3.0, Korea

I Saw the Devil

2010 / Kim Ji-woon > Kim has defined himself as one of the most versatile mainstream directors in Korean cinema. With outings that include the very good neo-noir in A Bittersweet Life, a Western steampunk epic in The Good, the Bad and the Weird and his foray into the English language with Last Stand later this year, it’s little surprise he was able to secure two of Korea’s top actors for I Saw the Devil: Lee Byun-hun (who many in the U.S. know as Brian Lee a.k.a. Storm Shadow in G.I. Joe) and Min Sik-choi (who, known widely in the West for his role as Oldboy, makes a long-awaited return to the big screen).

There’s no smoke screen here: I Saw the Devil is about vengeance in the best way possible. Or is it the worst? That may, in fact, be the central question at bay. In his quest to avenge his wife’s death, a government agent falls so deep down the rabbit hole that we’re asked to second-guess how far we’d go to satisfy our deepest desires for revenge. But the lessons here aren’t anything extraordinary. We walk away feeling mildly disgusted with ourselves not because of the gruesome violence we’ve been exposed to, but because it didn’t mean much. Had this been made by a lesser filmmaker with lesser actors, it would have been naturally panned. But Kim, at the very least, knows how to direct an entertaining thriller that plays out with few visible regards for a moral compass. And though he’s slightly late to the game—the genre has become so saturated over the last decade that the film’s twists become relatively predictable—the film still works as a misdirection from our daily lives where we’re expected a greater level of human compassion.

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3.0, United States/Canada

Black Swan

2010 / Darren Aronofsky > The original script for Black Swan played out like a detective story, but Aronofsky is better than that. He didn’t want to approach paranoia driven by perfection in conventional plot techniques, especially after having made his directorial breakthrough on the topic in Pi. What he does here is more contained than his previous efforts, showing a kind of maturation: The first hour of the film works as a set-up (with incidental horror cues that create just the right amount of tension), and then he lets the game loose. The last third of the film builds in an incredible crescendo that culminates in Natalie Portman’s finest performance since Closer. Like Giulietta Masina’s face told a thousand stories at the end of Nights in Cabiria, Portman is able to evoke the motions of a transformation simply by looking into the camera. Overall, it’s a solid, controlled effort hampered by some shallow characterizations (such as Mila Kunis’s character as a cliched foil) that puts an unfair burden of the film’s success on its finale.

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3.0, United States/Canada

Easy A

2010 / Will Gluck > Easy A is effectively a star vehicle for Emma Stone. She presents herself with just the right aura of the girl next door fantasy without crossing over to blatant Pussycat Girls territory to keep the film in the realm of possibility for the average teenager. But as enjoyable as her performance is, the script constantly tries&#151and fails—to break cliches, then relents to being generic. Still, Stone is the only reason you watch this. Her charisma will carry her far, far away from Superbad.

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3.0, Korea

The Man from Nowhere

New York Asian Film Festival2010 / Lee Jeong-beom > Though the title hints at classic film noir, The Man from Nowhere is a clear-cut actioner with brutal and often exciting fight sequences mixed with overflowing emotional padding. Aside from a seemingly complex plot that has no real consequence, there are simply too many long shots with sorrow-filled melodies to take the film seriously. In retrospect, I’m convinced that the 6.2+ million tickets sold in its domestic market have been due to star Won Bin’s abs. But his glowing stomach aside, the film effectively works as a melodramatic version of Taken. There’s no doubt that if you could trim some of that sentimentality, the outcome would be far superior.

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3.0, United States/Canada

Funeral in Berlin

1966 / Guy Hamilton > It’s hard to believe the follow-up to The Ipcress File had the same cinematographer: The original had carefully constructed camera angles that contributed to the storytelling, but here Otto Heller’s camerawork feels generic and secondary. Also troubling is the change of mood: Michael Caine’s Harry Palmer is still shuffling through the bureaucracy to do his counter-espionage duties but our focuses constantly shift until we realize the plot is a bit too clever for itself. We don’t get attached to any characters, and we don’t really care much when we find out who the bad guys are (especially since the motives feel muddled). Oddly enough, Hamilton made Funeral in Berlin after Goldfinger, which feels problematic because Palmer’s character is closer to Bond here than in the original.

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3.0, United States/Canada

The Karate Kid

2010 / Harald Zwart > Call it The Karate Kid or as it would have been more aptly titled The Kung Fu Kid, the fact remains that Jaden Smith’s genetically passed-on charm and charisma doesn’t make up for his near-farcical martial arts techniques (especially in comparison to many of the young Chinese actors). But if we can excuse that, the film works as a modern immigration tale: How do young Americans, especially a minority, moving to China come of age? Christopher Murphey’s screenplay has enough twists on genre conventions to justify the remake, though it fails to take advantage of deeper intercultural understanding by simply glossing over most conflicts.

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3.0, Hong Kong/China

Prison on Fire

1987 / Ringo Lam > It’s a bit tragic that A Prophet may have forever ruined expectations for prison films. Trendsetter Lam’s take on the genre tries very hard to shine through the brutal experience of being behind bars but never really breaks through with anything particularly memorable. Prison on Fire ends up being a fairly ho-hum tale with a few stereotypical characters saved primarily by another fantastic performance by Chow Yun-Fat, who’s considerably more watchable when directors utilize his abundant charisma. Consider this an appetizer of sorts for their electrifying joint-effort in Full Contact.

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3.0, United States/Canada

Greenberg

2010 / Noah Baumbach > There’s a surprising amount of humanity packed into Greenberg, though what stuck out for me is the disconnect between generations. How we handle things is different than 20 years ago and will be different 20 years from now. Technology has changed the way we communicate with our neighbours. Youth, adolescence and the potential of the lost twenties vary due to the context of their own eras. It’s not an easy matter to dissect during the length of a feature film, but Baumbach tries to throw the kitchen sink at it. For the most part, his heart is in the right place, but I’d argue that the two leads were a little too polar for it to work efficiently. We’re not dealing with subtlety here, and that makes it feel a bit more pedantic than it needs to be. In contrast, one could argue the lightheartedness of Kicking and Screaming better added to the effectiveness of exploring post-collegiate life than Greenberg’s near-blanket cynicism.

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3.0, United States/Canada

Life During Wartime

2010 / Todd Solondz > As Solondz’s follow-up to one of the iconic chronicles of a modern dysfunctional American family, Life During Wartime is effective. But it only really works as an addendum to the original: The characters (played by different actors than in Happiness, a technique Solondz first experimented with in Palindromes) are surprisingly two-dimensional without their expository sequences, though there is some satisfaction in seeing the aftermath of it all.

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3.0, Europe

L’avventura

1960 / Michaelangelo Antonioni > It’s not quite Last Year at Marienbad, but L’avventura has the kind of melodic feel to its foundation that makes you want to look past any faults. But compared to La Dolce Vita (released in the same year) where Marcello was grounded in reality while all those around him floated about, nobody in this first part of the Antonioni’s alienation trilogy had that kind of hook. I had a hard time worrying about characters who often went out of their way to show (and sometimes tell) us that they didn’t have to care about the same things as the masses. If the film is meant to symbolize that money (and the lifestyle it brings) can still lead to an empty life, I’m not sold. Because these characters couldn’t garner my sympathy, I couldn’t, subsequently, care about what happened to and around them. For others with different value systems and life experiences, this may work. It’s a film you have to feel in your gut or it just won’t have a payoff.

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