Christmas in August, Starman, Murderball, & Izo

Christmas in August is a sort of depressing Korean film about a camera shop manager (well, he's the only worker, it seems) who is dying and the parking cop who falls in love with him. It was a great film, though, and it was pretty heartbreaking. But ultimately, it was sort of uplifting with the ending. The stars reunited the next year in the quite good Se7en ripoff, Tell Me Something, which I saw on a big screen years ago, so they both looked fairly familiar. Although since they're Asian, I could have just been thinking of a different set of Asian actors.

Starman is John Carpenter doing the romance thing. Oh, sure it involves an alien and a military conspiracy plus the Rolling Stones. And Karen Allen and Jeff Bridges, along with Charles Martin Smith, one of those guys, were very strong centers. Jeff Bridges was sort of loopy as the alien who takes the body of Karen Allen's husband by taking some hair and then growing a new body. And then the scientist says that the technology is 10,000 years in the future. Heh.

Murderball was pretty short, and it made me feel somewhat uncomfortable thinking about these guys being so violent. It's just one of those films I felt like I should see, even if I knew that it wasn't really for me. The supermacho just make me feel like they're trying to overcome something they lack. In this case, it makes some sense for them to overcome their various ailments or accidents, but I still don't particularly feel comfortable with them. The supermacho, not the handicapped. Made me have Light & Day stuck in my head for a good portion of today.

Izo starts with an impregnation (sex-ed style), and then goes into about a minute of a guy being crucified and run through, repeatedly, with spears. Then it goes into a montage catching up on Japanese history from the end of the shogunate and samurai to the present day, with a heavy focus on violence, sex, and the Westernization of Japan. Where the long dead Samurai is now roaming the streets of Tokyo killing pretty much anyone he can. Oh, and of course it's a Takashi Miike film. There's crazy violence, incestuous sexuality, and a seemingly indestructible killer. Plus, the English subtitles don't match the English dialogue, one of my least favorite things to have. The dubbing is terrible though, which is necessary for a film like this. Not one of Miike's better films. The constant jumping back and forth in time doesn't really serve much of a purpose. It just seems to be bizarre for the sake of bizarrity. I think it's all about hell, but going through a bat guano insane film for two hours with a guy killing everything just is too much. That every scene seems to be a different Japanese pop culture cliche suggests a cultural satire. Or is it as simple as violence begets violence?