Point of View

Catwoman - Movie Review

A Purr-fect Setting For Clichéd Merriment
By Fred H. Arm

Imagine a beautiful and talented actress like Halle Berry cast as the timid, frumpy graphic artist Patience Phillips, whose curiosity ultimately gets her murdered by her evil boss. Restore her back to life by way of a mystical cat until she morphs into this super human hunk of gorgeousness who can leap enormous heights in the blink of an eye and voila, you have Catwoman, the new super heroine.

The thrust of the clichéd plot is that her evil boss, the tyrannical George Hedare (Lambert Wilson) and his icy supermodel wife, Laurel (Sharon Stone), have created this fantastic anti-aging beauty cream, albeit actually disfigures the user after a period of time, which they plan to unleash upon the public. Patience discovers the plot and is killed by the wicked henchmen of Laurel. A mystical feline and her furry friends restore patience back to the living whereupon she realizes that she has these amazing powers and strength.

Unfortunately, while fighting crime in her skin-tight, leather, slinky, sado-masochistic cat outfit, the world mistakenly believes she is actually the criminal. Now where have I heard that one before? Anyway, she becomes enamored with the local police detective, Tom Lone (Benjamin Bratt) while she secretly leaps from building to building--higher, faster and with more agility than the fabled Spiderman. The underworld and the police now have a new nemesis in the form of an extraordinarily seductive crimefighter with the agility and special senses of a cat.

Do not expect too much in the way of acting, plot, or direction and you will have a lot of fun while the adrenaline pumps chaotically through your veins. Of course, there is also the visual feast of Ms Berry in leathers for the red-blooded American males in the audience and the women can fantasize and identify with her as a metaphor for freedom and release from the oppressiveness of a male-dominated society. Kids will delight with her romps amongst the skyscrapers of New York a la Spiderman and Superman. There is fun and excitement for everyone as long as you do not take the movie too seriously. For me Halle Berry is always worth the price of admission.

The Blind Swordsman: ZATOICHI- -A Movie Review

The Dirty Harry Senior Citizen of Japan Crushes A Bevy of Bad Guys
By Fred H. Arm

Take a blind, aging, shuffling masseur in 19th century Japan who still possesses incredible and deadly precision and match him against several gangs of bad guys and ex-Samurais and voila, you have a mixed bag of comedy and a series of blood baths. The Japanese auteur Takeshi Kitano, director of such masterpieces as “Fireworks” and “Sonatine”, embraces the iconic character of Japan’s longest-running and best-loved film series, “The Blind Swordsman: Zatoichi” as the lead actor and the director.

Best known for his gripping Yakuza gangster films and as a famous comedian, Kitano has laid down his guns and taken up the keen edge of the Samurai sword, slicing and dicing the bad guys in Shakespearean quantities. This white-haired, shuffling and bowlegged masseur masquerades as a harmless old man, however quickly dispatches the villains with lightening speed without remorse or hesitation.

This film is distinctly an oddity. It combines awesome and mesmerizing swordplay, corny humor, wonderfully choreographed and delightfully performed Japanese dances, cross-dressing, a creative glimpse into classical Japanese culture, combined with captivating cinematography and spiced with one gore fest after the other. It is fascinating that the gore has such an innocent and comical quality to it that even the most squeamish of us would not take it too seriously

While wandering through villages earning his living as a masseur and using his unique senses to beat the gambling casinos all the while posing as a shuffling old man, it comes as a amusing surprise that he is a Samurai warrior without parallel. At the one village, he finds the mountain people there at the mercy of Ginzo, a ruthless gang leader. Typical of such gangsters, Ginzo disposes of anyone in his way. Ginzo goes so far as to hire the out-of-work Samurai, Hattori (Tadanobu Asano), to annihilate a rival gang. After befriending a deadbeat gambler and breaking the bank in the primitive gambling hut, Zatoichi is forced to dispatch the entire gambling crew, who are also in Ginzo’s gang. He then meets the lovely Geisha brother-sister team who have come to town to avenge the killing of their parents at the hands of Ginzo.

The storyline is really not all that original, however the execution and style are fascinating to behold. Instead of six-gun justice, the swift and deadly swordplay emanating from the incongruous blind old man is sort of a delight in of itself. After a while, the spurting blood takes on a persona much like the old westerns where dozens of evil cowboys would clutch their chests and fall off their horses after being shot by the dude in the white hat. Interwoven in all this triteness, rises the unique Japanese culture, music and dance that trump all the violence. A captivating and absorbing saga that delivers a delightful variety and a symphony of beauty, culture, and humor.

Opens in San Francisco, in July 23.