Showing posts with label foreign. Show all posts
Showing posts with label foreign. Show all posts

Friday, July 3, 2009

Eden Log (2007)



A man wakes up deep inside a cave. Suffering amnesia, he has no recollection of how he came to be here or of what happened to the man whose body he finds beside him. Tailed by a mysterious creature, he must continue through this strange and fantastic world.

When I saw the trailer, I knew I HAD to see this movie. I searched online for hours until I found a Japanese website that offered a streaming version that loaded at about two minutes of film for every ten minutes of real time. It was the most unusual movie I've ever seen. It played out more like a video game than a movie, starting out with zero knowledge of our character or where he is or what's happened to him, and gradually he collects clues as he moves up "levels" in this strange grid of steel and plant-life. It's a French movie with English, but I'd rather it was just in French. The plot itself isn't original, it has a classic sci-fi vibe to it, a horror story of what happens when humans become consumed by the body of society and forget the individual. However, the execution is what makes it unusual, though it's not well-done. There is essentially no dialogue, no character development, and no visibility. The entire movie is bathed in darkness and the action is done in painful strobe-and-cut scenes, like a manic-depressive disco ball. Just as a movie-watcher, and not a critic, I would say this is a terrible movie. However, if one wants to think really hard about the filmmaker's choice of story and such, it's a really interesting experience.

Wednesday, July 1, 2009

Pan's Labyrinth (2006)



In the fascist Spain of 1944, the bookish young stepdaughter of a sadistic army officer escapes into an eerie but captivating fantasy world.

This is one of those rare films where every frame is soaked in beauty. It's nearly impossible to believe that the story is original, it seems like it was pulled right from the pages of some ancient fairy tale. Its Oscar win for Best Original Screenplay was deserved. The characters are either beautifully or terrifyingly drawn. The young heroine and her stepfather are exact opposites of each other in every way, where she is innocent, he is corrupt, where she is good, he is evil incarnate. There were so many aspects to the film, it was fascinating to see. It combines the history of Fascist Spain with eternal concepts found in fairy tales like good, evil and obedience. The soundtrack is tailored exactly to the movie's mood, and has some of the most haunting melodies I've ever heard. The movie is excellent, but not for everybody. My mother watched it with me and some of the images really disturbed her. The stepfather character's actions are repulsive, and some other people I know who watched it said he made them physically ill. All in all, the lines of good and evil are clearly drawn, and the ending is victorious. This is one of my favorite movies of all time.