Movie Reviews

Three... Extreme

Well, the title says it all. There are three shortish movies, illustrating three macarbe stories. And extreme they were.

Dumplings, the first movie, was the most elegant gross-out movie you can have. Simply put, there is a woman who makes special dumplings which when women eat them can assist in their rejuvenation and anti-ageing. The first scenes showing us a waning star painfully eats them one by one, their maker casually reminding her: "Don't think about what they were, but the effect they will have!"
Strangely, the content was rather close to some background internet browsing I did to help debunk a hoax spam a wee while back. The movie's cinematography was quite very smooth, and I wasn't surprised that it was Christopher Doyle. Isn't it odd that one can predict a cinematographer?

Cut, directed by Park Chanwook (of Old Boy and JSA) is a nasty piece of work, but oddly reminiscent of Old Boy. The film ironically is about a successful director who creates a scene in his movie exactly like his home, and then who is kidnapped to his set in the middle of the night and tormented by a rather psychotic "extra". The motive: All rich successful people are essentially bad people who trod on others, which makes the extra feel fine because he is neither rich nor successful, so could feel that those rich people were nothing. But the director, he is rich, successful AND a good man. Now that ain't fair!

Some elements of the film were so similar to Old Boy but it was still interesting. The ending though, I am yet to fathom.

Box, directed by the notorious Takashi Miike, was a disappointment. The plot was hard to describe, but was ever spiralling back on itself. This was good, it kept creating itself anew till the end... failed. Or so I thought.
Probably the same person who memorably pleaded "What happened?" at the end of Mulholland Drive, also yelped: "What?!" upon the second to last frame. And yes, something else could have happened... Ah, I can't be bothered in explaining it.

On the whole, it was the bad, the wicked and the disgusting (in reverse order) and worth the watch.