Reviews

Irreversible is pretty infamous by now because of its content, it would always be one of the first to come up whenever I read about disturbing films on the internet, and three words: fire, extinguisher, and rape, are always mentioned in the same sentence as the film's title.

It pains me to say it, but beyond the controversial and shocking scenes, this film really doesn't have much to offer. The film is not in chronological order, it goes backwards, but I'm not sure this was such a good idea. A similar thing was done in "Memento". In that film it was done for two main reasons: to make us see it from the main character's perspective, and also to emphasise the twists and turns in the plot. Irreversible does neither of these things. The reason for it is to make us see how their lives were ruined, before these things actually happen to them, but I think it's there more for style reasons and to make the film stand out.

Once you strip away the style, there is very little substance to this film. The all-over-the-place camera along with the strange noise in the background during the "Rectum" scene, was genuinely unsettling. Add in one of the most brutally violent attacks I've seen in a film and you have a disturbing scene. The rape scene is also disturbing, but overall this is a very thin idea stretched out over 90 minutes. This can be seen in the final 40 or so minutes. Once the rape scene is over, that seems to be almost all the film has to offer, and the rest of the film is just a lot of improvised acting from the actors, which must have been fun to make, but is not terribly exciting or compelling.

Every scene in this film goes on way too long, the rape scene is too long, and every single scene after it also goes on too long. One of the few things I did like was the end scene, but that couldn't redeem the whole film.

The whole concept behind the film is that this girl is raped, and her boyfriend takes revenge on the attacker. This isn't enough to make a 90 minute film out of, and while it's well acted by everyone, it amounts to little more than its controversial scenes overall.

When "Million Dollar Baby" came out, I didn't care about seeing it. There are many films I don't bother seeing at the cinema, and this was one of them, it just didn't interest me. The hype starts growing, critics are hailing it as a masterpiece, and before long it's picked up 4 Oscars including best picture. So when it comes out on DVD, I decide to rent it, after all, I have nothing to lose.

This is not a terrible film. Unfortunately, it isn't an excellent film either, and would be summed up best by the words 'painfully average'. There is nothing special about it. The story is nothing special, it's the simple sports underdog story we've seen so many times before, it didn't have anything that really pushed it towards anything more than average. I don't understand the big deal with the acting performances in this film, they're nothing special, and the script is average as well.

Every single character is just a walking cliché; Danger could well be one of the most pointless characters ever. We get it, this guy is all about heart but he can't fight to save his life. There was no need for any of his appearances on screen; it was a pointless character trying to put across some sort of message.

The main thing that made me dislike the film was the final 30-40 minutes, in which Eastwood tries to change the direction the film is going, but fails in my opinion. While it sounds as if I hated the film from start to finish, I didn't, it had good pacing and was quite interesting to watch, despite its flaws, up until this point. The final half hour is extremely long-winded, taking ages to reach its obvious conclusion, and failing to generate any sort of reaction with its supposedly tragic ending. It was this section that I really disliked, it went straight for the heartstrings, yet wasn't tragic enough to pull them.

Discussion over the success of "Million Dollar Baby" will continue until long into the future, but in my opinion it was a failure, which plodded along without ever reaching the level of brilliance, ending with a conclusion which missed the mark.

Ichi the Killer seems to have this reputation as a very violent and disturbing film, and I don't understand this. I hadn't really looked into really violent and gory films before, so I never considered this, I thought that for the time being it might be a bit too extreme for my tastes. Then someone told me it was actually presented in a strange and funny way, so I thought I'd try it, and it isn't really at all difficult to watch.

"Ichi" is first and foremost a comedy. Yes, it's obviously black humour, but after watching this film the words that I think of are silly, completely over-the-top and fun. At the beginning a woman is seen being raped with blood covering her face, and I was all set for a gruesome and and disturbing film, but that isn't at all what the film is like. Whenever Ichi kills anyone blood spurts out of them in a hilarious, over the top fashion, and it's clear that this film really isn't meant to be taken seriously.

This was the first film I watched from Takashi Miike. I had heard so much about this director and the way he comes up with strange images and ideas, and that's certainly the case in this film. The whole film has this feel to it which is difficult to explain, but wacky would probably sum it up. A lot of things in "Ichi" feel like they're straight out of a dream (or nightmare), very surreal and strange.

I do think that this film is well made and quite intelligent, aside from all the surreal images. The characters are well defined, Kakihara as the cool gang leader who likes torturing people with hooks, knives and boiling water, and Ichi as the brutal killer who also happens to be a cry baby and all round loser. Like the gore which is over-the-top and ridiculous, the characters are also exaggerated. Both Ichi and Kakihara are pretty much complete weirdos, but that's what makes the film so fun to watch, everything about it is just so strange.

I'd like to say that I'd recommend this to everyone, but I recognise that it's probably a love it or hate it kind of thing. Ichi the Killer is hardly a perfect movie, but don't expect it to be a disturbing and gruesome film. It's a strange film which manages somehow to make everything, from someone's arm being pulled off to a tongue being cut out with a knife, hilarious. If you like the sound of it, check it out.

I was quite clear on what I thought about Reloaded, the action scenes inside the Matrix were good overall, but it was letdown by the scenes in Zion which I felt were mostly a waste of time. In that film, it didn't matter, I could sit through a few scenes I didn't like for the great car chase or the Architect scene. However in this film, I realised that Reloaded's flaws only emphasise the flaws in Revolutions.

Firstly, this film is all over the place as it is. Not enough time is spent on Neo who is the pivotal character of the trilogy, there are extremely long sequences just showing the war between man and machine in Zion, which definitely would have benefited from a few Neo and Trinity scenes as intermissions. The battle between the humans and the machines isn't presented well and it's boring to put it bluntly. However, it is made even worse by the fact that these characters fighting the machines were not developed enough in this film or the previous one.

Bottom line: The Matrix Revolutions is about a war between some humans and some machines which I just don't care about all that much. The Wachowskis had plenty of time to develop these characters in the opening section of Reloaded, and instead they wasted their time on a five-minute partying scene. By the time the war comes around, I don't know enough about these characters for it to sustain my interest in a short battle, let alone this massive attack on the city of Zion which takes up half of this film.

I was sitting bored in my seat during most of this film, because despite the visuals and special effects, I needed someone to root for during this battle, and the closest I got to this was the kid who was seen briefly during Reloaded.

This isn't the only gripe I have with the film, the whole thing is just bad to be honest. The ending to the trilogy was disappointing and underwhelming, as yet again the effects were great and everything, but I was expecting something really inventive to finish this whole trilogy off. Instead the final scene ends too quickly and it's predictable, recycling some of the ideas from the first Matrix film.

The Wachowskis failed big time on Revolutions, it lacks pretty much everything that made the first film exciting to watch, and everything that made Reloaded at least passable as a sequel. It's boring and doesn't deliver a satisfying ending to the trilogy after three films, tainting all the good memories of the previous two.

The Matrix wasn't one of my favourites, I think it's good but it isn't amazing as some people think. The Matrix Reloaded made me appreciate the Matrix a little bit more however, as it seems to be a bit unfocused when compared to the first film which seemed to be well written and well made.

Reloaded is inconsistent and it seemed a bit rushed and a bit of a mess when I saw it. Zion, which was talked about a lot in the first film, is now seen for the first time, but it's here where I was getting worried about this film already. Sequels often fail when they're just a carbon copy of the original, so I didn't mind the change in setting at the beginning of this film and all these new characters being introduced, but it just wasn't gripping and was very slow moving.

Eventually the film speeds up and there's some awesome action. Like the first film Reloaded is often visually stunning, and it's the weird and wonderful exiles that are the highlights. From the moment Neo encounters the Merovingian, a very intriguing character, I was anticipating what was going to happen next and the film seemed to get better and better, leading up to the meeting with the Architect. This middle section is overall very good and great to watch.

The main problem with Reloaded is that scenes just go on far too long much of the time. For example, when the Oracle is first reintroduced, this is a great scene at first, Gloria Foster's all-knowing mother figure, who was very interesting in the first film, returning again. But a few minutes later, and I'm getting bored, there's only so much philosophical discussion about Neo's choices that I can take. When this conversation finally ends, we move straight onto the Burly Brawl, the brilliant and visually stunning fight between Neo and the masses of Agent Smiths. That is, until it's gone on for far too long and bored me to tears. This section then, with the Oracle and The Burly Brawl, could have been shortened greatly to make it far more gripping and interesting.

The worst scene not only of this film, but probably of the last few years that I can remember, suffers from a similar problem. As Morpheus delivers his speech to the people of Zion at the beginning of the film, they all go mad and start partying late into the night! This scene is just cringe-worthy, slow motion takes of Zion's people dancing to some dance music, inter-cut with Neo and Trinity having sex. I want to know what was going through the Wachowskis' heads when they filmed this scene, I do not understand what they are trying to achieve with it one bit. The worst thing about it is that at this early stage, I already equate Zion with this terrible scene. The scene goes on for way too long as well, a minute of this would have been tolerable, but it seems to go on for about five minutes. Enough already! One scene which doesn't go on too long is the awesome freeway chase scene which is up there with anything that the first film can offer. This was a scene which I wanted to go on for longer, as the creepy Twins chase Trinity down a packed road, while agents appear and place Morpheus in trouble. This scene is awe-inspiring and is backed up by a great piece of music by Juno Reactor which fits the quick tempo of the scene perfectly.

Overall, when Reloaded is concentrating on some great action inside the Matrix and the strange beings which inhabit it, it plays like a question and answer session on the first film, answering all our questions that we might have had when we first heard the concept of the Matrix (what if...). It's the beginning at Zion which is slow-moving, and other scenes which are just too long, that prevent it from being great.

Oldboy just blew me away. A month earlier I had seen Seven Samurai and Spirited Away, which are both great films, but Oldboy topped them both in my opinion. I can understand why a lot of people might not like this, but for me it was just everything a great film should be, a good plot, well paced, well acted and with a great soundtrack as well. It was a film which I watched again the day after I saw it for the first time, it had that impression on me.

The premise seemed intriguing, a man is kidnapped for what seems to be no reason and is locked away for 15 years. Then he's released and has to find out what the reason was for his kidnapping. When I saw this plot outline and that it was listed in the top 100 here in the IMDb, I was eager to check it out. In a sense, I got the wrong idea about it, I thought it would be very violent and gory like other Asian Extreme films, and I had heard many people criticising this film for just being out to shock with its violence. I don't really understand this, I winced when a close-up was shown of a person's tooth being pulled out, and it is a violent film, but from what I'd heard I was expecting a lot more violence and I don't see why people make such a big deal out of it.

There are many memorable scenes in this film, an infamous one-take corridor fight is one of them, as the main character Dae-Su Oh takes on a bunch of guys with a hammer. I mentioned how the film is well-paced, and it is, Dae-Su is taken out of the blue, some time is given to showing the conditions he is locked up in, and then he's released, finding out small parts of information that eventually build to this awesome climax. Many climaxes feel rushed, but the two hour film makes sure the whole last half hour is taken up by its climax, meaning it rounds it all off well, and it's one of the best endings I've seen.

Every scene is acted well by Min-Sik Choi, who is good all the way through but really shows off his acting talents in the climax where he's just magnificent. However, Ji-tae Yu is often overlooked and he's also excellent in this, his character is a very 3-dimensional villain with different emotions. Ji-tae Yu is creepy when he needs to be creepy, but also allows us to feel sympathy for his character in places. The villain is really what makes this film work, he isn't just a 2D character thrown in to make it a bit more difficult for the hero, he's just as interesting and integral to the story as Dae-Su himself.

The score by Yeong-Wook Jo is also a crucial part of the film, for me it's one of the best of this decade so far. The music is always there, always fitting the mood of what is happening on screen, but it's in the last half hour when it becomes amazingly memorable. The music playing at the ending and over the credits is brilliant, and there's one scene in particular where the music combined with the scene is so memorable that it now sends shivers up my spine whenever I hear the music now.

I thought this film lived up to all the hype and I think it deserves its place in the IMDb's top 100, everything about it is above average. It's well made and very entertaining, make sure you see it before anybody spoils it for you.

Battle Royale's premise is very interesting and already gives it a good head-start. Imagine if a class of teenagers from a school was sent to an island, where only the last one left alive survives. It's far-fetched and ridiculous, certainly the idea that a "transfer student" would willingly enter themselves into the game for fun is stretching it a bit, but it's something everyone can relate to. A new spin on the countless reality TV game-shows and also, everyone's been in school, so you could imagine your school class in this position and how strange a situation it would be.

However, the premise also brings problems along with it, with a class of 42, as is shown in the film, how do you present it? There's always the danger of it becoming just a couple of hours of continuous killing and violence, and how do you flesh out the characters? With a premise as disturbing as this one, any of the students being killed is shocking, but how do you decide which characters to develop and which ones to kill off straight away. Certainly the filmmakers would have had a difficult job with this concept and trying to make it into a decent film.

There are, as you would expect, characters that die who we really don't know anything about except their name, but by the end all the key characters have been developed and we can now recognise them. The aforementioned "transfer student" is a sadistic teenage killer who we always expect to be lurking in the background, and we're cheering on anyone who's anyone to just finish him off.

There are twists and turns along the way and it's suspenseful all the way through. Who can our main characters trust? Can anyone really be trusted? By the end however, it needs to come to a conclusion, and it's here where I wasn't really satisfied. It's very difficult to come up with an ending to this concept, if one is left alive as the game's rules suggest, then it's an anti-climax, if a few of them escape, it's an anti-climax. It needed something really new and original to finish it all off, and let's just say I maybe expected more from the ending.

Overall, the film is intriguing and worth a watch, but it fails to deliver a really great conclusion which would have made it into a great film.