Them!
Thursday, December 28, 2006
With nothing on television I’ve gone back to watching old classic films that I haven’t yet had the pleasure to see. Last week I watched The Woman in the Window; this week it was Them!. I had always thought of 50s scifi as the ultimate cheese. You know, bad special effects and next to no storyline. While Them! certainly has elements of that (and I’d venture to guess it was the inspiration for much of the genre), it holds up rather well nonetheless.
First of all, the special effects really aren’t that bad. Since these are just ants, they were able to make a reasonable representation. Although they do look a bit like big stuffed animals, they aren’t so bad that I’m unable to suspend disbelief (such as in It Came from Beneath the Sea).
The story is simple enough. Radioactive ants are discovered in the deserts of Arizona. Local officials rush to try and destroy them, with the help of a scientist. The film falls quite short in terms of realism here. For example, the “scientist” never says what his specialty is. He’s introduced as a scientist, and immediately knows everything about ants. Even though they ants had yet to be discovered when he was brought in. They only knew that something strange had happened. Likewise, the male lead is first a sheriff of this small Arizona town, but continues pursuing the ants, even going as far as to lead the army in Los Angeles. Of course, we’re talking about a movie with giant radioactive ants, so it’s difficult to complain about realism too much.
There’s also a moment at the very end of the film, and you can see it coming, where the scientist sort of looks off into the distance and gives a speech about how man has entered the atomic age and that we don’t know where that leads. A lot of 50s science fiction focused on fears of the cold war, specifically about the threat of nuclear war. You see this in Invasion of the Body Snatchers, for example.
Nevertheless, the film never loses interest. I got the feeling throughout that the ants were going to escape, that things weren’t going to end well. The story was set up as to make the audience believe that ants spread at such a rapid rate that with ants of this size, it would be virtually impossible to stop them. This is still a 50s film, however, so the chances of things really ending badly were slim. Nevertheless, I got the rush. And that’s why I ultimately enjoyed the film.
Posted byMateo at 8:24 PM
Labels: Science Fiction
The Great Yokai War
Saturday, December 2, 2006
I decided to track down, and watch, this film for two reasons. The first is director Takashi Miike. I’m not nearly as big of a fan of Miike as a lot of people are, who call him the modern day Wes Craven, among other things. I’ve only seen two of his films, Audition and Ichi the Killer, neither of which lived up to their hype in my opinion. Don’t get me wrong, I found both films to be enjoyable in their own ways, but classics they were not. Particularly annoying was Miike’s insistence in being slowly suspenseful, simply for the sake of being slowly suspenseful. Audition was almost boring until the final act.
The second reason I wanted to watch this film is Chiaki Kuriyama, one of my favorite young actresses (or actors in general, for that matter). You’ll probably hear me write here a lot about how I’m not an “actor guy”. By that I mean that I don’t really watch movies/television shows for the actors. I’m from the Hitchcockian school that says actors are merely tools to be used by outstanding directors, they are not to be artists themselves. Nevertheless, ever now and then I come across an actor that changes my mind on this philosophy just a bit. For the most part I watch films for the story, but in this case, Chiaki was my primary draw. I loved her in both Kill Bill Vol. 1 and Battle Royale. Of the three films I’ve now seen her in, The Great Yokai War is definitely my favorite performance.
Ok, with all of that now understood, let’s talk about the film. First, it would not be possible for me to recreate the story here. Like many Japanese movies, it’s simply too complicated and odd to entirely understand what is going on. But I will tell you that it has something to do with goblins, who are both good and bad. With that being said, the special effects, which are a big part of the film given the fantasy elements it presents, are both odd and strangely comforting. While the budget of the film was probably rather big, it didn’t seem to be Hollywood blockbuster level either. And that’s ok, because the special effects work.
Now remember, this is a children’s film, a departure from Miike’s usual brutal horror. Despite this, one complaint I would have is that the film can sometimes lapse into melodrama. There are scenes where the main character, a kid, becomes scared by seeing one of these hobgoblins for the first time (or something else), that just wear on and on. We get the point that he’s scared from the beginning, but it gets pounded into our heads anyways. It’s arguable that the reason for this has to do with it being a children’s film, and I guess I can accept that. What I really love about this film is that it seems to have that Final Fantasy style aesthetic to it. This sort of futuristic fantasy is common in video games, but rare in American cinema. It works here, despite not being a true post-apocalyptic story.
I haven’t read a lot of online reviews, but I’m willing to bet that The Neverending Story comparison is out there, and I would say that it’s fairly accurate. I definitely recommend the film.
Posted byMateo at 8:28 PM
Labels: Science Fiction