Bad Boy Bubby

Ugly, crude, and intentionally shocking, I hated Bad Boy Bubby in a way I haven’t hated a film in years.

The picture, a 1993 Australian import and multiple Australian Film Institute Award winner, centers on a man who’s been raised like an animal, abused and imprisoned in a basement for thirty-five years.  When he finally makes it to the outside world, he does his unhinged best to cope.

But the outside world, like the basement and the people in it, is ugly and coarse and horrible.  This is intentional, as Bad Boy Bubby seeks to shock and dismay.  But you know what?  I do a lot of traveling around the world, and I’ve seen my share of ugly and coarse and horrible.  I don’t need it in my entertainment, and I don’t need to see Bad Boy Bubby ever again.  Goodbye.

Wild Target

In Wild Target, Bill Nighy plays an uptight assassin who accepts a contract on manic pixie dream girl (MPDG) Emily Blunt.  But there’s a problem: Emily Blunt is too smart to play a MPDG.  Something about her eyes doesn’t let her do “carefree and irresponsible.”  She looks like she’s faking it.

Nighy never looks like he’s faking anything, and he makes for a fine straight man in this British comedy.  Rupert Grint shows up as a hapless stoner and displays good comic timing, as does Rupert Everett as a very angry villain and Martin Freeman as a competing assassin.  Unfortunately, we never really buy Blunt in the Zooey Deschanel role, and this sucks the air out of the proceedings. 

It’s too bad, really.  I’d buy Ms. Blunt as a detective or a scientist or the Queen of England.  But she just doesn’t have MPDG in her.  Here’s hoping that next time, she chooses a role more in line with her strengths.

13 Assassins

13 Assassins is as good as movies get.

The picture, a “men on a mission” story set in pre-Meiji Japan, opens with a samurai committing seppuku, a ritualized form of suicide in which the individual disembowels himself.  It’s incredibly difficult and painful, and 13 Assassins presents it in all its horror by not showing it to us at all.  We see the samurai prepare, then we see his face in closeup as he goes through agonizing pain and exertion.  Understand that seppuku was normally committed with a “second” standing by, sword raised to decapitate the samurai after he makes the first cut, to spare the man the agony of disembowelment.  This man has no “second.”  Music plays, sound effects suggest what’s happening below the frame, and our stomachs curl and our hands clench and our hearts break for this man.  We’re only two minutes into this movie, and we feel moved and involved and completely engaged in the world of the samurai and the repercussions of this act.  Later, another samurai commits the same act under different circumstances.  He has a “second,” and this suicide takes on an entirely different aspect of nobility and technical excellence in its portrayal.

I’m not arguing that suicide is cool.  I’m saying that seppuku was a part of feudal Japanese culture, and that 13 Assassins approaches this subject dramatically, artfully, and with perfect technical execution.  I use the film’s portrayal of seppuku to illustrate what the film does throughout its 2 hour and 21 minute run time: it nails feudal Japan, from its social structure to its mythology to its code of honor and even to its view of suicide.  It does so with class when appropriate and with horror when appropriate, and it does so with the absolute surety.

13 Assassins is not some kind of Merchant-Ivory historical fetishization.  That first seppuku propels a “mission” film that rocks every beat, from the gathering of the team to the cohesion on the road to the laying of the traps to a final battle that compares with the absolutely fundamental Seven Samurai.  Its characters are interesting.  Its jokes are funny.  Its action set pieces, including the aforementioned (45-minute long) final battle, are both cool and comprehensible.  This is a good time at the movies.

Credit director Takashi Miike, whose Ichi the Killer and the short film “Box” from Three Extremes suggested talent, but not on this level.  Kôji Yakusho, aging very well since 1996’s Shall We Dance?, is suitably wise and commanding in the Takashi Shimura ‘Samurai Leader’ role.  Gorô Inagaki, new to me, does petulant villainy as well as I’ve ever seen it done and gives us a character we can really love to hate. 

Y’know, I could go right down the credits list, telling you how great everything and everyone is.  I could probably figure out a way to compliment the Key Grip.  But here’s the bottom line: 13 Assassins is a flat-out classic, successful in every way.  If you care about movies, you need to see this as soon as you can.

Exit Through the Gift Shop

Greg Sorenson nailed his review of Exit Through the Gift Shop, and he's graciously permitted me to reprint it here.  Enjoy.

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"Street Artist" Banksy cobbles years of footage of himself, Shepard Fairey, and other graffiti/stencil artists doing their thing, all meticulously documented by a compulsive videographer named Thierry Guetta. In the course of making the film (more accurately, in the course of wrenching Guetta's footage away from him and turning it into something usable), Banksy convinces Guetta to go do some street art of his own. He adopts the persona "Mr. Brainwash" and does a little street-stencil work before hiring a stable of designers and artists to churn out a ton of derivative pop art, displaying it all in a huge, wildly successful 2008 art exhibition.

Or does he? Long before Exit Through the Gift Shop was released, rumors were circulating that Mr. Brainwash was a hoax put on by Fairey and/or Banksy. Guetta is quite the character. Artistically he's akin to Mark Borchardt and Tommy Wiseau, but does appear, at least, to be very good at turning trash into cash -- he's first shown putting hundred-dollar tags on "vintage" clothes at his trendy LA boutique. He's maybe a little too good at this to be real; as the years of videography go on, and then as his (seemingly very expensive) art show comes together, I thought at least once, "where's this money coming from again?"

If Mr. Brainwash is indeed a hoax, does that make EThGS a mockumentary? I don't think so, It's still about creating subversive art, and it's quite possible that Banksy has documented a creation of a human installation