jeffuary

Every once in a while a film comes along that makes you glad to be alive. Cinema is a beautiful art form, and no cinema is more gorgeous than 3 Ninjas: High Noon at Mega Mountain. Epic on a grand scale, the cinematic majesty on display would make Kurosawa's corpse reanimate just so it could kill itself in shame at never meeting the grandeur of vision presented herein. I saw this movie and broke down in tears, as I knew my eyes had witnessed the most beautiful sight since Stallone and Carl Weathers flirting with each other on the beach in one of the Rocky films. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll curse yourself for thinking that the greatness of the previous 3 Ninjas movies could ever be topped.

Bravo. Bravo.

First off, I hated Ju-On. I thought it was derivative garbage of the J-horror variety (most J-Horror, which many American's think is "cult", is the equivalent of teen slasher flicks in their respective countries). That said, I was expecting nothing from this film. Instead, I got a Japanese David Cronenberg film, for all intents and purposes. This film would make an excellent companion piece to Cronenberg's Videodrome.

Both deal with technology and alienation in an urban setting. While in Videodrome it's the proliferation of mass media that causes the protagonists reality slip, here it's the creation of such media. The main character is a freelance videographer who makes a living filming the horrible things that people do to each other (and themselves) in the crowded yet isolated world of the big city. He eventually comes to understand that nothing is more cruel than what he does. He is, in a figurative sense, a vampire. He sucks the blood of the living into his lens, and thrives off the rewards. But he is lost.

Then he meets...a girl? A creature? A vampire? A hallucination? The fact that she has no recognizable emotion or attachment, and lives only to feed on the blood of people is a projection of what he is so ashamed of.

This film really gets into the feel of alienation (much the way "Clean, Shaven" and Cronenberg's "Spider" did) and makes you feel the way the populace who views his videos do. Disturbed, but secretly glad and thrilled that misery was put on film.

Which leads me to the presentation. Many have griped about the Digital Film approach, which, as most cinephiles know, leads to a harsh lighting scheme and stark contrasts- none of the lushness of film- and jerky movement feel. Shimizou could have easily done this on film if he had wanted to, but instead, I feel, made a choice to use digital...it's the same format that his protagonist records horrible images on. One turn deserves another. I enjoyed this aspect, as the presentation aspect of a film is rarely intrinsic to both the style and subtext of the film.

That said, it's not entirely successful. A few scenes could have used better FX work or shot choice/editing, but, hey, he shot this on the fly in 8 days, on his way to make another J-Horror "scary-kid" schlockfest. This film shows he is more capable than that. Fans of J-horror may want to avoid this, whereas if, like me, you're a fan of shock-cinema and narrative surrealism (Lynch, some Cronenberg, you) may enjoy this.

Ah, the golden days of High School. My twin brother and I would go to the local video shop, located in the deep shadow cast by "Mega-Video Mall and Lobotomy" across the street, and spend our summer days trying to find the WORST horror film ever made. And by "worst", of course, I mean "best".

To some people Vertigo changes their view of film. For others it's a Godard piece or a Kurosawa study. For me, my epic is Gore-met Zombie Chef From Hell. A movie so ludicrous, inane, bad, lame, and annoying that every frame REEKS of the love for film. Nobody could EVER see a 'production' of this sort to completion if there wasn't a bone deep, cellular level love of all things film. This movie is almost a tragedy in that sense. People actually took the time and effort to create, film, and release what was probably not a good idea in the first place, no matter how drunk they were when it came to them. I've heard rumors that this was an attempt by porn filmmakers to make a legitimate film that would rescue them from the fringes of show business. If that is true, as I used to believe as a high schooler, then it is akin to watching a calamity in which no one survives: you feel horror, shock, pity, and anger, touched with a sense of wonder and a strange desire to latch onto the feelings the moment stoked in your heart. This movie should be played in a modern art museum somewhere.

So bad it achieves a level nearing beauty. So inept as to be almost unbelievable. So unwatchably bad that it actually re-enters the other side of the spectrum as fan-freaking-tastic.

I wish someone would track down the cast and crew and write a screenplay about the filming of this movie.