Action

(Jusannin no Shikaku)
dir: Takashi Miike

2010

Whenever I hear that Takashi Miike has a new film out, I wonder out loud to myself, especially when I’m on public transport, “Well, what new piece of fucked-upedness has he come up with now?” I mean, after all, this is the demented Japanese director responsible for, in a criminal sense, films like Audition, Ichi the Killer, the yakuza Dead or Alive trilogy, Visitor Q and a whole host of other flicks so vicious I don’t even want to quote scenes from them, because it’s too traumatic to remember.

Suffice to say, there’s never, apparently, been a moment where he’s thought of depicting something on screen that is vile, horrifying, obscene or demented and thought, “Nah, that’s too fucked up, even for me.”

Whatever depravity he’s previously been responsible for, he still remains a completely flexible director with the ability to make any kind of Japanese flick in any kind of Japanese genre, which, to use an overused phrase, ranges from the sublime to the truly, hideously ridiculous.

Instead of spending time talking about the truly horrifying and nightmare-inducing stuff I’ve seen in all his other films, which is tempting in the extreme, I’ll just talk about this film, which is surprisingly solid.

dir: Joe Johnston

This makes up for enduring Green Lantern, but not by too much.

Captain America, despite being Captain America, was enjoyable enough. The film, especially the back end, doesn’t entirely satisfy, but it was so much more enjoyable an experience, and not as actively irritating as the aforementioned shitheap masquerading as just another franchise, that it could not help but look better.

I am aware that Captain America is a relatively ancient comic book property, dating back to the World War II era, famous for a cover that showed Cap punching out Hitler. The fact that this was drawn and published during the war makes it all the more important that, thankfully, Cap’s origin story (which most of the flick is) occurs during that vital time.

dir: Michael Bay

Michael Bay returns to fuck the proverbial metallic donkey again for fun and profit…

The last time I reviewed a Michael Bay – Transformers film, I made the point that Michael Bay is a donkeyfucker of long standing, who delivers exactly what he promises: 2 and a half hours of shiny, shiny donkeyfucking. As such, considering the vitriol his directorial abominations garner, I was simply stating the obvious that, whatever Bay’s actual intentions, pretentions and beliefs regarding the quality of the donkeyfucking he delivers on demand, he delivers exactly what he promises to the great unwashed texting, tweeting masses.

No-one expects either the Spanish Inquisition or decent acting performances from anyone in these flicks. No-one especially expects Shia La Fucking Beouf to act any better than he’s ever managed to in the past, because he’s always been terrible, and will always be terrible, unless they somehow mutate him in a lab or a meteorite crashes into his hideous head.

So what do people expect from a Transformers / Michael Bay donkeyfuckfest (I promise this will be the second-last time I use that phrase)? They expect a stupid plot that a child would feel insulted by, they expect an unnecessarily-elongated running time, and they expect big shiny robots transforming into other stuff, and then transforming back into robots in order to fuck shit up. And explosions, lots of explosions.

dir: Kenneth Branagh

More comic book movies. More Marvel comic book movies! See, the waddling Comic Book Guys of the world don’t have enough to entertain themselves with and bitch about across the vast expanse of the tubes of the internets already.

There weren’t enough goddamn Spider-Men, Supermen, X-Men, Iron Men, Batmen, Hulk Men, Man Men flicks out there stinking up the joint as it was?

Of course it’s never going to end because the golden age continues. They make billions of dollars, and they convince grown adults to buy merchandise for themselves to put on their desks at work, without the least amount of shame or reluctance. That’s a fucking money spinner, that is. Comic book franchises make money rain from the skies, so it makes sense that the Microsoft of the comics world, being Marvel, invested a shitload of money setting up their own studio to make these delightful and delicious flicks themselves with greater regularity and with more direct profits to themselves.

And thus, Marvel Studios brings us The Mighty Thor!

As tempted as I am to keep ripping the shit out of them and this flick just for the mere fact of their lazy existence, I’m not going to. Mostly, I’m not going to because I actually enjoyed Thor, ridiculous as that seems. Embarrassing as it might be.