Super

Watching this movie made me feel the way I felt while reading the first issue of Mark Millars Kick-Ass. I was suddenly shocked into a world where a comic could be written this way, about this subject matter. Well, this movie is like director James Gunn out Kickassing Kick-Ass. It takes the same premise, regular guy decides to fight crime. But instead of stopping halfway through to be introduced to “real” superheroes like Big Daddy and Hit Girl, Gunn takes it to it’s logical conclusion.

The story follows Frank, played by Rain Wilson, who’s wife has been effectively kidnapped by a drug dealing mobster played by Kevin Bacon. He decides to strap on the tights and pull on the mask to try and save her. In an effort to come up with ideas for his superhero persona, he visits a local comic book store where he meets his soon to be sidekick, Libby, played by Ellen Page. She has  this really manic, destructive energy that balances out the way we view Frank in a very interesting way.

Before we get to know her, we’ve accepted that Frank is clearly insane, but after we see how off the walls she is, he’s suddenly humanized. It’s as if he’s at a solid 10 but she’s cranked up to 11. It felt like the first step in seeing Frank as a force for good instead of just aimless aggression and frustration. By the end of the movie, we’re offered a moment to reflect on the idea of a single person being a force for good in the world and I found it to be quite powerful.

The movie manages to avoid feeling depressing by infusing a great sense of humor and an amazing upbeat soundtrack. The humor never feels out of place, it’s sometimes dark and shocking and other times very subdued, almost voyeuristic. We can laugh at Frank and Libby but only because they don’t see us laughing at them. It’s humbling and honest.

As a fan of comics all my life, I felt like this was one of the most daring origin stories of any character I've ever seen. At the end of The Killing Joke, a Batman comic written by Alan Moore, we’re asked to view Batman, not as a one dimensional hero that dresses up because, well, that’s what you do. But instead, we see something on the page we’ve never seen before, a deeply troubled man who’s decided that dressing up like a Bat is the only way he can battle his demons. From frame one, Super does this. The whole film, you’re with a man facing this same type of struggle and there’s no mansion, no Batcave, he has nothing. I feel like it will inform all my future comic book adventures in the same way that Killing Joke and Kick-Ass have. I cannot recommend this movie enough.

Super on Blue Ray.

Insidious

Insidious, directed by James Wan of Saw fame, is the type of film that bites off more than it can chew and then spews it all over the living room carpet. The bits left on the carpet resemble one of two things: A very ambitions film, or more likely, a poorly made one. To its credit though, I never felt bored and you might even be able to praise it for trying to do something inventive with the genre, but alas, I will not be doing this.

A large portion of this film is clearly trying to be a standard horror movie. From apparitions to strange voices and objects moving around on their own, the movie hits every beat once, it felt like the writer had a checklist he was working from. It was so paint-by-numbers that I had even forgotten the films tag line, “It’s not the house that’s haunted”.

I was quickly reminded that the film had this clever twist up it's sleeve about 45 minutes in, when it decided to focus on a different type of story. One that spends far less time trying to scare you and most of its time explaining the clever movie tag line. At this point we’re introduced to 4 new characters, including Elise Rainier played by Lin Shaye, who serves as the films exposition machine. She, along with the 3 other characters, in a scene that takes place during the middle of the day, explain everything going on in the movie and it's extremely jarring. I just spent 45 minutes in a haunted house and now I'm not there anymore, instead, I'm in a brightly lit living room, with the films hook being sold to me.

Ignoring the fact that I had not bought into the premise for the rest of the film, the last act of this movie has an insane amount of problems packed into it. Elise is still vomiting information at me, everything seems rushed, there's no sense of danger and it’s incredibly dark. I spent the majority of the time thinking of Nigel from Spinal tap saying, "It's like, how much more black could this be? and the answer is none. None more black". This is horribly compounded by the fact that we just had 30 minutes of exposition explaining everything we're supposed to be seeing in this portion of the movie and I’d like to have seen it.

Overall, it was pretty unsatisfying and I was left feeling like this would have been a much better, albeit different film, if it tried to be more like Mirrormask and less like The Exorcist. You can have your imaginative, unnerving imagery, but the story you're ultimately telling is about this haunted child trying to return home. Instead, the ideas are grafted together, but the surgeon had no idea what he was doing and the stitches he left behind are really obvious and distracting.

All that said, I dug the last 30 seconds.

Inception: A Really Horrible Week

I recently watched Inception again & something dawned on me that I never really thought about before. In the movie, they establish that they will have a 10 hour flight to complete the job, 1 week in dream time. Well, as we all saw, shit hit the fan pretty fast and Yusuf drove that van off the bridge in day 1, probably within a few hours of entering the dream.

What the hell did they do for the rest of that week? They couldn't kill themselves or they'd head to Limbo. So did they just spend 6 days running away from mercenaries trying to kill them?

I think I’d watch that movie.

Fantastic Fest / Boys on the Run

Having recently attended my first Fantastic Fest here in Austin TX & having no idea what to expect, I was completely unprepared for what was, essentially, an onslaught of film. Now, as anyone who's watched 30 films in 7 days will tell you, they tend to blend together in the aftermath. My memory of the festival is more like a highlight reel, a slideshow of amazing out of context cinema.

That being said, there are a few films that stand out, with no effort whatsoever, as cinematic experiences that will shape the way I consume this art form for the rest of my life. These films remain crisp in my memory, they sit on the tip of my tongue, waiting to be gushed about the room to anyone who would listen. I fell in love this weekend & it saddens me to think that these films (for the most part) will go on, unseen and unloved by the majority of the movie watching public. It's with that in mind that I've decided to write about my favorite film of the festival, to try and encourage the seeking out of this movie, however impossible that endeavor might become.

Boys on the Run, based on a Manga of the same name, is the story of Toshiyuki Tanishi (played by Kanzunobu Mineta), a 29 year old Japanese man who holds a job refilling vending machines that dispense small bubble capsules with  trinkets inside. Tanishi is painfully socially awkward & mostly keeps to himself. With his porn collection and his seemingly frequent visits to the red light district, he's built a life where his desires are seen to, but without any meaningful connection to anyone. The director Daisuke Miura handles the character with a deft hand, straddling the line between simple loner and hopeless deviant constantly. Tanishi never seems reprehensible and he always seems like he's upset with his situation & clearly wants a better life, unaware of how to get there.

The movie roots itself in a pretty solid "boy meets girl" plotline when Tanishi meets a cute co-worker, Chiharu, (played by Mei Kurokawa) and they begin their slow, awkward romance. She falls for the one thing he has going for him, his calm earnestness & honesty. At this point the film heads into standard rom-com territory, presenting Tanishi with a series of comedic mishaps that he must weather to keep the girl. But this didn't dawn on me until the movie was over, it's all "disguised" with a heavy Japanese sensibility. The comedy suits the character we've come to know and root for in act one, it proudly wears its perversion on it's sleeve and even becomes part of the charm.

The third act focuses mostly on the revenge portion of the story involving a rival co-worker who's meddled with Tanishi's romance, all the while taking cues from Rocky & Taxi Driver. If that sounds crazy, it's because it is, in the best possible way.

If you've ever lived the awkward, passionless life of the main character, I promise you laughter, possibly tears and one of the most satisfyingly unconventional endings I've ever seen in this kind of story. Someone I saw this with said he was depressed with how much he identified with Tanishi & I couldn't help but agree with him. However, like Tanishi, under all the dirt, depression and humor, Boys on the Run, finds an incredibly honest & touching voice that's begging to be heard & accepted.

And thanks to Google image search & Rahat over at Life as Fiction for the couple of seconds of joy when I thought Criterion had released this film on DVD.

Spectacular box art sir, thanks :)

Released in Japan in January of 2010, screened at Fantastic Fest in Austin TX, September 2011. Movie trailer @ YouTube - Quite possibly NSFW