Fall 2014 #15: Seven Samurai (1954) - Akira Kurosawa

I don’t know how my Fall 2014 Movie Bucketlist got to be 16 films, but don’t worry, there’s one more on this list! After that I’ll get started on my Summer 2015 Movie Bucketlist.

Yeah I know watching new movies is exciting. So this is probably the one on the list I was most nervous about, because it was by far the longest film on my list. The original cut that ran in Japan in 1954 was 3 hours 27 minutes. The American cut was barely two and a half hours, since everyone knows Americans can’t sit through anything. Thankfully the Criterion Collection has the full original cut…

So at literally over an hour longer than the second longest film on this list (Rosemary’s Baby, 2 hours 16 minutes), watching this film definitely seemed daunting.

On top of that, samurai films are not my favorite genre. I mean they’re not my least favorite genre either (cough Westerns). I had seen an Akira Kurosawa film before, Yojimbo, in a film class, so I knew I could count on a good story, even if the acting can sometimes be seriously off-putting.

Basically, as for the plot, a small town of farmers in 1587 Japan enlist a group of ronin (masterless samurai) to protect them from the bandits who threaten to steal all of their crops. The first hour or so of the film involves the farmers finding the first samurai, an experienced warrior by the name of Kambei, and then him helping them assemble the team of seven samurai with them. A hero-gathering montage!

That’s Kikuchiyo, the unwanted seventh samurai.

So the team of samurai decide that the farmers will finish their harvest, and then begin a war with the bandits to protect their crop yield. Cue Intermission.

Once the war begins, the film is a classic (although incredibly modern for its time) action movie. Kurosawa used almost four times the original intended budget for the film, shooting for 148 days in fully-constructed peasant village.

But it sure is one hell of a war. Over the course of a few days, the samurai continuously outsmart and outlast the bandits. At this point, the bizarre unity of the clever and courageous samurai and the terrified but ambitious villagers fighting to defend their harvest reminded me of something.

The similarities between A Bug’s Life and Seven Samurai are actually startling. A victimized village of poor farmers turn to what they believe to be a group of warriors to help defend their harvest from bandits. In A Bug’s Life, the warriors actually turn out to be circus bugs, but using their ingenuity and wealth of resources, the two groups work together to protect the villagers.

So the samurai aren’t circus-folk… but they do have their unique cast of characters that make them strong. There’s a love story, a massive rain-storm during the final battle, and even a harvesting montage. Pixar you are busted.

But I did some research, and apparently Pixar has never commented on these similarities. Instead, they explain that the source of inspiration for A Bug’s Life is none other than one of Aesop’s Fables, The Ant and the Grasshopper, a moralistic story about how it pays to be prepared. There’s not even a wise samurai leader spouting platitudes about things he learned in battle.

Oh well. The film was nominated for two Oscars, best Costume Design for a Black and White Film and Best Art Direction for a Black and White Film. It’s also #20 on the IMDb Top 250, the highest ranking Asian film. If you have three and a half hours you should give it a try!

Fall 2014 #8: Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind - Hayao Miyazaki

My sixth Studio Ghibli film! What a wonderful time it’s been, getting to enjoy this amazing collection of unique movies. Always so full of heart, with great themes and incredible depth of storylines, I can’t get enough of Miyazaki’s films. 

Now normally I would say that any film that uses “of the” twice in the title is not worth my time (looking at you Lord of the Rings movies and Planet of the Apes prequels). But imagine if M. Night Shyamalan films had the depth to actually gracefully present their pro-nature sentiments, with strong feminist characters and incredible visual imagery, and that’s Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.

Actually, scratch that weird comparison altogether, I’m sorry. So the reason for all of the “of the”s is because Nausicaä is a princess living a post-apocalyptic world, where her small settlement is called “The Valley of the Wind” because of its strong offshore winds. The story takes place one thousand years after a devastating war that wiped out human civilization as well as nature, giving birth to the Toxic Forest. Humans cannot breathe the poisoned air near the forest, but hoards of vicious, giant bugs live there and threaten the human settlements that survived the war.

Nausicaä, who is a badass with a glider, soon becomes entangled in a war between two of the settlements, Tolmekia and Pejite. The Tolmekians have captured an embryo of a Giant Warrior, one of the warriors from the war that destroyed everything, and are planning to use it to wipe out the Toxic Forest and their enemies. They are led by Princess Kushana.

Nausicaaä befriends the Pejite prince, Asbel, and the two must figure out how to stop the war and save the forest (despite it’s toxicity). It’s a real battle of human industrial expansion versus nature’s will to survive and adapt. It’s kind of reminiscent of the Avatar The Last Airbender series, even though that came 20 years after this movie came out.

And the movie certainly has powerful themes with great emotional storylines. It recalls the devastation of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as well as the environmental damage of human expansion. Not to mention the way it situates female characters as being strong while also being feminine and uncompromisingly themselves, something that feels crazy for an animated film from the 80s (couch cough The Little Mermaid). 

The English cast for the unedited 2005 version (Miyazaki was furious after an English-dubbed Warriors of the Wind from 1985 cut about 21 minutes of the film) includes Shia LaBeouf as Asbel, Uma Thurman as Princess Kushana, and even Jodi Benson (Ariel from The Little Mermaid) as Asbel’s mother.

So it’s safe to say Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind is an awesome film, tying together beautiful animation with thought-provoking themes and striking fantasy elements. It currently sits at #199 on the IMDb Top 250. 

Fall 2014 #5: The Exorcist (1973) - William Friedkin

Alright so I was beyond excited to put this on my list. I feel like I’ve reached a point in my life where I don’t scare easily, which took about… 21 years of desensitizing myself to horror movies by growing to absolutely love them for cinematic purposes. I still stay away from slasher films, but in the past two years or so I saw Carrie, The Shining, Nightmare on Elm Street, Night of the Living Dead, The Grudge, Silence of the Lambs, The Ring, Scream, and The Exorcist for the first time. I guess you could say

But I knew I had to get this one off my list before Halloween, so I sat down and let myself get taken away… to the 1970s.

I know, I know, scary. The film follows a 13 year old girl who is suddenly possessed by a very disturbing and cruel demon. After what seems to be weeks of hiring doctors, therapists, and running tests, Chris MacNeil (played by Ellen Burstyn) decides that to save her daughter she will need an exorcism.

To get to this point of desperation, Chris sees her daughter, Regan, do some pretty horrifying shit. 

When the priest, Father Karras, is contacted, the church also sends the help of Father Merrin, one of the only priests they know to have performed an exorcism before.

This is when the movie gets really good.

I should also probably mention that I had seen Scary Movie 2 before, so I knew a lot of these special effects were coming before they happened. This didn’t in any way affect my enjoyment of the movie. I loved every minute of watching Regan transform from a normal girl into the most hideous, foul-mouthed demon I had ever seen.

From that into this.

The process is pretty incredible. 

The film is also based on the events of a real exorcism, performed in Maryland in 1949. Supposedly most of the events that take place in the film actually happened, although the head-spinning-around is probably the most disputed of all.

Last fun fact: Adjusted for inflation, the film is the highest grossing R rated movie of all time. It also was so horrifying to viewers, that several injuries occurred due to audience members fainting in the theater.

The film won two Oscars, Best Screenplay and Best Sound.

Summer 2014 #1: Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) - Hayao Miyazaki

I can’t believe that I’ve managed to get my almost 250 film Watchlist down to just 196 films in a little over a year. But I think I can do better! That means it’s time for another Moviecation. This time, I won’t be doing 15 films in 15 days like I did over winter break. I’m doing 15 films over the course of the summer. So

and let’s go!

My fifth Miyazaki film! In just sixth months. I can’t believe it was only January when I saw Spirited Away, and since then I have seen My Neighbor Totoro, The Wind Rises, and Princess Mononoke. Miyazaki has totally altered the way I think about animation, since, as I’ve said before, the only animation companies I respect are Disney and Pixar. 

I think Miyazaki has transcended the American idea that animated films have to be geared towards kids. And even though the fantastical worlds created in Studio Ghibli’s films are definitely, on the surface, childlike and wonderful, these films are always much deeper. Miyazaki’s hard childhood experiences with WWII bleed into all of his films, and you can feel the animator struggling to understand those troubling times in mid-twentieth century Japan.

Howl’s Moving Castle follows a strong female protagonist like many of his other films. This one’s name is Sophie, and within two minutes of meeting her as the bland hat shop girl who works herself too hard, a witch comes and transforms her into an old woman.

The film doesn’t care to take the time to characterize Sophie in her normal world, but we do hear a little about the strange wizard named Howl, who eats women’s hearts and must be watched out for. That is, until Sophie encounters him and he protects her from some evil spirits that are following her.

Old lady Sophie is a hilarious lens for the story, because she is strong-willed and curious and learns quickly that with old age comes a bizarre amount of courage. Her witty self-banter is probably the strongest comedic source in the film, and she quickly asserts herself into Howl’s magical world in hopes of having her curse lifted.

Howl’s connection to the crown makes him a target for the king’s system of drafting military men, since he trained with a witch that seems to have all the power in Japan. A violent and unjust war permeates the entire film, and Howl’s plight to stop it leaves him less and less human with each battle. It’s very interesting to see the negative characteristics in Howl, namely his cowardice, because it humanized someone who at the beginning of the film seems so inaccessible. 

Like the other Miyazaki films I’ve seen, feminist and anti-war themes ground the film, while the imaginative world it inhabits lifts it off of the screen and into a sort of escapist adventure. Between the witches and wizards, the spells, and Howl’s literal moving castle, the film has enough heart to rival even the best Pixar films. Not to mention a great love story.

And as always, Studio Ghibli’s ties with Disney made for some amazing English voice actors. Howl is voiced by Christian Bale, Josh Hutcherson plays his young assistant, and the amazing Lauren Bacall (The Big Sleep) gets to be the antagonist turned comedic side character, the Witch of the Waste. 

There she is in her “normal” state. Here she is the next scene.

Also the fire she is referring to is a tiny fire voiced by Billy Crystal.

I loved the film overall. It has drama, heart, and comedy. Roger Ebert, one of the only critics to not love it, called it one of Miyazaki’s weakest films. I think I’d be hard-pressed to pick a “weak” Miyazaki film, but out of the five I’ve seen, I can see where this one seems to be missing in that last bit of extra spark that his films usually emit. Maybe it’s the nonchalance with which Sophie falls in love with the deluded, cowardly Howl, I’m not sure. Not that the film isn’t great, because it is. It’s beautiful in so many ways, and definitely worth viewing.

Howl’s Moving Castle lost the Best Animated Film at the 2005 Oscars to “Wallace and Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit.” But it ranks as #152 on the IMDb Top 250, only behind #36 Spirited Away and #130 My Neighbor Totoro. 

Day 1: January 3rd, 2014: Spirited Away (2001) - Hayao Miyazaki

So I spent the past four months in the land of wine and cheese, Paris, and unfortunately I did not make the time I would have liked to to continue this blog. On January 2nd I got back, and after a long early-evening I succumbed to jet-lag by falling asleep at 8pm. Now that the effects have mostly worn off (I still wake up at 7am but whatever), I have come up with a fun proposal for how to spend my arctic-temperature-filled winter break. I have made up a list of 15 movies that I consider to be classics and necessary viewing for anyone interested in film. I am going to watch one film every day from January 3rd until January 17th, and I will give myself 24 hours to blog about it. Most of these films are films I’m slightly ashamed to admit I haven’t seen, so I’m not going to make excuses for myself. Now without further ado, let’s start with Hayao Miyazaki’s Oscar winning 2001 film Spirited Away.

I basically had no idea what Spirited Away was about, and now that I’ve seen it, I understand why it’s nearly impossible to explain. It’s very unlike American animated cinema, with fantasy worlds being drawn out very clearly, with explanations as to why everything exists the way it does. Another film which came out in the same Oscar year, Disney’s 2002 film Treasure Planet, is Treasure Island but set in a galactic universe. There are humans and there are aliens, they live in an integrated society and for an American audience with a cultural history of Star Wars, that raises no questions. But Spirited Away draws on Asian culture that I haven’t been as exposed to (unless you count Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was done by animation companies in South Korea and draws on anime tropes). Spirits exist in this world but we don’t know what they do or what their purpose is, we just catch them at this snapshot in time. Lucky for us, Pixar’s John Lasseter is friends with Miyazaki, and Disney approached him to supervise the English language translation and distribution of Miyazaki’s films. That means that the main character Chihiro:

is Daveigh Chase, AKA Lilo:

and her work friend Lin:

is Hercules’ (and the stage version of Beauty and the Beasts’) Susan Egan:

and Chihiro’s friend Haku:

is Hairspray, 30 Rock, and X-Men’s James Marsden:

In the most basic terms, the story is about a young girl Chihiro who finds herself trapped in the spirit world after her father takes a wrong turn on their way to their new house. She meets a boy named Haku, who protects her and tells her that she must get a job at a spirit bathhouse to keep herself safe (since the spirits don’t like humans). The bathhouse is under the control of the witch Yubaba.

Definitely what makes the story most interesting is that no character is inherently good or evil, but each one has his or her own individual set of morals and values. Even though the spirits despise humans, they grow to like Chihiro as her work ethic solidifies her place in the bathhouse. And as they come to accept her, the audience sees Chihiro coming into her own as a young girl who could hardly let go of her mom’s hand in the beginning of the film.

Miyazaki wanted to tell a story about a 10 year old girl who would serve as a role model for other young girls, and Chihiro definitely grows to be both courageous and clever beyond her years. I spent my whole childhood thinking that Disney and Pixar owned the children’s animated film market because no other company put as much heart into their films as those two did, but now I know of another company whose films are basically this:

And I’ll try not to hold a grudge for the fact that Spirited Away beat my favorite animated film of all time, Lilo & Stitch, at the 2002 Academy Awards for Best Animated Feature. 

Monsters University (2013) - Dan Scanlon

I don’t shy away from telling people that Pixar is the most magical, inspirational production company working in film today. In our post 90s-Disney world, someone has to step up and put all of the pointless sequels and movies based on children’s toys (I’m talking to you, The Lego Movie) and TV shows that are before its own target audience’s time (Smurfs) to shame. And Pixar fills that role time and time again.

Now I know what you’re thinking, Pixar is in a slump of unnecessary sequels and some “meh” movies. Cars 2 was a disgrace (I’ve never even seen it), and I still hold the belief that Disney forced them to make it. Brave was pretty and heartwarming but a bit of a mess in terms of having a coherent story. So without having made a great movie since 2010’s Toy Story 3, Pixar had a lot riding on their first prequel. And that’s why I went in with a lot of expectations, but also why I walked out trying to wipe the tears from my face before the two other families in the theater with very young kids saw me in the light.

I’m not saying the film was perfect. In fact it had an almost identical formula as two other films about college, Sydney White and House Bunny, where a well-intentioned hero turns a group of ragtag fratbros/sorority sisters into popular winners through a lot of trial and error, plus transformation montages. But unlike Despicable Me 2, which I saw three days before, the film had what Pixar repeatedly proves it has, and that’s heart. Cue corny music. 

One thing I loved about the film is that they turned Mike from this funny egomaniac that you just laughed at in the first film into a fully developed, hardworking underdog. I found him so inspirational and courageous that you just root for him from the first scene, where, on a school field trip, he sneaks into a door on the scare floor and sees a real scarer in action. He is forever changed and works incessantly until he has earned his place at the top scaring school, Monsters University. Which is great, because it proves that no amount of difference (he’s made fun of for being so small and not scary) can keep you from accomplishing your dreams.

And yes he’s still lovable and these little easter eggs that reference the first film are magical when you see them. And once at school, Mike meets James P. Sullivan, the self-righteous legacy who got in only because of the merits of his father, Bill Sullivan. Sulley is naturally talented, unlike the intuitive and book-smart Mike, and the two dislike each other from the get-go. But when fate leads them to have to join the least popular fraternity and win a campus-wide scaring competition to prove their worth and not lose everything they had worked for, the two learn to understand each other’s differences and combine assets to make a great team. The film is relatable, touching, and teaches the value of friendship. Also it has a college setting, which is a nice touch considering the first film came out 12 years ago, so most of the target audience then is now in college.

FYI this is just a shot from the teaser trailer and isn’t in the film. So aside from Pixar being the studio that touches hearts around the world, they are also successful enough to afford a quirky and talented cast of voice actors. There’s Billy Crystal and John Goodman as Mike and Sulley again, and Bonnie Hunt (I’m not sure if Pixar secretly owns her or she just loves working for them, because she did Bug’s Life, Monsters Inc, Cars, Cars 2, Toy Story 3, and Monsters University) who plays Mike’s elementary school teacher. They also got Aubrey Plaza (Parks and Recreation, Safety Not Guaranteed) to play an unattached, goth announcer for the Scare Games, but I guess you could have figured that out.

They also got Charlie Day (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Horrible Bosses) to play a new age philosophy major named Art, who basically has all of the best one liners in the film because of how strange he is.

Overall, Monsters University isn’t one of the many unnecessary sequels that fill the younger generation’s heads with animated garbage. Pixar has made 14 films, all premiering at number one at the box office, and 7 have won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature. Out of those films, 4 are not original stories (Cars 2, Toy Story 2 and 3, and Monsters University). Also Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo, is on the horizon. Before that, they had two original films coming up, The Good Dinosaur, and Inside Out. In my opinion, Pixar has earned the right to a few sequels, because aside from Cars 2, they understand that sequels are more than just quick money, but that they can also further a story so beautiful that it needed to be revisited.

Iron Man 3 (2013) - Shane Black

As my summer movie list becomes longer than the number of days in summer, I start to wonder how Phineas and Ferb get everything done. But yesterday I did manage to see both Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness, and I loved both of them. 

I know. And honestly, I had high hopes. Iron Man 2 was… forgettable, and Marvel/Disney had a lot to live up to in this post-Avengers period of their superhero films. Seeing as this was the first one since Avengers, they set the film up with a sort of existential crisis that Tony Stark is having after going through the vortex. At points it was heavy handed but in general it gave the emotional depth the film needed to keep from being boring and uninvolved. And I want to give a huge amount of credit for the film’s success to Robert Downey Jr. 

We just love Tony Stark. He’s egotistical, superficial, but dangerously intelligent and very loving towards Pepper. His cynicism and sarcastic quips make him hilarious to watch and lift the story beyond just another superhero film. And in one summer with almost five superhero films (Iron Man 3, Thor 2, Man of Steel, Wolverine, technically Percy Jackson 2…), each movie needs to do everything in its power to stand out. 

And Iron Man 3 definitely had its clichéd superhero movie moments, but it did them with an originality that I think comes form Tony Stark’s “I don’t really know what I’m doing but I actually have a plan” kind of attitude. He always seems to be outnumbered, or outsmarted, but then suddenly he’ll whip out 40 plus Iron Man suits that run without human bodies and can fight as a little army for him.

And you can’t help but geek out a little when all of the suits are revealed. Because you realize that no one can beat Tony Stark, he’s just TOO good. I just did this in the theater at this scene.

The film is told as a story, where Tony Stark reflects on his mistake he made in 1999, when he didn’t join up with a (mad)scientist who wanted to genetically engineer super humans that could regenerate their bodies after injuries. The plot is familiar (X-Men Origins: Wolverine, Captain America, Star Trek Into Darkness), but Iron Man 3 made it complicated, it made it confusing. And it certainly tested Tony Stark in a way that I think the other two movies failed to. In Iron Man 1, he has to build the suit to survive, and then has to fight an even bigger version of the suit. In Iron Man 2… (to Wikipedia!) Iron Man has to figure out how to find Vanka and eventually has to fight a bunch of drones before fighting Vanka in his own arc-powered suit. But this one didn’t involve a villain getting his hands on an Iron Man suit, but a villain that almost took Stark down with terrorism and going for what matters, Pepper Potts.

Not only did Stark have serious PTSD, but it also went into the subplot of how Tony Stark saw himself, as just a filling for the Iron Man suit, or as a man simply wearing a suit of armor. This movie is about Tony Stark understanding who he is and where Iron Man plays into that being, which is what makes the ending so perfect. The film is exciting, hilarious, and this review isn’t doing it justice at all. Everyone should go see it.