cecilparks Reviews

Séance (2000 TV Movie)

Beautiful reflection on death, and how we fill our lives waiting for it.

[10/10 · 2 July 2004]

This movie should not be seen as a straightforward ghost movie, nor as a basic series of set-ups, struggles and resolutions. It is a gripping movie, masterfully shot, bleak in its vision yet assembled with an inspiring meticulousness.

Junco is a psychic who feels trapped by her extra-sensory powers in more than one way. For one, she cannot hold a regular job, despite her best efforts. She is also aware that her gift will never be completely understood or taken seriously by the public at large, not even by those who seek her help.

When a freak coincidence lands a missing girl in her husband Katsuhiko's hardware case - after the police, as a last resort, has asked for her advice about the case - she sees it as a possible opportunity to make a name for herself as a serious and respected psychic, while clearing her husband and her of any responsibility in the girl's disappearance. She sees a way out the couple's humdrum, boring life, and her husband wants to believe it too. Needless to say, not much goes according to plan.

**NOTE** About the doppelganger appearing in the movie, as mentionned in a comment below. The double does represent impending death for Katsuhiko. The decision to have him burn his double alive was a way to show how he is not willing to accept a fate he has not chosen.

Cremaster 3 (2002)

Can't say I understood, but it's been haunting me

[20 October 2003]

When I got out of the theater after seeing this movie, I was stuck with one major question: how does one get the financing to make such a movie? How do you sell a movie so unusual to investors?

I must admit I desperately wanted this movie to make sense. I wanted the mason to have a legitimate reason to fill an elevator with concrete, and I wanted this reason explained later on in the movie, but I could tell the answer would never come. I know my expectations were conditioned by years of conventional cinema and storytelling. For this reason alone, Cremaster was worth watching. It stirred me up, exposed me to very personal and thorough symbolism, and made no apologies.

This movie is not cinema as you've come to know it, it's performance art caught on film. I've heard that the artist explains a lot of his symbolism on his website but I'm not sure I want to know, at least for now. I'd rather let the images simmer in my mind for a few weeks and let meaning bubble up. For now, three days after seeing it, I'd say the movie is basically about the powerlessness of the individual against the powers that be and the necessity for an artist to pander to those powers to achieve his vision. This necessity is also the struggle that drives the creative process. Lackeys and employees are numbed by their position, and some of them express themselves in a creative way to alleviate the numbness and feel alive. Whether they succeed or not is not the point.

Kin'yû hametsu Nippon: Tôgenkyô no hito-bito (2002)

Once again, Miike caught me off-guard

[8/10 · 8 August 2003]

If you thought Miike was nothing but a deviant obsessed with sex and violence (Dead or Alive, Ichi the Killer, Visitor Q, Audition, etc.), you'll be very surprised by Shangri-La.

A printer is forced to shut down his business after his main client goes bankrupt. That rich client has a lot of property and assets hidden away and doesn't plan to use those assets to pay for his debts. Ridden with shame from leaving his employees without a job, the printer tries to commit suicide but ends up instead in Shangri-La. Inhabited by social misfits, Shangri-La is basically a small group of makeshift houses by a river in an industrial wasteland. The "Mayor" and the "Deputy" of Shangri-La set on to help the printer get revenge on the rich businessman, and make a little fortune while they're at it.

Who would have thought Miike would deliver a solid, tightly-paced, feel-good movie ? Hilarious at times and based on a fantastic script, this movie proves that Miike can and will do anything that inspires him. He has balls of steel and doesn't care what you expect of him.

8/10

In My Skin (2002)

Too heavy for words

[8/10 · 29 July 2003]

Saw this at a cult film festival. You'd think a cult audience would be able to stomach depictions of self-inflicted violence, but several people walked out. I can't really blame them. It is an intimate and plausible portrait of a woman who has lived her life on autopilot until she finally finds a way to feel alive and beautiful: by mutilating herself. She seems painfully aware that her friends and coworkers won't get it, understandably, and that once she takes that path, there is only one way out.

Devastating.

The Ring (2002)

Unnecessary, irrelevant

[6/10 · 17 October 2002]

Take "Ringu", make it visually slicker, overexplain plot elements that don't really matter and remove the paranormal explanation and you have "The Ring". The moviemakers involved in the remake had the laudable idea of taking the near-perfect original plot in new directions, but all their initiatives fall flat by the 75th minute. In-depth character development is not a necessity in a genre movie, just a brief explanation will do. I can't blame the American team for trying to dig deeper, but their new ideas don't hold water and go nowhere. The actors don't even sound like they believe their own lines in a few scenes.

There are some great moments in "The Ring", but they were integrally lifted from the Japanese version. The way the story unfolds in "The Ring" may seem unoriginal to someone who has already seen "Session 9", "Stir of Echoes" and M. Night Shyamalan's work, but that would be unfair since all those movies were obviously inspired by the J-Horror wave of the late nineties, which arguably culminated with 1998's "Ringu" (although I hear the recent "Dark Water" is brilliant). If you thought "The Ring" was good and if you don't mind sub-titles, do yourself a favor and seek out movies by Kiyoshi Kurosawa ("Cure", "Seance"), Hideo Nakata ("Ringu" 1 and 2, "Dark Water"), Masayuki Ochia ("Hypnosis"), Takashi Miike ("Audition", "Visitor Q", countless others) and Higuchinsky ("Uzumaki").

Fight Club (1999)

As empty as the society it condemns

[6/10 · 23 December 2001]

***SPOILERS***

"You are not the car you drive. You are not the contents of your wallet."

I agree. But I also think a movie is not its special effects, its flashy violence or its tacked-on incoherent twist ending. Let's be fair, this movie was probably THE thrill ride of 1999. But after repeated viewings, its flaws become painfully apparent.

A lot of users on this board talk about the movie's message. What exactly is the message? That materialism is bad? This movie is as materialistic as they come. This movie is all about looking good, talking cool and dressing sharp. It's a quote mine, it tries to be a Tarantino movie minus the actual storytelling. The visuals are astounding and the acting is compelling, but the plot is totally incoherent. For example: if Tyler and the Narrator are the same person, what exactly happens right before the car accident? Is Tyler talking to himself? He has to be talking out loud since the two "soldiers" on the back seat answer his questions. That scene simply doesn't work. There is also the problem of the Narrator's name. Is he Tyler Durden? No one calls him by his name until the last minutes of the movie. Even the cop calling about the explosion in the condo doesn't call him by his name. On top of that, Tyler's decrepit house was bought "under (the Narrator's) name". I get the feeling that's an area the film-makers intentionally left grey so they wouldn't have to worry about it spoiling their "great twist ending".

The movie would have been better if Tyler and the Narrator had not been the same person. But if they hadn't been, young male viewers wouldn't have left the theaters whispering "Woah, that movie was f**ked up!". I'm guessing that's the market and the reaction they were going for. (F.Y.I., I'm a 27 year old white male)

To its credit, Fight Club makes you think. Unfortunately, if you think about it long enough, the movie caves in and falls apart. This movie is anger dressed up in cool clothes. It is to cinema what a Limp Bizkit album is to music.

Under Siege 2: Dark Territory (1995)

Worst movie I ever sat through (spoiler)

[1/10 · 30 September 2001]

I won't go into details, but I was forced to watch this unbelievably stupid movie all the way through. How could Eric Bogosian get involved in such a mess?

I can't even understand how anyone could get a kick out of such a pathetic movie. An action flick has to catch you off-guard and surprise you at least a couple of times to actually work. This piece of drivel was so utterly predictable, I just can't imagine how it could thrill or excite anyone.

The WORST has to be poor Morris Chestnut playing the token black character. You just know from his first scene he'll be in charge of providing comic relief, and that he'll die before the end of the movie.

Rating: ZERO! NO redeeming qualities whatsoever!