YNOT at the Movies

Ami is a teenager girl who is about to jump off the roof when she does not cut her wrist repeatedly. But she is also able to witness the miseries of other misfits. Roy is a high school bully who shuts himself off from the world and builds a bomb to "break out his shell." Hiroki is graduating from college and looking for a salary job, but he gets involved in a gang rape which ruins his future that he has been dreaming about. All of them feel that there is no where to go in this society. They create a world of their own.

With impressive performance and direction, the film is filled with heartfelt emotions from these desperate teenagers. The sound track is very effective to express film's dark subject matters. Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata becomes chilling, painful, disturbing, and sad in the film, as if we can hear those weeping souls.

Although I am not a big fan of his shaking camera, but the very young Ryo Nakajima (born in 1983) clearly shows his talent and complexity in this film that he started to write when he was 19 years old. I wonder what a film might be like if he makes a comedy.

This film will be screened (Feb 10 & 11) at the upcoming the 10th San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

From endless TV series to great features like "Grave of the Fireflies (火垂るの墓)," Japanese Anime has become a culture phenomenon and gone mainstream in films and television. But interestingly, Anime was not born in Japan, but in the America. In 2006, to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the first animation film in history, sixteen Japanese Anime artists collected seventeen pieces of their creative work called "Tokyo Loop" (Japan 2006, 75 min.).

Using Tokyo's city life as the backdrop, with refreshing visuals and fanciful imagination, these seventeen animation shorts provide a delightful treat for the audience to appreciate.

From walking dogs ("Tokyo Strut," which is my favorite), to chasing a dog bone ("Dog & Bone"), to cleaning up after dogs ("Funkorogashi"), from naked dancing girls ("Tokyo Girl"), to a suffering man ("Unbalance"), to a mother and her sons ("Manipulated Man"), we experience the luxury to observe the imaginary world created by these talented Japanese animation artists.

The film reminds us the unique contribution from Japanese Anime films that enrich our lives, as well as cinema. It is indeed a celebration, not only for the birth of animation, but also for the spirit of artistic creation.

This film will be screened (Feb 8 & 9) at the upcoming the 10th San Francisco Independent Film Festival.

I laughed pretty hard at an advance-screening of "Teeth" (USA 2007, 88 min.) tonight. It's not because the movie is funny that makes me laugh, but because I can't believe how gross and shocking some of the scenes are. Alright, that makes the movie actually darn funny.

Dawn is the poster girl at her high school for an organization called "The Promise" that pledges abstinence, even she has a step brother at home who does it like a rabbit. However, when Dawn's boyfriend loses his cool and breaks her pledge, she realizes that her vagina is different: it has teeth like sharks. It's called vagina dentata, I learned tonight.

So instead of dealing with the mess she is getting into with her boyfriend, her vagina begins an all-you-can-eat-buffet, certainly there will be blood.

We have seen gross stuff in movies like the "Scary Movie" series. But this movie has gone beyond that. The film is not shy away being over the top and outrageous. It actually works at first and people laugh due to disbelief. However, when similar jokes repeat again and again, scenes begin to gross people out instead of being funny. When a dog spit out a stud pierced on a penis, the audience revolt at its coarseness.

For those who don't believe people born to be gay, I think they can use this film as their education material — if I were straight, I would be gay after watching the film.

When I walk out the theater, still giggling, I keep wondering: does Dawn floss her teeth?

"Do you need a new life?" That's a slogan displayed at a plastic surgery clinic in Korean director Kim Ki-duk's (金基德) thirteenth film "Time" ("시간," South Korea 2006, 97 min.). This film indeed has a new life compared to Kim's earlier films, but it is just as engaging and philosophical as others.

See-hee is obsessively in love with Ji-woo after they have dated for years. However, she thinks that Ji-woo is getting tired of her. She decides to do something drastic to stay on top of the game — one day, she disappears suddenly and walks into a plastic surgery clinic to get a new life. She meets Ji-woo again as Seh-hee, at a cafe called "Room and Rumor," where most the scenes are set besides a beautiful sculpture park on the beach. Will the new life in Seh-hee given by the plastic surgeon keep Ji-woo's heart? If you have seen Kim's films, you would know that this is a question that can only be answered by his story.

I love many Kim's films because of his engrossing storytelling style. The plot almost always develops unpredicted, for better or worse. In many of his films, he tells his stories with fantastic visuals, with little dialogues or none at all from protagonists. For example, Jung Suh in "The Isle (섬)," Tae-suk in "3-Iron (빈집)" (who appears on Ji-woo's computer screen many times), and the young girl in "The Bow (활)" never speak one word during the entire film. However, "Time (시간)" has a lot dialogues and conversations for a change, without lacking of its rich visuals.

Water is such an important element in Kim's film. In "The Isle (섬)" and "The Bow (활)," everything happens on water. In this film, a fascinating sculpture park on a beach becomes an essential part of the story. Ji-woo and his girlfriend (which one?) always hang out on those sculptures. Many of these sculptures, works by Lee Il-ho (이일호) about love making and relationships, represent a sharp contrasts to the love struggles among the protagonists.

Although I am thoroughly captivated by this film, I think some scenes in the film should have been less sloppy. I am appalled that somebody can walk straight into a plastic surgeon's operating room from the streets when the surgeon is cutting up somebody's face. If I needed a new life, not that I do, I certainly would avoid that surgeon at all cost, especially because he treats a patient like See-hee.

Now I know where I want to visit next — the sculpture park on the beach where Ji-woo and See-hee frequently visited. Who knows? I might meet one of them, perhaps with a new face, or a new life.

In 2007, I totally watched 319 feature length films, and wrote 139 reviews, including 52 films screened for the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival that are not listed and posted. That doesn't include the films that I walked out.

Everyone seems doing a top-ten list of films. But I always wonder if they are based on the same set of movies, because it has become very difficult to classify which year a movie should belong to. Therefore, I put together my top-ten films among those I saw in 2007.

Top Ten Films I Saw in 2007

1. Sleuth (USA 2007, 86 min.) Reviewed on October 10, 2007
   
   
2. Please Vote for Me (请投我一票, China 2007, 58 min.)
   
   
3. Devils on the Doorstep (鬼子来了, China 2000, 139 min.)
   
   
4. The Bow (활, South Korea 2005, 90 minutes) Reviewed on June 6, 2007
   
   
5. Juno (USA 2007, 92 min.) Reviewed on December 12, 2007
   
   
6. Jesus Camp (USA 2006, 84 min.) Reviewed on February 20, 2007
   
   
7. The Cats of Mirikitani (USA 2006, 74 min.) Reviewed on April 1, 2007
   
   
8. Along the Ridge (Anche libero va bene, Italy 2006, 106 min.) Reviewed on May 6, 2007
   
   
9. Maborosi (幻の光, Japan 1995, 110 min.) Reviewed on January 28, 2007
   
   
10. Audience of One (USA 2007, 88 min.) Reviewed on May 8, 2007