Save the green planet!
Azumi
Boogeyman
Save the green planet!
Director: Jun-hwan Jeong
With this his first feature, South Korean director Jun-hwan Jeong has created something that is at once breathtakingly complicated and bizarre. "Save the Green Planet!" is an entertaining mix of several genres: comedy, social and ecological satire, drama, crime, sci-fi and horror. This could have turned out quite messy, but the director does a masterful job keeping things focused. He handles both narrative and technical issues as if he had been making movies for years. Korean cinema is producing some of the most interesting and original movies in the world right now (take, for example, "Oldboy"), and has developed a fresh approach to filmmaking and storytelling. This is not a movie for everyone, but if very, very black humor is your thing, you will like it.
(Julie Vintent)
Last year this reviewer dutifully watched 353 films and wrote his opinions on almost half of them. "Save the Green Planet!" is in a class entirely by itself, and one of the most bizarrely entertaining movies you may ever see. One minute you'll be laughing hysterically, the next you'll be sitting shocked, mouth hanging open. Yet, from start to finish, you'll be absolutely spellbound wondering what happens next. Whether you rarely visit the cinema or are a foaming-at-the-lips movie maniac, don't miss this extraordinarily thought-provoking experience. In his directorial debut, Jun-Hwan Jeong ingeniously captures reality in a weird and wacky nutshell. His wildly alive masterpiece pays homage to B-movies, Hollywood and the passionately magical process of filmmaking. A word of warning: not for the faint of heart or easily offended.
(Laimons Juris G)
Azumi
Director: Ryuhei Kitamura
Japanese director Ryuhei Kitamura already proved, with his compelling features "Versus" and "Aragami," that he was a director to look out for. Adapted from a manga, "Azumi" is an entertaining and action-packed samurai movie with a strong comic book feel to it. The body count is high due to an abundance of hysteric sword-slashing. Since the narrative isn't particularly strong, the middle of the movie lags to some extent. However, the eye-catching action and charismatic characters save the film. Kitamura works with highly stylized pictures and has a fine sense of action directing. As for this film, he's thoroughly succeeded in making a little girl with a short skirt and big-ass sword one very convincing assassin. I'm already looking forward to his newest feature: "Godzilla: Final Wars."
1/2 (Julie Vintent)
This tongue-in-cheek exaggeration streaks across the silver screen in a furious orgy of nonstop ninja action. Hidden away in the mountains, a group of orphan children are trained to be warriors. Azumi (Aya Ueto) happens to be the only female, but she's the fiercest and deadliest of the pack. Cult director Ryuhei Kitamura relies on overkill (no pun intended) to capture his audience. Gruesome beheadings are paradoxically interlaced with slapstick comedy while blood splatters everywhere. In the course of this movie practically all the characters (and extras) get massacred in one way or another. The villains aren't evil, menacing monsters, they're just local yokels; pretentious goofballs strutting around like roosters showing off their plumage. If you can handle campy lyrical violence then this is just right for you.
(Laimons Juris G)
Boogeyman
Director: Stephen T. Kay
The genre is horror, but the only horrific thing about "Boogeyman" is how incompetent and unimaginative this piece of garbage is. Every shot and plot-point has been stolen from other movies. None of the frights work for two reasons: bad timing and the fact that we've seen them a hundred times before. The Boogeyman character turns out to be a flop 's a sketchy version of a computer-game zombie. Meanwhile, the poor actors just end up looking silly, and waste all their energy screaming over a monster that's no scarier than a hand puppet. After "The Ring," there has been a boom in horror movies 's bad ones - that producers have realized they can make for a buck or two, and still earn a lot on. Hopefully people will just get tired of the junk and production will grind to a halt.
1/2 (Julie Vintent)
Yours truly was eager and ready for a nice juicy horror flick (everybody can use an invigoratingly good jolt now and then). On top of all this, the film's potential and talent were readily available. Yet upon final assessment, this movie, like so many other horror attempts, winds up as a major disappointment. Everybody knows about the scary "Boogeyman" who comes to get you from under the bed or a forbidding closet. For the last 15 years, Tim (Barry Watson) has been living in fear of this monster, who brutally abducted his father. You might jump, you might just let out a shrill yell of surprise, and then you might even burst out with a soft chuckle or two. But most likely you'll be laughing at the stupidity of the whole thing.
(Laimons Juris G)
