Land of Whimsy

Movies watched in July 2007

Land of Whimsy / Movies / Movies watched in July 2007

Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Grindhouse ****½

USA: Robert Rodriguez/Quentin Tarantino, 2007

Planet Terror: ****½
Death Proof: ****

IMDB reference

Monday, July 16, 2007

Paprika **

Japan: Satoshi Kon, 2006

This morning, I forced myself to sit down and watch Paprika... with an emphasis on forced, because I really did find it a chore to sit through. I have nothing against nonsensical films that operate in the world of dream logic - Mulholland Drive and Inferno being two of my absolute all-time favourites - but, if the director doesn't know what he or she is doing, or loses his or her sense of perspective, it's easy to lose track of what counts. With Paprika, I can only assume that, as with Darren Aronofsky's The Fountain (another dream logic film I saw recently and hated), everything made sense to writer/director Satoshi Kon in his head, but he was unable to translate this on to the screen in a way that resonated... with me at any rate. I never felt as if I was actually experiencing a dream, just viewing one nonsensical scene after another.

It doesn't help that, unlike the other Satoshi Kon film I've seen, the excellent Tokyo Godfathers, the visual style is that bland, stilted, lifeless look that I (rightly or wrongly) associate with anime. Rather than moving their whole faces when they speak, characters' mouths just open and close, and the voices (in the original Japanese - the English dub is unsurprisingly cringe-worthy) certainly don't add any more life to these wooden personalities. There is some nice colour work, and a couple of interesting visual images, but most of the latter are to be found in the opening credits - really not a good sign. The designs are mostly bland and generic, and I find myself wondering how the same director could produce such inventive visuals in Tokyo Godfathers, working with a much more reality-based storyline, and yet give this high fantasy such an uninspired look.

I do intend to seek out Satoshi Kon's other work - Perfect Blue and Millenium Actress - but I sincerely hope my enjoyment of Tokyo Godfathers wasn't just a fluke.

IMDB reference