Affirming himself as a truly unique filmmaker with the kaiju mockumentary Dai Nipponjin (2007) and a master of high concept comedy with Symbol, easily one the best films of 2009, comedian/director Hitoshi Matsumoto elevates his peculiar craft to an entirely different level with this jidaigekicomedy that had me crying and gasping of laughter. Like his two previous films, Saya Zamurai (aka Scabbard Samurai) is a high-concept comedy relying on repetition of a very simple and clever idea. When an aging swordless ronin (Takaaki Nori, hilarious) and his young daughter (Sea Kumada) are captured by a feodal lord, they are given 30 days to make his son laugh, who has lost his smile with the passing of his mother. 30 days, one attempt per day – that’s it. And because Matsumoto’s mastery of comedic timing and imagination knows no bounds, hilarity ensues. But in the process, Saya Zamurai manages to become much more than a relentless series of genius gags: a film about the intricacies of creative process behind filmmaking and comedy; a film about the absurdity of bushido, mortality and life itself; a film experience unlike any you’re going to have this year. Matsumoto elevates comedy to such degrees it becomes humanistic. Saya Zamurai will illuminate your day, have you marvel at the sheer ingenuity of its cinematic devices and, most importantly, take you through a spectrum of emotions that will have you wiping tears off your face.
Acclaimed British visual artist Steve McQueen (not to be confused with that Steve McQueen) did not make his first steps into the film world unnoticed. Indeed, Hunger, a stunning account of the Irish Hunger Strike of 1981, in which Michael Fassbender’s star-making performance confronted us with the mental and bodily repercussions of corrupt politics, was rightfully hailed as one of the greatest debut films of all time and best films of 2008. It came as no surprise that McQueen was going to team up with Fassbender again (with whom he is evidently building a Scorsese-De Niro relationship) for Shame, his exploration of urban alienation through the lens of an excruciating sex addiction. Incredibly precise in its composition, performances and script, Hunger is the gut-wrenching portrait of Brandon, through which McQueen exhibits his rare talent as a director and Fassbender confirms, yet again, he is one of the great actors of our time. Careful framing and impeccable sound design sustain tension out of thin air as McQueen takes us through a man’s self-destructive sexuality and his single relationship with his sister (interpreted brilliantly by Carey Mulligan) – a dynamic which escalates into a grandiose and spellbinding tragedy one can simply not look away from. Furthermore, McQueen’s unshakable aesthetic– rivalled this year perhaps only by Refn’s stellar Drive – makes it one of the most pleasing visual experiences of the year, in which the architecture and colours of the city have a voice of their own, yet merely amplify the human story McQueen and Fassbender decorticate with impeccable minutiae. Fascinating, beautiful and devastating, Shame is simply one of the best films of the year.
Despite what the trailer might want you to believe, Romain Gavras’ feature film debut is a perfectly idiosyncratic buddy comedy(!), if Napoleon Dynamite had the grittiness of La Haine, by ways of the odd films his fellows of the French electro scene have been producing in the past few years - Daft Punk’s Electroma, Quentin Dupieux’s Steak, Rubber or Justice’s road movie A Cross the Universe, which Gavras co-directed, come to mind. Mostly known for his music videos (M.I.A.’s “Born Free”, spiritual sequel to this film, Justice’s “Stress”, The Last Shadow Puppet’s “The Age of the Understatement”, etc.), Gavras (son of Costa) crafts here a delirious story of chaos and destruction, as two redheads (Cassel and Barthelemy - perhaps the French Jesse Eisenberg), who’ve had enough of the persecution(?) perpetrated against their “race”, decide to drop out of society, hit the road to find the promised land (Ireland) and ultimately get into a heap trouble when they decide to get homicidal. Following very little plot and carried by its visual and performances alone, Notre jour viendra is a fun in-and-out, worth your time if you can appreciate a thin and bizarre film about the search of identity - that could very well be about nothing.
Eric Khoo’s animated docudrama on the life of influential manga artist and gekiga founder Yoshihiro Tatsumi plays out a little bit like Schrader’s Mishima in how it mixes real life events with fiction in a seamless portrait of an artist. Adapting segments of Tatsumi’s autobiography A Drifting Life and 5 short stories, the Singapore production is less an animated film than it is a motion comic, and while slightly disappointing in that respect, remains a vibrant homage to a founding father of alternative manga and vital introduction to stories that, ironically enough, overshadow their creator’s life, beautifully brought to life here in movements, colours and music.
Despite being overlong for my personal taste and tackling a subject matter I’m barely - if even - interested in, I can safely say Wim Wenders latest film is one of the definitive works done about contemporary dance, in any medium. Love letter to the late Pina Bausch, which cinephiles might know from her appearance in Almodóvar’s Hable con ella, Wenders (who was at the screening to give an incredibly heartfelt introductory speech which placed the film back into the context of Pina’s passing) transforms what was initially going to be a documentary about Pina into a celebration of her legacy, work and craft. Constructed around extended sequences of gorgeous 3D(!) choreographies, Pina is one of the rare films to fully understand 3D and successfully use as an enhancer of depth-of-field, a visual tour-de-force which, as impressive as it is and as good an introduction to Pina Bausch’s work as it might offer, has - because of its unconventional structure and pace - a very little audience outside of modern dance enthusiast and Wenders completionists, which - and rightfully so - should be delighted by this impressive visual homage.
Quite similar to Trier’s previous film, the excellent Reprise (2006) which explored Norway’s expanding youth culture within the context of two writers’ rivalry, Oslo examines 24h in the life of a seemingly recovering drug addict, 24 hours in Oslo which he’ll use to wander around, reflect, meet ex-girlfriends, long time friends and old acquaintances, have fun, slip into old habits and such. Beautiful, purposefully loose and insidiously devastating, Oslo, August 31st is the second - and better offering -from a contemporary director I urge you to discover and whose work is almost unsettlingly immediate in its portrayal of Norway’s current young adults.
The FNC 2011 program was revealed today. And I bought my pass as well. Now I’m poor, happy, and left with a headache of scheduling ahead of me. Last year I managed to squeeze 20-odd films in my not-as-hectic schedule, so who knows how this year will go…I’m hopeful though; here’s my preliminary selection/schedule, with venue and showtime in brackets:
Thursday 13th
Mathieu Roy & Harold Crooks’ Surviving Progress (IMP, 19h30)
Sion Sono’s Guilty of Romance (IMP, 21h30)
Friday 14th
Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st (QL, 14h15)
Wim Wenders’ Pina (QL, 16h15)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers, 20h00)
Saturday 15th
Steve McQueen’s Shame (EXC, 13h00)
Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy(EXC, 15h15)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Walter Hill’s The Driver, 20h00)
Sunday 16th
Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter (QL, 19h15)
Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (QL, 21h30)
Monday 17th
Oleg Novkovic’s White White World (EXC, 15h00)
Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (QL, 19h00)
Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (QL, 21h00)
Tuesday 18th
Miaoyan Zhang’s Black Blood (EXC, 12h30)
Pedro Almodovar’s Le Piel Que Habito (QL, 19h00)
[Maybe?] Benoit Pilon’s Décharge (QL, 21h15)
Wednesday 19th
[Miss Miskatonic class]
Tran Anh Hung’s La Ballade de l’Impossible (QL, 18h30)
Romain Gavras’ Notre Jour Viendra (QL, 21h15)
Thursday 20th
[Skip school]
Quashiq Mukherjee’s Gandu (CIN, 16h00)
Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown (QL, 19h00) [or work BLUE SUNSHINE’s Buffy Sing-A-Long, 20h00]
Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko (QL, 21h45)
Friday 21st
Naomi Kawase’s Hanezu (QL, 17h00)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again, 20h00)
![The FNC 2011 program was revealed today. And I bought my pass as well. Now I’m poor, happy, and left with a headache of scheduling ahead of me. Last year I managed to squeeze 20-odd films in my not-as-hectic schedule, so who knows how this year will go…I’m hopeful though; here’s my preliminary selection/schedule, with venue and showtime in brackets:
Thursday 13th
Mathieu Roy & Harold Crooks’ Surviving Progress (IMP, 19h30)
Sion Sono’s Guilty of Romance (IMP, 21h30)
Friday 14th
Joachim Trier’s Oslo, August 31st (QL, 14h15)
Wim Wenders’ Pina (QL, 16h15)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Michael Reeves’ The Sorcerers, 20h00)
Saturday 15th
Steve McQueen’s Shame (EXC, 13h00)
Céline Sciamma’s Tomboy(EXC, 15h15)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Walter Hill’s The Driver, 20h00)
Sunday 16th
Jeff Nichols’ Take Shelter (QL, 19h15)
Béla Tarr’s The Turin Horse (QL, 21h30)
Monday 17th
Oleg Novkovic’s White White World (EXC, 15h00)
Julia Leigh’s Sleeping Beauty (QL, 19h00)
Lars Von Trier’s Melancholia (QL, 21h00)
Tuesday 18th
Miaoyan Zhang’s Black Blood (EXC, 12h30)
Pedro Almodovar’s Le Piel Que Habito (QL, 19h00)
[Maybe?] Benoit Pilon’s Décharge (QL, 21h15)
Wednesday 19th
[Miss Miskatonic class]
Tran Anh Hung’s La Ballade de l’Impossible (QL, 18h30)
Romain Gavras’ Notre Jour Viendra (QL, 21h15)
Thursday 20th
[Skip school]
Quashiq Mukherjee’s Gandu (CIN, 16h00)
Justin Kurzel’s Snowtown (QL, 19h00) [or work BLUE SUNSHINE’s Buffy Sing-A-Long, 20h00]
Shinya Tsukamoto’s Kotoko (QL, 21h45)
Friday 21st
Naomi Kawase’s Hanezu (QL, 17h00)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Gordon Hessler’s Scream and Scream Again, 20h00)
Saturday 22nd
Hitoshi Matsumoto’s Saya Zamurai (IMP, 15h00)
(BLUE SUNSHINE: Marcell Jakovics’ Fehérlofia, 20h00)
Sunday 23rd
Koji Shiraishi’s Shirome (ONF, 14h15)
Daisuke Miyazaki’s End of the Night (ONF, 16h30)
Takashi Miike’s Hara-kiri: Death of a Samurai (QL, 18h45)
Christopher Sun’s 3D Sex & Zen Extreme Ecstasy (QL, 21h15)](http://25.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ls61q9Gcm61qzyw6so1_r1_1280.jpg)
