directed by the amazing Shinichiro Watanabe. Also props to "Second Renaissance" to doing the machine apocalypse more justice than the live-action films ever could.
I always say Guy Ritchie's films are best when his budget is smaller, not bigger. Put him with some stylish British blokes in London, add in some guns and stolen property and you've got yourself a film. The film bounces around with a manic energy, a comedy of errors and diamonds. It's great fun, and I hope Ritchie can replicate its success some day.
I think Neil Blomkamp might be a wizard. His expertise has always been in cinematography and SFX, and it shows in District 9. His alien future is a dump, but it's a supremely believable one. From the media circus surrounding the aliens to their treatment by humans and the mechanisms of military technology, District 9 feels real even if it's stretching the limits of what's possible to put on screen. Also, Sharlto Copley is a treasure.
3D CGI anime is usually ... not great. I was skeptical of the new Lupin III movie having grown up with Hayao Miyazaki's timeless Castle of Cagliostro. While this film doesn't reach the former's bombastic highs, it does provide a zany adventure worthy of Lupin, and the 3D CGI complements, rather than detracts from the film. It suits Lupin's rubbery movement and bouncy demeanor, as well as the ridiculous physical antics he and the gang get up to. I watched the film in English - a mistake, given the lip mismatch - but everything else was technically wonderful. Shout out to the insane plot point involving Lupin disguising himself as none other than an elderly Adolf Hitler - only he could pull off something as goofy as that.
The story of how I watched this movie is actually pretty funny - I was fresh off "Parasite" and remembered Bong Joon-Ho had made another movie about a train. That's "Snowpiercer," obviously, but the title eluded me at the time. Instead I watched "Train to Busan," which turned out to be one of the best zombie movies ever! Confined spaces, plenty of gore and limited access to firearms made the violence all the more intense, and the fact that our characters are just regular people trying to survive makes every death all the more gut-wrenching. Glad I found this one by accident!
I've seen this movie so many times, for fun and for a class. It's visually, thematically and emotionally rich, managing to make the cold future of technology so much warmer. It's about family, by blood and otherwise, and the triumph of the human spirit over all. I find that I always cry a little bit when I watch this movie, and it's grown on me in the 15 years since its original release.
This anime retelling of beauty and the beast is a cyber-musical epic. Mamoru Hosoda never fails to make me cry, and I don't cry very often when I watch movies. There's something about the earnestness of the way he treats technology as the fulcrum of our relationships with others that makes his films especially powerful. While I think this movie doesn't have the staying power of Summer Wars - I think Belle is just a tinge sappy - it's still a great film that will make you think and feel.