Frames and Fools: Film, Filmmakers, and Foolishness

We’re back with ‘HANA-BI’ (‘Fireworks’)(1997), another Japanese yakuza film. Dylan unwittingly picked another artsy one, however, so get ready for a discussion that goes beyond gangsters, cops, and robbers, and gets more into the impressionistic stylings and choices of this unique film that brought international acclaim to Japanese mega celebrity Beat Takeshi. Though ‘HANA-BI’ offers a challenging first watch, it also contains delicate moments that blossom once given some time and reflection. Serenity is punctuated with sudden violence; a gunshot yields to a splatter of paint on canvas. The city and nature push back and forth against one another as characters wonder what life is really about. Hardly anything is handed to us, the audience, and there’s something intriguing in the beautiful voids created there. Miyazaki fans will rejoice from the opening strains of the soundtrack (composed by the legendary Joe Hisaishi), a sweeping collection of variations on the movie’s melancholy main theme. 

Wonder what it all means in Episode 25.

I See Dead Movies is back with Rian Johnson’s ‘The Brothers Bloom’ (2009)! As always this is our show within the podcast where we examine flops and why they didn’t succeed critically or commercially. This week’s movie is a subtle twist on the con-man genre with some international locales and heartwarming relationships thrown in for good measure. Why didn’t this smart and charming movie make its money back? We can only hypothesize, but one person’s smart is often another person’s smug, and there’s a fine line between charming and cloying.

Find out for yourself in this week’s I See Dead Movies!

Do you have what it takes to be No. 1? While watching ‘Branded To Kill’ (1967), did you have any idea what was going on? How far did you get into the movie before figuring out that we aren’t meant to understand what is happening? How did you feel when you reached that crucial point? It’s new wave meets absurdist subversion in this Yakuza production line film. What could have been a truly run-of-the-mill quick-turnaround gangster movie became something wildly more memorable in the hands of Seijun Suzuki, the now-celebrated Japanese director. Boiling rice, butterflies, and bullets all punctuate this beautifully shot and completely insane story about nerve-wracked hitmen.

Find out who is No. 1 in Episode 24!

You vs. you, old vs. young. In ‘Looper’ (2012), Joe (played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt) must look himself in the eye and make some difficult decisions. The problem is that he’s looking at himself from 30 years on the future (played by Bruce Willis). They play a hitman whose job is to dispose of targets sent back from a world where time travel has been invented and outlawed. ‘Looper’ is no ordinary sci-fi thriller, however, and Joe’s struggle with his older self is only the beginning. This episode also looks at the differences between ‘Looper’ and last week’s episode 22: ‘Gemini Man’, another ‘fight yourself’ action movie that took a radically different approach.

The path is a circle. Change it.

Welcome to Wednesday! We’re going to start celebrating the middle of the week by watching movies that didn’t quite make the intended splash when they were released. Often the reasons for box office failures go beyond the quality of the movie itself, and we love figuring out what buried potentially fantastic films. For our first flop we watched ‘Speed Racer’ (2008) and had a damn good time breaking down this wild ride of a movie. Start your engines!

We watched ‘Gemini Man’ (2019) starring Will Smith and Will Smith or, as we like to say, Will Will Smith Smith. It’s an ambitious film that took over 20 years to make because the incredible technology needed to digitally clone and youngify Will Smith wasn’t up to the task until recently. Was it worth the wait? Will Will Smith win? Will Smith Smith will Will? What’s happening? Are we all Will Smith? Will young Will Smith smite the wilier wizened Will Smith? Will smith Smith will? Huh?!

It’s twice the Willpower in Episode 22.

There’s no crying on insta! We did a lot more laughing than crying when we talked about ‘A League of Their Own’ (1992) on this week’s episode. This one hit a lot of notes for us: nostalgic baseball flick; 90’s goofy comedy; heartwarming sports tale; peak Tom Hanks; sibling rivalry; and a fantastic ensemble of women headed up with Geena Davis, Madonna, Lori Petty, and Rosie O’Donnell. Director Penny Marshall packed a lot into this movie and we had a great time watching it, largely thanks to the excellent onscreen baseball action (performed almost entirely by the actors themselves). Really makes you wanna get a neighborhood game going. Someday soon. Until then, it’s classics like these that keep us going.

Like a Shakespearean tragedy, ‘Fruitvale Station’ (2013) unfolds toward an inexorable conclusion that is presented to us at the beginning of the movie in the form of the actual cellphone footage captured on that fateful night in the first hours of 2009. Horrifying in its stark presentation and enraging in the blatant malice it captures, the footage is the only glimpse most people got of Oscar Grant III, the victim of a police shooting at the Fruitvale Station of the Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) network. The movie, director Ryan Coogler’s debut feature film, follows Oscar through his last day alive and shows us the smallest sliver of his challenges, his circumstances, and his world. Michael B. Jordan puts in a career-catapulting performance that balances incredible sensitivity and subtlety with pain and back-against-the-wall-aggression. 

Next stop: Fruitvale Station.

Don’t leave the county, get home by 11. In ‘Blindspotting’, Collin Hoskins is nearly off probation and holding down a job while staying in a mandated halfway house. In three days he’ll be a free man again, no longer disenfranchised by the state. Just three short days. What could happen? ‘Blindspotting’ (2018) takes a look at how gentrification, police violence, and identity collide in the bustling San Francisco Bay Area. Oakland is a rapidly changing place, and both Collin and his childhood friend Miles encounter different struggles as they try to exist in a town that sometimes seems like it wants to swallow them alive. 

See both pictures.

Like many teenagers, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ (2009) was widely misunderstood, didn’t make much money, and claimed to have a lot more sex than it had. This was largely due to producer meddling (the film), marketing people completely out of touch with the intended audience (the film and teenagers in general), and nasty rumors that bogged down a good thing (both again). More recently hailed as an intriguing piece of queer horror and feminist dark comedy, ‘Jennifer’s Body’ came and went in the late 2000’s, largely seen (and ignored) as a cheap Megan Fox vehicle with scares and enough sex to shake a stick at. The truth is much more interesting, and the film’s heightened dialogue and self-aware campiness speaks to a deft understanding of horror tropes that director Karyn Kusama (‘Girlfight’) and writer Diablo Cody (‘Juno’) wield like a extra-sharp box cutter (that’s both a compliment and a deep cut from the film (and that’s a pun, fully intended)). The movie follows two best friends at a small town high school whose relationship is tested when one is turned into a demon-possessed succubus.

CORRECTION: Henri goofed when recorded the show; it was Catherine Hardwicke who directed ‘Thirteen’ (2003), not Karyn Kusama.