Air World Tour 10
sodagreen
To mark their milestone 10th anniversary, feted Taiwanese band sodagreen embarked on a regional tour for much of last year.
Named after their first single Air (2004), the concerts were about taking stock and bearing witness to how far the band have come in a decade. They were also an opportunity to celebrate their much-loved works from Little Love Song to Once In A Lifetime to What Is Troubling You over the course of nine studio albums.
The meat of this package – a record of their gig at the Taipei Arena last July – is really in the DVD, which offers over 100 minutes of footage from the concert, capturing lead vocalist Wu Ching-feng’s peerless live singing as well as the top-of-the-line visual effects. From the video imagery to the rotating raised platforms, it was clear that a lot of thought had gone into the presentation of the songs.
The CD almost feels like an afterthought with only 10 tracks on it. Also, an audio-only version of a track with fans singing chunks of the chorus is not the most exciting thing to listen to.
On DVD, though, the extent of fan fervour comes across compellingly. Even then, it does not quite capture the full flavour of a sodagreen live performance, which often runs to three hours and longer.
If you can, get the version with the bonus DVD featuring the top 10 song requests made on the tour. This is a fan favourite segment as they get to shout out the song that they want to hear.
Not only does it showcase the musicality of the band as they take on sometimes obscure material on the fly, but it is also a chance for Wu to wear his variety show host hat and entertain with his quick wit and cutting remarks.
Now that the anniversary festivities are over, they will be working on the final album in their ambitious four-season project. Winter is coming and that is the best news for sodagreen fans.
(ST)
Wednesday, May 27, 2015
Red Amnesia
Wang Xiaoshuai
The story: Old Deng (Lv Zhong) lives alone after the death of her husband. Her elder son Jun (Feng Yuanzheng) has a family of his own while her younger son Bing (Qin Hao) has a male lover, a fact she does not approve of. She begins to get harassed by phone calls from someone who never says a word. Meanwhile, there is an intruder breaking into homes in her neighbourhood.
Is there any connection between the two things? And why does she keep seeing a teenage boy around?
This is an intriguing shape-shifter of a movie. It seems at first to be a portrayal of contemporary China society, warts and all.
Age-old values of filial piety and respect for the elderly are put to the test in today’s bustling cities. Nursing homes are packed to the brim, even drawing long lines as beds need to be reserved in advance. Deng’s mother is in a home and she herself does not wish to be a burden to her children.
Prickly and hard to get along with, she cannot see eye-to-eye with her daughter-in-law (Qin Hailu) and disapproves of the fact that her younger son is gay.
Stage and screen actress Lv Chong is excellent, conveying Deng’s pride, resilience and vulnerability in equal measure, in the process making the character sympathetic.
Writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, 2001) has more up his sleeve, though. The Chinese title Chuangruzhe, which means intruder, points to the mystery-thriller part of the film.
Questions start piling up: Who is the teenage boy lounging about in different apartments? Who is making nuisance phone calls to Deng? Why does she feel guilty?
Then the film takes another turn, seemingly towards a ghost story of sorts. Or is Deng losing her grip on reality?
The different threads start coming together when she returns to Guizhou where she and her family were stationed during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, a sensitive period Wang had previously dealt with in the dramas Shanghai Dreams (2005) and 11 Flowers (2011).
As the sins of her past are revealed, she gets cast in a new light and one’s sympathy for her is put to the test. Red Amnesia’s unusual structure can be frustrating at times, but it might well mean that you will not be forgetting this movie in a hurry.
(ST)
Wang Xiaoshuai
The story: Old Deng (Lv Zhong) lives alone after the death of her husband. Her elder son Jun (Feng Yuanzheng) has a family of his own while her younger son Bing (Qin Hao) has a male lover, a fact she does not approve of. She begins to get harassed by phone calls from someone who never says a word. Meanwhile, there is an intruder breaking into homes in her neighbourhood.
Is there any connection between the two things? And why does she keep seeing a teenage boy around?
This is an intriguing shape-shifter of a movie. It seems at first to be a portrayal of contemporary China society, warts and all.
Age-old values of filial piety and respect for the elderly are put to the test in today’s bustling cities. Nursing homes are packed to the brim, even drawing long lines as beds need to be reserved in advance. Deng’s mother is in a home and she herself does not wish to be a burden to her children.
Prickly and hard to get along with, she cannot see eye-to-eye with her daughter-in-law (Qin Hailu) and disapproves of the fact that her younger son is gay.
Stage and screen actress Lv Chong is excellent, conveying Deng’s pride, resilience and vulnerability in equal measure, in the process making the character sympathetic.
Writer-director Wang Xiaoshuai (Beijing Bicycle, 2001) has more up his sleeve, though. The Chinese title Chuangruzhe, which means intruder, points to the mystery-thriller part of the film.
Questions start piling up: Who is the teenage boy lounging about in different apartments? Who is making nuisance phone calls to Deng? Why does she feel guilty?
Then the film takes another turn, seemingly towards a ghost story of sorts. Or is Deng losing her grip on reality?
The different threads start coming together when she returns to Guizhou where she and her family were stationed during the tumultuous years of the Cultural Revolution, a sensitive period Wang had previously dealt with in the dramas Shanghai Dreams (2005) and 11 Flowers (2011).
As the sins of her past are revealed, she gets cast in a new light and one’s sympathy for her is put to the test. Red Amnesia’s unusual structure can be frustrating at times, but it might well mean that you will not be forgetting this movie in a hurry.
(ST)
Good Kill
Andrew Niccol
The story: Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) used to be a combat pilot. Now, he executes drone strikes and returns home each day to his wife (January Jones) and children in a Las Vegas suburb. His superior, Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood), believes in following orders, while newcomer to the team, Vera Suarez (Zoe Kravitz), believes in speaking her mind. When the orders to kill start coming in from a disembodied voice over the telephone from the Central Intelligence Agency instead of the military, some start to question the morality of their actions.
Ethan Hawke is haunted and haunting in Good Kill.
Teaming up again with writer-director Andrew Niccol, with whom he had worked on the stylish and absorbing sci-fi drama Gattaca (1997), the actor known for films such as Boyhood (2014) and Before Midnight (2013) slips thoroughly under the skin of Egan to create a compellingly flawed character.
Not only is he a combat pilot who gets his wings clipped, to add insult to injury, he also has to continue to wear a flight suit even though his work station is now a bunker in the Nevada desert.
He does not want to burden his wife with the murky details of work, preferring to keep it all bottled up and releasing stress by drinking.
The not-very-helpful advice from his boss is to keep compartmentalising.
Each time he completes a successful drone strike, he utters: “Good kill.”
It is a phrase that grows increasingly ironic and fraught as Niccol examines what it means to kill from a distance. While the crew are removed from the actual location, what they see through the drone’s camera is shockingly intimate, as they can even make out faces and expressions.
The television drama Homeland explored similar terrain over the course of Season Four, albeit without much discussion of the ethics of a drone strike which triggers a dramatic chain of events.
Good Kill takes a quieter approach by forgoing an emotive music score for much of the film and is also more thoughtful, raising all kinds of questions.
Much of the outright querying is by junior airman Suarez. The pointed posers include why are they carrying out missions in Yemen, a country not at war with the United States, and whether striking a target twice to fully eliminate a threat puts them on a par with terrorists who wait for rescuers to arrive and then attack again.
She even asks sarcastically at one point: “Was that a war crime?”
The movie also addresses the changing nature of war to one in which the combatants are now playing a shooting game, a comparison that was presciently drawn in the 1985 classic sci-fi novel Ender’s Game.
Towards the end, the film stumbles with a few false steps. Egan’s actions stretch plausibility, yet they make sense in the context of one man’s attempt to redeem his humanity.
(ST)
Andrew Niccol
The story: Major Thomas Egan (Ethan Hawke) used to be a combat pilot. Now, he executes drone strikes and returns home each day to his wife (January Jones) and children in a Las Vegas suburb. His superior, Colonel Jack Johns (Bruce Greenwood), believes in following orders, while newcomer to the team, Vera Suarez (Zoe Kravitz), believes in speaking her mind. When the orders to kill start coming in from a disembodied voice over the telephone from the Central Intelligence Agency instead of the military, some start to question the morality of their actions.
Ethan Hawke is haunted and haunting in Good Kill.
Teaming up again with writer-director Andrew Niccol, with whom he had worked on the stylish and absorbing sci-fi drama Gattaca (1997), the actor known for films such as Boyhood (2014) and Before Midnight (2013) slips thoroughly under the skin of Egan to create a compellingly flawed character.
Not only is he a combat pilot who gets his wings clipped, to add insult to injury, he also has to continue to wear a flight suit even though his work station is now a bunker in the Nevada desert.
He does not want to burden his wife with the murky details of work, preferring to keep it all bottled up and releasing stress by drinking.
The not-very-helpful advice from his boss is to keep compartmentalising.
Each time he completes a successful drone strike, he utters: “Good kill.”
It is a phrase that grows increasingly ironic and fraught as Niccol examines what it means to kill from a distance. While the crew are removed from the actual location, what they see through the drone’s camera is shockingly intimate, as they can even make out faces and expressions.
The television drama Homeland explored similar terrain over the course of Season Four, albeit without much discussion of the ethics of a drone strike which triggers a dramatic chain of events.
Good Kill takes a quieter approach by forgoing an emotive music score for much of the film and is also more thoughtful, raising all kinds of questions.
Much of the outright querying is by junior airman Suarez. The pointed posers include why are they carrying out missions in Yemen, a country not at war with the United States, and whether striking a target twice to fully eliminate a threat puts them on a par with terrorists who wait for rescuers to arrive and then attack again.
She even asks sarcastically at one point: “Was that a war crime?”
The movie also addresses the changing nature of war to one in which the combatants are now playing a shooting game, a comparison that was presciently drawn in the 1985 classic sci-fi novel Ender’s Game.
Towards the end, the film stumbles with a few false steps. Egan’s actions stretch plausibility, yet they make sense in the context of one man’s attempt to redeem his humanity.
(ST)
Wednesday, May 20, 2015
Spy
Paul Feig
The story: Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) feeds suave spy Bradley Fine (Jude Law) intelligence from behind her desk at the headquarters. When he falls off the grid, she steps up and goes undercover to get close to arms dealer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne). The bumbling efforts of compromised agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) get in her way.
A-list leading man Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes, 2009) is in this movie and so is Jason Statham, the go-to guy for mid-budget action flicks such as the Transporter trilogy (2002-2008).
But there is no mistaking the fact that Melissa McCarthy is the star here. Even better, her character is no loser spy, but an effective one who can run, shoot and get out of tight spots like the best of them. Score one for the women.
It is good to see McCarthy finally land a vehicle that does her justice.
She has always been likeable and fans remember her fondly as the excitable chef Sookie St James on the drama Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). After she broke out on the big screen with a memorable turn in the raunchy Bridesmaids (2011), she seemed to be stuck in movies which ran the gamut from crappy to lacklustre: Identity Thief (2013), The Heat (2013) and Tammy (2014).
Teaming up again with writer-director Paul Feig after Bridesmaids and The Heat, she strikes gold this time.
Feig juggles spy-thriller parody, physical comedy and creatively salty insults in a movie that comes together nicely. From the opening credit sequence and theme song, which clearly reference James Bond, it is clear he has great affection for the globetrotting action-thriller genre even as he sends it up.
Neither is McCarthy merely the brunt of jokes – she blossoms from a mousy deskbound operative nursing a crush on super spy Fine to an effective agent who proves to be quick on her feet, despite being saddled with lame disguises (“I look like someone’s homophobic aunt,” she decries in one instance).
In a sizzling kitchen showdown with knives, pots and pans within easy reach, she also gets to unleash her lethal side.
The supporting players pull their weight as well.
Statham pokes fun at his oh-so intense on-screen persona through a character who talks big, but is something of a dimwit.
Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun Of The Dead, 2004) raises chuckles as an incorrigibly lecherous Italian agent who keeps hitting on Cooper.
Laughs, action and, buried beneath the pottymouthed dialogue, an inspirational message of believing in yourself – Spy has it all.
(ST)
Paul Feig
The story: Susan Cooper (Melissa McCarthy) feeds suave spy Bradley Fine (Jude Law) intelligence from behind her desk at the headquarters. When he falls off the grid, she steps up and goes undercover to get close to arms dealer Rayna Boyanov (Rose Byrne). The bumbling efforts of compromised agent Rick Ford (Jason Statham) get in her way.
A-list leading man Jude Law (Sherlock Holmes, 2009) is in this movie and so is Jason Statham, the go-to guy for mid-budget action flicks such as the Transporter trilogy (2002-2008).
But there is no mistaking the fact that Melissa McCarthy is the star here. Even better, her character is no loser spy, but an effective one who can run, shoot and get out of tight spots like the best of them. Score one for the women.
It is good to see McCarthy finally land a vehicle that does her justice.
She has always been likeable and fans remember her fondly as the excitable chef Sookie St James on the drama Gilmore Girls (2000-2007). After she broke out on the big screen with a memorable turn in the raunchy Bridesmaids (2011), she seemed to be stuck in movies which ran the gamut from crappy to lacklustre: Identity Thief (2013), The Heat (2013) and Tammy (2014).
Teaming up again with writer-director Paul Feig after Bridesmaids and The Heat, she strikes gold this time.
Feig juggles spy-thriller parody, physical comedy and creatively salty insults in a movie that comes together nicely. From the opening credit sequence and theme song, which clearly reference James Bond, it is clear he has great affection for the globetrotting action-thriller genre even as he sends it up.
Neither is McCarthy merely the brunt of jokes – she blossoms from a mousy deskbound operative nursing a crush on super spy Fine to an effective agent who proves to be quick on her feet, despite being saddled with lame disguises (“I look like someone’s homophobic aunt,” she decries in one instance).
In a sizzling kitchen showdown with knives, pots and pans within easy reach, she also gets to unleash her lethal side.
The supporting players pull their weight as well.
Statham pokes fun at his oh-so intense on-screen persona through a character who talks big, but is something of a dimwit.
Peter Serafinowicz (Shaun Of The Dead, 2004) raises chuckles as an incorrigibly lecherous Italian agent who keeps hitting on Cooper.
Laughs, action and, buried beneath the pottymouthed dialogue, an inspirational message of believing in yourself – Spy has it all.
(ST)
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Half. Wan Fang's Little Theatre
Wan Fang
Anyway, I Believe
Shin
Those in Singapore probably know Taiwan’s Wan Fang as a singer. But she is also an accomplished actress. This release explores her dual identity. Happy Reading is the theme song of a play she has acted in, Happy Receipt Of The Letter. While it references specific characters, it is also self-contained enough to stand on its own as a short epistolary love story.
There is a poetic sensibility to the EP’s five songs, which works well with the spare arrangements and Wan’s thoughtful readings. The Same Existence from the play Merry Christmas juxtaposes opposites: “In the night, flying in search of the sun/In the day, waiting for night to fall.”
Who is a haunting ballad with the late singer- songwriter Koumis, who died tragically young in 2013 from illness. Life, love, death – it is all here in the space of an EP titled Half. As she asks intriguingly in the liner notes: How would you know that half is not the whole?
Such contemplation is not rocker Shin’s thing. On his sixth studio album, Anyway, I Believe, he cranks up the volume and tosses odd lyrics in the title track that make it sound like the theme song for a trashy B-grade flick: “When you take off your underwear, you are my everything.”
He also amps up the drama in a reworking of Su Rei’s pop-rock classic The Same Moonlight, but it does not quite feel like an improvement. The material works best when he takes it down a notch, as on the moody-broody ballad, It Would Be Great If You Were Still Here.
He growls, he screams, but I would rather just hear him sing.
(ST)
Wan Fang
Anyway, I Believe
Shin
Those in Singapore probably know Taiwan’s Wan Fang as a singer. But she is also an accomplished actress. This release explores her dual identity. Happy Reading is the theme song of a play she has acted in, Happy Receipt Of The Letter. While it references specific characters, it is also self-contained enough to stand on its own as a short epistolary love story.
There is a poetic sensibility to the EP’s five songs, which works well with the spare arrangements and Wan’s thoughtful readings. The Same Existence from the play Merry Christmas juxtaposes opposites: “In the night, flying in search of the sun/In the day, waiting for night to fall.”
Who is a haunting ballad with the late singer- songwriter Koumis, who died tragically young in 2013 from illness. Life, love, death – it is all here in the space of an EP titled Half. As she asks intriguingly in the liner notes: How would you know that half is not the whole?
Such contemplation is not rocker Shin’s thing. On his sixth studio album, Anyway, I Believe, he cranks up the volume and tosses odd lyrics in the title track that make it sound like the theme song for a trashy B-grade flick: “When you take off your underwear, you are my everything.”
He also amps up the drama in a reworking of Su Rei’s pop-rock classic The Same Moonlight, but it does not quite feel like an improvement. The material works best when he takes it down a notch, as on the moody-broody ballad, It Would Be Great If You Were Still Here.
He growls, he screams, but I would rather just hear him sing.
(ST)
Wednesday, May 13, 2015
Pitch Perfect 2
Elizabeth Banks
The story: After an embarrassingly disastrous performance, the Bellas are banned from recruiting new members on campus. The only chance for them to redeem themselves is if they win the World Championships of A Cappella in Copenhagen. The band of sisters include ambitious Beca (Anna Kendrick), out-there Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and high-strung Chloe (Brittany Snow). Freshman Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) manages to join the group as her mother used to be a Bella.
The first Pitch Perfect (2012) was a sleeper hit, grossing more than US$113 million (S$150 million) on a budget of US$17 million.
The music video for the song Cups sung by Anna Kendrick has racked up close to 200 million views on YouTube and the album was the best-selling soundtrack of 2013.
In other words, a sequel was inevitable.
But how to take the story forward?
In the earlier film, the Bellas won the national a cappella competition. So this time, they head for the world championships, but it feels like a perfunctory progression.
Pitch Perfect opened with a performance marred by projectile vomiting. So the sequel opens with Fat Amy accidentally flashing the audience during a stunt gone wrong – an incident quickly tagged, among other labels, as Southern Exposure.
The jokes strain for laughs and border on the offensive, whenever a ridiculously sexist commentator (John Michael Higgins) shoots off his mouth. The idea, which does not work, is that he is so off- the-charts outrageous that he is funny.
The Bellas themselves are a collection of paper-thin types. The exception is Kendrick, who gets a little more plot to work with as Beca finds herself thinking about life beyond college and interns at a record label.
Her crush on the Amazonian leader (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) of the German group Das Sound Machine is also mildly amusing. Every time she tries to come up with an insult or retort, Beca ends up complimenting her instead.
Still, for a Kendrick who sings with genuine emotion, catch her in The Last Five Years instead.
Mostly, the middling Pitch Perfect 2 muddles along from incident to incident. The more interesting competition is not the world championship, but a strange little sing-off between a cappella groups that takes place mid-way through the movie.
Actress Elizabeth Banks from The Hunger Games franchise makes her feature directorial debut here. She probably found that getting the Pitch right, much less perfect, is harder than it looks.
(ST)
Elizabeth Banks
The story: After an embarrassingly disastrous performance, the Bellas are banned from recruiting new members on campus. The only chance for them to redeem themselves is if they win the World Championships of A Cappella in Copenhagen. The band of sisters include ambitious Beca (Anna Kendrick), out-there Fat Amy (Rebel Wilson) and high-strung Chloe (Brittany Snow). Freshman Emily (Hailee Steinfeld) manages to join the group as her mother used to be a Bella.
The first Pitch Perfect (2012) was a sleeper hit, grossing more than US$113 million (S$150 million) on a budget of US$17 million.
The music video for the song Cups sung by Anna Kendrick has racked up close to 200 million views on YouTube and the album was the best-selling soundtrack of 2013.
In other words, a sequel was inevitable.
But how to take the story forward?
In the earlier film, the Bellas won the national a cappella competition. So this time, they head for the world championships, but it feels like a perfunctory progression.
Pitch Perfect opened with a performance marred by projectile vomiting. So the sequel opens with Fat Amy accidentally flashing the audience during a stunt gone wrong – an incident quickly tagged, among other labels, as Southern Exposure.
The jokes strain for laughs and border on the offensive, whenever a ridiculously sexist commentator (John Michael Higgins) shoots off his mouth. The idea, which does not work, is that he is so off- the-charts outrageous that he is funny.
The Bellas themselves are a collection of paper-thin types. The exception is Kendrick, who gets a little more plot to work with as Beca finds herself thinking about life beyond college and interns at a record label.
Her crush on the Amazonian leader (Birgitte Hjort Sorensen) of the German group Das Sound Machine is also mildly amusing. Every time she tries to come up with an insult or retort, Beca ends up complimenting her instead.
Still, for a Kendrick who sings with genuine emotion, catch her in The Last Five Years instead.
Mostly, the middling Pitch Perfect 2 muddles along from incident to incident. The more interesting competition is not the world championship, but a strange little sing-off between a cappella groups that takes place mid-way through the movie.
Actress Elizabeth Banks from The Hunger Games franchise makes her feature directorial debut here. She probably found that getting the Pitch right, much less perfect, is harder than it looks.
(ST)
Thursday, May 07, 2015
Tamalakao
Jane Huang
Going back to their aboriginal roots has proven to be a musical boon for the likes of A-mei and Chang Chen-yue. Chang’s album, Ayal Komod, was one of Mandopop’s highlights in 2013 and A-mei’s excursions under her Puyuma moniker, Amit, have been sterling outings.
Following suit is rocker Jane Huang, One Million Star singing competition alumna and formerly of the duo Y2J. The title Tamalakao is the tribal area where she was born and home is a recurring theme on the disc.
The album begins with a tribal chant and the first song is Where I Belong, written by Chang. She yearns to be away from the stifling metropolis as she sings: “Standing in the middle of the road, can’t smell the fragrance of grass/ Wandering, drifting, the city has no place for dreams.”
The sense of alienation lingers on the rocker Sleepless In Supermarket, in which the supermarket is both an imagery and a metaphor, and she warns: “Don’t let them buy away your unique, authenticated smiling face.”
A highlight here is Silent Protest, a beautiful ballad written by Penny Tai. Huang sensitively charts out the rocky terrain of a relationship: “You stammer through your ‘Sorry’/I object, but what good is that.”
This is no mopey record, though, and an insouciant spirit comes through on the positive spin of A Speck Of Dust, the breezily light-hearted Understood and the uptempo Crazy World.
Huang finds strength in her home and identity and the results speak for themselves on Tamalakao.
(ST)
Jane Huang
Going back to their aboriginal roots has proven to be a musical boon for the likes of A-mei and Chang Chen-yue. Chang’s album, Ayal Komod, was one of Mandopop’s highlights in 2013 and A-mei’s excursions under her Puyuma moniker, Amit, have been sterling outings.
Following suit is rocker Jane Huang, One Million Star singing competition alumna and formerly of the duo Y2J. The title Tamalakao is the tribal area where she was born and home is a recurring theme on the disc.
The album begins with a tribal chant and the first song is Where I Belong, written by Chang. She yearns to be away from the stifling metropolis as she sings: “Standing in the middle of the road, can’t smell the fragrance of grass/ Wandering, drifting, the city has no place for dreams.”
The sense of alienation lingers on the rocker Sleepless In Supermarket, in which the supermarket is both an imagery and a metaphor, and she warns: “Don’t let them buy away your unique, authenticated smiling face.”
A highlight here is Silent Protest, a beautiful ballad written by Penny Tai. Huang sensitively charts out the rocky terrain of a relationship: “You stammer through your ‘Sorry’/I object, but what good is that.”
This is no mopey record, though, and an insouciant spirit comes through on the positive spin of A Speck Of Dust, the breezily light-hearted Understood and the uptempo Crazy World.
Huang finds strength in her home and identity and the results speak for themselves on Tamalakao.
(ST)
Wednesday, May 06, 2015
Big Game
Jalmari Helander
The story: As a rite of passage, 13-year-old Oskari (Onni Tommila) has to venture into a Finnish forest and hunt down an animal on his own. What he chances upon is the president of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson), ejected to safety after Air Force One is shot down. With the villains on the hunt for their big game, it is up to Oskari to thwart their devious scheme and save the day.
There are actually two movies here.
One is a cinematic update of an almost quaint genre – boys’ adventure, as exemplified in magazines such as Boy’s Own Paper (1879-1967) that were geared towards entertainment and character-building.
In order to prove that he is no longer a child and make his father proud, Oskari has to track down a deer and claim it as a trophy – even if he is not quite ready.
The other movie is a more conventional Hollywood-type action thriller with stock villains out to hunt down a target – the American president.
When the two movies collide, the result is a passably entertaining flick, helmed by Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, 2010).
It helps that the two worlds are so different. If Oskari had been an American kid, the movie would have been far less intriguing. Tommila, who had also acted in Helander’s Rare Exports, is likeably plucky without a shred of self-aware cutesiness.
Jackson (Pulp Fiction, 1994) is cast against type as a lame duck president, not just politically, but also physically – he has to depend on Oskari for survival. Still, Helander could not resist giving Jackson a badass moment late in the film.
Big Game begins like an arthouse film with characters speaking in Finnish, with ideas of masculinity a constant theme.
The intrusion of the Hollywood action flick is when the film gets dumbed down.
Oskari’s conflicted attitude towards masculinity is met with pat advice such as: “You don’t have to be tough, you just have to look tough.”
At the same time, the boy’s fantasy adventure aspect of the story takes off, complete with aerial stunts and underwater exploits and much hand-wringing from hapless Pentagon officials.
Without the unusual Finnish elements, this would have been a far more mundane Game.
(ST)
Jalmari Helander
The story: As a rite of passage, 13-year-old Oskari (Onni Tommila) has to venture into a Finnish forest and hunt down an animal on his own. What he chances upon is the president of the United States (Samuel L. Jackson), ejected to safety after Air Force One is shot down. With the villains on the hunt for their big game, it is up to Oskari to thwart their devious scheme and save the day.
There are actually two movies here.
One is a cinematic update of an almost quaint genre – boys’ adventure, as exemplified in magazines such as Boy’s Own Paper (1879-1967) that were geared towards entertainment and character-building.
In order to prove that he is no longer a child and make his father proud, Oskari has to track down a deer and claim it as a trophy – even if he is not quite ready.
The other movie is a more conventional Hollywood-type action thriller with stock villains out to hunt down a target – the American president.
When the two movies collide, the result is a passably entertaining flick, helmed by Finnish writer-director Jalmari Helander (Rare Exports: A Christmas Tale, 2010).
It helps that the two worlds are so different. If Oskari had been an American kid, the movie would have been far less intriguing. Tommila, who had also acted in Helander’s Rare Exports, is likeably plucky without a shred of self-aware cutesiness.
Jackson (Pulp Fiction, 1994) is cast against type as a lame duck president, not just politically, but also physically – he has to depend on Oskari for survival. Still, Helander could not resist giving Jackson a badass moment late in the film.
Big Game begins like an arthouse film with characters speaking in Finnish, with ideas of masculinity a constant theme.
The intrusion of the Hollywood action flick is when the film gets dumbed down.
Oskari’s conflicted attitude towards masculinity is met with pat advice such as: “You don’t have to be tough, you just have to look tough.”
At the same time, the boy’s fantasy adventure aspect of the story takes off, complete with aerial stunts and underwater exploits and much hand-wringing from hapless Pentagon officials.
Without the unusual Finnish elements, this would have been a far more mundane Game.
(ST)
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