USA 2004
Director: Stephen Sommers
Cast: Hugh Jackman, Kate Beckinsale
Score: *1/2

1887, Transylvania. Dr. Frankenstein (Samuel West) has just perfected his monster (Shuler Hensley).  Outside the castle, the villagers are restless.  With a battering ram, they break open the bolted door, chase the monster up the old windmill and burn him.  Done in handsome black and white photography with a combination of CGI and live action, the first 10 minutes of the first of 2004’s blockbusters, VAN HELSING look promising. 

Alas!  Everything goes downhill from here.  Written and directed by Stephen Sommers (THE MUMMY THE MUMMY RETURNS and DEEP RISING), VAN HELSING is the story of one Dr. Gabriel Van Helsing (Hugh Jackman) and his battles with Mr. Hyde (looking like a cross between Shrek and the Hunchback of Notre Dame), the wolfman, Dracula’s brides and as if that is not enough Dracula’s servant and a whole assortment of other old movie monsters.  As ridiculous as it sounds, Van Helsing (like James Bond) has been committed by some underground holy group to rid the world of evil.  And that means killing Dracula.  The love interest arrives in the form of the ravishing Anna (Kate Beckinsale), his love and fight mate.  Van Helsing comes complete with one side-kick, a friar weapon inventor and vampire know-it-all expert (David Wenham) from the holy order.  This friar can bed down women as he claims he is not a monk.  So, follow the adventures of the three musketeers – Van Helsing, Anna and Friar ***censored***.

VAN HELSING cannot be forgiven for the amount of money ($200 million) it costs to make while talented struggling filmmakers mortgage their homes to get their first films made.  Take Dracula’s masquerade ball that comes complete with elaborate costumes, hundreds of extras, trapeze artists, acrobats and antique furniture.  Or the relatively unexciting combination of CGI and live action runaway burning coach segment!

The fight sequences are well staged.  Again Sommers has integrated the different genres of action high adventure (THREE MUSKETEERS, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK), light horror and tongue-in-cheek comedy.  But if you have seen one Stephen Sommers film, you have seen them all.  And like a computer game, the implausible plot combining all the movie monsters is too far-fetched to be novel after a while.  Same-old, same-old.  Lots of action with no excitement and lots of monsters with no scares. 

It is time for Sommers to advance.  But upon careful consideration, Hollywood has itself never moved on.  The number of sequels and prequels that appear on cinema screens every summer says it all.  What opens soon?  SHREK2, SPIDERMAN 2 and THE BOURNE SUPREMACY to name a few!

Review by Gilbert Seah.

South Korea, 2003
Director: Kim Ki-Duk
Score: ****

Self-taught South Korean filmmaker Kim Ki-Duk is most likely than not, unheard of among North American audiences.  But for those who frequent the film festival circuit, this bad boy of Korean cinema of cruelty is well-known for shocking audiences causing many to faint, vomit or leave with scenes like fish hooks inserted into the vagina (THE ISLE), pencils poked into eyeballs (ADDRESS UNKNOWN) or animals slaughtered on screen (BAD GUY).  Kim’s films have been dismissed by some critics as artistic ***censored*** but Kim’s new feature SPRING, SUMMER et al. is a surprisingly assured and more matured work containing many scenes of astonishing beauty (natural or man-made) like the floating monastery on a secluded lake by the mountains or the painted artwork on the side of the canoe.

As the title goes, the seasons serve as a metaphor for 4 stages of a human being’s life – the repeated stage (spring) signaling a return to the full cycle.  According to director Kim, the elements of joy, anger, sorrow and pleasure are portrayed through the life of a monk surrounded only by nature.  The action is catalyzed by the words of the old monk’s who admonishes the young monk after discovering him having sex with a visiting girl, “With lust comes the intention to possess and then the intention of murder.”

The film opens with spring with the protagonist as a boy (Kim Jong-ho) under the guidance of his master, an older monk (Oh Young-soo).  Nothing much in terms of plot happens in this first segment, yet this is the most captivating of the five.  Director Kim introduces the beauty of the lake (actually a man-made one 200 years ago in a National park), overlooked by mountains and century old trees.  The monastery lived in by the two floats on the water, switching directions as if indicating the various directions life can take.  Joy, innocence and a little ignorance are the human traits portrayed by the boy as he ties stones to a snake, frog and fish hampering their movements.  When the older monk teaches him a lesson by doing the same to him (with a rock), the boy attempts to free his animal victims only to discover that the fish and snake have died as a result.  The boy learns an important lesson in a simple tale that is so effectively told.

The film moves on to summer.  It is the summer of years ahead when the boy is now 17.  With the arrival of a sick girl to be cured, the teen (now played by Seo Jae-kyung) succumbs to his sexual desires.  Like Pandora’s box that is opened, the young monk discovers all the evil that comes with love and desire.  And so Kim’s film progresses through the other stages.

Kim’s camera work is static.  There are no hand held camera or tracking shots.  The characters move in and out of the frames (the common technique used in many of the old Japanese and Korean films) as if nature acting as the camera engulfs or captures the human’s actions and emotions.

SPRING, SUMMER et al. is fascinating for the way Kim ties the little seen Korean culture into his storytelling.  Kim ends each segment with the slow opening of the free-standing doors at the edge of the lake expressing the passage of time as the seasons change.  As for the doors inside the monastery, they act like as rules.  Thus when the young monk ignores the free standing door and sneaks into the girl’s room by going through (the door) and not around it, Kim implies that the monk is presently ignoring his master’s wishes.  Kim himself acts in the winter segment, playing the role of the matured monk.  In one scene, he practices Sun Moo Do, a form of martial arts used for treating the body and mind.  Non-Koreans will miss the part about the song Jung-sun Arirang, a poetic and nostalgic rhythm heard over the soundtrack when the matured monk journeys to the top of the mountain.  The hardship he faces is matched by the well-known song’s theme.

Yet the pain and cruelty is still present, though not graphically as in Kim’s earlier films.  The young monk collapses in exhaustion when he is forced to carve out the sutra on the wooden deck overnight.  The simple act of burdening a snake, frog or fish with a stone is another form of animal cruelty.  At least, unlike Kim’s other films, the plot justifies the purpose of these acts.  Another characteristic of Kim’s film is the sparse dialogue.  His characters speak only if they have to.  A consequence, however, is that he has to rely on other techniques to enhance his story.

Kim’s film is very watchable despite its slow pace.  Having viewed it twice – the first time at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival – SPRING, SUMMER, FALL, WINTRE.. AND SPRING still appears fresh and unpredictable as Mother Nature’s different seasons.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

USA, 2003
Director: Morgan Spurlock
Score: ***

Can a person eat all his meals at McDonald’s for 30 days and survive?  That is the question writer/director Morgan Spurlock attempts to answer in his hilarious but scathing documentary comedy that puts down the biggest fast-food chain in the U.S.  Spurlock is his own guinea pig, adopting three simple rules: eating and drinking only what it is on the McDonald’s menu; always super-sizing when offered and eating every item on the menu at least once.

SUPER SIZE ME spans a lengthy but amusing prologue (actually the setup—starting with the glimpse of the American flag followed by a commentary stating that everything is bigger in the U.S. including the people) followed by a documentation of 30 days of the experiment.  Interspersed are Spurlock’s narrative and interviews with doctors, nutritionists, teachers, kids and lawmakers.  The accounts of how fast food chains started up with their different sized meals; who are to blame for the country’s obesity and the declining physical education in schools appear hastily put together.  Spurlock goes overboard at times with his enthusiasm, striving mostly for humor rather than authenticity. In one particularly outrageous segment, he records his own sickness after 22 minutes of consuming a super-sized meal. In another, his wife confesses how McDonald’s meals account for her husband’s lack of sexual drive. To take into consideration both sides, Spurlock interviews the industry’s lobbyists, one McDonald die-hard enthusiast and two black kids who claim that it is ok to eat fast-food as they get enough exercise. But these are more than overrun by shots of obese men and women in particularly every scene. 

Spurlock’s experiment culminates with his weighing in and medical testing at the end of the month.  Gaining a myriad of unhealthiness like high blood pressure, weight gain (25 pounds), headaches and addiction, the initially healthy Spurlock easily wins the public side against the fast-food chains.  Though one still questions Spurlock’s standards of journalistic ethics, one cannot complain that it is always a hell load of fun to go against the big guys knowing how ruthless they are as well.  It is worthy to note that Spurlock’s purpose of making this film is more likely than not to make money rather than fulfilling some noble course of educating the masses.  Whatever the reason, SUPER SIZE ME may well turn out to be the most entertaining documentary this year.

Review by Gilbert Seah.

As expected, Jackie Chan is hardly in JACKIE CHAN’S CRIME FORCE. But it doesn’t matter – the movie (originally known as GOLDEN QUEEN’S COMMANDO) succeeds in being entertaining in its own plotless, nonsensical, over-the-top manner without him.

It’s a crazian (that’s crazy + Asian) female version of THE DIRTY DOZEN, minus five protagonists, so let’s call it THE SKANKY SEVEN. The opening sequence introduces us to each of the man-hating, felonious females, including the eyepatch-wearing Black Fox, the tattooed Amazon, the fright-wigged Black Cat, the pickpocketing Quick Silver, the whore Sugar, the pyrotechnic Dynamite and some alcoholic chick whose name I didn’t catch because the titles are poorly framed and cut off.

Upon her arrival in prison during World War II, Black Fox (Brigitte Lin of CHUNGKING EXPRESS and POLICE STORY) double-crosses each of the girls so they’ll all end up in the hole together. There she hatches an escape plan upon which they all agree. Though the escape gets the movie rolling, it denies us the usual women-in-prison clichés to which American renters are so pruriently accustomed (though it does offer a ballet-like basketball game and Keystone Kops-esque food fight
instead).

Once they flee on horseback, Black Fox reveals they’ve been recruited to help her infiltrate an evil warlord’s chemical weapons plant. In a booby-trapped forest, they encounter the usual dangers – nets, spikes, sword-wielding skeletons – and are soon captured, but are allowed to go free when they beat their enemies at their own games – namely archery, blindfolded balloon shooting and noodle-eating. Following a brief interlude in haunted woods, the girls finally arrive at the cat-stroking warlord’s ENTER THE DRAGON-ish secret cave lair. Said warlord is portrayed for all of about two minutes by Chan. This is the best part, though, because the chicks shoot a lot of minions and do flips.

You get all this plus severed limbs, a rat pierced with a chopstick and a fat guy named, well, Fatty. Arguably it’s the silliest thing Chan’s ever done outside of FANTASY MISSION FORCE, yet still a better career move than THE MEDALLION.

You can find it (as did I) in a double-feature DVD set with JACKIE CHAN’S THE INVINCIBLE FIGHTER, which cuts up his really old movies in an effort to craft a documentary on his life.

Review by Rod Lott.

USA, 2004
Director: Nick Hamm
Score: **

When Paul (Greg Kinnear) and Jessie Duncan (Rebecca Romijn-Stamos) unexpectedly lose their 8-year old son, Adam (Cameron Bright) in a tragic accident, they are approached by a Dr. Richard Wells (Robert De Niro), offering them the opportunity to clone Adam (a Godsend?) and thus reunite the broken family.  Of course, moral, ethical and whatever issues are raised but all do go hunky-dory till Adam reaches his 8th birthday.  Adam imagines strange phenomena.  To add a twist, which most likely is the reason De Niro was attracted to the project, Dr. Wells has a dark secret that is yet to be revealed.

GODSEND has been advertised as a psychological thriller/drama that probes the outer-reaches of science while dealing with ethical issues.  But it turns out to be a feeble moral tale about two characters (the couple and Dr. Wells) in a typical American society squabbling over possession of the boy. The cardboard Paul and Jessie, do their token romantic stuff, argue over issues and predictably give in to the wishes of the good doctor. Dr. Wells is the typical Hollywood-type brilliant scientist, all good-at-heart till pushed to the limit. Nonetheless, their final confrontation is inevitable.

Mark Bomback’s screenplay treats cloning as a serious novel idea, though countless films have dealt with clones be it in comedic terms as in Woody Allen’s SLEEPER or as a sci-fi thriller (CLONUS).  Great lengths have been taken by director Nick Hamm to make it all believable – the huge facility the doctor works at is elaborately set up; the cloning process is explicitly explained – but the problem lies in the indecision of what kind of film GODSEND want to be.  Hamm (responsible for the recent barely acceptable British thriller THE HOLE), who has his roots in theatre, dabs into the horror genre (with a few genuinely eerie moments like when the father questions what would happen if the boy finds out the truth), family drama, moral issues but goes nowhere with any of them.  The film works best with the psychological problems faced by Adam – when he starts hallucinating or occupy twin characters.  But whatever interest that initially was generated is quickly lost as the script tackles too many concerns.  Even Niven Howie’s (LOCK, STOCK AND TWO SMOKING BARRELS) spirited editing fails to help.  The result is a pretentious forgettable film that probably sounded good when first put on paper.

Review by Gilbert Seah.