Life, Foyle's War, Blind Mountain, & Woman on the Beach

Life is the follow-up to Planet Earth, although it doesn't quite have the mind-bending awesomeness that was seeing that on a huge HDTV, back when that was fancy and unexpected. Having seen many things (including politician pores and McCain old man creepiness) in HD, it's not quite the novelty. Also, Oprah is no Sigourney Weaver. In fact, before I even started to watch it, I pre-ordered the Blu-ray version with David Attenborough's narration from the BBC version. Because Sigourney Weaver isn't even Sir David. Definitely check out both of these if you ever want to show off your HD TV. Seeing all the adorable creatures trying to deal with life, like the macaques in Japan and the seals and meerkats really are impressive.

Foyle's War is apparently over, unfortunately skipping most of 1944 to the very end of the war in Europe. The last three episodes, one about Russian POWs, racism, and traitors covers some pretty awesome ideas, and it's just a shame that we never get to see Foyle getting back at the American war profiteer. Because I want more Michael Kitchen being a complete badass. He's really just an extremely enjoyable actor.

And from a couple months ago, I watched Blind Mountain, which was a depressing story of a woman who gets kidnapped by a shady dude, and sold into slavery to be a man's wife in a small town in rural China, and how that's how things go there, and the horrible degradations she has to go through to try to let her parents know about what's going on and try to get rescued. If you want a depressing movie filled with rape and beatings, go for it.

I also watched Woman on the Beach, which was a depressing story about a director with writer's block and his relationship with his assistant's girlfriend. Not a particularly good or interesting movie.

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, The Pluto Files, Being Human, Life, & lots more TV

The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz is about the life of an obese Dominican and the history of his family tied up in a story of the Dominican Republic and the fuku that colonization has brought upon the world. Being both a history buff and a nerd, I really loved the book. It's just the kind of thing that I love. I'm enjoying the fact that there's books like this that are winning things like Pulitzer prizes. Because that means that I'm either becoming more literary, or, more likely, the literary establishment is becoming nerdier. I wonder when the first bit of fan fiction will win a major writing award. I really hope it's some good old Luke/Han Solo slash.

I finally actually watched The Pluto Files, and it was just as enjoyable as I was hoping. Neil deGrasse Tyson is just so engaging, and he makes science so interesting. Who doesn't make science interesting were the people who did Being Human. Which was a three part series about the evolution of man, but was pretty darn boring. Life, on the other hand, had annoying narration from Oprah Winfrey, but the footage in HD is worth it. I didn't enjoy it as much as Planet Earth, but it's hard to argue against HD nature footage.

In network TV news, Justified, the new FX series with Timothy Olyphant based on Elmore Leonard stories, is pretty enjoyable. Pacific isn't as good as Band of Brothers, but it's still fairly enjoyable. The Ricky Gervais Show, although based on podcasts, is funny, and Karl Pilkington is a magnificent moron. Community continues to be the best thing on free network TV. Treme, if you aren't watching, is a proud successor to The Wire. This is also about a city and people that is being failed by the institutions that are supposed to have protected it. There are so many things about this show that just make me giddy when I watch it.

The Naked Prey, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day, 2 Days in Paris, & Elizabeth: The Golden Age

The Naked Prey has a monkey fighting a cheetah. Oh, and it's basically like The Most Dangerous Game, except in this case, it's far more racist because it's set in Africa in the 19th century and it has a white guide for a safari being the only survivor of a native massacre. But he only survives to be released naked and then hunted for sport. It was made in 1966. There's genuine footage of animal-on-animal and human-on-animal violence. And man-on-man violence. The story is based on the true story of a white man who was hunted by Black Foot Indians in 1807, and he survived after 11 days of running back to civilization (there's an awesome Paul Giamatti-read version of the story on the Criterion DVD). The movie itself is beautifully shot vistas in South Africa, but man, the racial implications of this film make Rush proud.

Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day is a much shorter film than I was expecting, even though it was only about a day in the life of a generally unpleasantly judgmental person. No, it wasn't about me. I have never been a maid. Or a social secretary. Frances McDormand was pretty enjoyable, I will never complain about Lee Pace getting work (the second to last episode of Pushing Daisies wasn't quite as good as the third to last episode, but still better than almost anything else on TV), Ciaran Hinds was enjoyable, as was Shirley Henderson and Amy Adams. Basically, an enjoyable film that doesn't really say anything or mean much of anything. But if you want an enjoyable fast-paced film, you could do far worse.

2 Days in Paris is clearly a personal story for Julie Delpy, writing, directing, starring, casting her parents as her parents (following Before Sunset), and her former boyfriend as her boyfriend. And I think it's mainly about the differences between the US and France. But it's also a belated let's make fun of Americans for being idiots and supporting Bush.

Elizabeth: The Golden Age is the entirely unnecessary sequel to Elizabeth, which was excellent and a much better movie than Shakespeare in Love. I just found this movie boring. Sorry, Cate Blanchett and Clive Owen. I generally like you both, along with Geoffrey Rush and Samantha Morton. But it appears that Shekhar Kapur just couldn't do it again. The sense of watching something that never needed to be made was something I couldn't get rid of throughout the film. And now you've made me retroactively less happy with Elizabeth. Success, Mr. Kapur? I hardly think so.

Weirdly all of these films have non-sexual nudity. 2 Days in Paris has weird pictures with penii and balloons. The others were mainly asses, although The Naked Prey has naked native women breasts.

The Da Vinci Code, Cutthroat Island, The Long Good Friday, Executive Koala, & Purple Rain

The Da Vinci Code clearly was going to be made, based on the huge sales of the book, but is there a more useless big budget film? Ridiculous, and somehow, for some reason, they changed the ending to make it much more ambiguous that Sophie is the descendant of Jesus Christ. Too bad, because that was just about the only thing that made the story remotely interesting. Of course, it's crap, based on misrepresentations and the like. Of course, I fully subscribe to the idea that Jesus was a normal dude, and the huge gap in his life in the New Testament, along with the idea that since I believe that Jesus actually did exist, it's highly unlikely that the huge inconsistencies and mistranslations in the Bible could possibly be reconciled. It's obvious that all religions are based on earlier ones, building on myths, trying to explain things that science hadn't yet explained, so a healthy skepticism of organized religion is good, but the least you can do is at least be honest. Dan Brown may be a compulsively readable author, but he's a first class liar.
Cutthroat Island is quite simply terrible in every way. But it's a different terrible from The Singing Forest. There's some talent there, but so little of it is in evidence anywhere remotely near this film that I wonder who decided to greenlight this with such a huge budget. Really, anyone who may have, at one time or after the movie, been a good actor/director/writer/anything seriously did not know what the hell they were doing. They replaced quality movie with explosions. And extra-long boring fight scenes with pirates, a monkey, and explosions.
The Long Good Friday is a great British gangster film. Bob Hoskins gives a riveting performance as a "middle-class" gangster trying to open a casino, and deal with bombings that seem to be trying to eliminate him and his woman, Helen Mirren. It also features a young Pierce Brosnan as an assassin. Really, it's quite good.
Executive Koala is a very strange film, a Koala is a salaryman at a pickle company in Japan, and his wife disappeared three years ago and his new girlfriend just disappeared. And he works for a bunny. Telling you much more about the plot would be ruining it. There's a musical interlude, some strange cultural satire, and some breaking the fourth wall. Definitely worth watching, because I have never seen a film that so nonchalantly deals with something so utterly weird.
Purple Rain has some great Prince tracks, and some terrible acting. The bluray didn't seem like it was worth getting, as it still looked like an old DVD, so maybe they just did a crappy job with the transfer? And Morris Day is supposed to be stupid, but his pants were just too high for me to take him remotely seriously.

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End & Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty

Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End has Geoffrey Rush back, which is a definite step up over Dead Man's Chest. But it's also racist, with pretty much all the Asian characters complete stereotypes. At least the main pirates have some type of obvious thinking going on in their heads, every single other character is wafer thin. And do I have to mention, again, that the only female characters in the film are a god in human form and Keira Knightley? As if it needed to be more of a sausage fest. Basically, far, far, far too long, stupid, and just an insult. And still not as bad as the second one. Geoffrey Rush is just that good.

In order to get the bad pirateness out of my mouth, I went ahead and purchased Ratchet & Clank Future: Quest for Booty. Unfortunately, it was not really a search for booty (of either the pirate or rapper kind), but a search for things to make searching for Clank easier. But it was about as fun as Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, which this follows in time. I hate jumping puzzles, and feel that they're there only to piss me off, due to my lack of spatial awareness, but even though I struggled with one stupid part of jumping on some moving platforms and walking along a thin beam, I still got over four hours of enjoyment from the game. And for only $15, not a particularly bad purchase. Because, as a Ratchet & Clank game, it was funny, and you can never have too many drunken robotic pirates.

ST 3: Marauder, POTC: Dead Man's Chest, Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone, & Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House

Starship Troopers 3: Marauder was terrible. There was gratuitous nudity. But as per usual, no frontals, so sorry. That some nudity thing made me think it would just be a fleeting thing, but nope. Anyway, the film was horrible. Vagina dentata up the wazoo though, along with ridiculously stupid religious symbolism. Actually the nudity and the fact that the black guy doesn't die are about the only things to recommend it. Well, it depends on whether you actually liked the book. The return (I haven't seen the second, and both Tweaks and Meat have warned me of just how terrible it is) of the Nazi propaganda films made it somewhat enjoyable. Jolene Blalock's horribly puffed up lips detracted from that. Oh, and the main protester being named Gonif was a little bit of Yiddish humor. Gonif's hard to describe, but sort of a good-for-nothing who does things that are sort of illegal, but not really a crook.

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest is 2.5 hours long. For those of you keeping track, that's at least an hour too long. It just kept going and going and going. And Depp wasn't nearly as fun, and basically everything wasn't nearly as fun. The first one didn't feel like it had to live up to anything, and my expectations were pretty low. I did see it in a packed theater with a very enthusiastic audience, and this one I saw on blu-ray on my HDTV, but alone on a Sunday morning. I sort of regretted it, although now I can complain about the most important thing that the Pirates of the Caribbean films brought to light: a zombie pirate monkey. This was such a great thing in the first movie with lots of zombie pirates and then a reveal of a zombie pirate monkey at the end, and then this just shunts him off to a couple of jokes, and focuses on sea creature pirates. Which fail miserably. I like cute furry creatures, not starfish. So few films really need sequels, and most that get them screw up the expectations created by earlier films that it's just painful to see them even try.

Larry Flynt: The Right to Be Left Alone was a short documentary about Larry Flynt. And while I've never actually read/held a Hustler in my hands (as far as I can remember, it has been pretty hard to find a Hustler in Cincinnati for most of my life), I like Larry Flynt's continual fight for its right to exist. And this was a much more accurate version of the movie than The People Vs. Larry Flynt. About my only complaint (besides brief length) was that intercut with the archival footage and talking heads was a scene from a photoshoot for Hustler. This was unnecessary. I don't care what the photoshoot looks like, except in the context of what is acceptable and not within a variety of censorship laws throughout the country. I mean, is it acceptable to show nipple? Because I have this feeling that it isn't in Malaysia. Silly Muslims, nips are for kids. And yes, I just hurt everyone's brain with that. Yay!

Thank You, Mr. President: Helen Thomas at the White House is a big love letter to the White House press corps. And it's too short. I wanted more of a press corps that cared and asked tough questions like that. Maybe less singing from Helen Thomas though. It's a good use of 40 minutes.

Also, this was the colon update. It's complicated.

Joyeux Noël, High Spirits, & Pootie Tang

Joyeux Noël is a weepy melodrama about the Christmas truce between the Germans and the Scottish and French troops in 1914 on the Western Front. It's effective, but clearly there are extensive liberties taken with history. An anti-war film, all I could think about the entire time was about the best way to break through the lines in 1914. How do you get past the best defensive weapon of the time before there's really any corresponding advancement in offensive weaponry? Clearly the current tactics were not working, and it's amazing that they tried the same things over and over again. Working with smaller forces attacking weaker points would have worked, and did, finally, by the end of the war. You would have thought that mass assaults that decimated the forces would have made them realize that wouldn't work. And that's basically everything I was thinking about for most of the movie. Especially anytime that Diane Kruger wasn't on screen. When she was, it was maybe 90% of what I was thinking.

High Spirits is a Neil Jordan film, who directed the supremely awesome Mona Lisa, The Crying Game, and The Butcher Boy, along with the quite good The Company of Wolves, The Good Thief, Breakfast on Pluto, Michael Collins, and Interview with the Vampire. Basically, I like Neil Jordan, so when I was told that there was an 80s comedy with Peter O'Toole, Steve Guttenberg, Jennifer Tilly, Peter Gallagher, Beverly D'Angelo, Daryl Hannah, and Liam Neeson, I had to watch this. And it's just as bad as you'd expect a movie with Steve Guttenberg and a ghostly Daryl Hannah (doing her best Lucky Charms, which brings me to the review on Netflix that includes this: (save for Darryl Hannah as an Irishwoman--doesn't work, but they even purposefully have her lapse out at certain lines for comic effect, which shows they can make fun of themselves), which is so blatantly stupid that it's ridiculous). There are so many things that just don't work in this film that I was amazed that anyone thought it was a good idea. That it was funny in its terribleness is amazing. Just avoid this film unless you are with a lot of people who are very much into watching crap. I do very much want to see Neil Jordan's original cut of the film, especially considering the psychosexual aspects of The Company of Wolves, which this film clearly should have had more of. Also, the special effects were terrible 80s rear projection, models, and some stop motion. And there was the Duke University reference (more info about Duke's importance in Parapsychology here), which always reminds me of Carrie (the novel makes a couple references to Duke University scientists) and the opening of Ghostbusters, with the Zener cards. Of course, Duke no longer has it, but it's still in Durham. Ugh...

Pootie Tang is hilarious. In a good way. Also, what a cast: Bob Costas, Robert Vaughn, Chris Rock, J.B. Smoove, Wanda Sykes, Dave Attell, Laura Kightlinger, J.D. Williams, Jennifer Coolidge, Andy Richter, Kristen Bell (in her first credited performance! and just as hot as she is now), David Cross, Jon Glaser, Rick Shapiro, and Todd Barry. And a gorilla mauling. Plus it's full of good messages for the kids: don't eat sugary cereals, don't drink whiskey, don't smoke, respect women, and watch out for a man with a belt.

King Kong, The Trials of Henry Kissinger, The Pornographers, American Dreamz, & Memoirs of a Geisha

King Kong is three hours of boring action scene after boring action scene, with a strong hint of extreme colonialism liberally sprinkled throughout. Maybe Peter Jackson loves the film and has been wanting to make the film for years, but that only comes out at all in that the film is indulgently long. Not a bad film by any means, just utterly unnecessary.

The Trials of Henry Kissinger makes me sort of like Christopher Hitchens. Which is saying something, considering what a drunk-ass former commie war apologist he is now. But Eugene Jarecki, director of Why We Fight does a very good job with an extremely biased film, pointing out just how evil Kissinger is. Because he's really, really freaking evil. It's a well-put together film, plus frequently funny, as well as frustrating. That anyone can think of Kissinger as anything other than a war criminal who cost thousands of American lives, let alone the Vietnamese and Chileans killed due to his manipulations, is one of the worst aspects of the right. Trying to rehabilitate all those criminals from Watergate, Vietnam, and Iran-Contra is offensive.

The Pornographers is based on a novel by Akiyuki Nosaka, who also wrote the novel Grave of the Fireflies (made into one of the best non-Miyazaki animated films ever made). It's directed by Shohei Imamura (Dr. Akagi, 11/09/01, and Warm Water under a Red Bridge), and consequently it's all about sex in Japanese society. The book is episodic, but extremely hilarious, and I don't entirely agree with some of the changes to the story (I liked the pornographic novel writer who only knew if what he was writing was good if he got himself off, the sex doll section was far more important, and the intimations of father-daughter incest are far more restrained, and I'm not sure why there needed to be a son in the family as well). Much was excised for length reasons, but adding the son seemed to be more about social satire. Given the changes, the film still skewers the hypocrisy inherent within Japanese society effectively. I do wish that there were actual extras on the disc, as just a trailer was disappointing. Just because I've read the book doesn't mean I don't want to listen to anyone talking about the film. Unfortunately, the film just doesn't work as well as the novel. The extra characterization possible allows for the episodic nature to gain added resonance because of the extra emotional connection available. We're just a little too detached from Ogata in movie form.

American Dreamz is a little satire that should have been better. Yeah, making fun of Bush and American Idol is funny, but the film dragged quite a bit. I wish that everything had been better, and that Adam Busch had gotten more scenes. I am all for more Jews getting play from lots of women on screen. Good cast, though.

Memoirs of a Geisha is one of those films that, were I really an Asian fetishist, I would have loved. With Zhang Ziyi, Gong Li, Michelle Yeoh, and Youki Kudoh, four of my personal favorite Asian actresses, I should have liked it. But the whole "We can't find any Japanese actresses (besides Kudoh), so we'll put a bunch of Chinese (and a Malaysian) actresses in the main roles, and no one will ever know the difference" is just so offensive to so many people. Plus, the film is absolutely gorgeous, clearly very expensive, and deserved the Oscars it got. If only the film itself were better. I imagine the book is quite good, based on reputation, but I just kept thinking about how this was all a lot of money spent on a film that was never going to do well. Hire a bunch of people who can't speak English to speak English and you'll get some stilted performances. Also, far too long.

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse

The Testament of Dr. Mabuse was Fritz Lang's last film in Germany before he exited due to being Jewish. As such, the anti-Nazi subtext of the film adds quite a punch to what is, in Lang's typical fashion, an expressionistic masterpiece. And it has some extremely effective set pieces, like the escape from the locked room and the ending car chase. He just knows how to film something. And the use of a master criminal, who is never seen by his associates, but is heard in a ranting tone of voice, ordering them to commit anti-social crimes almost entirely to bring down society, fits quite well with Hitler, but it isn't so much about that, as it is about the ability of people who would otherwise be somewhat, if not entirely, normal to commit heinous crimes because they are ordered to. Which, of course, has not just relevance to the Nazis and the German public in general at the time, but also to today and our inability to actually do anything about, say, the government and its desire to lead us into an unjust and illegal war. That the general public are sheep is not particularly ingenious in its revelation, but that the film itself works so well allows that nice message to work far better than if it were another shrill documentary that can be attacked for its partisanship. It's a blatantly partisan film, with good reason, but it's far harder to condemn a fiction film as that without having to explain the point of it, thus bringing those ideas into the public eye far easier than a Robert Greenwald documentary. Plus, of course, it's not worth even pointing out vast gap in the relative artistic merits of Fritz Lang, one of the greatest directors ever to work during the silent and early sound era, and Robert Greenwald, someone who can't really put together a 78 minute long documentary of how unfair and unbalanced Faux News is without causing the audience to become bored in half an hour. The talent behind the camera allows for far more effective political commentary than if you just put a hack there. It's like a Paul Verhoeven film: you can argue whether his points are valid (e.g. whether the future really is all about communal showers), but his talent allows you to focus on that rather than on shoddy construction (e.g. Robocop 2 & 3, although 3 was far worse than 2). Yes, I did happen to rewatch Robocop this past week. Seriously, TCM is the greatest channel currently on TV. The original AMC was also quite good, before they decided commercials were fine and that Any Which Way You Can was an American Movie Classic, rather than an excuse for more monkey hijinks. Heh, monkeys. I know they renamed the channel just AMC, but that day sucked when they switched.

Dirty Pictures, Marie Antoinette, 1776, & The Weather Underground

Dirty Pictures was a movie by Showtime made ten years after the events depicted: the Mapplethorpe/Contemporary Arts Center trial in Cincinnati. Of course I was interested in seeing this, since I actually remember this whole thing. I am pretty sure my parents went to see the exhibit. The pictures themselves are really nothing more than typical porn, with the exception of the urolagnia picture and the two "child porn" ones, of which neither are anything more than a typical picture of a kid in a bathtub, which I'm sure most people have. Just because you see a penis doesn't make it erotic. Just take a look at, say, Ken Davitian in Borat. He's naked, and man is he not attractive. Unless you're into overweight bears. I've gone off topic. The film is quite well done, with real interviews interspersed with reenactments. And I'm, of course, completely sympathetic to the film, with its message of free speech, along with the dangerous threat of the bringing of completely spurious lawsuits that go to trial because of biases. There's also the epilogue of the creepy People for Community Values guy explaining why these lawsuits without merit are brought, along with the threats made against those willing to put up art. Just made me frustrated. I hate me some bigots.

Marie Antoinette has a good soundtrack, but ultimately disappointed me. I get that Marie-Antoinette may have been a young woman who didn't really understand anything outside of her life. Then again, it fits in perfectly with Coppola's other films, with a young woman struggling with her location in life. And this has outstanding costume design, well deserving of its oscar, no matter how stupid that "it's literally a feast for the eyes" line in the telecast was. Really it's just not as good as I was hoping, even if I'm not entirely sure how to make it better. There already was a monkey in it.

1776 was long, the songs were boring or stupid, and beh to it all. Yeah, that's all you get 1776. I'll give you three sentences.

The Weather Underground is an interesting look at a violent leftist organization that bombed many establishment places to protest violence against blacks or Vietnam and the like. I really didn't know very much about them, so it was nice to learn a lot. Also, Ian MacKaye, Jerry Busher, Amy Domingues, and Brendan Canty were involved in the music for it, giving it that added bit of DC indie rock cred. The music is reminiscent of Philip Glass's scores for Errol Morris's films, so I bet it was successful in that plan.

The Stranger, Spanking the Monkey, Gozu, Versus, & The Gingerbread Man

The Stranger is interesting from a historical standpoint, but the studio limitations, the main one being Edward G. Robinson rather than Agnes Morehead in the G-man role, make the movie nothing that special, except for the finale in the clocktower, which is pretty effective. Otherwise, Welles doesn't put too much of his own stamp on it, except for making the Nazis really really unpleasant. My favorite bit of weirdness was that apparently Edward G. Robinson can hear a dog being kicked within a 15 mile radius even when asleep. Thems some good hearing. But the thing that actually woke him up was something I immediately noticed upon the hearing of it. Nobody says things like that except for Nazis. Edward G. Robinson clearly wasn't at all intelligent as the rest of the movie made him out to be.

Spanking the Monkey was a little Oedipal for my tastes. Also strange seeing a young Carla Gallo. Interesting though, but sort of strange, and I'm not just talking about using Morphine for the soundtrack. Jeremy Davies is excellent, as is his mother. I thought that the ending was very appropriate for it, as that was one seriously messed up family.

Gozu is typical Miike weirdness. Insane yakuza imagining yakuza attacking dogs and cars, more lactation, reincarnation, plus a full-grown man being born during sex... I didn't even mention the cow-head. Pretty weird freakin' film. Not nearly as good as his other films. Still insane, but the weirdness doesn't seem to have as much of a point as others.

Versus is bizarre Japanese zombie-samurai-yakuza-(a bit of) vampire craziness. Good fight scenes, and a somewhat interesting idea for a movie. I don't entirely think that the movie's ending actually makes sense. There were some very funny bits, some very good gore, and the acting is acceptably crazy for the movie. Probably just would have been better if the director had actually made an ending. Sequels are fun, but it would have been nice for this one to make a little sense.

The Gingerbread Man is overlong and a mess of a movie. Branagh's accent is good, but the movie's nowhere near good for an Altman film. I'm only somewhat suprised, as it was in the midst of his dry spell. Not sure whether anyone could have made a good movie of this though. At least Grisham's other works are... well, actually none are particularly good. This one just seems to make a little less sense than the others. And that Mercedes convertible can really handle everything. I'm impressed.

Land of the Dead & Visitor Q

Land of the Dead is vastly superior to Day of the Dead, but that isn't really saying that much. Romero shows that he can do the barely hidden metaphor in a zombie film better than anyone else. That it has Dennis Hopper being an evil, evil man is an added bonus. My main complaint was actually that it had too much flesh eating. Yeah, I wouldn't have thought that possible. I did see the unrated version, so that could explain it. Leguizamo was actually not annoying either, which I also didn't think was possible. I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the zombies getting brains and figuring out tools and the like. I know that Bub in Day of the Dead clearly was learning, but I think that the zombies learned how to do a little much in a very short period of time in this movie. I have to say that it was enjoyable, and I definitely prefer the slow zombies of this to any fast zombie movie (with the notable exception of 28 Days Later, which is the only good fast zombie movie I can think of, and that wasn't really a true zombie film). And how much better this was than the Dawn remake just goes to show that Romero is needed for any good movie in this universe (note that I'm including remakes, recuts (that horrible extended Night of the Living Dead), and movies that are supposed to happen in the same universe (the horribly nihilistic and mainly craptacular Return of the Living Dead movies)). Wow, that was horrible sentence structure. Score one for the non-writer.

Visitor Q is a typical Miike film. If you don't come out feeling extremely dirty after seeing one, I don't think you truly saw the movie. Incest, prostitution, beatings, lots of lactation, drugs, rape, necrophilia, loose bowels, pissing, you name it, this movie has it. Except a giant robot monkey pirate ninja zombie. They still haven't made a movie with that yet. Note that if they did, I would immediately love that movie. I think the movie is saying something about the state of reality TV and Japanese society, along with the damaging effects of violence and sex on family life. Plus, are we really supposed to think that Visitor Q is a god of some sort? Wait, that's sort of a spoiler, except that that's never really discussed in the movie itself. It just makes some sense if you try to figure out what the hell the movie is about. Because I'm not entirely sure it succeeds in what Miike's trying to do. It does succeed in being one of the most sick, twisted, weird, funny movies you're likely to see. Unless you've seen other Miike films. This is by no means a well-made movie (straight to video, boom mikes frequently visible), but it is unlike almost anything I've seen before. And for that alone, I thank Takashi Miike.