Three...Extremes Review

I'm gonna be honest. I think Asian countries do horror alot better than America does, for the most part at least. I think it's because countries like Korea and Japan have such a higher tolerance for messed up stuff. I Saw the Devil is one of the greatest movies about a serial killer I have ever seen, and yet that movie probably would of never been made in America because of how disturbing it is.

Anyway, in 2002 a horror film came out called Three. It was comprised of three different segments from three different famous Asian directors from different countries: Kim Ji-Woon, the director of I Saw the Devil, (South Korea), Nonzee Nimibutr, known for his horror film Nang Nak (Thailand), and Peter Chan, surprisingly known for romance and action movies, (China). I haven't actually seen Three, but this was just background info.

Three...Extremes was released in 2004. Not being a direct sequel to Three since, you know that movie is just 3 segments that have nothing to do with one another, rather it follows the same idea, by taking three famous directors from Asian cinema and having each one directing a 40 minute horror segment. The directors are Fruit Chan (China), who is pretty respected in his country, but I have personally never seen anything else by him.Chan Wook-Park (South Korea) who is my favorite director, I pretty much love everything he does. Takashi Miike (Japan), who I love for his insanely unique visual style and his almost unparallelled diversity, seriously he's made splatter movies like Ichi the Killer (which I love), straight up almost porn movies like Visitor Q (weird movie, I think he was trying to make some sort of statement, but I was to weirded out by the incest and what not), to family movies like Zebraman (its weird, but freaking awesome).

The first segment is Fruit Chan's "Dumplings". Personally I find the three segments to all be completely different kinds of horror films. With Chan's being the disturbingly gross kind. You know movies like Hostel. Except its not really a splatter film, its just extremely messed up...okay maybe its nothing like Hostel...not sure where I was going with this. Anywho, the segment is about an aging actress Mrs. Li (Miriam Yeung) who goes to Aunt Mei (Bai Ling) who cooks special dumplings that supposedly have a regenerative property. Its a great tale about the effects of aging, especially on celebrities, and the lengths people will go to retain their youth. I won't spoil the secret ingredient to the dumplings because its something that has to be watched to be properly disgusted by. Also the last shot of the movie is probably one of the most soul sucking depressing things ever.

The second segment is "Cut" by Korean director Chan Wook-Park. Again, keeping with the different kind of horror aspect, I personally think Park's reflects the realistic horror. Like its a bit of a far fetched concept, but can technically happen. It concerns the Director (Lee Byung-Hun) whos travels home only to be knocked out and wake up on a film set looking at the Stranger (Lim Won-hie) standing over him and his Wife (Kang Hye-jeong). You learn that the Stranger is a disgruntled extra who is mad at the Director for being seemingly perfect while he is a failure. Its a very well made film, what do you expect from Chan Wook-Park? There's alot of moments that you laugh at not really because they're particularly funny, but because you have to relieve the tension. Its again, a realistic approach to horror with the violence being gruesome, but not over the top. Its easily the best segment of the three.

The final segment "Box" hails from Japan and is directed by the mind-f*ck master himself, Takashi Miike. I'm gonna be completely honest right up front. I have absolutely no freaking idea what is happening in this segment. Something about twins, and an abusive father, there may or may not be incest or one of the twins gets burned in a fire or something. Seriously, its confusing as hell. and to top it off the ending doesn't really tell you anything. Its left open to what was real or not, but the whole thing is so surreal and bat shit insane that you have absolutely no idea what is happening. And it is genius. No, seriously, it is. You may have no idea what's happening, but that doesn't stop you from watching it. Its so strange and other worldly that you have no option but to continue in the hope that you'll figure something out. You probably won't, but its entertaining as hell and is the segment with the most horror aspect. Just straight up freaky crap happens in this part and very little of its explained but damn is it scary and weird. I don't want to give away much, but if your scared of Siamese twins like I am (I don't mean to offend Siamese twins but....damn they scare me) you'll be pretty terrified.

All in all Three...Extremes is a fantastic little gem of Asian horror. Each segment is about 40 minutes and lasts just long enough to unsettle you, but not too long to where you get used to the horror of it. The terror of each segment just builds and builds until it reaches its peak...and then it ends. Its perfect that way. As soon as you get used to the particular form of horror the segment is going for it ends and the next segment starts and scares you a completely different way. Whether its psychologically terrifying or realistically so, there's a segment for every kind of horror fan and each one works in its own right. 

Three Truths and A Lie

 This is a story I did for Chuck Wendig's weekly flash fiction contest. You can find his website here: http://terribleminds.com/. I highly recommend giving it a look.

                                                      Truths and A Lie

Three truths will I tell you and one lie.

1.       I did not mean to kill her.

2.       I did mean to kill him.

3.       The child’s death was an accident.

4.       She wanted to have sex with me.

So, if I’m writing this from a prison, which I’ll never leave, what’s the point of lieing?  I don’t know.  Just to mess with you. My story, like any other, starts with a beginning.

                I was 24 years old and a hitchhiker, for no other reason than I didn’t want to work, but I wanted to travel. Traveling was my dream and I was afraid that if I took a job I would be stuck in it forever and never be able to travel. So, I decided to travel first, doing odd jobs along the way to earn just enough money to get me to my next destination. Sounds fun right? Like a happy go lucky road trip about an aimless drifter who eventually finds love or something and at the end of the story settles down. Nope, nothing like that at all. I did find love, but it didn’t exactly end how you would hope.

                I met Adam and Amy halfway through my journey across the United States. I started in New York and was halfway through Kansas, which by the way horrible state, boring as piss, when they picked me up in their car. They were a nice couple, both extremely pretty people with a beautiful child of their own, James. I only asked for them to take me a couple of miles, but it turned out they lived a few hours away and offered to take there where they offered me a meal and a night’s sleep. Right? Way too nice and trusting, but I agreed, of course I agreed. So after three or four hours of driving and a riveting patty cake tournament with little James (who was four), where he thoroughly annihilated me , we arrived at their quaint little farm house.

                Turns out both of them had been born into rich families and when their parents died they both inherited large fortunes. What the hell are the odds of that? How many times in the history of ever has that happened? I realize maybe now it may happen more, but they met at school…in California, just happened to meet and go on a date and fell in love or whatever. They only learned after the fact that both their families were extremely wealthy. The hell fate? Anyway, they told me their story, which while it had an interesting opening with the whole rich families thing, it soon descended into boringness. With them detailing their travels, which was my dream dammit, and how they ended up living in Kansas (trust me not as interesting of a story as you might think).  They didn’t do it in a condescending way or anything, it just happened to be part of their story. Either way it pissed me off, I was born into an extremely poor family with an alcoholic mother and an abusive father (Jesus…I just realized my life sounds like the plot of a terrible gangster movie) and all I wanted to do was travel, but instead of flying or whatever I was forced to hitchhike my way across America.

                Anyway, I ended up staying for about a week, taking advantage of their hospitality and what not because…screw you they were rich and I was jealous. I found myself thinking more and more about Amy as I lay in the extravagant guest room at night. She was a perfect specimen of the human race, straight auburn hair, gorgeous sparkling blue eyes, and a body that would convince any priest to turn away from little boys (Ha topical humor). I thought maybe it was love, but I had never really been attracted to anyone before, so I wasn’t sure. Either way I found myself increasingly obsessed with her, thinking about her constantly, stealing glances at her and staring, and having very vivid fantasies and dreams. I wanted her so bad it started to cloud my mind; no other though was cohesive or precise.  Everything in the world seemed muddled and confusing and everyone else’s voice sounded so dim compared to her angelic one.

                One day I couldn’t take it anymore and I decided to proposition her.  I told her what I thought about her and essentially begged her for sex. To my complete shock, she said yes. So next time her husband and son decided to go shopping she elected to stay behind. It was amazing, the best sex of my entire life. It was passionate and loving and just so damned amazing. The hour her family was gone was the greatest hour of my entire life, but of course they returned. Of course they returned early.

                Adam as far as I could tell up to that point had been very level-headed. But walking in on me and his wife naked, I’m pretty sure something snapped. He lunged at me from the open doorway. I jumped out of the bed and ran down the stairs desperate to get away because I knew in a fair fight Adam could rip me into tiny bloody shreds.  In the kitchen I found a knife, he rushed at me and I stabbed him. He fell, and in my moment of power I took it too far, stabbing him over and over and over to satisfy my lust, I had never felt so powerful. Eventually, someone grabbed my arm; I whipped around and stabbed without looking. It was Amy. Of course it was. She fell. I stood there in horror. I saw the kid, James; he ran up the stairs, I of course gave chase, had to try and explain. He tripped going up the stairs, fell and broke his neck. The prosecution tried to tell a different story, that Amy was already dead when Adam got home. That Adam was running from me and that I threw the child down the stairs. This is how I remember it.  But seeing as I’m writing this in a maximum security prison, with two guards standing directly over me watching my every move I guess I could be wrong. But this is the event as I remember it. My attorney tried to plead insanity just because my mother suffered from schizophrenia and drank while she was pregnant with me. What does he know? He wasn’t there, I was. So which one is the lie you ask? Honestly, I can’t remember. Good luck.

God Bless America Review

 

In my Iron Sky review I talked about how I think having political undertones and such in your movie is okay as long as its subtle or clever and doesn't take away from the characters, story, and such of the movie. That is a statement I will stand by..

Some movies are all about politics though, like Michael Moore films. And in documentaries and such I understand. But in a fictional film where the point is the story and the focus should be on characters and making the audience like them, having amazingly ham-fisted and blatantly obvious political overtones can alienate audience members or, in my case, completely destroy my enjoyment of a movie.

I have seen one other film by Bobcat Goldthwait, that is World's Greatest Dad. And I liked it quite a bit, I thought Robin Williams was brilliant, and I thought the funny moments worked for the most part and the dramatic moments worked too. Point is, for the most part I really liked that movie, I thought it was a very well made movie about the lengths a parent would go to for his child.

God Bless America is the fifth movie written and directed by Goldthwait, and completely unlike World's Greatest Dad, I cannot stand this movie. I understand what he was trying to do, I really really do. Underline the point about how America has lost its way and has descended into paying attention to horrible people doing horrible things. I get it America is deteriorating because of how it worships terrible people and because of how people have become increasingly pop culture obsessed in stead of getting a job or whatever.

Its not really the subject matter that bothers me, although the movie does come off as very America hating, its how Goldthwait goes about telling the story and who he tries to make us identify with. The film starts with Frank (Joel Murray) living in a crappy apartment next door to a douchebag, hsi annoying wife and their non-stop crying baby. The first scene is a scene where Frank imagines him shooting the man and the baby with a shotgun and he smiles about it. That's not a very good way to introduce us to a character that we're supposed to like. And we are supposed to like him by the way, it isn't one of those movie where a psychopath is the main character so you can see what goes through their mind, like I Saw the Devil, we're supposed to like Frank and cheer him on during his horrible murdering spree. Anyway he is diagnosed with a brain tumor and fired from his job for sending flowers to a female co-worker who was having a bad day, Frank then kills an obnoxious teenager (one of the Sweet 16 girls) and it is witnessed by Roxy (Tara Lynne Barr). She then convinces Frank to go on a vicious killing spree with her, basically killing anyone they don't like or agree with. That's pretty much the rest of the movie.

I understand what this movie is trying to do, its all a political point about the downfall of America. I get it. But do the main characters really have to be so horrible and unlikeable? They don't come off really as people trying to make some sort of point, although they constantly try and say they're making a point, they come off as psychopaths. And again, I'm, not opposed to having a psychopath a mian character (again pointing out I Saw the Devil), but this movie tries to make you emphasize with Frank and Roxy like they're doing the right thing. At no point does the movie come out and say that what Frank and Roxy are doing is wrong. In fact the film makes it seem like what they're doing is right. In understand that its also an attempt at black humor because that's Bobcat Goldthwait's thing, and while it worked in World's Greatest Dad, that's because although we didn't like his son, we like robin Williams character because he was a good guy trying to defend his son because at the end of the day no matter how terrible of a person his son was he was still his son and he loved him. That worked because Williams' character was a good person. Not so in God Bless America, the two leads are horrible despicable people.

The actors are okay I guess, they do their job well and the directing is pretty good, but its really the writing that just completely destroys this movie. For example: the movie tries to paint Republicans as horrible selfish people who are completely unfair to the opposite point of view. Ok that's someone's opinion and I respect it, but at the same time, the two main characters are liberals and are killing Republicans because they don't agree with how they act. Do you get the point I'm trying to make? I get that maybe it was some sort of attempt at saying that both parties are full of horrible people, and that would of worked if, again, the movie didn't try and paint Frank and Roxy as the good guys. Through the whole movie Frank is painted as the good guy, but he isn't a good guy, even in his own horrible moral world he isn't a good person because alot of the people he kills, especially in the last scene, are just people doing their job, trying to make a living and he kills them just because they're there.

Besides politics, the rest of the people in the film that Frank and Roxy kill are jerks. I guess that's another point about the movie, to try and be nicer to other people. Which is a sentiment I can get behind. But the movie is very juvenile in the way it tackles the subject matter. Basically is someones a jerk, kill them. And while yes there have been times where someone was being a jerk to me and I wished I could have killed them, I would have never had done it. Because as soon as I stopped and thought about it I realized I would be the better person if I just ignored them and didn't let it get to me. Giving jerks attention is what makes them jerks. They figure if people pay attention to them when they act like that, why not act like that all the time? Also, at some point in your life you have to realize that no matter how bad you may want them dead, jerks are always going to be there, its just a part of life, some people are just mean spirited people. The best you can do is rise above them and be a better person, ruthlessly gunning them down in a movie theater isn't being a better person.

I hate this movie. I understand what Goldthwait was trying to do, but they way he went about doing it was, I think, completely wrong. It comes off as shallow and self centered. And although Goldthwait tries to make a statement about technology and how it is ruining America, there is no cleverness to it. Its very blunt about, like he's saying it because he doesn't understand the technology, basically he comes off as that old man on his lawn yelling "You darn kids". This movie isn't, clever, funny, or entertaining and I cannot stand it.