I've seen a ton of movies lately, and I am finally catching up on reviewing some that I saw weeks, even months ago. So here is a collection of short reviews.
Headhunters
Directed by Morten Tyldum, Headhunters is an exhilarating, if forgettable, heist film based on the book by bestselling Norwegian author Jo Nesbo.
Headhunters concerns one Roger Brown (Aksel Hennie, who looks like a young Christopher Walken). Roger is a headhunter for large companies, meaning he discovers, interviews, and recommends new talent to big businesses. Roger is also 5'6'' and married to Diana, a statuesque blonde with brains to spare. Roger is clearly insecure about his height and the fact that he's married to a bombshell, so he tries to compensate by showering Diana with all the material possessions she could dream of, including her own art gallery. But Roger's day job doesn't pay for this luxury: Roger moonlights as a art thief. When he gets entangled with a sociopathic Clas Greve, a man he is supposed to "headhunt" for a company, Roger's world comes tumbling down and he ends up running for his life. Greve will stop at nothing to hunt Roger down.Headhunters is a fast-paced, violent thriller. I enjoyed it, but it didn't stick with me (after all, it took me about 6-8 weeks to get around to reviewing it). I would recommend it to people who enjoyed The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo and similar movies.
3.5 out of 5 stars
***
Sound of My Voice
Sound of My Voice is also a thriller, but a much less action-packed one. The premise of the film is fascinating: a journalist and his girlfriend decide to go undercover to check out a woman who claims to be from the future and the cult that is slowly building around her. Will they be able to bust her as a fraud, or will the get sucked in and "go native" in the process? Sound of My Voice keeps you guessing throughout. At times, it seems as though Lorna (the girlfriend) is starting to genuinely believe that this woman is telling the truth. At other times, it seems as though Peter (the journalist) is the more bedazzled of the two. And in the end, the movie makes a blatant point to keep you guessing. It's definitely a tease of a movie, but an enjoyable one. There are also great performances all around, especially up-and-comer Brit Marling as Maggie, the leader of the cult.
4 out of 5 stars
***
Brave
Pixar's latest film finally puts a human girl at the center of its plot. Princess Merida, a fiesty, red-headed, bow and arrow-toting 16-year-old, lives in what appears to be a Disney-fied version of Medieval Scotland. She is about to be married off to one of the first born princes of another clan and she is none to happy about it. Unfortunately, her mother insists that she must marry in order to continue the family line. Merida goes off in search of a way to "change her destiny", which leads to unexpected consequences and a twist I genuinely did not see coming. Even though Brave is formulaic in the sense that "everyone learns a lesson" in the end, it really is a heartfelt movie and with a very different tone than most people expect from an animated film. It's definitely worth checking out.
4 out of 5 stars
***
The films of Studio Ghibli:
Recently, the local arthouse theater in my area did a month long festival dedicated to the Japanese Studio Ghibli, featuring the films of Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, among others. I was a little skeptical at first, since I've seen a number of Miyazaki films (namely, Spirited Away, Ponyo, Princess Mononoke, and Howl's Moving Castle) and I haven't particularly cared for them--which is sacrilege in the world of cinephilia, I know.
But I went ahead and gave some different Ghibli films a try. Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro were both adorable and easy to watch. Kiki's Delivery Service focuses on the coming of age of a young witch who uses her ability to fly to become a delivery girl for a bakery. My Neighbor Totoro is a little more heart-tugging, with two young sisters at the center of the film. The girls and their father move out to the country while their mother is recovering from an unspecified illness. Despite their difficult circumstances, the girls (voiced by Elle and Dakota Fanning) are unfailingly optimistic, playful, and imaginative. They end up making friends with magical creatures in the forest, who help them deal with the fear and uncertainty of having a sick mother.
Whisper of the Heart was a more forgettable film about a school girl who dreams of becoming a writer and also finds herself falling for a rather annoying young man who wants to become a violin maker. The story line is a bit more mature than Kiki's and Totoro and deals with the difficulties of growing up and discovering one's calling.
The Cat Returns was much more fun. When Haru, a teenage girl, saves a cat from getting run over, she is rewarded in a very unusual way: the cat begins speaking to her and asks her to join him in the land of cats and marry him! Before Haru can decline, she is whisk(ered) away to a fantastical land and held captive by the Cat King, whose son is the one she saved and the one she is being forced to wed. With the help of the Baron, a statue of a cat that comes to life, and a grouchy, corpulent cat named Muta, Haru tries to escape before it's too late.
And finally, I saw an unbelievably bizarre film called Pom Poko. Pom Poko is about a community of shapeshifting raccoons whose land is being forested so that the local city can expand into the once densely wooded forest. The raccoons decide to impede this destruction by pretending to be ghosts and demons to scare away the humans. Ultimately, they lose the battle and decide to adapt and either live among the humans, or in what's left of the woods. You would think this movie could get its point across in 80 minutes. You'd be wrong. Pom Poko is two hours long and very repetitive. The raccoons try to foil the humans and fail. They try again and fail. They try again and fail. They try again and fail. They try once more and fail. They admit defeat. The end.
Oh, and they also use their balls as weapons. Yes. Their testicles. As weapons. Which is really the only thing that makes this bizarre movie worth watching.
"They used their testicles as weapons in a brave kamikaze attack"
~actual line from Pom Poko
Kiki's: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Totoro: 4 out of 5 stars
Whisper: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Cat Returns: 4 out of 5 stars
Pom Poko: 2.5 out of 5 stars
The tanuki (they are not actually racoons) thing with their testicles is actually from old Japanese folklore:
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_raccoon_dog
Japanese folklore is full of unusual things though.
That's a good point Ed. After the movie, I discussed it with someone much more well-versed in Japanese culture than myself, and a lot of the bizarre things made more sense. But going into it without that knowledge was wacky.
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