cinema sublevel.

men in suits.

2008-01-02T21:44:00.001-08:00

You never realize just how much you miss people in detailed rubber suits fighting other people in rubber suits.
Keita Amemiya is one of my current favorite makers of films including such elements, including Mechanical Violator Hakaider, two Kamen Rider Movies, and the two Zeiram movies. This is only a fraction of everything he has done, and from what I have seen so far, its some of the best sentai ever. Ridiculously elaborate designs, and all the crazy gore you could want. I really cant explain much more with words, so here are some pictures instead.

other than this, ive mostly been watching anime and not so much movies worth talking about. i still should probably do a review for we are the strange, and i feel bad for not posting as much.

zatoichi.

2007-12-12T20:55:00.000-08:00

There are a lot of Zatoichi movies. Zatoichi is the master swordsman who wanders around, killing everyone with little to no hassle. Thats what the old movies were like, and I did not enjoy them.
This movie is different. Sort of.
Zatoichi is blind. hes a decrepit old man, who gambles often and lives in a farmhouse with a kind family. when required to however, he unleashes incredible skill, enhanced by his honed senses due to his lack of eyesight. This never fails to catch his opponents off guard. while he has no real purpose, he finally decides to help a brother and sister avenge the murders of their parents.
This movie is extremely well done. From the artistic arcs of spurting blood, to the odd camera shots during fights that enhance the action, to the bizarre cast of characters, including the fat neighbor kid who only wants to be a samurai. The cast is made up of some fairly well known actors, as I recognized several of them from other various Asian movies. One of the things I liked most about this movie is the lack of useless dialog. it was very to the point and straightforward. The fights weren't drawn out, and are completed without hesitation. All this added together makes a really great, action packed, well done samurai movie.
nine out of ten.

tamala 2010 - a punk cat in space.

2007-12-08T20:56:00.000-08:00

This movie started out slow and stayed slow. The animation was a little different than i was used to, a very vectory, no shading, Super Milk Chan esque style. This movie is about a cat, named Tamala. Thats basically the first 45 minutes. Then, about halfway through, the movie starts to get interesting. I faded in and out of this movie, so bear with me. Apparently, the cats and the dogs live in different sides of a futuristic city. A few of the gay dogs migrate over into cat space, and get assaulted. then the Tamala revolution begins, and everyone goes crazy. A zombie cat old man begins to explain this monstrous Tamala conspiracy, involving a giant robot. I sort of lost it there. then theres a huge sequence of flashing different random images. Then, at the end, Tamala sets our to Orion to kill the giant robot.
Its not so much that this movie was confusing. It was just that i wasnt paying enough attention to it. Mostly, it had a really different art style, and some really cool images. I may go back and watch it again, but probably not.
Eight out of ten for art.
Five out of ten for everything else.

Attack of the Killer Tomatoes.

2007-11-26T05:19:00.000-08:00

"Its like trying to stack bibles on whipped creme."
8 out of 10.

party 7.

2007-11-20T07:00:00.000-08:00

Finally a movie worth talking about. Party 7 is a movie about the relationships between 7 people who end up in a hotel room, as a result of some very unrelated occurences. Miki steals 200 million yen from a mob boss, and visits a unknown hotel to hide. He then is visited by Kana, who wants money from him that we later find out is so that she can buy actors to play her parents at her upcoming wedding with Todohira, who shows up in pursuit of Kana and turns out to be a poor fraud. Miki's childhood friend and "brother" then shows up to get the money back for the mob boss, where he confronts the fact that the boss has no faith in him at all. During this time, they are being watched through a fake window by Captain Banana and Okita, veteran and novice peepers. Captain Banana reveals Okita's fathers peeping secret, and tries to get Okita to realize his destiny as Captian The Yellow Jr. The four, after resolving differences and lies, decide that they will keep the money and run. They are then confronted by Wakagashira, the crazy nostalgic hitman, and they combine forces to beat him. One of his bullets ricochets off of the breifcase with the money, shattering the fake window, revealing Captain Banana and Captain Polar, a man in a polar bear suit, trying to get the Captain The Yellow suit onto the reluctant Okita. Okita confesses his love for Kana, Miki wants to know who Captian banana is, Kana has gotten Wakagashira's gun and shot Captain Polar, Sanada is genuinely confused, the briefcase has spilled open revealing not money but magazines, causing Todohira to go into a panic, while wakagashira is knocked out on the floor after Kana smashed a cheap plated camera into his face. Ill stop there before I completely ruin it.
This was an interesting movie with great dialog exchange, similar to that of Fist Planet Trava, an anime series by the same director. This movie moves well and has great action shots, even in places you would not expect them to be. One of the things I loved the most was for the opening credits, there was an extremely well done animated introduction for each of the characters. The animation was extremely fluid and was sort of a combination of the styles of Aeon Flux and Trava Fist Planet. A really good movie.
8.5 out of 10.

No Somos Nadie.

2007-11-12T12:59:00.002-08:00

No Somos Nadie is a Spanish film that gives us a view of religion fueled by the mass media and the public's want for entertainment. Salva is a street urchin in a pseudo post-modern city. He keeps trying to find a gimmick to make money, and decides that with all the commotion over the second coming of the savior, he will walk the streets carrying a huge cross dressed as Jesus. He accidentally knocks a priest down a flight of stairs to his death with the cross, landing him in jail. The world is fueled by TV ratings, and one of the most popular shows is Heavy Hand, a show that lets its viewers decide if the convicts presented on the show live or die. When Salva is put on the show, he plays a very humble innocent man who is truly sorry for the accident, and is eventually spared, giving the show massive ratings, prompting the station to hire him to be a co-host, providing the audience with reasons to spare the contestants. He gets out of control and rants about the government and tries to tell the people to rise up, but their mob consciousness keeps them from realizing. He runs away from this celebrity life only to be brought back to the show, where he faces his fate, at the hands of crowd.
This movie mixes contemporary themes and biblical stories to make a very odd environment, filled with symbolism both subtle and terribly obvious. There are a lot of interesting elements, such as Salva preaching to people in a sort of WWE wrestling venue, shouting to the crowd and feeding off of their responses. There are some parts that are not too well done, but it is overall an intersting and well done movie.
6 out of 10.

Electroma.

2007-11-05T06:34:00.000-08:00

I did not expect anything that happened in this movie. This is the third movie by the French techno-pop group Daft Punk. I had seen one of their earlier movies, Interstella 5555, which was an anime movie with super retro animation. This movie is absolutely nothing like Interstella in any way. That being said, this is a pretty awesome movie. There are several things i would change, but mostly there is about 30 minutes of nothing that could be removed. When stuff happens in this movie, it is always cool. This is a very artsy movie, relying mostly on imagery, as there is no dialog.
The story is fairly simple. Daft Punk visits a town where everyone wears daft punk helmets. They then go to a laboratory where they are given human faces molded from plastic goo, which are formed over their masks. As they walk through town, the villagers chase them, and all the children are afraid. Their masks begin to melt in the sun, signifying that they cannot change who they are. They tear off their masks and move on. A while later, Daft Punk Silver decides that he doesn't want to live anymore if he cannot be human, and has Daft Punk Gold arm a detonation switch on his back. This results in a really cool looking explosion. Daft Punk gold continues on until he realizes he doesn't want to live without Silver. Gold tries to arm his own detonation switch, but he cannot reach it. Finally, he takes off his mask, revealing a circuit board face. He slams the mask on the ground, breaking it into shards. He takes one of the glass shards, and holds it up to the sun, soon lighting him on fire. The final image of the movie is Gold walking away into the darkness on fire.
This movie has great imagery, and really the only think that could make it better would be if they cut out about 30 minutes of mostly walking and driving. A really good art film.
8/10 for actual content.

Adventures of Prince Achmed.

2007-11-01T06:15:00.000-07:00

Hailed as the first full length animated movie, The Adventures of Prince Achmed follows a story based on Arabian Nights. Achmed is tricked by the evil African Sorcerer and finds himself in the land of the demons, where he falls in love with Peri Banu, the ruler of the demons. He tries to take her back to his homeland, but the sorcerer again tricks him and captures Peri, and sells her to the Chinese Emperor. Achmed escapes the sorcerers trap and saves Peri, only to have the demons come after him to retrieve their queen. The final epic battle decides Achmed's fate.
This movie was directed and created by Lotte Reiniger, and contains some of the more interesting stop animation that I have seen. All of the people, animals, and backgrounds are hand cut silhouttes that give the movie a very original feel. The cutouts are extremely detailed, with intricate clothing, hair, feathers, and all sorts of other flourishes. The animation, though jerky, is very interesting to watch, as the cutouts are extremely well made and articulate. Various special effects are created by either adding filters, distortion of the background, or superimposing things like smoke or fire. The music is extremely well done, and fits the movie perfectly. The original movie was filmed in 1926, but I watched the fully restored version. A very odd and beautiful animation.

8 out of 10.

Dead End Run.

2007-10-31T09:14:00.000-07:00

Dead End Run is a movie about running away. No matter how you try to run away, you will always end up experiencing a bizarre and possibly ironic event. There are three stories in this movie. The first is a man running away from a killer after he is involved in a fight. He accidentally kills a random girl who was walking by, thinking that she was the killer. Before he has a chance to decide what to do, she comes alive, and initiates a musical number about how they were destined to meet and that she loves him. She is still, however, dead. The second story is about a Yakuza that is being chased by a hitman, who when confronted looks exactly the same as the Yakuza. The third is about a suspected criminal being chased, who takes a hostage on a rooftop that turns out to be suicidal. He then tries to convince her not to do it, even though he was considering that as his way out of the situation.
This movie was directed by Sogo Ishii, and is shot very similarly to another of his movies, Electric Dragon 80,000 volts. There is a lot of running shots, utilizing many camera angles and techniques, including a very fast close to the ground shot that came up several times in Electric Dragon. There are actually very many cyberpunk elements in this movie, despite it being almost more of a drama or thriller. This movie is much more of a mind-game movie rather than cyberpunk action, though it does have a lot of very similar scenery. The last story arc has a twist that I was not expecting, which is becoming a rarer and rarer thing for me. One of the best things about the strange events is that the movie makes no effort to explain them, leaving them up to imagination. An interesting and well done movie.

7 out of 10.

...

2007-10-26T11:59:00.001-07:00

welcome to cinema sublevel, reviewing movies you've probably never heard of. there wont be any brand new big budget hollywood movies reviewed here, because thats not what this is for. here you'll learn about obscure and amazing cinema that you can then amaze your friends with knowledge of. feel free to comment on the reviews with your own thoughts. i watch about 8 movies a week, so i should get at least one worth mentioning. i also have several movies i've seen recently to talk about.
so sit, stay, and learn about cinema you'll probably never find otherwise.