The Hunger Games

  I'll keep this short and snappy because it deserves as few words as possible:

The Hunger Games is a poorly written, sloppily directed piece of shit, a soulless enterprise with as much warmth as two Daleks fucking. The build-up to the game is endless and unnecessary, doing very little to color its world interesting.  That world, if you must know, is a blend of  The Running Man's worst aspects (and fashions) crossed with 'American Idol'. Add a dash of '1984', too, but remember to do it badly. Also: hint at satire, but fail to follow through on the issues that satire raises.

The picture's biggest flaw is the almost total lack of conflict in the first hour. Everything that comes before the game -- in this hour --  could have been compressed into a five minute montage. Instead, it plods through enough expositional sludge to occupy close to half its running time.

I haven't read the books, so I hope they're a major step-up from this underwhelming feast for the young and easily raped of their earthly possessions.

Yes, the idea of a contemporary, media-driven game is culled from Kenji Fukasaku's Battle Royale, which was thematically aided by Peter Watkins' grossly underseen masterpiece Punishment Park. Both films, not surprisingly, are a hundred times smarter, more entertaining, and more economical than this. Other even earlier influences, conscious or unconscious, are Robert Sheckley's novels The Seventh Victim ('53) and its sequel The Tenth Victim ('66), as well Stephen King's Richard Bachman novel The Long Walk ('79), filmed quite poorly as The Running Man.

In contrast to the beautifully directed and photographed scenes of conflict in Fukasaku's masterpiece of raw cinema, director Gary Ross scores an  "F" for  haphazard and chaotic jigsaws of blurred movement. The action is frequently impossible to follow, impatiently edited, and there are a surprising amount of out of focus shots for a big studio film.

Jennifer Lawrence, looking like an updated version of Juliet Lewis, acquits herself well considering the trash she has to work with, and is forced to contend with a character whose fate is determined by scriptwriters, not her inner being. If she suffers from uncertainty about her commitment to a game that may kill her, we're not privy to it. In one ludicrous example of scriptwriting schizophrenia, she explodes at another key character, only to behave as if she didn't explode at him in the following scene.

The distributor of this film has done a masterful job exploiting what is a truly awful, flat-footed movie. Cheers to them for their seamless trickery!

4/10 for me (and that's generous). Oh, and 1/10 for the silly haircuts and fashions.

Why are there so many bad haircuts and ridiculous fashions in pathetic 'Dystopian' films like this? And why do the rich always behave like wanna-be Bret Easton Ellis characters? It's an insult to Mr. Ellis.

I suggest you go and buy Battle Royale or Punishment Park  on BluRay instead , or shell out some bucks on the just-released The Raid, a sincere celebration of cinematic animalism. Just try to avoid contributing to this stinker's swelling coffers like I did. Hopefully, I'll be forgiven one day.

 

If you're only ten year's old, you'll be all over this poorly executed garbage and its groundbreaking "satire"

 

The excellent Series 7: The Contenders ('01) was sharp satire on reality TV; The Hunger Games, with its kiddie-friendly rating, is about as effectively satirical as 'Punky Brewster'.

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Afterword: On its second weekend of release, the film dropped 72%, a clear indicator that word of mouth amongst initial viewers has not been good enough to keep enthusiasm high.

The Source of Woo's The Killer

 Just as John Woo's Bullet in the Head is a very obvious remake of Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (right down to its lighting setups), his The Killer is a less obvious remake of Teruo Ishii's An Outlaw and, of course, Melville's Le Samourai. I'd throw Nicholas Ray's truly amazing crime melodrama  They Live By Night into the fray also.


I've raved about Ishii before on this blog, usually having unreasonable cinematic orgasms about his freak-oriented material such as Horrors of Malformed Men, Love and Crime, and Orgies of Edo. But Ishii also directed thrillers, outrageous erotic comedies, and torture-themed epics.

An Outlaw, with Ken Takakura, is an Ishii thriller. Takakura plays a killer (very well) contracted to take out a scumbag; turns out the scumbag is a good guy. Angered by this betrayal, the killer sets out to expose the maggot-infested filth behind the ruse. Along the way, he becomes attracted to an innocent girl, helps a pretty prostitute with tuberculosis, and finds he shares a common sense of morality with a cop. At one point, he and the cop exchange gunfire with their common enemy.

Sound familiar? It screams familiar.

Yes, it's The Killer without the heavy stylization, but with the doubledecker trams and visually spectacular exploitation of Hong Kong's Victoria Peak. Mr. Woo must have been quite a fan of the film.

Thankfully, Ishii's bizarre trademarks rupture the film's surface now and then like welcome blisters. An old woman's wonderful facial scar (or is it a tattoo?) is a classic touch. Also true to Ishii is a bloody brilliant scene in which our hero saves a woman from vomiting on her own blood by deep kissing her and sucking the blood from her throat. It's super erotic, loving, and grotesque at the same time. I was in heaven!

I've waited eons to see this film and I was not disappointed.

Another triumph from Toei, the people who would one day bring you Battle Royale.

Kitano's OUTRAGE is outrageously good

 It's only January 5, but already I've seen a film that will surely occupy a prime position on my top ten list at year's end.

As my gut predicted, Takeshi Kitano's Outrage (Autoreiji; 2010)  is a controlled masterpiece, and the best film the auteur has made since the sizzling Hanna-bi (aka Fireworks).

Kitano's yakuza films are fascinated by the small details of gangster politics, so it is a small detail -- a wrong decision -- that triggers a brutal war between factions in this deft, crisp, exceptional piece of filmmaking. As usual, the drama provokes splashes of crimson that denote the disintegration of a crime family. Kitano, though not the key participant, takes an enforcer role that shows us his Sunday best.

Written, edited, and directed by Kitano, Outrage does quite the opposite of glorify the gangster life. It paints for us an underground society that is, for most, a vicious hell on earth where nobody is to be trusted, money is more important than anything, and relationships are not worth spit.    Every act is one of self-advancement, and every step on the ladder to the top is but a cruel mirage for gullible players.

The violence is very wince-worthy and impactful. We get chopsticks jammed in ear drums, an excruciating assault with a dentist drill, and a brutally beautiful scene involving a car, a rope, and one unlucky fuck whose time is up.

Music by Keiichi Suzuki, who also scored Kitano's Zatoichi, has a somber, electronic base that adds an interesting but not distracting element to the proceedings. Katsumi Yanagijima, who shot Fukasaku's brilliant Battle Royale, does a superb job with Outrage's visuals. The soft, subtle tones perfectly contrast with the frequent displays of glorious and disturbing Grand Guignol.

 This is a harrowing, compelling yakuza drama from a master of the moving image.

***

The Japanese Blu-ray is of exceptional quality and is English subtitled

It is available from amazon.co.jp or cdjapan.co.jp

Top 22 Horror Films in 22 Years

Recently, there have been a great many horror lists published on various blogs as a rebuttal to Owen Gleiberman's list in Entertainment Weekly.

I cheated my list back 22 years so as to include In A Glass Cage, one of my favorite horror films of any time.

Good horror comedies such as Shaun of the Dead are missing because they're not real horror to me.

You won't find Blair Witch Project here because it is now and always has been utter shit.

I realize some films here such as Battle Royale may not meet everybody's definition of horror. For mine, the film's premise is horrific ) enough in my book -- kill all your friends and classmates or you die!

Utterly disturbing.

Extremely tense. Claustrophobic. Doesn't put a foot wrong.

The cheat ending still bothers me, and almost bumped it off the list, but everything that comes before it is true horror executed with love and gusto.

A masterpiece from the late Kinji Fukasaku, a god among directors.

Surreal, atmospheric horror.

One of the best Italian horror films ever made (and they've made some doozies). Grisly, surreal, erotic, disturbing, and beautiful.

Despite the lack of perfect versions of this, it is a rich, atmospheric horror film occasionally handicapped by wrong-headed comedy. Still, its necrophilic tone qualifies it for greatness.

I love Arturo Ripstein, and this phenomenal Mexican version of The Honeymoon Killers is sometimes unbearable to watch.

As I am not a fan of Audition (I find it quite boring), my Miike choice is the brilliant and twisted Ichii The Killer.

As the years pass, I like Silence of the Lambs less and Ridley Scott's Hannibal so much more.

Gary Oldman's 'Mason Verger' is a modern horror creation that Lon Chaney would have been proud of.

One of the most subversive horror films ever to be slipped through a studio gate.

Real horror with brutal catharsis.

Easily one of the most bizarre, troubling, and anxiety-inducing horror films. From director Fruit Chan.

I may be alone on this one, but John Dahl's riff on the Duel premise is a taut, unrelenting horror pic with a great, unseen villain ('Rusty Nail').

What can I say that hasn't already been said?

Powerful psychological horror that captures the terror of being a prisoner of your own delusions.

A nightmare captured on celluloid.

This '87 masterpiece of bloodsucking just slips through the 22-year gate.

One of the most bizarre, cruel, and horrific studies of child abuse ever burned to the screen, Midori is a worthy successor to Todd Browning's Freaks.

Based on Mr. Arashi's Amazing Freak Show by Suehiro Maruo.

Supreme tension.

Masterful, understated horror fairytale.

Accomplished tale of alienation where the horror grows like cancer on sunburn.

David Mamet's only attempt at writing a horror picture is stark and frightening and unforgettable. Stuart Gordon's direction is flawless.