2003, Action
Director: Corey Yuen
Cast: Shu Qi, Vicki Zhao, Karen Mok

So Close is the movie that Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle should have been. It’s slick, it’s cool, it’s three girls kicking ***censored*** and – and this is the big difference – it’s not braying-donkey annoying.

Shu Qi (The Transporter) and Zhao Wei (Shaolin Soccer) are two sisters who have been working as an assassin-for-hire team ever since their parents were brutally murdered. Wei sits at home with a super-decked-out eye-in-the-sky satellite-linked computer spy system, feeding Qi info as she carries out the actual hits. The opening sequence is a stunner, with Qi carrying out a hit on a wealthy computer CEO and shooting her way through the enormous office building as a Carpenters-soundalike version of Burt Bacharach’s “Close to You” plays over the structure’s PA system. If this doesn’t suck you in to the film’s offbeat charms, nothing will.

Hot on their trail is cop Karen Mok (Black Mask), which results in a couple of great chase scenes. But to further complicate matters, Qi’s falling in love and Wei’s taking a liking to pulling triggers, something her big sister does not want her to do.

Directed by Hong Kong choreographer Cory Yuen (The Transporter), the high-tech flick takes some surprising turns and doesn’t follow the usual formula that your standard Hollywood action movie – especially one with a female-led cast – would. The three leads are all engaging – particularly the sister team of Qi and Wei – proving that sometimes, women can do these things better than the
men.

For those who usually gripe about American video releases of HK films, Columbia’s anamorphic widescreen print is crystal-clear, plus its language default is the original Mandarin track with Chinese subtitles. So all you lazy Americans will have to switch one or the other from the get-go if you care to follow the plot. The disc also sports trailers for this, the markedly inferior Charlie’s Angels franchise and other Eastern-born actioners like Returner, Black Mask 2, Double Vision and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.

Rod Lott writes about pop culture, annoying celebrities and life’s other absurdities every day at Hitch Daily and he also publishes the long-running Hitch:The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity which is actually made out of paper.

First there was The Fast and the Furious, then 2 Fast 2 Furious, and now there’s Torque, which is essentially the same tale but told with motorcycles. And it’s 2 goofy 2 be any good.

The Ring’s Martin Henderson stars as Ford, because Kurt Russell is 20 years too old to be doing so. He’s a renegade cyclist who ditched his girlfriend Shane (Monet Mazur, who’s too clean-scrubbed to convincingly play white trash and looks like Mary-Louise Parker with a dye job) for a romp in Thailand after stealing some motorcycles with crystal meth in the gas tanks from a sniveling bad guy named Henry James (not the famous author of The Turn of the Screw, but Matt Schulze from The Transporter). Like all the bad guys in real life, he sports a mullet. But now he’s back to set things straight with both Henry James and the feds.

Only it ain’t that easy because he’s also pursued by a rival biker gang known as The Reapers, led by Ice Cube (forever frowning and snarling his way through a terrible performance), who thinks Ford has murdered his brother, because that’s just what Henry James wants everyone to believe. And while that may resemble a plot, the script does nothing to forward it. Oh, the characters talk alright – it’s just everything they say is meaningless, like the words of Charlie Brown’s school teacher, unless it’s a priceless bit of bad dialogue. This movie is jam-packed with exchanges like “Nice bike.”
“Nice ***censored***.”

Nice try. With its saturated, slightly washed-out colors, I liked the way Torque looks. I just didn’t like how it sounds, feels, tastes or smells. Every frame is jacked-up and pimped out to resemble a Mountain Dew commercial. Every character lacks peripheral vision and a hearing range beyond two feet so that people and motorcycles can sneak up on them all the time, yet the dudes have no trouble communicating with one another during their loud rides.

But action is the hook for a flick like Torque – unfortunately, it’s ludicrous. Cycles zip and zap everywhere, including through a moving train filled with passengers, but the climactic chase has Ford and Henry James facing off through downtown L.A. at 200 mph and having somehow obtained expert reflexes. This scene flies by at such speed that you cannot tell what the hell is happening
– like much of the movie, it’s as close as a film can get to being animated without using pencils.

Rod Lott writes about pop culture, annoying celebrities and life’s other absurdities every day at Hitch Daily and he also publishes the long-running Hitch:The Journal of Pop Culture Absurdity which is actually made out of paper.

Drama, USA, 2003
Director: Robert Altman
Cast: Neve Campbell, James Franco
Score: ***

The Company is the real life Chicago Joffrey Ballet – world class artists who are as beautiful and vulnerable as they are difficult and the centre of Robert Altman’s raw new film.  The story revolves around Ry, (short for Ryan) played by Neve Campbell of the Scream films), a gifted performer who suffers a broken tendon mid-way through the film.  Campbell, who also co-produced the film, spent two years training with the Joffrey Company in order to perform the dances including “My Funny Valentine”, a sexy romantic pas de deux and the climatic over-the-top “Blue Snake” on display in the film.  Her boyfriend (James Franco) understands her agony and the hours she has to spend working to make ends meet and practicing her craft.  This is as far as plotting goes, for the film comprises isolated incidents within the broad framework of ballet.

Yes, everyone knows that it is tough as hell to survive in the world of ballet.  Dancers do the impossible.  Strenuous routines, unearthly hours, agonizing practices and unearthly sacrifices are part and parcel of the life of a ballet dancer.  In The Company, director Robert Altman (Gosford Park, M*A*S*H*) takes it upon himself to demonstrate what it is like to live in such a world. Altman claims that he was thrilled to be let into the unfamiliar world of dance.  It shows, as Altman has projected every member of the company as a martyr for the course.  In the film’s best scene, a dancer is dismissed from a sequence as not been good enough.  He sits down in tears (as if fired forever), only to be comforted by another before his agent threatens to sue the company for ill-treatment.  There is no one to be blamed.  The best must go on.  This is not the Altman audiences are familiar with – the one who satirized the army in M*A*S*H and destroyed the institution of marriage in A Wedding. The Company definitely has its moments of pleasure, but one only wishes Altman would have added some balance to this effort.

The music and choreography are the highlights of The Company – though one can argue that nothing can substitute for actually attending a live theatrical performance.  Yet, with the graceful movement of the camera and inspirational selected music from Chopin and Glazunov, even those unfamiliar with the arts are in for a rare treat.

USA, 2003
Director: Christopher B. Stokes
Cast:Marques Houston, Omarion
Score: **

You Got Served is a vehicle for hip-hop street dancing, in which very athletic and good-looking groups compete for money and respect.  Like most films of this nature, like the series of 1980 Breaking films, the plot is unbelievably infantile, the dialogue silly if not ridiculous and the drama outright pretentious.  Our two heroes Elgin (Marques Houston, IMX) and David (Omarion, B2K) must settle their differences before combining their efforts in beating out a white group to win the grand prize of $50,000 and an opportunity to dance in the Li’l Kim (she plays herself here) video.  You see, one is dating the other’s sister and…

That is as much there is to say about the plot except that Stokes’ film is extremely racist (against non-blacks).  But the climax, (the last 15 minutes) has everything going for it - an amazing soundtrack, spellbinding choreography and compelling performances.  But the viewer is forced to sit through 90 minutes of pure hell before getting to his part, and it just ain’t worth it!

GILBERT SEAH was born in Singapore and moved to Toronto in 1982. He is an engineer by profession, with a passion for the cinema. Since the age of 10, he has been to the movies almost daily. Having been brought up in the Asian, British and Canadian cultures, he is able to bring a distinct perspective to film. 

Canada, 2003
Director: Carl Bessai
Score: **

Emile follows director/cinematographer Carl Bessai’s third installment on the topic of identity.  His first two films, Johnny and Lola dealt with real life characters in a cinema-verite format made roughly with the Dogme rules in mind, allowing each film to demonstrate strong performances in an effective Canadian setting.

The central character this time is Emile (played by Brit. Sir Ian McKellen), returning from London to Canada, the land of his birth to receive an honorary degree from the University of Victoria.  He uses this excuse to stay with his niece Nadia (Deborah Kara Unger) and her 10-year old daughter Maria (Theo Crane).  The real secret however, is later revealed that he had hurt her deeply in the past by abandoning her when her father passed on.

Emile is hauntingly lit (by Bessai himself) in soft colors with events interchanging between past and present giving the film a lyrical/artsy look.  But director Bessai spends more time revealing the events that occurred rather than dwell on the issue of Emile’s redemption.  For example, it is through a third of the film that the viewer realizes that Emile is Nadia’s uncle.  The viewer is also led to believe that deliverance comes through the heart of Maria who eventually bonds with the older Emile.  The brash dialogue, that made Lola and Johnny more interesting and gave it a fresh and quirky feel, is noticeably missing in Emile”.  Emile looks more professionally made though, especially with McKellen in the title role.  This still does not prevent the film from sliding into predictability.