RPIFF: Autoreiji a.k.a. Outrage (2010)

And so the Revelation International Film Festival was brought to an an end with the most high profile film of the fortnight. International superstar 'Beat' Takeshi Kitano directing and starring in his first Yakuza movie in ten years, Autoreiji.

There is nothing new on show here. This is a Yakuza movie filled with double crossings, violent deaths, torture, honour and well that's about it. It merely updates the story and in Kitano's trademark way shows the Yakuza for what they are without dressing them up in glamour like an American movie might.

At times the plot is labyrinthine in it's crosses and double crosses and triple crosses and it is hard to keep track but in essence you can summarise the film as follows: Yakuza chairman plays power games with his underlings, playing them all off against each other in an effort to kill the strongest and most powerful and thus stop from getting killed in a power struggle. Beat Takeshi is Otomo, an old school yakuza who is lead around by the nose doing everyone's bidding whilst trying to keep one step ahead of being the next head on the chopping block.

Kitano makes beautiful films with violent content and this is no different, it's not as beautiful as some (see Hana-Bi and Sonatine) but it sure is violent in parts. The meandering plot doubles as a device to show Otomo killing in interesting ways, you may have heard of the dental office scene but there are a few others that are equally violent but not gruesome. None of which I will spoil for you by telling you about here.

It is a film littered with humour, some obvious visual jokes; some of them coming from the characters and I feel (as I often do with subtitled films) that some of the humour may have come from misunderstanding a foreign culture. But overall you feel nothing for a bunch of caricatures being used as a metaphor about the loss of honour in the Yakuza as they chase money and even the loss of tradition in Japanese culture.

I can't really recommend this movie too much, it's not bad as far as Yakuza movies go if you want some violence but if you were going to watch a Japanese movie or a Kitano movie you should probably watch something better.

So it ended on a down-ish note for me but The Revelation Perth International Film Festival was a great experience. I've never been part of something like a film festival before, never had a chance to see so many great films in the cinema and the hard work that went in to getting to the cinema to see 6 films in such a short space of time was completely worth it. I hope that these movies get worldwide cinematic releases, they deserve to be seen a lot more than most films that I see advertised but even if they don't I can safely say that the exhilaration of seeing something incredible in a cinematic environment is alive and well in this film lover and I appreciate the hard work that went on to bring such a great event to this backwater city of Perth.

Hopefully I don't have to wait a whole year until the next RPIFF to see something else as fresh and interesting and challenging and powerful as I have done these past two weeks.

Share the blah good readers, anyone else feel this way? Anyone love Outrage?

The Week In Movies 18/7/11 - 24/7/11

A heavy week at the Revelation Perth International Film Festival has seen me watch 8 films, 5 of them at the cinema with full reviews (including those yet to come) so this should be a pretty quick roundup.


It seems like forever ago that we sat down to watch Marathon Man only to find out that the disc was faulty and watched Nic Cage winning an Oscar for drinking his life away in Leaving Las Vegas. It's been so long since he actually acted that it surprises people when I talk about how good Nic Cage is in this and that the Oscar was actually deserved. This is one of those films you shouldn't watch too often; it's terribly depressing, but fantastic. Once every few years however you should remind yourself how wonderful this Mike Figgis film is. Elizabeth Shue as the prostitute on her way to redemption probably gives her career best performance and Julian Sands makes a fun cameo not to forget Danny Huston's blink and you miss it film debut as a bartender but primarily this is all about the subtleties of Nic Cage. Yeah that is what I said.

A few months back we watched the lots of fun but flawed, Carla Gugino starring, Sebastian Gutierrez directed Elektra Luxx about the personal life of a porn star and her group of friends and then we found out there was a film about these characters already, Women in Trouble. So for a bit of light entertainment we settled in. These are not ground breaking movies, there's nothing new or particularly special about them but they're fun all the same with some enjoyable moments and good dialogue from characters you don't usually see in films. Infact one of my favourite characters of recent times, somebody who I could probably watch quite a lot more of, came from these movies; Adrianne Palicki as failing pornstar Holly Rocket. Adrianne Palicki is an extremely beautiful woman and she hardly ever wears much in the way of clothing but her character is so totally clueless and adorable it hardly matters. If you want to look below the surface of these films there's probably even a message and moral somewhere.

Now on to the Don Roos movie The Other Woman, a film which has also been known as Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, hence the two very different posters used, and starring Natalie Portman. I'm a fan of the movies of Don Roos. I saw The Opposite of Sex before any Woody Allen movie so the gimmick with Wednesday Addams breaking the fourth wall was an exciting new cinematic tool for me. Most people didn't enjoy Bounce if I remember correctly but I did and not just because of my guilty pleasure of watching Ben Affleck movies, and Happy Endings was a good, fun, low budget piece of cinema. None of the films are made in a similar style but there's some kind of charm that unites them which must be brought to them by the director. There's nothing particularly new about The Other Woman, we've all seen step-mothers trying to be liked by the child and hated by the ex-wife before but it does have a strong performance from Natalie Portman and Lisa Kudrow is her usual flawless self in this minor post-Friends role. Enjoyable but nothing amazing, but it has stayed with me all week.



I've already reviewed Charlie Casanova and Vacation! from The RPIFF but seen and with reviews forthcoming are Submarine, Small Town Murder Songs and Autoreiji.


A busy week, how bout you? Do you remember when Nic Cage wasn't a joke? As always I'd love to know what blah is filling your movie minds.