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From the rental shelves
It's crunch time as they say. Papers, tests and group projects loom and I'm becoming convinced that the sky really is falling. Who has time for the theaters with sky-high ticket prices, crowded lines and jigsaw parking lots? Even when I'm popping with stress like a humanoid dice bubble from the board game Trouble, I can't avoid the video stores. It's in that spirit that I head to the racks to dig out something old, something new and ... well, something Japanese. Enjoy.
Suicide Club
Ron Bonk, head of underground straight-to-video distributor Sub Rosa Studios, gave this advice to low-budget gore king Eric Stanze ("Scrapbook," "I Spit on Your Corpse; I Piss on Your Grave")
(I paraphrase) "Your film needs one thing, the one thing that everyone will be talking about, because they won't believe that you've done it. It will build word-of-mouth among fans."
Apparently this concept transcends cultural boundaries. Case in point: Japanese director Shion Sono's "Suicide Club."
Just picture 54 Japanese school girls joining hands and gleefully leaping in front of a speeding train. This opening scene is perfect for separating those who wouldn't pick this obscure J-horror flick anyway from the ones who have stopped reading this review and bolted to the video store already.
A strange outbreak of suicides is raking Tokyo. Detective Ryo Ishibashi (J-horror fans will remember him from Takashi Miike's must-see "Audition"), aided by a bizarre Internet informer with the moniker "The Bat," discovers a Web site that may be predicting the suicides.
Sono inundates the viewer in a murky soup of hyper-Americanized J-pop culture. Sono nakedly blames this cultural vacuum for the suicidal outbreak with direct-to-the-camera deadpan to rival the nihilistic joy of teen suicides.
The film suggests that if "shoot yourself in the face" were a hit pop song by a girl group pop sensation, then there would be a whole lot of popping sounds late at night in America. More so, the film suggests this isn't necessarily a bad thing.
But don't look for a tight storytelling and wall-to-wall entertainment. Sono's narrative drags as his hand strays from holding the camera to point accusingly at the viewer. Tangents - most notably a Hedwig meets Manson blonde who comes out of nowhere to rock a goth tune about the love of death - jar the film from establishing any real tempo or mood.
Even with its truly shocking opening scene, Sono's film doesn't really raise the bar for J-horror as far as audacity, thrills, scares or horror goes.
Kiyoshi Kurosawa (known as "the other Kurosawa" in some film circles) made the quintessential Japanese horror-allegory with his homicidal plague film "Cure." Shinya Tsukamoto started it all with his electrosexual monster film 'Tetsuo: Iron Man." Miike's "Audition," Hideo Nakata's "Ringu," and Takeshi Shimizu's "Ju-on" prove that Japanese horror has pulled a severed head and shoulders above the innocuous American drivel as of late.
And Hollywood is playing catch-up. Shimizu is set to direct an American "Ju-on" under the wing of Sam Raimi. Nakata is doing "The Ring 2." J-horror has already being subsidized for exploitation by American audiences under the theory that a good movie is inherent in its premise and that any cultural identity can be cleanly whipped off, a dish to be served free of subtitles and with familiar faces.
However, I truly doubt America can handle the audacity of 54 schoolgirls committing ritual suicide, so for now this sick bastard of a film is safe - and ready for you to rent, oh sick flick lover!
Stoked: The Rise and Fall of Gator
The joke that started "Hey remember the 80s?" hasn't quite run its course on pop culture. Whiney britt-pop imitators croon on the radio. The excellent Gary Jules cover of Tears for Fears "Mad World," is now picking up play along with a conspicuous amount of The Cure. With all these waves of nostalgia floating around I'm close to breaking down and wishing it was 1984, but I was 2-years-old -and as I remember it wasn't that good of a year anyway.
From this murk rises "Stoked, the rise and fall of Gator," a not-so-rad trip into the mind of '80s skateboard king Mark "Gator" Rogowski, who is currently serving 31 years for the rape and murder of a 20-year-old woman.
The documentary by Helen Stickler tries to trick the gap between charismatic skater poster boy and violent rapist.
Starting out, more or less where Stacy Peralta's 2001 skating doc "Dogtown and Z-boys" left off, Stickler charts the rise of vert skateboarding and its evolution from illegal pastime to corporate cash cow. Stickler leaves the details of the crime for the very end, save for a teaser early on, leaving about 80 percent of the film to describe Gator's rise to the top.
Rogowski, who changed his last name to Anthony at the height of his marketing absurdity, stood out from colleagues Tony Hawk and Steve Caballero with his natural instinct for self promotion.
The childish egomaniac rides his celebrity with as much aggressive precision as he does the vert ramp, scoring big with a deal from Vision skateboards.
Like Peralta's 'Dogtown,' 'Gator' suffers a bit from too much 'whoa, I'm on camera,' skateboarder talking heads, mostly due to an inordinate amount of pro skater Jason Jessee riffing stoner comedy with a "Dude where's my skateboard" vibe.
Stickler also relies too much on Tony Hawk, whose brief sound bites could be clipped from the film altogether if the filmmakers weren't relying on his name to increase the box value. Peralta's subjects in 'Z-Boys' may have been older, but their enthusiasm ripped through the screen with truly 'stoked' performances.
Uninspired interviews aside, 'Stoked' vividly crafts the real killer: fame, corporate sponsorship and celebrity. Even after seeing the brutal crime scene photos the most haunting image in my mind is Gator's fans decked out in baggy T-shirts with full-body logos, moving slowly on archival footage.
In the Cut
"Piano" director Jane Campion cuts this shady noir like an erotic bad dream. Prudish English teacher Franney Avery (Meg Ryan) becomes involved in a string of brutal murders and then a string of erotic encounters with the shady investigating officer Giovanni Malloy (Mark Ruffalo). Bending the noir genre away from the conventions of snappy dialogue and twisty-turny plot, Campion's film reads more like a discussion of women's sexuality than a Raymond Chandler book. Franney and sister Pauline (Jennifer Jason Leigh) tumble like dirty ragdolls in a rotten steam bath with dialogues about meeting men, humping men and the peculiarities of marital instinct.
Campion dissects the genre as skillfully as David Lynch did with "Mulholland Drive," and her product is nearly as bizarre. The characters bleed questions not answers; time lazily drags on. But in lieu of a solid plot it does ask an important question "Is that fellatio I just witnessed or was it homicide?" A head scratcher for all.
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