Faizan

LESSON OF THE EVIL is a relentless, remorseless look at pure evil. It is so brutally violent, it numbs you into submission and you are unsure how you should react to it. There is little joy in watching the film (though there is dark, black humour throughout) but it stands as a unique testament to infant terrible director Takashi Miike's crazy view of the world.

The film's first half is almost as restrained as the second is violently eruptive. The setting is an elite private school in Japan where teachers and administrators discuss the prevalent problem of students cheating during exams, mostly using their cell phones. Numerous solutions are proposed but the most radical comes from Seiji Hasumi, the charming, popular English teacher, who suggests body searches and signal jammers, but who's notions are rejected as being counterproductive to keeping the schools environment healthy. Undeterred, Hasumi continues keeping tabs on students and learns of widespread bullying, harassment and illicit teacher student relationships. You think he's going to turn into some kind of saviour, and the films tone seems to be heading this way, but then, and there is no fine way to describe it, Hasumi goes psycho. He explodes into a violent killing machine during a nightly school function, exacting brutal death, wielding a shotgun, pumping bullets into anything that moves and talking to his demons to leave little doubt he is a complete loony.

Knowing a bit about Takashi Miike and the reputation that precedes him, this midway shift should not be surprising (or even considered a spoiler). His films are almost exclusively violent, of that there is no doubt, but they revel in tasteless torture porn that is not for the squeamish. LESSON is no different and if anything, the overlong period of exposition, detailing the tribulation of a small group of students at the school, seems overcooked in contrast to the rushed, extended finale, which is really where Miike displays his skills as filmmaker. Hasumi is molded in the fashion of television's DEXTER—a likable serial killer with a wide grin and charismatic looks to match who is also extremely lucky in giving anyone investigating the deaths, a slip. But while the last hour is a lot of fun (at one point Hasumi off's countless students wearing a rain jacket and swaying to the jazzy tune of MACK THE KNIFE) it is indescribable, nearly unwatchable and after sometime, repetitious to the point of being unbearable. And, just when you think there might be some end in sight, Miike turns a moment of hope into a Michael Haneke moment of viewer patience testing ala FUNNY GAMES. If that sounds like your cup of tea, you know you're in for a good time.

A decade away from the movie scene has given the Men In Black series a chance at a fresher, newer perspective. Taking its cue from Shrek Forever After, MIB 3 takes on a tired concept (time travel in this case) if only to acknowledge the failure of its dull sequel and take us back to a different era allowing us to view the franchise from an unsullied angle. The result is a film that returns to its roots and gives audiences the chance to relive much of what they first enjoyed – a smart, sci-fi, buddy comedy that embraces everything weird and wonderful about the unknown universe.

In his first cinematic role in nearly 4 years, Will Smith's Agent J is the usual charming, witty wiseass we expect him to be. Still teamed up with the laconic Agent K (wrinkly Tommy Lee Jones) he is no closer to cracking his older partners deadpan demeanour but their relationship issues take a back seat when a nemesis from Kay's past, Boris the animal, turns up to exact revenge for having been imprisoned on the moon 40 years ago. His elaborate plan takes him back in the past, to the day he was caught, and sets ripples in the present, where K no longer exists and a different reality results. J has to then literally time jump (off the Empire State building no less) and fix the past for normalcy to return in the present.

Directly Barry Sonnenfeld seems to find his groove once again with the zany and icky shenanigans that put him on the map with the original. Using plenty of the wide angle camera work that gave him fame as the Coen's favourite lenser, the resulting imagery should work wonders for those who decide to pay extra and catch the film on 3D (converted). Boris the animal is also a return to series villains being screwball and menacing in equal measure (remember Vincent D'Onofrio?) and Rick Baker's excellent makeup effects are both incredible and revolting. The big surprise is how well Josh Brolin impersonates Jones in the role of a younger K – which should not be a surprise considering Brolin's recent, impressive body of work as a bonafide actor, most notably in W. So chameleon-like is his performance that you forget it's him and actually completely believe it's just a younger version of Tommy Lee Jones that you're seeing.

The films primary achievement and a true signal of its return to form though are the scenes set in the past. Not only is Josh Brolin a deadringer for Tommy Lee's K during his youth, but the hip musical vibes of the late 60's/early 70's allow for plenty of playfulness to ensue with a particularly hilarious segment devoted to Andy Warhol. If that isn't enough, everything very neatly ties into another epochal scientific moment from that time period and ends on a moment of curiously satisfying emotionality that provides not only closure to the film but the series as a whole. If that doesn't make you forgive all the wrongs that the sequel did and embrace this film as one of the years better movie franchise offerings the only thing that might work on you is a neuralizer.

"Certified Copy" is a film of great beauty and mystery. The first thing that strikes you about it is how real it feels. Not just its plot, not just the acting, but also the dialogs - they are laced in the anguish, hope, fears, disappointments and joys of the life we all live, everyday. To try to explain what the film is about it to rob it of its sense of poetic irony but all you need to know about it is that it revolves around two people who strike up a conversation after meeting in picturesque Tuscany. Binoche plays the part of a woman, apparently a single mother, who owns a small antiques store. She meets a visiting British writer, James Miller (opera star William Shimell, in his debut) who is there promoting his new book, a treatise on copies in the art world. The two decide to meet later for a discussion dinner, but what at first seems like mundane musings on the every day quickly takes a turn when it appears to us that the two are familiar to each other and perhaps even might have met. We are never told, not directly at least, whether this is the case, but numerous hints are dropped; a joke that Miller shares for instance than Binoche seems to have heard before, then an anecdote that is all too familiar to her and which can relate to, about the replica (or copy!) of the David statue outside the Academia in Florence. Dialogues therefore drive the film. Binoche's description of her sister and her problems with stammering are so succinct, so clairvoyant that when we almost feel we know her as well and later in the film, when Binoche uses the pseudo stammering 'J-J-J-James', it tells you so much about her. If you listen carefully to the dialogs and are intent on picking up inflections, body language and facial expressions the film is richly rewarding.

Credit for this greatly goes to director Abbas Kiarostami for his use of formalism combined with minimalism and tight framings. Let's just say he knows where to place his camera and what to get out of his actors. His closeups of the faces of his two leads is both intrusive and revelatory. In the finest example of this, and in an outstanding unbroken single take, he lingers on the beautiful, ever luminous face of Binoche as she powders her face and applies her lipstick. Ordinarily the scene should have been inconsequential, but in the scheme of things it is both a private moment with the character that Binoche plays and fine testament of Binoche's ability. She is outstanding throughout - shifting from one extreme to the other, crying and laughing, sometimes at the same time. In the films most heartbreaking scene, she asks Miller if he noticed whether she dressed up for him that day. When he answers that he didn't she responds by telling him how she was able to pick up the scent of his new perfume. This might be nothing more than the deconstruction of all cross gender relationships, yet we learn so much about both of them while being kept at a distance. Because we can only infer what is going on, but still not be entirely sure about it, the film envelops us into its puzzle completely. At a time when many directors, most film and almost all actors are stuck doing the same things, "Certified Copy" feels like the real thing.