A major difference between 13 Assassins and The Seven Samurai is that the titular assassins of Miike’s film (who are samurai (except for one dude), leading me to wonder if the title is poorly translated for it’s English language release) are not defending a town from bandits. Instead, they are using the defense of a town as a trap to kill a sadistic young lord, who is on his way to become an influential member of the Shogun council. The assassins are essentially playing a game of cat-and-mouse, attempting to manipulate the lord’s path and send him directly into their trap. Unfortunately, Miike only focuses on one side of the cat-and-mouse game, which I suppose means it can’t really be called a cat-and-mouse game.

Although at one point we hear that the samurai leading the lord’s escort might be getting the idea that something is up, Miike never tries to engage any sort of real conflict or back-and-forth between the two factions. The bulk of the first half of the film is samurai talking, pointing at maps, and occasionally hammering logs. Miike had the opportunity to create some tension, but by focusing on the side of the assassins alone, he ignores the potential of the sadist villain and his honorable guard.

Without that tension, the first half of 13 Assassins is pretty boring. There’s a little bit of humour when the assassins enlist the help of a common woodsman, but laughing at poor people (or laughing at poor people laughing at rich people) can only go so far. After about an hour I was a saying to myself, “You know what this movie needs, Shawn? It’s needs some crazy samurai fight scenes.” I was not disappointed.

Although there’s really only one big fight scene in the movie (the assassins do encounter a band of hired thugs early on in their journey, but that’s over so quickly it’s not even worth counting) it’s a doozy of a fight scene. Hundreds of guards versus twelve samurai and the woodsman guy. There are traps laid, all sorts of shit blows up, and then the thirteen assassins get down to the business of kicking some ass. And ass they do kick.

The final showdown of 13 Assassins is the very definition of Shakespearean-in-magnitude. Countless people die, assassins come out of nowhere to save their fellow assassins, and in the end, it comes to a final confrontation between two samurai and the sadistic lord. And like any proper Shakespearean-in-magnitude ending, pretty much everyone dies. Except for one guy, who I was pretty sure died but then showed up at the end all alive and clearly not dead. I don’t know if I wasn’t paying attention well enough or if I’m just racist and can’t tell the difference between Japanese people unless Ichiro! and that chick who played Go-Go in Kill Bill are involved. Or maybe Miike was making some sort of artistic statement about supernatural intervention in bringing about the eventual decline of the shogunate. I can’t really say for sure.

Despite the awesomeness of the fight sequence that ends the movie, 13 Assassins just isn’t all that great. It starts off like Ocean’s 11, but with samurai and there are thirteen of them. Then it becomes like the montage sequence in an episode of the A-Team, you know, the one where the build a tank or something to fight the evil ranchers. Then there’s ten minutes of a Michael Bay movie. Then, finally, we get some crazy samurai fightin’ action. It’s good samurai fightin’ action, really good, but not good enough to make 13 Assassins anything more than a run-of-the-mill samurai action flick. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give 13 Assassins three tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. If you like samurai movies, then give this movie a shot, but start at the chapter where the sadistic lord and his guard show up in town.

What makes People on Sunday so historically interesting is the number of future greats that worked on the film. Billy Wilder, Edgar G. Ulmer, Robert Sidomak, and Fred Zinneman all had a hand in the making of the film. It’s interesting that a film billed as “A Film Without Actors” would feature a quartet of filmmakers that would later go on to great individual success. Actually, I suppose having amateur actors has nothing to do with the quality of the crew who made the film. I should probably say that it’s trivial that a film billed as “A Film Without Actors” would feature a quartet of filmmakers that would later go on to great individual success. But it is an interesting bit of trivia.

Despite having a trio of future noir masters, People on Sunday disappoints in terms of visual style. Although it is not a documentary, it is shot as one, making the film completely devoid of the chiaroscuro lighting and oblique angles that many silent films of Weimar Germany are known for. There is some snappy editing that’s pretty impressive, but not as impressive as the editing of films coming out of the Soviet Union at the time.

As for the drama of the film, there really isn’t all that much. The characters (played by non-professional actors) go on dates and whatnot, but there’s not much of a plot to speak of. And there’s certainly nothing approaching what a director like Charlie Chaplin and was doing with plot and character in his films of the era.

Essentially, all that People on Sunday has going for it is the trivial aspects of its production. Using non-professional actors, location shooting, and focusing on the aspects of ordinary life would eventually become aspects of the Italian neo-realist movement. And, as previously mentioned, four people associated with the making of the film would eventually become successful directors, with two of them winning Oscars. Aside from those nuggets of film history trivia, there’s not much to People on Sunday. It doesn’t compare to the German silent films of the day, and Berlin: Symphony of a Great City did a much better job capturing the daily life in a German city.

There is a quick scene of a man throwing a child into the air that’s pretty cool (there is far too little throwing of children in cinema), but other than that, People on Sunday pales in comparison to other works of the same time period. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give People on Sunday two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

By casting his vampire family in the British countryside, Haig makes some choice alterations to the typical vampire myth elements. Vampires aren’t vampires, they are blood addicts–living people who crave blood and gain power from it. Some of the common vampire ailments remain: blood addicts are weakened by sunlight and have allergic reactions to garlic, but they are not immortal. They can die of old age, but aging works at a much slower pace, allowing blood addicts to live for hundreds of years. The novel also presents an alternate history where all the great artists (Byron, Hendrix, Douglas Sirk) are blood addicts and the lesser talents (Sting, Phil Collins) are not. Also, when the blood addicts drink blood, they can fly. That part doesn’t make a lot of sense. They don’t change into bats or fog or anything like that, they just up and fly around, like characters from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. It’s very easy to view Haig’s blood addicts as variations on Popeye: without their spinach (blood), they’re weak and tired; with their spinach, they have the powers of superheroes. I realize that a novel where vampires are really Popeyes might seem a little ridiculous, but The Radleys manages to avoid being too outlandish. In fact, rather than describing it as a novel where vampires are really Popeyes, I should categorize The Radleys as a novel about middle-class suburban ennui, or middle-class suburban malaise, or middle-class suburban [insert pretentious foreign-sounding word here]. The Radleys isn’t so much a typical vampire novel as it is a Jonathan Franzen novel, if Jonathan Franzen novels had vampires and weren’t so insufferably awful.

The Radleys tells the story of a family struggling to find its identity. The parents, Peter and Helen, are abstaining blood addicts, using meat to feed their cravings and attempting to live as normal a life as possible. Their teenage children, Rowan and Clara, are completely unaware of their true nature, believing that they suffer from hereditary medical conditions that cause photo-sensitivity, insomnia, and migraine headaches. The family tries to lead a regular life, but the parents suffer from a largely loveless marriage and the children are outcasts at school. This sounds like the makings of a cliched tale of mid-life crises and teenagers learning to be cool by taking of their glasses and dressing like whores, but Haig’s insertion of the vampire element makes The Radleys far more interesting than other stories of domestic depression.

Peter and Helen suffer from a loveless marriage because they cannont access the thing that brings them the most passion–blood. Rowan and Clara are seen as freaks because they are actually freaks, not because their dirtbag troglodyte classmates look down on quiet teens who like poetry. The vampirism in the story provides a source for the family’s problems and, when Clara attacks and kills a teen who tries to take advantage of her (thus forcing her parents to come clean with the truth about their family), vampirism provides the impetus for the family to discover who they really are and finally function as a real family. Plus, there are super-evil, mind-controlling brothers, vampire-hunting secret police, and musing on fictional Booker prize shortlisted novels. You won’t find that in any teen paranormal romance. (Well. you might find the first two.)

I won’t give much more about the novel away, because I honestly think that The Radleys is a novel whose enjoyment hinges entirely on whether or not books about secret vampires living in a nice country home is something that appeals to you. The novel is much more than a run-of-the-mill vampire story, but a lot of the novel depends on the reader’s willingness to accepts that there are a certain few who, by drinking blood, can fly around and carry corpses out to the North Sea. If that’s your sort of thing, you’ll probably like The Radleys. If it’s not, I’d suggest you still give the book a chance. Haig does a wonderful job of pacing his novel with very short chapters. It makes the 350 pages of the novel read like a 137 page novella. There are some predictable twists in the story, and the ending is far too contrived, tying things up in a convenient (and not very Shakespearean-in-magnitude) package. As much as I love the basic concept and execution of the novel, I can’t give it my highest rating. So, on my scale of one to five tiny Ludivigne Sagniers, I give The Radleys 4 tiny Ludivigne Sagniers.

The Flag, The Duke, and America's Team

This afternoon, the Seattle Seahawks will host the New Orleans Saints in a NFC Wildcard Playoff game. The Seahawks had a 7-9 record during the regular season, so there are some in the sports-watching community that are none too happy with a team with a losing record not only making the playoffs, but hosting a home playoff game as well. I’m here to tell those naysayers to go suck a lemon. The Seahawks belong in the playoffs and everyone should support them, not because they are a good team, but because they are America’s team.

Now some of you might be saying, “But Shawn? How can such a pathetic team be America’s team? I mean, they probably wouldn’t have won three games had they played in a division other than the NFC Worst.” That’s a good question, and a clever pun on the NFC West division name, but let me provide you with some reasons why the Seattle Seahawks are America’s Team.

• The Seahawks are mediocre: There is nothing more American than mediocrity. America ranks 17th in Democracy, 12th in Sexual Confidence, 31st in Nocturnal Safety for Women, 48th in Leprosy (is that good or bad?), and 21st in Happiness. Those are all some pretty mediocre randomly cherry-picked statistics.
• Loudness: Americans are loud. Our cars are loud. Our movies are loud. Hell, even though our TV shows are loud, we Americans still have to make our commercials even louder. You know what else is loud? Qwest Field is loud. And the Seahawks take pride in being loud, just as Americans should take pride in the Seahawks taking pride in being loud.
• Second Chances: America loves second chances. Can’t make it in another country? Come to America, where you’ll have the chance to live your dream. Want to murder dogs and play professional football? America will be mad at you for a little bit for the whole dog murdering thing, but as long as we can gamble on you, you’ll get your second chance. Even if you allow the worst terrorist attack on American soil and start two wars that the nation can’t afford, you’ll still get a second chance from America. Demonstrating their love for the American institution of the second chance, the Seahawks are coached by Pete Carroll, who had a fairly disappointing coaching run in the NFL before moving on to USC, where he fielded a very successful squad, mostly because of all the cheating and recruiting violations and whatnot. But despite the fact that Pete Carroll has shown that he can only be successful when given unfair advantages, the Seahawks said, “We don’t care if you’re a cheater! In fact, we could probably use some cheating!” and gave Carroll a second chance.
• Meaningless Gestures: Meaningless gestures are a great American tradition. We love bumper stickers, car magnets, rubber bracelets, and pretty much anything that makes it look like we support something, but without actually having to do something that might actually support our troops or cure cancer. Students stand for the Pledge of Allegiance every day. Congress slowly reads most of the Constitution, but doesn’t stick around to actually hear it read in its almost entirety. And the Seahawks, continuing this grand American tradition, fly the 12th Man Flag, as a meaningless gesture for the fans who have been paying more money for a large beer even though it contains the same amount of beer as a small. There are few things more American than paying lip service to a group of people then taking their money. It’s practically the foundation of American governance.

So you see webcrawlers and blog spammers who read this blog, the Seahawks have a lot in common with America. So instead of mocking them, or demanding a restructuring of the NFL’s playoff system, take some time today and root for the real America’s Team. Not the Dallas Cowboys with their cheap marketing gimmicks of giant video screens and titties. Not the New Orleans Saints with their coincidentally playing in a city that has suffered ridiculuous amounts of hardship over the last few years. The Seattle Seahawks, with their mediocrity, their disregarded for previous instances of corruption and incompetence, and their shameless pandering to an exploited fan base, are truly America’s Team. Go Seahawks!

The Reapers are the Angels tells the story of Temple, a fifteen-year-old girl trying to survive in a zombie-infested hellscape. The thing is, zombies are really a threat to Temple. She has a Buffy-like aplomb for killing, which means that she has little trouble dismembering and beheading the shuffling meatskins, as zombies are called in the novel. Her skill in killing makes the beginning of the novel somewhat hard to fathom. Temple is living in a lighthouse, catching fresh fish for food, and safely removed from society. She sees one zombie wash up on shore and she’s all like, “Oh no! I have to run away!” Why not just stay in the lighthouse, which would probably be easy to defend, rather than go roaming around in the wastelands of Florida? It doesn’t make any sense.

As Temple continues her travels, she meets people, easily kills zombies, and wanders around. It’s not very interesting. It’s actually a lot like a not very interesting imitation of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. About halfway through the novel, things start to pick up when Temple kills a man and that man’s brother, Moses Todd, vows revenge. Of course, this doesn’t make it any more of a zombie novel, because the antagonist is human and zombies are just ancillary background characters.

Things really start to pick up when Temple, still on the run from Moses, finds a mentally retarded man carrying his dead grandmother and a note reading:

Hello! My name is Maury and I wouldn’t hurt a fly. My grandmother loves me and wishes she could take care of me forever, but she’s most likely gone now. I have family out west. If you find me, will you take me to them? God bless you.

Temple, unable to turn her back on a helpless innocent, makes escorting Maury to Texas her primary goal. Moses is still following them, occasionally making an appearance, but the focus of the novel becomes Temple’s efforts at defining herself. Is she a caring young girl capable of protecting and saving for Maury, or is she nothing more than a violent killing machine? In the final third of the novel, zombies become almost non-existent (although there are some mutants that pop in for some odd reason) and the novel becomes much more philosophical. Even the conversations between Temple and Moses concentrate on the nature of evil and Temple’s morality. The also fight some mutants, and again, I don’t quite understand why the mutants are there.

Although the novel wanders into strange territory for a brief spell, Bell redeems himself with the final showdown between Temple and Moses. It’s during this showdown that Temple first seems vulnerable. Fighting zombies and mutants, there’s never any question that she’s going to win, but the showdown with Moses is brilliantly suspenseful. Bell’s talents as a writer are on full display as Temple, facing down the barrel of a gun, evaluates her options and plans her last-ditch effort for survival. I won’t reveal the Shakespearean-in-magnitude conclusion, but I will say that it surprised me to the extent that I actually went back and reread a page or two, just to make sure I hadn’t misread something. The resolution is shocking, surprising, but not absurd or unbelievable.

It’s a shame that the first half of The Reapers are the Angels isn’t nearly as good as the second half. In all honesty, you could start reading this novel about ten before the start of Part 2 of the book and it would make perfect sense. It might even be a better novel.

Although the novel drags at the beginning, The Reapers are the Angels picks up enough at the end to still be a worthwhile read. On my scale of one to five tiny Ludivigne Sagniers, I give The Reapers are the Angels three tiny Ludivigne Sagniers.

How am I supposed to root for a hero with a tramp stamp?

Generally speaking, I like genre movies. Horror, sci-fi, dog-cop buddy comedies, all that fun stuff. A well-done genre piece is doubly satisfying: not only do you get the enjoyment of watching a quality flick, but you also get the satisfaction of watching something that transcends the low-budget schlock and rubbish that predominates genre films. Conversely, a genre film also has the potential to be doubly disappointing, as is the case with Gareth Edward’s Monsters.

Monsters had so much potential to be a great genre film. A decent plot (aliens are living along the US-Mexico border and a photojournalist needs to escort the daughter of his publisher safely back to the US), very good cinematography (shot by the writer-director Edwards), and nice use of special effects (also done by Edwards) that help conceal the low-budget nature of the film (estimated $800,000 budget, according to IMDb). Unfortunately, writer-director-cinematographer-production designer-special effects guy Edwards apparently didn’t want to make a genre film. The fundamental flaw of Monsters is that the film is desperately trying to avoid being a genre film, while liberally ripping off a variety of other, better genre films.

To trace the problems with Monsters, we much first trace the path of narrative thievery that meanders through the film. The movie starts of as Cloverfield, with hand-held night-vision camerawork documenting an attack of a giant monster. The monsters (which are technically aliens, but we’ll get to that later) are essentially giant land-kraken, so the argument could be made that Monsters is borrowing from Pirates of the Caribbean or Clash of the Titans or China Miéville’s wonderfully awesome novel Kraken. But I think the concept of a giant land-krakens roaming Central America is fairly universal, so I won’t fault Edwards for using land-kraken in his film. I also should give credit where credit is due: the five minutes that open Monster are exponentially better than anything in Cloverfield. One of the strengths of Monsters is Edwards’ cinematography. He shows an admirable adeptness as shooting night sequences and using the darkness of the night to hide his budgetary limitations. But sadly, not all of Monsters is nighttime footage of rampaging land-kraken.

As I mentioned earlier, Monsters is a film ashamed of being a genre film. It tries ever so hard to be something more. Edwards the writer tries to turn the film into an indie character drama, complete with indie drama stereotypes like non-professional actors and allegedly improvised dialogue. But Edwards the casting agent failed miserably in one regard: the stars of Monsters are not the level of actors that can get away indie drama artistry. This isn’t Chrisotpher Guest and his stable of improv wizards, it’s the guy who played Beg-Bug on an episode of My Name is Earl. The “opportunistic” (according to IMDb) dialogue is awful, and without decent dialogue, there’s no chance for the characters to be developed in any meaningful way.

Both characters are types, but not genre film types. There’s no tough kickass woman or world-weary man. The two main characters are a spoiled, beautiful rich girl who has real problems (she’s just like the rest of us!!) and a sleazy douchebag who, with the worldly guidance of the spoiled, beautiful rich girl who has real problems, learns to become slightly less of a douchebag. It’s character development (if it could even be called that) at its most elementary and uninspired level. So we’ve got two uninteresting characters who get out-acted by pretty much every non-professional actor in the movie, but there’s one character who we haven’t addressed yet: the land-kraken. Unfortunately, Edwards doesn’t spend very much time addressing the land-kraken island.

As I mentioned in a brief plot summary above, Monsters is about aliens that come to Earth and live in a quarantine zone between the US and Mexico. Although this plot seems remarkably similar to the basic plot of District 9, Monsters never goes further than superficial similarities. Where District 9 explained the culture, history, and character of the aliens, Monsters makes no such efforts. Instead of investigating the reasons and history behind the quarantine zone, we get two characters, staring at the wall that separates Mexico from the US (which looks really good in the film), talking about whether or not they ever practiced laughing. Edwards had the opportunity to go full-on sci-fi, to make the titular “monsters” of his film a character in the film, but he chose to give us mediocre improv workshopping.

There are really only two sequences when the land-kraken come into play: the ending of the film  and a jungle sequence that is ripped straight out of Jurassic Park. The two characters are in a car when their group is attacked by the land-kraken. Some people get out of the car and are promptly killed, while our two protagonists hide quietly in the car and get to live. Oh, and the dead goat that we feel bad for in Jurassic Park is replaced with an anonymous five-year-old Mexican girl. And, naturally, the T-Rex is replaced with a land-kraken. But other than that, the major action sequence of the film is Jurassic Park redux.

That brings us to the end of the film, which share similarities with The Road and War of the Worlds. The two main characters wander through the abandoned remains of a border town, steal stuff from dead people, and encounter a crazy person with a shopping cart. And, for some reason, a phone in the convenience store still works, despite the fact that the town has evidently been bombed by an air strike. And the land-kraken come around and have sex. Or at least I think that’s what they’re doing. Whether or not the land-kraken scene was influenced by Japanese tentacle porn remains to be seen. I’m not familiar enough with Japanese tentacle porn to compare the land-kraken boning to that genre of pornography. (And yes, I’m purposefully mentioning Japanese tentacle porn again and again to lure in more misguided Googlers.) Perhaps if the land-kraken were more of a character in the film, rather than just a special effects set piece, I’d have a better understanding of what they were doing in the convenience store parking lot. Or, it could be that this is a conscious choice on the part of writer-director Edwards to be intentionally ambiguous, just like the overrated art-house films he’s trying to emulate.

After that land-kraken fucking scene, the real end of the movie rolls around. I don’t want to give too much away, but I will say that the ending is quite Shakespearean in magnitude. It’s the single moment in all of Monsters that Edwards manages to perfectly blend sci-fi genre excitement and clever artistry. If the whole movie could have been as good as the first and last five minutes, Monsters would be one of the greatest films ever made. Unfortunately, there’s 80 minutes of bad acting and lame attempts at character development in between. The film does avoid the clichés mainstream sci-fi films, in that there are no pissing robots and the world doesn’t explode, but it also manages to avoid the strengths of a good sci-fi films, like having more than a superficial sprinkling of science-fiction in the film. Monsters, although it had the potential to be a phenomenal sci-fi film, ends up being a mediocre indie road trip movie. So disappointing.

On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Monsters two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. Monsters is not a great movie, but I will definitely keep my eye on the future films of Gareth Edwards. As a director-cinematography-production designer-special effects guy, he does a bang-up job. As a writer, he could use some help.

The Domestic Crusaders

A play about a Pakistani-American family. In the introduction by Ishmael Reed, he writes something about the play not just being about Pakistani-Americans, but about all families. I suppose that’s true, but that doesn’t make The Domestic Crusaders any more interesting. And it certainly doesn’t make it comparable to Eugene O’Neill or Arthur Miller, as Reed tries to claim. The Domestic Crusaders, if you’ll pardon my sounding like local newspaper movie review, is rather domestic.

Fountain City

A fragment of an abandoned novel by Michael Chabon, with facing annotations and commentary. This is something that any aspiring or struggling writer could find solace in. Although some of his commentary is mundane (former names of airports, which friends of his mother’s his characters are named after, etc.) Chabon gives rare insight into the working process of a novelist. He points out ideas that started to work well, those that didn’t, and tries to explain how a novelist creates and how a novelist fails to create. It’s super-interesting, but I suppose only for those who are interested in writing.

Ma Su Mon

A booklet from a forthcoming Voice of Witness series about life in Burma. It tells the story of Ma Su Mon, a college student imprisoned for a year and eventually forced to leave her family in Burma because of her association with opposition party organizations. The booklet provides an informative look into the life of the Burmese people, although it’s very blandly written, which makes some sense considering the book is a collection of narrativized interviews. There’s been so much good creative nonfiction coming out the last couple of years, that this journalistic approach seems trite and borderline uninteresting.

Jungle Geronimo in Gay Paree

The title pretty much nails exactly what this book is about: a low-rent Tarzan knockoff in Paris. The story reads like a Dinosaur Comic where every character is T-Rex. If that’s your sort of thing, you’ll probably be a fan of Jungle Geronimo.

Bicycle Built for Two

A screenplay about old-timey baseball and tandem bicycles, written for Mike Myers and Dana Carvey. It’s not nearly as funny as The Love Guru.

The Instructions

I’ve written about Adam Levin’s The Instructions before and the 40-page sample included in McSweeney’s 36 is a perfect example of everything I found great about the novel and everything that frustrated me about the book. Great dialogue, including a tour-de-force recreation of a post-fight middle school locker room cacophony, but the sample also displays the violently unlikeable aspects of the characters that exasperated me over course of the novel’s 1000 pages. Still, a good addition for those who might not be entirely sold on a such a massive undertaking of a novel.

Stories and Letters

A good batch of letters this time around, especially those by Steve Delahoyde. Most of the collection is taken up by Colm Toibin’s longer story, continuing what seems to be a trend in the recent quarterlies of including a longer, generally disappointing story. Two of the other three stories, however, really shine. John Brandon continues to be one of my favourite authors, as it seems like everything he writes is gold. And Imet Prcic’s “At the National Theater” was a story so wonderfully strange that I had to immediately read it a second time.

Final Thoughts

When McSweeney’s sticks to its guns–literary storytelling–is still puts out tremendous writing by talented authors. When it tries too hard to be clever and churns out the wink-wink-nudge-nudge so-bad-it’s good silliness (which is better suited for the Internet Tendency than the Quarterly Concern) it still has a tendency to fall flat. The quality of McSweeney’s 36 lies in two stories, The Instructions, and the sweaty head box. On my scale of one to five tiny Ludivigne Sagniers, I give McSweeney’s 36 three tiny Ludivigne Sagniers, although one of those tiny Luddys is due entirely to the head box, and not the contents contained within.

Black Swan tells the story of a potentially great ballerina (Natalie Portman) who struggles to embody the role of both the white swan and the black swan in Swan Lake. Throughout the film, she is haunted by images of Evil Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis (who sometimes turns into Evil Natalie Portman), her mom (who is like an old Natalie Portman and, although she is not as overtly evil as Evil Natalie Portman, is still pretty mean) , Winona Ryder (seriously, Winona Ryder is in the movie. It was a pleasant surprise), and is tormented by her director (who is pretty much the only character in the movie that does not physically resemble Natalie Portman, which means that, as good as Vincent Cassel is in the film, the role probably should have been played by Bill Kaulitz). Basically, the story is about a timid performer who struggles taking on a role that is so diametrically opposite of her natural personality. Also, there are scenes of Natalie Portman masturbating and having cunnilingus performed on her by Mila Kunis, if that’s your sort of thing.

Brushing aside the Cinemax After Dark interlude for a moment, Black Swan is all about Natalie Portman. Considering that the only part of the Star Wars prequels I will willingly acknowledge is the scene with Natalie Portman chained to a post and that my favourite part of Adam Levin’s The Instructions is when the devout middle-school Israelites debate whether hanging a poster of Natalie Portman is a violation of the 2nd commandment, I fully support any quality Natalie Portman vehicle. And she is phenomenal in the film, as is the supporting cast. The use of Swan Lake score is done wonderfully, with the score being used for horror cues and suspense as well as the ballet scene. The fact that the score will not be eligible for an Academy Award is the greatest Oscar mishap since Ben Affleck tainted the history of the entire cinema with his Oscar win. The editing is masterful, the direction, even though Aronofsky uses more hand-held camera work that I prefer, is great, meaning that the film has all the making of the masterpiece. But it still falls short.

Despite long stretches of brilliance, there are times when it seems like Aronofsky and his screenwriters just said, “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if we put in a scene with Natalie Portman’s vagina being manhandled by somebody?” I don’t want to come across as a neo-Puritan prude, but the sex in Black Swan is a little over the top. I understand that the sexual awakening of Natalie Portman’s character is part of her overcoming her timid and virginal nature and embracing the Evil Natalie Portman that lies within, but do we really need a scene of ass-in-the-air masturbation? Yes, Aronkofsky is famous for the Requiem for a Dream’s ass-to-ass dildo scene, but I’d like to think that a director of his considerable talents would be able to move on from simple-minded ass fetishism and into a more subtle depiction of lust.

It’s odd that the major problem I have with Black Swan is the over sexualization of one of the sexiest ladies in the history of sexy ladies, but the softcore excursions of the film really do distract from the rest of the film. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Black Swan four tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

Mirageman is the story of a humble martial arts expert who takes crime-fighting into his own hands. Seeing a woman in danger, he beat the crap out of the woman’s assailants and saves her. It turns out that the woman is actually a television news reporter, so the rescue gets coverage on the news, inspiring the humble martial expert to make crime-fighting a regular part of his life.

In the early stages of the film, Mirageman comes across as an action spoof. Mirageman has difficulty getting in and out of his costume, and is viewed by the public (and the news station that continuously covers his adventures) as an object of ridicule, rather than as an actual hero. There’s even a cheesy 1970s Blaxploitation music score that accompanies many of the transition scenes. But Mirageman is not an action spoof. It is not Defendor or Kick-Ass or Special.  Mirageman is a real superhero movie, a movie about a man from a humble background who manages to accomplish great things. The writer/director, Ernesto Diaz Espinoza, suffers from bouts of genre confusion, but the film he has made is fundamentally better than most any of the other superhero movies recently released.

Since Mirageman is a low-budget film that is not, as far as I can tell after 3.7 seconds of Google searching, based on a comic book franchise, so there’s no need for the filmmakers to establish a long-running, money-making franchise, like an Iron Man or Spiderman film would. This gives Mirageman (both the character and the movie) something that even great superhero movies (like The Dark Knight) lack: mortality.

Superman isn’t going to die in the movies. Batman isn’t going to die. Spiderman isn’t going to die. Mirageman, on the other hand, is a vulnerable superhero. He doesn’t have super powers gifted by the yellow sun or radiation. He’s not a mutant, nor is he a vengeance-obsessed Richie Rich. He’s a normal guy, who just happens to be super awesome at karate. This means Mirageman doesn’t need fancy gadgets or magic powers, which means that Mirageman doesn’t suffer any obvious ill-effects from its low budget. The fights are well-choreographed punching and kicking, without fancy jumping, wire-tricks, or any particularly glaring uses of slow- or fast-motion photography.

The mortal and unspectacular nature of Mirageman also works to make him a more identifiable character. Instead of Batman calming stitching himself up as his butler and his military-industrial complex associates help him prepare for his next battle, we get Mirageman actually feeling pain, both physical and emotional. We see him tricked, taken advantage of, and abused. And because he’s Mirageman and not Spiderman or Wolverine, we don’t know how he’ll recover from and respond to these assaults. Essentially, Mirageman gives us a character to care about, not just a marketable costume to victoriously and predictably triumph in the end.

That’s not to say that Mirageman is without its flaws. It does feature the typical superhero structure of rise, questioning, and return. Despite this conventional narrative structure, the filmmakers to a brilliant job of handling the middle portion of the film, where Mirageman is forced to question his role as a hero in society. By adding a satirical critique of the entertainment-starved news media, the film again establishes itself as something more than just your typical dude-punching-dudes action flick. And the Shakespearean in magnitude, ending completely subverts the conventions of the superhero genre, which shows that Mirageman is more of a character-driven martial arts movie than it is a superhero movie.

The combination of quality fight scenes, well-crafted characters, and the use of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” make Miragman a can’t-miss flick. On my scale of one t0 five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Mirageman five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.