"The deliveryman has become takeout!"

Sandra Ng directed and starred in the silly ghost story Goldbuster. It’s rare for a woman to have the chance to direct and Sandra acquitted herself nicely with this film about an eclectic group of tenants being forced out of their homes so that the apartments could be demolished by an immoral land developer.

The rundown Prestige Garden Apartments are down to its last seven tenants-two fugitive gangsters, a widower and his son, two bankrupt inventors, and an erotic web cam girl. When they grow tired of being haunted by a ghost, they call in a ghostbuster. With the arrival of bargain basement Ling, the ghostly comedic antics begin in earnest.

The tenants were a mixed bag of odd characters. One of the gangsters, Ming, played by Francis Ng, believed he was a cop and often postured himself like Crockett from Miami Vice. The other gangster, Ren, had a girlfriend who required a bike pump to stay inflated. Wang Bao Jian, an acupuncturist, suffered from the guilt of being unable to save his wife. His son hadn’t spoken since his mother died. Wang didn’t want to leave the building hoping her spirit would come to visit. Ping, the erotic webcam girl, enjoyed living in the nearly empty complex. The ghostly visitations had the added benefit of increasing the visitors to her site. No one in the building knew if the inventors Jin San and Ju Hua were working on their next invention or were in actuality drug dealers. Two of Boss Xu’s men were under orders to dress like ghosts and scare the tenants out of the building. When the brassy swindler Ling walked in she made more objects disappear into her pockets than exorcising ghosts.

Things I learned: 1-People who cheat small money are swindlers, and those who make it big are businessmen. 2. You can go to hell for photoshopping. 3. There’s always room for one more needle in acupuncture.

Sandra Ng created an elaborate swindle comedy involving ghosts, zombies and a hellish underworld. She even threw in a Thriller re-enactment. The comedy in this was over-the-top at times but never devolved into the overt mugging cross-eyed at the camera some comedies relied on. I’m not a huge fan of Hong Kong comedies but I laughed out loud in several places. The glue that held this story together were the tenants and the family they had created from a diverse group of good-hearted weirdos. Goldbuster could be obvious and erratic and lacking in subtlety, but it could also be warm and funny at the same time. Sandra Ng could be proud of her directorial debut, it may not have been eek-tastic but I really hope it wasn’t a dead end for her directorial career.

10/17/23

Lees verder

"Life itself, shines down on its own"

Ghost Walk told the story of an unremarkable woman who became entangled in rather remarkable supernatural and natural events. The film was more of an exploration of Hye Jung’s existential dilemma than horror. Though there were high stakes for several characters involved, the movie played out like a gentle slice of life.

The story began on October 8th, Korean Thanksgiving. Hye Jung works at a textile factory and has cut all ties with her family hoping to make it on her own and be free of them. After work, a co-worker walks her home, gives her a birthday gift and declares himself. She tells him she's incapable of having a relationship and turns him down. In fact, she has no close relationships with anyone, including her roommates. Three days later she wakes up to find to find those roommates being questioned by the police and a large blood stain soaked into her bedroom carpet. From there her un-life will become entwined with a little girl, a loan shark, and her roommates. Each day she wakes up one day earlier than the previous day as she discovers how they are all linked.

Ghost Walk may have had a murder mystery to solve, but it seemed to focus more on the isolating nature of financial and familial social pressures. Hye Jung preferred being alone and suddenly she was well and truly alone. To her credit, the reserved young woman handled the supernatural events in her life with aplomb and without breaking down. The effects of gentrification also played a small role. Hye Jung’s connection to the world was Soo Yang, the daughter of the loan shark, with their destinies depending on one another. The music, like Han Hae In’s acting, was never overwhelming, never loud, only softly and mildly accenting the action in select places.

There were times the film attempted to be too clever and enigmatic, especially the film’s ending quotes. It's unhurried pace will not be for everyone. Ghost Walk didn’t break any new ground, this type of story has been told before but it was a quiet ghost story that helped an unremarkable woman gradually break out of her shell. Whether her actions would aid her or anyone else remained to be seen.

10/9/23

Lees verder

Scent of a Ghost was one of those strange combinations of romance, fantasy, violence, slapstick sex comedy, and tragedy all rolled into one. This review will be short because I don’t want to spoil any of the plot twists and turns although most people will see them coming.

In this fantasy drama, the most unbelievable thing for me was not the sex crazed and pervy ghosts lurking about, it was that the lovely Lee El and Kang Kyung Joon, 37 and 36 years-old respectively (in 2019) were supposed to be playing university students. I might have bought it if they were working on their second PhD or if they’d been professors, but as youthful as they appeared they didn’t look like college kids.

Despite the distracting age issue, the actual love story was sweet, funny, and bittersweet. Unfortunately, it didn’t take up enough time so more time was given to middle-aged people banging all day or the cops trying and failing to play ghostbusters. Son Byung Ho who usually plays wealthy CEOs, played a shaman with a good heart in a nice change of pace. The comedy was hit or miss and the sex romps began to wear thin. I really wish they’d devoted more time to the budding romance, it would have strengthened the story greatly. If you’re looking for a ghost story with humor (some funny, some not) and pathos, with a short running time, this might be a film to check out if you keep your expectations low, real low.

10/9/23

Lees verder

Who knew Yetis love sashimi?

If you ever thought, “What would a movie be like if you moved King Kong from a tropical island to a frozen mountain top?”, Snow Monster attempts to answer that question. The movie felt like an old Toho monster movie only with slightly better CGI and monster costumes.

In 2045 a van carrying scientists travels through the mountains on the North Pole. I really hope that was a translation error or else there had been some cataclysmic tectonic shifts. Lead scientist Xiao Qin’s instruments showed high magnetic readings and a geothermal hot spot under the van. The scientists believed that high magnetism could result in strange genetic mutations. As if to prove them right, a gigantic hand erupted from the snow causing the van to plummet over a cliff.

Professor Lin asks Xiao’s ex-boyfriend, Ren Yi Fei, to help them find her and he joins the team made up of mostly soldiers. Inside an ancient set of ruins in what looks like a jungle, the team discovers a tunnel filled with centuries old artifacts, skeletons…and deadly prehistoric birds. The men avoid becoming human bird food when they find the exit while being chased by the creepy birds and land outside, in the same location where the lost crew disappeared. The “rescue” crew is confronted with a snow shark (Jaws 5: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back Skiing), the Yeti, an avalanche, and a tribe of snow elves. Lucky for Ren, the snow elves are friends with the gentle, humorous Yeti. The real danger is a friend who isn’t what he seems to be and his betrayals lead to multiple deaths.

Snow Monster's script was all over the place and most of it did not make sense. I guess they figured if people would watch a movie about a skyscraper tall snow monster, it didn’t matter if the rest was nigh on incomprehensible. There seemed to be a message about leaving endangered people and animals alone, but it was pretty thin. The snow elves’ costumes revealed too much skin for people who lived in eternal winter. Maybe the magnetic field had mutated them in such a way that they were impervious to frostbite and hypothermia. The “science” in this movie was ludicrous and I have no idea what kind of geographical map the writers used, but it wasn’t for this planet. The acting and CGI were serviceable, nothing special. Norman Chui was the only actor I recognized and I’m always happy to see him even for the brief minutes he was on screen.

In order to enjoy this movie on any level you have to have developed a high tolerance for men in monster suits and be able to laugh at the absurdity of giant snow sharks. As is often the case, the humans were the biggest monsters in the movie. The Snow Monster was a sweet fluffy Bumble, as long as you didn’t interrupt him while he was eating his sashimi dinner.

10/7/23

Lees verder

A picture is worth a thousand words, or is it?

If you are not old enough to remember rolls of film, one of the commonly used rolls had 36 shots on it. This film was told in 36 segments based largely on camera shots or the memories from those shots as if labeling a picture or a memory. The film leisurely and gently explored the relevancy between photos and memories and the malleability and impermanence of both.

Sai is a film location scout and Oom is the art director. They meet scouting out an abandoned love hotel from the Vietnam War era that Sai has memories of being in her old neighborhood. Sai uses a digital camera, taking many pictures that she will later store and keep. Oom still uses a film camera and often takes pictures of people when they aren't looking even though he refuses to have his picture taken. Though he says he will send them a copy, he rarely does. The two spend a lot of time discovering the nooks and crannies of the possible set and also negotiate with the landlady over room prices for the cast and crew. Oom takes a picture of Gita, the landlady's 12-year-old daughter that later may prove important. Afterwards, Sai and Oom enjoy an evening breeze from the roof and take their picture with her camera in front of the beautiful sky. Soon the "end credits" appear after the 11th shot.

The film jumps into the future 2 years. Sai and Oom have gone their separate ways. When the director she is currently working for discovers the building he built his new script around has been leveled, Sai mentions the other building. She attempts to recover the photos but even after a friend works to restore them, only a few survived and not the one of her and Oom on the rooftop. She returns to the building and talks to the landlady. It turns out Gita died and the landlady would love to have the picture Oom took of her. During the process of trying to find Oom and restore the pictures, she realizes her feelings for him were stronger than she had known. As the film closes in on the 36th segment, Oom looks at the picture of them on the roof faraway on his computer (unknown to her he had copied her images from the shoot long ago), Sai smiles as she remembers the special moment they shared.

36 was shot in an artful way that could also distance the viewer from the characters. Oom is never seen face on, and often shots of other characters were in profile or from behind or even half hidden by architecture. I liked the labeled 36 bits of the story, like looking at a picture album where the photo had been annotated and saved. The OST was also lovely, I especially enjoyed the piano music.

Just as film cameras have mostly transitioned over to digital cameras so are most movies now shot with digital film. The danger of digital film was also addressed in that backups are necessary, because once a disk or other device has been damaged the pictures are likely lost for good. Her friend Kai mentioned how many people brought hard drives to be fixed saying they needed them immediately, but instead never returned for them. A drawerful of memories lay untouched. For one reluctant woman who came to pick hers up, he offered to erase those memories.

Which is more important? To see a bird or to take a picture of it? To experience the person you are with, or only the relative engagement of photos? The argument is made for both the value of the human experience and memory as well as the memories that are brought back by glancing at a photo. For the director whose childhood building was destroyed a picture is all that is left of it and his memories. Ironically, at the end of the movie, Oom who always valued the human experience more is found looking at Sai's picture and reminiscing. Conversely, Sai goes back to the place they shared and the memory floods her mind as she gazes fondly to where they had been together. Memory is a fragile, fading construct of the mind, subject to change. While memories are important, photos help to shore up the time and events. Buildings crumble, people die, digital photos can be erased, photos fade and relationships shatter, 36 touched on the concept of impermanence as well. There comes a time when no one remembers the people or places in the pictures.

While I enjoyed this film, it also failed to emotionally capture me with the relationships involved. The ending was meaningful to the arguments of photo or memory, but it left a hole in the picture I had hoped to find. I was hoping for a 37th epilogue image or a new roll of film to begin. This is a very slow, artful movie, more philosophical than touching. Yet for its shortcomings I did find it engaging. If this genre is of interest to you, it would be well worth trying.

5/23/23

Lees verder