Sucker Punch

Sucker Punch - Dir. Zack Snyder (2011)

It's ironic that Zack Snyder calls his production company, Cruel and Unusual Films, because his latest picture is a cruel and unusual experience. Sucker Punch is a tedious and exhausting exercise in sensory overload. Snyder has been marketed as a "visionary director" for helming a surprisingly good remake of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead as well as the meticulously faithful comic book adaptations, 300 and Watchmen. Visionary? I actually agree. It takes a man of unique vision to make such a dull movie, despite the fact that it revolves around beautiful young girls armed to the teeth with automatic weapons, swords, and mechsuits.

Snyder unleashes his first film based on an original idea, fleshed out by himself and co-writer Steve Shibuya. However, all Sucker Punch proves is that Snyder doesn't have an original idea floating around in his head. Just bits and pieces of all those issues of Heavy Metal he grew up on with whatever hip video games, anime, and comics the kids are all talking about these days.

Sucker Punch opens with a wordless prologue set in the 1960's and featuring Emily Browning as a blonde, pig-tailed girl known only as Baby Doll. The actress provides something akin to narration with a melodiously melancholy version of "Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)" by The Eurythmics. Baby Doll's mother has passed away, leaving her and a younger sister in the charge of their wicked stepfather (Gerard Plunkett), who is angered at being cut out of the will. Baby Doll accidentally shoots her sibling while trying to stop stepdad from molesting her. As a result, he has Baby Doll committed to a mental institute. It's a feel-good movie for the whole family.

The ticking clock counts down when the stepfather bribes a crooked orderly, Blue (Oscar Isaac), to forge a signature from Dr. Gorski (Carla Gugino) in order to have Baby Doll lobotomized. She must find a way to escape from this gothic horror show and does so in more ways than one. Baby Doll imagines the insane asylum is now a high-class nightclub/bordello where she and her fellow inmates are forced to work as dancers and hookers. Blue is re-imagined as the owner/pimp with Gorski as their demanding dance instructor. As Baby Doll is forced to strut her stuff, her mind travels deeper into a second fantasy world where we go from Black Swan to Kill Bill with our heroine dressed in a black schoolgirl outfit and looking like the pinky violence version of Sailor Moon. There, she is tasked by the Wise Man (Scott Glenn in the David Carradine role) to gather a collection of objects which will facilitate her escape.

Soon, she is joined by Sweet Pea (Abbie Cornish), Rocket (Jena Malone), Blondie (Vanessa Hudgens), and Amber (Jamie Chung). Trading in burlesque outfits for dominatrix combat gear, they become an elite fighting force battling Nazi steampunk zombies on an apocalyptic WWII battleground, Orcs and fire-breathing dragons in a dark Lord of the Rings inspired castle, and gleaming robots on a speeding futuristic bullet train.

The action sequences are undeniably the main attraction of Sucker Punch and it's obvious they were Snyder's primary concern. The marketing has revolved entirely around ass-kicking girls. The over-the-top fantasy realms Snyder has dreamed up are stunning, confectionary visuals for the undemanding movie-goer seeking sweet, sweet eye candy. These scenes revel in their ludicrousness. In the first fantasy, Baby Doll delivers a death blow to a giant samurai armed with a Gatling gun then walks away in slow motion as everything explodes behind her and all set to Bjork's "Army of Me." The very idea seems fun at first until you realize that there are no stakes or emotional engagement. Snyder makes no attempt to blur the lines between reality and fantasy. We know we are in the protagonist's imagination as such we know the girls are in no danger because none of it is real. Once the novelty wears off, the spectacular set pieces become more and more dull to the point where the final sequence descends into a chaotic mess as Snyder crams as much as possible into every shot. Snyder tops it off by drowning everything with fem-rock covers of tunes by varied artists like the Stooges, the Beatles, and the Pixies ("Where is My Mind" to really drive the point home). Some of the songs are quite good such as a cover of "White Rabbit" by Emiliana Torrini (another Icelandic artist), but an obnoxious gangsta rap mash-up of Queen's "We Will Rock You," succinctly signifies exactly what went wrong with this jam session of half-baked concepts.

Simply because the film features women wielding weapons larger than their petite frames, it is somehow meant as a rallying cry for girl power. On the contrary, Sucker Punch is merely an indulgent adolescent fanboy wet dream masquerading as female empowerment. It doesn't help that the leads have even less defined personalities than the Spice Girls. The outfits are certainly fetishized with Baby Doll and company going from bustiers, silk stockings, and high heels to bustiers, silk stockings, high heels, and machine guns. There's nothing wrong with that and it isn't dissimilar to the sweaty bare-chested Spartans of 300. No, the main problem is that nearly all the butt kicking the heroines supposedly do only occurs in a second level fantasy, a solitary refuge from a fatalistic world where abuse and sexual assault are constant threats. Even in this dreamland it is the Wise Man who offers the girls sage advice and points them in the direction towards the path to liberation. It's a surprise Snyder didn't go the more obvious route and place Carla Gugino's character into the role of the mentor. Alas, the strong matriarch is reduced to either an ineffectual authority figure or a weeping mess brought to her knees by male brutality.

Has Warner Brothers' golden boy, Zack Snyder, lost some of his luster? It bares bad omens for his upcoming Superman reboot. With a production budget of over $80 million (not factoring in marketing costs), it had to be a more than a disappointment that Sucker Punch (even with overpriced IMAX screenings) was sucker punched by the family friendly, Diary of a Wimpy Kid 2. The negative critical response probably helped in spreading bad word of mouth about the film. It will likely be a long time before Snyder is given free reign as he clearly bit off more than he could chew. Sucker Punch tries to be far too many things as if Snyder polled Comic-Con attendees about their favorite things and smashed them all together. It's Moulin Rouge meets Inception. It's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest with the Pussycat Dolls. It's Girls with Guns, Interrupted. It's just a terrible mess, a thinly veiled video game haphazardly brought to movie screens.

Rating: * ½ (*****)

Paul

Paul - Dir. Greg Mottola (2011)

Along with director Edgar Wright, Simon Pegg and Nick Frost came to prominence in geek culture with their Channel 4 sitcom, Spaced. Their leap to feature films with Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz was wildly successful. Having tackled zombies and cops, Pegg and Frost finally get around to tackling sci-fi with Paul, based on a script they wrote with Greg Mottola (Adventureland Superbad) behind the camera.

Paul makes it known right away who its target demographic with an opening sequence set at Comic-Con. Pegg and Frost are Graeme Willy and Clive Gollings, a graphic artist and science fiction writer, respectively. The best friends traveled to the United States to attend the Mecca of nerd-dom. They ogle the Slave Leias and get starstruck at meeting the robot from Buck Rogers ("…bidi, bidi, bidi."). Afterwards, Graeme and Clive embark on a bromantic road trip in a rented RV to visit famous UFO sites such as Area 51 and Roswell. Coming across a car accident, they are shocked to discover, Paul (Seth Rogen), an alien who has been locked away in a government facility since his spaceship crashed in the 1940's. Graeme and Clive agree to help Paul get to his mothership. Along the way, they also pick up Ruth Buggs (Kristen Wiig), a Christian fundamentalist whose faith is shaken by the appearance of a creature from outer space.

The supporting cast is a tremendous ensemble of players that include Jason Bateman as a no-nonsense man in black on the hunt for Paul with a pair of bumbling FBI agents played by Bill Hader and Joe Lo Truglio. They take their orders from Sigourney Weaver, who appears for most of the picture as a hidden voice sort of like Dr. Klaw from Inspector Gadget. We also have Jeffrey Tambor as sci-fi author Adam Shadowchild and Jane Lynch in a tiny role (a little Jane Lynch goes a long way) as a diner owner. Everyone is good, but none more so than Wiig as both a comic foil to Paul and love interest to Graeme. Wiig takes a rather one-dimensional character in Ruth and makes her extremely likable. She also possesses tremendous comic timing shown off when Ruth awkwardly tries cursing for the first time and launches into a series of nonsensical profanities ("Well, ain't that a bag of tits.").

Seth Rogen may be suffering from overexposure as of late. While you certainly cannot fault the man for venturing out of his comfort zone, the results have been mixed at best (i.e. Observe and Report, The Green Hornet). Here, Rogen goes back to basics providing only motion capture work and his distinctive voice. His Paul pulls a 180 on the prototypical alien by turning him into a rude and gross little guy with a cigarette constantly in his hand. He's E.T. if he were a potty-mouthed, bulb-headed stoner from a galaxy far, far away.

Paul definitely has its weaknesses. As foreigners, Pegg and Frost go the easy route by portraying most of the Americans they come across as bible-thumping zealots or gun-toting rednecks. David Koechner and Friday Night Lights' Jesse Plemons a bit wasted as the latter. Some of the subplots don't pay off, especially the one involving Ruth's domineering father (John Carroll Lynch), which could have easily been cut from the film to tighten the plot. In the end, Paul will live and die by its geek chic sense of humor.

While Shaun of the Dead and Hot Fuzz poked fun at genre conventions, Paul is more concerned with making specific references, many of which will go most everyone's heads. There are tons of requisite Star Wars gags with entire lines of dialogue quoted by various characters. One of the best features a country western band playing their version of the Mos Eisley Cantina song. Other iconic sci-fi flicks like Back to the Future and obscure ones like Mac and Me are referenced as are numerous Spielberg movies to the point where the director himself makes a voice cameo receiving story advice from Paul.

Make no mistake about it, Paul is a movie for geeks and by geeks. As someone who is steeped in the culture (I'm a Comic-Con veteran for nearly two decades), it's hard for me to say how mainstream audiences might take the film. Hopefully, they'll find Paul as hilarious and surprisingly poignant as I have.

Rating: *** (*****)

Rango

Rango - Dir. Gore Verbinski (2011)

Imagine if Hunter S. Thompson and Sergio Leone dropped acid together and had a baby. That mutant freak baby would probably be Rango. Throw in healthy doses of Salvador Dali and Tex Avery and you have an animated film that stands apart from the homogenized CG kids movies flooding multiplexes across the country.

Johnny Depp has been praised for his chameleon-like qualities as an actor so it comes as no surprise when he's called upon to play an actual chameleon. As the titular Rango, he is a pet lizard (with a flair for the theatrical) living inside a glass aquarium struggling to define his own identity. When we meet Rango, he is performing Shakespeare with his only friends a dead fly, a plastic wind-up fish named Mr. Timms, and the naked torso of a Barbie doll. Oh, the movie hasn't even begun to get weird yet.

A car accident sends the aquarium tumbling out of the car where it's smashed into a million pieces across the asphalt road. Rango finds himself lost in the middle of the desert and the first creature he comes across is a Don Quixote-esque armadillo named Roadkill (Alfred Molina). He is so named because he was clearly run over by a car, yet somehow survived. Practically bisected, the poor armadillo still has the tire marks across his flattened stomach. Nope, the movie gets weirder still.

Rango wanders through the scorching desert and finds a dusty Old West town appropriately named Dirt. Through sheer dumb luck, he kills a predatory hawk plaguing the town and re-imagines himself (like any good chameleon) as a deadly gunfighter and becomes the sheriff of Dirt. Rango also romances Beans (Isla Fisher), a desert iguana prone to random spells of catatonia. Her farmland is sought after by the seemingly benevolent Mayor of Dirt, a wheelchair bound desert tortoise voiced by Ned Beatty. It shouldn't be much of a spoiler that the Mayor will be revealed as primary antagonist since Beatty also portrayed the similar Lotso Hugging Bear in Toy Story 3. There's also an owl mariachi band who act as a Greek chorus narrating the journey of Rango.

Rango was produced by Nickelodeon Movies and is the first film fully animated by Industrial Light & Magic with Roger Deakins serving as visual consultant (as he did on Wall-E and How to Train Your Dragon). The animation is impeccable including a gorgeous shot of infinite reflections of the characters inside a giant eyeball. The performances were uniquely captured as well with director Gore Verbinski, working from a script by John Logan (Gladiator, The Last Samurai), using a process he dubbed 'emotion capture.' This is a decidedly low-tech method with the actors performing the scenes on a soundstage. The voices were recorded there and the video tapes were viewed by the animators to properly render movement and facial expressions.

While the majority of animated films tend to look the same, Rango dares to be original. There's no attempt to make the creatures cute and cuddly so the studio can sell them as Happy Meal toys. Even generally adorable animals like rabbits are rendered as mangy oddballs. One character has an arrow going through his eyeball and out the side of his head. Rango himself is hardly the lovable little chameleon from Tangled, his Hawaiian shirt and smashed, lopsided head is meant to evoke the artwork of Ralph Steadman, the long-time collaborator of the late-Hunter S. Thompson.

The subversive humor of Rango is another element that makes the film so successful. The movie is filled with pop culture references which will likely go over the heads of the children in the audience as well as some of the parents accompanying them. Rango makes several references to Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas such as the visual callbacks to Steadman and a cameo from two humans resembling Thompson and Dr. Gonzo. The primary plot point of the movie (involving a water shortage) is lifted straight out of Chinatown while much of the imagery is borrowed from iconic Westerns like High Noon, The Wild Bunch, and A Fistful of Dollars while the score by Hans Zimmer is cribbed from the work of Ennio Morricone. Rango's eventually nemesis, Rattlesnake Jake (Bill Nighy), has a Gatling gun for a tail and a flat-brimmed hat borrowed from Lee Van Cleef. Rango also goes on a vision quest where he meets the Spirit of the West (Timothy Olyphant) and I won't spoil who he's clearly modeled after.

One spectacular action sequence finds the protagonists riding a wagon and being chased by a clan of rodents riding bats ("We can't stop here. This is bat country!"). Somehow the filmmakers weave together references to Apocalypse Now, The Road Warrior, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and Star Wars (it is an ILM production). However, none of the references are thrown in simply to show off how clever and hip everyone is. Neither are they Family Guy gags where they pop up randomly and have nothing to do with the plot. The references don't draw attention to themselves so children won't be scratching their heads while those in the know will get an additional layer of joy. The voice acting doesn't draw attention to itself either as the filmmakers chose the best actors, instead of stunt casting A-list talent. This leads to the casting of great character actors like Ray Winstone, Stephen Root, and Harry Dean Stanton.

Rango earned a PG rating and contains some decidedly adult humor. One of the townsfolk mentions how he found a human spinal column in his feces. So parents should be warned in case their child asks them questions about prostate exams.

The year may have barely begun, but Rango is already the frontrunner for Best Animated Film of 2011. With Pixar releasing the anemic looking sequel, Cars 2, it is hard imagine another picture knocking Rango off the pedestal. The fact that a movie so strange and trippy was made in the Hollywood system is astounding. Most likely it exists solely because of Verbinski and Depp's success on the Pirates of the Caribbean series. The story may be familiar, but the film is a unique and witty take on the classic hero's journey.

Rating: ***½ (*****)

Battle: Los Angeles

Battle: Los Angeles - Dir. Jonathan Liebesman (2011)

Battle: Los Angeles takes the sci-fi spectacle of alien invasion movies like Independence Day and War of the Worlds and combines it with the gritty realism of combat films like Saving Private Ryan and Black Hawk Down.

Battle: LA opens promisingly enough as the invasion is in full force and Earth's armies are in disarray. Cities have fallen and casualties are numerous. Then, the rug gets pulled out from under the audience. Yes, this is one of those movies that starts in the middle of the story, and then takes you back to the beginning in order to slowly introduce the main characters. Not the best example, but Predators knew how to do it right. Don't bother with a lengthy prologue; just drop the characters (and the audience) right into the thick of things. Flesh the characters (however thin) out through their actions while moving the story forward, rather than stopping it dead for extended dialogue scenes. But, I digress.

Aaron Eckhart is SSgt. Michael Nantz, who is putting in for retirement following a disastrous tour in the Middle East when he lost all the Marines under his command. That retirement is nixed when meteorites begin raining down on Earth. Nantz is assigned to a platoon out of Camp Pendleton and headed up by Lt. Martinez (Ramon Rodriguez), a fresh face straight out of officer school. The Marines initially believe they are to assist with emergency efforts. They are horrified when news footage shows alien forces laying waste to the beaches of Santa Monica.

The platoon are dropped into L.A. and tasked with rescuing any civilians taking shelter inside a nearby police precinct house. Their group takes heavy losses during an alien ambush and barely makes it to the police station. Along the way, they join up with a ragtag group of survivors from other military branches, including Air Force Tech Sgt. Elena Santos (Michelle Rodriguez). Inside the building, they find only two orphaned children, Joe Rincon (Michael Pena) and his son Hector (Bryce Cass), and a veterinarian (Bridget Moynahan).

I'd describe the Marines in greater detail, but I honestly couldn't remember anything specific about most of them. The platoon is a diverse mix of soldiers from many backgrounds, including a Nigerian medic and another Marine (played by pop singer Ne-Yo) nicknamed Specs because of his thick black-rimmed glasses. There's a fellow from Jersey, a confident sharpshooter, a rookie who has yet to see combat, and Michelle Rodriguez in the Michelle Rodriguez role. I'm surprised they didn't trot out the guy who dies five minutes after showing everyone a picture of his girl back home. One soldier suffers from post-traumatic stress, but aside from an early scene in his psychiatrist's office, it never comes up again probably because it was redundant of Nantz's subplot.

Making the characters further indistinguishable is the fact they are dressed in full combat gear along with the heavy use of handheld cameras. Luckily, the battle scenes aren't as nauseating as some of Paul Greengrass's work. I've gotten use to seeing shaky camera work for action sequences, but not for ordinary dialogue scenes. When Nantz speaks to his CO, the camera bobs and weaves to dizzying effect.

Unable to generate any genuine emotion, the filmmakers go for cheap tactics such as throwing children off bridges and cutting to close-ups of their crying faces whenever possible. The clichéd characters speak in a continuous stream of clichés along the lines of, "Don't die on me now, man," "Give this to my wife…," "Nobody gets left behind," "America, f**k yeah!" In the end, Eckhart delivers a stirring speech to rally the men and it's a credit to the actor he was able to lift it above the inherent pandering jingoism. With his good looks and cleft chin, Eckhart is suitably cast as the all-American G.I. Joe.

Battle: Los Angeles is on par with watching someone play Call of Duty for two hours with the volume on full blast. If you're the forgiving sort who is only in it for cool special effects and lots of explosions, Battle: Los Angeles will offer you the thrills of a summer blockbuster three months early.

Rating: ** (*****)

Drive Angry

Drive Angry 3D - Dir. Patrick Lussier (2011)

How have we been subjected to two Nicolas Cage movies when it's only March? Drive Angry is exactly what it advertises, Nic Cage is angry and he drives. He drives angry.

Cage sits behind the wheel as John Milton. Yeah, because I wouldn't have taken this movie seriously unless they made a Paradise Lost reference. Anyways, Milton literally escapes from Hell to hunt down Jonah King (Billy Burke), a cult leader who murdered Milton's daughter and plans to sacrifice her baby for a satanic ritual. Milton blows bad guys away with his shotgun and is completely irresistible to every woman he comes across. Who could resist that luxurious head of greasy, stringy blonde hair? Milton receives assistance from a feisty waitress named Piper (Amber Heard), who drives a '69 Dodge Charger. Dogging their trail is The Accountant (William Fichtner), a demonic emissary, who is half-Terminator and half-Anton Chigurh. He cuts a swath of destruction across the south as he attempts to retrieve the errant Milton. David Morse also has a brief role as a former associate of Milton's by the name of Webster. I'm guessing his first name was Daniel, as in the Devil and…

Drive Angry is the latest film to try and recapture the exploitation magic of low-budget 70's grindhouse cinema, which has become so fashionable as of late. Unfortunately, it lacks the inventiveness of Machete and the hilarity of Black Dynamite. There is plenty of blood, bullets, and boobs to be found, but there's nothing particularly exciting or original about the action sequences. In a rip-off of Shoot 'Em Up, Cage kills a horde of henchmen while simultaneously banging a buxom blond. Later, the Accountant plows through a police blockade in a tanker truck while listening to "That's the Way (I Like It)." While shot in 3D, Drive Angry doesn't benefit a lick from the process with very little difference between it and conversion jobs. The 3D effects amount to nothing more than bullets and random debris flying at the screen.

When the writers aren't peppering in weak literary references to prove that they passed high school English, they’re concocting ludicrous dialogue like, "Hell is already walking the Earth," and Amber Heard's classic, "Ah'm gonna tell everyone what ah caught you doin' with mah pink dildo."

Speaking of whom, Heard's hotness is the best thing going on in Drive Angry. Director Patrick Lussier (who also helmed the atrocious My Bloody Valentine 3D) knows enough to give the male demographics a Megan Fox shot of Amber Heard with the young starlet dressed in cut-off denim shorts and bent over the hood of a car. The second best thing in the movie is William Fitchner, who resembles a younger Christopher Walken, gives a scene chewing performance as the Accountant. On the other hand, Cage is surprisingly restrained and this is one instance when you wish the cuffs were taken off. Every once in a while you see a gleam in his eyes as if Cage were about to go batshit bonkers. An unleashed Cage can be a sight to behold as evidenced in Wicker Man and Bad Lieutenant. Alas, he's just plain dull and uncharismatic.

Drive Angry is clearly marketed towards muscle car driving, meat eating, red blooded American males. Too bad for Summit Entertainment, they avoided it in droves. Drive Angry has gone down as the lowest grossing 3D movie given a wide release. The film all but disappeared from theaters a week after opening, pushed off 3D screens by an even bigger box office bomb in Disney's Mars Needs Moms.

Rating: * ½ (*****)

Season of the Witch

Season of the Witch - Dir. Dominic Sena (2011)

Season of the Witch has little to do with the song by British folk singer Donovan nor does it bare any connection to George Romero's Season of the Witch or the threequel, Halloween III: Season of the Witch. Alas, it is another entry in the recent rash of period actioners that has given us Roman legionnaires (Centurion, The Eagle), Vikings (Outlander, Valhalla Rising), and medieval knights. Much like Christopher Smith's Black Death, Season of the Witch revolves around heavy handed religious themes and the Bubonic Plague of the 14th Century.

Nicolas Cage, sporting the same hairdo from The Sorcerer's Apprentice, stars as Behman, a knight in service of the Church alongside his wise-cracking sidekick, Felson (Ron Perlman). Together they rack up an impressive body count during the Crusades, but desert ranks when they are ordered to slaughter women and children. The armor-clad BFFs make their way back to England only to find their homeland stricken by disease. Unfortunately, Eric Idle never shows up shouting, "Bring out your dead."

Behman and Felson are called upon by an ailing Cardinal (Christopher Lee), who believes the disease is the work of a young witch (Claire Foy) they have captured. The witch is to be taken to an abbey where the monks hope to reverse the spell she has cast. Behman sees only a frightened girl and agrees to act as escort in order to ensure she is given a fair trial. Our intrepid heroes shore up their ranks with a collection of D-listers from the most unimaginative Dungeons & Dragons session ever. They're joined by another warrior in Eckhart (Ulrich Thomsen), Debelzaq the fanatical priest (Stephen Campbell Moore), Hagamar the swindler (Stephen Graham), and Kay (Robert Sheehan, looking like a Dark Age version of Jay Baruchel), an altar boy with dreams of knighthood.

The last time Cage teamed up with director Dominic Sena was in the god-awful remake of Gone in 60 Seconds so expectations are undoubtedly lowered here. The movie is a complete mess with bland action sequences highlighted by piss-poor special effects. A finale featuring the protagonists battling zombie ninja monks isn't nearly as cool as it sounds. No one can make up their mind about the dialogue as actors speak in either faux-medieval speak or corny, contemporary idioms ("We're gonna need more holy water."). Cage drones on with his trademark inflections as if he had narcolepsy and doesn't even bother with a British accent. Neither does Perlman who is easily the best thing in an otherwise dreadful picture. For some reason the English-born Stephen Graham doesn't speak with his natural voice, instead utilizing some indiscernible East Coast accent as if he were still playing Baby Face Nelson in Public Enemies or Al Capone on Boardwalk Empire.

The screenplay by Bragi F. Schut has bounced around Hollywood since 2000, went into production in 2009 and was originally slated for release in 2010 before being dumped into the theatrical graveyard of January 2011. If only studio execs had the same ardent devotion to superior projects that still lay dormant. For his part, Cage wanted to make a film reminiscent of both the old Hammer horror pictures and Roger Corman drive-in productions. Season of the Witch is nowhere near as creepy or fun. Ludicrously enough, Sena took inspiration from Bergman's The Seventh Seal. Cage playing chess with Death might have made a better movie. A completely unhinged Cage playing board games with the William Sadler Death from Bill & Ted's Bogus Journey would have been awesome.

Rating: * (*****)

I Saw the Devil

I Saw the Devil - Dir. Kim Ji-woon (2010)

South Korea is the place to go for the true connoisseur of cinema seeking new and exciting films. Some of the best pictures of the past decade have come from South Korea, such as the war epic Tae Guk Gi, the off-beat rom-com My Sassy Girl, and the horror comedy The Host. There's one genre the South Korean filmmakers have lately been able to pull off better than anybody and that is the hard-assed, ultraviolent revenge movie. One need not look any further for prime examples than movies like The Chaser or Park Chan-wook's brilliant Vengeance Trilogy comprised of Sympathy for Mr. Vengeance, Oldboy, and Lady Vengeance. I Saw the Devil isn't quite as successful as its predecessors, but it does provide a gut-wrenching experience on a purely visceral level.

I Saw the Devil is an all-star collaboration with Kim Ji-woon in the director's seat. Kim first received international press during the Asian horror boom with A Tale of Two Sisters (which was remade by Dreamworks as The Uninvited), then followed it up with the gangster flick A Bittersweet Life and the wild Western homage The Good, the Bad, the Weird. His newest picture features Oldboy star Choi Min-sik and screen idol, Lee Byung-hun, who is probably more familiar to Western audiences as Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe: Rise of Cobra.

Choi is Kyung-chul, a merciless serial killer targeting young women. He bludgeons them then takes his victims to his hideout where he decapitates and dismembers them with a makeshift guillotine. Kyung-chul's latest victim is Joo-yun (Oh San-ha), the daughter of a local police chief and the fiancée to Lee's Soo-hyun, an agent for the National Intelligence Service (South Korea's CIA). Both men are horrified when Joo-yun's body parts are found scattered across a riverbank. Thanks to the father, Soo-hyun gathers a list of suspects and quickly zeroes in on Kyung-chul just as he is about to claim murder an abducted schoolgirl. This leads into the hook of I Saw the Devil.

Soo-hyun beats Kyung-chul into unconsciousness, but does not kill him. That would be too easy. Instead, he plants a tracking device inside Kyung-chul and releases him into the wild. Soo-hyun's plan for revenge is to punish Kyung-chul, let him go, follow, then punish him again before he can quench his murderous lusts. Rinse, lather, repeat. Predictably, Soo-hyun's hare-brained scheme of extreme cockblocking goes terribly wrong, placing his surviving loved ones in grave danger.

I Saw the Devil just barely misses the mark in qualifying for torture porn. Those of you with a weak stomach may be thankful that the grisliest stuff occurs off-screen or hidden in the shadows. Somehow this makes the attacks even creepier, including one (seen in silhouettes) in which Kyung-chul repeatedly smashes a wrench into a woman's skull. The squeamish should still be ready to cover their eyes at any moment, especially during a close-up where Soo-hyun uses a scalpel to sever his nemesis's Achilles tendon. It should be noted that the film went through extensive editing to remove violent content in order to receive a theatrical release in South Korea.

The story isn't an easy one to engage with and not just because the queasy violence. The film forces the audience to identify with two rather loathsome characters. If you're looking for someone to root for, forget about it. However, I Saw the Devil never asks you to, it simply drags you along for this twisted cat and mouse game. Any sympathy for Soo-hyun quickly turns to revulsion when you discover rescuing Kyung-chul's intended victims is completely incidental to the primary objective of tormenting the killer. When Kyung-chul traps a nurse, he forces her to strip and perform fellatio on him. Only then does Soo-hyun make his move. He could have easily prevented this happening at all. It isn't so much about saving lives as prevent Kyung-chul from taking them.

Therein lays the film's greatest weakness, an unshakable and unsettling misogynistic bent. Female characters exist solely to be slain or saved. They are terrified, frail, and naïve. This isn't a diverse collection of women either; they are all young and beautiful.

At nearly two and a half hours long, I Saw the Devil is about thirty to forty minutes too long. There's also a bizarre left turn into Texas Chainsaw Massacre territory in the middle of the picture when Kyung-chul meets two friends who not only happen to be serial killers too, but cannibals as well. The script by Park Hoon-jung attempts to convey the futility of revenge and the ways in which it eats away at the soul. Soo-hyun has stared into the abyss, the abyss has stared back, and he relishes it. But, the themes were already richly explored in Park's films. Here, it feels like empty and ponderous moralizing.

Despite the excessive runtime and rough treatment of women, the film has a remarkable visual style thanks to Kim Ji-woon. The dark mood manages to make Seven look like a Saturday morning cartoon show. Kim knows how to construct fantastic action sequences. The movie opens with a chilling scene of Joo-yun being assaulted on a snow covered road, but the centerpiece irrefutably is a scene where Kyung-chul stabbing two men to death as they ride in a taxi. Blood sprays everywhere like an overworked sprinkler system as the camera circles around and around in one take. Kim should definitely be considered one of the country's top directors alongside Park and Bong Joon-ho (Memories of Murder, The Host, and Mother).

I Saw the Devil is a nasty piece of work. The visuals are exceptionally stylish. If David Fincher did Hong Kong action, it might look something like I Saw the Devil. The acting is strong with Choi Min-sik portraying the wild-eyed mania that made him famous. His sheer animalism is contradicted by Lee Byung-hun's handsome and stoic visage. The contradictions are also apparent in a plot which alternates between enthralling and repugnant.

Rating: **

Inside Job

Inside Job - Dir. Charles Ferguson (2010)

The film that cost over $20,000,000,000,000 to make.

If you have a pulse and a conscience, Inside Job will make your blood boil. Stick your head in the sand and ignore this picture, if you wish, but ignorance is not always bliss. Former software entrepreneur Charles Ferguson turned his attention to documentary filmmaking with 2007's No End in Sight, a critical look at the Bush Administration's mishandling of the Iraq occupation. Ferguson's second feature, Inside Job, is a slickly made and meticulously researched expose of the current financial crisis. To put it bluntly, this is the story of how the corporate elite raped the global economy and reaped the benefits while the world burned around them.

In an opening prologue, the film uses the economic crash of Iceland as a microcosm for the chaos that was to come. The tiny island, whose most famous export is Bjork, saw its three largest banks rack up a debt of $19 billion following government de-regulation.

Ferguson traces the recession's roots to the massive de-regulation of the Reagan era, which lead to the prophetic savings and loan scandals of the mid-80's. However, Inside Job plays no favorites. It may have its fair share of Bush bashing, but it also criticizes Clinton as well as Obama, whose lofty promises of stricter policing fizzled as his administration has become content to enforce the status quo. This incestuous relationship between the government and the financial sector (which has also spread into academia) is equally covered as Ferguson attempts to untie this Gordian knot of back door deals and kickbacks or should I say "campaign contributions?" Politicians are bought and paid for, Wall Street types worm their way into key positions, all so they can rewrite laws to allow banks to engage in riskier ventures with their investors' money. The same officials charged with policing such activities are the very same who

The film also does a splendid job explaining Byzantine concepts such as derivatives, sub-prime loans, and credit debt swaps to the layman. Even then, it's still difficult to conceive how such things could possibly work. Perhaps, that's why the whole house of cards fell apart.

Unlike Michael Moore, Ferguson keeps his involvement to a minimum, but he cannot keep his indignation in check when confronted with the sheer incompetence and boldfaced lies of the few financial advocates who agreed to be interviewed. Most stammer through their segments grasping at straws to provide a reasonable answer while others offer inane doubletalk to justify the massive payouts Wall Street CEOs gave themselves while their own companies crumbled. The subject who comes off the worst is likely Frederic Mishkin, a current professor at Columbia Business School who co-authored a report entitled, "Financial Stability in Iceland," which was published a year before the country's collapse. Mishkin was appointed to the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve in 2006 before resigning in 2008 (amidst the onset of the crisis) to deal with more pressing matters…the editing of his textbook.

Footage from Senate hearings is equally damning. Daniel Sparks, a chairman for Goldman Sachs, is called out for aggressively selling investments, despite labeling them as “shitty” multiple times in an email sent to another top executive. One-time Manhattan Madam, Kristin Davis, surprises no one when she states high-priced hookers and cocaine were the lifeblood of Wall Street traders.

In the end, the current recession was not solely caused by bad investments and people buying homes they couldn't possibly afford. It was created and exacerbated by numerous individuals who committed massive amounts of fraud on a worldwide scale. Yet, no one has been held accountable and no one has been convicted of any wrongdoing. If you embezzled money from your company to gamble in Vegas, you would go to prison. If you ran a pyramid scheme and bilked the life savings from naïve octogenarians, you would go to prison. If you committed these crimes in the boardroom or a penthouse office, you get a $500 million bonus.

Inside Job won the Oscar for Best Documentary during the recent Academy Awards broadcast. Ironically, ABC ran multiple ads for J.P. Morgan-Chase as they disingenuously praised themselves for "helping" so many people during the economic crisis.

Rating: *** ½ (*****)