These are the kind of events that ol' FATHER GEEK loves, real live FILM HAPPENINGS, events you will remember all your life. This one sounds great and I wish I could have been there covering it in person for you AICN readers, but like you I at least get to experience it second hand because of our little old site on the world wide web. Enough of me though, and on to the city of the mermaid, COPENHAGEN...
I have been a long time reader of your site, but I have never participated, other than in the talkbacks. Now might be my chance to bring something interesting.......?
The annual Nightfilm-festival of Copenhagen, Denmark, was, as always, a pleasure. Showing a mixture of previews, cultmovies and classics there's something for everyone. This was the tenth of these festivals, and the movies I saw were: Alex de la Iglesias´ "Perdita Durango", Austin Powers, Shinya Tsukamotos´ "Bullet Ballet", and "Kichiku" by Kazuyoshi Kumakiri. I would of course have attended many more if I didn´t have a job that needed my attention, there was so much that looked interesting.....
I screwed up, and missed the screening of the german classic "Der Golem, -wie er in die welt kam" featuring live accompaniment by Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas. Such a bummer. It made it hard to breathe for quite awhile...
I am aware that some of these movies aren't all that new, and within the only-seen-by-20-peole category, but still, I'd like to spread the word a little on this event, and the movies.I dont figure anyone not having heard about Austin Powers, so I'll skip that one, OK?...;-)
PERDITA DURANGO:
PD is penned by the director Iglesias, David Lynch pen-pal Barry Gifford, Jorge Guerricaechevarria and David Trueba, and features the story behind a character from Lynch´s "Wild At Heart", originally played by Isabella Rosselini. In PD she is played by Rosie Perez.
Perdita and boyfriend travels with carnival-type voodoo/santeria show, stealing bodies for their performance, -and creating fresh ones for the fun of it. Underway they kidnap and kill several people, ending up stealing an illegal truckload of fetuses (intended for sale to a manufacturer of cosmethics), belonging to a gangster. Therefore they are chased by a very persistent cop,-who gets beaten up, run down, and shot at-, *and* the henchmen of the bad guy. This chase of course results in several shootouts.
I will not give away too much of this excellent film, but urge everybody to see it. "Perdita Durango" will kick your ass. Its got great action, nice gore, and a nice performance, and music by, the amazing Screamin´ Jay Hawkins! I sat through the whole movie alternating between belly-laughs, and Butthead-like giggling. Huh-huh.....
Be warned though....... This movie steals several scenes from movies like "Natural Born Killers" and "From Dusk Till Dawn", without trying to cover the fact at all. In addition it is not for the faint-hearted. It crosses the line every other second, showing no moral subtext at all, but since it does this with an overall tongue in cheek black humor unrivalled by anything I've seen lately, it shouldn't be to disturbing for anyone with a sound hold on reality.
It'll probably affect some people with its unashamed stealing of ideas from other movies, but it would be very unfair to say that this is not an original film, though. It succeeds in doing a lot of stuff that made me rethink what's possible in terms of making and extremely entertaining (action)movie. With an over-the-top comic book-style reminiscent of Ranx Xerox, it serves you good twists on known fare. Its been some time since I saw something this entertaining.
My *only* gripe about this movie, and it is minor, is that its shot in both spanish and english, alternatingly, which sometimes makes the dialogue hard to follow. The movie, as a whole, isn´t though. 4 of 5, maybe even 4 1/2...:-)
KICHIKU
This one was a *huge* disappointment. Not that I knew the director, but the synopsis in the program made it sound really interesting, and in general I love japanese cinema.
This is the story about the internal power struggles of a group of political activists; something which, especially when set in Japan, could have been really interesting, but isn´t, because nothing *happens*! No real plot, no exposition on what the group is about, no interesting characters or character-development...nada...zip!
The group wait for their leader to be released from prison, and gradually the seeds of distrust is planted, -one woman does her best to entice the various male members of the group to take over leadership-, and they end up killing each other in the most gruesome ways. The latter may sound great, but when the gore finally starts.... well... gushing, you are so bored out of your mind that you don´t care at all. Even though I´m as much a gorehound as the next guy, -and this was like something out of a Jörg Buttgereit movie (think rape by shotgun,-which *does* get fired off-, and so forth)-, it just doesn´t matter; the whole thing had deterioated to a stupid and uninteresting pile of dung at this point. Judging from the reactions of the other people in the small theater, noone liked it......I´ve wasted to much time on this one already: avoid it! 1 of 5, for the gore, basically..... ...instead, use your money on:
BULLET BALLET
While a little less frenetic and confusing than the "body-horror" of Tetsuo I+II, BB is still very much a Shinya Tsukamoto film: intense and weird. It seems that ST is heading in a direction where further emphasis is put upon the psychological depth of the characters. In this development, Tokyo Fist seemed to be the natural transition unto BB. It might disappoint some after seeing the Tetsuos, but basically its a more brainy film. The themes remain intact, though: obsession and fetichism is still very much in center. It also scores very high in coolnes, methinks!
As Goda, -played by ST himself-, returns home and finds his home swarmed by police, and his girlfriend dead, he refuses to believe it a suicide. The hunt for an explanation quickly deterioates into and obsession about guns, where Goda, who is working in the advertisement business, starts making his own videos of explosions, handguns and the like. He tries to build his own handgun, and as he fails, start hunting through the Tokyo (?) underground, trying to buy a gun.
(This hunt for a gun smacks of Kurosawas´ Stray Dog, but it could just be me, since I saw this one recently).
He encounters a streetgang, and becomes somewhat romantically interested in one of its members; a girl with a serious deathwish. Even though he and the girl are inexplicably linked by similar scars, they degrade him, but still allow him to hang around. When someone starts killing the members of the gang, he becomes their protector, and everything ends up in a Taxi Driver-like finale.
Shot in black and white, the movie carries the "trademarks" of ST, namely the handheld camera chase-scenes, the dark and seedy image of the big city, and the intense industrial music. Sort of noir meets cyberpunk meets a fetisch/transgressive film. I feel that ST still hasn´t dried out these themes, and even though he´s already made quite a number of films (which I haven´t seen, sadly), I still think his got something up his sleeve. If you like movies that doesn´t spell out everything for you, this is it. 3 1/2 of 5
Hope you got through without getting too annoyed by the namedropping, I´m not trying to be an asshole, but using it as a way of conveying the feel of the movies.
Regards,
GG
BTW:
Danish director Lars Von Trier is currently filming "Dancer in the dark" in Sweden. With a budget of 120 million danish kroner (appx 20 mil$), it is the most expensive scandinavian production so far. The movie stars Catherine Deneuve, Peter Stormare and icelandic singer Björk.
