REVIEW: Asian DVD Marathon

BULLET BALLET: dir: Shinya Tsukamoto

Well I spent the weekend with numerous allergy attacks. So I was laid out for the majority of the weekend. However I did manage to view some DVDs from the stack. Being a huge Asian cinema fan, I decided to start there and didn't look back. The first movie I watched was BULLET BALLET from Tetsuo: The Iron Man director Shinya Tsukamoto. The director also takes on the lead acting role as Goda. This is a black and white highly stylized flick that really surprised me. I was expecting a John Woo esque bullet ballet, but instead got a really interesting and often times mediating look at violence. If you have seen Tetsuo and are looking for the same, you may be slightly disappointed here, but stay tuned cause it has moments of sheer greatness. The story concerns Japanese film editor, Goda who upon coming home one night finds his girlfriend dead of a self inflicted gunshot wound. Goda however does not believe that she would have committed suicide and begins a quest to find out if a local gang may have done it. In the process he becomes obsessed with buying a gun himself and killing those he "thinks" may be responsible. Through a series of misunderstandings he is forced to align himself with the gang because he is the only one that they know that owns a gun and can protect them from a hitman hired to kill them all. BULLET BALLET is a dark film that is edited with a fast paced highly visual style that moves well with the mind set of the lead character of Goda.

THREE EXTREMES: dirs: Takashi Miike, Fruit Chan, and Chan-wook Park

Well, this is one of those movies that may be better while watching drugged up as I was, but even sober you might have fun with this Asian horror experiment. Let me roll this out to you... This is a kind of Twilight Zone: the Movie but Asian style. They took one big time director from Japan, Hong Kong, and Korea and they each made a short horror film, hence the title, THREE EXTREMES. The first is Miike's BOX. Like most of his stuff, BOX is kind of all over the map, but it does have some moments of unforgettable imagery. The short kind of challenges you to keep up and is rather fractured in its structure, so if you leave and come back without hitting pause you may as well go to the next short. All in all I thought BOX was good Miike, but not "over the top holy fucking shit he didn't just do that" Miike. The next short is a cut down version of the feature length film by HK's Fruit Chan called DUMPLINGS. It stars Bai Ling as a magical ex-surgeon who puts chopped up fetus' in her magical age curing dumplings. I won't say too much about this, because after I watched it I then popped in the full length version, so I'll get to that review in a minute... The third short was Chan-wook Park's CUT. I found CUT to be somewhat flat. This has been done before and much better. This extra on the set of a director's film kidnaps his wife and and the director and makes them admit sins to each other while chopping off the wife's fingers while sitting at a piano. OLD BOY was my favorite film last year because of the energy that film had. This one has moments but most of it feels staged and flat. Let's move on to DUMPLINGS shall we...

DUMPLINGS: dir: Fruit Chan

I have not seen many Fruit Chan films before, but maybe I should start. This movie will freak you out. As I said before, this is the full version of the short included on THREE EXTREMES. In a nutshell, this lady wants to look young for her cheating husband and does so with the help of Bai Ling's age defying fetus filled tasty dumpling treats. Yes, you read it right. Age defying fetus filled tasty dumpling treats. Yum yum. That's about all I have to say about this flick. I liked it. The photography by Christopher Doyle is outstanding in every regard. Every single shot is a magazine cover. His color pallet is so sweet to feast your eyes upon. For such a terrible subject he paints the frame like its a masterpiece. Nice work. Of note, Doyle is Wong kar-wei's Cinematographer. And man is he good. I think THREE EXTREMES is coming out in the U.S. from Lions Gate sometime soon. Check it out. If you want to get the import DVD of DUMPLINGS, you can order it at the bottom link and THREE EXTREMES too.

HK FLIX