Hellboy

Guillermo del Toro, USA, 2004
2.5 out of 4 stars

I decided to watch del Toro’s first adaptation of Mike Mignola’s comic book almost entirely because, probably owing to the success of Pan’s Labyrinth, he had been able to release another one. I figured that, if possible, I should try to avoid seeing the sequel first, and I would also try to see if I’d really be interested in paying $5-$10 for it. Well, I’ve read a few of the early issues of Mignola’s series, focused around a demon raised by humans who work for the government, along with his other paranormal colleagues, and I like the idea although I’ve never been blown away enough by it to seek out the whole series. One thing you notice in del Toro’s version is that there is basically no attempt to emulate the shadowy, impressionistic quality of Mignola’s art (perhaps this just wasn’t possible). Hellboy himself is after all bright red, and there was no willingness to alter his appearance into something more film-friendly or shadow-friendly (as they did in, say, the X-Men films, with the black uniforms replacing the bright costumes of the comics). Fidelity seems to be the bywords here, and it seems to have unfortunately been a limiting factor in the film’s success. The scenes added back in for the director’s cut may well have been worthwhile, but the augmentation probably should have been accompanied by some reduction.

Another hindrance seems to have been a disregard for pacing and an unwillingness to excise or trim languid, less-than-engrossing scenes. The “Nazi mysticism” opening is actually quite interesting, albeit campy, but the film starts to stumble as soon as del Toro moves us to the present day, and continues to kind of amble along after that. The fight scenes, when we get to them, are fun to watch and involving, but hindered here by the lack of variety, as Hellboy fights the exact same monster on at least three different locations.

Hellboy himself, as played by Ron Perlman, has a strong if overly laconic presence. Doug Jones complements him well as Abe Sapien, but most of the time Perlman is playing against his neophyte handler, John Meyers. Rupert Evans plays the ultimately pointless, but unduly-emphasized role of the would-be audience identification character with almost no spine or wit, and not that much intelligence either. I’m not sure if the studio forced del Toro to include a “regular guy” figure (for the first part of the film, he almost seems to be the main character!) but even if they did, they still could have done better than this (and there is at least one more interesting “regular guy” character present here). I should also mention that the archvillain, Rasputin (yes, that Rasputin) gets more and more ridiculous as his scenes get longer and you have to actually listen to him.

All that said, this very imperfect attempt made me want to see del Toro take another shot at doing it right this time, particularly in light, of course, of Pan’s Labyrinth. I am heartened by reports I have read indicating that there are many more monsters in the sequel, as I am by indications on IMDB that Evans is not returning (and in fact seems not to have made it in Hollywood at all). I do suspect, though, that seeing this film first may not actually have been necessary, as I’m sure the sequel was made with full knowledge that the original was not a great success.

Source: Sony director's cut DVD
18 Jul, 12:00 PM

One Nite in Mongkok

(Wong gok hak yau)
Derek Yee, Hong Kong, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

They tell you from the beginning, if you're paying attention, that this movie is about fate. Although many of the Hong Kong films dealing with cops and gangsters emphacize some form of honor or heroism, this picture very quickly sets the stage for a tale that is grittier not in the sense that it depicts unpleasant events (although there is that too), but in that it does not provide us with these comforting lenses through which to observe the action.

For one thing, it takes quite a while for the protaganist, a young man from the mainland hired to kill a gang boss, to even appear in the picture. Although his story ultimately drives the film, albeit with frequent cutaways to the police and their attempt to avert a gang war, the fact that he doens't show up until events lead to his introduction seems to show that, even though our focus is on him, he is only a part of larger events. In fact his introduction is surprising, as before we meet him the film seems heading towards more of an ensemble approach, but Daniel Wu turns in a good performance as the often-conflicted, somewhat naive and moralistic would-be killer. His costar, Cecilia Cheung, does overplay her more cliched "prostitute with a heart of gold" role (although it may just be overwritten as well), but their relationship, strange as it is, is nonetheless appealing, as they are both in Hong Kong due to similarly dire conditions in their home villages, bringing in an important social critique to the film (not something I've seen in many Hong Kong cop films).

I enjoyed this film quite a bit, in part because it is extremeley foreboding, particularly the closer you get to the end, but is not unrelenting. Rather than whip you up into some exaggerated frenzy of dread, One Nite in Mongkok (pity about the idiotic spelling in the English title) is more about the banality of coincidence (or fate, I guess) and the compromises that all the characters have made with varying degrees of deliberateness. This makes for a film that is both more interesting and more challenging than most.

Finally, although I lack the filmic vocabulary to go into detail, the film is shot with a good degree of energy and artistry. While ultimately it falls under the umbrella of mainstream film, there does seem to have been an artsy inclination on the part of the filmmakers, and in this case I'd say their ambition was well-realized.

Source: Tai Seng DVD
21 April, 8:45 PM

Super Size Me

Morgan Spurlock, USA, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

I’m gonna assume that everyone has heard about this movie, and as such, I’m not gonna spend any time describing it for you. The first thing I will say is that it probably benefited from really low expectations on my part. Intellectually, I still object to Spurlock’s methodology; it’s the film version of what a public radio panel recently referred to as “extreme sports writing,” and I think that documentaries should not, in general, be documents of stunts. Furthermore, It’s hard not to be bothered by the futility of the whole thing, and it’s also hard not to wonder what would have been the point if, say, he had managed to get himself permanent kidney damage.

My greatest critique of this film, prior to actually watching it, was that it dramatized the obvious, and therefore must not have any real purpose; in this respect, I believe myself to be proved wrong. The truth is that what is obvious to some is not obvious to others, and I found myself increasingly uneasy at the degree to which I personally felt indicted by the film. I remember feeling this way when I first read Eric Schlosser’s Fast Food Nation, but the effect has not been the same upon reviewing it for my class (the film was also shown during three class periods, interspersed with some other activity), and any case, I think the visual effect is very crucial; I was disturbed simply by the sight of how gigantic the now-defunct “super size” actually was.

The real question is whether this film can cause anyone to change their behavior; Spurlock obviously would like the government and corporations to change theirs, but he explains the lobbying system (overlapping with Schlosser here, as he often does) clearly enough to show us that that’s not going to happen, so he does leave it up to us in the end. Initially, I felt irritated at being condemned without actually being enlightened (it’s not like I didn’t know that I shouldn’t eat that Western Bacon Cheeseburger, after all), but over time I feel more hopeful that I may have actually internalized some of the message. And most importantly, the film is much more entertaining than I expected, due mostly to its shock value; aside from that, the interviews in particular and such consist of a more complete package than the marketing would suggest (in fact the central stunt is largely just a marketing gimmick when it comes right down to it). My students did not react audibly as often as I did, but many of them had after all seen it before. But if I’m gonna measure this by how much impact it had on me, I should probably come back in a month and raise or lower the rating based on how concerned I am by that point!

Source: WEA DVD
5 March, 3:20 PM

Breaking News

(Daai si gin)
Johnnie To, Hong Kong / China, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

The film kicks off with a violent confrontation between police and robbers, in which a beat cop is caught in the fray and, what’s worse, caught on camera looking particularly unheroic. This opening sequence is a setup for an hostage plot in which the commanding officer’s main goal is to craft a counternarrative for the media in order to restore her department’s credibility and public image.

The word “satire” popped into my head as I thought about how to describe this movie, but aside from some typically dubious uses of technology, the film avoids that slightly-exaggerated, larger-than-life tone of most satirical films. Indeed, it’s commentary on how PR holds equal importance with solving crime for police today is not particularly subtle, but it does constitute an interesting angle for what could have otherwise been a rote police drama. I find it interesting that, for the most part, the filmmakers refrain from condemning anyone overtly. This leads to less of the usual hand-wringing and finger pointing that we might expect from an American mainstream film attempting to tackle this subject.

The main downside to this film is that characterization is very slight. This is, of course, a film without much filler or prologue, so this decision seems to have been deliberate. I must confess, however, that I do like characterization, and without it, the connections between the characters sometimes seem hard to understand or unearned. It’s also a little difficult to see how the stock “renegade cop” character really ties in to the central commentary of the film, except until maybe the end, and that doesn’t seem to be that crucial, really. It’s almost as if his character is a major concession to the “bread and circuses” reality of mainstream film, something that is as much of an issue in Hong Kong as it is here, in all honesty.

Source: UMVD DVD
10 June, 8:27 PM

Primer

Shane Carruth, USA, 2004
2.5 out of 4 stars

Who's up for some indie, low budget realist scifi adventure? Okay, perhaps "adventure" might not be the right word for a rather low key film about a couple of tech workers who try to invent things in their garage until one day, they stumble upon a reality-bending device. I might well be being too easy on this one, simply because it was so difficult to understand what was happening that I ultimately decided that I shouldn't hold my lack of comprehension against it. It seems clever and sort of dark, but it also seems a bit like the Sundance version of any number of Star Trek episodes I could name. Like another film I've seen recently, it's also 77 minutes, and it seems pretty clear that it's not any longer than the filmmaker could afford to make. I think that it's somewhat possible that some of the missing pieces of information here are actually a result of running out of money, and instead are made into a virtue by creating a "mindbender," but maybe it really is just difficult to understand. I usually try to avoid reading any websites about a film until after I've written these, but in this case, I'm looking at some stuff that explains how this is all about science and how really no one gets it after the first viewing. I guess I am not much of a science guy or a repeat-viewing guy, so I am willing to consider that it might be a masterpiece after watching it 50 times, but there are other films to watch, after all.

Source: Warner DVD
25 March, 7:53 PM

Clean

Olivier Assayas, France / UK / Canada, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

When a musical legend self-destructs, we have a bad habit of blaming his decline on his wife or partner, as if he had no agency in bringing about his own end. This film is about such a wife, played by Hong Kong actress Maggie Cheung (speaking mostly English and French here), and what she has to do when she finds herself all on her own. I found her character very sympathetic, perhaps because I am always resistant to those blame-the-woman narratives in the first place, but I think Assayas and Cheung do a good job at crafting a character who you can root for even though she obviously is a little bit complicit in some things, especially when it comes to drugs.

The main weakness of the film is that the plotting is a bit haphazard at times, which is somewhat problematic because it’s a largely plot-driven film. Although much of the film is spent depicting some rather difficult times for the protagonist, I felt that the overall tone was surprisingly optimistic, but I don’t know if I was just filling in the blanks the way I wanted to in order to see it as a story of redemption (rather than the opposite). That, however, may be the point; if so, it only enriches the film when two kinds of spectators could validly take something entirely different from the same film.

Source: UMVD DVD
6 January, 1:07 PM

C.S.A.: The Confederate States of America

Kevin Willmott, USA, 2004
3 of 4 stars

This mockumentary, formed out of fake commercials and reenactments as well as decontextualized photos and video, purports to show the viewer how America would have developed if the South had won the war and established the Confederate government over the entire nation. The point of this is that, through various ingeniously repositioned quotes and rearranged or reversed historical occurrences, the director is able to show us how our own society has developed into a slightly cleaned-up, more polite version of this slave society dystopia, rather than something completely opposite from it as we would like to think. What turns out to be shocking is not how alien this scenario is, but instead, how easily various real aspects of American history fit into this alternate trajectory.

I do think that without a basic knowledge of American history (and I don’t claim any more than that), some of these parallels might be lost on the viewer. That is perhaps the main weakness of the piece, which is that it requires a certain amount of knowledge and saavy in order to draw the needed connections, and that those who lack one or both may feel confident in rejecting the content of the film as a mere “what if” flight of fancy. There is some text at the end that attempts to ground us in real history, but while admittedly informative, it comes off as heavy-handed.

It also must be said that the film is not of consistent quality, which is perhaps due to Willmott’s grand ambitions and his low budget. For instance, some period pieces, especially the 1946 film, don’t evoke their periods very well, and we could have used a greater variety of fake talking heads (the ones we have are sometimes a bit too didactic or obvious). Finally, Willmott seems to lose control of his alternate history near the end, as some threads are never resolved properly, such as the fate of Nazi Germany, and this really undermines the effectiveness of the film.

Nonetheless, the message is worthwhile and compelling, and above all, the film is darkly humorous… that is meant in the sense of “black comedy,” but I can’t help but be self-conscious about these kind of expressions after watching this film! The point is, I laughed with horror throughout, and this seems to indicate that Willmott at least captured the right tone, even if he faltered at times in the execution.

Source: Genius DVD
1 January, 8:58 PM

Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle

Danny Leiner, USA / Canada / Germany, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

Despite all the hype and positive comments from friends, I ignored this film for a while due to my prejudice against what I refer to as "grossout comedies." However, I should have listened. This film is actually quite groundbreaking in that it manages to destroy the assorted "model minority" and "perpetual foreigner" stereotypes that are the plague of Asian Americans, specifically young men in this case, in an entirely "conventional," mainstream setting, through the vehicle of the stoner buddy comedy, which, even if you don't enjoy this kind of film all that much, you have to admire the project. I find it fascinating that the whole thing was written by a couple of apparently Jewish (I'm just guessing from the names here, but they did insert a doppelganger stoner buddy pair that is more overtly Jewish) writers, who apparently understood representation enough to feel like they wanted to do write by their Asian college buddies (in the DVD they say that there is even a real Harold Lee).

Of course, this film could provide all sorts of great comedy and yet ultimately work more against its purpose if it turned out not to be funny. Luckily this is not the case, although i suppose it's impossible for me to know if I would have found it less funny if I wasn't the kind of viewer to appreciate "low" comedy better because of its "political" content. John Cho and Kal Penn are certainly very likeable though, and the fairly traditional quest structure of the plot is largely effective in maintaining our interest while serving as a vehicle for jokes and character development. The only real problem with the film (aside from a few moments that are perhaps a tad bit overkill, although overall this movie fell short of my "grossout threshold") was the low budget, which occasionally required the director to stage an instant night-to-day (and vice versa) transition, something that I've never seen before, at least not so glaring as it was here!

Source: Warner DVD
20 December, 8:42 PM

Closer

Mike Nichols, USA, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

Although I’m sure I’ve read it somewhere, I don’t think I needed to be told that this was a film adaptation of a play. The film only contains four characters, and it is composed of a finite number of lengthy, talky scenes. Just because it’s obvious, however, doesn’t mean that this is a bad adaptation; in fact, it’s quite the opposite, as I felt that Mike Nichols found a very good balance of cinematic and theatrical sensibilities in this piece.

The stagey origins of this film comes out is through the deliberately artificial quality of some or much of the dialogue. The characters often speak to each other in various series of incisive, if improbable, questions and answers. Julia Roberts is the weakest link, to a point, but overall the actors manage to make this style work, and they therefore make the film possible. As for the plot, I’m not sure if I took it as seriously as I was supposed to; for instance, was I really supposed to take the online sex chat as comedy? I think the piece does succeed in being emotionally involving and engaging, nonetheless, and I suspect, speaking as a lover of the theater, that this play probably works better on screen, with the breathing room it gets through the sets, the outdoors, and Nichols’ camera angles. On a stage, it seems like it could become stultifying.

Source: Sony DVD
19 October, 10:22 PM

Collateral

Michael Mann, USA, 2004
4 out of 4 stars

There’s no denying that the flawless style of Michael Mann is the main reason this movie is as remarkable as it is. However, this is also the movie that made me a big Jamie Foxx fan, even though I’ve still never seen Ray. Much like Damon Wayons in Bamboozled, I sensed both times I watched this film that Foxx was basing his role off of one of his comic personas, specifically the passive loser. Spike Lee talks on the Bamboozled DVD about using comic (black) actors in dramatic roles because he believes they’re capable of more (and probably because he hopes to redeem the buffoonish portrayal of blacks in film) and he was right; he just had the wrong guy.

Wayans never managed to rise above the level of preprogrammed comic persona, whereas Foxx, despite my initial skepticism on the first viewing, does a fantastic job at slowly progressing his character through a sometimes-ludicrous series of transformations and epiphanies, mostly revolving around how he both reacts against and is molded by Tom Cruise’s villain character (and Cruise-as-villain seems rather prescient now that people have turned against him; today, Foxx might well have gotten the top-billing he deserved).

I’ve read criticisms about the plot in spite of the style, but honestly, I’m not bothered by any of it, not even the ending that I’ve seen criticized the most frequently. What I love about this movie is that it’s a mainstream film that beats most art films at their own game. It doesn’t actually have to be so polarized. Imagine that.

Source: Universal DVD
20 July, 8:08 PM

Kings and Queen

(Rois et reine)
Arnaud Desplechin, France, 2004
3.5 out of 4 stars

It starts out with a woman describing her various marriages, then, after a bit, we meet a man right before he is condemned to a mental hospital. The connections and the backstory aren’t clear at the outset, but this is not at all frustrating in this film. Instead, I was captivated from the beginning. The dialogue is all top-notch, very literary but also grounded. The style of the film is quite remarkable; the two plots are expertly intertwined, and the director makes judicious use of a quick-cut technique in which he rapidly shows the viewer two, usually brief, takes of the same action or emotional reaction. The acting is very strong, and the characters are sympathetic but also, well, “complicated.” Finally, the story is very poignant and at times crushing, but it also contains a wealth of little charming moments and amusing quirks. I can’t really do justice to how good this movie is, though, so really, I can only say that I highly recommend it!

Source: Genius DVD
3 June, 8:25 PM

The Bourne Supremacy

Paul Greengrass, USA / Germany, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

It can be a little frustrating seeing a “spy plot” unravel to the point where you realize there wasn’t much of anything there at the center of it. It’s especially frustrating when the ending comes with 20 minutes to go, and you don’t even really feel the need to see what happens afterwards. Luckily, this film has a tremendous amount of visual style, and it’s almost surprising to me that this was enough to make me enjoy the film, as I’m not always a big fan of the “handheld camera” thing when it comes to action films. In this case, however, the jolting camera was an important part of the action and of the character, such as it was. I think ultimately, this is a very forced sequel that doesn’t justify its undoing of the last film’s ending (while also relying too much on the audience’s knowledge of its predecessor). Most of all, though, I think it’s a pretty clear case of a good director, Paul Greengrass, having been saddled with a half-assed script.

Source: Universal DVD
31 May, 11:10 PM

Kung Fu Hustle

(Kung fu)
Stephen Chow, Hong Kong / China, 2004
4 out of 4 stars

I wasn’t sure at first, but as I kept going I decided that this film does indeed deserve my very unofficial “best of 2005” title (the 2004 date above is the original Hong Kong release). This film does indeed start slow, like Shaolin Soccer, but not quite as bad, because it’s not so much that the beginning isn’t funny or interesting, as that you don’t know where the hell the plot is trying to go. While the tension I felt near the end of the film was largely eliminated by my knowledge of how the battles would go, I still had to relearn the need to not get hung up by “the plot.”

If anything, I was a little testier with it because this time out, I wasn’t just overwhelmed with glee at the fact that I was actually seeing a Stephen Chow movie in theaters. That said, in retrospect it's clear that the confused plot is part of the humor; the best example being the “epiphany” at the end. I do have to admit that part of this film’s attraction, though, is that someone (Sony Pictures) finally gave Chow a lot of money, so we don’t have any of those dubious attempts at computer graphics seen in Soccer. The movie is quite beautiful, and not just in an “overlook the visual flaws” type of way, either. I would love to say I could recommend this movie to everyone, but a lot of you would probably think I was on crack if you saw it yourself.

Source: Sony DVD
23 May, 11:09 PM

The Intruder

(L'intrus)
Claire Denis, France, 2004
2.5 out of 4 stars

Well shucks, I tried to like it, and at least I succeeded in not hating it and in getting something out of it (whereas several walked out of the theater during this “festival” screening). That said, filmmaker Claire Denis clearly wasn’t willing to meet me halfway. This film is clearly inaccessible by design. Not only do you not quite know what things mean, you don’t even know why things are happening or even what is happening. In fact, you’re not even sure what thematic ballpark we’re supposed to be in. Entire sequences and characters are introduced with no rhyme or reason. And while there are plenty of films I’ve seen lately that have similar obstacles to enjoyment, there is often enough beauty or artfulness that those concerns don’t ruin the experience. Denis, however, prefers to assail the viewer with images that fail to even appeal to the viewer in any aesthetically comprehensible manner. I’m not saying it’s crap. I’m just saying it’s not for me, or for most people, and that there’s nothing wrong with that.

Source: Wellspring 35mm print
9 May, 7:43 PM

Keane

Lodge Kerrigan, USA, 2004
Three and a half stars

This film is a very interesting and risky experiment that thankfully works quite well. I suppose it has been done before somewhere by someone, but I myself have not seen very many art films that focus entirely on one man to the extent that, for perhaps the majority of the film, his head and shoulders fill up most of the frame! This character has lost his daughter and, to put it lightly, isn’t dealing with loss very well, and director Lodge Kerrigan creates a really wrenching effect by preventing you from looking away from this guy. Just as importantly, actor Damian Lewis is clearly up to the challenge of having to be the entire movie (although his child co-star is quite good too). Plot developments come as a surprise, but for the most part I wasn’t sitting there waiting for them, I was engrossed in the character’s seemingly aimless trajectory through his own misery. I think there are limits to how far this kind of filmmaking can go (by which I mean, I wouldn’t want to watch too many films like this), but I was generally more receptive to this than I expected, although my mind did wander at times. The end, however, is perfectly calibrated in tone and sentiment, which was almost surprising considering that films like this tend to have very unsatisfying endings (although it would be misleading to say I was “satisfied” in the traditional sense).

Source: Magnolia DVD
19 April, 8:57 PM

The White Diamond

Werner Herzog, UK / Germany, 2004
4 out of 4 stars

Fantastic! There is such a great wealth of beautiful imagery in this film, yet there is also an amazing, bizarre artistic vision at work. This comes before Grizzly Man, which I saw earlier, in the oeuvre of Werner Herzog, and you can see some of the same motifs at play; a tragic background of a quest for capturing nature that is both admirable and foolish, shameless intrusions by the director/narrator, and uncomfortable, lingering shots that wrench unwanted sentiments out of the subjects Herzog is scrutinizing. The last one is weird because Herzog was working from the amazing treasure trove of found footage that Timothy Treadwell left behind for him, whereas here, he’s always at the helm (I suppose Herzog did the film on Treadwell because Treadwell captured himself in the same way that Herzog would have sought to capture Treadwell).

Of course, Herzog’s perspective on the whole thing is amazingly skewed and there’s no real pretense of objectivity, but this element really works in his films, for some reason. Meanwhile, I find it especially fascinating that there are so many shots in this film that are more beautiful than anything I’ve seen in a narrative, fictional film this year. See it for the swifts, the waterfall, the airship, or the whacked-out maestro himself.

Source: Genius DVD
14 April, 10:04 PM

The World

(Shijie)
Jia Zhangke, China / Japan / France, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

This rather arty film depicts the lives of workers at an internationally-themed park in Beijing. It’s actually more focused on two main characters than the chaotic opening might lead one to believe, and the very brief diversions into the lives of others seem mostly to be thematic red herrings, but I don’t know if that’s a fair assessment. There isn’t tons of narrative here, but there is nonetheless a plot and a more sincere attempt to engage the viewer than what I’ve seen recently in other arty, uneventful films like Millennium Mambo and Forty Shades of Blue.

Jia Zhangke does some very interesting things with recurring visual motifs, and he hints (sometimes agonizingly) at things like broader social significance and the most basic of character motivations. Even with some surface plot points, it took me a few seconds to digest what had happened. While I enjoyed it, I couldn’t recommend it because I feel that films like these are even more “in the eye of the beholder” than regular films, because when the director doesn’t guide your experience of the film as much, your reaction is going to be all the more personal.

Source: Zeitgeist DVD
4 April, 8:29

Catwoman

Pitof, USA, 2004
1 out of 4 stars

Hilariously bad trash! Probably the best part of this movie is the dumbfounded looks on peoples’ faces when you tell them that you actually watched it. I wouldn’t make a habit of watching infamous flops, but a few here and there can be a good source of unintentional entertainment.

Source: Bootleg DVD
2 March, 9:30 PM

Spider Forest

(Geomi sup)
Song Il-gon, South Korea, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

One of those “what the hell is going on” movies, but, despite the “Asia Extreme” label (without which I imagine there’d be no Region 1 DVD release), not exactly one of those “pushing the limits of horrificness” films. By the end, you pretty much do know what’s going on, and it’s interesting but not exactly shattering. I found the mood to be well cultivated but the film to be a little somnolent at times, or maybe it’s the characters that weren’t involving enough. It’s not bad, but I don’t know if I’d recommend it to someone that had never heard of it.

Source: TLA DVD
19 February, 10 PM

Head-On

(Gegen die wand)
Fatih Akin, Germany / Turkey, 2004
3 out of 4 stars

Engaging, but uneven. There are definitely a lot of extreme moments and the characters are interesting, but it doesn’t reach the heights you keep hoping it will build up to.

Source: Strand DVD
17 February – 9:30 PM