Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #47: Cartoon Noir (1999)

Feel like some short film? Animated short film perhaps? Something that isn't terribly funny? Consider Cartoon Noir.

Noir presents you with six short films plucked from the murky skulls of an array of animators, hailing from such cultural planetary zones as Portugal, Poland, the USA, The UK, and the Czech Republic. Animation styles vary from film to film, moving, for example, from chiaroscuro to stop-motion to detailed and colourful paintwork, each mode affecting tone and subject matter like wet black birds on a wire - unsettling and proportionate and balanced and with voltage. In regards to tone or atmosphere or whatever you’d like to call it, the films should give you a taste of the romantic, the morose, the bizarre, the eerie, the bleak, and even, finally, the life-affirming. Each tale contains a dark sensibility, whether it be a brooding Dostoevsky-inspired murder story or an endearing fable about a cat caught in the night and in love. Forgotten mannequins in a warehouse or (my personal favourite) a suicide witnessed by a horrified and concerned Mickey Mouse parody. Even a poem about a baked monkey. Everybody loves monkeys.

So: Highly recommended.

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More hardcore wrestling this Saturday at the Polish Legion (601 Wellington St N, Kitchener)! Be there or be square! Click on the poster for Deathproof's website and deets.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #46: Kiki's Delivery Service (1989)

Miyazaki always shows such remarkable ability to give you a bright and sunny world filled with colour and cool breezes, and it keeps me coming back to his films time and time again. He also clearly loves flying machines, as his films tend be full of them, and the sense of hugeness and warm open air he always achieves tickles my need for atmosphere pretty damn well. I was happy to find that Kiki delivers on both of those Miyazaki fronts.

Like Ponyo, this one is geared a little more towards children, and operates on a much lighter scale than some of his more intense works. While light, friendly, and warm it still presents you with the complexity that I think Ponyo didn't possess (and wasn't intended to, no doubt). This made Kiki a little more satisfying for me, since it speaks to an intelligence that moves into the inspirational.

So: Might just give you the recharge of spirit you may or may not need!

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #45 (I skipped 43!): Capitaine Alatriste (2006)

This one's a 17th century period piece chronicling the Spanish golden age through the eyes of a Spanish mercenary (Viggo Mortensen) known as Captain Alatriste. The 'Captain' title is merely an affectation, since the man holds no rank and is dirt poor. But he can swing a sword with the best of them.

In general, Alatriste feels a bit too much like TV and not enough like a film. It struck me as the Spanish answer to the Tudors, and even looks to me to be lit like television. It's apparently based on a series of novels, which explains why it feels much too crammed with plot points and characters that never seem to add up with the correct weight. Each scene pushes for too much drama between too many characters that have the pretense of being established, but haven't been given the time to be so. It ends up feeling mostly contrived, presenting the audience with contrived characters engaging in contrived love affairs. Not much has weight in Alatriste. Even the political intrigue of the Spanish court gets delivered by random characters just walking up to secondary characters and whispering what they know, and the information just doesn't feel earned.

Scenes bounce along fairly quickly without much time to invest in what you're seeing, and start to feel like they've been clipped just a bit too much. The acting is mostly not very good, and you might find that there's little facial expression in favour of a Spanish stoicism.

I was interested enough to watch most of the whole thing for a handful of reasons. Firstly, the period. The Spanish golden age is not often looked at outside of 'New World Discovery' movies that make vague mention of a powerful court. Here you actually see that powerful court on its home turf. Secondly, like in the Tudors, the costumes enthrall me. If I could get away with wearing a fancy doublet, I'd probably do it. I'll take a shower to wash the shame off after the review. Lastly, I like that Alatriste, as a soldier, is not an invincible pro. He can get hurt in his fights, and sometimes does. Pretty badly too.

So: If you like the Tudors and wish it had more swordplay, check Alatriste out. If not, there's plenty of other movies more worthy of your time.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #45: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

I realise that this is probably nonsense to many a movie-goer, but Robert Downey jr. consistently annoys the living tapeworms out of me. I just can't digest his line deliveries very well, and neither can the tapeworms. The flippant and breakneck banter I've come to link to Downey pretty much ruined the Iron Man flicks for me, as in those movies - more pronouncedly in the second - the banter reaches a level something like 'extreme biohazard'. This review is starting off with a real tilt towards the biological, and I'm not entirely sure why. Hm. Oh well.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang is infectious. The dialogue comes very close to annoying Downey syndrome, but manages to reel back just enough to strike me mostly as charming. It's written by Shane Black, who apparently wrote the first Lethal Weapon movie. And Last Action Hero. Yep. (Holy shit - that's the creeping familiarity that's been lurking in my unconscious since watching this movie. That's why Downey bothers me. I think he reminds me of Mel Gibson in Lethal Weapon, and I've never been keen on the Lethal Weapon series. Downey gets characters with the same flippant attitude, the same borderline madness. Here I'd like to apologise to Mr. Downey Jr. for comparing him to Mel Gib-racist-sexist-son.) The drama unfolds in an archetypal but satisfying way, and features a man who isn't what he thought he'd be when he grew up and a woman in the same boat. She's also 'the one that got away' and he hasn't quite given up. All the clever banter that moves between them gets interrupted now and again by ugly moments made all the more ugly for being couched in what is seemingly a comedy.

Anywho, I must talk about Tarantino factor now because Kiss Kiss has a definite post-Tarantino vibe to it. That might be good or bad depending on your feelings toward the big T, but the echoes of his post-modern style are of course here to stay in cinema, and he's oft emulated and never matched. Kiss Kiss manages to do better than most on that front, which is surprising given that it goes further where Tarantino tends to wisely stop: while T-man's movies are culturally referential and draw attention to cinema as being deliberate representations or constructions, his movies never quite become aware of themselves. With the exception, I think, of Kill Bill, they don't stop and say "Hey, I'm a movie." Kiss Kiss is aware of itself. Downey works as a cheeky narrator who openly acknowledges that you're watching a film. Characters namedrop their favourite movies from time to time, letting you know that it was written by someone who considers themselves pretty fairly steeped in movie-culture. While this can easily become trite, it manages here to add something wistful and idealistic. Something that speaks about our desires and where we place them.

Lastly, I always get a kick out of Val Kilmer, and his role as Gay Perry, a tough and unrelentingly acerbic counterpart to Downey is a treat to watch. I kind of want a movie about Gay Perry.

So: A meta, stylish, and funny bit of wish-fulfillment. Val Kilmer rules.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #44: Body Snatchers (1993)

Ugh. You can't hear it, but there's a terrifying wail coming out of that inhuman face.

I'm a fan of the classic communist-fearing Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and I was moved to tears and fits of hysterical shouting when I discovered that this 90s update is really very good as well.

Director Abel Ferrara isn't afraid to move his camera in interesting ways, and the movie really thrives for it. A held shot, for example, on a sleeping woman can suddenly turn very sinister with a seemingly simple and slow tilt of the camera and a slight colour change. In general, the special effects in the film are genuinely horrifying: people are invaded by disgusting, worming, creeping tendrils that hook into you like alien veins because that's what they fucking well are supposed to be. Family members crumble to dust, half-grown duplicates writhe and crack with blood, and pod people gestate in their disgusting pods before our eyes.

Body Snatchers feels relentless and tense, and its most horrifying aspect is the constant sense that the characters in the film are too late. Too late to survive, too late to save the day.

So: Really very creepy. Something moved in my bed that night and I had to sit up and stare for a few seconds.

Ryan Watches A Motion Picture #42: Shutter Island (2010)

It had been years since I'd seen a Scorsese film and I was really excited to learn - I had it from a good amount of people - that Shutter Island was worth the watch. I'd also had it from some that it was an unsatisfying experience due to the movie's twist, a twist so large it could be seen from a mile away. Or, in this case, thirty or forty minutes into the movie.

Well, on watching Shutter it's certainly true that the twist is obvious, but I didn't find the movie diminished for it. I don't think the movie ever tries overly hard to hide its plot secrets, and instead wants you to figure out what's going on early enough to follow the psychological movements of the protagonist with an extra insight. The crux of the film isn't the plot reveal, it's the haunting choice that's made during the movie's final minute. The plot itself is pretty much a MacGuffin.

So: Great amosphere, great visuals, and an ending I really liked.