REVANCHE (2008)

A sex club bouncer falls in love with one of the prostitutes and wants to run away to a better life. That takes money. They don't have money. While visiting his elderly grandfather, who lives in a small village, the bouncer cases a bank and decides to rob it. His girlfriend insists on coming along. Things don't go so well and even though he gets away with the robbery free and clear he can't leave the village (watch the film to find out why). He stays with his grandfather under the guise of helping him with farm work, but really he's dealing with personal demons and wrestling with the idea of getting revenge on somebody who he thinks did him wrong.

This is not an action packed movie. It's very slow. There's no musical score, only the ambient sounds of whatever is happening onscreen, which is usually not too much. Despite the slow pace I found myself glued to the screen and the deeper I got into these characters I was forgetting to even blink. This is an amazing movie and all of the actors were beyond impressive. I mean there was one scene where the wife of the cop was eating and when he starts talking about the bank robbery she actually started spinning her spaghetti faster on her fork! I know that's a little thing, but I found it drew me even further into the story.

That said, I've seen a metric shit ton of arthouse movies and while the cinematography and the acting was amazing I still found the story once it started going to be pretty predictable. To somebody who's not a arthouse movie nerd, it might be a different story, but once the bank robbery guy settled into life on the farm I quickly saw where the film was going. I really, really wanted it to throw me for a twist, but it never did.

That's just my stupid complaint, do not let that prevent you from checking out this movie. REVANCHE is a great film and very deserving of an audience and the Criterion release, which as always has an amazing picture. The complete lack of extras though was a big letdown. Somebody dropped the ball there. Criterion, at least give us a fucking audio commentary! WTF?!

Everybody on this film is now on my radar, so I'm hoping to see some great things from them in the future.

Boom mic shadow over to the left.

MY SASSY GIRL (2001)

I'm a sucker for a good romantic comedy movie and this is one of the best I've ever seen. The simplified version of the the story is a young man, Gyun-Woo, sees a beautiful (but extremely drunk) woman at the train station. She's teetering on the platform ledge as the train approaches. He pulls her to safety and helps her on the train. He's intrigued by her drunkenness and can't help but watch her...then she vomits on a older man and right before she passes out she calls Gyun-woo "Honey". So now everybody on the train thinks that she's his girlfriend and scolds him about how he can't take care of his girlfriend, etc. Gyun-woo carries her off the train and to a local motel to let her sleep it off. Things happen and when he gets out of the shower naked (remember he has vomit all over him) the cops bust in and arrest him. The next day the Girl calls him (he's at home now) and wants to talk to him. They meet and she is a very demanding person with a lot of obvious pain inside, but Gyun-woo sees there's something sweet underneath and he wants to "heal her sorrow". And that's how their relationship begins.

At first the Girl has a wall up around herself and a lot of what she says is lies or misleading, but then as the film moves along and she begins to heal, we (the audience along with Gyun-woo) start to see through her armor and it's absolutely beautiful. That's all of the story you need to know.

I really fell in love with this movie and cannot say enough wonderful things about it. The best advice I can give you is to pay attention to everything (the handkerchief, the water, the film scripts she writes and especially [SPOILER?] the special passenger in the train). Also watch it more than once. This movie is a lot deeper and there's much more going on beneath the surface than you think. I kinda felt stupid for not seeing the ending earlier, but sometimes ignorance truly is bliss. =P

I do have a few questions though: [SPOILERS!!!] How come the older version of Gyun-woo time-travels alone? Where did the frog in the time capsule come from? (Update: [SPOILER!!!]) I might be going out on a limb here, but maybe the frog was put there by a time traveling Girl who was observing Gyun-woo from off screen. Just a thought. Remember the one film script featured a time traveling girl saving the boy). Was she trying to commit suicide on the anniversary of her ex-boyfriend's death and if so was it his spirit that lead Gyun-woo to her? (Update: that last question is answered in the movie WINDSTRUCK). Why did Gyun-woo have his phone turned off?

Director/writer Jae-young Kwak on the left(?).

Biggest clue in the movie is in this shot.

Nice fan made video:

DEATH NOTE: L CHANGE THE WORLD (2008)

Yawn. This entire movie is about L. Now I like L, but without his nemesis, Light, he's kinda boring. As you remember from the end of Part 2 L wrote his own name in the Death Note saying that he would die peacefully in 23 days. This is the story of what happens during that time.

It's entertaining, but without Light or Misa (my god she was hot!) or Ryuk the whole thing is disappointing. It's like if there was an episode of "Buffy" starring only Giles. Honestly, if you're a big DEATH NOTE fan I would just skip this film, it's just going to disappoint you. As a stand alone film it's OK, but still boring. Skip it.

I guess I could tell you the plot: L has to stop some terrorist from releasing a deadly virus that will kill everybody on the planet. Of course, if he didn't burn the Death Note at the beginning of the movie he could just kill them. Then again that would be against L's morals.

Part 1
Part 2

DEATH NOTE: THE LAST NAME (2006)

Part 2 is even better than the original!!!!! I liked it so much I just ordered the Blu-Ray set! Part 1 spent a lot of time introducing the story and the rules and characters, etc., but with Part 2 we already know all that shit so they bust in balls out from the very beginning and it's a non-stop roller coaster ride the entire movie!

You already know how at the end of Part 1 Kira killed his girlfriend to gather enough sympathy to be asked to join the task force well now he's in, but even he's in for a surprise when a second Kira shows up and this one has "the eyes" that the god of death spoke of earlier. I'm not going to give any more away, but it was very exciting. Highly recommended.

My one and only complaint (besides Erika Toda not getting naked) was the song by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. What the fuck is that shit?! Yuck!!!

Part 1
Part 3