USA, 2004
Score: ***
Director: Nicole Kassell

THE WOODSMAN is the character in the little red riding hood fairy tale that cuts open the wolf’s stomach to have granny emerge unharmed. The act reflects a difficult and terrifying deliverance – and a redemption no less tragic that Walter—a convicted sex offender (Kevin Bacon)—has to undergo to in order to etch back a decent living.

Director Nicole Kassell takes her time to establish Walter’s child molester character – moody, pensive, emotionless and sometimes confused, then has him take a transformation under the guidance of a lady friend, Vickie (Kyra Sedgeick). The film, based on the play by Steven Fechter (who co-wrote the screenplay with Kassell), is part love story and part redemption drama driven by incident rather than characters. Wisely enough, Vassell stresses the emotions and interaction of the characters than the incidents that occur. Bacon delivers a memorable performance as good as his troubled convict in MURDER IN THE FIRST. But Kassell and Fechter’s script is manipulative and slightly flawed in the way it often moves towards its rightful ending. For example the little girl Robin agrees to sit on Walter’s lap for no apparent reason except to have him reject the act in order to prove he is above his illness. 

As a first time director, Kassell plays it safe but the film has a one-dimensional feel. The most daring bit is the casting of a black woman as Walter’s prejudiced co-worker. Bacon probably had quite a bit to do in helping her get her film made. Rapper Mos Def has a small role as a sympathetic but determined detective. Still, despite its flaws, THE WOODSMAN is an acceptable well performed human drama.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

USA/Germ/UK 2004
Score: **
Director: Kevin Spacey

The audience was informed during the promotional screening of BEYOND THE SEA that the film version of the life and times of singer/actor Bobby Darin had for years been the dream project of Kevin Spacey. He had grown up hearing all the Bobby Darin songs (played by his mother) and it comes as no surprise that Spacey performs all the musical numbers on his own.

BEYOND THE SEA begins with Spacey’s confident rendering of MACK THE KNIFE. The film takes a step back, intercutting between the narrative of Darin’s life story and discussion between him (Spacey) and younger self.  This device works more to the film’s disadvantage, reminding the viewer that he/she is watching a film about Bobby Darin than immersing him/her in the story. 

Kevin Spacey has been nominated for a golden globe for his performance as Darin. But it is clear from the first scene that this 46-year old man is playing what is essentially a Toby Maguire role. He looks the oldest in the majority of the scenes. Needless to say, the chemistry between him and much younger Kate Bosworth (as wife Sandra Dee) just isn’t there. Whether prancing around, doing the love scenes or decked in red colorful gear, Spacey is past his years for the role. This point hits the peak in the scene when Spacey plays Darin at his oldest and most worn down at 36. Or when he has a press reporter (at the film’s start) complain to him— daring at least of Spacey to include this scene in the film—after watching Bobby Darin rehearsing as his younger self that he is too old to play the part. In one scene, Darin mentions about reality only being in theatres and fantasy being the essence of movies. Obviously, this point must have gone to Spacey’s head. However, to Spacey’s credit, he performs all the musical numbers with the energy of a 20-year old.

The disclaimer that the filmmakers have taken certain artistic liberties with Darin’s life also makes the viewer wonder what is true and what is not. Did Darin really take his name from the half lit neon restaurant “Mandarin” sign? Worse of all – did he die during his comeback Vegas performance or was this another ‘liberty’ taken to heighten the film’s dramatic climax?

BEYOND THE SEA contains a few scenes of genuine humor. The best is the “Oh my God- I cannot believe I did not win the Oscar” scene with Spacey imitating and scoffing Melvyn Douglas’ HUD performance. Or Greta Scacchi’s (Sandra Dee’s mother) line to her daughter: “Why not go for Rock Hudson instead?”

As far as the performances go, Brenda Blethyn and Scacchi do admirable jobs as the mothers but John Goodman and Bob Hoskins can only do so much with their under-written roles.

If a word could be used to sum up BEYOND THE SEA – the word would be superficiality. In the currently playing HOTEL RWANDA, Joaquin Phoenix remarked when thanked for shooting a video on genocide that might prompt the west to intervene: “If people see this footage, they will say: ‘Oh my God, that is horrible.’ Then they will go on with their dinner.” In BEYOND THE SEA, Darin riles up an entire Vegas night-club audience to sing along with him a Vietnam freedom song. And that is supposed to help stop the war and pacify Darin’s demons. Bobby Darrin was a charismatic performer. He was a troubled, self-centered man that was hell to work or live with.  That is all that can be said about any insights provided by this dismal fantasy biopic. Spacey’s attempt to instill any artistic imagery (e.g. Darin as boy and adult conversing together in certain scenes) only re-enforces the film’s superficiality. BEYOND THE SEA is a total embarrassment for Kevin Spacey!

Review by Gilbert Seah

For decade after decade, television programming fit neatly into a kind of pre-fabricated, shrink-wrapped box. Whether it was the hour-long drama, the thirty-minute sitcom, or the two-hour “made for TV” movie, the geniuses working in network programming seemed to have only a handful of genres deemed fit for the great-unwashed masses.

Enter Joel Hodgson and his MST3K revolutionaries. When the show began in 1988 (on a local Minneapolis TV station), the notion of watching a movie while listening to a running commentary in real time was bold, to say the least. For some, it was (and remains) unsettling, but modern audiences, already accustomed to that other revolution, the DVD commentary track, should find themselves in a nice, safe place.

Volume 6 of Rhino’s ongoing Mystery Science Theater 3000 Collection delivers 4 discs of top notch material from Hodgson and the gang’s early years on Comedy Central. The first disc starts with UNDERSEA KINGDOM, a genuine Saturday afternoon serial (the kind we’re told ad infinitum directly led Spielberg and Lucas to the creation of Raiders of the Lost Ark) starring 30’s action hero Crash Corrigan. Corrigan, whose special skills seem to revolve around acrobatic rescues of small children, gets caught up in an evil underwater lair filled with all sorts of art deco era gadgets. Joel takes particular interest in one of the props: “G.E.—we bring good things… to DEATH.”

Disc 1’s “full length” feature (if you consider 62 minutes “full length"), Roger Corman’s Attack of the Giant Leeches, starts with an understated, lower-case only title sequence ("looks like an ee cummings book cover") that now seems horribly dated. The story, set in the Florida swamplands, revolves around backwoods folk struggling to deal with a visitation of, yes, Giant Leeches. Joel and his robot friends, Crow and Tom Servo, have fun mocking the town nymphet and her bloated cuckold of a husband, and the murkily filmed underwater sequences are laughably unsuspenseful. Watch for the frequent mentions of coffee drinking.

Disc 2 brings us Gunslinger, another Roger Corman flick, set in the rip-roarin’ Old West. The quality of this movie is a bit high for a MST3K episode, but don’t fret—the pacing is lugubrious, and the outdoor sets look as though a light breeze would knock them over. Of all the material in Volume 6, Gunslinger was the least enjoyable. It’s just a drag, plainly and simply.

The short films on Disc 3, MR. B’S LOST SHORTS, are standouts. “Design For Dreaming” is a surrealistic nightmare from the good folks at General Motors. A lot of money was clearly spent on this pastiche of modern dance, flying sequences, and kitchens of the future, but it’s unrelenting message of a modern, consumerist utopia is enough to make even Donald Trump kvetch. The hallucination continues with “Mr. B Natural,” the story of a budding young musician and his imaginary, asexual friend, Mr. B. Prancing and dancing and an awkward encounter in a young boy’s bedroom make this one of the most sickenly saccharine short films ever made. “Are You Ready For Marriage” is another “educational” film from the fifties created with the sole intention of preventing sex-starved teenyboppers from acting upon those raging hormones. “Hired!” follows the difficult life of an ambitious car salesman who, alas, doesn’t own a car. His solution? Go door to door and ask people if they need a vehicle! Does it work? Not very well. “Johnny At The Fair” is a routine travelogue style short telling the story of an adventurous tike who gets separated from his parents while visiting some long forgotten Canadian World Exposition. Finally, “X Marks The Spot” follows a reckless driver’s grim descent into a sort of afterlife People’s Court, where he learns the lessons of safe driving sadly much too late.

Disc 4’s TEENAGERS FROM OUTERSPACE was one of my earliest introductions to the show and it remains a true MST3K classic. This sci-fi oddity concerns Derek, a Harry Connick, Jr. look-alike who visits 1950’s Hollywood with his space pals. They’re looking for a place to harvest their food source (their food source looks suspiciously like Maine lobsters) but Derek isn’t completely on board with the scheme. He instead makes friends with a horny high school girl and her kindly, buffonishly naive grandfather. TEENAGERS’ deliberate pace and laughable script serve as a perfect straight man for Joel and the robots. Most of their barbs fill the empty spaces in the movies’ soporific dialogue perfectly and make this an early example of MST3K writing at its finest.

Other than the features and shorts, there are no extra features to speak of. Still, at over 6 hours, the dusty old films sparkle back to life and leave MST3K fans (and fans of great comedy writing) with plenty to laugh at. The revolution marches on!

Review by David Grizzard

Buy it on Amazon.com!

Japan, 2004
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Score: ***1/2
Buy it on Amazon.com

A bit of background is required to bring the viewer up to par with what is going on in GHOST IN THE SHELL 2: INNOCENCE.  Cyborgs are mechanized bodies inhabited by human spirits, dolls are robots with absolutely no human traits and humans are humans eventually forgetting who they really are.  In the first GHOST made in 1995, cybercop Kusanagi was the principal character but in INNOCENCE, she is reduced to a ghost in a shell.  Her side-kick the ever-so-boring Batou is elevated to prime anti-terrorist agent.  The gist of the plot is simple enough. The newly invented sex companions called gynoids are slaughtering their owners.  Batou and his new partner Togusa investigate and their journey concerns writer/director Mamoru Oshii’s outlook on life in the cyberworld.  Director Oshii brings the viewer up to date quickly in the film through voiceover.

Credit goes to director and writer Mamoru Oshii for knowing the updated technical computerized world and translating it into the plot.  For example, the gynoid malfunction is attributed first to the presence of human production errors and then to viruses.  But Oshii is neither interested in violence nor action packed sequences typical of a manga film.  Instead, he teases the viewer with philosophy (Descartes and Confucius sayings), logic and views of existence (Darwinism).  Though this computer animated sci-fi anime conjures up a spectacular display of colors (example: the interiors of a mansion glitters in gold then changes to a simmering turquoise green blending then into a dazzling array of tinted flushes), the film suffers from poor pacing resulting in a slow mid-section.  However, the soundtrack comprising digitally altered Cantonese dialogue, a mix of Latino and Japanese tunes is awesome.

If the viewer was to consider GHOST 2 to be a different kind of anime noir, with poetic musings (no matter how far a jackass travels, it will never return a horse) and some incredible computer effects (the rotating body machinery, for example), he or she will be in for a treat!

Bonus Features:
Bonus features include the lengthy Japanese trailer done to the song FOLLOW ME which lasts close to 10 minutes. The trailer is done in operatic mode without key plot points revealed.

For those especially interested in anime, the commentary by director Oshii and animation director Toshihiko Nishikubo is particularly enlightening. They speak for example of dolls being shot.  Being non-humans but with spirit, they are depicted to die without change in their facial expressions.When humans move one shoulder up, the other automatically goes down. But in this film, the norm is not practiced, in order to create a more realistic robotic atmosphere. The voice talents also put in their two cents worth, but they mainly discuss the characters portrayed.

Previews:

A bit of advertising is forgivable.  Other anime trailers include MILLENIUM ACTRESS and the first GHOST IN THE SHELL film.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

Spain, 2004
Director: Pedro Almodovar
Score: ***** Year’s 10 Best

A story told in flashback that eventually evolves into a film within a film. A trickle of blood on a buggered boy’s forehead that splits the screen into two halves revealing the two men that ultimately affect the boy later in life. A fade out of two lovers superimposed on the same two—sixteen years later—when they meet once again. And just when you thought the film’s plot was getting a bit complex, director Almodovar offers a breather with a 10-minute teaser of Mexican hottie, sex-on-legs Gael Garcia Bernal in skimpy underwear frolicking in a friend’s swimming pool. These are just a few of the pleasures that await viewers of Pedro Almodovar’s latest tribute to film noir, a film that involves a love triangle between two 10-year old boys and their catholic school priest.

In Almodovar’s LAW OF DESIRE, the transsexual played by Carmen Maura confesses to a priest that she had been a pupil at the school where he had fallen in love with her as a boy.  A similar scene exists in BAD EDUCATION when Angel (Gael Garcia Bernal in drag) confronts Father Manolo (Daniel Giminez-Cacho) to blackmail him (for deflowering him). This is a key scene that re-occurs several times throughout the Almodovar tale. Lies and femme fatales make up good film noir and Almodovar’s is brimming with lies and a most deadly femme fatale in the form of Garcia in drag, doing whatever she can to achieve what she wants in life.

The film opens with acclaimed young film director, Enrique Goded (Fele Martinez) looking through the tabloids for a new story.  In appears a bearded stranger, who calls himself Angel, with a script. As the scene ends, Almodovar excites the viewers’ anticipation that these two were first loves. The film then flashbacks two years back to the story in the script.  Almodovar brilliantly weaves his tale non-chronologically while comparing the times, political influences and national attitudes of the changes that follow. 

The film’s best sequence occurs during a school outing in a country with 10-year old boys bathing in the river done to a Spanish rendering of MOON RIVER (sung by the young Ignacio played by Ignacio Perez). It is a most beautiful and innocent sequence filmed in slow motion. The camera retreats and it is revealed that the ones enjoying the scene are the movie audience and not the pedophile Father Monolo who has just abused the 10-year old Ignacio behind the bushes. 

Though two of the film’s three protagonists perform really bad acts, Almodovar never judges his characters. He even manages to invoke sympathy for the pedophile priest. When admonished that a man cannot love a boy of 10, he remarks in all somberness and sincerity that he did love him. The other evil one, Angel, who would sleep with male or female and not hesitate killing anyone to get what he wants, has his mother tell Goded: “Do not judge my son”. 

Yet, Almodovar has not lost his touch of humor or colour. Most of the laughs are provided by scene stealing Javier Camara (the protagonist of TALK TO HER), as Angel’s drag queen accomplice, Paquito. Almodovar hits the funny bone when Paquito asks if she could finish sucking off their victim after noticing him passed out with a hard-on. The deck chairs by film director Goded’s swimming pool are characteristically bight red and the costumes donned by both Bernal and Francisco Boira in drag are designed by haute couture designer, Jean-Paul Gauthier.

But the greatest beauty of BAD EDUCATION is its depiction of the purity of first love between the two 10-year old boys. From the moment they first meet during a soccer match to their jerking off of each other in a movie theatre (influence of the cinema?), the silent scenes invoke the best memories of our first loves (whether straight or gay). And this is what Almodovar’s film is all about. As the story unfolds and the layers pealed away, it is the celebration of the new times and freedom that Almodovar wishes to display. As Father Manolo leaves the church to join a publishing firm re-inventing himself as Mr. Berenguer (Lluis Homar) in the later years, the boy Ignacio grows up to become a drug addicted drag queen in the changing modern times.

Almodovar is at his peak with three hits in a row – this one, ALL ABOUT MY MOTHER, which won the Oscar for best foreign film and TALK TO HER. BAD EDUCATION is loosely based on Almodovar’s early life. And it is clearly his film from start to finish. When film director Goded (personifying Almdovar himself) at the film’s start is told that a described scene sounds incredible, his remark is: but it makes a wonderful image. The film ends with a voiceover informing viewers what eventually becomes of each character in the future years.  For Goded, it is said that he continues his passion in making movies. The word passion from a newspaper cut-out finally covers the entire screen. LA MALA EDUCACION is clearly Pedro Almodovar’s personal masterpiece. 

Review by Gilbert Seah.