Day 2
Machine Girl (Noboru Igushi)A schoolgirl loses one of the arms, but is rewarded with a prosthetics machine gun and seeks revenge on her foes.
Just by reading the line above you probably don’t need to know anything else to decide if this flick is for you. Anyways, let me help with more detail:
It’s bloody. Very bloody. The machine gun makes one hell of a mess, with bullets literally destroying the poor targets bodies.
It’s campy. Very campy. The girl meets her brother and the camera closes up on his ambiguous loving smile and shiny eyes, while mellow classic guitar sounds fill the background. A female foe opens her robe to reveal her deadly drill-bra. The fights, dialogues and FX are just ridiculous.
It’s funny. Quite. More so if you happen to laugh at übergruesome deaths. But the enemies introducing themselves with motions and shouted names just like a Power Rangers kind of show cracked me up.
It’s sexy… Kind of. Depends on how into Japanese schoolgirls with machine guns you might be. The girl in question makes sure she’s wearing lace lingerie underneath her ragged uniform to help trigger your impure thoughts.
It has to be mentioned that our heroine runs out of bullets at some point. Then she finds a chainsaw that’s lying around… Did I say the movie is bloody yet? Well, it gets worse.
How campy is too campy or just plain dumb? That’s a very subjective matter, but I’d recommend this movie as good, warped, shallow fun. See it with a bunch of friends.
Audience rating: 5 claps
Audience best reaction: A not too subtle upskirt and the last death scene. I’d rather not spoil it, but I can say it hardly gets more outrageous than that.
So the bloodbath inspired me to go eat something, I went for a walk along St. Catherine to check the joints. The first one I see is McDonald’s, I chuckle thinking “Not on this life”, and keep walking. 5 blocks after, and only 20 minutes before the next movie, I just go back and order a quarter-pounder trio. A man has to know when to give up. But I need to find another cheap quick place around, as I have no intention to do a supersize-me-kinda blog.
Genius Party (Atsuko Fukushima, Shoji Kawamori, Shinji Kimura, Yoji Fukuyama, Hideki Futamura, Masaaki Yuasa, Shinichiro Watanabe)The cool thing about animations is that everything is possible. Suspension of disbelief is immediate when your eyes see drawings instead of pictures. The bad thing about animations is that everything is possible. The flick might fall into self-indulgency and forget to take you where it’s going.
The 6 cartoons in Genius Party hit those extremes in different degrees. One in particular is simply made of flashing lights and a dude that looks like Benicio Del Toro uttering existential mumblings that I’m probably too stupid to follow. At the end of this one I did the proper Brazilian let’s-express-feelings-loudly thing and hollered a “WHAT?” causing the only positive reaction from the audience.
UPDATE: To my surprise, this episode is registered for the posterity in the hugely entertaining Gazette blog Ciné Files. Go figure.
To compensate this bore, we are treated to a very pretty anime that starts with 2 high-schoolers skipping class under the oath of not thinking of tomorrow or the future, just for a day. They decide to catch a train towards the ocean and everything goes wrong. The quiet mood, surreal situations and beautiful images got me to the point I was holding tears when the cheesy final scene hit the screen.
But perhaps not helping the whole movie work as a satisfactory experience, the best cartoon is the second one, showing us how a snotty innocent kid can stop yet another giant-robots invasion to Japan. What starts as typical sci-fi Japanime turns out to be a celebration to the chaos of creativity that makes us humans, and the art of making cartoons. It may be a self-pat on the back, but beautiful nevertheless.
Audience rating: 3 claps (Each cartoon, except the existencial one, had its share of applause, but the enthusiasm was steadily dwindling)
Audience best reaction: When a droid spits his cigar up to better spin and shoot robots surrounding him. The camera switches from the gun action to the cigar slowly flying up and then falling back. The anticipation of him finishing the killing and catching it back with his mouth made everyone cheer, the amazing conclusion made the house go down.
Pye-Dog (Derek kwok)The movie begins with such good production values that I was sure I’d be in for a great ride. The cinematography was just gorgeous, the music touching, the actors charismatic... But the plot is just lacking. When it ended I had the impression I had just watched a very forgettable soap-opera episode. Kwok surely knows how to shoot a movie, but even that starts to get annoying. The movie is telling you how cool the camera angles are instead of making you care about what’s in front of the lens. Especially the action scenes, expected in a mobster movie, don’t feel like they belong. Even the Hitchcockian shooting in a carrousel feels more rip-off than homage.
Audience rating: No claps
Afterwards there was a birthday party in the Plateau. Cake, booze and a good time was had by all, with the exception of the girl that had her balance sense a bit affected, fell from her bike on the way out, hit her head against a parked truck and passed out. She came to fairly quickly after spooking the heck out of everyone, but the worst part was the neighbours complaining about the noise we people make while worrying about a bleeding girl on the street. Those things still deeply impress me in Canada and it’s inevitable to feel creeped out by how raw people here can be in their interactions. This is way scarier than any genre movies, where the monsters are very visible and a chainsaw might take care of them. The “you’re invading my space” vibe that so many people showcase is not as easily dealt with, and sometimes I’m afraid it will get the best of me.
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