Categories
Cinema Features

The spider is back

Maybe many of you did not know that before this original appearance, Stan Lee dismissed the design for Spider-man that Jack Kirby initially drew. In this first design, that was never published, Spider-man was heavier and with more muscles, and instead of acquiring his powers because of the radiation, he could get his amazing powers carrying a ring. Ditko's ideas prevailed.

Marvel did not believe in the success of the new hero, and the first adventures were published in a magazine that was going to be imminently closed. In August 1962 Spider-man's first adventures were published in the magazine Amazing Fantasy #15. More issues of the magazine were published and the readers quickly identified with the new hero and asked for more. The result: the first issue of The Amazing Spider-Man was published in March 1963. The rest is comic history.

{mosimage}The first appearances of Spider-man in films date back in the 60s and have nothing to do with the enormous budgets of the Sam Raimi's movies. The first adaptation is an amateur movie directed and performed by Donald F. Glut done in 1963 in which Spiderman fights Dr. Lightning. Three years later, the first commercial Spider-man was done in Turkey (Örümcek adam, 1966). More popular were the tv movies and series in the end of the 70s.

Thanks to Sam Raimi the series went big in 2002. It was the first film of what it is expected to be a series of six. And what can the spectator expect in this third Spider-man film: Well, amazing new enemies such as Sandman and Venom, the extreme beauty of Kirsten Dunst as the red-haired Mary Jane, and overall the excitement of watching Spider-man dressed in a black costume fighting against his most powerful enemy: his dark side.

Categories
Cinema Interviews

Commander Zero

Around the streets of Manugua, Edén Pastora carries a gun while driving a car brought from Mexico and speaks to the camera. It is the first sequence of the documentary Edén Pastora – Commander Zero (Eden Pastora – Komentaja Nolla). The film portrays one of the most intriguing characters of the revolution in Nicaragua and follows him in the municipal elections for mayor of Manuagua in 2006.

The documentary was made by Spanish filmmaker Álvaro Pardo, who has been living and working in Finland since 1979 when he decided to moved from Madrid to study cinema at the School of Motion Picture, Television and Production Design in Helsinki. “I didn't mean to stay this long in Finland. I was just a visiting student, trying to learn editing and cinema,” he remembers, “but then I started working, I got married and well, I'm still here.”

 

Why did you decide to make a documentary about Edén Pastora?

The idea came to my mind when I read an article that said that Edén Pastora was selling all his possessions because he didn't have any money to live. I was shocked because he had been such a great personality. We all also know that all the Sandinsta leaders are millionaires now, so I wanted to know why he was so poor.

How is possible that he didn't have the money?

He was considered a traitor, and a CIA agent, but he was only a guy who disagreed with the Sandinista regime. He received money from the CIA just to do something in which he believed, like he could have taken the money from any other source. He didn't have anything to do with the counter-revolution in Honduras.

{mosimage}Was it easy to get in touch with Edén?

Actually, it was. I got lucky. I didn't know much about Nicaragua and I didn't know anybody there. I contacted the author of an article I read that told good things about Edén. I contacted the journalist and he got me in touch with Edén. When I arrived there, Edén was in Mexico to get a car and nobody knew when he was coming back. After five or six days, he appeared. He's always very keen to be interviewed and I started the pre-production.

How was the filming?

It got a bit complicated because Edén never tells what he's planning to do the next day. It's a custom from his guerrilla days. Many people hate him there and would like to see him dead. I made two trips to Nicaragua. The first lasted around twenty days and then he decided to run for major, so I came back for another twenty days.

Is Managua a dangerous place?

Yes, it is. There's a lot of poverty and people have nothing to lose. Anything you have is more than they have.

What is your opinion about Edén now that you spent such a long time with him?

I always thought that many things he said in media were not true, but after spending time with him, everything he says is true. He is very optimistic and charismatic. One tends to like him so much that one is willing to do anything for him. On a bigger scale one might be able to fight and die for him.

Edén Pastora – Commander Zero will be show on YLE 2 on 8th May 2200

Categories
Cinema Features

A film (finally) exposed

Louhimies is the most acclaimed director inside Finnish borders in recent times and, with only five films, he has achieved a great reputation and, more importantly, captured a personal style in each one of his films. Having received the Jussi award two consecutive years, he is also a controversial character, not only because of the plots of the films, but also concerning issues in the post-making, which contrasts with his calm attitude. However, it seems that internationally, the Kaurismäki brothers are still unreachable when referring to exporting Finnish films abroad.

Riisuttu Mies will surely create a great deal of discussion among the most conservative sectors of the Finnish population. Nevertheless, the topic is quite controversial, since throughout the movie we follow a gang of peculiar priests, male and female, that split their thoughts between the love for God and the love for the bottle, the power and frantic sex – not exactly the kind of movie that many religious people would feel comfortable watching.

{mosimage}Many can argue that Louhimies pushes their stories to limits that have more to do with fantasy than with the reality of Finnish society, but it is certain that his acid critic always hides some parts of truth. The director is obsessed over showing us the darker side of Finnish society that goes further than lakes, sauna and Lapland. And surely he achieves it with his raw style.

In the main roles we find a group of old collaborators in his previous movies: Samuli Edelmann as the fatty childish priest aspiring to bishop –who is a director and musician himself, having released Rock and Roll Never Dies some months ago, Matleena Kuusniemi in the role of his calculative wife and Laura Malmivaara (who also happens to be the wife of the director) as the hippie young priest, Eve's apple. For those of you who live in or visit Turku, the locations of the churches may be familiar.

With Riisuttu Mies, some themes are repeated by the obsessions of Louhimies, such as the difficulties in love relations, the infidelity and the flexibility of moral values. You can like his visions of society or not, but surely it is worthy to give it a try and watch it.

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

Goya’s Ghosts

Milos Forman’s new film, Goya´s Ghosts, offers a biography (and it seems that the polemic Czech director never gets tired of the genre) of one of the most important painters in all history, the genuine and genial Goya, interpreted by Stellan Skarsgård. But it must be said, that the appeal of a new Goya´s biography is used in this case as a mere excuse for representing a critical vision of Spain during that twisted time of darkness and light. Goya´s role gets quickly eclipsed by another superb performance by Javier Bardem, who is able to provoke, equally, love and hate in the eyes of the spectator. Goya´s artwork has a secondary role in the plot, since Forman is more obsessed with showing the fight between the reason of the French Illustration and the madness of religious fanaticism, with the obsolete role of a numb monarchy in the middle. And he certainly achieves it.

On the other hand, it is a pity that such an interesting figure as Goya himself does not get more importance in a film whose title points directly to him. Maybe, we will have to wait until Forman decides to make a film about the Spanish Inquisition (or a new biography of its leader, Torquemada) to get an accurate description of the genial painter from Aragon.

Milos Forman´s film passes the test of the Spanish Inquisition, but somebody should teach him some more lessons of history: regarding how the Spanish citizens were able to fight the French oppressor without such a huge help from the British, as he wants us to believe on screen.

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

He-Men go to war

Take 300: a mixture of one car commercial/remake director, one sexy ‘graphic novel’ (from the creator of Sin City), spiced up with a few speeches about freedom, and served lukewarm with IMAX-tailored cinematography. The result: a product that even the creators refer to as the ‘300 experience’ rather than calling it a film.

Director Zack Snyder (of Dawn of the Dead-remake fame) remakes Gladiator and Sin City at the same time and casts snarling action figure Gerard Butler as the take-no-shit Leonidas, the king of the Spartans and patron of chiselled abs. And when Snyder expands Frank Miller’s original comic book by adding a political intrigue sub-plot, where limp-wristed liberals do their worst to hinder the brave Spartans from beating the hell out of a force of million Persians lead by the enigmatic Xerxes (Rodrigo Santoro), it’s hard not to start seeing this as a republican wargasm film. But maybe drawing such conclusions from this film are uncalled for, since 300 is pure entertainment, which does not concern itself with depth.

After such a my critical onslaught, it has to be said that 300 is nonetheless a fast-paced yarn and a stunning visually: every shot is a piece of art, sometimes directly lifted from Miller’s source work and the battle scenes are, at their best, breathtaking. Still, it’s hard to care for any of the two-dimensional characters and the end result is ultimately unsatisfying: this is combat pornography, where you can fast forward the boring bits and watch spears pierce flesh and blood-spattered man-flesh gleam. Which makes watching 300 like watching somebody play a game on a super-charged game console rather than sitting at the cinema.

Categories
Cinema Features

…And justice for all

Alfred
Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick, Federico Fellini, Robert Altman and Cecil B.
DeMille are some of the film directors who never won the Best Director Academy
Award, and it seemed Martin Scorsese was to follow that black list after five nominations.
All of his generation mates had won the award: Coppola, Lucas, and Spielberg,
but in February Scorsese finally joined the club and was rewarded for his film The Departed.

The award
now feels more like an honorary Oscar before it is too late. Even though the
film is an outstanding effort, it pales into insignificance when compared to Scorsese’s
masterpieces, such as Raging Bull,
which is now being rerun in selected theatres across Finland.

Raging Bull (or Kuin
Raivo Härkä
in Finnish) is a tragic biopic based on the life of the harsh
obsessive middle-weight boxing champion Jake LaMotta. The film is popular for Robert
De Niro’s extreme interpretation. He gained more than 25 kilos to play LaMotta
in his declining days in the '60s and he trained as a boxer entering three
matches in Brooklyn, winning two of them. It was actually De Niro who convinced
Scorsese to make the movie.

In spite of
his initial lack of interest, Scorsese took the movie to his own style. He
portrayed life in the Italian ghetto in New York, adding many elements of first
generation Italian-American subculture.

The drama
and the real punishment of LaMotta were outside the ring and his alienation
from his family and brother. Nevertheless, Scorsese put great effort into the
fighting scenes. The sequences were rigorously choreographed beforehand and
planned frame by frame in the storyboard.

The black
and white cinematography by Michael Chapman gives the film a tone that resembles
the boxing films from the 1940s and '50s, and it seems timeless. With the passage
of time, the praise for Raging Bull
has grown and it is now seen as a great American movie, plus one of Scorsese’s
best. In 1986, Aki Kaurismäki paid homage in his hilarious short film Rocky VI.

Raging Bull was the first Best Director nomination for
Martin Scorsese, which was one of eight nominations including Best Picture, and
won Robert De Niro a Best Actor award and Thelma Schoonmaker an award for Best
Film Editing. More than 25 years later, thanks to The Departed, Martin Scorsese is awarded with his well deserved
Academy Award.

Categories
Cinema Features

The camera keeps on rolling

Born in
Lithuania, but exiled to America in 1949 after spending some time in a
displaced persons camp, the life of Jonas Mekas is all about films. He is
considered the godfather of avant-garde and experimental filmmaking and he was
one of the founders of Film Culture
magazine, the American response to Cahiers
Du Cinema
. In the 60s and 70s, he was one of the top names of the art world
as he worked and filmed with artists such
Andy Warhol, Salvador Dalí Allen Ginsberg and John Lennon.

Jonas Mekas
remembers that he decided to film his own movies after watching The Search (Fred Zinnemann, 1948), a
film about displaced persons made after the war. “I saw it with my brother and
we got very angry how little understanding of the real situation there was in
this film, about what it means to be displaced”. After that, Mekas bought a
camera and has been filming ever since.

Some of his
most representative films were showed in Tampere, where he was the guest of
honour. In his short films, he portrays people and places or he shows bits of
life, like a diary. He enjoys presenting the happy moments of life. He often
films himself and others dancing and celebrating: “I leave the depressed
moments for the modern artist”, he said during his visit to Finland.

There is no
better expression of this diary form than his current project: 365. Every day during 2007, Jonas Mekas
will release one short film that will be available to download from his
website. These are short films that include old and new material. He takes his
camera everywhere: “Some footage from Tampere might appear in 365 this month or the next one”.

Preserving
film was another duty for Jonas Mekas: in 1970, he was one of the co-founders
of the Anthology Film Archives in New York, a non-profit organization devoted
to the preservation and exhibition of experimental film. However, prefers to
look ahead than look back: “With the new technologies, the language of cinema
gets richer. Different forms are developed. Everything is changing and that is
beautiful!” he claims. The Lithuanian filmmaker understands cinema as a
constant evolution, in which current films cannot be understood without the
previous ones.

As 365 shows, Jonas Mekas is neither afraid
of that evolution nor of new technologies. Indeed, he welcomes the new forms of
expression without fear and does not plan to stop filming. As he says, “perhaps
after 365, the next project will be the 1001 nights”.

The 365 project and other films by Jonas
Mekas can be downloaded from www.jonasmekas.com

Categories
Cinema DVD

Casino Royale

Casino
Royale
is based on
the  novel of the same name by the father
of Bond, Ian Fleming, and presents the first adventure of Bond just
after getting the status of 007: an agent with a license to kill. It combines
the best of the old Bond films with the use of the new technologies.

Daniel Craig
is convincing as the new Bond: virile, seductive, ironic and with a powerful
gaze not seen since Sean Connery himself. The “Bond girls”, Eva Green
and Caterina Murino, are sensual and wild; the action is brilliant; the
fights are vibrant; the baddies are perfect in their roles; Judi Dench
is superb as “M”; and the locations are astonishing.

The critics
loved the film and the audience loved Craig (especially the women), so why did
I not feel totally satisfied after watching the movie? Maybe I have become too
conservative or maybe I have started to get a bit tired of this continuous race
to show in the movies how the latest technologies are always available for
saving the world. Maybe since the last Mission:
Impossible
trilogy, I have started to feel bored of so many games with
mobile phones, and so many satellites locating the “seed of the devil” in some
remote island in the middle of Pacific. I feel annoyed with this
“ultra-technological saturation” every time I try to watch a spy movie.

Nevertheless,
I liked the movie a lot. It is sometimes very explicit, even raw (like in James
Bond’s torture scene, which you can feel directly in your own testicles) but
you cannot deny that the film’s rhythm absorbs you for its 144 minutes.

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

Summer of ’84

{mosimage}Kid is a
confused girl trying to find her place in this world, between being Swedish and
Finnish, and being a child and an adult. Not knowing where she belongs, she
desperately wants to be loved by her mom, but at the same time she is ashamed
of her. Kid is almost a teen and her sexuality is starting to awaken, which
makes things even more complicated for her. The tension between Kid and her
mother rises so high that it almost destroys everything.

In many
ways Aavan Meren Tuolla Puolen is a
nostalgic and bright movie paying regard to the fact that it is director Nanna
Huolman’s first feature length movie, plus the young actors’ first movie. In
addition to good storytelling, the acting is excellent, especially the young
talent Mia Saarinen, who performs very well. The scenery is beautiful with
thousands of Finnish lakes and endless forests, and the Art Director made a big
effort to find artefacts from the ‘80s. A great film that reflects exactly how
the Finnish summer of 1984 was!

 

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

Finnish gigolo

Juha’s
friend agrees to help him to sell his body. Soon their business is booming and
Juha is making more money in an hour than in two days at his old job. His guilt
worsens every day, as does the
shame and lies, but the money helps him cope with the downside of his
new profession. Everything is fine, so long as his wife doesn’t know about his
new job or touch her antidepressants.

Miehen Työ is a film about a man’s
dignity and humiliation, as well as male prostitution. It is also a story about
taking responsibilities and the pressure on a man, a father and a husband. The
film is dark with a hint of a humour, but realistic and quite intense thanks to
the credible acting. Directed by Aleksi Salmenperä, Miehen Työ
is
his second feature, although he has made several short films, and hopefully we
will see another feature film from him again soon.

 

 

{mosimage}Interview with Tommi Korpela

You played the leading man, Juha,
in Miehen Työ. What’s Juha like and
was it easy for you to play the part?

Juha
is a man who thinks that his value is measured by his achievements. He feels
that he is loved only when he is able to support his family. I don’t think that
there are very much similarity between me and Juha. The part was challenging
and enjoyable to play.

 

Why was it interesting act in this
movie?

This
is my first main part in a movie and before this I have been doing more acting
at theatre and TV. So, acting on the screen is always good fun and experience.

 

How was the team?

It
was great and everything went smoothly. We shot the whole thing in about 6
weeks. I would like to do other projects with the team in a future.

 

What else are you going to do this
year?

I
am busy for the rest of the year. I will continue my work at theatre and act on
TV as well.

 

Aleksi Salmenperä answers

Why did you make a movie about the
shame of a man?

I
liked the topic. It is interesting and important issue. There are plenty of men
in Finland and everywhere else on this planet who feel like Juha.

 

Did you any research about the male
prostitution?

I
met a journalist who had written an article about the subject. I read it, got
interested in it and read some other articles as well.

 

What is the deal of the man’s
shame?

Men
want to accomplish things, be successful and if they fail, it is a matter of
their self-esteem. Men are very competitive and they measure their achievements
all the time.

 

Do you think that there will be
public conversations about the main topics of the film? Which topic will gain
more attention in publicity?

Probably
the male prostitution -topic, which really isn’t the main topic. It is easy to
hang on to it.

 

What’s on your agenda this year?

I
am planning new films. Few subjects have been in my mind for a while now. I
would like to do a film about an old man and his despair or about kids in the
70’s.

 

Categories
At the cinema Cinema

The King of the Minimoys

{mosimage}There is
nothing astonishing new in Besson’s movie, but it outstands due to its innocence,
simplicity and the friendly fairy-like characters, the Minimoys, who borrow the
voices of Madonna, Snoop Dogg, David Bowie and Robert De
Niro
, among others. The dubbed Finnish version also features the voices of
pop stars like Paula Vesala of PMMP
and rapper Elastinen.

While working
on the films, Besson published a series of children books based on Arthur’s
adventures. More movies based on these books are expected.

 

 

Luc Besson on Arthur and the Minimoys

Why did you
choose the film to be part animated and part live action?

I don’t
come from the animation world. For me it is very important that the audience
believes in the story. Making a live action introduction helps us to believe.

The main
characters have the voices of pop stars, how did you come up with that idea?

It was just
a coincidence. The character of Max was inspired by Snoop Dogg. Madonna is a
queen so it was easy for her to lend her voice to a princess. David Bowie…
well, he just has an amazing voice. It was easy to call them. The idea worked so
I suggested that dubbed versions around the world would use pop stars too.

This is
your 10th film. Once you said you would retire from directing when you reach
this milestone. Do you still think this way?

I don’t
know. I’m scared of repeating myself. I need to feel that I still have
something meaningful to say. I burned my first short film because of a friend’s
opinion. He showed that I need to have something to say if I want to make
movies. I learned the hard way.

 

Categories
Cinema DVD

Eight Below

If Bambi has cruel moments, what to say about a movie where the
dogs, which cope wonderfully with the leading roles of the film,  face the toughest challenges that turn them into
almost a pack of wolves. They die, fight, kill and become sharper in the
struggle for life. You can see the wildest side of nature since the moment they
are left behind, but also the most marvellous one.

I even enjoyed Paul Walker´s acting. There is not much of the
“handsome boy” role as everybody would expect, and more about sobriety in front
of the camera. He is very smart playing the role of Jerry Shepard, the owner
and guide of the dogs. The veteran director, Frank Marshall, has created a wonderful story,
evolved in paradisiacal and extreme landscapes, that is able to transmit a real
love for friends, even if they have four legs. Because if there is one word
that defines the film, that would be commitment. The friends have not left
behind, and if they had to for major reasons, other friends would come to help rescue
those who had been left.

The rest of the cast develop their roles quite nicely as well, and even Jason
Biggs
´ foolness does not turn our to be too smarmy.

As I said, I enjoyed the movie through all of its 115 minutes. I never felt
bored; I enjoyed the stunning polar nature surrounding our dear fellows Buck,
Dewey, Maya, Max, Oldie, Jack, Shadow, Shorty and Truman
.

One complaint: the Huskie dogs look really beautiful, but so similar the
eight of them that it can easily cause difficulties to distinguish who is doing
what…

When I sit on a sofa and get ready to see a Disney’s movie, I know that
probably I am not going to witness the last masterpiece from the psychological
drama genre, or a movie with a very difficult plot. I expect fun and
entertainment for all the family.  Eight
Below achieves it, and for that reason deserves all my respect.

Categories
Cinema Features

An open source adventure from outer space

“It started
as a hobby,” Samuli Torssonen, the man behind the Star Wreck saga and the face
of Captain Pirk, the ultimate emperor of the Universe,
explains. “I’m a
huge fan of the Star Trek series and movies since I was kid.  I liked it so much that I had to make
something similar. It was my way of expressing my fandom”. In 1992, a teenage
Samuli created a simple 2D animation movie with three spaceships shooting at
each other. It was his first step in the universe of Star Wreck. As he admits,
the graphics are bad, the story is bad, almost everything was bad… but the core
of the story is there: Pirk, Mr. Fukov, Mr. Dwarf, the Plingons… The big
Finnish parody of Star Trek had begun.

The last
episode of the series so far, Star Wreck: In the Pirkinning has become a cult
movie, downloaded millions of times from Internet. For being an amateur movie,
it counters with astonishing computer-generated special effects.  “During the seven years that this project
lasted, several computers worked non-stop at my apartment”, admits Samuli.

Star Wreck
is all do-it-yourself philosophy. The production started with a small camera, a
portable television, a couple of 25 euro work lights and a broken wheelchair, Timo Vuorensola says. “Samuli contacted
me through some friends and asked me to play the role of Colonel Dwarf in 1997
for Star Wreck V,” Timo recalls. “The requirements were that he needed a guy
who can speak loudly and a guy who is tall and has long hair.” He ended up
being the director.

 

Internet hit

The
Internet and word of mouth have been the distribution channels that made Star
Wreck widely known. “People got
interested in us because we were giving it for free. The best way to market
your film is to get a lot of people watch it,” according to Timo.

As Samuli tells us, Star Wreck went to the Internet very early: “We released the first movies in 1997
and it was amazing because there were no movies at that time in the Internet.
Then people started contacting us through newsgroups and our message board”.

That is how
Star Wreck started to be a collaborative effort that gathered more than 300
people working voluntarily. For the forthcoming projects the team wants to keep
the community idea of the project: “We
would like to use the Internet to make a collaborative film,” says the director.
”The whole concept is that there are not only us making the film, but also our
fans. That keeps on giving the same kind of freedom to create. The idea behind
this attitude seems to be based on open source software: “For some reason this
kind of thinking is very Finland-based,” he continues. “We have Linux and a
couple of other phenomena. If it’s done so effectively in computer programs,
why not in the film industry?”

The open source idea is also applied to the ways the movie is
distributed. It is released under Creative Commons license and freely
distributed from the movie’s official website and peer to peer networks.
Copyright battles are not in the Star Wreck agenda: “For me, piracy the
funniest thing in the world,” says Timo. ”I’m more afraid of the things that
are done against it, like the Digital Rights Management (DRM), which is
preventing people from using the  available technologies."

 

{mosimage}Iron Sky

Samuli’s production team is currently ready for the next project. It
will start with a large budget. So far, only the title, Iron Sky, and a promotional
picture have been released.

Do expectations affect these guys? Samuli admits that “people are
expecting something a little bit better, but we want to make something way much
better”.

Timo thinks that one way to improve is to be very careful with the
story: “Everybody knows that we are able to make great special effects. I have
a feeling that we have a very strong story that people don’t expect from us”

And obviously, after so many years working hard together, the guys have
become a great family, cheering up each other when going through bad times.
“Low moments usually last a couple of hours, and get solved with some beers.
We have our own working methods. We
know what the others are thinking. There are no big problems between us. Now we
are four working as the core team, very strongly involved. Most probably we
will be working like this in the future, although it is true that we will need
to expand a bit. We need more professional people joining. However, it is a
hard process to include someone into a group that has worked together for such
a long time”. And expert hands have joined the team, since it was recently
confirmed that writer Johanna Sinisalo
will contribute to the script.

As a last question, we wanted to know what people’s reactions are when
they see the supreme emperor of the universe walking around Finnish streets: “I
have noticed in Tampere that people stared at me, but not really in Helsinki.
In bars Finnish guys come and talk about the movie…they find the courage when
they are drunk in the toilet!” Samuli laughs.

Categories
Cinema DVD

The Replacement Killers

Teaming up with him is Mira
Sorvino
, with a convincing interpretation of Meg Coburn, a tough woman
forged by a hard destiny, who employees herself faking different kind of
documents and identification cards.

The director, Antoine Fuqua,
achieves some great action sequences during the movie. Chow Yun Fat, out of the
typical stereotyped muscled hero for action movies, commands respect on screen
just with his wild gazes. And the film counts some top-quality cast actors for
the “bad boys” such as Jurgen Pröchnow,
Clifton Collins or Danny Trejo.

But nevertheless, the film lacks that "something” necessary to
break the line of mediocrity. The Chinatown
atmosphere could have been much better explored, the characters appear to be
only lightly developed, and the rhythm of the film is sometimes not able to overcome
the feeling of merely admiring one killing spree after another by Yun-Fat/Lee.
If you are thirsty for more of Chow Yun-Fat´s action movies, go back to the earlier
Asian films where he starred.

Categories
Cinema DVD

Riding Alone for Thousands of Miles

Riding Alone for Thousand
of Miles
is a movie
that flows peacefully and is well-balanced, just as the main character Gou-ichi
Takata (played by Ken Takakura) faces the problems of life.

There are many important things being told to the spectator in the film,
hidden behind the simplicity of forms used to narrate the storyline. It tells
about family relations, about bonds broken and remade, about communication,
between human beings and between cultures (Chinese-Japanese) and about the loss
of communication (from a father and a son who have not met for decades to the loss
of phone coverage in a remote Chinese village).

Director Zhang Yimou, who became internationally recognized with
his previous film House of Flying Daggers, completes a circle here; such
a recurrent figure when we come to think about Asian philosophy. He is able to
transport us from the simplest things of life, to the most complicated
feelings, and then back to simplicity reflected in the pure eyes of a child.
And all that with an exquisite respect for the culture, traditions and relations
of the two most powerful Asian tigers.

I enjoyed the redemption pilgrimage of Mr. Takata through the land of China, because it makes us just take a
look to some of the most important features that we have left in this life to
be considered human beings: forgiveness and love.