3 Extremes
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Movie Reviews of 3 Extremes
Movie Review: Icky but not that extreme, really
Summary: 3 Stars
You know how it is with anthologies - they're always hit and/or miss, even when you get top directors. This one really has good names. I was wary of this film when I learned two of the three directors were Park Chan-wook and Takashi Miike. I saw their previous movies and they freaked me out. Miike, especially, really traumatised me with "Ichi the Killer". All three mini-movies are beautifully shot and there are hints the directors really are trying to be extreme but trying doesn't mean that they are. It was really surprising that non-horror director, Fruit Chan, is the one who comes closest. His "Dumplings" - a tale of abortion, cannibalism, dumplings and beauty supplements - is the only one truly worthy of the price of admission. It's uncomfortable, disturbing and macabre, all the more by relying on suggestion and being relatively gore-free. Ironically, Park's and Miike's segments are the weaker ones. Park's entry, "Cut" is silly psychobabble nonsense while Miike's "Box" is too bizarre and incoherent to be horrifying. There's a lot of fluids,body parts and mad people but that only makes it icky, not extreme.Movie Review: Dark, Disturbing Film
Summary: 3 Stars
One thing about the horror genre is that it is so difficult to define.
Viewers expecting supernatural ghost stories or vampires and werewolves might be disappointed with "Three...Extremes." What any good horror film does however, is hit (or sometimes pound) on a key that deeply disturbs us inside.
Three...Extremes is one such film and is comprised of three shorter films, the best of which being Dumplings (Fruit Chan). Though utterly disgusting and hard to watch, it is done right, for it does not rely on gore alone. Rather, it delves into the human psyche and exposes a darker side of humanity-- thoughts and perversions we'd rather not think about. To what length will one go to obtain what she thinks she wants?
The other two mini-films, although not as good as "Dumplings," are decent. "Cut" would draw comparisons to "Hard Candy," and perhaps "Saw." The third mini-film (Miike), entitled "Box," is somewhat unique, perhaps too abstract to be truly chilling.
Movie Review: Three Snores
Summary: 2 Stars
Bad news from the Eastern front!
If this dull little horror anthology is the most extreme terror our three Asian Masters---Takashi Miike, Park Chan-Wook, and relative newcomer Fruit Chan---can cook up, then I'm afraid the J-Horror cauldron is sorely in need of some spice.
I really *wanted* to like "Three Extremes", which made the anthology's bumpy mediocrity sting all the worse. Maybe it was high expectations, maybe it was a few bad tuna rolls earlier in the day, but this little outting left me bored, bummed, and with a sour taste in my mouth, to boot.
Episode 1 is "Dumplings" by Fruit Chan, which takes the dubious distinction as having been the only anti-abortion horror flick I've ever seen.
Chan proves he has a knack for direction and a few moody, creepy shots, but the guy knows nothing about setting up what should have been a surefire Chinese pot-sticker of Grand Guignol ghoulishness. I mean, for Lolth's sake, it's about a chick who decides to roll back the years by chomping down on crispy aborted foetuses.
No joke, crispy aborted foetuses.
Fruit Chan might want to take his talents on the road to the increasingly popular food-TV circuit, since he manages to make the little tender vittles (with finges and hands and toes, and crunchy little craniums!) look yummy.
Anyway, talk about Pro-Choice: the only choice here is between having the little buggers sauteed in blood broth or served up pan-seared. Equally tasty is luscious little Ling Bai (Auntie Mei), who does hard duty as a kind of East End (wayyyyy East End) version of Sweeney Todd's Missus Lovatt, who midwifes her little tasties out of the uterus and right into the kettle, and with a little culinary legerdemain into her yummy, chewable meat-pies. Ling Bai can cook my dumplings any day.
Next up is Chan-wook Park's balefully dull "Cut", the tale of a director (Byung-Hun Lee, who looks for all the world like an Asian version of McCauley Culkin all-growed up) caught up in an orgy of vengeance orchestrated by an astonishingly unmotivated stage extra (Won-hie Lim, whose purring, nasty lisp is the scariest thing in the flick).
There are a few truly delicious moments here that kept my finger off the FFWD button: the Director's wife lashed to her grand piano by a spiderweb array of catgut and piano-wire, her face a wild tomcat Kabuki-mask of tears and ruined mascara. Or the Trap itself, carried out on a studio set identical to the Director's house, a set whose garish colors and peculiar angles call to mind the nightmare landscapes of Dario Argento.
Oh, and there's the jolly spectacle of the Director himself, lashed within his little labyrinth by a bungee chord. Haven't seen *that* before.
But Park does nothing with it: nothing that hasn't been done a zillion times before by the most conventionally commercial American serial killer flicks. "Hannibal", at least, for all its tedium, at last got the blood up: "Cut", by contrast, just drones on and on until it wheezes out beneath its deadly dull weight.
And then there's Miike's "Box", arguably the best of the pitiful bunch. Like the rest, you've seen it all done before, and done better: it's the tale of a travelling circus performer and his two twin daughtes, who strut their stuff on the boards as adorable (if spooky) little contortiontists and have an, erm---complicated---relationship with Daddums. One gets jealous, something nasty happens, and the rest of the show is all about tying up loose ends, so to speak.
Miike is a deranged genius, but here he underplays it: the shock scenes are filmed at a distance, so the effect is muted. That actually works to "Box"'s advantage, though, in that the horror is almost sublime, and for that reason all the more effective.
It's a nice touch---and a testament to Miike's self-confidence---that he didn't go in for the kill with a close-up on the nasty, matted, red-gooey horror that peers out of the box for an instant: that marvellous little moment alone merits this otherwise dismal collection its two stars.
In the end, though, "Extremes" loses out because it's just not all that extreme. The weirdness level is about 20 gauges below that of David Lynch, the gore (crispy fetuses notwithstanding) is set on LOW, and the terror-factor is pretty much non-existent.
The real shock is the number of missed opportunities---what about using all that catgut to slice big bloody chunks out of the Director's wife in "Cut", rather than riding the rails to Dullsville by just chopping her fingers off? What about having one of those baby dumplings wriggle around before dinner, maybe turning one of its malformed little black shark-eyes up to its wilfully vain diner?
Nothing that cool happens, and that's what's wrong with "Extremes."
Three extremes? Nah---try Three Stooges. Pass.
JSG
Movie Review: yellow caution tape on this one
Summary: 2 Stars
I was not familiar with Fruit Chan prior to seeing this but was excited to see both Takashi Miike and Chan-Wook Park in a single film. Well, the idea was way better than the result.
"Dumplings" is quite genuinely disturbing actually, so perhaps I should be more complimentary towards it but I found it too annoying and offputting in its precious style to really like it; so I guess I have a certain cerebral admiration for this episode but I just wouldn't particularly want to go through it again. Chan-Wook Park's episode "Cut" was a startling disappointment to me. It was so completely deranged and aggressively over the top (and not in the good way) as to almost make me question my love of his other work. It had that kind of highly theatrical exaggerated formal gimmickry that a lot of very tough to sit through late 60s/early 70s "ART" films have (especially fellini inspired trippy movies about movie-making); a kind of frenetic jumbling of avant-gardisms and artificiality that can just push you away from the screen and make you recoil. While Oldboy, say, has its excessive attention-drawing formalistic elements, they never pile up and become distracting or egregious; maybe this short film was intended by Park as a kind of extended joke about criticisms made of his other films but I can't really tell for sure. I prefer to tell myself that "Cut" just does not exist and will continue to think of Chan-Wook Park as a director that I like. Miike's installment, coming after Park's is strangely quite subdued and has a sort of dreamy Lynchian feel a bit like Gozu did. While I thought there were some nice moments to it and some striking visuals, it's really not all that essential to see in the rather complicated Miike-landscape.
So, I can't really see much reason to recommend getting this. I'm not even sure if I could recommend a single viewing, given that I somewhat regret having seen "Cut" at all and given that "Dumpling" is so fundamentally unpleasant in nature. But then, perhaps, my reaction to those two installments should say something about what true "horror" is really about (?) and maybe there is more to this omnibus venture than I am willing to admit. If true "horror" is about feeling repulsed and unhappy, then maybe these two segments really nailed it in fact, but I tend to think it's not as simple as that and so easy.
Movie Review: Get the no doze, you're gonna need it!
Summary: 2 Stars
A J-horror anthology? Sounds good (if you like J-horror films). I must say that I bought this because it got good main stream review. But when I watched it.....wow I was disappointed. First we have "Dumplings" directed by Hong Kong's Fruit Chan about a women trying to regain her youthful appearance by eating dumplings with some questionable ingredients. Bai Ling is Auntie Mei the cook of the dumplings in question. Questionable ingredient most foul-aborted fetus. MMmmm thats tasty good! Next we have "Cut" from Korean Director Park Chan-wook about a movie director tortured by a disgruntled film extra. Well he's tortured by watching his wife get tortured(who is subdued and glued to her piano and set in place with a myriad of taunt wires. This whole cut story was silly, the film extra whose running the show, is just not believable and kind of obnoxious, the best part of the segment is when the director comes clean with a confession of how he really feels about his wife. Classic! Lasty we have "the Box" directed by Japan's Takashi Miike about a carnival side show showcasing twin girls and the contortionistic abilities, especially folding themselves into a small box. This segment takes turn for the wierd in an almost Twilight zone fashion when one of the twins gets trapped in the box and is set ablaze. the rest is even stanger than that. But for what its all worth, each segment are far from extreme, perhaps in another universe it would be the first Outer Limits to get an R rating. It was if I was watching three dramas, not 3 extremes. Bottom Line.....Boring, trying to stay awake during these, was a real chure. Very disappointed.