Blu-ray Review: Samurai Marathon (2019)

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Alternate Title: Samurai Marathon 1855

A velvety timbre that contains equal parts smolder and menace in the sounds of a rich baritone, actor Danny Huston's cognac of a voice is tailor-made for screen villainy. And indeed it's his voice that cuts through the ceremony of Commodore Perry's (Huston) sudden visit to Japan in 1855 when — having arrived from America uninvited on a purported mission of friendship from President Fillmore — he tries to interact with the Japanese officials greeting the Americans getting off their "black ships" with suspicion. 

Unable to translate Perry's words since the man whom the Japanese lords have brought with them to do the job speaks Dutch instead of English, they have no idea how to interpret the language being uttered by that devilishly seductive voice. Trying to meld the context clues of Perry's smile with the mixed signals of the presents he offers when he lands, although Perry begins harmlessly with a daguerreotype, the stakes are suddenly raised when he hands over Kentucky bourbon and a .45 caliber single-action Colt army revolver, ironically known as "the peacemaker."

Introducing a faster way to kill and dominate with these American "gifts," a direct correlation is made between the debut of the gun on Japanese shores with the end of the samurai in director Bernard Rose's handsomely crafted but woefully uneven Samurai Marathon. 

Testing the samurai to ensure that they have what it takes to stand up to the Americans and their weapons, which can kill quickly from afar, a thirty-six-mile marathon is held across tough, hilly terrain for all men under the age of fifty who serve the lord of the Annaka clan. Fearing this signals a future war, an Annaka accountant (played by Takeru Satoh) who privately serves as a Shogun spy sends a coded message to those in Edo before he has all of the facts. Though written in earnest, Satoh's note escalates things, setting in motion a hefty amount of chaotic swordplay, gunfire, and violence that follows as he tries to right this wrong. Added to this mix is the rebellious Princess Yuki (Nana Komatsu), who, after rejecting her father's candidate for marriage, slices off some of her hair and joins the marathon as well.

One of those period pieces which tries to excuse away its ludicrous plot machinations by centering the action on a historical event in the form of the samurai marathon (which later became the Japanese marathon and is still run to this day), the film starts to lose us in the very first act. Breathlessly jumping from Huston's veritable cameo to Satoh to Komatsu, rather than endear us to our two leads, Marathon is never sure which story it wants to tell, let alone the tone it should take.

Working from a novel by Akihiro Dobashi, throughout the film, it's obvious that Rose and his co-writers Hiroshi Saitô and Kikumi Yamagishi have no shortage of enthusiasm or ideas. Utilizing an everything and the kitchen sink approach — from weird flashes of humor that feel incredibly out of place to one harrowing sequence involving a mass shooting that's spliced into what could otherwise be described as a ho-hum chronicle of a marathon — this film goes everywhere and nowhere all at once.

Even underwhelming from an action perspective, although it's painted with a masterly brush by cinematographer Takuro Ishizaka, whose frames are jaw-droppingly lush, there's little to recommend the film as a whole. Given a typically impressive high gloss transfer to Blu-ray high definition from Well Go Entertainment, although it might be of morbid curiosity to fans of Bernard Rose as this seems to work as a cross between some of the most diverse entries in his head-scratcher of a filmography (including the horror favorite Candyman and say, the underrated Immortal Beloved), others should steer clear.

A lackluster samurai film that's about as exciting as watching a thirty-six-mile marathon run by nobody you know, though it impressively follows up the promise of duplicity in the guise of Danny Huston's symphonic voice with the strains of a notable score by legendary composer Philip Glass, Rose's Samurai never quite manages to find its rhythm.

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Blu-ray Review: X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009) -- Ultimate 2-Disc Edition

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According to the refreshingly humble and self-deprecating interview with Stan Lee included on Fox's Blu-ray release of Wolverine, he passes off his creation of Marvel Universe favorites the X-Men as taking a "lazy way out" by offering zero explanation as to how the characters developed their "crazy powers" other than noting they were simply "born that way."

Instead of the radioactive spider that turned an average boy into Spiderman or any number of scientific or biological experiments gone wrong, Lee decided he didn't want an elaborate concoction and shrugs it off by saying that he has "never been as dull" in his entire life.

Yet due to the development of the X-Men book and the way it evolved as it changed hands three major times when "new blood" took over as Lee admits that the series wasn't as important to him as Hulk or Thor, the comic became endlessly creative as it continued over the years. In doing so it used allegory to deal with certain social and civil rights issues and current events in the book, popular animated television series, and resulting trilogy of motion pictures.

While Lee gives much of the credit for the success of the book to Jack Kirby, whom he felt was an unappreciated storyteller as well as a talented artist, X-Men really hit its stride when Lee Wein created the character of Wolverine, originally as a battling partner for Hulk (which you can witness in the terrific Lionsgate release Hulk vs.).

Long a fan favorite with his rebellious nature and mysterious air that was strengthened both in the animated version as well as in the films when actor Hugh Jackman took on the role, it was only natural when Marvel announced they were going to release an X-Men Origins title that it would focus on the series' most popular character.

And to support the release and franchise in general, it's important to note that series creator Lee is the only one on the Blu-ray who admonishes his series creation as "dull" which may strike fans of Bryan Singer's first two films-- and Brett Ratner's crazily uneven but necessary third closing work-- as an odd acknowledgment. However, after seeing the coolly detached, largely illogical, and thinly plotted X-Men Origins: Wolverine, we realize that it was the talented filmmakers who this time were guilty of taking the dull and easy way out.

Yet although I grant that it is strange to imagine that we'd really need the origin tale of a man who would lose his memory prior to the start of the recent trilogy, I for one was really looking forward to another take on a character and series I'd previously enjoyed especially in its '90s surge in popularity.

Humorously Roger Ebert attacked the historical inaccuracies of the film which are glaring and kick off right from the start as the precise location and time of Canada's Northwest Territories in 1840 technically wouldn't have been dubbed such for 27 more years for the country and 30 for the territories.

And while that's certainly amusing, it was frustrating to open with an emotionally potent yet structurally blank and unsupported introduction to Logan/Wolverine and his half-brother Victor/Sabretooth as boys. Other than a silly "time and place" card that reveals more than poor talented screenwriter David Benioff is ever allowed to contribute, we're barely given any explanation for their mutant features as they're apparently just born with claws nor do we fully grasp the impact of the rushed opening sequence that results in the unintentional murder of their father.

Likewise, even more vague was the audience's understanding of just how the faux "Canadians" ended up fighting on our side in countless American wars via a bravura CGI heavy opening sequence as Logan (Jackman) and Victor (Liev Schreiber) somehow cease aging while getting their violent kicks.

Thus, we're further shortchanged in the Origins department by having the action flash forward over roughly a hundred and forty years as the two grown men are recruited into the shady off-the-books Black Ops force headed up by Danny Huston's General Stryker after surviving a firing squad attack. Despite the fact that the two half-brothers have already begun to change as Schreiber's Sabretooth has an unquenchable thirst for violence and is the first one in line to be "bad to the bone" of the claws that pop out of his knuckles whereas Logan wants to live as normal of a life as he can, he finally walks out on the group when a situation in Nigeria goes horribly wrong.

So the fighter becomes a lover and his transformation continues mostly because he appears to be slightly happy (Wolverine was never much for emotional outbursts) and he devotes his time as a musclebound lumberjack while sweet on a lovely schoolteacher played by Lynn Collins whose character is about as generic as one of the wife-beater t-shirts worn by Jackman.

Basically making him a lumberjack is a plot device designed to give Jackman one of endless chances to strut his stuff as a wife-beater wearing stud which was achieved via a strenuous exercise program and protein diet. Alas, his life as Logan is short-lived when once again he's prompted to get back into action as Wolverine by undergoing Stryker's Weapon X Program.

And although the film is essentially a Hugh Jackman vehicle tailored for and produced by the star, unfortunately he's the least interesting character in the movie as he's given a weak plot that at one point borrows heavily from Superman. Additionally, he's constantly upstaged by far too many supporting players including Taylor Kitsch's delightful turn as Gambit which is worthy enough to have built a movie around whereas some walk-ons by the Blob (Kevin Durand) find you wishing the editor would've had more freedom to cut since as a film, it doesn't make all that much sense anyway.

However, the showdown portion of the film is fun for popcorn flick fans. Still, it suffers from the lack of a compelling screenplay which fails to draw on decades of endlessly thrilling Wolverine comic material. Likewise because Tsotsi and Rendition director Gavin Hood somehow forgot the important storytelling aspect in his transition from dramatic to action filmmaker, Wolverine is ultimately a big snooze. Overall, it's a film that doesn't manage to deliver on its title and additionally suffers from the fact that we all know Wolverine won't remember it anyway in the conclusion.

Including footage of the film's world premiere held nearby in Tempe, Arizona from Fox Movie Channel, I still must admit that despite the film's shortcomings, it's another absolute dazzler in the Blu-ray format. The release from Fox boasts a digital copy of the movie (compatible with Mac and PC) and endless featurettes on the making of the movie, including the great discussion with the series and character creators, various tracks to watch the film with trivia, commentary, and more.

As Fox has proven in the past by improving on lackluster movies with terrific transfers that constantly rival Walt Disney as the two most routinely outstanding studios that excel in High Definition, Fox goes one better with Wolverine's Blu-ray by adding a trick even Gambit would've Marveled at by including the first ever "Live Lookup" feature in the history of the studio's BD releases. The technique uses the Blu-ray Live technology to connect disc owners to IMDb so that the information will never seem dated considering the film, its stars, and more as it will constantly change and update with time.

While overall, I can't recommend Wolverine as a movie, the Blu-ray is another dynamite achievement from Fox even though it pales in comparison to Singer's first two films in the X-Men series as well as the animated titles releasing from Marvel's new partner-- Walt Disney-- via Buena Vista Home Entertainment.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
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DVD Review: How to Lose Friends and Alienate People (2008)

Annoying You Into Hysterics
On DVD 2/17/09

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The dumbing down of the media has been a sad trend for a long while. And more recently it's taken shape via the same "mouth breathing" critics who pose for photos with celebrities that Roger Ebert warned against in his wise and witty list of rules for those in the profession to the recent announcement that the one man hype and buzz machine Ben Lyons was named the most hated critic in America.

Namely, journalism has been on a downward slide for roughly a decade and former pop culture magazines like the lauded Rolling Stone and film fan favorite Entertainment Weekly have begun moving into Tiger Beat and Bop Magazine territory filling pages with gossip and an emphasis on tween friendly items. Of course, this includes the massive disappointment for Juno enthusiasts everywhere that the former Minnesota stripper turned Oscar winner turned EW columnist Diablo Cody checked her intellect at the door and has begun penning a column that reads like a nonsensical and arrogant "Dear Diary" entry with topics mostly consisting of herself, guest-starring on 90210 and her unabashed love of New Kids on the Block.

While Rolling Stone is still the go-to source for some truly hard hitting political journalism (often by writers such as Matt Taibbi), overall, it's lost the same sting it used to have in holding up a much needed mirror to our celebrity obsessed culture. Therefore, is it any wonder that newspapers are on the decline with massive layoffs of hard-working staff members and the threat that perhaps by the end of the year, my most cherished publication-- The New York Times-- may indeed go under?

While environmentalists will breathe a happy sigh of relief that more trees won't be wasted, the fact that we won't even have certain papers and columnists to read online is disheartening as they've been made obsolete with the media's emergence of "infotainment." This finds CNN inviting users to leave comments on their anchors' blogs, get in touch with them via Facebook, MySpace or Twitter-- in a way in which the worldwide public is shaping the news by leading journalists to ask certain questions, make assumptions and otherwise neglect the integrity that previously held their work together. Social networking conversations are one thing but what is "news" is something else or at least it should be.

Yet, long before journalist Stephen Glass began faking stories for the National Review, Britain's controversial writer Toby Young left his homeland for a gig in New York, perhaps predicting this decline of Access Hollywood and speculative rumor mill news. It was in New York that Young proved that, in addition to being an utter pain, he may in fact have been ahead of his time.

Lewd, crude, rude, and filled with attitude, Young was hired away from his co-editorship of London's groundbreaking and staunchly critical, in your face magazine Modern Review by Vanity Fair's Graydon Carter in 1995. It was a disaster all the way as Young was simply unwilling to play ball with our buzz filled journalism. Yet instead of taking a high and mighty road, he took the lowest one imaginable which he chronicled in his infamous memoir, upon which Curb Your Enthusiasm director Robert Weide based this film.

Young's time spent working for both Vanity Fair and becoming a failed screenwriter were perhaps best summed up by the man who invited him from across the pond in the form of Vanity Fair's editor Carter, whom New York Times critic Manohla Dargis quoted as likening Young's short tenure to "a brief one-night stand that results in octuplets."

The octuplets remark seems especially fitting as Young was never content to just let one thing happen without knocking as many dominoes as he could down in the process. Moreover, he made a grand display of all he did including sending a stripper-gram to his sleazy superior (played in the film by Danny Huston) for stealing his story idea before realizing it was "Bring Your Daughter to Work Day."

Additionally as Roger Ebert noted, Young "blew through deadlines, vomited on people, wrecked parties, brushed with libel, suggested offensive story ideas, alienated the very celebrities he was paid to celebrate, and pulled off the neat trick of being shunned by most of the publicists in America."

Based on the memoir written by Young and turned into an engaging satirical script by screenwriter Peter Straughan-- Straughan took some of Young's most revolting and hilarious "greatest misfires" as well as a few "hits," to develop it into a contemporary plot where Toby becomes Sidney Young and Carter becomes Clayton Harding (Jeff Bridges).

And this time around, he's embodied by one of my current favorite British comedic actors, Mr. Simon Pegg (Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz). A man so hilarious that even when he's leaving Thandie Newton fully pregnant on her wedding day in Run Fatboy Run, Pegg still somehow remains an underdog hero you can root for when he tries to win his lady back, thus making him the ideal choice to bring Young to life.

Fittingly he'd been Toby Young's dream version of himself and as such Pegg was actually "approached to play the role back in 2004 for a stage version," but a scheduling conflict found him having to bow out. Dubbed by Toby Young on the DVD release as "the Dudley Moore of our generation," Simon Pegg's name was the only two-word answer Robert Weide used when people approached him to ask how on Earth he was going to make the notoriously loathed Young sympathetic. And while all on the set seem to concur, honestly, you get the feeling Weide is being a tad humble as-- having been a part of Curb Your Enthusiasm for years-- by now he's a pro at finding the funny in the most despicably selfish of human behavior.

Yet, it's quite a fitting comparison to make in likening Pegg to Dudley Moore who managed to make his perpetually drunk and childish title character in Arthur, downright lovable. And although there's nothing remotely lovable about Young-- you just can't help crossing your fingers for the man that Pegg deemed is "obnoxious and slightly loathsome," but still can't hide the "bit of honey" buried within his heart. It's a heart he covers up on his first day of work wearing one of the most inappropriate t-shirts imaginable.

And, in proving he's not ready to play ball anytime soon, he alienates an actor he interviews by asking if either the character or the individual is Jewish and/or gay in one of the most appalling yet hysterical scenes of the film that goes against the kiss-ass press junket spirit. Instantly loathed by his superior Danny Huston, Gillian Anderson's controlling publicist who has everyone wrapped around her little finger, Max Minghella's overrated, and young Tarantino like director for avoiding phony small talk, Young proclaims that Con Air is the best movie ever made. And in doing so, he nonetheless manages to intrigue his new cute colleague Alison Olsen (Kirsten Dunst) despite his hilarious satirical story pitches that he write a piece about Paris Hilton as though she were a near Greta Garbo-like recluse.

However, although they develop a camaraderie and flirtatious friendship as she bails him out of a tight spot and he does the same for her later, as soon as he sets eyes on the gorgeous sexpot ingenue Megan Fox (hired by Weide actually before Transformers made her a superstar) who saunters in an evening gown across a pool and seduces a la Angelina Jolie, he begins to change everything about himself to get close to Fox's Sophie Maes. And in landing Maes, he crosses so many lines that he can't even see the lines he'd set for himself when he first became a writer anymore.

The film was mostly panned by critics who may have felt as though the film and its subject were hitting a little too close to the nerve of what celeb driven media coverage has become. Despite this, I must admit that it was a genuinely entertaining surprise aside from its awful trailer and poor advertising campaign that tried to masquerade the film more in the vein of Judd Apatow and less like Barry Levinson's 2008 Hollywood satire What Just Happened (also based on a memoir).

Additionally, much better than some of 2008's super-hyped films with multi-million dollar ad-campaigns, it was sadly another one of those movies just sort of dumped in the fall when theatres were already over-crowded. However, I can only hope viewers will give it a chance despite the misleading trailer and the fact that, perhaps like fellow Brit Ricky Gervais in the other fall charmer Ghost Town (which is downright Capraesque next to this one), possibly Pegg has yet to be recognizable to mainstream audiences.

And while you can't exactly root for Sidney Young-- much like Weide's HBO curmudgeon Larry David-- you don't exactly want to root against him either. Filled with a cool, contemporary soundtrack-- intriguingly the '95 events have been now set into an even more unrealistic Hollywood time of constant text messaging and YouTube. Weide and screenwriter Straughan's update of Alienate is a fervent reminder that-- although not to the extreme of Mr. Sidney or Toby Young-- possibly what journalism needs right now is less celebrity worship or mushy, "OMFG, I starred on 90210" Tiger Beat styled columns. And in their place, we deserve more work that holds those responsible for pop culture accountable by kicking them off those pedestals that find young girls starving themselves in emulation.

Although, to this end, I'd suggest to emulate Young in using a pen, in lieu of embracing Young's penchant for vomit, party crashing, and bringing an animal to a film event in the hopes of gaining admission. But, something tells me that even then, the story would be much better than watching Twitter, Facebook, or MySpace messages fill up the bottom of a CNN screen as the anchors turn our carefully chosen thoughts into news.

New on DVD & Blu-ray for the Week of 2/15/09

Jen's Pick of the Week

Religulous

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I Really Hate My Job

Director: Oliver Parker

Following a voice over narration which drowns out the visually atmospheric introduction of London’s hustle and bustle before the action is transferred to the claustrophobic setting of Stella Bar in Soho, author Alice (Shirley Henderson) receives a letter from her publisher informing the scribe that her latest manuscript has been rejected as both “unmarketable” and “mind-numbing.” Shortly thereafter, one begins to feel exactly the same way about writer Jennifer Higgie’s unfocused, rambling, and over-the-top screenplay which, just like Alice’s overly intellectualized novel, seems to be in dire need of revision.

Director Oliver Parker has proven in the past that he has a penchant for plays with the inventive adaptation of An Ideal Husband and the mediocre yet watchable versions of Othello (saved by Kenneth Branagh) and The Importance of Being Earnest. He seems to be up to his old theatrical tricks once again when tackling Higgie’s text, which although it tries to pass itself off as a film, seems like it would have been better suited to an avant-garde or experimental college feminist theatre troupe production rather than the world of independent film. Saddled with an unimaginative and narrow title that fails to highlight the film’s ensemble nature, Parker relies heavily on his talented cast to disguise the many shortcomings as we spend a chaotic, irritating, and disaster ridden evening among five female restaurant employees who find themselves in charge of the entire bar after they’re unexpectedly disappointed by two other male employees off-screen.

While task-master Madonna (Anna Maxwell Martin)-- a well-intentioned but largely ineffective manager tries to promote working as a team and trying to cover up her soon to be broken heart, affable Henderson’s Alice suffers burns and catastrophe slaving away in the kitchen alongside a maniacal dishwashing assistant named Rita (Oana Pellea) who smokes like a chimney and spouts communist revolutionary theories with zero prompting. Rounding out the group is the film’s saving grace in the form of the sweet but admittedly dim German art student Suzie (Alexandra Maria Lara) whose innocent naiveté provides an entirely welcome counterpoint to Neve Campbell’s brash, debt-ridden struggling actress Abbie who comes to work on her thirtieth birthday and proceeds to have a breakdown over the course of the ninety minute film.

Unsuccessfully trying to cram far too many offbeat (and 99% unlikable) characters into the chaotic production does little to endear Parker’s film to audiences, despite a nice cameo in the end by actor Danny Huston who seems to have both waltzed in from and onto an entirely different production altogether. While every once in awhile an actress delivers a killer line you know you’ll remember long after you hit eject, you can’t help wondering how much better it would’ve been if-- much like Alice’s manuscript-- they’d streamlined it when it was still in the writing stage by trimming the fat, combining personalities or removing some of the unruly characters altogether.