August Underground

Like the fat loser trying to gross out all the girls by putting bugs in his mouth on the playground. It's not really effective to me. Just sad.
This is the whole film. Boring, stupid and juvenile.

Not really worth the wasted time.

Suddenly all these people begin to swarm the hills. A hundred faces, he sees. But none of them see him. I feel as though I've experienced this before.

Irreversible

Okay, so after I stand alone kicked me right in the balls and both simultaneously and paradoxically made me squeal with delight and madness, I decided to check out the rest of this Noe feller's work.

First and foremost, when I want to know if a film's worth checking out, I generally turn to Sean, the only person in existence that I suspect watches more film than I do.
So, I says, I says, SEAN! Hast thou seent I stand alone?
And he was like; Yes'm.
And I'm all like; DID YOU LOVE IT LIKE YOU SHOULD?
And he says, he says, Yes'm, it's the best thing Noe has done.

So, then I ask about Irreversible.

"Rape and fire extinguishers," he says. "Pretty much all the film has going for it."

In a way, he was kind of right. Those were easily the most impressive scenes in the film. The violence is deliciously graphic, and the rape scene is realistic and impressive on a few levels. About ten minutes of continuous shot for this scene, which isn't necessarily an easy feat to accomplish. Oh, and what's this? THE CAMERA ISN'T CONSTANTLY MOVING DURING THIS SCENE?! YAY! FOR FUCKING FINALLY.

About the first half of the film is shot unconventionally, which on some levels I feel like I should give him credit for, but on others it's like, come on, goddamnit, stop moving the fucking camera. I'm getting nauseous. Luckily I don't drink anymore, or this might make me throw up.

The movie is in reverse chronological order. There are about twelve scenes, and it starts with the ending and works its way back. The problem with this is that once you get past the major plot points in the film that happen towards the middle and end, the rest is just buildup. It's not bad, but it's kinda strange to sit through. The camerawork calms down, but there's less and less happening that's anywhere close to interesting as the film progresses.

One of the most impressive things about this film is that there was no script involved. It was a three page outline of basic events that have to happen, and the rest was improvised and slapped together on the fly. For the method of construction of this movie, it came together really well, and didn't really seem to suffer all that much from its lack of preparation.

I have mixed feelings about this movie. Really good at points, tries too hard to be stylistic in others. For one of my least favorite Noe films, it has two of his most impressive scenes. It's definitely worth the watch, if you have the stomach for this kind of material.

I really like Noe's brain. I wouldn't mind walking around inside of his head for an hour or two.

Oldboy

Can fifteen years of pretend training actually be put to use?


Fuck yes

120 minutes of stupid.

"Eat da poo poo."

"I don't wanna."

"I said eat da poo poo. Eat da poo poo like ice cream."

"I don't wanna eat da poo poo."

"I SAID EAT DA POO POO!"

Den she eats da poo poo. I wonder if Marquis wrote this before or after raping that prostitute with a crucifix.

Oh, by the way, the movie is shit. Pun intended. lololololololol

I stand alone

Quite possibly the most disturbingly beautiful thing I've ever seen in my entire life.

Ju-On (2000)

-Do you have a boyfriend?
-No.
-Oh! How boring!

That's prime fucking character development right there.

Okay, it's almost like I can't rip on it too much. Ju-on is like the autistic kid on the playground who plays with spiders and shits in his pants, and you can't help but feel sorry for him. So you try to be nice and all, but he'd rather just keep on playing with spiders and shitting in his pants, so you just let him be.

The original two movies were made for television, so they're obviously low budget. Both Ju-On and Ju-On: The Grudge turned out to hit lower than my already low expectations. In Ju-On, characters are given very little exposition before they get killed. And that makes it pretty difficult to care about what happens to them.

If you've seen the American remake, you pretty much get the idea of the plot. There's a cursed house. Ghosts come out of the attic or down the stairs and make super scary croaking noises. Everybody who enters the house gets killed. No exceptions.

The remake, however, was based on the sequel to the J-horror film. I was told that the original was much better. Well, uh. J-horror's pretty cool and all, but like all horror film industries, not all ideas are good. Or worth watching. And I guess that's really all I can say about it.

My favorite part of the whole movie was close to the end, when a male character was being attacked by a moving trash bag with a corpse in it, and a resident of the neighborhood it was being filmed in began walking his dog. And although he could probably see the event occurring in front of him, he chose not to react or get out of the shot or do anything. Like trash bags attack people in Japan daily. But when a hungry trash bag starts coming after strangers on the street, the Japanese government seem to advise their citizens to do nothing about it and let nature take its course. It's obviously a problem that Takashi Shimizu smartly includes in his movie to provoke us. We should start helping one another, and maybe we can prevent unfortunate trash bag attacks.