Clown, Dir. Jon Watts 2014

     Ever a sucker for a horror DVD with Eli Roth's name attached, I was excited to pick up Clown in my local rental store. Director Jon Watts has recently come to the movie following publics attention with the announcement that he has been hired for the upcoming Spiderman re-reboot and with the release of his new Kevin Bacon starring thriller Cop Car.

     Clown follows the story of Kent (Andy Powers) a loving father and husband, who in the opening scene is frantically looking for a clown costume for his weirdly clown obsessed son. They have recently moved into the property, Kent is an estate agent, and he discovers a strange antique clown suit in the basement complete with red nose and multicolored wig. After wearing the suit, Kent discovers he cannot take it off, and this leads to lots of socially embarrassing situations and pretty skin crawling scenes, involving building and surgical equipment, as he tries try to free himself from the suit. There is certainly an element of body horror here, and although narratively unlike say the work of David Cronenberg, the low budget look of the film definitely adds a nostalgic, 80's charm.

     As Kent's sense of panic escalates he becomes increasingly desperate to discover what is happening to him. He comes across a costume seller played with brilliant scenery chewing ham by Peter Storemare, a legend of the supporting role, who goes into a pretty silly, but amusing for any horror fan, explanation of the curse of the costume and the sinister history of the clown. For many people clowns hold a sense of terror and dread, and this is a clever play on that fear, confirming what Coulrophobs (yes people with a fear of the red nosed circus devils) always suspected. It turns out the original clown had a taste for the meat of human children, and it's not long before Kent, or whatever is left of him, is biting kids and leaving their tiny stripped down bones in his wake to ease his loudly gurgling stomach.

     There are comedic elements running throughout the film, with some clever jump cuts that made me laugh out loud, a hilarious clown infected blood colour, and scenes of unnerving but slightly amusing failed suicide. The blood and gore although nasty but mostly off screen is well judged and unsettling. The violence towards children is especially brave, and Watts doesn't hold back. Clown is well shot and well paced. I found the timeframe flew past, and all in all is a very neat and tidy little horror film. It blends the comedic elements with horror and violence well, and the make up effects are particularly well done. I am a huge fan of make up and prosthetic effects, especially in horror, and the filmmakers admirably don't go for any CG. The clown's final incarnation had me thinking of Christopher Nolan's villains in his Batman trilogy, with obviously the Joker and less clearly the Scarecrow springing to mind.

     Clown is definitely worth seeking out for all horror fans, and perhaps even you Coulrophobs out there.

4/5

Run All Night, Dir. Jaume Collet-Serra 2015

     The Liam Neeson action star phenomenon continues with this fairly conventional but well made action thriller. I enjoyed director Collet-Serra's previous pictures Non-Stop, an exciting and fast-paced action movie set on a plane also starring Neeson, and Orphan, an edgy if pretty slow and slightly generic horror.  

     Like Non Stop Collet-Serra has assembled a pretty talented cast for Run All Night, including a supporting rostrum of Ed Harris, Joel Kinnaman, Vincent D'Onofrio, rapper Common, and a cameo from Nick Nolte. Neeson plays retired crook Jimmy Conlon; a tired old man who smokes and drinks too much and seems to exist only to suffer daily from the guilt and shame of his past crimes. He has abandoned his son Mike, to protect him from the gangster lifestyle but still holds a friendship with his old partner and organized crime boss Shawn Maguire, played by Harris.

     One night Mike, a limousine driver, delivers some shady clients to a meeting, which unbeknown to him is being hosted by Maguire's drug dealing son Danny. Danny is in trouble as his father has rejected a heroin dealing proposition and the clients arrive regardless for their payout. Clearly untroubled by their threats he guns them down, and Mike and his boxing trainee friend who has conveniently shown up with a his smartphone and videoed the whole thing, witness the crime. Mike escapes and when Danny comes looking for him, Neeson is there to kill him. Resignedly calling Shawn to tell him what's happened, a game of cat and mouses ensues that lasts throughout the night.

     Collet-Serra makes uses of some handy camerawork and CGI to jump around New York, building a picture of these relationships which span the city and to track this deadly game of the hunter being hunted. Neeson plays the role like most of his other recent ones, the Taken franchise prominently coming to mind of course. The story is well devised and the relationship between Neeson and Harris is well written. The pain of this unfortunate situation, tainting the romanticism and affection for their close past, is well composed. The action scenes are well directed, but the stand out car chase and escape from an apartment complex felt a little old fashioned and uninspiring. The best action sequences come from fights between Neeson and Common, playing a relentless but not invincible hitman. They use their surroundings well to injure one another and the violence has impact and force.

     My biggest issue with the picture was the running time and pacing. At nearly two hours it did outstay it's welcome, and there are long fairly dull periods which only serve to advance the story towards the inevitable showdown between Harris and Neeson. When it finally comes it's all a little fleeting and lacking power.
   
3/5

Foxcatcher, Dir. Bennett Miller 2014

     Foxcatcher is a film I have been anticipating for sometime, and this week in Japan we finally got the blu-ray release. The film documents the true story of the Foxcatcher Wrestling team set up by wealthy estate owner, John du Pont. I was unfamiliar with this story before the movie's release and much has been made of Steve Carrell's complete transformation to the role. Carell is joined by Channing Tatum, playing Olympic gold medalist Mark Schultz and Mark Ruffalo playing his older brother David, who also underwent a slight transformation for his role, with his beefy stocky frame and almost hunched over walking posture.

     The film opens with expository scenes of Mark and David in training. They live in pretty dreary, dark habitats, not those you would expect of successful athletes. Mark receives a mysterious phone call requesting his presence at Foxcatcher estate. Curious and without any knowledge of why he is going there, but clearly impressed by an all expenses paid trip, he flies out and is taken by helicopter to the estate over the lush, expansive American countryside. The locational impact is direct and hard hitting.

     In an elegant room, within the depths of a huge mansion, we first encounter du Pont. The impact of the character is immediate. He speaks in hushed tones about making America respected again through sporting achievement, and how he wants Mark to live on the estate and win a second gold medal at the upcoming Seoul Olympics. From beneath all the make up, Carrell's eyes barely flicker with any sign of human life. He seems almost in a vegetative state, his voice flat and dreary, each word lost amidst long pauses of hesitation that is so unnerving I found my skin crawling.  

     From this point onwards the relationship between the two men rises into a crest of love and friendship before the inevitable crash, and du Pont uses his wealth and power to replace Mark with David, and continue building his fantasy. The most powerful scenes come from those with du Pont preaching to his mother and desperately searching for her recognition. Like a spoilt brat, he whines about not needing his train set, about how his coaching, a complete fallacy that exists only within his mind, will set America back on the right path. What with the current US Republican nominee cycle in full swing, I found his character quite timely. A rich white male, sheltered from the life of poverty which so many Americans are enduring, preaching about how to fix America, while he buys people off to lose to him in the ring, and wheels his mother out for an extremely cringeworthy presentation to his wrestlers. After his mother can take no more, he goes back to silently walking around his private training complex, oblivious to whats going on. Like his own personal Disneyland he has created where he gets to play Walt without any real work or achievement, devoid of talent unlike the most successful geniuses of our time.
     
     Incidentally, while watching Foxcatcher du Pont reminded me of two other rich boys pretending to have talent and built achievements; Zach Galifianaki's character in The Hangover series, and Finn Wittrock's Dandy Mott in the recent television season American Horror Story: Freakshow. Except these are comedic creations mocking the perception of the spoilt white rich boy. Du Pont was a real person. Not only using his wealth to ride the backs of others to success, he has an affliction to military weapons, purchasing a tank and complaining it has been delivered without a huge gun attachment, and being presented with a tripod mounted machine gun.
     
     How true to reality Foxcatcher is I cannot comment, but the film is a fascinating and well directed depiction of a truly strange figure. Not that he is the only interesting aspect to the film. Tatum delivers a performance of great stature, and he is clearly a talented actor who will continue to make intriguing pictures. His character, Mark, clearly has deep set issues, and we learn about his damaged childhood raising the specter of mistreatment and abuse. In one scene, completely consumed with a failure induced rage, he violently destroys his hotel room and binge eats to disturbing levels. One can't help but wonder what kind of person would be drawn in so deeply to someone like du Pont, but once he is rejected, and this is clearly not the first time in his life that has happened, he falls into an epic sulk, his face reminiscent of a scorned school boy.
   
     Ruffalo plays David well, his embarrassment at du Pont's attitude and his pride being torn apart for money worn with painful and deep seated facial expressions. The film builds dread admirably, and is so uncomfortable to watch I doubt I will revisit it more than once. That's a shame as it is so beautifully shot and acted. Every line of dialogue exists to hit a mark and each scene holds huge power throughout the lengthy but deserved running time.
   
4.5/5

All the President's Men, Dir. Alan Pakula 1976

     While listening to Bret Easton Ellis`s wonderful podcast recently, in which he mentioned the soundtrack to 1976`s All the President's Men, I realized I had never really sat down and watched this supposed classic with any real intent. I have become quite engaged with American politics since Barack Obama`s election victory 7 years ago. British politics on one hand is pretty mundane, but in the US figures such as Sarah Palin, Donald Trump and most of the current Republican candidates for next years election are truly fascinating, if rarely for the most sane reasons. 

     As a result of my current fascination with the US political race, I decided to give All the President's Men, directed by Alan J Pakula another watch. The film focuses on the two Washington Post journalists who after the Watergate building break in, started an investigation into political corruption within the GOP. This leads to the revelations which eventually forced Richard Nixon to resign from the presidency. What is fascinating about this time is the truly little attention paid to the incident, and if it wasnt for the sheer belief in what two very brave and relentless men were doing, effectively putting their lives on the line, history would have perhaps been very different.

     Pakula directs the entire movie with a slow building menace. You find yourself checking the shadows for sinister government agents who should pop out at any moment to snuff out the two journalists. The soundtrack builds the tension expertly, and there are some really terrific scenes of pure edge of the seat tension in a desolute and wonderfully lit dark car park. It takes some true filmmaking brilliance to make conversations between two men inbued with such menace and dramatic tension, but Pakula pulls it off expertly. At over 2 hours, the picture is well judged and never felt too long. 

     In the central roles Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman pull off the excitable hungry young journalists brilliantly, and there is a nice comedic chemistry between the two that really gives the viewer moments to relax admist all the tension. The supporting cast area all excellent, whether it`s the editors of the newspaper in the male-dominated smoky meetings that you would expect of the era, or the sources who anxiously release tidbits of information. There is particular emphasise on telephone conversations and these are very well directed. The final shot makes powerful use through the simplicity of a typewriter and left me satisified and jubliant. 

     All the President's Men is something of a dead art now. A big budget, highly adult and complex movie. Made for an intellectual audience by intellectual filmmakers. Watching it today it is still riveting. 

5/5  

Retribution (Sakebi), Dir. Kurosawa Kiyoshi 2006

I came across Retribution or Sakebi, the original Japanese name, while perusing a list of recent Japanese horror online. Upon discovering it I realized I had seen one of director Kurosawa Kiyoshi's previous pictures titled Cure. Retribution is available to watch for free on youtube and so I gave it a go. I had liked some elements of Cure, particularly the antagonist who is a serial killer who kills people by using his mind to command them to commit suicide. I found him creepy and unsettling, and the story held my attention resolutely until the end.

     In Retribution the lead actor and detective from Cure returns, once again playing a detective and a character who in his appearance and movements appears almost identical. The detective is played by Yakusho Koji, a relatively popular character actor who appears over here on Japanese television commercials and variety shows from time to time.

  In Retribution he is investigating the murder of a young woman, who is killed during the opening scene of the movie. She is wearing a bright red dress which stands out dramatically from the dreary Tokyo port location. An invisible assailant holds her head down in a puddle of seawater, which has appeared we later discover due to liquefaction caused by the routine earthquakes shaking the area. Small tremors occur throughout the film, and we are always unsure of whether they are being caused by tectonic plates or something more sinister. The characters barely seem to react to them. As Detective Yoshioka continues to investigate the murder, the evidence continues to point towards him as the killer. Another murder occurs with much the same MO as the first, and the killer of that crime is caught but the original murder remains unsolved. As Yoshioka gets closer to finding the killer he starts seeing visions of the ghostly woman in the red dress and as she communicates with him he begins to remember forgotten memories of his past which hold deep and disturbing meanings.

     Retribution is an interesting but slow film. I did not find the ghost scenes unsettling or scary, and they are quite tame when compared to other examples of the Japanese horror genre. However Kurosawa does have his own style, and his murder scenes are genuinely disturbing in that they seem very realistic. When a character is killed that character goes through pain in very real, not heightened terms. There is no fast editing or cutting to close ups of the victims faces. Kurosawa does not abide by the Hitchcockian idea that murder can be art. His camera moves slowly, he cuts slowly, and the murders appear almost as mundane as their assailants doing the housework.

  Kurosawa is effective at building tension through the use of very little sound or dynamic movement. He uses space and props effectively to evoke horror. He is an interesting director and I would certainly be interested in watching more of his work. However I found Retribution a little flat, and it has raised Cure's standing for me as that is the clearly superior film. Retribution seemed twenty minutes too long, and with a bit of shortening it would have made more of an impact.

3/5

Welcome

Welcome to Film Runner.

My name is David Willis and I'm just a regular guy who loves movies and TV shows and just happens to be British and living in Japan.

On this blog I will post short reviews of films I have watched during the week, and occasionally an update on any TV I'm watching. I will give movies a mark out of 5 as I feel this is the clearest scoring system.

A little bit about me. I am 32 years old. As I mentioned above, I live in Japan, where I work as an English language instructor. I have lived in Japan since 2012, and I love the culture, and especially the food in my new country. I studied Media Production in the UK at the University of Lincoln, and prior to that studied Media Studies, Photography and Art at college. I have held a deep interest in film since my early childhood. As a result I watch, I assume, an above average number of movies a week and have a pretty broad taste. I will not discount anything before watching it, but do tend to stay away from movies that have a too clearly defined target audience. I feel a great movie should be accessible to anyone with a love of film. If I could pick a favourite genre, although I feel the best films do not prescribe to a singular genre, it would be horror.

To get an idea of my kind of taste in for example, the horror genre, here is a top ten countdown of my favourite horror movies of the past 10 years, being those released in 2005 to 2015.

Under the Skin
Let the Right One In
Rec
I Saw the Devil
Hostel
The Descent
Sinister
Halloween 2
Kill List
Nightmare Detective

As you can probably guess from my list, I have a keen interest in foreign language cinema. I am particularly interested in contemporary Korean and older Japanese cinema. Here is a list of my favourite directors, in no particular order; David Lynch, David Cronenberg, Mizoguchi Kenji, Oshima Nagisa, Michael Mann, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, Denis Villeneuve, Wes Anderson, Miike Takashi, Tsukamoto Shinya, Jonathan Glazer, Wong Kar Wai, Chan-wook Park, Jee-woon Kim, Ki-duk Kim, Guillermo del Toro, Lars Von Trier.

A little on my creative background. I currently have a self published novella on Amazon titled "Horumon". The story centers around a young Japanese man who works in the meat butchery section of his local supermarket and has an unhealthy fixation with knives. He experiences all kinds of strange incidents and characters and gets pulled into a dark and increasingly dangerous journey to escape his everyday life. I wrote the book a couple of years back, and am currently working on a new short novel about a man who is severely burned and undergoes a revolutionary treatment with dark consequences.

     As for my film background, I edited a couple of documentaries while living in England and made a music video which is still available to view on youtube for the song "Hang my Head" by Channel 83.

     On social media I am Willis_san on twitter. So, enough about me, and on to film chatter. Oh, and if you didn't guess, my blog title comes from my favourite film of all time.