Hamlet 2 and Sukiyaki Western Django

My dad used to (and maybe he still does. I don't spend enough time in Texas these days to know for sure) frequently complain that the arts critics at The Dallas Observer tried to wear too many hats at the same time. Robert Wilonsky wrote a substantial portion of the magazine's music and film reviews. I always sort of felt that this was an unfair criticism. The paper probably didn't have enough money to hire a full time film and music critic. And really, if you can write an album review, you can write a movie review. Us music lovers also frequently love movies.

So to that end, I'll start including movie reviews in this blog. This weekend I saw Hamlet 2 and Sukiyaki Western Django.

I'll start with the first movie that I saw (and also the easiest to review), Hamlet 2. If this movie doesn't start Steve Coogan's career as a star in America, then there's really no justice in the world. While I am still mostly unfamiliar with his television work in the UK as the self-centered television show host Alan Partridge, I have seen two of his star performances in 24 Hour Party People and Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story, and I remember vividly how both movies (especially the first) were well served by Coogan's comic skills.

However, both of those movies (especially Tristram Shandy) involved frequently breaking the forth wall, and required Coogan to portray not just the characters of the story, but himself as well. In Hamlet 2, he gives a much more straightforward performance as Dana Marschz (pronounced Marsessesss--or something like that), a failed actor and failing drama teacher. Several clips of his advertising work quickly give us a good idea of how his acting career went. And a school performance of Erin Brockovich by the only two members of his drama program give us a good idea of where his his teaching career is headed (nowhere).

But two instigating events (and allow me to digress and point out how wonderful it is that writers Pam Brady and Andrew Fleming were able to think of more plot devices than Dana Marschz being weird. The writing is superb; it never sinks into laziness and relies on one single factor to deliver all the laughs or plot development) quickly change things for Dana. First, because the school has cancelled the cool extra-curricular activities, his drama class has swelled in size, including what drama student Epiphany Sellars refers to as "ethnics". Second, because of budget cuts, the theater program has just one last term.

This and his hope to finally earn a positive review from the highschool paper's theater critic (one if many hilarious minor roles that scatter the film), Dana attempts to put his own work into production: Hamlet 2. I still don't fully understand the plot of the play. It involves Hamlet, Jesus, "Satan french kissing the President", a time machine and a musical number extolling Jesus' sexiness (one of the best scenes of the film). Reactions to the script range from ridicule from his wife Brie (a character that would have felt horribly implausible and unnecessary with anyone except for Catherine Keener in the role), outrage from his school principal to bafflement from some of his students parents.

As you know by now (if you've seen any trailers), Dana finally pulls of his production. He does this thanks to his dedicated cast who --not as implausibly as you would think-- actually buy into Dana's artistic vision and put all of their varied talents into the production. Next to Steve Coogan's performance, his young co-stars are my favorite thing about this movie. I haven't managed to find the ages of these cast members, but the majority of them actually looked like they could be in highschool (something rare in Hollywood films). More importantly, they actually ACT like highschoolers. Of course they make fun of Dana at the start of the film, but their conversion to his ardent supporters is entirely believable.

I've left out several great supporting performances. Amy Poehler as the jaded ACLU lawyer, Cricket Feldstein (she married a Jew). Elizabeth Shue, playing Elizabeth Shue who has quit acting to work as a nurse but still misses getting to make out with actors in movies. David Arquette in a largely silent role. But it's Coogan who brings them all together and who makes Hamlet 2 a smash both on stage and on the screen.

Takashi Miike's Sukiyaki Western Django is a much harder film to review. For one, I'm not sure whether I liked it or disliked it. Secondly, what kind of movie was it? I don't think it was a comedy (although someone behind us had a very different idea and laughed at just about every inappropriate moment in the film), but it certainly had elements of slapstick. Despite all of the shooting, stabbing and blowing things up, I'd hesitate to call it an action movie. And calling this an art film just feels like a lame cop-out to excuse the films baffling elements.

The story is incomprehensible except for the most basic elements: Two rival gangs, The Reds and The Whites are in a state of war in a small Japanese old western village (I should probably stop here to let you know that the film is set in some kind of fantasy world that combines the old west with ancient Japan. Swords and guns are used interchangeably). A lone gunman arrives in town. The rest of the plot is some bizarre re-interpretation of Yojimbo and Fistful of Dollars. The rival gangs are after some sort of treasure (I can't remember where it turned out to have been placed), and there's a subplot about a murdered Red who had married a White and fathered a boy. The mother returns to the Whites and appears to have some sort of revenge plot.

I have a feeling that anyone who's seen many of Miike's films (I have only seen Dead or Alive) has some idea of what comes next: radical shifts in story and tone. Several characters you thought would live end up dying while others turn out to be amazing gunslingers. And then there's the sheriff with multiple personalities. And the leader of The Reds changes his name to Henry and makes a big deal of reading Shakespeare's Henry VI. Oh, and Quentin Tarantino is there to introduce the story, explain (poorly) one of the characters and parody his own training sequence from Kill Bill 2.

Apparently Miike's made four films since this one. He's made somewhere close to 80 films already. While the production values don't appear to suffer (much), they do suffer from a serious lack of creative restraint. But I've only seen 2/78 of his films. It would take a lot more time to find a representative sample. Sukiyaki Western Django feels as if it was made up as the director and cast went along. I know this can't be the case since the almost entirely Japanese speaking cast had to learn their English lines phonetically (something that's especially remarkable since Takashi Miike doesn't even speak English. Or so I've been told).

Takashi Miike's lack of restraint certainly makes this film frustrating. But I'm not sure if that's a bad thing. Sure, the finale isn't as emotionally satisfying as Yojimbo, Fistful of Dollars or Last Man Standing, but should a film about an orphaned child and massacres ever be satisfying?