• 23Dec 09

  The Storm Warriors (Fung Wan II) - Film Review

  

  Directed by Oxide Pang Chun and his brother Danny Pang, The Storm Warriors (Fung Wan II) is a martial arts film set in ancient China. It is a period of kung fu experts and deadly warlords. The evil warrior Lord Godless (Simon Yam) has taken a number of people, including the Emperor of China, hostage. Godless plans to break into the Emperor's tomb and rule China himself. Initially he is forced to battle a martial arts expert called Nameless (Kenny Ho) but comes out victorious, declaring himself the new ruler of China. In order to stop him, two warriors named Cloud (Aaron Kwok) and Wind (Ekin Cheng), enlist the help of the warrior Lord Wicked, who will train them quickly for a showdown with Godless. Despite knowing he could be corrupted by evil martial arts, Wind is selected for the assignment over Cloud as he is more in control of his power.

  Having not seen its predecessor The Storm Riders (Fung wan: Hung ba tin ha), it is difficult to make any sense of this truly awful kung fu, special effects film. The only mildly redeeming quality about The Storm Warriors is its rather impressive visual effects. The martial arts experts in the film posses magic powers, allowing them to conduct bolts of lightning and turn droplets of water into massive balls of ice. Yet like many recent Western films, the Pang brothers have opted to over edited these fight scenes to the point where they lose any coherency and grandeur. The film also pales compared to much more visually intriguing and extravagant Asian films such as Hero and Oldboy. The computer generated backgrounds of the landscapes are a particularly painful sight. The fights are also so frequent in this film that they diminish anything that might have once resembled character, development or even just a plot. There is one particular battle that takes close to a quarter of the entire film. What remains of the story is so minimal and insignificant that some trailers would exhibit more narrative and depth. Wooden performances and amateurish expository dialogue further poison this film. However, the latter could be due to the poor translation of the subtitles from Cantonese to English. The dialogue might sound better in its native tongue. There is very little reason to see this film unless you are interested in mild visual effects, the appearance of a character that resembles Skeletor, or a credit sequence, complete with an Asian pop song, which would be more fitting in a James Bond picture.

  • Posted Dec 23, 2009 9:42 pm PT
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• 21Dec 09

  The French Kissers - Film Review

  

  In Brittany, France, Herve (Vincent Lacoste) and his best friend Camel (Anthony Sonigo) are two horny adolescent teens who are flunking their high school cIasses. Rather than studying they are too busy thinking about women and wanting to get laid. Yet they are both so inept and socially awkward that they have little luck with any of the girls they pursue. They are also picked on regularly by the more popular bullies. Herve, whose father is away supposedly in the army, struggles with his meddling mother, who is not shy to ask him personal questions. Despite his poor social skills, Herve is eventually greeted by a girl named Aurore (Alice Trémolière), who sees something in him and they start a relationship.
  
  Riad Sattouf's first film as a writer and director is like the French version of American Pie. As with that movie, this is yet another comedy and coming of age film that explores an adolescent's fixation with sex. Herve and Camel regularly spy on their neighbours having sex, imagine themselves with the most beautiful girls in their cIasses and pleasure themselves with magazines. Some will suggest that this film is truthful to the years of an adolescent. To an extent it might be, but this is a film that begs the question as to when truth becomes a cliché, as countless other films have explored the same behaviour in more subtle, meaningful and original ways. This is a crude and juvenile film that takes these issues for laughs and only in the most superficial manner. Seeing The French Kissers recalls the indie comedy-drama Thumbsucker (2005), a superior film that also focussed on adolescent behaviour. It rarely overstated the teenage interest in sex and its dopey adolescent protagonist was characterised with moments of frustration, highs and low, strengths and weaknesses. It felt like a finely realised visualisation of some of the most difficult times in growing up.
  
  The two characters in this film though are so devoid of any redeeming qualities and substantial development that by the end some will be begging Sattouf to give them some dignity. They are hopeless in every aspect of their lives. They are idiotic, lazy, selfish, socially awkward and interested in little beyond sex and music. Both of the boys, though through no fault of their performances, are less credible than they should be because their roles have been written more like caricatures, coming straight from the handbook of bad adolescent behaviour. They channel every cliché imaginable for the nerdy teens, right down to playing games of Dungeons and Dragons. The credibility of the main relationship between Herve and Aurore is also strained because one has to question what exactly she sees in him. For his apparent obsession with sex, he initially does not seem the least bit interested in talking to her. Most disappointingly, the repetition of masturbation jokes grows very tiresome after a while and minimizes the number of laughs in the film. Some might enjoy this brand of gross out humour but others will surely find it particularly unfunny and unintelligent.
  
  Domestically, The French Kissers has been a huge hit. Yet for Western audiences the issues explored in this film are likely to be overly familiar given that so many funnier and more intelligent films have dealt with the same concepts. If the characters had more qualities to evoke our sympathy for them, this could have been a more engaging and personal story, but at best it's rather hollow and two dimensional. For the debut of Sattouf it is not a terrible film, just one that shows his immaturity, most specifically, as a screenwriter.

  • Posted Dec 21, 2009 10:23 pm PT
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• 16Dec 09

  Avatar (3D) - Film Review

  

  In the future, a wheelchair bound marine named Jake Sully (Sam Worthington) reveals how his brother, who was a scientist, was killed. It is because of this death and the fact that they share the same DNA that Jake is asked by his military employers to operate his brother's avatar, a virtual body that is controlled by a person's mind. Jake is sent by a group of scientists, including the reluctant Grace Augustine (Sigourney Weaver), to investigate the island of Pandora, which holds valuable minerals that need to be researched. Yet in regaining the use of his legs through the alien-like body of the avatar, Jake is careless and becomes separated from the rest of the science team. Stranded, he is rescued from wild monsters by a native girl, Neytiri (voiced by Zoe Saldana), who resembles the same avatar employed by Jake and the scientists. Hesitantly, she introduces Jake's avatar to the rest of her tribe. They are initially hostile to Jake's avatar but he convinces them not to kill him, and he comes to understand their customs more thoroughly.

  Director James Cameron has always been a filmmaker interested in spectacle. His most famous feature film Titanic, was made over a decade ago and was praised more for its technical accomplishments, rather than its scripting accomplishments. Avatar, which has accumulated significant levels of hype over its lengthy production, because of its apparent specialisation in 3D technology, is likely to follow suit. As with Titanic, this is a visually magnificent production, with a budget soaring into hundreds of millions. The 3D visuals as a whole are outstanding. The rich variety of locations, from cliff faces to thick green forests, mountain ranges and military bases, are lavishly beautiful and command to be seen on the silver screen. The lighting, in particular a forest lit with neon lights, is simply beautiful, as too is the smooth animation of the avatars themselves. Cameron's strength as a director has always lain with visuals effects and the technology. It is a quality he demonstrates most thoroughly with this film. However, despite the spectacle, some might be disappointed with the 3D technology itself. Unlike other pictures such as A Christmas Carol, Avatar opts for more subtle refinements to the visuals, like occasional glimpses of added depth to the picture, rather than launching objects and gesture towards the audience. Avatar is slightly more immediate and sharper than a standard 2D picture, but its 3D technology might not be quite as obvious and satisfying as some might have been expecting.

  For all of its aesthetic qualities, Avatar is highly marred by a script that is highly formulaic, recycled and severely lacking in intellect or depth. This is yet another big budget action film with a narrative devoid of interesting or sympathetic characters. Sam Worthington has a fairly unremarkable and unchallenging role as Jake, who simply doesn't have enough to do in the film. He is completely outdone by the avatar that he voices, who features in all the action scenes. Michelle Rodriguez has again found herself cast as the typical hardened girl, while Giovanni Ribisi and Stephen Lang both have painfully obvious roles as the films typical baddies. At least Zoe Saldana has some emotion in voicing Neytiri but these are not so much fully fleshed out characters as caricatures and archetypes that only develop in the most formulaic way. The film's dialogue, written by Cameron, ranges from merely serviceable to outright poor and no matter how much the sweeping music score would like to arouse emotion in the audience, it is difficult to care about these characters. More frustrating is how rapidly the film becomes predictable because of the number of elements recycled from other films. Once Jake is taken in by the natives it is highly obvious as to what will happen and who he will rally against. Slow motion jumps for cover, exploding spaceships, last second death requests and a forbidden romance, are just some of the clichés that are used throughout a very insubstantial script. Any ethics or moral ambiguities that could have been derived from the obvious allusions to Native Americans and Colonialism are diminished because of the cartoon division between purely good and simply evil. Given that it has been over a decade since Cameron's last big budget feature film, a lot more was expected from the narrative and the array of talent here deserved far better.

  In spite of its failings, Avatar will attract and impress computer game enthusiasts who will see the film purely for its outstanding visuals and the action which unravels on the grandest scale. For those that are expecting something far more intelligent and substantial, this will seem like a formulaic and predictable action movie, given the various problems with the script, the over length and the largely wasted cast. The 3D visuals and cinematic quality alone are not enough to justify the hefty price of admission expected by cinemas these days.

  • Posted Dec 16, 2009 10:22 pm PT
  • Category: Movies
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