Final Destination 5 (2011)
dir: Steven Quale
One Christmas not long after I graduated from high school, my always well-meaning but occasionally somewhat obtuse mother bought me the first Final Destination (2000) on DVD because, as she put it, it looked like something I would like. In her defense, I did spend an embarrassing amount of what everyone older than 40 and at least a little bit unhappy with what their lives had become kept telling me were the best years of my life watching horror movies alone and wearing at least one Nine Inch Nails shirt. But come on, mom. Final Destination? As a Lucio Fulci enthusiast and an admittedly snobbish nerd with a loser resumé that could make Stephen Lea Sheppard Hulk-green with envy, I ignorantly swore off ever watching the thing, and went on with my advanced studies in Final Fantasy, obscure 1970’s giallo films, and never getting laid.
Fast forward about a year to an evening of perfect drunkenness with my 5 or 6 equally inebriated (and lame) roommates finally sitting down to heckle our way through what we assumed would be a total cheeseball trainwreck of awful, vapid modern horror. And it kind of was, but not without its surprising charms and the alcohol-enhanced joy of never quite knowing just how RIDICULOUS the death scenes were going to become. All in all, an enjoyable diversion that did little to prepare any of us for the orgiastic bloodletting of the first sequel, which successfully trumped its predecessor’s casually misanthropic inventiveness with an opening scene that will probably remain the Holy Grail of cinematic vehicular manslaughter for as long as stories are told through a visual medium. Predictably, the concept wore thin over the next two sequels, each weaker than the last, and notably more concerned with the cruel punishment of uninteresting characters than the impressive dynamics of Rube Goldberg-inspired machinations of doom. So of course, my expectations for this newest—and, in a move that would be best for the series, hopefully last—installment were pretty low. Fortunately, the tasteful inclusion of admittedly gimmicky 3D and a script that considers just enough small details that one would never find in the previous two entries provides a modicum of improvement, which pays off in the overall enjoyment of the proceedings. Most notably, we are presented with characters worth giving at least a little bit of a damn about, a few setpieces that can compete with the finest from the first two films (especially the gymnasium scene… yeesh), and some genuinely interesting visual ideas. It probably won’t be on your mind a week after you see it, but I definitely drove home from the theatre very carefully.
More movies after the jump…
Final Destination 5 (2011)
dir: Steven Quale
One Christmas not long after I graduated from high school, my always well-meaning but occasionally somewhat obtuse mother bought me the first Final Destination (2000) on DVD because, as she put it, it looked like something I would like. In her defense, I did spend an embarrassing amount of what everyone older than 40 and at least a little bit unhappy with what their lives had become kept telling me were the best years of my life watching horror movies alone and wearing at least one Nine Inch Nails shirt. But come on, mom. Final Destination? As a Lucio Fulci enthusiast and an admittedly snobbish nerd with a loser resumé that could make Stephen Lea Sheppard Hulk-green with envy, I ignorantly swore off ever watching the thing, and went on with my advanced studies in Final Fantasy, obscure 1970’s giallo films, and never getting laid.
Fast forward about a year to an evening of perfect drunkenness with my 5 or 6 equally inebriated (and lame) roommates finally sitting down to heckle our way through what we assumed would be a total cheeseball trainwreck of awful, vapid modern horror. And it kind of was, but not without its surprising charms and the alcohol-enhanced joy of never quite knowing just how RIDICULOUS the death scenes were going to become. All in all, an enjoyable diversion that did little to prepare any of us for the orgiastic bloodletting of the first sequel, which successfully trumped its predecessor’s casually misanthropic inventiveness with an opening scene that will probably remain the Holy Grail of cinematic vehicular manslaughter for as long as stories are told through a visual medium. Predictably, the concept wore thin over the next two sequels, each weaker than the last, and notably more concerned with the cruel punishment of uninteresting characters than the impressive dynamics of Rube Goldberg-inspired machinations of doom. So of course, my expectations for this newest—and, in a move that would be best for the series, hopefully last—installment were pretty low. Fortunately, the tasteful inclusion of admittedly gimmicky 3D and a script that considers just enough small details that one would never find in the previous two entries provides a modicum of improvement, which pays off in the overall enjoyment of the proceedings. Most notably, we are presented with characters worth giving at least a little bit of a damn about, a few setpieces that can compete with the finest from the first two films (especially the gymnasium scene… yeesh), and some genuinely interesting visual ideas. It probably won’t be on your mind a week after you see it, but I definitely drove home from the theatre very carefully.
More movies after the jump…
13 Assassins (2010)
dir: Takashi Miike
For about 2 years between 2000 and 2002, Takashi Miike was my favorite director. The uncannily prolific Japanese auteur was an indisputable force of gleefully insane cinematic creativity, churning out an anarchistic and diverse array of films ranging from the madness-injected cops’n’criminals exercise Dead or Alive and the darkly comic and unforgettably manipulative feminist freakout Audition (both from 1999) to the pornographically violent yakuza fantasy Ichi the Killer and the unexpectedly heart-warming and family values-promoting dysfunctional drama Visitor Q (both from 2001). As would be expected from such an idiosyncratic workhorse, there were at least as many hits as misses over this period of rampant film production; sometimes Miike’s finest and poorest tendencies would appear within the same uneven film, but the presence of a truly unique personality was always undeniable. Later years would see a definite maturation in the man’s work, most notably with 2002’s Graveyard of Honor, a remake of the Kinji Fukasaku gangster classic updated with Miike’s own brand of ironic nihilsm; 2003’s Gozu, a Lynchian foray into surrealist allegory; and 2004’s Izo, a film that I still can’t settle on as either a Jodorowsky-indebted philosophical meditation on man’s violent nature, or an excessively tedious exercise in such matter.
13 Assassins may just be the pinnacle of my man’s career to this point, personal unabashed worship of Audition nothwithstanding. This is a finely crafted beast of a samurai epic, owing equal amounts to Sergio Leone and Akira Kurosawa. The film is nearly devoid of the oddball touches that permeate so many of Miike’s others, save for a few random images such as flaming bulls, a young boy urinating (included for no obvious reason), a possibly supernatural loner introduced near the climax, and the shocking image of a mutilated woman that will stay with you much, much longer than you’ll most likely expect. Speaking of the climax, this one is a doozy. Nearly 45 minutes in length, the final battle is so grand in ambition and well-done in execution that it’s essentially pointless to describe. It needs to be experienced. Miike may have excised a great deal of his own personal lunacy from the film, but there are plenty of small details that ensure his unique vision remains intact within the overall feel. Matured, sure, but far from tame.
Sucker Punch (2011)
dir: Zach Snyder
A few nights ago I had my mind very unexpectedly blown by Zach Snyder’s almost universally panned Sucker Punch. An incredibly effective and subtle (in ways completely missed by most, ahem, film critics) feminist empowerment fable disguised as empty-headed and attention-deficit-dependent teenage boy eye candy, the film contains more levels than a lifetime of Super Mario Bros. Eschewing the heavy-handed elitism of a Michael Haneke exercise, Snyder manages to deliver an effective condemnation of the patriarchal values glamorized and perpetuated by popular entertainment by crafting the most ridiculously overblown action set-pieces since John Woo and John Rambo shared an exploding wet dream. He simultaneously provides them with just enough emotional pathos and impressive mise-en-scene to keep them both easy to follow and genuinely thrilling. Not to mention the fact that he markets the film towards a young female audience in much the same way that most films of its ostensible ilk market them towards a young male audience. Thus, he utilizes and subverts expected gender roles with the exhilarating effect of creating a film that presents its female protagonists as legitimately badass, without ever once obsessing over their physical characteristics or pandering to the basest male impulses to sexualize all things female (I’m looking at you, Michael Bay). The fact that most critics still found a fetishistic tilt to a film that never once lingers unnecessarily an any female character’s physical attributes, and simply presents them (in a fantasy world rife with zombie soldiers, cock-throated dragons and indestructible robots) as ridiculous caricatures of stereotypical action movie stock characters (not as titillating eye candy), belies any denial of the inherent sexism that bubbles within said critics’ own culture-damaged heads. And did you somehow miss all of those phallic symbols being summarily decimated? Look closer, dumbasses; that zeppelin was a dick!
