Fantastic Fest 2011 – Sennentuntschi/Elite Squad II/Yakuza Weapon/Dreadnaught/Rabies

SENNENTUNTSCHI: CURSE OF THE ALPS (2010)

Directed by: Michael Steiner
Written by: Stefanie Japp/Michael Sauter/Michael Steiner

I don’t actually know how I feel about this one. I may never really know.

A little girl finds a skeleton and her mother tells the police the story of what happened in the village in 1975 when a mysterious girl (Roxane Mesquida from The Fat Girl) wanders into town after the apparent suicide of a priest. What ensues is mass chaos. The chief of police (Nicholas Ofczarek) tries to uncover her story, but only find a picture of her from 1950. Could that be possible? And why does the head priest hate her so much? Why does he keep saying that she’s the devil?

There is so much going on in this movie that it’s pretty difficult to keep up all the time. I’m sure that, after a few viewings, everything will start to click into place. And, honestly, I’m willing to try that. The story is so interesting and the movie is so good that I wouldn’t mind watching it two or three times just to puzzle it all out.

I’m not really sure, though, that it’s meant to be puzzled out. The ending is very ambiguous and could be interpreted many different ways. Sometimes, that’s what separates the great from the merely good.

I’ve heard that this is the first true horror movie to come out of Switzerland. If it is, I can’t wait to see what else that country comes up with. Steiner needs to make more movies immediately and get them released in America.

Even if I hadn’t liked the movie so much, I think that it still would have made me want to visit the Swiss Alps. MAN, was the movie beautiful.

ELITE SQUAD II: THE ENEMY WITHIN

Directed by: José Padilha
Written by: José Padilha/Rodrigo Pimentel/Bráulio Mantovani

We all know that South America’s government is dirty. There’s no surprise there. The surprise is typically how deep it goes.

Jose Padilha’s new installment in his Elite Squad series is out to uncover the deep. It still centers on Lt. Colonel Nascimento (Wagner Moura), head of BOPE, the Special Police Force of Rio. It’s always been there job to get rid of the drug dealers, but now Nascimento has started to realize that getting rid of drug dealers doesn’t get rid of the real problem: dirty cops. Eventually, the cops are making even more money from other things than they ever were from drugs.

I’ve never seen the first film, so I really had no frame of reference going into this movie. It was only a time-filler. Luckily, it wasn’t a bad time-filler. Not a great one, but not a bad one.

My main problem wasn’t the acting or the action. All of that was great. The problem was how fucking confusing it was. One of the legislators looked a lot like Nascimento, so I kept getting them confused. There was so much double-crossing going on that I had no idea who was on what side. Finally, once I kind of had it all figured out, I kind of wanted the nearly two hour movie to be over.

If you’re looking for something to do and want a little bit of realistic action (this ain’t know Ahnold flick), check it out. I might check out the first one, if possible.)

YAKUZA WEAPON (2011)

Directed by: Tak Sakaguchi/Yûdai Yamaguchi
Written by: Tak Sakaguchi/Yûdai Yamaguchi
Based on manga by: Ken Ishikawa

At some point, Sushi Typhoon will learn how to make movies again. They almost threatened it with this one.

The best Yakuza fighter in Japan is coming back home because his father has just been killed. He finds out that the murderer was one of his father’s lieutenants, so he goes after him…hard. Soon enough, he’s minus an arm and a leg. The government gives him new ones. His arm now has a machine gun and his leg is a rocket launcher.

But he’s not nearly as sexy as Rose McGowan.

Imagine Robocop directed by Lloyd Kaufman, but take all of the satire and pathos out of it. Then you might come close to the silliness of Yakuza Weapon. The co-writer and star of Versus (which got an anniversary screening just before this movie) teamed up to write and direct this one and, honestly, I don’t even think that they learned anything from that experience. (Remember, I’m one of the few people at this festival who thought that Versus was not particularly good. It was amazing for about 15 minutes and then it was boring for the other six hours. I thought Azumi, which no one else liked, was WAY better.)

The funny thing is, this movie has more depth than most of Sushi Typhoon’s movies lately. Their only good movie is still The Machine Girl, but this one is probably a VERY distant second…maybe third. But there are a couple of scenes in this movie that would probably serve another movie really well. The scene with the lead character and his life-long arch-nemesis/friend fighting to the death ends really well. It should have been in some kind of John Woo gangster movie.

Unfortunately, it was attached to this, which was just more of the same over-the-top CGI blood effects and silly “comedy.” But, no matter how bad their movies are, Fantastic Fest will continue to support them and show their movies.

Well, it was at least better than Robo-Geisha.

DREADNAUGHT (1981)

Directed by: Yuen Woo-ping
Written by: Wong Jing

This year, the Festival programmers decided to show four surprise Hong Kong films from the early 80s. You see, they recently received about 650 prints from a production house that went under. The programmer for the New York Asian Film Festival came in to help them categorize them and decided to stick around and show these four films.

The first one was called Dreadnaught and was directed by martial arts choreography legend Yuen Woo-ping and was the first movie to be made by his family. If this had been 10 years ago, I probably could have told you just by watching it that it was written by Wong Jing because it was SUPER silly.

It also made me realize how I had forgotten how goddamn entertaining these old martial arts movies could be.

Mousy (Yuen Biao) is just what his name implies: a mousy little guy. He just can’t bring himself to be a hard-ass, even when people owe his family money. He desperately wants to be taught martial arts by the legendary teacher, Wong Fei-hung (Kwan Tak-hing, who played this role approximately 5498 times…this was his last time). His best friend, Ah Foon (Leung Ka-yan), is Wong’s student and wants to help Mousy in his quest.

Meanwhile, a masked murderer named White Tiger (Yuen Shun-yee) is roaming the streets and is after Mousy because he carries bells with him. There’s sort of an explanation, but it’s not particularly good.

Mousy, of course, gets in all kinds of trouble with Ah Foon leading the way. Eventually, though, he learns to get by and finds out that he knows more kung-fu than he thought. He also has to get revenge.

I had never seen or even heard of this one before, but I’m really glad that I saw it. It may not be the greatest movie ever made (really, what martial arts movie from the early 80s is?), but it really is a lot of freakin’ fun. If you’re into martial arts flicks, especially of this era, find a copy and watch it immediately.

RABIES (2010)

Directed by: Aharon Keshales/Navot Papushado
Written by: Aharon Keshales/Navot Papushado

When four kids get lost in the woods in Israel, chaos reigns. They run into a guy whose sister is trapped in a box underground. Then, while the guys are off trying to help him, the girls run afoul of a couple of cops, one of them being a bit too handsy. Then there’s the park ranger and his dog who are just trying to help.

Blood is everywhere.

Keshales and Papushado set out to make the first horror film ever to come out of Israel and, against all odds, they did a pretty amazing job. Not only is it a good horror film, but it’s a horror film that plays with conventions so well that you almost forget what those conventions were in the first place. (Notice that I didn’t even mention the killer. He exists, but….watch the damn movie.) They lace the entire thing with a pitch black sense of humor and a surprising sense of tragedy. As the filmmakers said, “That’s life in Israel.”

Rabies may not be the best movie at the festival, but it may end up being one of my favorites. Definitely worth a couple of looks. This is a really cool film.

And, no, the dog does not have rabies. In fact, no one does. But violence is a disease that spreads to everyone.

The filmmakers said that there are a couple more horror flicks coming out of Israel soon. I hope we get a chance to see them. Pent up countries always make the best horror films.