Monsters

Monsters posits a world in which extraterrestrial animals wind up in Northern Mexico.  US and Mexican authorities establish a “quarantine zone,” in which they use chemical and conventional weapons to try to eliminate enough creatures so they don’t gain a foothold in our ecosystem.  The film convincingly creates and ages this world, making us feel that this isn’t a new phenomenon and that the two governments have been fighting the monsters for quite some time.

Our audience surrogates in this alternate world are a news photographer and his charge, the boss’s (adult, and rather fetching) daughter.  They’re trapped on the wrong side of the quarantine zone, you see, and they need to get to America.  Why they don’t just catch a commercial flight from Mexico City is never explained, but just play along – Monsters is trying to tell a story, here.

What happens?  Well, it’s kind of a mix of It Happened One Night and Sin Nombre, with the two Americans hiring a gang of coyotes to escort them through the quarantine zone and across the US border.  Is it good?  It’s fine, I suppose, but I never bought into it.  This isn’t because the film makes Northern Mexico look like Central America, and it isn’t because it places a Mayan pyramid within walking distance of the Texas border.  It’s because the movie couldn’t decide if it wanted to be Apocalypse Now, any of a dozen movies about illegal immigration, or the aforementioned Frank Capra movie.  And you know what?  I could have accepted that if it weren’t for the film’s big, climactic moment, the moment in which we’re supposed to feel awed at the aliens’ beauty and empathy with their plight as unwanted interlopers.  See, all I saw were creatures of Lovecraftian horror that needed to be eliminated, even if it meant the irradiation of all of Northern Mexico and much of South Texas to make that happen.

I can credit Monsters for originality and craft.  Its aliens look alien and its world looks convincing.  But in the end, it’s just a road movie with an unsuccessful climax.  Pass this one by.

Ink

Ink is bold and creative and a fantastic example of what someone can do with vision, originality, and a $250,000 budget.

In the world of Ink, we live surrounded by beings much like angels and demons.  The angels come to us in our sleep and renew us with sweet dreams and good hopes.  The demons come, as well.  They bring nightmares and horror.  Some demons even steal souls.

Ink, short for Incubus, is just such a soul-stealer.  Hunched and ragged, he lays hands on a sleeping little girl and whisks away her soul while her father concerns himself with other things.  Ink wants to bring the soul to his masters as a sacrifice.  Can the angels stop him in time, and can they save the father’s soul in the bargain?

This is a great idea for a story, and Ink overcomes its budget restrictions to tell this story in a fantastical and compelling way.  The angels and demons are martial artists, which makes for great battles between them.  While the angels are your basic attractive young people, the demons are truly horrifying and otherworldly, with a design unlike anything you’ve seen before.  Further, Ink contrasts the spirit world and the real world with music, lighting, and set design that accentuates the difference, particularly when illustrating the hopeless, horrifying world of demonkind.

Yes, the script has some jarring moments, and the performances range from pretty good to “somebody’s parents must have put up some production money.”  Nevertheless, Ink stands as a successful low-budget film that serves as an object lesson in how to stretch $250k.  It creates a convincing world, uses that world to explore themes of duty and love, and delivers an entertaining night at the movies.

Good job, Writer / Director / Composer /  and, for all I know, Craft Services Guy Jamin Winans!  I look forward to seeing what you do next.

Vengeance

Johnnie To walks into a production meeting.

“Guys, here’s the idea: our heroes, triad assassins with hearts of gold, are in a field, hiding behind big bales of scrap paper and surrounded by bad guys hiding behind big bales of scrap paper.  The bad guys roll their bales in front of them, as a moving shield.  The heroes roll their barrels at the bad guys, guns blazing.  Colorful scraps of paper blow in the breeze.  Music plays.  Blood everywhere.  It’s magnificent.”

Kai-fai Wai, To’s collaborator and business partner, is the only man in the room with the courage to question the great Hong Kong director and producer.  He says, “Sounds great, Johnnie.  What’s the story?”

“Story?”  says Johnnie.  “Who cares?  Listen to this: the good guys track the bad guys down to their meeting place in the woods.  They close in for their shootout, O.K. Corral style, when suddenly the bad guys’ families show up.  It’s a picnic!  The good guys keep walking, taking position on a nearby hill and waiting for the picnic to end and the families to go home.  The bad guys enjoy their evening, even sending some food over to the good guys.  When the picnic’s over and the families leave, though, it’s no-kidding, Wild West shootout.  They all have honor, see?”

“I like it,” says Wai.  Is there any kind of narrative through-line you’d like to explore?”

“Pfft.  I’m producing four movies this year and directing one.  I don’t have time to write scripts.”

“Right,” replies Wai.  “Well, those sequences sound great, and I’m sure you have more up your sleeve.  I’ll gin up a revenge thriller around them and whaddaya say we start second unit filming on Monday?”

“Works for me.  Let’s use Vengeance as a working title.  I’m going to go storyboard my shootouts.  Have a good weekend, everybody.”

And so, I like to imagine, Vengeance was born.  The box says it’s about a very serious Frenchman who comes to Macau to wreak, well vengeance.  It’s really about the great Johnnie To creating cool action sequences.  Even better, it’s about the great Johnnie To (Election, The Heroic Trio) creating cool action sequences in Macau and Hong Kong, the Vegas and Manhattan of China.  Simon Yam (Ip Man & Ip Man 2) plays the villain and has great fun with the role.  Anthony Wong Chau-Sang (Infernal Affairs, Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor), Ka Tung Lam (Election, IP Man, Infernal Affairs), and Suet Lam (Shinjuku Incident, Kung Fu Hustle, Election) play the three assassins with hearts of gold and, if you follow Hong Kong cinema, those names are enough to put this movie on your queue right there.  Johnny Hallyday, whom Roger Ebert describes as a French combination of Elvis Presley and Charles Bronson, plays the Frenchman as a dour guy in a black suit, and his plastic surgery gives him an odd enough look to make him an interesting hero.

So what do have, here?  You have a good-enough story, reliable actors and stuntmen, and a string of very cool, very creative shootouts, chases, and action sequences.  In short, you have a terrific Hong Kong action thriller.  Vengeance is a winner.

After the Wedding

In After the Wedding, Mads Mikkelsen (Casino Royale, the exceptionally good and well worth seeing Flame and Citron) works in a Bombay orphanage.  He teaches school.  He looks after the kids.  He does fundraising.  He’s poor, but he’s noble and happy.  And he’s got that lean, tanned, Adventure Guy thing working for him.

One day, his boss calls him in and tells him he must fly to Copenhagen to meet with a deep-pockets philanthropist whose money they need to keep the orphanage open.  Mikkelsen doesn’t want to go, but he consents.

So far, so good.  I’m with him right up ‘til he tells one of his waifs, “I’ll be back in ten days, tops.  I promise I’ll be there for your birthday.”  See, I know this is a drama, so I know there was no way he’s going to make it back in time for that birthday.  I know the waif will guilt him out, I know he’ll feel badly about it, and I know that it’ll all be a part of the second-act crisis.  Suspension of disbelief = blown.

Once Mikkelsen gets to Denmark, the donor inexplicably invites him to attend a family wedding.  Surely, weddings were put on this earth as a test of loyalty, for they rank among the most crushingly dull of all ceremonies.  Loyal friends and relatives can reasonably be called upon to attend, but glancing acquaintances?  No way – that’s too much to ask.  So here am I, an audience member of this film, watching a crushingly boring wedding through the eyes of a glancing acquaintance.  Not only do I not believe in the proceedings on the screen before me, I’m looking at my watch. 

But hey, this movie’s called After the Wedding, so there’s gotta be some drama coming, right?  Well, yeah, but I know that it’ll all lead to Mikkelsen calling the sad-faced waif back in India and telling him sorry, he won’t make that birthday after all.  And I’m pretty sure nothing’s going to explode, because this doesn’t seem like that kind of movie.  So now, instead of catching myself up in the personal drama of Mikkelsen, the donor, and other attendees of the titular wedding, I’m just watching the plot’s gears turn and waiting for it to be over.

A lot of people, people whose opinions I respect, love this movie.  I stopped believing, like, ten minutes in, and that was it.  Seeing After the Wedding was like attending a wedding: an excruciatingly dull affair I endured out of loyalty.  Your mileage, of course, may vary.