Bandini Blog

In 1967 Joe Shishido starred in three films for Nikkatsu, perhaps the most iconic roles in his 170 film career at Nikkatsu. These films were Seiijun Suzuki’s Branded to Kill, Yasuharu Hasebe’s Slaughter Gun and Takashi Nomura’s A Colt Is My Passport. Most famous internationally is Branded to Kill which was an incredibly dark and almost nihilistic Film Noir that resulted in Suzuki being fired from Nikkatsu but became a defining film in the careers of Suzuki and Shishido. A Colt Is My Passport was released just a few months before Branded to Kill and shares a lot of similarities.

The film centres on hired contract killer Shuji, played by Joe Shishido, who is contracted to kill one gang boss by a rival gang boss. Shuji proceeds to carry out the contract, killing the boss with a sniper rifle in a scene shot predominately through the scope of the rifle. Once he has carried out the job, the boss that originally hired him double crosses him and the boss and the son of the dead boss try and hunt down and kill Shuji and his sidekick Shun (Jerry Fujio). Shuji and Shun hide out in a hotel where they encounter Mina who is working there and clearly anxious for a way out. Shun is captured and in the final stages of the film Shuji agrees to give himself up for the release of Shun, who escapes on a boat with Mina. Shuji tells those chasing him that he will be at a landfill site at 7am if they want to kill him. What seems at first to be a suicidal move on Shuji’s part turns out to be a set up for a last stand and a thrilling climax filmed with intensity and memorable action sequences.

A Colt Is My Passport is a stunning Film Noir and one that deserves a place in film history. It is perhaps unfortunate that the film was released in the same year as Branded to Kill which is admittedly the better film. That said, when judged on it’s own A Colt Is My Passport really shines. With clean, precise direction, especially in the camera movement, the action is a joy, especially in the climax which pits Shuji against a group of hoods on foot and then finally in a bulletproof car. Read more

Reportedly costing $14.5 million, Streets of Fire was released in 1984 to an unreceptive audience and critics who appeared to unanimously dislike it. The film flopped at the box office and subsequent video sales did little to reverse this trend. Nevertheless the film continues to have a strong cult following and some critics have begun to look more favourably upon this Walter Hill musical/action picture.

The film opens with a large concert scene with a packed venue of screaming fans and pounding drums. On stage runs Ellen Aims (Diane Lane) who belts out an 80s take on 50s rock ‘n’ roll with a song called ‘Nowhere Fast’. Despite Diane Lane being a singer she was actually dubbed for the singing parts. As the crowd cheer ‘Ellen Aims and The Attacker’, a bike gang known as The Bombers rushes the stage kidnapping Ellen and causing a riot. The gang is led by Raven (Willem Dafoe) who drags Ellen back to his club in the rough side of town, The Battery. At the concert is Reva Cody who sends a telegram her brother and ex-boyfriend of Ellen, Tom (Michael Paré) asking him to come home.

Tom Cody is a soldier of fortune and excepts $10000 from Ellen’s manager and boyfriend Billy Fish (Rick Moranis) to rescue Ellen from The Bombers. Helping him out is fellow ex-soldier McCoy (Amy Madigan) who Tom meets in a bar and offers his sofa to. Tom, Reva and Billy set out into The Battery storming the club, rescuing Ellen and blowing up a lot of The Bomber’s bikes in the process. As Tom leaves, Raven walks out into the road to stand off against him but without a weapon retreats back into the darkness with the obvious intent to pick this fight up again.

Following the shootout at the club there are a few short scenes of the four getting out of The Battery, including them meeting a vocal group along the way. When back on the other side of town the police warn Tom that they don’t want any trouble from The Bombers and he should get out of town rather than fight it out with Raven. Tom ignores this and when Raven arrives with his whole gang, the police let them fight it out. Read more

Z Channel: A Magnificent Obsession is directed by Xan Cassavetes, daughter of directorial legend John Cassavetes, and is a film about films, an obsession with cinema and the desire to not just watch films, but to spread the word about great films and even participate in the making of them.

Z Channel was a cable film channel which ran throughout the 70s and 80s and was the first US cable channel to show films 24 hours a day and unlike the majority of film channels today, the motivation appeared not to be profit but a genuine love of cinema. Central to this was Jerry Harvey, the head programmer of Z Channel for many years. Prior to this he had been the programmer at The Beverly Canon Theatre in LA where he had shown the extended cut of The Wild Bunch, which was hand delivered by Sam Peckinpah himself. As the head of Z Channel Jerry programmed the channel with huge enthusiasm and an esoteric taste showing American films and World Cinema, often focusing on particular directors or actors/actresses. On Z Channel you could see a Sam Fuller Film festival next to a six hour cut of Bertolucci’s 1900. One of the significant legacies of Z Channel is the alternative, director cuts that it championed; in particular1900, The Wild Bunch, Once Upon a Time in America and Michael Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate.

Heaven’s Gate is a particularly interesting case; famed for destroying a studio, it’s escalating costs, being a commercial flop and creating a backlash against American directors being given the freedom to spend large sums of money pursuing personal visions. Jerry Harvey was lucky enough to see a longer cut of Heaven’s Gate, a cut that Cimino had intended to be seen, and was struck by it’s brilliance and how unfairly it had been treated by the press in it’s shorter form. He managed to persuade Cimino to let him show the longer version on Z Channel which led to a re-assessment of the film and helped restore the critical opinion surrounding it. Jerry formed a personal bond with Cimino and it is a shame that Cimino was unable to appear in the documentary.

Those that were available are a fantastic collection of friends and colleagues of Jerry’s and also those who Z Channel influenced who have gone on to have careers in cinema; in particular Jim Jarmusch, Alexander Payne and Quentin Tarantino. Tarantino wasn’t actually able to receive Z Channel but watched the videos that his friend had taped off the channel and remembers getting angry about those films that his friend hadn’t taped that he saw advertised.

One striking element of Z Channel is the influence it must have had on a generation of future film-makers and writers. Would Jim Jarmusch’s films be the same without the influence of Jerry Harvey’s individual programming choices. It is this programming that is so exciting and also sad about Z Channel. Here was a channel for film fans, like myself, made by a film fan where almost anyone could go and have their eyes opened to a film they had not seen before or get to see a film in an entirely new way. It is so exciting as this is the embodiment of what I love about having a passion for cinema and the desire to spread this passion, but it is so sad because Z Channel is gone, exciting and individual programming is all but gone and tragically Jerry Harvey is also gone. Read more

The premise of Air Doll is one than will instantly alienate a lot of people which is unfortunate as it is a premise that Koreeda uses not in the most obvious ‘wacky’ way that people might expect but to investigate emotional subjects. The film is based on a Manga by Yoshiie Goda entitled The Pneumatic Figure of a Girl and centres on an inflatable sex doll who comes to life and explores the world around her.

The sex doll in question, Nozumi, is played by Bae Du-Na, whose performances in The Host and Linda Linda Linda and now this have made it clear that she is a talented actress who will hopefully continue to get roles that afford her the opportunity to show her obvious skills as an actress.

Nozumi is owned by a restaurant waiter Hideo (Itao Itsuji) who mostly treats her as if she were real, buying her clothes, having dinner with her and of course engaging in sexual activities with her. One day, whilst he is at work, Nozumi transforms from an ‘Air Doll’ into something else. She is not a human as she still retains her seams, is full of air and is made of plastic, although she does not look plastic, but now she is ‘alive’. Once Nozumi comes alive she sets out to explore the world with what Bae Du-na has described as a soul “as pure, as beautiful and as spotless as a new born baby’s.” An innocent character who explores the world is a theme that has come up in literature and film before with obvious but not wholly appropriate comparisons to Pinnochio coming to mind. A better point of comparison is probably the 1993 Rolf de Heer film, Bad Boy Bubby, in which Bubby emerges from a cocoon like existence into a world that he does not understand, gradually exploring and seeing both the dark and light sides of humanity. Nozumi’s world to explore is a city and this is the type of world that Koreeda is exploring with the film. Nozumi comes into contact with a variety of characters including a Bulimic Hikikomori (a reclusive individual), a woman worried about her fading beauty, a father trying to connect to his daughter, a woman who constantly confesses to crimes she did not commit and the two staff of a video store where she gets a job. At the video store she learns more about the world from watching films she is recommended and forms a relationship with fellow worker Junichi (Arata) who even finds out and excepts the truth about Nozumi in a particularly dramatic and comic scene.

The characters that Nozumi encounters are like her in many ways, empty, missing something inside. This point is one that is perhaps to plainly signified in the film, at one point even commented on by a character, but it is nonetheless a powerful and effective part of the film. The film clearly sets out to explore the nature of city life and like Koreeda’s film Afterlife there is a clear interest in the human condition and in social interactivity or lack of in city life. Unlike some I did not feel this was too heavy handed as the film was so meditative and slow-paced for the most part that the ideas on display were allowed time to breath and for the viewer to consider the themes whilst the drama unfolded. Read more

In 1981 Raiders of The Lost Ark was released and like many young boys Eric Zala, Chris Strompolos and Jayson Lamb saw the film and were enraptured by it. Like many kids Chris wanted to be Indiana Jones, to have his own adventure, to fight nazis, hunt for treasure and get the girl. He therefore decided that he would remake the whole film shot-for-shot and that he would play the starring role of Indy. He discussed this with his friend Eric who agreed to help and realising they could not achieve the necessary effects they got another friend, Jayson, involved in the project. Together, over the next seven years, the three boys, with the help of almost 100 others made the greatest fan film ever made, Raiders Of The Lost Ark: The Adaptation. When the boys started they were just 11-12 years old and when they finished they were adults. Having finished they screened the film to family and friends and got on with their lives.

Once the boys had decided that they were going to remake Raiders shot for shot they hit their first problem. No video rental copy was yet available for the film so they therefore began collecting anything they could find to help construct a shot-by-shot storyboard. They collected books, artwork, magazine articles and ingeniously even snuck a cassette recorder into the cinema and recorded an audio version of the entire film. Eric then drew out precise and quite incredible storyboards that allowed them to then shoot the whole film shot for shot with little deviation from the original. He also designed costumes for the film which they began making, including turning school uniforms into nazi uniforms. Although they didn’t keep track of the budget of their film the three agree that it probably cost them roughly $5000 to make over the course of the seven years. Not bad when compared to the $28 million the original Raiders cost.

The boys made everything they could and what they couldn’t they asked for for their Birthday and Christmas presents. In parts of the film where they were unable to replicate certain props and scenery their ingenuity is outstanding and often quite amusing. Their replacement for the monkey is a particular highlight. That said, one of the delights of the film is seeing them actually accurately replicate things from the original that you just can’t believe they would have been able to. Particularly startling is the stunts that the boys manage to replicate which help recapture one of the greatest elements of the original; practical effects and stunts which felt genuinely dangerous adding real tension to the action sequences. This helped make the Indiana Jones films such exciting action/adventure films and was noticeably lacking from the recent Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, much to the film’s detriment.

In the 14 years following their hometown première the story of these three boys who remade a whole film in their teens became legendary, especially amongst film students, and VHS copies of the film were traded, illegally sold or rented and passed around campuses. In 2003 one such copy of the film was in the hands of director Eli Roth. Eli Roth was a friend of Aint It Cool founder Harry Knowles who, every year to celebrate his birthday, programmes 24 hours of films at the Alamo Drafthouse in Austin, Texas called Butt-Numb-A-Thon (BNAT). Eli Roth was in attendance at the 2003 BNAT and handed Harry a copy of the tape which Harry gave to fellow organiser Tim League who put the tape on the side in preparation to play it if they ended up ahead of schedule. Luckily this happened and the film played on the screen to 200 film fans who went nuts, cheering throughout. News of the screening spread and Eric, Chris and Jayson were invited to show the film at the Alamo as a special event with a Q&A. They agreed and the film played to a packed audience who gave them a four minute standing ovation. Read more

As a film fan I follow a lot of film news online and there are many stories that ones assumes are false or to bizarre to ever actually come to fruition. Examples of this include news such as Ridley Scott making a film based on the board game Monopoly, Universal making a film based on the video game Asteroids, the sixty year old Stallone’s plans to make new Rocky and Rambo films. The fact is though that Hollywood executives often make incredibly strange decisions and greenlight films that you would never believe could ever get made. One of these news stories that struck me as insanity was the report that Werner Herzog was set to remake the 1992 Abel Ferrara film, Bad Lieutenant and the subsequent news that it was to star Nicholas Cage in the lead role. Surely this couldn’t be true? The director of Fitzcarraldo, the star of National Treasure? Sure enough though roughly eighteen month later I sat down to watch Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans at the London Film Festival.

Port of Call, as I shall refer to it in this review, is not strictly a remake of Ferrara’s Bad Lieutenant and is more of a remake thematically. The story has been relocated to New Orleans and the narratives have the same themes of a badly behaved lieutenant involved in drugs and gambling but the narratives differ in many other ways. Herzog has actually said that he has not seen the original film and also allegedly attempted to get ‘Bad Lieutenant’ removed from the title, perhaps explaining probably the longest and clumsiest title of a film this year. Ferrara, clearly unhappy at the film getting remade has said that the makers of Port of Call “should all die in hell.”

In Port of Call, Nicholas Cage plays Terence McDonagh, a New Orleans cop who, following the flooding of a prison by Hurricane Katrina, rescues a prisoner and in the process injures his back. Suffering from long term pain as a result of this injury, Terence is prescribed Vicodin which he supplements with a variety of illegal narcotics, cocaine and crack seemingly his favourites. Cage plays Ternence with noticeable back problems, loping around with his gun tucked in his trousers throughout. In many ways Cage plays the character or Terence expertly, finally finding a good excuse for his hyperbolic acting style, with many scenes making you wonder if Cage actually lost his mind during filming. Some moments are truly bizarre, including one scene where Terence is hiding behind a door waiting for two old ladies he needs to speak to. Once they enter the room he reveals himself and talks to them whilst shaving with an electric razor only to subsequently fly in to a fit of rage pointing his gun at one of their heads and calling them a cunt. By this point Terence Mcdonagh is going insane. He has had almost no sleep, he is on a variety of drugs and has escalating gambling debts. He is on a case in which he is trying to find those responsible for the death of a Sengalese family who were dealing drugs in an area controlled by Big Fate, played by Xzibit.

Terence states at one point that “It’s amazing what you can get done when you’ve got a single purpose guiding you through life” and it appears to be the homicide case that he is referring to but it quickly becomes clear that Terence’s single purpose in life is getting high, very very high. He ends up teaming up with Big Fate protecting him in order to make money and to procure some high quality crack. He has a strong relationship with his girlfriend, a prostitute named Frankie (Eva Mendes) who he defends against a john who turns out to be connected and whose associates demand money. He also racks up a huge debt gambling on baseball games and is threatened by his bookie, played by Brad Dourif. Going off the rails as sleep deprivation and crack send him insane at one point he cuts off the oxygen supply of an old lady in order to get information resulting in him being investigated by internal affairs. All these strands pull together hilariously in one of the last scenes of the film when all the major characters come into his office in quick succession. Read more

Following Soderbergh’s epic Che, which told the reasonably epic story of Che Guevara and the Cuban revolution, Soderbergh made a much smaller film, a film that focused on a New York call girl, played by adult film star, Sasha Grey. Grey plays a character who is referred to by the names Christine and Chelsea (I shall use Christine for convenience). She is an expensive call girl who does not just supply her clients with quick sexual thrills but offers ‘the girlfriend experience’. This involves a deeper and more complex service where in addition to the sex Christine plays the part of a companion, someone to talk to and spend time with as well as someone to sleep with. Christine is clearly highly paid for her services and her clients are connected men with wealth and power. She also has a somewhat more traditional relationship with her boyfriend Chris, who is a a personal trainer and also has well paid professional clients who he also gives a personalised service to.

The film is set in 2008, roughly a month before the US presidential elections and during the beginnings of the economic crisis that struck much of the world. The film was mostly improvised throughout and features many performances by so called ‘non-actors’. During filming Soderbergh ensured newspapers were delivered to the set every day and scattered around the set. The makes the film incredibly up-to-date and relevant but to that precise moment in time. In many ways, The Girlfriend Experience is a modern period piece, it captures a moment in time with minute detail but unlike period projects this film was made at the time rather than in retrospect. The conversations throughout focus heavily on the issues of that time, with characters discussing the upcoming elections, who to vote for, how to safeguard their money and what the future might hold for the political and economic climate. It is worth noting the similarity between Christine and her clients, she looks them in the eye and lies, and as we have found from the stories surrounding the recession, people such as Bernie Madoff were doing the same thing.

On one level the film is about hyper-consumerism, as Christine represents an extremely expensive commodity, a service for the super rich. She faces problems in her career from the free-falling economy, competition from rival call girls, a slimy reviewer, played by former Premiere film critic Glenn Kenny who she needs to impress in order to keep a good reputation and the realisation that she needs to diversify to provide a future. The film explores this delicate structure of consumerism collapsing, not in the emotionally dramatic way that Hollywood audiences are used to but in a more cold subtle way. Christine and Chris, the names I am sure are deliberate, are both attempting to survive in their service of the wealthy in their respective careers. They both try and push their clients for more as their clients slowly back away and the in the failing economy their services are more and more an extravagance that is not truly needed. Read more

A Bay of Blood is a film that has been distributed under a large number of different titles, including Bloodbath, Carnage, Chain Reaction, Twitch of the Death Nerve, Reazione a Catena (which roughly translates as ‘The Ecology of Murder’) and it was even baffling released in the USA as Last House on the Left Part II. The film is directed by Italian visual master Mario Bava and is perhaps best known as being considered by many to be the first ‘slasher’ film.

A Bay of Blood begins with two murders, the first an inventive and twisted hanging in which a woman in a wheelchair, the Countess, has a noose tied around her neck and then her wheelchair pushed out from under her. The perpetrator of this murder is then stabbed by an unseen second murderer. This little comic twist in the opening is a taste of the film that unfolds as Bava injects black comedy into the film’s dark and lurid plot. The film then cuts to pastoral music and shots of the lake that is the film’s setting and only location. The camera then settles on a fly that dies, dropping into the lake.

The plot of the film centres on the struggles by the various characters to seize ownership of the lake area which is somewhat up for grabs following the death of the Countess. The characters are all willing to commit acts of violence in order to get the area for themselves and deaths begin to start stacking up. The plot is actually somewhat complex and with a lot of the characters given limited screen time it is sometimes hard to keep track of their motivations and keep up with the plot’s twists and turns. There is a definite Shakespearian influence to the story, even down to the Lady Macbeth figure of Renata and an allusion to the play in Albert’s blood stained hands.

That said it is not the story that grabs one’s attention when watching A Bay of Blood and it is not it’s strongest point. The violence, gore and proto-slasher elements are what makes A Bay of Blood such an entertaining watch. It is quite surprising when watching A Bay of Blood quite the impact that it clearly had and it’s huge influence on the Friday the 13th series. The setting of course is very similar in both and there is even a reference made in the diary entry in A Bay of Blood to the date of Friday the 13th. There are also 13 murders in this film and it is two of these murders that are so noticeably similar to murders in Friday the 13th Part II, in the scene where one of the characters has a machete embedded in his face and also in the sequence where a couple having sex in bed are impaled with a spear that goes through them both and out through the bottom of the bed. There are many other small similarities between the films, the most amusing probably being the use of the same knitted jumper being worn by a killer in A Bay of Blood and Mrs Vorhees in the first Friday the 13th. Read more

The Lovely Bones is Peter Jackson’s recent adaptation of the 2002 Alice Sebold book of the same name. Set in 1970s Pennsylvania it centre’s on the murder of Susie Salmon, played by Saoirse Ronan, the attempts by her family to deal with the grief of losing their daughter/sister and also the gradual uncovering of her murderer. The whole story is narrated by the dead Susie, who looks over her family and the murderer from an in-between world, seemingly between the physical world and Heaven. This is a somewhat similar concept to Noe’s Enter The Void but the two films are otherwise very different. Where Noe’s film deliberately confronted the viewer throughout, Jackson constantly pulls his punches.

The film begins rooted in the real world as we are introduced to the Salmon family, Susie’s friends and the creepy neighbourhood child murderer George Harvet, played by Stanley Tucci.. Susie is a pleasant 14 year old girl, intelligent but not bookish, sweet but not too saccharin, she likes taking photographs, she has a high school crush, she is a good approximation of a relatable teenage girl. She is also deftly played by Saoirse, who is very close to Susie’s age in real life. Unfortunately, despite the premise, the film gives Susie’s character very little in terms of interesting dialogue, plot development, or characterisation. One element missing from the film which is detailed in the book, is the rape and murder of Susie. Although we are made aware of the murder, Jackson cuts away before anything is seen and the rape present in the book is not even mentioned in the film. Including these scenes or referencing them more fully would have been deeply unpleasant but it is this unpleasantness that would have helped make the film more emotionally resonant and help counter the frankly silly flights into CGI fantasy.

The film constantly cuts back to scenes set in the inbetween world where Susie is joined by a reasonably irritating companion Holly, whose final act twist is painfully obvious from the moment she is introduced. The scenes in the afterlife are well put together and full of psychologically appropriate symbolism but left me emotionally cold. The scenes felt more like showy CG than an important element to the story. There is one exception though in the scene where Susie re-imagines George cleaning up after the murder which is quite stunning and brings some of the horror lacking in the depiction of what is an appalling act. There are overlaps between the inbetween world and the real world and there is even a character who can see Susie, kind of. This character, Clarissa, seems baffling pointless in the story, with really only one significant scene, and her special ability only adds an extra level of ludicrousness to the film. She contacts Ray, the boy Susie has a crush on, and they form a friendship that affords Susie the opportunity to get the first kiss, in manner reminiscent of Ghost, she has always dreamed of. The scene feels so massively contrived and clumsy that it loses any of the aching emotional beauty the scene could have captured. Read more

Audiard is renowned for his slow working practices, taking a long time to prepare for each new film. In this case there has been five years between The Heart My Beat Skipped and Un Prophete. In this time Audiard has researched the French prison system and meticulously planned this somewhat epic crime film. The film begins with the lead character Malik, exceptionally brought to life by relative newcomer Tahar Rahim, entering prison. He has six years of incarceration ahead of him. We do not find out what crime he committed in order to receive this sentence but the it is unlikely to have been a very serious crime due to Malik’s naivety at the start of the film and his clear fear of violent confrontations.

Malik enters the prison with nothing. He attempts to smuggle in 50 Euros but this taken by the guards. Even the trainers he is given are stolen the second he walks into the prison yard. Malik lacks more than just physical possessions though as it becomes clear he also has nothing outside the prison walls. He seems to have no family, no friends; if he is to survive he needs to use any skills he has at his disposal.

He is quickly marked out as an easy target and a group of Corsican gangsters decide to use him to kill a prisoner they need dead. They bully him into killing the prisoner through threats of violence and make it clear that even the guards will not help him as they are under the control of the Corsicans. Malik goes through with the murder, despite his obvious despair at having to do so. The murder is graphically shown and stands out as a very disturbing scene within the film, with a emphasis on the real physical effects of a violent murder. The audience is placed right in the cell with Malik, confronted with the reality of this gruesome murder.

Once Malik has committed this act he is taken under the wing of the Corsican boss, Cesar (Niels Arestrup), who realises more and more how useful Malik can be. Malik is not treated the same as the other members of the gang though. As a French Arab, the Corsicans see him as a lower class citizen and within a social system that is itself low class this puts Malik at the bottom of the bottom. He is resigned to duties such as sweeping, fetching food and newspapers and making coffee. It is only when Cesar is left more isolated as many of the Corsicans are let out and the guards begin to turn their back on him does he become to increasingly rely on Malik. Malik clearly has his own agenda though and when sent out of the prison on day leave he uses this as an opportunity to make connections and make money for himself.