More reviews from the Calgary Underground Film Festival
BIG MAN JAPAN (2007)
Nothing happens in the first 20 minutes of Big Man Japan . Seriously you can show up late have a smoke outside use the bathroom visit the snack bar; whatever you want. All you’ll miss is an awkwardly silent interview with the world’s most boring man. Then the boring guy grows to be 30 storeys tall and battles a giant monster in the heart of Tokyo.
Surprise! Boring guy is actually Dai-Nipponjin (“Big Man Japan”) the sixth in a line of gigantic superheroes who protect Japan from giant monsters. The CGI sequences of the big guy tromping through Tokyo with his purple underpants extensive tattoos corporate logos and troll-doll hairstyle are well-realized and gloriously surreal. Then he returns to normal size and the dull interview footage continues but this time we’re more interested because we finally know what the movie is about.
For a national saviour Dai-Nipponjin isn’t particularly well liked. His ex-wife is embarrassed by him and only lets him visit their daughter twice a year. His heroic monster battles are only televised after 2 a.m. and people write insulting graffiti about him on every wall. Even his grandfather Dai-Nipponjin the Fourth causes him aggravation by wandering out of the old folks’ home and alarming the countryside with the sight of a gigantic Alzheimer’s patient. Every humiliation is met with a shy shrug from the loner hero. He’s only doing his job.
Big Man Japan alternates between the crushing tedium of the protagonist’s day-to-day life and utterly ludicrous battle scenes with the strangest monsters I’ve ever seen leading up to a gleefully insane finale that I won’t even attempt to describe. If the movie had nothing but monster battles it would be exhausting; if it lacked them it would be interminable. By schizophrenically shifting between mundane life and berserk kaiju action Big Man Japan works. Not perfectly but any criticism is quashed by the simple fact that nobody else has ever made a film quite like this.
JOHN TEBBUTT
GRACE (2009)
Now this is a real horror movie. I’m stunned staggered thrown off balance… I might not sleep tonight.
Grace is involving harrowing and completely human — with all of the tenderness and horror that humanity implies. Madeline (Jordan Ladd) has suffered two miscarriages. Pregnant again she is determined to stay away from doctors and hospitals opting instead to hire a competent and trustworthy midwife (Samantha Ferris). When a car accident leaves Madeline without a husband or a living fetus she insists on carrying the dead child to term. Born lifeless the baby seems to come alive in her mother’s arms and appears healthy and happy. Still something is profoundly wrong with little Grace. Flies are constantly buzzing around her crib and the child can’t seem to digest milk. She’s only content while suckling blood from her mother’s wounded right breast. How far will Madeline go to keep her newborn baby alive and healthy?
A remarkable script likable characters and flawless performances make the ghastly premise seem frighteningly real. Any film can startle or shock; Grace is a much more rare beast. You watch with eyes unblinking and mouth agape full of dread and trepidation but desperate to see what happens next.
JOHN TEBBUTT
GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR (2009)
Graphic Sexual Horror details the rise and fall of Insex.com a notorious torture and bondage porn website. The website’s creator Brent Scott was a former Carnegie Mellon professor and performance artist who felt that the university was unsupportive of his S&M-based artwork forcing him out of an academic career. Insex became then a type of revenge for Scott. As he says in the film “If they’re not going to allow me to teach their children then I will corrupt them.”
Though Scott’s early films are more anemic then arousing (like the Saw films minus the gore plus genitals) they quickly become more extreme as the website gains subscribers and bigger sums of money. Women are hit choked nearly drowned and placed in confining cages and all kinds of other bizarre bondage contraptions. As Scott earns more cash and notoriety safety and ethics begin to crumble. Women who sleep with him on the side get more work; one of these regular “models” as he calls them (the women in the videos are given numbers as names) is a drug addict willing to endure limitless amounts of torture in order to support her habit.
The film raises a number of important issues particularly around the porn industry’s conflating coercion with consent. However the journey is gruelling. Viewers be warned: many scenes are quite disturbing and unsuspecting moviegoers may have a difficult time sitting through the film.
BRYN EVANS
MONSTERLAND (2009)
Monster movies are serious stuff. They reflect our perception of evil and are influenced by catastrophic events like Hiroshima and 9/11. Several books tackle the subject of monster movies seriously but not many films do. Here’s one that does.
Monsterland is a straightforward but interesting documentary about cinematic boogiemen such as Dracula werewolves mad slashers Godzilla and others. We see footage from several classic films as well as a few unfamiliar ones and a smattering of “fan films” that succeed in re-creating the feel of Frankenstein and Godzilla movies on a much smaller scale. This footage is used as visual punctuation to interviews with such luminaries as Tetsuo director Shinya Tsukamoto Godzilla-suited actor Kenpachiro Satsuma special-effects wizard Rick Baker and British film journalist Kim Newman. Each interviewee has their own fascinating and articulate viewpoint on the subject and the film uses the time-honoured documentary technique of editing out the interviewer’s questions leaving these intelligent monster aficionados to present their views and observations without interruption. Most of the film is quite safe for squeamish viewers as this is a film about themes and ideas not bloody viscera. A healthy interest in the subject matter is needed to appreciate Monsterland but genuine fans of horror cinema will be delighted.
JOHN TEBBUTT
