Movies

MEMENTO

I'd like to think I've seen enough movies to be able to compare Memento to something else I'd seen somewhere, but I'm at a loss. This movie is aggravating, uncomfortable, unsettling, and all-around mesmerizing.

Guy Pearce stars as Leonard (Lenny) Shelby, an insurance claims investigator whose life is drastically altered on the night of his wife's rape and murder. Lenny is hit on the head and left unable to create any new memories. Lenny remembers everything in his life leading up to the accident, but now loses his memory every ten minutes or so. So he spends his days trying to exact revenge on his wife's killer, following a trail marked by the tattoos he wears to remind him of the facts he has accumulated, and various Polariods of the few people he interacts with, who may or may not be helping him along the way. Even this plot description, however, is a bit too straightforward, considering the paranoid meandering mind-fuck the film runs with.

The story is told backwards, starting with the end, and finishing with the beginnning-- sort of. There are also these creepy black and white scenes showing Lenny on the telephone with an unknown person, having a conversation that runs an expletive thread through the rest of the action. These scenes interject the story line with an even more macabre emptiness.

As bleak as the premise is-- a revenge-bent man wandering around not knowing where he is a good 90 percent of the time-- the movie manages to be not only a dark comedy, it is also a stunning examination of identity and the importance of memory to the idea of self.

Although I didn't much care for Guy Pearce's character in L. A. Confidential-- he was Russell Crowe's bitch in that film-- he really brings the big guns out in Memento. He is absolutely perfect in the role, which is not such an easy task. He looks completely lost when he comes to after each blackout, but he still remains in character.

Carrie-Anne Moss is at turns biting and sweet as Natalie, a bartender who may or may not be helping him, and she brought along fellow Matrix co-star Joe Pantoliano. He plays another shady character in Lenny's world. Friend or foe? It's hard to say with anyone Lenny encounters throughout the film-- all part of the fun.

If you can't handle movies with ambiguous endings, then don't go see this. If you are creative minded and don't mind developing your own conclusions from a twisted spotty tale, then by all means. A
--Josh Tyson

Movie Review

CHUNHYANG

There's no way around it; Chunhyang is defiantly a Korean movie. It opens with Cho Sang-hyun, the film's narrator, singing in front of a modern-day audience. What he is singing is pansori, a traditional Korean narrative art form. What he is singing about is the story of Mongyong Lee and Chunhyang Sung, two troubled lovers in 18th century Korea.

The pansori continues throughout the film, sometimes giving it a surreal feeling while Cho sings the dialogue being performed by the actors. The lyrical narration takes some getting used to, but the movie ends better for using it. The most interesting aspect of this technique is found when the camera returns to Cho. His facial expressions and movement around the stage, along with his audience's reactions, illustrate the point that he is putting on a good show alone, without the visuals the movie audience is getting.

But what visuals they are. Using slow, measured camera movements and subtle angles, director Im Kwon-taek demonstrates why he is considered one of Korea's top directors. He knows how to set up an effective tracking shot, letting the actors move around in and out of the frame, not moving the camera around them. Having first stepped behind the camera in 1962 and directing nearly 100 films since, Im has clearly learned what it takes to keep any audience's visual attention without resorting to flashy effects or rapid editing.

Chunhyang's story is very similar to its imagery: both are elegant in their simplicity. In a fairly familiar setup, a nobleman's son falls for a courtesan's daughter (Mongyong and Chunhyang, respectively). Tradition and class forbid their love, so they keep their wedding under wraps until Mongyong can pass the test to earn his own nobility. The story's conflict arises when Mongyong's family moves to Seoul, forcing him to leave Chunhyang behind after less than a year of marital bliss. Promising to send for her when he is a nobleman, Mongyong rides off, letting the film concentrate on its title character while her devotion to her absent husband is rigorously tested.

Everything about this movie works. The slow pace, the beautiful images and dialogue, the lead performers, even the characters thrown in for comic relief. It also provides an interesting look into Korean culture, for those of us who don't know much more than what we've seen on "M*A*S*H." One walks away from this movie with an understanding of the class system, values, and traditions of Korea in the 1700s. While Im probably didn't intend his film to be a textbook, and it is certainly more engaging than one, the information that seeps through is a welcome addition to Chunhyang.

A touching love story with powerful drama offset by some light comedy: this is a film worth seeking out. Once you get into the pansori narration and suspend a little bit of disbelief, Chunhyang becomes a beautiful couple of hours at the movies. B+
--Chris Ward

Movie Review

TOMCATS

During one of the television ads for Tomcats, we witness a group of guys sitting in a room as they share a bottle of wine. As the bottle is passed around, the only word uttered by these meatheads is, "Dude." The sequence goes, "Dude. Dude? Dude! DUDE!?" Now if my memory serves me correctly, the last time we saw a trailer for a film that threw the "Dude" word back and forth between characters in a film, it was for Dude Where's My Car? and Baseketball (both not good movies). Tomcats follows the same lead of these films, and much like its predecessors, falls apart right before our eyes.

Jerry O'Connell and Jake Busey star as Michael and Kyle, two guys whose goal in life is to screw every woman on the face of the earth. During a wedding ceremony, these two jokers, along with another five pals, decide to make a pact that they each will invest money in mutual funds and the last man to remain single keeps the pot. As years go by, the pot has turned into half a million dollars, and Michael and Kyle are the only two men left standing. After gambling $50,000 he doesn't have in Las Vegas, Michael has two choices: either pay with his life in 30 days, or con Kyle into marrying the only girl that he felt got away, Natalie, played by Shannon Elizabeth.

After hunting Natalie down, they both come to an agreement that she will marry him as long as they split the money. During the next half hour, we witness these two going through the usual spy tactics as they try to figure out what type

of woman Kyle is willing to settle down with. What I didn't understand is if these guys have been friends for so many years, why is Michael sitting in a sauna with a hidden mic trying to figure out his best friend? He should know these answers by now. During their nights of going incognito, Michael falls for Natalie, and is faced with yet another dilemma: send Natalie to Kyle, who he knows will continue his infidelity, or keep her for himself? Without giving too many plot points away, Kyle is struck with a serious disease (I thought this was a comedy), and Natalie actually falls for him and they decide to marry. Who wants to guess what Michael is going to do at the wedding he wasn't invited to?

Tomcats is a film that had potential to be funny. It is geared towards guys 18 to 25 years of age who are looking for a film that will have lots of nudity as well as a few laughs. Sorry fellas, there is only one small scene that shows a mother milking her very fake breast. As for laughs, you could probably count them on one hand. This is not a good movie. Tomcats is the first film to be released by Revolution Studios, which is run by a former big shot of Disney, Joe Roth. He was responsible for such hits as Armageddon and The Sixth Sense. Personally, I think he may have lost his edge. For an encore, this June he is releasing Animal, starring Rob Schneider as a man whose body parts are replaced with those of wild animals. Happy hunting. D-
--Neal James

Movie Review

THE DATE

Online shorts are turning into a cottage industry for young filmmakers looking for that big break. The catapult of funny shorts to big-budget features has always been around-- Tim Burton and the South Park boys both started with underground shorts-- but the Internet gives short films a higher profile than ever before.

Atom Films, a subsidiary of Shockwave. com, has been one of the leaders in streaming video, providing a variety of content and even screening one of the nominees for Best Animated Short in this year's Academy Awards (the first time any of us peons has had a shot at screening one of these obscure gems). While most of the shorts at even this exemplary site are flat and understated to a fault, a few rise to the top. The Date is one of those films.

An Australian piece starring Dan Spielman and Rose Byrne, The Date concerns a politician's daughter who man-ages to have horny trysts with the next door neighbor, Nick, during her father's numerous business trips to Asia. Ever mindful of the health risks in today's society, Nick freaks when he forgets to buy condoms. The daughter proposes using her father's last one (a pretty creepy idea, if you ask me), reasoning that he can simply buy some replacements the next morning. The young couple proceeds to roger like wallabies.

Since this is a comedy, the company that manufactured daddy's favorite brand decided to change the wrapper color from black to white, leaving our poor hero in quite a lurch (the politician, before leaving, confided in Nick that anyone he caught with his daughter would have his balls lopped off). The outcome is anything but predictable, and it's only seven minutes long, so even if it were predictable, what would you lose?

Damon Herriman and Will Usic, the directors, show a lot of promise in some scenes, particularly the fast-cut chemist-to-chemist condom search sequence. Everything is well lit and framed right up until the twisted ending, which sounds like stretching to compliment, but in the world of Internet shorts, it's quite a feat.

If you've got a fast enough connection, this is a good flick to check out; if nothing else, you'll get to see how nice the lobbies are at Australian condom manufacturers. B --Chris J. Magyar

This film is available online at www.atomfilms.com

DVD REPORT

C.H.U.D. (1984)

C.H.U.D. is a throwback to the hey-day of the '70s exploitation film. It's most reminiscent of the Roger Corman produced movies of that period: it's cheap but slick. The script, acting and direction are all stronger than you'd expect. It presents an almost shockingly realistic urban milieu, of a sort seldom seen much anymore. As well, it abounds with Corman-esque left wing politics, especially in its portrayal of the homeless and the proclivities of the Government.

We open strongly with a teaser in which a woman is pulled into a manhole by a monstrous, albeit rubbery, claw. From here we follow a large yet sharply etched cast of characters as they fight to learn what's behind a recent upsurge in missing persons. Inevitably, the truth comes out: toxic waste illegally stored beneath New York City has turned members of the homeless community into C.H.U.D.s ... Cannibalistic Humanoid Underground Dwellers.

I don't want to oversell this, but it's actually a pretty good movie. Admittedly, it's not the kind of thing where everything makes sense. However, it moves quickly and smartly enough that we don't stop to pick apart its ever-increasing goofiness.

The monsters are rather silly, it must be admitted, but the characters are sharply written and well portrayed by the likes of John Heard and Daniel Stern. Heard particularly provides a strong performance, even to the point of making his character often arrogant and unlikable. Meanwhile, many then-unknown but now-familiar faces dot the proceedings. Not only does a comparatively thin John Goodman briefly appear as a beat cop, but his partner turns out to be Jay Thomas. Patricia Richardson, Tim Allen's wife in "Home Improvement," also pops up in the background.

What really makes the disc take off is the hilarious commentary track. This is a real jumble, featuring five guys sitting around and yakking about the film. On hand are actors John Heard, Christopher Curry and Daniel Stern along with director Douglas Cheek and Shephard Abbott, who provided the original story this came from. (Mystery novelist Parnell Hall is credited with the script. Apparently the story behind this is still such a sore spot that the subject is tacitly ignored. Abbott does take the opportunity to boo Hall's screen credit, though!)

This is great stuff, with the gentlemen basically striving to see who can break the others up the most. The only slight problem I had was that I seldom could tell who was speaking at any one time. (On the other hand, I don't exactly have the world's greatest ear, either.) Thus I'm not sure who's wife played the woman killed in the beginning of the picture, nor which individual is the one who reveals that he actually managed to get paid what they were promised for making the movie. Even so, it's pretty funny to hear the others reacting with surprise and some slight indignation, even after all these years, to hearing that one of their number didn't get ripped off like the rest. B+
--Ken Begg