13 Assassins

These guys? You don't want to fuck with these guys.

Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins is what 300 should have been. It's a violent, historical action movie about the few facing impossible odds, but still has personal drama and character arcs to it. It uses shocking imagery and gore to great effect, instead of just splattering it around to appear edgy. It's made by people from the country it takes place in, so it doesn't neuter the setting to make it more relatable to modern (Yank) audiences.

And I was expecting this movie to be really bad, because I'm still bitter about Ninja Assassin sucking balls. There aren't even any ninja in this movie.

13 Assassins is set in 1844, during Japan's Shogunate period, and the last days of the samurai. Lord Matsudaira Naritsugu is a shogun's younger brother, and will soon ascend to being shogun himself, which doesn't sit well with his subjects-to-be. This is mostly because he's an almost comically heinous monster who uses his high position as an excuse to rape, murder and torture people left and right. The shogun's advisors decide that something must be done, and hire Shimada Shinzaemon, a veteran samurai, to assassinate him. Shinzeamon recruits a ragtag group of warriors to achieve the task, knowing full well that even if they succeed at their task, they will have to give up their former lives for good after having assassinated the shogun's brother.

Now, as much as I like to laud any movie for not treating its viewers like idiots, I have to admit that there is such a thing as expecting too much of them. The early parts of the movie are filled with exposition about the current situation, and you're expected to remember a lot of names and faces to keep up with who's doing what and what their relations to the others in the room are. After about a third of the movie has gone, the planning stage starts, and the pacing gets better. I don't want to spoil anything about the action climax, but let me just say... they're going to have to rename that rule "The Inverse Samurai Law", now.

Aside from the pacing issues and some really shoddy editing, the movie succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be: a shocking, grim action drama where a lot of people get cut up with katana, and the essence of bushido is inspected and questioned.

I saw this movie at the Helsinki International Film Festival, a Finnish event where non-mainstream movies are shown in big cinemas. It premiered in Japan about a year ago, so I don't know if it's running in the cinema near you. If it is, I highly recommend it.

I wish Takashi Miike the best of luck with his next project: The Phoenix Wright film adaptation. (I'm not making this up.)

Midnight in Paris

The best movie poster yet on this blog.

Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) is an indecisive, gibbering Hollywood screenwriter, and a hopeless romantic. While visiting Paris with his fiancée Inez (Rachel McAdams) and the in-laws, he realises that he's in love with the city, its rich culture and history. This annoys his missus-to-be, as she's planning on moving to Malibu. When taking a walk on the streets at nighttime to escape Inez's annoying acquintances, he stumbles upon an antique car that takes him to 1920s Paree, where everyone is famous and restaurants serve free champagne to bohemian artists and authors. Gil embarks on a journey of reflection and discovery, and has to come to realise how what he sees in the past applies to his own life.

Midnight in Paris is the first Woody Allen film I've ever seen. Despite having this hole in my filmbuff-cred, I'm aware of Allen's style. The character of Gil is obviously written to be played by the director's younger self, and Owen Wilson was only hired as a stand-in. Wilson himself hasn't been in a single good movie before this that I'm aware of, but he's not that bad an actor. I love his body and facial acting, but the character can get a bit grating over time due to the neurotic tics and stuttering Allen is famous for.

The real showpieces of the movie are the music, the costuming, the supporting actors and Paris itself. The way the city is shot is like a really well done ad for tourism, and I won't blame anyone for wanting to visit Paris after seeing the film. The scenes taking place in the 1920s really have a sense of energy and a lust for life to them, and all the actors playing famous people from the past are magnificent. Corey Stoll as Ernest Hemingway will make you to ask: "Who is this actor and why isn't he in more movies?" Adrien Brody gets a one-scene part as Salvador Dalí, and he's by far one of the most memorable and hilarious things I've seen in a film in some time.

I know that all this talk about early 20th century culture may make some people nod their heads politely and start looking for another movie, but this film isn't really snobby or pretentious, per se. It's about a pretentious snob, to an extent, but I never felt like it was trying to distance itself from the laymen among the audience. In order to enjoy the movie, you don't really need to know more of Hemingway, Dalí, Zelda Fitzgerald and Pablo Picasso than that they existed, and were artists.

It's a mood movie, all about imparting the right emotions upon the viewers, but alas, it seems to take that as an excuse to neglect its story and characters. For a film that does a great bit of gushing over how great the artists of the -20s were, and honestly admiring the depth their works held, Midnight in Paris is a very straightforward movie. There is almost no ambiguity or subtlety about it. The main theme of the story is outright stated ten minutes before the credits, and the resolution is quite predictable. I dunno, maybe putting Hemingway in your movie makes me expect too much out of it, but I was kinda left asking: "That's it?"

So, to sum up, I liked the film. I can see why others would find it boring or annoying, but I still recommend giving it a chance if you think there's a chance you'll find it entertaining. As far as romantic comedies go, one could definitely do worse.