Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #241: The Straight Story (1999).

 

In 1994, 73-year-old Alvin Straight was told his estranged elder brother, Lyle, whom he'd not talked to for a decade, had had a stroke and was now on his deathbed. Being unable to obtain a driver's licence due to his failing eyesight and battling several other ailments of his own, Alvin resolved to catch a ride to his recently-bought, 30-year-old John Deere ride-on lawnmower and then travel 390km from Laurens, Iowa to Lyle's residence in Mount Zion, Wisconsin, to hopefully reconcile with him before he died. As the title suggests, the 1999 film The Straight Story covers Alvin's odyssey.

I was genuinely surprised how much I liked this, as director David Lynch's work usually alienates me with a vengeance; however, this discrepancy may be frankly because he didn't write this one. Lynch and writers John E. Roach and Mary Sweeney take what could've been a very dull or conventional true-life story and make it engaging by wisely applying a very picaresque approach. As Alvin travels across America, he encounters and gets to know numerous misfit characters, like a pregnant teenage runaway (Anastasia Webb) and a competitive cycling team, and I felt this served as much to maintain the viewer's interest as Alvin's socialisation. It's nonetheless a slow movie, but one that still demonstrates a clear narrative direction. Freddie Francis' relaxed cinematography enhances this.

But surely the heart and soul of it is Richard Farnsworth as Alvin, in an Oscar-nominated performance. He brings unmistakable dignity and quiet passion to the screen here, just like the real Alvin brought to his journey. I should stress I didn't quite love The Straight Story, but obviously I'd recommend it to other Lynch detractors and even people who've never seen any of his films. 8/10.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #240: Rat Race (2001).

 

Las Vegas casino tycoon Donald Sinclair (John Cleese) has hatched a contest to entertain the high rollers visiting his casino. He recruits six teams go with a special key each to Silver City, New Mexico, 906km from Vegas, to a train station where a duffel bag containing $2 million has been left at a train station. The players: con-men brothers Duane and Blaine Cody (Seth Green and Vince Vieluf); newly reunited mother and daughter Vera Baker and Merrill Jennings (Whoopi Goldberg and Lanei Chapman); recently disgraced football referee Owen Templeton (Cuba Gooding, Jr.); narcoleptic Italian tourist Enrico Pollini (Rowan Atkinson); dishonest and opportunistic traveller Randy Pear (Jon Lovitz) and his family; and strait-laced lawyer Nick Schaffer (Breckin Meyer) and his helicopter pilot love interest Tracy Faucet (Amy Smart).

Taking inspiration from the 1963 ensemble screwball comedy classic It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, the 2001 update Rat Race is a shamelessly ridiculous (although that's clearly the point) but relentlessly hilarious farce. Working from former Saturday Night Live writer Andy Breckman's screenplay, spoof veteran Jerry Zucker covers this territory with zest and affection which he manages to infuse his cast with. They're all delightful and clearly had a ball making this film, especially Goldberg, Gooding, Vieluf and Atkinson. Among their highlights are Gooding having to drive a bus full of Lucille Ball cosplayers (including Zucker's mother Charlotte) travelling to an I Love Lucy convention, Meyer and Smart flying over Tracy's boyfriend (Dean Cain) to find him cheating on her, and the Pear family mistakenly taking a detour to see the Barbie Museum and realising it's for the Nazi Klaus Barbie and not the doll. (This is particularly apt considering Zucker and Breckman are both Jewish.)

Watch also for cameos from Kathy Bates, Rance Howard (Ron's father) and the band Smash Mouth. It's also smoothly edited and shot, with a fun soundtrack powering all the action. Rat Race is much longer-running (no pun intended) but far and away more entertaining than any athletic one.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #239: Spriggan (1998).

Yu (voiced by Shotaro Morikubo in the Japanese-language version) is a rebellious young man with a past he would much rather forget. But presently, he is a top soldier for ARCAM, an organisation working to protect ancient artefacts and keep them in safe hands. Yu's professional and personal lives are currently going fine, until he receives several violently threatening messages, culminating in a close friend's suicide, which eventually tell him Noah (yes, the biblical figure) will kill him. He now travels to Turkey and ARCAM's archaelogical dig there at the site believed to be where Noah's Ark is resting. En route, Yu learns the forces that tormented him beforehand are not yet through with him, and that the Ark could have catastrophic consequences for all humanity.

This 1998 adaptation of writer Hiroshi Takashige and illustrator Ryoshi Minagawa's manga, which was published from 1989 to 1996, literally fires on all cylinders from start to finish. Director Hirutsugu Kawasaki and his co-writer Yasutaka Itu take a go-for-the-jugular approach in fleshing this tale out to feature length, infusing it with non-stop action but also keeping a sharp, close eye on protagonist Yu's character arc and internal conflict. Working as supervisors on the production were Takashige and Minagawa themselves, along with Akira creator/director Katsuhiro Otomo, whose fingerprints are particularly evident here as the narrative does share numerous similarities with Akira's, most explicitly in the sidekick Little Boy (voiced by Katsumi Suzuki in the Japanese-language version), who for me paralleled the character of Takashi in Akira.

I blind-bought both Spriggan and Wicked City from a local shop this week and honestly, I enjoyed this more. Wicked City was good, but this maintained its suspense for slightly longer and the protagonist's tale resonated with me more. But focusing just on Spriggan again, obviously I have to also mention the quality of the animation; it's truly some of the most lucidly detailed and ambitious I've ever seen in an anime work and it never shows its 23 years. Additionally, Kuniaki Hishima's score makes the action even more pounding still, and Takeshi Shiyama edited all that action together to make it as fluid and coherent as possible. Spriggan is a firecracker of an entertaining adult animated flick. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #238: Wicked City (1987).

A peace treaty has been in effect for centuries to prevent a war between Earth and the Black World, a parallel universe home to supernatural demons and unknown to most humans. This treaty is about to be renewed, but the Black World's evil forces want to ensure it won't be. To ensure it is, bitter human Taki Renzaburo (voiced by Yusaku Yara in the Japanese-language version) and sexy demon Makie (voiced by Toshiko Fujita) are charged with protecting a diplomat, Mayart (Ichiro Nagai), who holds the key to peace. But, with an army of multidimensional assassins on their trail, it won't be easy.

Based on Black Guard, the first in Hideyuki Kikuchi's Wicked City novel series, this adaptation by director and lead animator Yoshiaki Kawajiri and screenwriter Norio Osada is maybe the most mature animated movie I've ever seen; it's easily the most erotic. Just for starters there's a brutal gang rape and prostitution in contemporary Japan is one of the central themes. But equally surprisingly, it also possesses a narrative film noir streak, with the two protagonists often conducting themselves like private detectives in a 1940s crime film. This also felt reminiscent to me of Men in Black somewhat, despite predating that film and its own source material.

It has a few technical inconsistencies, and the dialogue is occasionally wooden, but those shortcomings aside, Wicked City is wicked fun. Just keep this anime flick far away from the young'uns' eyes and hands.

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #237: In This Corner of the World (2016).

It's between the World Wars, in rural Japan. Suzu (voiced by Rena Nonen in the Japanese-language version) is an innocent young girl who loves drawing and lives near Hiroshima. As she grows up, mainly working in her family's edible seaweed-making business, Suzu meets and falls for Shusaku (Yoshimasa Hoyosa), an out-of-town boy who her parents reveal is coming to propose to her and who, it turns out, Suzu actually already met randomly as a child. She chooses to indeed marry him and, despite the arranged nature of their marriage, it proves to be a loving one. But by now, of course, war clouds are gathering and this threat gradually arrives on Suzu's doorstep. Now she must do everything she can to protect her family and her marriage from it.

Based on a manga of the same name by Fumiyo Kouno, In This Corner of the World is an anime movie I'm honestly neutral about. Director Sunao Katabuchi and his co-writer Chie Uratani do a praiseworthy job of visually recreating this era of Japanese history and in a style very distinctive from films like those of Studio Ghibli et cetera; it actually has a rather watercolour feel to it in numerous scenes. J-pop singer/songwriter Kotringo delivers an authentic and emotionally understated score, and the voice cast all bring conviction to their roles. But I found the story itself simultaneously fresh in perspective but quite dull in plotting and action. Where Grave of the Fireflies explored WWII-era Japan with emotional restraint and objectivity but nonetheless a touch of immediacy, this lacks that last element and subsequently felt much less suspenseful for me and therefore, nowhere near as impactful.

However, narratively it does work quite well as a statement on the matriarchy Japanese society had then (and perhaps still has) and how important that was. It reminds the audience that while the men had to leave and fight for their nation, the women and girls who were left behind on the home front had to keep that nation going, which was a war in many other ways, and the film successfully conveys that too-frequently trivialised message and honours those strong females behind it (as well as the men who risked their lives in military service). 7/10. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #236: I Want to Eat Your Pancreas (2015).

 

Aloof high schooler Haruki (voiced by Mahiro Takasugi in the Japanese-language version) randomly encounters a book in a hospital waiting room. Upon starting to read it, he learns it is a diary his hugely popular classmate Sakura (Lynn) is keeping, and then he goes to visit. Once they now become friends, Sakura tells Haruki she is actually dying of a pancreatic illness and eventually promises to tell him when the end is here. When she does die, albeit unexpectedly and not of her disease, he is encouraged to keep her diary and try to forge or reforge connections with various people Sakura once knew, alongside handling his own grief for her.

I really tried to enjoy this one, but underneath the striking visuals lay a romance narrative so wholesome and cliched it bored me to death. Now, for clarity, despite the title's connotations, I knew this was not a horror movie, and I like a lot of love stories, but this was one which, as I said, I just could not get into. Based on a 2014 novel by Yuro Sumino titled Let Me Eat Your Pancreas, which had already been adapted into a live-action 2018 film, this anime one by writer-director Shinichiro Ushijima was for me increasingly sappy and monotonous, with the two protagonists such cardboard cut-outs I thought they must've actually been taken from a cereal box. Hiroku Sebu's excessive score put me off even more.

Whether I'm beginning to watch too much anime, or if I simply wasn't the target audience for this one, I can't say. But I can say I Want to Eat Your Pancreas falls into the "overrated" category for me. 

Something Cult, Foreign-Language or Indie #235: The Rocket (2013).

In the Laos mountains, a woman named Mali (Alice Keohavong) gives birth to twins, but one is stillborn. When twins are born the natives believe one is blessed but the other cursed, and so Mali's mother-in-law Taitok (Bunsri Yindi) insists the surviving twin be killed, but Mali successfully intervenes and spares him, keeping this a secret from her husband Toma (Sumrit Warin) with Taitok's help. Seven years later, the surviving twin, Ahlo (Sitthiphon Dissamoe), remains stigmatised in his community as a cursed child and his village is now levelled to make way for the construction of a new dam. Seeing an opportunity to make a difference and now improve his reputation, Ahlo now tries to lead his family and friends on a perilous trek to find a new home, participating en route in a rocket-flying festival to prove to them all he is not cursed after all.

Writer-director Kim Maurant's The Rocket was Australia's entry for the 2013 Best Foreign Language Film Oscar but it wasn't nominated and frankly, I understand why. Its intentions and spirit are great, and Maurant deserves kudos for seeking to focus on a culture very rarely explored in Western cinema, but his film was, for me, ultimately very insipid, shallow and even rather insincere. The Laotian landscape is filmed beautifully and the distrusted outsider theme is a profound and resonant one, but it's also a rather hackneyed one today and Maurant doesn't even try to explore it with any freshness or personal insight here. The performances are all reasonable but none of the cast really have anything meaty to work with, the pacing is very inconsistent and most prominently, Caitlin Yeo's score feels much too conventional and European where I would've far preferred a strongly Asian soundtrack.

Some rockets explode, and some fizz out. For me, this one did the latter.