Home Media Magazine - December 9, 2007 - (Page 30) REVIEWS www.homemediamagazine.com I SYNDROMES AND A CENTURY Prebook 12/13; Street 1/15 Strand, Drama, $27.99 DVD, NR. In Thai with English subtitles. pichatpong Weerasethakul’s latest, Syndromes and a Century, continues in the same deliberately elliptical vein as his last two outings, Blissfully Yours and Tropical Malady. The pace is glacial, the performances unremarkable, and the plot barely deserves the name. Yet Weersethakul’s work is anything but dull; on the contrary, it’s mesmerizing. The film opens in a rural hospital where Dr. Toey (Nantarat Sawaddikul) is interviewing a colleague, army-trained Dr. Nohng (Jaruchai Iamaram), to see about placing him on the staff. After a short title interlude, we see her primarily going about her workaday routine: consulting with a patient, trying to collect a debt from a friend, and engaging in some idle chit chat with co-workers. It’s all very commonplace, and rendered in patient, penetrating takes. It isn’t until halfway through the film — around the time that the average viewer may have begun to despair of there ever being a compelling storyline — that the story stops and suddenly begins again. Once more we are presented with the interview between Toey and Nohng, but the details are a little different. The hospital is urban, the filmic style more fluidly contemporary, and the narration now favors Dr. Nohng. Once the interview is concluded, we follow him, rather than Toey, on a different, but similarly unspectacular, day in the hospital. The film, of course, invites comparison between the two parallel chapters, but there is no parlor-trick mentality (a la Hal Hartley’s Flirt) at work here. Weerasethakul has said that the two halves are devoted to his individual parents, the first to his mother, the second his father. They are not mirrors of one another so much as they are re-imaginings, and Weerasethakul’s artistry is what will likely confound some. He refuses to make their relationship simple. – Eddie Mullins A I THE DR. JEKYLL & MR. HYDE ROCK ‘N ROLL MUSICAL Prebook 12/11; Street 1/8 Koch/Elite, Musical, $14.98 DVD, NR. I BEYOND THE RING Prebook 12/11; Street 1/8 MTI, Action, $24.95 DVD, ‘PG-13’ for some violence. Stars André Lima, Martin Kove, Gary Busey. B eyond the Ring is a family friendly, 1980s-style martial arts film starring Brazilian champion Lima and Hollywood wild man Busey. Based on true events, the story follows Lima (who plays himself) as a struggling father of two who gave up fighting nearly a decade ago after the death of his wife. Now as a single father trying to make ends meet, Lima runs his own martial arts studio and writes self-defense books with the help of his friend and publisher Deluca (a great slimy role for Busey). Just when his family seems to be returning to normal, Lima’s young daughter falls ill with a brain tumor and needs an immediate and expensive operation. Unfortunately, his medical insurance won’t cover the procedure, and he has only a limited amount of time to find the money before his daughter goes blind. Deluca offers him the chance to participate in an underground mixed-martial arts fight in which he’s promised a lot of money. Without much of a choice, and only nine weeks to train before the bout, Lima, who is pushing 40 and hasn’t fought in years, hooks up with a trainer who puts him through hell to prepare for the match against the undefeated Zulu (played by seasoned kickboxer Justice Smith). Beyond the Ring is different from other lowbudget martial arts films, as the focus is placed more on the drama of Lima’s family life and struggle to get back into fighting shape. In fact, the only fight in the film is the one between Lima and Zulu, which proves to be a hard-hitting, well-choreographed sequence that is worth the wait. It’s also impressive to see Lima in his first starring role, turning in a performance that is already far superior than Steven Seagal on his best day. – Matt Miller F ew movies so eagerly await the return of “Mystery Science Theater 3000” as this laughably terrible anti-masterpiece. If you manage to finish watching The Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde Rock ‘N Roll Musical, you might even find yourself wondering if the “MST3K” crew might come out of retirement just to do the obligatory commentary track for Dr. Jekyll. Certainly, they might lend the film the precise air of disreputability that this contemporary look at the Robert Louis Stevenson classic sets in its sights. Few films, in fact, are as dependant on the notion that ‘B’-movie awfulness translates, somehow, into cult and culture status. However, it is difficult to catalog the problems with Jekyll, as to do so would be to simply catalog everything that actually categorizes filmmaking. Nonetheless, the musical score, script, acting and direction are as amusingly bad as the production values. The real question is whether the overwhelming host of problems makes for a better viewing experience than had Jekyll been merely sub-par. No doubt, there are enough people dressing up for The Rocky Horror Picture Show to give it a shot; hopefully they can find the fun here — or at least make some fun of their own. – J.R. Wick 30 Home Media Magazine December 9–15, 2007 http://www.homemediamagazine.com
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