Ubume no Natsu - I've had this DVD for a dog's age, finally decided to watch it, so I could get some more j-horror in me. Bad move! This is not a horror movie, it's a talky j-mystery with little or no actual scares.
Ringu - I remember this as being much more unsettling. I remember when they showed the faces of the corpses, how terrified they looked, and this time, it seemed undistorted. I thought the scenes had been manipulated so the faces were torsioned out of normal capacity. Having seen her recently on TV, Matsushima Nanako does not appear to have changed in the intervening years, which is a little disturbing. The video sequences are still quite effective, but it's not quite there. I probably will choose not to re-watch Dark Water (Honogurai no Mizu no Soko Kara) for fear of having it fall flat.
Mononoke Hime - This movie gets better with repeated viewings. My god, what a thrilling adventure, rich, nuanced characters, and basically everything you could want from a Ghibli movie, except a sense of humor. There just aren't many laughs in the movie, and that's a shame. Suspense, action, even intrigue -- it has in spades. A lush, wonderful movie.
Super - Rainn Wilson can act, and is a hilarious, brave guy to wear that much shitty spandex. Liv Tyler plays a borderline attractive, trashy, doomed addict with perfect pitch. I wonder how many role models she's had on hand for the role, because she nails it. Kevin Bacon is also great, but that's like saying "the sky is blue." Kevin Bacon is
always great. Ellen Page looks like a young Sigourney Weaver without her baby fat, which is a good thing; the hyperactive, poor-impulse-control comic store grrl is a good role for her. It's a shame it's
just slightly out of her reach, acting wise -- at least compared to the other performers. I enjoyed the more realistic take on superheroes; more realistic than Kick-Ass, but at the same time, the resolution is not particularly believable.
Ending spoilers:
spoiler (click to show/hide)
In the end, Frank has bought guns, a cop has been shot dead in his house; there is no way for things to end well for him. After his confrontation with Jacques, he ends up taking Bolty's body and his wife, Sarah, back home.
With as realistically as they'd tried to present so much else, it's surprising that there wasn't a police investigation. If there had been one, it would have led to Frank being in prison. That's where the movie should have ended; I would liked to have seen one last shot of Frank in his happy future, and having it all crossfade -- just a very brief shot -- to him actually being in a prison cell, with the peaceful, happy future he's seeing as just another of his hallucinations. He's an unstable dude who is prone to them, after all.
As-is, it is still a very enjoyable, disturbing film.
There's a great essay on it by The Hulk if anyone can stand reading pages of all-caps.
