THE BULLET VANISHES (消失的子彈) [REVIEW]

Posted on August 31, 2012 by Elizabeth Flux

Countless factory workers churn out bullet after bullet in an industrial warehouse.  On her knees, a young girl screams her innocence before shooting herself in the head. The crowd standing around just lets it happen. Her limp body is thrown onto a cart. Yan might be dead, but she has left a curse. Men scrub her message off the wall, but unease remains. “The phantom bullet will kill you all”.

The Bullet Vanishes is a murder mystery with a hint of the supernatural and a generous helping of the police procedural. Set in the late 1920s in China’s Warlord era, a series of murders have been happening in an arms factory owned by the sinister, scarred and slightly over-acted Ding (Liu Kai-Chi). The girl from the opening scenes, Yan, was accused of stealing a case of bullets, and as per factory rules, Ding “let the heavens decide” – through a game of Russian roulette. The murders began two weeks afterwards, and with no bullets left behind, the workers begin to suspect that Yan’s promise is coming true. Sent in to investigate are policemen Dong Lu (Lau Ching-Wang), and Guo Zhui (Nicholas Tse).

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BULLY [REVIEW]

Posted on August 29, 2012 by H D Thompson

Kids are fucking assholes. I have always maintained this and now there’s footage to prove it. Obviously that statement is a tad broad – not all kids are assholes – but the barbaric history of bullying is so rarely captured on film and brought to attention I left this film with anger in my heart (and I will admit, a tear on my cheek).

Bully is a documentary by film maker Lee Hirsch about the nature of bullying in schools in America. It opens with the gut wrenching story of a teenager who had committed suicide due to a life of enduring constant bullying. Narrated by the boys’ father, the story hits hard – it’s a good opener. The film follows other outcasts who are unfortunate victims of the bullying plague that affects most of teenage-kind. The most interesting part for me was the parents of the victims trying to do something about it and being politely ignored by all authority around them (including and mostly, that particular school’s moronic principal), and it’s this insight into the bullying world that is the most potent – anyone who works with children everywhere should see this film. It’s not up to kids to be better people; it’s up to the adults raising and protecting them to do something about it.

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VULGARIA (低俗喜劇): AS THE NAME SUGGESTS [REVIEW]

Posted on August 28, 2012 by Elizabeth Flux

At the heart of Vulgaria lies a story about a man trying to impress his young daughter after a separation and a string of career failures. Interesting contrast, as the rest of this metaphorical body is made up of jokes about candy enhancing oral sex, threatened gun violence, making porn and implied bestiality.

The film lives up to its name. Repeatedly. To Wai-Cheung (Chapman To) is a film producer, and Vulgaria opens on him describing to a class of university students what his job entails. “It’s like being pubic hair” he explains, to the dismay of the lecturer. “Without it, you can get a lot of friction – my job is to ease that friction between people.”

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MARGARET [REVIEW]

Posted on August 27, 2012 by H D Thompson

A film that almost never was – spending 6 years in post-production hell and a theatrical release worldwide so limited it’s embarrassing – more of a work in progress than a complete piece of art but nonetheless an exhausting thump in the chest – in the best sense of the phrase. An operatic slugger of a film, Margaret is Kenneth Lonergan’s long awaited follow up to the stunning You Can Count on Me.

A precocious teenager, Lisa (Anna Paquin) witnesses an horrific bus accident and her quest to find the true guilty party stems from the slight role she played in the accident. Lisa is a regular modern day teenager, smart-assed and expectant and adamantly sure of herself. She has political debates in class, flirts with teachers, rebels against her mother and strives for her absent father’s waning affections. Continue reading →

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BEAUTY (SKOONHEID) [REVIEW]

Posted on August 23, 2012 by H D Thompson

What I like about a film is its power to make me feel something I wouldn’t usually feel. Beauty hit me in a place a lot of films haven’t before, and while maybe it wasn’t a nice happy feeling, it affected me for days after, and that’s a rare thing.

A film set in South Africa, spoken in Afrikaans splattered with English, it is the story of aging, repressed sexuality festering in the combines of an underlying wave of racism in a country still trying to find its feet. The older hardy whites of South Africa still bear the shavings of racism their Dutch forefathers harboured in their hostile takeover and some still band together, believing the black resurgence nothing more than the country “going to the dogs”. Franciose (Deon Lotz) is a middle aged man, running a successful sawmill, in a rather unhappy marriage. He is also part of a club of men that gets together once in a while in a secluded house for a good old fashioned orgy, but rest assured; they’re “not fags”. Francoise meets and becomes dangerously smitten with a friend’s young son, Christian (Charlie Keegan). The film hypnotically follows this infatuation from the first lusty glance at a party, to the final crushing pinnacle of obsession.

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