“Hey, they say its five centimeters per second.”
“Huh? What is?”
“The speed at which cherry blossoms fall. It’s five centimeters per second.”

Film at-a-glance:
Genre: Romance
Creator: Makoto Shinkai
Studio: CoMix Wave
Length: 63 minutes
Year: 2007
Highlights: One of the most heartbreakingly beautiful films ever made.

The past two films we have examined as part of this series (My Neighbor Totoro and Spirited Away) have both been Studio Ghibli films, specifically Hayao Miyazaki films. While Miyazaki is undoubtedly one of the greats of contemporary anime, and one of my all-time favorite directors, there is one director I possibly like even more: Makoto Shinkai. Shinkai rose to fame after he created a 25-minute short film completely on his own, called Voices of A Distant Star. He wrote, animated, produced, directed, and voiced it himself; the only thing he couldn’t do were the female voices and the music. Since then, he has achieved popularity and critical acclaim, and has even been called the “new Miyazaki”. Since his early success, he has made four full-length films. Out of these, my favorite is his second film, 5 Centimeters Per Second, because it makes me cry. Every single time.

5 Centimeters Per Second is the story of a boy named Takaki Tōno and the people whom he loves and who love him, and is divided into three separate acts, each showing a different section of his life. The first act, Cherry Blossoms, takes place when Takaki is 13, and details his friendship with a girl named Akari, who bonded because both of them move and change schools frequently. After Akari moves away, they continue to exchange letters, and Takaki eventually comes to the realization that he is in love with her. He decides to visit her, and to give her a letter expressing his feelings. However, his train is delayed because of a late winter blizzard, and as time stretches on it seems like he may never see her again.

The second act is called Cosmonaut, and picks up several years later when Takaki has moved to one of Japan’s small southern islands. This story is told mostly by a girl named Sumida Kanae, a native of the island and an avid surfer, who has fallen in love with Takaki. However, she is very shy, and can’t bring herself to tell Takaki how she feels about him. And more than that, Takaki is always texting on his phone, but he’s never texting her…

The final and shortest act shares it name with the film as a whole, and shows Takaki’s life a number of years later as an adult. It is partly narrated by Takaki, where he talks about his life and feelings. The rest of it is a montage showing the lives of Takaki, Sumida, and Akari, and how each of them has been able to move on from their past and embrace a new life, or how they have not. The montage is set to the popular Japanese pop song “One More Time, One More Chance”, which talks about wishing to see a loved one again. Together, the three acts show the progression of life and specifically of the love that makes up a vital part of life.

The film is interesting in that it is a love story where none of the characters are ever able to find their love. All of the love they carry is unrequited, either because of circumstances outside their control or because of their inability to let themselves find happiness. The film is so touching because it is so accurately able to sum up and express an experience that every person has gone through, showing the sort of beauty and self-awareness in the everyday that most of us only see a rare few times in our lives. In addition, the film is a complex philosophical piece on people and the nature of love, talking about how life isn’t a fairy tale and that we don’t always find love or happiness, but how we have to move on and live our lives regardless. The title of the film comes from the speed at which cherry blossoms fall from the tree to the ground, and is used as a metaphor for falling in love. Another motif is using a rocket and images of the stars as a way of illustrating how far away someone is whom we love but who doesn’t love us. 

In addition to that, the film’s beauty is enhanced by both the animation and the soundtrack. Makoto Shinkai has become well known for his gorgeous animation, but this film is the crown jewel of all of them, possessing a sort of paint-like stylization, giving the film an almost dream-like quality at times. The animation of the people is often somewhat sparse and subdued, which draws attention to the extremely lush yet lonely backgrounds, many of which are based on real places, and which are so colorful that they almost make reality seem dull by comparison. Things as simple and ordinary as fields of snow, the stars in the night sky, and falling cherry blossoms seem magical and otherworldly and become laden with symbolism. The music, primarily simple yet extremely touching piano compositions, kicks in at just the right time to make many scenes almost unbelievably poignant. 

A friend of mine recently asked me what my favorite film was. This is probably the worst question you could ask a film writer, but when I narrowed it down to my favorite anime film, what I told her wasn’t what I thought it would be. It was 5 Centimeters Per Second, and afterwards I thought about why I gave her that answer. I realized it was because it is not only one of, if not the most, poignant and beautiful films I have ever seen, but because it is a piece of art that so perfectly expresses the most beautiful and arguably most sad thing a person can go through.

I guess I’m letting my hopeless romantic side shine through a bit here. Like I said, this movie makes me cry, every single time. I don’t think there’s any other movie I have ever seen that I can say that about, and for that reason I cannot recommend 5 Centimeters Per Second highly enough. Please, just go watch this film. My words cannot give it the justice it deserves.

Grade: A+++

This week, I got a chance to sit down for a round table interview with Mike Cahill and Michael Pitt, director-writer and lead actor of I Origins. We talked about the inspiration for the film, some of the technical aspects of making it, and why small sci-fi films can talk about love and other universal concepts.

Question: What was the inspiration for the movie? Where did you come up with the ideas?

Mike Cahill: It came from a June 1987 cover of National Geographic magazine, "Afghan Girl" photograph taken by Steve McCurry. It’s a really iconic photograph and she has these stunning green eyes, it’s the feature that’s most prominent about the picture. And what was interesting is Steve, the photographer, didn’t know her name or anything. She came in, it was in a refugee camp in Pakistan, took the picture, and off she went, to play with her friends or whatever. And that photo turned out to be super famous, and for years and years and years he would get letters saying: “Who is this person? Who is this person?”, and he didn’t know. He didn’t know her name, she didn’t sign a release form. So 17 years later they went to go and track her down but they didn’t know what she looked like. The one thing that they did know is what her eyes were like, because of those piercing green eyes. And that’s when I started to learn about iris biometrics, that this a real thing that everybody’s eyes are unique, that from a photograph you can get an iris scan, which is basically the cracks and crevices in the eyes, you can extract those from a photograph and get a unique, it looks like a social security number code, 12 digits. And your eyes stay the same your whole entire life. And they went and they mounted this expedition to try and find her and a bunch of different women were potential candidates, they had these piercing green eyes and they say “I think that might have been me”, and they had a biometrics company scan the eyes and it wasn’t her, it wasn’t the next one, it wasn’t the next one, until eventually they found her, Sharbat Gula. And I started thinking that it was so interesting looking for someone based on their eyes, and then what if, after we die, our eyes come back, in newborns. And if you present that sort of very simple data to a scientist, who has more atheistic tendencies, how would they grapple with that, especially if that person was someone they loved. 

Question: [to Michael Pitt] So how does something like that get pitched to you? What drew you to this film?

Michael Pitt: Money... [laughs]. I met Mike in Brooklyn, we both live in Brooklyn, and I kinda met him in a general meeting, and I was really taken by him. He had about 5 or 6 projects in his head. And he talked to me about I Origins, the idea of I Origins, and I could see that he had the whole movie in his head. At that point there wasn’t a script but everything was there, it was just a matter of him putting it down on paper. And I just kind of casually said: “That project, that particular project we were talking about was really interesting to me, you should try to put some time into it when you get the chance.” And like two, two and a half, three weeks later the first draft was on paper. And that script… was pretty much the script. Yeah, we changed things, like nuances, dialogue, we certainly worked with the actors. And he was really gracious about letting me develop my character. Filmmaking, at its core, I think is a collaborative art form. Some people get that and some people don’t and Mike is able to really grab gems from everyone, he’s super talented, but he’s also able to really keep a focus on what his mission is, and that’s a hard thing, not everyone has that. 

Question: I wanted to talk about the way you shot the film. With Another Earth you had a lot of handheld shots, and in this it seems like you didn’t have as many, you wanted to go with something different.

Mike Cahill: We still have a lot of handheld shots, they’re a little bit more stabilized. And I wanted to try, I mean, I was going for a sort of poetic realism. Handheld has a sort of an alive feeling to it. But I worked with this great cinematographer Markus Forderer. I saw a film that he shot in Switzerland, well he didn’t shoot it in Switzerland, I saw it there, and I sort of tracked him down and I’m like “I need to work with this guy”, like I could feel that we were in sync. And we were lucky to be able to shoot this film with two cameras simultaneously for most of it, two Reds, an Epic and a Scarlet, and I would operate one and he would operate the other. And it was amazing, it allowed us the ability to capture really wonderful gems. But also I wanted to experiment, to push and find some new boundaries, new land in terms of techniques and aesthesis. The film for example, for example, has a double vertigo shot, the first time ever in movie where we harnessed this tool, this robotic techo-crane that you can program all the positions of the camera into. So it allowed us to do a vertigo shot in, 180, and do a vertigo shot out, in one continuous move.

Question: Did you have more toys to play with then on Another Earth?

Mike Cahill: Yeah, a little bit more…

Question: Another Earth wasn’t on Red, was it?

Mike Cahill: Another Earth was on the Sony EX-3. And it shot 1080p, actually we shot 720p. And it was like, I remember when we sold it to Fox they were like: “Is there any way we can make the picture, like… better?” And I’m like: “…Um, what do you mean?’ And they’re like: “I don’t know, just better.” But this we shot in 4K so it’s like “boom!” And there’s so many visual effects shots that are invisible in there…

Michael Pitt: We have 200 visual effects shots in the film. The eyes of the little girl are done in post…

Question: Well, you know it’d be kind of hard to find two people with the exact same eyes…

Michael Pitt: For me it’s the best way to use visual effects. Mike was using I would say really current, state-of-the-art equipment for this movie, but I don’t see this movie being dated. You’ll never see that, and that’s the hardest thing to do with visual effects. You get all this new gear and, you know, very often the filmmakers will just exploit it, it’s just there, it’s all out in the open, and then five years later it’s just like: “Yeah, it’s actually not that cool anymore.” So to do it seamlessly is a really precise thing, and what they were doing with those eyes, putting those eyes, Astrid’s eyes in Kashish’s head, is really complicated. That’s really really complicated work. To be honest, when he was talking about it, Mike was really obsessing over it all throughout the film. There was times when I was going, “Is this going to work?” But it did, he pulled it off.

Question: Why do you feel that these big, large-scope sci-fi stories are good for telling small, personal love stories?

Mike Cahill: You know sometimes when you watch those big sci-fi movies and you see the army generals and heroes, and I always wonder what everyone else is doing. You know, everybody else is doing something. And they eat, sleep, shower, use the toilet, and like there’s this other paradigm now. And I think also, in the intimate stories, you can touch upon something universal, like loss, or wanting somebody back. 

You can read our review of I Origins here.

For a long time, there was a definitive conflict between the forces of “progress” and the weight of tradition. The philosophy of modernism saw itself as the vanguard that would lead the world out of the superstitious darkness of the past and into the glorious enlightenment of the future. Science was progress and religion was antiquated garbage. Simple, right? However, things are not that simple, as the advent of postmodernism shows, and in the present day there is more muddling of values than there was in previous decades (or at least, that’s what we all like to think). Chief among these changes is the desire by some to reconcile science and religion instead of continuing the past adversarial relationship between them. Some of this idea is expressed in art, such as I Origins.

I Origins follows the life of Dr. Ian Gray (Michael Pitt), a molecular biologist and geneticist living in New York. He is fascinated by eyes, and bases his research around them, as well as taking photographs of people’s eyes as a hobby. At a Halloween party one night, he runs into a girl with the most unusual eyes he’s ever seen, and after photographing them they nearly have a spur of the moment hook-up, which Ian backs out of at the last second. Despite this, he eventually meets the woman again through a chain of bizarre coincidences, discovers that her name is Sofi (Astrid Berges-Frisbey), and quickly falls in love with her. Although he is a man of science and Sofi is a woman of strong faith, they seem made for each other.

Now at this point I will stop, because I don’t want to spoil anything for you. However, while the first half of the film is a love story, the second half is a bit different. Like in his previous film Another Earth, Mike Cahill takes a scientific idea and uses it to talk about something else, as all good science fiction writers do. In Another Earth, he used the concept of parallel universes in order to talk about human choice and the consequences of those choices. In I Origins, he starts with the fact that every human being has a unique set of eyes. It’s like how everyone has a unique fingerprint, and it’s why retina scans work. In this film, it is discovered that certain individuals have retina patterns identical to those of other people (a statistical impossibility), specifically of people who have died. The idea is then that retina patterns are a sort of signature of the soul, and that those who have the same retina signatures of past people are actually reincarnations of those people.

So does the mysticism-science fusion work? I think it does. The first half of the film is a genuinely good romance story, and this is coming from someone who generally doesn’t care for romance films. This first half of the film is mostly carried by Pitt’s and Astrid’s performances, both of which are very pleasant to watch. Both of them have a bit of brooding and existential doubt in them, but not enough to be annoying or pretentious. In addition to Pitt and Astrid, Brit Marling- Cahill’s frequent collaborator- plays a role in this film as Dr. Gray’s lab assistant (you may remember her as the lead in Another Earth).  The second half, by contrast, has a genuinely engaging plot line which uses science to talk about faith, in a way. It’s unique and clever, and even if there are moments that stretch the suspension of disbelief, it never quite breaks it. I will admit, there are moments in both sections of the film that feel a bit cliche, but they are only moments, not the film as a whole, which manages to stay authentic the whole way through.

Overall, I believe that I Origins is a genuinely unique and thought-provoking film (which reminds me: make sure to stick around for the after-credits scene). I enjoy toying with the idea that faith and reason are actually two sides of the same coin. I don’t think that science and religion are not so different as either wants to believe, and this film is a great artistic interpretation of that idea. So if you want a thought-provoking film combining both science and spirituality, then I Origins is your film.

Grade: B+

When most people think of spy films, they think of Astin-Martins, megalomaniacal super villains, and martinis, shaken not stirred. Now, I love James Bond movies as much as the next guy, but, for all their flashiness and non-stop action, there is more to the espionage genre. For example, occasionally a movie comes along that makes you think, “Hey, this is probably what spies actually do”. And that just has a kind of lure that even chiseled MI6 agents can’t muster.

A Most Wanted Man is an adaption of the novel of the same name by British espionage writer John le Carré who, just like Ian Fleming, worked for the British intelligence services and has written novels based on his experience. The film stars Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Günther Bachmann, an old-fashioned and gruff agent who runs a secret intelligence unit in the German city of Hamburg, which has been on high alert ever since the Sept. 11 attacks were planned there. His team’s current assignment is the investigation of Issa Karpov (Grigoriy Dobrygin), a part Russian part Chechen recent arrival to Hamburg. Issa, with the help of a passionate human rights activist named Annabel Richter (Rachel McAdams), is trying to claim his rightful inheritance from a German bank. However, Günther believes that he is connected to Islamist terrorist cells, and enacts a plan to use him to catch a more valued target, respected philanthropist and suspected Al-Qaeda sympathizer Dr. Faisal Abdullah (Homayoun Ershadi).

What’s interesting about this movie is that it is a spy movie with no gunfights, no car chases, and no explosions. But that by no means make it less interesting than a “typical” espionage movie. In fact, it makes it more compelling, because it makes you realize that this is the sort of stuff that real intelligence agencies probably do. The spies’ methods may be mundane, but they are no less disturbing for that. Instead of chasing after the bad guys, guns in hand, they put hidden cameras in their houses and watch their every move. Instead of messily hacking into their computer files, they blackmail the people closest to them and make them spill their secrets. Instead of shooting someone, they silently pull up, put a bag over their head, and drive away. It’s often chilling, and with the recent revelations about our country’s espionage activities, it will strike a deep chord with many people.

And this is fascinating. If you had told me about this film before I had seen it, it might have sounded boring. And yet, this at times excruciatingly slow-burn of a thriller kept me glued to my seat for every moment. It makes you wait for every bit release of the enormous amount of tension that builds up as Günther slowly and steadily zeroes in on his targets, waiting for the right moment to strike. There is almost no violence, and the acting is similarly subdued. And speaking of acting, Phillip Seymour Hoffman is brilliant, as always. The German accent though is slightly strange-sounding, but not enough to break your suspension of disbelief. Rachel McAdams, while not as good as Hoffman (and even if she was, it would be film critic heretic to say so), is still very good. Robin Wright also makes an appearance as a meddling CIA official. The lesser known foreign actors really make the film though, as they portray, again, realistic characters, not caricatures or simple foreign bad guys. Further, the film is not at all afraid to tackle tough issues, and dos not at all disguise the fact that much of what Günther does is illegal, and immoral, and quite likely necessary.

While I do not see this kind of realism becoming the standard for espionage films, it is refreshing to see that they not only exist, but that they can be just as thrilling, gripping, and suspenseful as a blow-em-up. While bombs and bloody shoot-outs are fun, they need some kind of substance in order to really make a connection. A Most Wanted Man is a testament to how high-quality acting, writing, and realism can do to make an exciting yet mellow film. The only bad thing about it is that, due to the tragic, untimely death of the great Phillip Seymour Hoffman, we won’t ever get to see anymore of Günther Bachmann (and the fake German accents, just a tiny bit.)

Grade: A-

Hercules is a new musical from Disney featuring the famed demigod and his journey from zero to hero as he goes…

…Wait, not that Hercules?

Wait, who plays Hercules? The Rock? Like, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson? And this is a real movie that’s happening?

Goddammit.

That was essentially my thought process about Hercules when I first heard about it. It’s probably just going to be The Rock being really muscular and killing a lot of people while yelling I AM HERCULEEEESSSSSSS!! And you know what? That is exactly what it is.

Okay, the bad stuff first. The script is… oy vey. It switches back and forth between period speech—big words, long sentences, you know—and straight up jokes. Like, funny asides to the camera or other characters that are completely out of character. They’re kind of amusing the first few times, but they just keep going and going and going. Hercules also dips into overdrama a few times, specifically during the many, many flashbacks to the death of Herc’s wife and children. The close-up shots of their lifeless, blood-covered faces accompanied by dramatic drum hits and jump cuts are just too much and they feel out of place in an otherwise pretty well-shot and well-edited movie.

Hercules is not a 300-style blood-and-guts fest. You won’t find any slow-motion overly stylized action sequences here. Instead, the fights are epic and yet brought down to human scale, jumping around from one member of Herc’s band of mercenaries to another as they slay baddie after baddie. It’s refreshing to see actually decent battle sequences in a movie this big, especially given the rise of shaky-cam to make up for lack of choreography. Hercules also spends a lot of time humanizing the titular hero and bringing him down to human scale. It certainly helps that his crew are all well-realized and enjoyable to watch.

Instead of the ancient history action epic we’ve come to know so well over the past few years, Hercules plays out more like a mish-mash of almost every conceivable action movie cliché. Hero tormented by his past? Check. Band of misfits who have been together so long they're like family? Check. Army of civilians that need to be turned from farmers to warriors before  imminent doom approaches? Rocky-style training montage? Inspirational speeches before every major battle? Check, check, and check. And yet, somehow, it kind of all works. Hercules embraces its clichés and its corniness and it makes something that's actually pretty enjoyable to watch.

I wasn't expected to be emotionally or intellectually challenged by Hercules, or for The Rock to turn in an Oscar-worthy performance. (Truth be told, he's probably the weakest part of the whole thing.) I expected to see The Rock fucking shit up, and I got that and a little extra.

Grade: B

Lucy continues the Scarlett Johanssonaissance that kicked off earlier this year with her surprisingly kick-ass turn in Captain America: The Winter Soldier and her seductive alien in Under the Skin. This time, though, ScarJo stars in a Luc Besson vehicle as a girl kidnapped and forced to be a human drug mule, only to have those drugs infect her body and allow her to access her brain’s full capacity, thereby giving her superpowers. It’s an intriguing premise helmed by a director that certainly knows style, if not substance (I think I’m the only person on Earth who doesn’t like The Fifth Element).

First of all, let’s talk about the premise. “We only use 10% of our brains” is an idea that needs to stop being a thing because it’s pseudoscience and it’s stupid. There are easier, better, more inventive ways to give someone superpowers in a movie without making them a superhero. And it’s not like it hasn’t been done before *cough* *cough* Limitless *cough* *cough*. So the entire basis of the movie makes no sense to begin with, but let’s try to move past that.

It starts out promising enough as a solid action flick with good performances all around. Then the central premise kicks in—the packet of mysterious drugs ScarJo has inside her bursts, flooding her blood stream—and the movie begins its slow decline into ridiculousness. That’s the best word I can come up with to describe Lucy: ridiculous. The movie takes itself far too seriously for its fantastical premise. As Lucy gains control of more and more of her mental capacity, her powers get more and more amazing and crazy, and we’re expected to take them at face value and just accept them. She can shapeshift now? She can see every cell phone and device in the area? She has some kind of mix of telepathy and telekinesis? All this, and so much more! The special effects are also very hit-and-miss. Some sequences and powers are honestly quite gorgeous, and even some of the more insane moments look very well done. And then there are others—fucking dinosaurs, for one—that look ripped straight from a last-gen video game. They’re so jarring, especially juxtaposed with the more refined moments in other places in the movie.

Another major problem is Lucy herself. As soon as she begins to gain her new powers, she becomes completely devoid of all emotion and compassion. Lucy turns into essentially a robot, fully aware of how simple and petty human minds are and unfeeling towards any of it. When asked to prove her skills to a scientist, she doesn’t decide to shapeshift or mentally hack into a computer. She Vulcan mind-melds with the scientist, exposing a repressed memory of his young daughter being struck and killed by a car. What the fuck, Lucy. I’m pretty sure this was how the character was written, and it’s a shame because Scarlett Johansson just gets to walk around with a vacant expression on her face spouting scientific nonsense.

The closest comparison I can make to Lucy is 2001: A Space Odyssey in that both attempt to grapple with questions of human existence and knowledge. The latter is a classic for very good reasons: it doesn’t really seek an answer to the meaning of life, but instead it presents a surreal look at human evolution, back from early humans up through our journey into the far reaches of space and beyond. Lucy, however, handles those questions far more clumsily to the point of incomprehensibility. I honestly could not tell you what the movie was trying to say about human existence or the pursuit of knowledge, but it was certainly trying to say something—or, rather, everything. As the film progresses, Lucy grapples with what she should do with her new powers, with help from Morgan Freeman’s neural scientist. But it doesn’t stick with any one point: it suggests consequences for Lucy’s mental capacity and her newfound knowledge of literally everything, and then tries to explain more consequences for mankind and what it means for our own human pursuits of knowledge and existence and why we’re here. I think. All of this is happening while Taiwanese drug lords try to hunt Lucy down and Morgan Freeman and his band of scientists try to understand everything. And, like 2001, Lucy ends with a climactic, dreamlike sequence transcending time and space. But while 2001’s ending scenes are gorgeously obtuse, Lucy’s are painfully on the nose. It devolves into an orgy of symbolism and special effects and action and nonsense and none of it means anything in the end.

Lucy starts out as an action flick and very quickly ends up being a vague rip on 2001: A Space Odyssey. It crawls so far up its own asshole that by the time the mercifully short runtime is over, you’re left with an overwhelming sense of confusion. But there’s nothing to understand, because none of it made any sense in the first place.

Grade: C-

Catch the wheel that breaks the butterfly
I cried the rain that fills the ocean wide
I tried to talk with God to no avail
Calling Him in and out of nowhere
Said if You won't save me, please don't waste my time
-“Falling Down”, Oasis (opening song)

Series at-a-glance:
Genre: Mystery, Romance
Creator: Kenji Kamiyama
Studio: Production I.G.
Length: 11 episodes, 2 films
Year: 2009
Highlights: Believable and likable characters, engaging mystery

Monday, November 22, 2010: 10 missiles fired by unknown assailants explode in downtown Tokyo, a day that would come to be known as “Careless Monday”.  Miraculously however, no one was killed. Fast forward to February 2011, and our story begins with Saki Morimi, a Japanese woman on vacation in the United States celebrating her graduation from university. While visiting Washington D.C., she runs into a fellow countryman in front of the White House. However, this man has no name, no memories, and no clothes on. All he has is a gun in one hand and a cell phone in the other. Saki graciously gives the stranger her coat to cover himself with, seemingly the end of the strange encounter.

The stranger, who soon takes the name Akira Takizawa, soon discovers that the phone in his hand is linked to an account with over 8 billion yen in it, and connects him to a concierge named Juiz who can use that money to grant seemingly any request. Furthermore, it is somehow Takizawa’s duty to spend all the money in order to become the “savior” of Japan. Soon reunited with Saki (she had to track him down to recover the passport she left in the coat), Akira strikes up a budding romance with her while simultaneously trying to recover his memories and uncover the secrets of the phone, the money, and his mission. However, as he soon finds out, he is not the only one with the same mission, and he may be connected to or even the cause of the Careless Monday attacks.

Created by Kenji Kamiyama of Production I.G., Eden of the East is both a romance series and a slow-burn mystery. It gives equal time to these two different genres, which makes an interesting combination of the highly realistic (especially in its depiction of life in modern Japan), and the speculative (especially in its depiction of the conspiracy that Takizawa slowly unravels). It possesses an animation style which generally leans more towards the realistic scale of the anime spectrum, and well-written dialogue and characterization which serve to make the characters highly believable. Viewers will very quickly begin to care both about Takizawa’s search for the truth and his relationship with Saki. The other characters in the series are similarly realistic, possessing ordinary jobs and lives in order to keep the (generally) realist feel of the series. These include Saki’s sister and brother-in-law who run a bakery and a recycling/computer programming club at her university (yes, I know it’s a weird combination).

In addition, the series touches on a number of philosophical concepts. The main one is the idea of noblesse oblige, a French term which means “the obligation of the privileged”. Basically, it is the idea that the people of a society who possess power and wealth must use their resources in order to help those less fortunate. This is further commented upon by a phrase that is repeated numerous times throughout the series: “The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power” (a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, ironically enough). As Takizawa gets deeper and deeper into the conspiracy, he must decide what exactly this means for him, and therefore how he will save his country.

As I said, the mystery is very slow-burn, with a slow but steady reveal as the series goes on. However, the last few episodes advance at breakneck speed as the plot reaches a climax in the finale. However, the series does not completely wrap up all of the plot points that it raised. In order to totally complete it, the series was followed up two films- Eden of the East: The King of Eden and Eden of the East: Paradise Lost. They pick up six months after the series ends, and initially shift the plot to New York City before transferring back to Japan.

The general rule of thumb is that one has to watch at least three episodes of an anime series in order to determine if it is worth your time. But, out of all the anime series I’ve watched, Eden of the East was one of the very few that I was invested in from the very first episode; I had to find out what happened to Saki and Takizawa. I attribute this to an engaging plot, and above all highly believable and likable characters. Like all the best mysteries, Eden of the East will grab you from the get-go and not let go until the end. 

Director Jonathan Glazer’s Under the Skin is an enthralling, remarkable and unparalleled work of originality. It’s fairly difficult to explain exactly what happens in the film, partly because it doesn’t really matter. Under the Skin uses plot as a means to use image, sound and rhythm to represent feelings inside Glazer’s head. Don’t let your confusion hold you back, just allow yourself to experience this avant-garde cinema.

Scarlett Johansson’s unnamed character is introduced on screen naked, taking a dead woman’s clothes off.  She’s an alien transplanted into a female body who is using this woman’s clothes to assimilate into society. Johansson, considered one of the most attractive women on earth, doesn’t seem very attractive. Perplexingly, she’s weirdly alien-like. This scene occurs in front of a blisteringly white background with Johansson and the other girl silhouetted in the center. They look like specimens under a microscope. A bug then crawls onto her fingers and suddenly Glazer does an extreme close-up of its highly strange shape with antennae and sharp long legs. The whole opening is absolutely unforgettable. Glazer is drawing attention to how absurd our physical human forms are. Our bodies are normal to us, but if we take a step back, we realize how utterly strange they are.

She enters society for the first time in a crowded shopping mall. Given the opening of the film and music compositions that are scintillating, haunting and enigmatic, the viewer senses her unfamiliarity. This otherwise typical moment, with the usual mall crowds, noises and of course Hollister entryway, feels abstract and new. Remarkably, Glazer makes the viewer understand the alien’s perspective. Soon after, Glazer cuts to several different women being “made-up” in a department store. One has her eyebrows plucked, another is having make-up applied, and another has her arm moisturized. They examine their bodies in the mirror. They are altering their bodies, becoming alien like Johansson. Glazer is effectively pointing out that in modern western society, women are usually pressured to focus on their physical appearance before anything else. The predator/prey relationship between men and women is the focus of Under the Skin but in reverse.

Johnansson’s unnamed character is in modern day Scotland. Throughout the film, she converses with different men on the streets. She picks up whoever is willing to pursue her and brings them into a strange room. She and each man appear in a black, vacuous hallway. She walks away from the camera seductively, stripping slowly, as he does the same while following her. Eventually the black floor becomes reflective, like a mirror in this darkness. Each man follows her, mouth agape; she isn’t a person, but a body. As they follow her, they sink in an oily black liquid pool. She stops her seductive walk once he’s fully submerged. We don’t know where he went. Seconds later, she’ll be on the prowl looking for more men. The first time I saw the film this felt repetitive and unnecessary, but on second viewing, I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

Why is this happening? I really don’t know, I can’t justify every image or scene. Under the Skin is a masterfully distinctive visualization of feelings. It’s exactly as Alfonso Cuarón called it, “pure cinema”. Amazingly, it’s also literally pure reality in some regards. The scenes in which she picks men up off the streets of Scotland actually happened, documentary-style. Johansson wore her costume and make-up and the filmmakers outfitted her car with high quality hidden cameras. The reactions she gets from Scottish men as she tries to pick them up are real. Clearly they must’ve signed waivers and chose to act once they get to the black oily liquid part in the film. However, the fact that this all happened in real life shows how true the conflict is. I imagine this knowledge is partly why I was so entranced by these scenes on second viewing.

I’m still skeptical of how perplexing Under the Skin is on a literal level at times. I’m not willing to give it the benefit of the doubt that every scene and image is worthwhile. Perhaps after 3rd and 4th viewings, it’ll shift into focus but for now I can’t let it off the hook. I’m also uncertain of its feminism. It’s incredibly effective at showing the predator/prey relationship, but is it a revenge fantasy? Why does Glazer have to explore this issue with a woman pursuing men? I’m never a supporter of revenge in cinema or otherwise. I don’t know the answers to these questions but I’ll continue pondering them as Under the Skin is a fascinating movie worth thinking about for weeks if not months or years.


Grade: A-


BRIEF SPOILER-FILLED RANT FOR THOSE WHO HAVE SEEN THE FILM:

One of Under the Skin’s most fascinating developments involves a deformed man’s interactions with Johansson. He may be symbolic of the non-sexualized male, who doesn’t objectify women. The objectifying male can come in two basic forms. First is the obvious jerk that catcalls women and has no respect for them as complex intelligent beings. The second type has a more insidious layer of sexism. He doesn’t catcall but still views her as a sex object first and person second. This second type is very complicated to explain and requires its own essay, so for now I’ll leave it there. This deformed man might be representative of the man who doesn’t objectify in either form. He doesn’t have friends because, as Glazer may be positing, this is a very rare breed of male that is usually surrounding by the other. After being kind and affectionate to him, Johansson entraps him like the others. However afterwards, she stares into a dirty mirror and feels wrong. Moments later, she brings him back from the black abyss and he’s set free. Glazer seems to be saying most men objectify, but not everyone. This is one of the most intriguing scenes in the film so I thought I should include these thoughts for those who may be interested!

I recently got a chance to be part of a round-table interview with Zach Braff. We talked about his new film Wish I Was Here, his cult classic Garden State, his plans for the future, and a secret having to do with Scrubs.

Question: You always have great music in your films; do you listen to music as you’re writing, do you wait and write the whole thing and then add music, what’s your process like?

Answer: I create a giant, epic playlist of just songs I love. I don’t listen to them while I write because it’s too distracting for me, but I create this epic playlist. When I hear a song, I go “oh, that feels cinematic, there’s just something about that”. Certain songs can be great but they don’t strike me necessarily as cinematic, and so I make this giant playlist of songs I think would be good in a movie. And those could be songs that came to me from a friend or I heard online or I shazamed it in a coffee joint, whatever, and then from there we’ll try stuff out in the film as we’re cutting. And it isn’t until you just find that perfect match, you get the hair on your arm raises up and you go “oh, that’s a possibility”. I don’t know the song is right until we’ve lined it up. Until then it’s just like anyone, finding songs that we thing could be possibilities.

Q: What’s the dynamic between you and your brother as far as writing the script is concerned?

A: The way we wrote is we got together and hammered out the overall spine of the story, and then we broke it down into an outline, and we spent that time together, because he lives in Honolulu and I was living in LA. So we would sort of write like “Okay, I’m gonna take a stab at this Aston-Martin scene, why don’t you take a stab at the scene with the young rabbi”. And we’d sort of like little by little switch it with each other and give each other notes, tweak and change, and little by little begin filling out the whole script until we had this giant thing and we started shaping it.

Q: You could talk a little bit about your experience with the crowdfunding and the KickStarter?

A: Yeah, you know, naively, I didn’t understand that the onus would fall upon me to explain the perils of independent film financing. You know, Rob Thomas had done it very successfully and everyone had cheered it on, and when I went out to do it, the first wave was, “that’ll never work”. Then when it worked in 48 hours, everyone had to rethink their think pieces. And so those who were detractors were making a lot of talking points that weren’t really true, and so that caught me off guard. I had to explain, again naively… You know when you know something, you guys are writers, you know that, if you have a hobby you know that very well… my life is trying to get money for movies, I spend my life trying to get projects financed, and so I know it really well and stupidly thought that everyone knows how this works, everyone knows how hard it is. So I then kinda had to go on up on a campaign, if you will, and explain all the different reasons why I had finally decided to try the crowdfunding. And it’s worked phenomenally well, I mean we had to take care of 47,000 people while we were making the movie, we shot it in 26 days. And if that isn’t hard enough, you have to make sure that every one of those 47,000 people felt taken care of. We had them visiting set, we had them being extras, we had them doing cameos, we created a whole online video blog of behind the scenes content. And that was my idea, I was like “Well people’s attention span on the web is like two and a half minutes, so let’s make like two and a half minute Project Greenlight behind the scenes videos of us making the movie.” I tried to do all the stuff to make it worth their while, and they seem pretty happy. The most fun of all is these Q&As, you know I showed the movie earlier, I’ve traveled the country, this is my second to last one and then I end in New York City. And show the movie early and do a Q&A with them and it’s awesome. It’s an experience a lot of people have never had before, you know the movie’s done and the guy who made the thing and stars in it sits with you and talks about it, and I hope that everyone who participated in it thought it was worth it.

Q: My question was going to be about your choice of Joey King [to play] your daughter. Did you develop a relationship as you were filming the movie?

A: Yeah, I just love that kid, she makes me want to have kids… [laughs]. You know, I met her on Oz [the Great and Powerful], we spent so much time together on Oz. Sam Raimi insisted that even though we were animated we were there every fucking day… And at first I was like “Oh God, I’m going to be stuck in this booth with this thirteen-year-old for six months…”, but she just turned out to be the coolest kid in the world. And she just was so cool, and so talented as you saw in the movie, if only I had that much talent at 13…

Q: Do you find it difficult to be both the actor in front of the camera and the director behind the camera?

A: It is tricky. You have to totally be bipolar in a sense and switch back and forth. Sometimes though it’s really helpful. I try to use it to my advantage, and that is, when you have a scene and it’s just two people, or not even two people, when it’s me and the kids or me and Kate [Hudson], I can sort of steer the scene from within. So if I’m doing a scene with you and you’re not being aggressive enough back with me I’ll just increase what a fucker I’m being with you. So if you’re a half-way decent actor you’ll naturally come back harder at me. And so in a lot of ways I think of it as being undercover in a scene. It was great with the kids too because the kids are so great at improving and being themselves, I would go on longer lenses and push the camera further away, so we’d just be sitting around that campfire, and I’d just talk to them. And the kids, little by little, just kinda forget that the cameras are there. And that’s stuff that a director can’t get as easily, because you have to call cut and come over and whisper in everyone’s ear. But I can just and roll the cameras and talk to Pierce [Gagnon], and get him to tell me stuff, like that campfire stuff is just him riffing. And that whole montage of them playing under the song and them all telling ghost stories was just us fucking around for half an hour and the cameras were way far back and shot the whole thing. And you just get these performances out of them that I wouldn’t have been able to get.

Q: Were you surprised by the success of Garden State when it came out?

A: Completely, it was my first movie. So when these think pieces come out that say “Why I liked Garden State then but not now”, I’m like, “Well thanks for liking it at all, it was my first movie”. I agree it’s flawed and at times it’s didactic and pretentious, but I never thought that many people would see it. So when it hit this cultural phenomena thing, I was shocked. Everyone told me I wouldn’t be able to even get those artists on the soundtrack, so when it went platinum and won the Grammy I was shocked, the whole thing was shocking.

Q: When did you realize it was a success?

A: I knew it did well financially, but then it won the Independent Spirit Award for Best First Feature, which is about as cool an award as you can get, for an indie-loving geek. Next to get getting an Oscar, getting First Feature at the Independent Spirit Awards is pretty rad. So that’s when I felt like, “Wow, this worked.”

Q: Do you see yourself doing an Ed Burns kind of thing where he does a Hollywood movie for two million dollars in order to pay for his own movie?

A: …Hollywood doesn’t hire me that much… [laughs] Ed Burns has had more luck with that… But TV, at this point TV is where all the great shit is happening, so I see myself going back to TV eventually, because there’s just not enough roles. I mean, no one’s making 5, 10, 20 million dollar movies anymore, everyone’s going big, it used to just be the summer tent poles, now they’re all just all-in, Marvel-esqu giant blow-em-ups. So I’ll do that probably.

Q: So my friend want to know: can you watch Scrubs on ABC? Like the episodes that you weren’t on?

A: I will admit to you something that I’ve never admitted to any writers before: I have never seen an episode of Scrubs post my exit in season 9. And not for any mean reason, I just couldn’t, it was too bizarre and weird. It’d be like going to a play, I’m in a Broadway show right now [Bullets Over Broadway], and going to the show once I’ve left and watching someone else do it, it would be too weird. So that whole rest of season 9 I’ve never seen. And that’s funny because no one has ever asked me that question before.

If that got you interested, you can read our review of Wish I Was Here.

Wish I Was Here is the new dramedy picture by indie darling Zach Braff. The follow-up to his 2004 cult classic Garden State, the film is the story of a family man named Aidan Bloom, an aspiring actor and the kind of man who dreams big. In the meantime, his more immediate concern is providing for his family and reconnecting with his now distant wife Sarah (Kate Hudson) and brother Jonah (Josh Gad). However, when his father (Mandy Patinkin) is diagnosed with cancer, Aidan must learn to deal with the realities his family faces and maybe become a better man because of them.

Actually, the reason I was primarily interested in this film was not because I am a Zach Braff fan but rather because this movie was partially funded through crowdfunding via KickStarter. I was interested to see how a crowdfunded movie would fare, both in whether it would be able to feel unique and indie, and whether it would be able to appeal to a wide audience (in contrast to the crowdfunded Veronica Mars film). The verdict is no the former and yes to the latter, although whether these are good things will have to be left up to the film-going crowd to decide.

To start, we shall address the first half of the dramedy fusion genre, the comedy. Frankly, the comedy of this film generally fell flat most of the time. Although they are a few genuinely funny, laugh out loud moments (such as one involving Reading Rainbow with LeVar Burton…), most of the jokes are simply not that funny. It often feels like the writers were trying too hard to get the audience to laugh, but more often than not we don’t.

The other half, fortunately, is better. Braff seems to be better at writing drama than comedy, because while the jokes generally failed to make me laugh, the movie did make me care about the characters. Aidan, despite his flaws, is a well-meaning guy who just wants to follow his dreams and be a good husband and father. Jonah has to come to terms with his strained relationship with his father. And even though it’s a relatively common plot, the story of both of them having to deal with their father’s impending death does pull on some heartstrings. Although it can occasionally lapse into the cliché, Wish I Was Here does save itself by having drama that, while not unique, does manage to be heartwarming.

Like I mentioned earlier, despite the fact that the movie was partially funded via KickStarter, it does not feel very unique. Rather, it just feels pretty much like every other comedy-drama movie that Hollywood makes every year. This disappointed me more than the lackluster humor in the film, because I was really hoping that crowdfunding would give Zach Braff the opportunity to make something really unique. It feels a bit like a wasted chance.

Overall, while not being great or particularly different than standard Hollywood fare, Wish I Was Here does show that Zach Braff can write a modestly entertaining drama film, if not comedy. If you’re in the mood for a bittersweet movie about the importance of family, then I recommend seeing it. If not, this is one that can wait until a DVD release. 

Grade: B-/C+