The Machinist (2004)

Add this film to your list of summer movies to watch (it's so easy with netflix!)

"The Machinist" follows the life of a blue collar man named Trevor Reznik (Christian Bale) who hasn't slept in over a year and is beginning to notice the side effects of his insomnia and sleep deprivation, including extreme weight loss slight deterioration of his flesh and weakness among the physical effects, while the mental effects are much deeper and lead Trevor down a disturbing path of violence and confusion.  Lets just say that it's a combination of "Fight Club," "Memento," with a little bit of "Black Swan."

This doesn't really seem like a typical role for Christian Bale at first because Reznik is an almost cowardly, skinny man with seemingly no aspirations to achieve something greater in life.  As the plot progresses and Reznik begins to hallucinate and the effects of his sleep deprivation become apparent the seemingly introverted Reznik shows the classic Christian Bale anger full of shouting and wide eyes that we expect from his other movies.  Either the makeup department for "The Machinist" really spent a lot of time making Bale look like a starving, skinny, pale, lower-class-man, or Bale really put himself inside of his role and did some serious role research to look the disgusting and disturbing way that he does.  His condition is only augmented by the color palette of the entire film, which is all drab and dreary with very few accenting colors and a plethora of shades of white, grey, and black.  The only color that really stands out a lot is the few points in the film where blood is present.  But this whole setup makes for a very disturbing and almost depressing movie.  Don't watch this alone while you're mulling over the idea that nobody in the world cares for you....not saying that I did that or anything....Anyways, "The Machinist" gets a 4/5.

Tokyo Gore Police (2008)

Wow! It's been a long time since I've posted anything here!  So, here you go!

I've been going through a phase of Japanese movies lately, and Japanese media in general.  In addition to the movie that this post is about ("Tokyo Gore Police"), I've also become hopelessly enamored with the anime show "Bleach", as well the movie "Ghost In The Shell" and the original "Gojira."  I've been kind of obsessed with the whole Japanese culture and much of that comes from the media that they produce.  But enough of that, on to the review!

What can I say about "Tokyo Gore Police" other than it's AWESOME!  It's definitely the Japanese B movie genre at it's finest!  It takes place in the future when the Tokyo police force has been privatized to deal with the growing crime level.  The plot centers around an officer of the law named Ruka (Eihi Shiina, who also stars in the extremely disturbing film "Audition" (1999) who has the job of hunting down criminals known as "engineers" who have subjected their bodies to a virus that causes any injury they sustain to mutate into bizarre weapons.  For example; a criminal gets his arm cut off in the first scene by Ruka's sword and from the wound he sprouts a chainsaw (awesome right?).  The main bad guy that Ruka is pursuing is a man known as the "key master" who created the virus in the first place.  The plot thickens when Ruka realizes that the man she is hunting down had a hand in killing her father when she was a young girl.

I see so many American influences is this movie!  There is a lot of David Cronenberg in the area of special effects and overall look of the movie.  It's very similar to "Scanners" (1981) "Videodrome" (1983) in the elevation of certain body parts into extraordinary weapons and in the combination of human flesh and machinery.  There is also a lot of the Bruce Campbell influence, as well as influences from classic Japanese martial arts movies like "Seven Samurai" (later to be seen in the Tarantino's Kill Bill series) and even the Korean film "Oldboy" (2003) in some of the panning fight scenes.  This is sort of in line with another Japanese film released in the same year called "The Machine Girl" which chronicles a girl avenging her brothers death with kung-fu and a machine gun arm ("Planet Terror" much?).  There

Bottom line, if you enjoy the above mentioned films, you would most likely not hate "Tokyo Gore Police", but you may not necessarily enjoy it.  "Tokyo Gore Police" gets a 4/5, because I like the references :).

The Quiet Earth (1985)

The Quiet Earth fits into a genre that has been explored through numerous avenues of film making.  It is based the book The Quiet Earth by Craig Harrison and explores the life of a man named Zac (Bruno Lawrence) after a catastrophic science project causes the entire universe to become unstable and on the verge of collapse.  This life-changing event causes every person on Earth to disappear except for Zac himself.  He copes with his lonely in stages of going crazy and submitting to his alternate personality, but regains his sanity in time to meet one other person that was left on the Earth, Joanne (Alison Routledge).  Eventually they meet another man, Api (Pete Smith), before the sun begins it's rapid decline into collapsing and taking the entire galaxy with it.

Now, as you can imagine, this plot line has been explored many times using different devices and these films never focus very much on the physical plot, rather the psyche of the different characters and group dynamics are analyzed as the characters are brought to terms with their own mortality.  Zombie movies continuously and frequently explore this mindset of being the last real human being on the planet as characterized by the original Dawn of the Dead and 28 Days Later (and sort of I Am Legend even though it's not quite a zombie movie).  However, what sets The Quiet Earth apart from these other movies is two emanating themes of existentialism and altered states of consciousness.  Zac brings forth the idea that nobody on Earth disappeared except for him and that Joanne and Api are manifestations of his subconscious mind in an attempt to cope with what is left of his own quasi-reality.  In addition to the constant question of whether they are actually alive, all three characters have had a near-death experience in which they were "drawn towards the light."  Since the solar system is so unstable, many strange mind-warping events happen that distort reality in unusual ways and disorients the three survivors.  The question that the viewer is left with by the end of the film is whether or not the whole experience was death, or whether the event really happened, or whether they were simply experiencing an altered state of mind induced by the science experiment, their near-death experiences, or something else entirely.  The Quiet Earth gets 4.5 out of 5.  

Black Swan (2010)

Over the past few years I have come to respect and enjoy the work of Darren Aronofsky; from his little known "Life of Pi" to his more recent "The Fountain."  He has a very characteristic film making style and "Black Swan" is no different.  This film follows the rise to fame of Nina (Natalie Portman) in the ballet world with her appearance in Tchiakovsky's Swan Lake.  Nina's story becomes a parallel of the story of Swan lake on a voyage of self-discovery and the quest to find her true voice in her passion, until she finally looses herself in the role and becomes a metaphorical representation of the the Swan Queen.

Every single aspect of this movie is tied together in a beautiful way with Nina's life descending into the darkness of the black swan after making her debut as the beautiful and technically perfect white swan.  Portman's portrayal of this role was spellbinding in her transformation from the good girl to the bad girl, which is backed up by textbook foreshadowing and symbolism.  Aronofsky uses color traits (white and black) to specifically represent Nina's dark side as she begins to rebel against an obsessive mother and against everything she traditionally thought ballet was supposed to be.

Supporting actress Mila Kunis makes a point of representing everything associated with the dark side that Nina doesn't tap into until the end of the movie.  He transformation is aided in the role of Thomas Leroy (Vincent Cassel), the slightly sleezy director of the ballet company who brings out the wild side of Nina.  "Black Swan" is a must see for any Darren Aronofsky fan, and for most other viewers who enjoy his characteristic psychological mystery thriller genre.  "Black Swan" gets 4.5/5.

Thankskilling (2009)

OMG!  I have descended down the road to darkness and into the depths of the abyss.  There are no redeeming factors left in my soul, I'm a terrible person.  I need an intervention.  My name is Jory Tindall, and I'm addicted....to B movies!

I just watched probably the worst movie I've ever seen (if it's not it's close).  What more could you want than a turkey that was created in colonial times by the native Americans to kill white people every 500 years?  Add to that a turkey with a bad mouth and about 1,000 great quotes and you have Thankskilling.  The plot is based on a typical horror movie formula; evil arises and starts terrorizing and killing the characters in some very cliche ways while the cast tries to find a way to dispose of it.  Of course Thankskilling makes use of the optional coda of adding a comeback for the villain after he is presumed to be dead so that he can kill some people before being destroyed for good.  Thankskilling is straight out of the horror movie textbook is this regard.  Terrible acting, terrible special effects and just an overall bad quality movie that is only made bearable  by the hilarious quotes and obvious air of comedy throughout.  You should probably only see it if you can see yourself enjoying quotes like these coming from the mouth of a turkey:

• "You just got stuffed!" (note the thanksgiving reference)
• "Gobble, gobble motherf***er!"
• "Nice tits bitch!"

What a nice couple of gems!  Honestly I have no idea why this movie is on Netflix, but I gave it three stars in the hope that more people would see it.

The Machine Girl (2008)

Been a while since I've posted anything, but it doesn't really matter because nobody reads this anyways!

The Machine Girl is real gem in the recent B movie genre.  It was released in 2008 and retains many elements of American B movies, including some nods at Robert Rodriguez as well as the Kill Bill films, but has a unique Japanese flair to it.  Basically the premise is a boy gets killed by bullies who happens to be the brother of an ass-kicking sister named Ami.  Ami teams up with the mother of another victim of bullying to take down a member of the Yakuza gang (Kill Bill anyone?) and his henchmen.  The spin on this is that Ami's arm gets cut off and she replaces it with a machine gun and a chainsaw (Evil Dead anyone?)!  Ami then proceeds to annihilate everyone in her path in a bloody swath of death and destruction.

The blood in this movie is very Kill Bill-esque in terms of the squirting fashion in which it exits the body, which everyone can recognize and identify with (at least those of you who are fans of Quentin Tarantino).  This leads to every single character being covered head-to-toe in blood (red corn syrup) and a battlefield full of severed limbs and homeless body parts (AWESOME!).  The Japanese twist (also similar to Kill Bill) is the idea of Japanese honor and pride, which isn't necessarily present in most American movies.  Ami goes on her killing spree for acts of revenge with no concerns for her own well-being, compared to acts of violence aimed at bettering ones personal image.  This is so reminiscent of American movies, but taken to the point of extremity that only the Japanese can obtain.  Not to mention that the main character is really hot...especially when covered in blood.  The Machine Girl gets a 3/5.

The Human Centipede: First Sequence (2009)

Oh.  Yeah.  I saw "The Human Centipede."  This'll be short because it's a disgusting movie to discuss.  The basic idea of the plot is a retired surgeon turned mad scientist who gets off on connecting people via their mouths and anuses to create a "human centipede."  So he kidnaps three people and connects them and basically keeps them/it as a pet until things start to unwind and he is discovered for what he really is.

I thought this movie was going to be un-watchable due to the amount of gore and graphic nature I was expecting, but it wasn't really that bad on the gore scale.  In other words I've seen much worse.  The thing that makes this movie what it is is the whole concept behind it, the concept of the human centipede and how screwed up it is.  The acting is not good by any means in this movie, except for the lead role of Dr. Heiter (Dieter Laser) which fits the vibe of the movie perfectly.  I guess you can't really expect much when you mouth is attached to the ass of another person for the entire movie.  There were a few cringe moments throughout the movie but not really anything to turn away at.  Unless you really have a hankering to see this movie I would skip it just because it's way overrated in terms of scare/shock/horror factor.  "The Human Centipede" gets a 2/5.