Snakes...........I Hate Snakes!

Yup, I saw this today. Go ahead - groan, roll the eyes, anything! I was with my friends - five people among an audience of ten, maaaybe fifteen people in the theater. Everyone else went to see World Trade Center. I'm glad I saw this. No, it isn't a great movie. Neither is it a bad movie. It's silly and entertaining, which is more than one should expect from a stupid premise. Nathan Phillips plays Sean Jones, a surfer and motorcyclist who in Hawaii witnesses a murder by the notorious L.A. gangster Eddie Kim. He is spotted fleeing the scene of the crime by Kim, and his henchmen. Samuel Jackson plays Neville Flynn, a FBI agent who saves Sean from being killed. Sean is pursuaded into becoming a witness for the prosecution, and Neville escorts him to Los Angeles. Kim arranges to have a crate full of snakes of various types (all poisonous) put on the plane. The flower leis which are stored with the snakes are doused with pheremones to aggravate the snakes into a fury. The smell is supposed to circulate through the plane; the idea being that the snakes will cause enough havoc that the plane will crash. Ooooookay, whatever! On the plane, we have: an assortment of stewardresses, ranging from young and cute to old and wise; a rapper and his entourage; a rich bitch; honeymooners; two young brothers on their first solo flight (from Hawaii to L.A.??? Please!!!!); a kickboxer; a latina mother; and a couple of young horny college age kids. There are others, but why waste time detailing, since a lot of people die in this film. Halfway through the flight, the crate is opened through a timed release, and the carnage ensues. Let me say that I found the movie entertaining beacuse of some smart, funny dialogue, and obvious set ups of characters, and the brisk, no nonsense pace that keeps the movie going, because in no way should we pay too much attention to plot or character development. The killing is gratuitous and awful. We were all groaning at how stupid it all was! Death by high heel shoe in the ear, falling onto an axe (on a plane???), by food cart, in the bathroom, while having sex in the bathroom, and more. If there was a napkin flying in the air I'm sure it would have cut someone's head off. Yes, both pilots die, and yes, in the classic Airport tradition, some one has got to land the plane. A lot of elements are borrowed from those 70's disaster films -- the passengers deal with one mishap to another, fighting to stay alive, and the action keeps you hanging in there with them. There are genuine moments of suspense (okay, maybe 30 seconds), and you have the Samuel Jackson quote, coming 3/4 into the film. Contrived? Yes, but it's better than a lot of other big budget summer blockbusters that have come out already. A good time wasting movie, and one that will make a killing on dvd, as this will make a great party film.

Now and Forever, or Weepies, part 1

Now and Forever is a Korean movie I'd like to classify as a "weepie," or tear-jerker. It's a romance movie, featuring Jo Han-Seon and Choi Ji-Woo as destined lovers who meet in a chance encounter in a rain storm, then in a hospital, the reasons for which unfold throughout the movie. Jo Han-Seon plays a playboy, schmoozing one woman while fielding phone calls from another, and eyeing a third. He runs an online gaming company with his best friend, played by Choi Seong-Gook. Jo Han-Seon romances Choi Ji-Woo in the hospital, and the first half of the movie follows their constant escapes from the hospital to go to restaurants, fishing, whatever. Then Jo Han-Seon finds out about Choi Ji-Woo's heart condition, and that she is soon to die, and the rest of the movie becomes a somber, handkerchief inducing series of moments as they split up, then come back together again, as he renounces his former loves, gets proof of this in writing (!), to demonstrate his feelings for her. Little does she know he too has a condition which will end his life soon.... a brain tumor! Like 90% of these movies, it runs about 15-20 minutes too long, because a lot of time is spent overindulging in the moments and not in the story. Using the hospital as the background was a good idea, but overall, there are inconsistencies. The supporting cast is not used effectively, from their best friends who also fall in love, who fall in and out of the movie, to the doctor and head nurse, whose romance is not played up enough -- they are just there as backdrop, and to remind everyone they are in a hospital. Apparently this kind of movie is big stuff in Japan, where housewives fantasize about the male romantic leads, and men drool over the gorgeous women. Choi Ji-Woo is considered a big actress in Asia, and in Japan they nickname her "Princess Ji-Woo," but I don't see anything here that addresses her talents. Neither Jo Han-Seon, and I have seen him in other films, and he has done better. If you like this kind of movie, by all means see it, and bring a bucket.

Romance and other guilty pleasures

I'll get right to the point -- I hate romantic movies! I hate the melodrama, the long shots of man and woman gazing longingly at each other through traffic/forest/war, etc., the soft fuzzy camerawork, but especially the strings -- that 101 strings, syrupy sound that is supposed to make things get all mushy. But what really gets me is that movies have developed, through trial and error, the idealized notion of romance, and that this has somehow filtered into our subconscious and has become our notion of what a relationship should be, even though reality is much different. That's why I appreciate dreck like Return of the Living Dead 3 -- boy meets girl, boy loses girl, girl becomes a zombie, does some incredibly nasty things, boy has to make things right, girl bites boy, and then boy joins girl in zombie heaven in double suicide. Stuff like that is not only improbable in real life, but silly as well. It's a movie, damn it. It's not real. And I know when I go out with someone situations like that will never arise.

Seriously, I have seen a lot of Korean romance movies. Comedy, action, whatever, and while they do tug as many emotional strings as any other film industry, I find myself somewhat engaged, and yes, once in a while, entertained by what is offered. Such is the case of Romance, a bland title for an interesting movie. Jo Jae-Hyeon plays a cop who saves a woman (Kim Ji-Soo) from killing herself from an oncoming truck. She is married to a politician (Eom Hyo-Seob), who is making a bid for the presidency the following year. And he's nuts. Everything in his household is fine, wealthy, executive, and stifling, and his wife is suffering from the lack of freedom and the love that has soured. It's a one way street, all his. Jae-Hyeon has issues too -- a hard boiled troublemaker in the force, whose wife and kid have left him, and he's struggling. So they meet, date, tango, go to a motel, compare scar tissue (they are both beaten up -- her by her husband, he by 'enforcing the law'),and fall in love. All in 20 minutes. Cue the 101 strings. What I found interesting was that every time the story seemed to lean towards conventional romantic melodrama, it gets knocked back into place by the evil machinations of the husband, who, having found out about the affair, really goes nuts! In a quiet, passive/aggressive yet sinister way. Like having his henchmen beat the stuffing out of him and kidnapping the wife to a hospital to "cure her," that is, brainwash her with a bunch of drugs. The cop survives, and the rest of the film is a rescue operation, hostage situation, and shootout. Forget the last ten minutes of the movie -- too much of a cliché, but the other hour and a half is really engaging. The acting is solid from all the principal characters, the direction tight and well paced, the camera work a bit uneven in style -- washed out a la contemporary Spielberg in the beginning ( I guess meant to evoke romance but it doesn't feel that way), then film noirish for the rest of the film. Thumbs up, worth a rental, especially for guys who have endured one too many chick flicks -- you can sneak this in the rental queue. Or for the ladies who know they have put their guys through one too many chick flicks, but will not concede to them renting Aliens vs Predator. There's enough schmaltz to get the hankies out.

Blue Swallow

Apparently a controversial film when it was released in Korea in December of 2005, Blue Swallow is a well made big budget picture about Korea's first female pilot, Park Kyung-won, during Japan's occupation of Korea in the 1920's and 30's. Controversial because Park Kyung-won's success was due in no small part to the Japanese military, and that she was seen as a collaborator to the Japanese. Also because when the film came out, critics saw it as a revisionist history, tying to put a positive spin on her career. In fact, the movie makes an effort to show that things weren't all black and white. Park Kyung-won's dream was to be able to fly, politics and affiliations did not come into play until much later. The flying schools were all run by the Japanese, so she went to where she could be trained. The movie does show that she seeks financial support from the Korean community, but it there wasn't much -- so naturally, support comes from a former rival and now friend, who is a daughter of a high ranking Japanese official. Aside from the overly melodramatic and swarmy intro of Park Kyung-won as a child and seeing her first plane flying overhead, the movie is a solid, well written tale, giving enough information to non Korean audiences to understand the historical and political contexts. The sequences of her flight training and competition between rival schools are intense and dramatic -- good CGI for a lot of the flying sequences (remember these are biplanes). Halfway through the film the mood changes when her boyfriend's friend, a reporter, assassinates the boyfriend's father and a couple of Japanese officials. Park Kyung-won and her boyfriend (Ji-hyuk) are taken into custody and tortured. She is released when he admits guilt (even though he wasn't), and is given a choice about pursuing her dream, which was to fly back to Korea solo, then to Manchuria. It comes at a price -- she embraces the Japanese flag (in photo ops), and is reviled in her home country. This is a Hollywood-like film (almost like the bio pics that were done in the 1930s or 50s), that outdoes a lot of contemporary US films. I enjoyed it especially because, embellished history or not, it gives one some insight into another country's past. Korea has been releasing a lot of compelling movies in the past 10 years, and this is a very good one to watch. Recommended.

The Executioners Trailer

Inferior sequel to Heroic Trio. Try to find this film on dvd! I found a copy when it came out.

The Heroic Trio Trailer

A classic HK action film with three the top leading ladies of the time. Johnnie To directed.

CANNONBALL ADDERLEY - Primitivo (1962)