FADING GIGOLO: ©2013 ZUZU LICENSING, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; DIVERGENT: ©2014 SUMMIT ENTERTAINMENT, LLC.ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.; PAGANINI: THE DEVIL’S VIOLINIST: © 2013 SUMMERSTORM ENTERTAINMENT / DOR FILM / CONSTRUCTION FILM / BAYERISCHER RUNDFUNK / ARTE. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.; EDGE OF TOMORROW: ©2014 VILLAGE ROADSHOW FILMS(BMI)LIMITED.; MALEFICENT: ©2014 DISNEY ENTERPRISES, INC.; HER: PHOTO COURTESY OF WARNER BROS. PICTURES; BEYOND THE EDGE: ©2013 GFC (EVEREST) LTD ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; PARKLAND: (C)2013 EXCLUSIVE MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT, LLC; TRANSCENDENCE: ©2014 ALCON ENTERTAINMENT, LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.; OLDBOY: ©2013 EXCLUSIVE MEDIA ENTERTAINMENT, LLC; 3 DAYS TO KILLS: ©2013 3DTK INC.; THIRD PERSON: ©CORSAN 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED; 300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE: ©2014 WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC. AND LEGENDARY PICTURES FUNDING, LLC; NOAH: © MMXIV PARAMOUNT PICTURES CORPORATION AND REGENCY ENTERTAINMENT (USA), INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PARAMOUNT; THE HOST: ©2013 THE HOST FILM HOLDINGS,LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.; OPEN GRAVE: ©2013 OG DISTRIBUTION LLC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
3 DAYS TO KILL
This bit of Luc Besson Euro-fluff was intended, I think, to be an action-comedy version of Taken, but perhaps Kevin Costner didn’t get the memo about the comedy part. And it has to be said that as over-the-hill ass-kickers go, he’s no Liam Neeson. The pedestrian story line has Kev as a brooding, terminally ill CIA hit man lured back for one last kill, all while he’s trying to win back the affection of his whiny teenage daughter for not being around, etc. Tedious, sloppy, full of aimless subplots and superfluous characters. Not even dumb fun. There are plenty of better ways to kill two hours. Japanese title: Last Mission. (113 min)
300: RISE OF AN EMPIRE
Apparently a second battle was raging while Leonidas and 300 rabid Spartans were off getting ma s s acre d at T her mopylae i n 2006’s loopy 300, this one at sea and with just as much yelling, CGIenhanced six-pack abs and even a few bare boobs. The bad 3-D is used mostly for repetitious slo-mo strawberry-jam blood splatter (okay, we get it). Sullivan Stapleton is a poor substitute for Gerard Butler, and that can’t be a good thing. Thank the gods for Eva Green, seemingly the only actor aware of how campy all this is, and her over-the-top portrayal of a hot and horny naval commander in a Catwoman outfit. Japanese title: 300: Teikoku no Shingeki. (102 min)
THIRD PERSON
An eminent author (Liam Neeson) i n Pa r i s i s c a r r y i n g on w it h a society reporter half his age (Olivia Wilde). An irresponsible mother in New York (Mila Kunis) fights for child visitation rights. A small-time swindler (Adrien Brody) in Rome decides to help a gypsy girl (Moran Atias) retrieve her abducted sister. Paul Haggis (Crash) has found a way to interweave these three very different stories, but the final “twist” is a cheat of the “and then I woke up” school. Telling you how that’s so would constitute a spoiler, but the title’s a hint. Liked the dialogue and the acting; hated being jerked around. (137 min)
NOAH
OPEN GRAVE
The movie opens, aptly enough, in an open grave. A not-dead Sharlto Copley ( District 9) awakes amid hu nd re d s of cor p s e s , w it h no memory of who he is or how he got there. This blank slate finds a nearby house containing a quartet of uninteresting fellow amnesiacs and a mute Chinese girl. It’s a premise ripe with promise, but alas unfulfilled, doomed by generic performances (except for Josie Ho), poor plotting, and a general lack of direction. Plot furtherance is provided by numerous sepia flashbacks as the movie trudges toward its notvery-surprising Big Reveal. Maudlin, hard to watch, and boring. Japanese title: Open Grave Kansen. (102 min)
UZUMASA LIMELIGHT
By Rob Schwartz
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hat are often called “samurai films” by the casual watcher outside this country are a major genre in the film industry here known as chambara. An example is Uzumasa Limelight, which focuses on the latter days of a swordfighting stuntman who’s made a career out of a little jousting and a lot of dying. Kamiyama (Seizo Fukumoto) has worked at the fictional Uzumasa Studios for decades and is now at the end of his career. After a TV series he had a bit part in is cancelled, the resigned Kamiyama is “reduced” to being an extra in a yakuza pic until finally he is lent to a samurai theme park where he begins tutoring an up-and-coming female actress and swordsmith. Satsuki (Chihiro Yamamoto) takes to the lessons with gusto and dedication, but it seems her hard work is a throwback to a different era. She winds up on a TV drama that uses pop stars and CGI instead of real swordplay and realistic action. Mirroring actor Fukumoto’s own career, and using Charlie Chaplin’s film Limelight as a reference point, the film is sweet, heartfelt and impressive in the sword-fighting sequences. Uzumasa Limelight is a winner without having to fake its own death. (103 min)
movie news
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tudio Ghibli is known not only for its award-winning animation and engaging storytelling, but also its careful selection of pop songs from hit makers such as Yumi Matsutoya. For its upcoming film When Marnie Was There, the studio tapped Los Angeles-based singer-songwriter Priscilla Ahn for the job, and the half-Korean musician provided her single “Fine on the Outside.” The track will be the first in English to appear in both the Japanese and international versions of a Ghibli film. Ahn’s acoustic guitar and ethereal vocals suit the look of the film, and the song she wrote while still in high school gels with the teenage alienation found in the source novel by Canadian writer Joan G. Robinson—about a lonely girl who makes a rather mysterious friend. “I feel like this will be a very good film for everyone to see, especially young teens,” Ahn said during a recent “Ask Me Anything” event on Reddit. “But I feel like anyone who’s ever felt alone before can relate to this film.” The singer got to tour the Tokyo studio when animators were putting the finishing touches on the film. “All the backgrounds of the film are painted by hand,” she says. “I know this, because I saw them actually painting them!” When Marnie Was There (Omoide no Marnie) opens nationwide July 19. Kevin Mcgue
cinematic underground
A
lejandro Jodorowsky’s ’70s cult milestones El Topo and The Holy Mountain were more than enough to ensure his place in the filmmaker pantheon. Now in his 80s and not having made a film in two decades, it was assumed he was retired. But he surprised everyone at Cannes last year with The Dance of Reality, a work that mixes autobiography and fantasy with the director’s son playing his own grandfather, a Russian–Jewish immigrant raising a family in 1930s Chile. Playing in Spanish from July 12 at Cinema Qualite (3-37-12 Shinjuku, Shinjuku-ku; http://qualite.musashino-k.jp) and Human Trust Cinema Yurakucho (2-7-1 Yurakucho, Chiyoda-ku; www.ht-cinema.com)... Shibuya art house Cinema Vera (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku ; www.cinemavera.com) presents yet another program of world cinema classics from July 12. The lineup includes Marilyn Monroe as an unhinged babysitter in Don’t Bother to Knock, Humphrey Bogart as a conman in Beat the Devil and Fred Astaire as a bandleader in Second Chorus… Eurospace in Shibuya (1-5 Maruyamacho, Shibuya-ku; www.eurospace.co.jp) will run a Sergei Parajanov retrospective to mark the 90th anniversary of the Soviet filmmaker’s birth. Parajanov’s dismissal of government-sanctioned social realism and his controversial behavior often landed him in prison. KM
PHOTO CREDIT: © CURBSIDE FILMS.
I do n ’ t re m e m b e r t h i s s i mp le Sunday school parable including h u g e ro c k-m o n s te r s w it h re d eyes, nor does the plot device of a vengeful, animal-cargo-munching warlord stowaway aboard Noah’s Ark ring a bell. Then there are the LOTR-like, SFX-laden epic battles. Huh? But it’s just the movies, right? Now, defending the Bible has never been an aspiration, but as a movie, this is overlong, slow moving, and lacks any real sense of danger. Noah, a raving patriarch created in the image of a seriously silly Russell Crowe, would be locked up today. A rare misstep for otherwise admired director Darren Aronofsky. Japanese title: Noah: Yakusoku no Fune (138 min)
eiga
Unless noted, Japanese films screen without English subtitles. Non-English-language films are shown with Japanese subtitles only. #1059 • WWW.METROPOLIS.CO.JP • 17