Fat Shaker (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

As an experience this is a must see film. This film is so far out there that its going to divide the audience, with most people either heading to the exits or saying rude things about it. A small percentage of the audience are going to be rapturous. I have no idea what I think of the film as anything other than a head trip experience, but as that, it's the kind of film that makes drugs optional.

Ignore what the official synopsis and descriptions say. The official bits say a lot of things that aren't in the film.  The simplest way to explain the film is to say that an obese man uses his deaf and dumb son to extort money from women. All of the details aren't explained in the film. Somehow the man and the son end up some how connected to a woman who takes pictures. What anyone's relationship, as well as what is real, what is a dream or a hallucination is anyone's guess as the father drifts in and out of realities.

Arty, pretentious, experimental, trippy, a mess, a supreme definition of WTF? Fat Shaker is all of those things and more. Roughly seven people wandered out of the press screening I attended. The first one headed for the exit after the second cupping scene. We can see were lesions on the man's back and coming after a bloody sequence with leaches I'm guessing it was too much.

Personally I considered heading for the exit myself, but I decided against it. Say what you will about the films free form narrative, the film's bouncing through time and head space made for challenging viewing. This is not a film you can simply allow to wash over you, this is a film you have to attack and wrestle with. Its a film that challenges you to work out what is really going on.

To be perfectly honest, I don't have a clue what it's all about. I know I know bits of whats going on, at least I think I do. I couldn't tell you what the larger picture is or how this would play in it's native Iran.

Should you see the film? Only if you're willing to go into someone else's head space. You also have to be open to the film's way of doing things and it's way of almost coming at you with hammer and tongs in an effort to beat you into submission. If you don't want to be challenged stay away. If you want a conventional narrative, stay away. If you want a unique viewing experience by all means go see this film.

(And yes I know that's disjointed and awkward but then so is the movie-and so am I after seeing it)

Samaritan Zatoichi (1968)

One of the best films in the series is a return to the  humanity that was lost in the previous film Zatoichi and the Fugitives. Sure there is darkness but it's not all encompassing.

The plot of the film has Ichi and his friend Sanuske becoming involved in a plot to kill a man who owes the yakuza money. Because the man is hiding in a dark house Ichi is the one to kill the man, but it was all a set up. The yakuza boss wanted the man dead so he could get his hands on the man's sister. Ichi then turns to protecting the woman until she can get to her aunts house.

Simple story complex issues.

Besides just being a damn good story, this is a meaty film, one that feels way meatier than you'd expect from an 82 minute film. Rolling around in the film are all sorts of notions relating to honor, obligation, forgiveness and making up for past wrongs. Never preachy the film simply tells you a good story while letting the audience think about what i right and what is wrong.

The film has several wonderful set pieces, all of the action is of course first rate, also first rate are sequences as the one early on when Ichi is eating in an inn and his friend tries to steal his meager fish. Another is a gambling scene that puts a spin on the typical dice game, and reveals Ichi isn't as honest as he usually seems.  The arcade sequence is another stand out, and is wonderfully touching.

I love the use of wide screen in this film. Every shot is beautifully composed and it amps up the emotion of the film frequently by bisecting or compartmentalizing the image in ways that says so much more than the dialog does (Watch the first scene when Ichi goes into the room at the inn with the woman he will soon be protecting.)

This is a great film by any standard and especially by the very high standard that is the Zatoichi series. A must see.

Happy Birthday to Us

Bully and Shelly say hi!

Happy Birthday to us.

What a wild and crazy four years it’s been. Somehow against impossible odds we’ve gone from one lone film fan trying to write about every good film he could think of for an audience of a couple to a dozen film fans writing for an audience of thousands. While we don’t get millions of hits for the things we do, we do get a nice regular readership of film fans coming to see what we’re putting up.

One of the things I really like is that we at Unseen are developing a reputation in some circles as people who try to cover films that are beyond the big blockbusters. I love that we’re getting contacted by festivals across the US and the world and asking if we want to provide coverage. I love that I had a PR guy say to me that he couldn’t understand why more people didn’t search us out since we actually provide coverage for the films and festivals we are offered. “You cover to everything” he said. Not quite but we try.

With the coming of the new year we’re going to begin shifting things around. Over the last few months I’ve been talking about some changes that we/I were hoping to make and some look like they will be happening and some are going to be delayed.

As of today I’m going to be less concerned with doing a post a day. While I’m still going to try and get you a film a day, I’m going to be less concerned if it doesn’t come together simply because we have so much planned that even our on average count is going to be something like two films a day. The focus from here on out is going to be quality and not quantity. If I’m writing because I want to write I tend to give you better pieces than when I’m just trying to fill a slot. You have been hanging in with me/us for four years now and deserve better.

Plans to expand our coverage to a wider realm of festivals is progressing so expect pieces on things like The Treefort Film Festival, The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival and Salt City Horror Fest not to mention the usual bunch of festivals.

Other plans such as to move to a .com and alter our layout are still progressing but much much slower than I had hoped. The key factor is that the person going to handle the physical changes is going to have to be me and while I have an idea of what I want to do and how I want to do it. While Unseen has lots of people funneling in content pretty much all of the grunt work is still done by yours truly simply because doing this is my passion. Basically faced with shutting Unseen down for several weeks while I do nothing but set up the new site or press on, I’m choosing to press on if for no other reason than a selfish one- there are festivals I want to attend and films I want to see.

As we move into year five I need to take time out and say thank you to everyone who reads what we do. As always if you didn't read we wouldn't do this... or do it quite so obsessively. You all seem to be interested in what we're seeing so we're more than happy to tell you.

Largely I need to thank everyone who helps with this little engine that could. I couldn't do what I do without every name in that side bar. I like that the group of us is a nice little family that seems to be growing with addition of Hubert and Alec over the last year.

Over the last year I've done a great deal of thinking about what to do with Unseen. What should we be covering? What kind of content should we be providing. I was debating trying to cover more mainstream stuff or should we drop the mainstream stuff or how  should we handle the flood of films at festivals.  I've had several conversations with the Unseen family and tried to weigh everything.

Then last week while I was sitting in a press screening and I overheard a conversation between two writers of note talking about covering things. There was a kind of elitist attitude toward their film coverage. They said that will cover certain directors but not others and certain films and not others. They will only cover the films that are pre-determined as important- with their coverage of  festivals where there are lots of World Premieres (Sundance Tribeeca) directed toward the ones they feel will go somewhere (though strangely their important choices at last year's Tribeca film festival went nowhere). They winced when they over heard another writer recommending  a certain B fantasy film to another writer as a wonderful throw back to Ray Harryhausen.

I was, to say the least, horrified. These were, nominally the people leading the way in film criticism. How can you say you love film and yet not see all sorts of films? How can you not mine new territories? In a weird way what they were saying seemed less about the films than self promotion.

I can't do that. I won't do that. I can't pick one thing to cover. Or claim that something is the best.Yes Unseen will go in certain directions because that's where my, or my writers's, interests lie but I will never say yes or no to a movie for any reason than my mood I won't watch it then because on that day and time I'm just not in the mood. Ultimately all films are important, all films could be treasures and just because someone is a big name director doesn't mean their next film is automatically worth seeing - hell it could very well be shit (Godard any one?)

As Unseen Films moves into it's fifth year I want to renew the pledge I made back in 2010 and that is to search out good films wherever they are and tell you about them. The addendum to that is that now we will also report on what we see at film festivals so that there is some record somewhere of the films that are playing. Someone must provide some sort of record, so why not us? We're also going to mix in some other films that we get a chance to see because someone asked if we wanted to see them. There is to be no list, no scheme, no plan, there is just a search for good films wherever they maybe. We may not always give you a new favorite film, but if we're lucky we'll at least give you a film you didn't mind seeing , even if you didn't really like it.

Now if you don't mind it's time to go eat some cake 

(A special thank you to Bully and Shelly for the well wishes and to Randi for sending them along)

Blind Fury (1989)

A remake/re-imagining of the Zatoichi character, Blind Fury uproots the blind swordsman from feudal Japan and plants him in the United States in the 1980s. Or at least it's an oddball riff on the character, now played by Rutger Hauer, in a comparably oddball version of the United States in the 1980s.

I say a version of the United States because most of the schlocky (but lovable) action films of that decade don't really take place in a familiar world but an exaggerated version of the world at that time, one in which rugged, ornery American values are the measure of all things. This goes for Commando, Death Wish 3, Cobra, American Ninja, Remo Williams: The Adventure Begins, the first two Rambo sequels, etc.; those jingoistic nationwide counterattack flicks like Red Dawn and Invasion USA; and the videogame Bad Dudes, perhaps the finest artifact of this imagined world, a game in which two meatheads in black tank tops and fingerless gloves have to save Ronald Reagan from a terrorist organization comprised of ninjas. This is one GI Joe nation, under a Christian God (and God is an American), with liberty, and justice, and unlimited ammo for all red-blooded cowboy rootin-tooters.

Welcome, Zatoichi, to The United States of the Eighties. Your new name is Nick Parker.

And yes, I love Blind Fury. Unironically.

It's such a bizarre take on Zatoichi. For one, our hero isn't a masseur/reformed gangster who's constantly attempting to live down the sins of his past. Nick is a Vietnam vet who lost his vision during the war. He's nursed back to health by kind villagers, one of whom teaches him how to use a sword not unlike a katana. How does a random villager in Vietnam know how to do reverse-handle slashes like a seasoned Japanese practitioner of iaido or kenjutsu? Don't ask, and enjoy your stay on Planet Eighties, where all of Asia is sort of like the five boroughs in New York.

Blind Fury spins a story with similar beats to Zatoichi Challenged, with some nods to Fight, Zatoichi, Fight as well. (That makes sense since Zatoichi Challenged is like a thematic continuation of a story started in Fight, Zatoichi, Fight and also referenced in Zatoichi and the Chess Expert.) Nick visits America to reconnect with an old war buddy (Terry O'Quinn), but it turns out he's in Reno forced to make some sort of synthetic drug. After the death of his war buddy's ex-wife (Meg Foster) in Miami, Nick vows to take his war buddy's son to Reno to reunite him with his dad. Hacking, slashing, and riffing on recurring tropes of the Zatoichi series (e.g., thugs picking on blind men, gambling) ensues.

Since Blind Fury is a standalone movie, there's no sense of cyclical hope and disappointment in Nick's life as there is in Zatoichi's. Much of this is due to Nick's lack of regret. The screennplay by Charles Robert Carner (who also wrote the gloriously schlocky Gymkata) and Hauer's performance paint Nick a someone who's pretty easygoing. He isn't trying to go straight or atone. Instead, he's just a vagabond with a cane sword who seems to be having a good time.

If Shintaro Katsu was playing Zatoichi, Rutger Hauer is playing the heroic Rutger Hauer; if Zatoichi's mission was to protect the downtrodden because there's too much evil and corruption in feudal Japan, Nick's mission is to kick ass and help people out because he's Rutger Hauer and this is The Goddamn United States of the Eighties.

Blind Fury heaps additional absurdity onto the blind swordsman idea in that almost everyone Nick fights is wielding a gun rather than a sword. Yeah, the blind guy brought a knife to a gunfight. That means the fights in Blind Fury are less about counterpunching as in the Zatoichi films and more about exemplifying the tenants of eighties badassery; it's still a case of "you try to hit me, I dodge, you get hit back," but Nick seems to smile coolly about the whole ordeal like it ain't nothing. Sho Kosugi, everyone's favorite 80s ninja, makes a guest appearance at the end for the requisite sword duel. The fights here are fine, but they don't have the same wow- or dazzle-factor as any of the Zatoichi films. As much as I like Hauer, no one movies like Katsu in those long takes. Really, Nick is a caricature who belongs with the proud pantheon of 80s action caricatures; Zatoichi is a  character, realized from the inside out (series continuity be damned).

Part of me wonders where they would have gone with Nick Parker if the Blind Fury series caught on. I want to believe that he'd have teamed up with other proud citizens of The United States of the Eighties--Remo Williams, John Matrix, the A-Team--and that he continued to save lives across this imagined land where spent bullet casings are as plentiful as pennies.

I want to believe.

Blood Glacier aka The Station (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

Thats not a rabid fox-but something much worse

From Marvin Kren the genius who gave us Rammbock, a nifty undead film a couple years back comes Blood Glacier (aka The Station).  This poisoned little confection had me squirming in my seat and fearing what sort of hellish nightmare was coming next.

The film is set now. As the result of global warming the glaciers are melting with many now long gone. At a climate station in the mountains an alarm is going off. It seems that something has cause one of the sensing posts to go down. Traveling out to repair it they discover what appears to be a huge "blood glacier". Taking samples they return to their main station and find that the glacier appears to be some sort of weird organism. When they go back to get more samples the blood glacier appears to be gone, but in its wake it's left something much worse- horrible hybrid mutants.

Yes its kind of Cronenberg's The Fly meets John Carpenter's the The Thing but at the same time it manages for most of it's running time to be it's own terrifying little nightmare.  This film generates scares and thrills despite wandering around in somewhat familiar territory.

I think one of the reasons the film works is that all of the characters are adults and very intelligent. There is a reason they are where they are and they talk to each other on a higher level than you normally see in similar films. We don't get endless explanation we simply get discussions of the facts as they stand in the film, if something is explained its because it has to be explained with in the context of the film. The characters don't know much more than we do so as a result we never get talked down to.

The other reason the film works is that director Marvin Kren milks the situations for all their worth. Even if it's true that the film covers territory we've been in before, there are still hiding spots to put your monsters so they can jump out and scare the audience and Kren manages to find them so that you still jump out of your seat despite your knowing its coming.

This movie messed me several times and had me mumbling "That's just wrong" repeatedly.

While the film isn't perfect, the film's introduction of more victims is a bit too fortuitous and the last 15 or 20 minutes it kind of loses focus, this is still a damn great film. If anything any reservations I have are due to my wanting this nightmare inducing film to some how morph into one of the all time classic films. While that's not the case  (though its close), its still scary, creepy, the right sort of unpleasant and the sort of thing that's perfect for mom, assuming your mom loves icky monster movies.

This film plays Saturday night at Film Comment Selects and will be released by IFC later this year. Either way its a must see.

Zatoichi and the Fugitives (1968)

Blind bastard doesn't know who he's dealing with.

Mean, cruel and nasty this is one of the darkest films in the Zatoichi series. Its a film who's darkness I found disturbing.

After getting caught in a rain storm Ichi takes refuge in an abandoned house. Ichi is aware that there is some one there but acts as if the girl hiding there isn't there. When the rain passes he heads off on the road where two surly guys try to torment and rob the blind man...its the last thing they ever do. The killings are witnessed by the girl. It transpires that she is traveling with a group of fugitives with a nasty reputation.  They are heading to town where a local yakuza leader is now a man of the law. The fugitives need a place to hide and the boss needs muscle...Ichi of course gets involved.

Darkness doesn't make a difference to a blind man

What makes the film so disturbing is that the bad guys in this film really are bad guys. They torment Ichi at every turn, by throwing dirt in his food, pricking his face with their swords and knives, trying to get him to step on blades and attacking him frequently. Ichi even comes up on the short end of a battle. Normally the villains in the series have some attempt at being good people,but not here. The bad guys are really really bad. These guys are some of the nastiest I've seen on screen.

Interestingly as if to balance the villainy of the fugitives, most of the people are solidly good, there is no grey in this film only black and white.

The bloodiest of the series to this point, this is also a film where Ichi gets severely wounded. Abused by the fugitives at one point, he spends the rest of the film dealing with his wounds, even as he's fighting for his life. We've never really been this afraid for Zatoichi, and while I know there are 8 more films and a TV series to go, I still was afraid he was going to expire before the film ended.

While most definitely a solid entry in the series (it may very well be one of the key films) I'm not sure what I think of it. There is something about the overly gritty, realistically violent film that doesn't sit well with me. While I like many of the sequences and love that I can root for Ichi to kill everyone, I'm  bothered by the toll that Ichi is forced to pay. Is it too much?

My skittishness aside this is an import film in the series and a must see.

Zatoichi Challenged (1967)

While staying at an inn the mother of a little boy dies. Zaotichi agrees to take the boy to his far away father. A long the way they meet up with a band of travelers who allow them to ride along part of the way. When Ichi and the boy reach his father they find he has been working for the yakuza making high priced pornography. Unfortunately the government wants the porn destroyed and everyone connected with it killed, Ichi however refuses to let that happen.

Speed bump in the Zatoichi film has a great opening third, a great last third and a deadly dull middle third. While good over all, and damn amazingly great in parts this is one of my least favorite of the entire series. The problem is that middle is way too talky and static.

I don't want to deal with the bad instead I'd like to highlight some of the good, beginning with some of the musical score. The opening guitar riffs make this feel like its going to be a kin to a spaghetti western and there are times when the film riffs on westerns, from its frontier town setting to the Shane echos at the ends.

While there really isn't any gambling in the film, there is a nice sequence where Ichi has to guess which hand a coin is in.

Actually to be honest the film's strong points is in the sequences, Ichi and the boy bonding, the opening fight on the road, the massive attack late in the game and the near perfect final confrontation in the snow between Ichi and the samurai who has become his friend. These are marvelous pieces which stick in my head way more than the film as a whole.

IS this a bad film? Most certainly not, but when you compare it to some of the highs in the Zatoichi series it seems not as good.

Definitely worth seeing, just don't expect one of the highs of the series.

Ichi (2008)

This is a repost of my IMDB review of ICHI from when the film came out. I figured since we're doing the month of Zatoichi I might as well include it.

Rethink, and perhaps continuation of the story of Zatoichi, the blind swordsman. here the blind masseuse and gambler has been replaced by a blind woman who is a trained musician. As the film begins she is looking for a certain man. One can pretty much assume that she wants to kill him. While staying with a blind woman some toughs decide to rough up her host when they won't pay for her services. A wandering samurai named Toma tries to help, but its Ichi who kills the men. Following Ichi Toma ends up hired as the protector of a village. They think Toma killed some of the gang that had been running rough shod over them, but it was actually Ichi. As the gang moves to take revenge, Toma and Ichi grow close. How it all plays out is the movie.

Some people really don't like this movie. I've seen some things that have blasted the film for not being a real Zatoichi film. Some people have taken it to task for having poor performances, especially in the lead. I really liked the film. I had no problems with Haruka Ayase as Ichi. I found her fine for what the part is. This is not a real restart of Zatoichi, its more a continuation with flashback sequences implying that the elder Ichi was this girl's father. Its a film that is going in a different direction.

I have no trouble with the film being anything other than its own thing. You can't really compare it to the best of the Zatoichi series since its not really fair since those films had a couple of chances to hit their stride before they got it right. Its certainly better than the weakest of the series. If I were to pin point the film's flaws it would be the over length, I don't know if the film really needs to be two hours. Certainly it felt longer while watching it than when it was over. The other flaw is that the films budget at times makes it seem almost like a TV movie, especially with the use of computer generated blood.

I like the film a great deal and would recommend it, especially if you let the film do what it wants to do and not take for what its not, say a continuation of Beat Takashi's take on the characters. Worth a rental or an evening at the movies.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero (2014)

By the time you've reached the 3rd installment in a 'flesh-eating virus' film series, your scraping the bottom of the barrel. Cabin Fever: Patient Zero is the latest in a franchise that I never thought would continue, after the well published disaster known as Cabin Fever 2. And while Cabin Fever: Patient Zero fails to add anything new, it's certainly no re-tread of the original source.

Cabin Fever: Patient Zero begins with the virus being contained and experimented on in an underground lab. Here we meet our first cast of characters: the generic scientist, his two female assistants (one of which resembles a Porn Star) & the carrier of the virus, actor Sean "Rudy" Astin. A quick paycheck is the only reason I can see why Astin would agree to this. Though for most of the film, he's not given much to do. The other half of the plot revolves around a group of young 20-somethings who are on a boat trip to a deserted island. They act like douchebags, smoke weed, everything cliched characters do before they're eventually killed off. Of course the island they land on is the same location where the virus is being held. Once the contamination is breached, thing's take a very bloody turn.

Director Kaare Andrews has shown potential between Cabin Fever: Patient Zero and his 2010 feature debut, Altitude. Both films have started out strong, but ultimately fall apart in the second act. Hopefully this is something Andrews can correct in the future. 

The acting and dialogue is everything you'd expect out of a typical direct-to-video film, so no point in dwelling on that. The one thing that Cabin Fever: Patient Zero brings, and it comes in buckets, is the gore. If you thought the leg shaving scene in the original film was rough, that's nothing to what you'll witness. For that reason, as well as an epic girl fight that comes near the end of the film, it's worth checking out. The dark humor that ran rampant throughout the first Cabin Fever is gone, which may disappoint some. But it is light-years better than the previous installment. Plus we already have the announced, yet to be filmed, Cabin Fever: Outbreak up next. Hooray for endless sequels.

Zatoichi The Outlaw (1967)

The title sequence of this film is a killer. It  has Ztoichi at a shooting gallery (they use bow and arrows). While eating he listens as a man misses his shots. As an ominous chord is struck the title The first feature by Katsu Productions appears. Then the shooter, annoyed by Ichi's kibitzing pulls him into the arcade and forces him to take some shots. Ichi begrudging agrees, but does so at the small targets. as everyone gets a good laugh Ichi takes a shot...A bullseye - a gong is rung and the title Zatoichi The Outlaw is splashed across the screen


This time out Ichi is sucked once more into the battle between rival gangs. One gang is kidnapping the farmers who can’t pay at their gambling den. Their opposite number draws the swordsman into the battle claiming to be for the people. Of course they are just trying to take total control of the situation. Add to the mix a swordless samurai who won’t fight, peasant uprisings, severed limbs and dash of politics and you have a heady mix.

With Katsu taking control of production the series seems to be shifting gears in any number of areas.

First this is the first of the films that seem to have been filmed entirely on location. I’m sure that the interiors were done on a sound stage, but at the same time they feel as though they were real houses. More importantly all of the exteriors feel real. In going through most of the films for this look at all of the films in the series you realize that in many of the earlier films the exteriors were shot on sound stages (especially the night sequences), that’s not the case here and it’s wonderful. What I love is that the real location filming allows for some stunning sequences, especially toward the end of the film where we get several battles in the rain and another where the wounded Ichi is carried on a board in order to rescue one the samurai who is being hauled off for execution. This is the film where you really get a sense that the story is taking place in the real world with real weather.

The action in the films seems to have been taken up a notch. Blood flows freely, arms and heads are severed. Even the normally seemingly indestructible Ichi is badly wounded and bloodied (notice how blood flows down his forehead during one of the rain battles). The blood actually adds weight to the proceedings. In this film the fighting has a terrible cost- and reinforces the repeated line about blood spoiling the ground.

The film is also very politically charged. The lines between the gangs, the government and the people is very much in play. The struggle for control is in the fore front and where in other films you get hints of it , in Zatoichi the Outlaw its very pronounced. The abuse faced by the peasants is very much on the films mind and it goes to great lengths to put Ichi on the side of the down trodden with him talking about how he has no use for anyone who doesn’t do anything for society and the people.

What is also really cool with this film are the small details. Watch all the small background details all through the film from the street traffic in the opening arcade sequence to the collateral damge in the fight scenes, swords go through walls, top knots are cut, and damage is inflicted by careless swings of the sword. The battles between Ichi and his opponents take on a desperation, gone are the carefully choreographed fights, people squirm in the mud, people don’t die instantly. It may not sound like much but it adds a weight that I for one greatly appreciated.

I like this film a great deal, and if the film won’t remain at the forefront of my brain as a favorite Zatoichi film, it’s only because there are 26 great films and they all can’t be first and foremost.

Zatoichi's Cane Sword (1967)

Heroes become attached to their weapons. You can't think of Luke Skywalker without his lightsaber or James Bond without a Walther. There's also a strange fetishization of weapons that comes through the act of naming. In the case of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, there's Sting wielded by Bilbo and later Frodo, or Glamdring wielded by Gandalf; and this is all part of a tradition that Tolkien knew well, going back to Arthur and Excalibur, Thor and Mjolnir, Beowulf and Hrunting, and to the blades Gram and Balmung of Siegfried. A sort of iconographic magic is imbued upon the arms of cinematic heroes and comic book heroes: Indiana Jones and his whip, Captain America and his vibranium shield, Batman and his batarangs. In Zatoichi's Cane Sword, the fifteenth film in the series and definitely one of my favorites, we get to learn a little bit of the fascinating lineage of Zatoichi's iconic weapon. The cane sword even provides a larger symbol for his recurring mental state as well as the moral imperative that is at the heart of many Zatoichi films.

In Cane Sword, our hero meets an aged blacksmith whose mentor crafted Zatoichi's own blade. The old man tells Zatoichi that there's a small crack near the hilt of the sword, and that using it will cause the blade to break. Zatoichi takes this as a sign that he should give up his ways and attempt (yet again) to settle down and lead a normal life. If you've watched at least five of the Zatoichi films before this one, you can probably figure out that this doesn't go as planned, especially since there are so many baddies in town.

There were some continuity issues I noticed between The Tale of Zatoichi and The Tale of Zatoichi Continues regarding the blade. At the end of the first film, he seems to give up his own sword, but he's got it back at the beginning of the second film. A bigger issue to consider is what happens to the blade at the end of Zatoichi the Fugitive. While that would be an ideal explanation for the sword's current state, Wikipedia suggests that the cane sword in this film is supposed to be Zatoichi's third blade. A convenient retcon to be sure, and yet it makes no actual sense in the continuity of the film series. I don't even see how it works in the fictional histories of Zatoichi or the blacksmith. It may be best to not think about it. This was not a cohesive, fully-planned-from-beginning-to-end film series, so these muck-ups are bound to happen.

Shintaro Katsu continues to be solid as our main man, once again torn between a desire for a trouble-free life and the inability to escape trouble. Special kudos ought to go to director Kimiyoshi Yasuda, particularly for the memorable finale, and also to screenwriter Ryozo Kasahara for his strong thematic material. Yasuda also directed Zatoichi on the Road and Adventures of Zatoichi, and he has further films in the series coming up; Kashahara also has another Zatochi film he penned in the near future (Zatoichi Challenged) and apparently wrote an early draft of the Zatoichi update/pseudo-remake Blind Fury.

But I want to come back to the sword since it is the focus of the film. Weapons are extensions of our heroes, and the cane sword has always been a fitting symbol for the Zatoichi character: like the sword, the man seems like something else on the surface (i.e., a blind masseur), but when unsheathed, his true nature is revealed (i.e., a killer). I've mentioned Wolverine before in a review or two of these films, and I can't help but feel some connection between Logan's retractable adamantium claws and Zatoichi's cane sword. Logan's claws were something he was born with, and I think even if Zatoichi tries to deny it, his killer instinct is innate. He cannot deny his true nature in the same way that a blade, if it could express itself without human hands, would have to cut in order to do so.

And so there's the matter of the crack near the hilt and only one more kill with the cane sword. That's most Zatoichi movies in a nutshell. He tries to settle down because he'd rather preserve his own life, as if something within him would break if he kills again. And yet the world Zatoichi lives in is full of evil, and the good people are all too weak to defend themselves, and even though Zatoichi is a killer, there's good in him as well. For the downtrodden, Zatoichi risks breaking and continues on, wandering and drawing. Makers can imbue their materials and works with skill, and the wielders of such works can come to resemble the work and its material. By the end of the film, Zatoichi is not defined by the sword per se, but it's the inner stuff of Zatoichi, that drive in his nature, that manifests in the blade in his hand.

River of Fundament (2014) in brief

If you read some of the reviews for Matthew Barney's latest film you'd think it was going to be some horrific nightmare of disturbing scenes with everything literally covered in shit, but that's not the case. While the brown  stuff,  and other bodily fluids, play a key role it's not splashed over everything. Actually I was kind of hoping that the film would have some sort of outrageous awfulness so that I could rant about the alleged shocking nature of it all, instead the most shocking thing is that Barney has made what amounts to an eminently forgettable and rather dull art film.

I'm going to try and be brief here, something that Matthew Barney can't be accused of. You'll forgive me if I don't go into great details, I neither feel the need nor do I remember a great deal of the film, I was thinking of other things and watching the audience around me.

The film is nominally an exploration of the cycle of life, death and rebirth as symbolized by Norman Mailer, the Egyptian gods and Pharaohs, cars and a river of poo. The film crisscrosses through Mailer's wake where he, the gods, the Pharaoh and various celebrities dine, talk sing and play music. There is lots of talk of excrement and how if you eat it you'll get in touch with other peoples wisdom. Hey what ever floats your boat. It goes on through three parts and takes a total of about six hours to get through from start to finish.

Nothing here is shocking, except for some of the performances from name celebrities which are awful and most of the dialog which is as badly stilted as I've ever heard in any film ever (and I include mangled English translations of Chinese Martial arts films). I completely understand why the dialog is bad- it has to serve an artistic purpose and not be realistic, but at the same time its frequently god damned stupid. I frequently was laughing at it not with it.

Truth be told, and to be perfectly fair Barney has made a film of moments. There are grand and glorious moments or sections where the music and the visuals come together (see above) to create a glorious moving couple of seconds or minutes. But its all fleeting as a soul stirring moment will be followed by a stupid one such as the Bull Fighter song at the end of part one which is wrecked by a dinner guest. Yes, he's suppose to break the moment but he also stops the film dead. He broke the spell I was in and outside the film again.  In later parts glorious visual set pieces are followed by terrible looking bits that also kill the flow just as you think its all coming together, finally. The fact that the spell keeps getting broken ultimately leads to a boredom or disinterest, why keep watching when it only breaks your heart.

What annoys  me is that Barney has made a film that needs to be explained. There were pages and pages of notes in the programs handed out by the ushers at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Yes, you can follow the "plot" without reading them (I read them afterward), but if you don't read them several important points that Barney was trying to make are going to be lost on you. For example its not readily clear who the guy who appears in the bathroom with the colostomy bag at the beginning is but after I read the notes I knew. In reading the notes on the train home I had tons of ah ha moments. I should have had the Ah Ha moments in the theater, not on the train home.

If you've been reading Unseen Films for any length of time you know I hate films that need endless pages of notes to make sense, and this is one of them. No work of art, no film, should need to be explained. If you've made art that is so personal that you need to give notes either you've made something way too personal, or you've left something out. I can understand if you have to give notes to put a film/art in context with in the culture it was made, but Matthew Barney is an American who lives in New York, in theory this is my culture, this isn't say an Indian movie.

Ultimately River of Fundament misses the mark. Its way too much of everything, with not enough good stuff to sustain six hours- or at least six hours in one sitting.

The festival season explodes starting now: a look at things for the next six weeks plus a birthday and links

(Video by Chocko)

As you saw from earlier today Film Comment Selects starts tomorrow. As is our norm and as is the tradition Unseen will be wading into the fray. Earlier today we ran a review of the opening night film Our Sunhi, We have reviews of the horror film Blood Glacier and the cinematic mind warp Fat Shaker coming this week.  Back during Fantasia we ran a review of the very strange Korean film The Weight. Friday and Saturday we'll be seeing another five or six films in the series.

Film Comment Selects is very important to us at Unseen since the first festival coverage we ever did was on our second day of existence when we went to see the Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Revenge Films. Every year since then We've tried to go back and cover something.(And yes the Revenge films piece is a nervy embarrassing piece but at the time I didn't know better and no one, and I mean no one, was reading the blog- I leave it because that's where we started)

For tickets on Film Comment Selects go here.

Next Saturday before the Film Comment films I'll be stopping by the BAM Kids Fest for a film. We haven't really been covering the Fest in the past couple of years, the film skew younger than The New York International Children's Film Festival. They also tend to show lots of subtitled films to the their young audience and have adults read the subtitles out loud. I understand why they do it (it allows them to show good films), but I don't like to watch films that way so I don't go regularly. Details on the fest can be found here

Speaking of BAM earlier today I was at BAM for Matthew Barney's 6 hour River of Fundament. As this posts I'll hard at work on a review. Look for it in a couple of days.

In other festival news:

Tickets for The New York International Children's Film Festival are starting to sell out. Some films are sold out, and they've added more screenings. I have tickets for 11 or 12 films plus one film, We Are`The Best, crosses over with Film Comment Selects For tickets and details go here.

Another one of my favorite festivals starts up in a couple of weeks- Rendez-vous With French Cinema. This festival plays all over Manhattan and Brooklyn and frequently sells out. I'm starting in with press screenings this week and I'm going to some of the public screenings so look for lots of reports. Details on the entirety of the festival can be found here.

And if that wasn't enough it looks like we'll be getting some form of coverage from SXSW.  We should have some reviews and if my gentle arm twisting works we may have some on the ground coverage.

Of course by the time that's all done We'll be slipping straight away into that beast known as Tribeca since if they are true to form, press screenings will start at the end of March and take us to the end of April.

Earlier I pointed out that the first film festival we ever covered was Film Comment Selects back in 2010. The date was February 21 which was the second day in existence. That means February 20th, this Thursday is our birthday. I'll have a brief piece up about it then.

I'd like to take this time out to welcome Alec Kubas-Meyer to Unseen. Alec has been a friend of Unseen for a few years now. He was introduced to me and everyone through Hubert and nothing has ever been the same. Alec is a filmmaker and writer who's regular writing gig is being the Reviews Editor over at Flixist. He also has his own website A Million Tiny Bublebees. After many arm wrestling matches I finally got him to come over to the dark side to help out with our month of Zatoichi. And should you ever get the chance I also highly recommend going to dinner with him for some great conversation. (And if you want to know how the upcoming Raid 2 is read his piece here.)

This week the month of Zatoichi continues in full force. Not only will you be getting some of the Katsu films but look for some reviews of other related films. Also coming this week will be Film Comment Selects pieces and some other reviews of more current films.

And now some of Randi's full bodied links.

Altered for international release
Coen Brothers films as gig posters
Defunct Olympic sports
Aardman Pirates designs
Silent screen
Michael Mann talks Thief and the future
Al Jaffe talks about the one thing MAD Magazine wouldn't run

Our Sunhi (2013) Film Comment Selects 2014

The opening night film of Film Comment Selects is Sang-soo Hong's latest film Our Sunhi.  Its the story of Sunhi who returns to her college in order to gt a recommendation from one of her professors so she can go to grad school in the US. As she waits for her recommendation the professor, an ex-boyfriend and a film director circle around her.

If you know Hong's work you know what to expect, long takes, lots of talk, off beat humor and an an odd sense of story telling.

How is it?

Pretty much like a good number of his other recent films only more so. The individual scenes are okay, but they never completely connect to each other. The result is that by the time you get to the end you really don't know the point or more precisely why it took so long to get there.

Seeing this on the heals of Hong's Nobody's Daughter Haewon I have to wonder why Hong is such a critical darling.  As I've said before, all of his films of late are very similar, so  similar that you could probably inter-cut his films with very little difference. I mean the same actors and actresses are in the films as are the same locations. Several of the writers at the screening I attended were disappointed in the film. They like me were becoming aware that Hong seems to be spinning his wheels creatively.

Should you see the film? Are you a fan of the director? Then by all means. If you're not you may want to skip it.

Zatoichi's Pilgrimage (1966)

I don't want to give up my faith in people... - Zatoichi

When the Zatoichi films were all released on DVD in the US for the first time about 10 years ago there was one film not included in the release. My investigation back in the day had the film turned up a comment saying that the film was intentionally held back from release for two reasons, the wishes of the family of star Shintaro Katsu as well as the film not being like the other films in the series and  being less action packed. I don't know how true the story of the reasons is, but I do know that the only way I ever found to get the film until the Criterion release was as an unsubtitled DVD from Japan/Yes Asia.

Having owned all of the Zatoichi films on DVD there was no reason to upgrade to the Criterion Box except to get this film, however since I really wanted to see Zatoichi's Pilgrimage and it meant getting all the films on Bluray in a kick ass box set I decided to splurge and get the collection.

Lantern for a blind man? You have a wry sense of humor...

Easily one of my favorite Zatoichi films, this change of pace truly is something wonderful.

The plot of the film is set in motion with Zatoichi setting off on a pilgrimage of 88 temples to do penance for all the people he's killed. However from the outset things go wrong and his prayer not to have kill anyone is broken almost instantly. Attacked by a lone man Ichi must kill him to survive.  Heart heavy he once more sets off on the road followed by the man's horse who directs him to the dead man's sister who tries kill him. Ichi doesn't move and is wounded. Feeling remorse she tends to Ichi and takes him in.

It transpires that the girl's brother was hired by a local gang leader to kill Ichi, the hope was to get the brother out of the way so he could take over the village and surrounding land. The villagers are aware of the plan but hope Ichi will take on their enemy and leave their hands clean.

This is in a weird way it's an interesting riff on the Seven Samurai with the role of the farmers much less noble. They are in their own ways just as bad as the gangsters. They won't even help the one protecting them. As Ichi remarks earlier in the film the good people are rarely as good as they pretend to be.

What I love about the film is it really is operating on a level beyond the action. Notions of regret, redemption and forgiveness run all the way through it. Ichi's journey, and this is a journey, is marvelously emphasized by the long shots of him on the road or at the bottom of long staircases. We know the path he is traveling because of the long distances we see him travel.

Over the course of the film we are forced to ponder if violence necessary? More importantly is if we choose to do nothing what does that mean for others? I may choose the path of non-violence but that may mean someone else has to choose violence. This is a very heady film, probably the most heady of the entire series and it's a shame that it hasn't readily been available before since it colors the character and the series in a very interesting light.

Of course if you're not like me and prone to love philosophy there is the story and the set pieces, from the opening stair climb, to the battle on the bridge, to the feast and finally the final battle that will get your blood pumping.

This is a great film even by the high standards of the Zatoichi series and a must see.

Zatoichi's Vengeance (1966)

I live in a world with only two Zatoichi films. The first film, Revenge, makes all kinds of allusions to the character's past life and past world. I mean, it’s centered on the death of a master whose role is only vaguely hinted at, and he is surrounded by people who knew him back in the day (or have at least heard of him).

Vengeance, on the other hand, is self-contained. Nobody knows who Zatoichi is, and the film doesn’t even assume that you do. If you know the film is about a blind swordsman, you’re golden. So, Zatoichi’s Vengeance serves as a better introduction to the character of Zatoichi than Zatoichi’s Revenge does.

Even so, I’m glad I saw Zatoichi’s Vengeance second.

In my two-film world, Zatoichi’s Vengeance is The Dark Knight to Revenge’s Batman Begins. (It’s an imperfect analogy, but stick with me.) Revenge is the origin story. Here is a man who returns to his old stomping ground to find out that his master has been killed and his master’s daughter has been pulled into prostitution and treated horrendously. Even without any real context, these are pretty good reasons to follow a man as he exacts his revenge upon the people who have wronged him, his master, and his town.

Also, he’s blind, like a bat. (Except bats aren’t blind, but whatever. Not the point.)

For whatever reason, the word “vengeance” feels darker than “revenge.” They technically mean the same thing, but VENGEANCE is an excessive, horrible thing, whereas revenge is honorable, logical, and acceptable.

And so, Zatoichi’s Vengeance is a much darker film than Revenge. Though Zatoichi defeats evil in the end (there are literally a dozen films left to go), it’s bittersweet rather than triumphant. ­Vengeance, you see, is about Zatoichi’s weaknesses, his imperfections. Here is a blind man masquerading as an ultra-heroic swordsman. Without his bladed cane, he is nothing more than a bumbling fool. But even with the cane in hand, he's still human.

Zatoichi happens upon another blind man, a Biwa-playing priest who has been blind since birth (unlike Zatoichi, who apparently developed the condition as a child). The priest’s senses are even better than Zatoichi’s (he sensed Zatoichi from a hundred yards away, whereas Zatoichi didn’t notice him until they were mere feet apart), and he speaks cryptically about Zatoichi’s outsider status. He can’t fit in with blind men or with sighted ones. To them, he is just a freak.

Like the Joker. (I’m going to run this metaphor into the ground. Don’t you worry.)

After following the priest’s advice and heading to an apparently-quiet town, he finds that this place has been overrun by a gang boss who is making everyone pay him lots of money to keep their businesses open.

Zatoichi enters on this, and eventually it becomes his mission to help these people. But he is ambivalent. He is as capable a fighter as they come (as much was proven in Revenge), but the priest appears again and seeds doubt into his mind. He had shown off his skills in front a young boy, one who now had the thirst for power. (Not in the megalomaniacal way, although if he showed up later in Sympathy for Lady Zatoichi like that guy from The Incredibles, I would totally not be surprised.) But he doesn’t want to be the corrupting power, and so he must do that thing that Batman must do (although in a totally different way):

“Endure.”

And so we are subjected to Zatoichi being savagely beaten and nearly drowned in front of the small boy. Despite the weapon of choice and the body count, neither Zatoichi film is particularly blood-soaked, but Zatoichi’s face after that beating is drenched. It’s tough to watch, but it is undoubtedly the most compelling scene in either of the films. This is a man trying to do right by a young boy who he feels responsible for, a boy he really doesn’t know at all, and he must suffer in the process.

Fascinating.

Seriously. It’s fascinating. And it’s made all the more fascinating by having seen Revenge (and presumably the other early films). The moment where he admits to being afraid is powerful no matter what, and would work even in this self-contained story, but with greater context comes greater responsibility, and it’s all the more heartbreaking to see his fall from glory. As he walks off into the sunset at the film's end, the people he tried his hardest to help are distraught. Death has consequences, something that Revenge never really acknowledged. Vengeance does, and is far more powerful because of it.

Zatoichi and the Chess Expert (1965)

Zatoichi and the Chess Expert was definitely the first Zatoichi movie I watched way back in high school, and I realized that a couple minutes into the film. Recalling this movie in my review for The Tale of Zatoichi, I wrote that the blind swordsman blew a tick into a man's eye as an expert evade. In fact, it was the burning ember from Zatoichi's tobacco pipe. That makes more sense than a tick, and I'm surprised I forgot this scene happens on a boat. I remembered very little of the movie apart from generally liking it, but now I know why. This is a film that needs to be seen as part of the series rather than on its own. Had I watched a few of the previous movies before Zatoichi and the Chess Expert way back in high school, the film would have been a resonant and well-observed chapter in the unfolding story of Zatoichi.

That's to be expected this far in. When Alec reviewed Zatoichi's Revenge, he mentioned that he had some difficulty jumping into the film series midstream since there were so many questions about continuity. This is the same thing that keeps people from buying long-running comics or even watching shows mid-season--that unmistakable intimidation of in media res. Starting from the beginning isn't always necessary (e.g., you don't really need to read A Study In Scarlet before The Hound of the Baskervilles), but it also depends on where you jump in. Shintaro Katsu's performance is a strong throughline, and the basics of Zatoichi are quickly hewn in each film, and yet the movies vary in plot and quality, so some may be better mid-starting-points than others.

Zatoichi and the Chess Expert is the third film in the series directed by Kenji Misumi, who also did the original film as well as the eighth film, Fight, Zatoichi, Fight. What's struck me most about this movie is it's a blend of "Zatoichi's greatest hits" and the way it uses variations on a theme. The dice game hustle used in previous films figures heavily in the plot, for example, part of which involves buying medicine for a sick little girl. The other half of the story, in broad strokes, involves an uneasy friendship with a traveling samurai. While I found Zatoichi and the Doomed Man a little stale because it was so rote, Chess Expert uses the familiar tropes of the Zatoichi films to deepen the pathos of the character and even provide a sense of story progression.

Part of the intrigue comes from the interactions between Zatoichi and the chess-playing samurai, Tadasu Jumonji (Mikio Narita). Their back and forth during the games reveals, among other things, a kind of slippage in Zatoichi's character. Though blind, Zatoichi's been in control of so many situations. In this film, he stumbles. His old tricks don't always work, and he makes mistakes a little more often than he should. Is it life on the road that's wearing him down? Is it life in general? As these questions floated in my head, I became especially interested in the verbal chess games between Zatoichi and Tadasu. They're sizing each other up as swordsmen and revealing their martial philosophies.

Chess Expert offers forward movement through a combination of acknowledgement and variation. There's another woman named Tane here (played by Kaneko Iwasaki), which is an obvious callback to the first film as well as the fourth film, Zatoichi the Fugitive, and also a nice nod to the idea of a replacement Chiyo in The Tale of Zatoichi Continues. There's also a sense of thematic continuation from the baby in Fight, Zatoichi, Fight thanks to the sick girl in this film. So we have two familiar ideas in the series that have been joined: lost love and fatherhood. (Joined by moral duty and kindness, another familiar part of the character and his travails.) Zatoichi still dreams of domesticity, but again, this is something unattainable, constantly subverted by the sins of his past that won't be forgotten and cannot be absolved.

Zatoichi and the Chess Expert may not be the most action-packed film in the series or one with the most memorable set pieces, but it's a film with some surprising emotional stakes and danger. By the end of these 26 Zatoichi movies, I'll have to consider for myself which films are most essential to the loose narrative and the realization of the character. Chess Expert is certainly one of them, and it gives me high hopes for Misumi's three remaining Zatoichi movies. (Based on the brief plot synopsis I've read, I'm especially looking forward to Zatoichi: The Festival of Fire.)

Zatoichi and the Doomed Man (1965)

Early in this month of Zatoichi, I set a certain personal expectation on the franchise: I would think of the series less as a tight 26-film cycle and more as an ongoing comic book series. (Or maybe even as a season of a TV show.) This would place less pressure on each film as being part of a cohesive, ongoing storytelling project, allowing the movies to exist as their own animal. This would also allow me to enjoy each film on its own terms and consider each movie as its own statement on Zatoichi.

With all that in mind, Zatoichi and the Doomed Man, the eleventh film in the franchise, may be the first Zatoichi film I've written about that's left me a bit cold. There's so much it has going for it, at least on its surface. The set-up involves Zatoichi trying to clear the name of a man condemned to die whom he meets in prison in the film's prologue. The film is directed by Kazuo Mori, who also directed the fast-paced second movie in the series, The Tale of Zatoichi Continues. There are fine moments of comedy, particularly involving the morally bankrupt monk played by Kanbi Fukiyama, and there's a certain sense of the universe of Zatoichi being filled with sleazeoids and cheats who are simply trying to get by.

And yet what should be a brisk movie about grifters doing their thing feels a bit rote, even despite a good performance (as usual) by Shintaro Katsu and a pretty good finale, all things considered. There are memorable-enough scenes in Zatoichi and the Doomed Man, like the archery bit, or the moments of mistaken identity (if you've seen the movie, you know what I mean), or the great philosophical scene in which Zatoichi encounters the ocean for the first time. And yet these feel like bits rather than something of a whole, like riffs on a well-known theme rather than familiar harmonies that open new doors. I remember scenes but not the film; extracts, but that's it. Even the transitions between scenes feel abrupt, as if any pillow words (or pillow images) were excised to keep things moving even to the detriment of rhythm of the film.

I think the reason for this coldness I experienced has to do with two things. For one, we're eleven movies into the Zatoichi series and, as much as I love the character, there are times where events seem a little too familiar. Like any run in an ongoing comic book series or any stretch in a TV show, there will be issues and episodes that are just okay at best. Such is The Doomed Man. Serviceable but not essential, sort of like a fill-in arc or a filler episode with its own decent parts.

The other reason I felt cold about The Doomed Man may have a lot to do with coincidence. In Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses"--a scathing old-school diss-track in the form of angry criticism--Twain wrote about keeping apparent miracles out of stories, but if they should occur, the author must make the miracles seem plausible. The archery feats of a blind masseur are in themselves a kind of miraculous thing, but Zatoichi's sightless abilities are well-established by now, and I will allow this miracle to stand as part of many other suspensions of disbelief. What I won't allow legs is bald coincidence, and so much of the plot machinery in The Doomed Man is built on coincidence. (As George Saunders, one of my favorite living writers, points out in his non-fiction piece "The United States of of Huck," Twain himself committed one of the most egregious acts of coincidence in writing with the final chapters of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.) While a blind man hitting a moving target with an arrow is just fine for me, there's something about overdone interconnectedness that strains credibility. (Don't ask why. I don't know.)

Mori has one more Zatoichi movie in the 26-film series under his belt, 1972's Zatoichi at Large. I wonder what that will be like. What's interesting here is comparing a film by the second Zatoichi director to Fight, Zatoichi, Fight, the second film by Kenji Misumi, the original Zatoichi director. There was something novel about the second Misumi effort, whereas this second Mori film feels so played out even though it should stand out in theory. It may also be my own sense of being Zatoichi'd out mid-month. I love the character still, but this movie feels like something for completists rather than something essential.