Ahoy, squirts! Quint here having just finished the first of two Men On A Mission movies from Tarantino's WW2 Epic Night, a Klaus Kinski as an evil Nazi extravaganza called FIVE FOR HELL! Before the next one starts I figured I'd throw up Anton Sirius' newest batch of Toronto flicks! Some good stuff below! Enjoy!!!

Here's some interesting line buzz I picked up second-hand: Jason Statham has apparently started shooting a flick in L.A. for Lion's Gate (or is about to), a pretty cool-sounding action/martial arts riff on DOA called Crank -- the plot basically has him posioned, and the only way to keep himself alive until he finds the guy with the antidote is to flood his system with adrenalin peridoically... heh heh. Besson's team doesn't seem to be involved though, which is a shame.

More reviews, including an absolute must-see for every single person who visits this site: six hours of bloody Danish mayhem called the Pusher Trilogy.

Takeshis (2005, directed by Takeshi Kitano)

Usually when a director makes a "doubles" film, it's for one of two reasons -- to either delve into a philosophical discussion of fate and free will, or to use really cool split screen effects so that you can have TWO Jean-Claude Van Dammes fighting side by side. In Takeshis, Kitano does neither, instead using the doubles theme to deconstruct his own persona and mythology as a Japanese media icon. And by deconstruct, I don't mean "analyze in an effort to subvert meaning and assumed truths", I mean "gleefully bash apart with a tire iron".

Kitano, in his 'Beat' Takeshi persona, plays himself, one of Japan's most recognizable faces, a show biz vet best known for his bloody, stylish yakuza films. While at a TV studio one day to finish production on yet another crap-ass gangster story, he bumps into Mr. Kitano (also played by 'Beat' Takeshi), a struggling actor forced to play a clown and a dead ringer for 'Beat'. Takeshi and his entourage muse a bit about what life must be like for the like-a-look, and from there the film launches into a series of overlapping dream sequences, with 'Beat' fantasizing about Mr. Kitano's life of drudgery and quiet humiliation, while Mr. Kitano fantasizes about what life must be like as 'Beat' Takeshi - or at least, what life must be like as the type of big screen character 'Beat' Takeshi is notorious for playing.

Confused yet? It goes deeper. A 'Beat' Takeshi stalker mistakes Mr. Kitano for the star, and gives him a present - a homemade 'Beat' Takeshi bobblehead. (Or did that happen in a fantasy sequence?) The members of Takeshi's entourage, and people from the TV studio, all plays roles in the dreamed-up life of Mr. Kitano (or is it the other way around?) Signature Kitano 'bits' - the interlude on the beach; a tap dancing sequence; his real-life, near-fatal accident - become muddled up in one and/or both sets of dream lives. If it all sounds hopelessly insular it's not. Kitano is far too accomplished a director, and his show business instincts far too ingrained, to let self-indulgence get in the way of entertainment. Even if you don't grok why samurai would be charging up a beach to get gunned down by a bleach blonde Mr. Kitano, it's still a weirdly cool visual, and something else equally weird and cool will come along in a few moments to distract you from it anyway.

If Takeshis has any message in it apart from the obvious "I'm not the person you see on screen, dummies!", it's that the yakuza period of his film career is over. You really get the sense that he's putting the final nails in the coffin of the hard-ass gangster archetype he already lampooned in Kikujiro. It may be that Kitano never makes a film like Sonatine or Fireworks again, and this is his way of saying goodbye.

If so, Takeshis is a fitting send-off.

Pusher Trilogy (1996/2004/2005, directed by Nicolas Winding Refn)

Man, I would have loved to have been in the room the first time Quentin Tarantino saw these...

The Pusher trilogy (Pusher, With Blood on My Hands: Pusher 2, and I'm the Angel of Death: Pusher 3) is one of the most dynamic, explosive, sadistic, adrenalized bundles of cinematic fun in recent memory, and the second-greatest trilogy about organized crime ever. And no, that definitely isn't a back-handed compliment.

The first installment tells the story of Frank, a small-time drug dealer. Already in debt to Milo, a somewhat bigger fish in their dank little pond, Frank scrapes by from one deal to the next, getting drunk and high with his buddy Tonny and never quite committing to a relationship with his hooker girlfriend Vic. A big opportunity presents itself when a Swede he knew in prison looks to make a big buy, but the only person he can get that amount of product from is Milo - when the deal goes south Frank is left with neither cash nor smack, and he's got just a few short days to come up with enough money to keep Milo from letting his henchman Radovan bring the pain...

In the second film, Tonny is just out of prison. Never the brightest bulb anyway, the beating he got from Frank near the end of the first movie rendered him almost functionally retarded. In fact the only thing keeping him alive is likely the fact that his father is big-time crime lord the Duke, although even the Duke despises him. Tonny's one chance at redemption in his father's eyes (given the Duke's own pressing fatherhood issues) might be the newborn son Tonny didn't even know he had until he got out. Hooking back in with his dad's organization, Tonny becomes buddies with coked-up paranoid loser Kurt the Cunt, who's only the brains of their little two-man outfit because they both mistakenly believe he's the smart one. When Kurt fucks up a completely routine buy, he gets Tonny in too deep by coming up with increasingly convoluted plans to keep his partner off his back - without telling Tonny who that partner is...

In the third (and hopefully not final) movie, Milo takes the lead. Past his prime and trying to kick his dope habit, he's drifting towards semi-retirement, worried far more about cooking for his daughter's massive 25th birthday party than he is with his organization's latest dealings. When a bad batch of sarna lays all his henchmen low with food poisoning, Milo is left at the mercy of the various young Turks (and Albanians) looking to make names for themselves on the street, especially if it comes at the expense of a legend like him. Clinging by his fingernails to the wagon, Milo has nothing to defend himself with but his wits and his instincts - and a convenient hammer, and a favor called in from an old friend...

As a whole, the Pusher films play out like Cassavettes' adaptation of Balzac's Human Comedy, only with lots of plastic sheeting laid down for easy clean-up afterwards. There's not a single weakness in any of these movies. Every film has its own distinct atmosphere and feel, even though they all take place in the same milieu - #3 is basically an extremely black comedy that deals intelligently with the racial issues boiling away in Denmark, while #2's dedication to Hubert Selby Jr. makes perfect sense once you've seen it. The acting is brilliant, top to bottom, beginning to end; the dialogue is hilariously banal at times, chillingly so at others. The propulsive, grinding rock music on the soundtracks fits as perfectly as Goblin did for Dario Argento way back when. The restless handheld camerawork works exactly the way restless handheld camerawork is supposed to, letting you into the lives of these people without shaking the onscreen images into incoherence. And you're never allowed to forget for a moment, no matter how occasionally charismatic or sympathetic one of the characters might seem, that these are society's dregs you're watching, the absolute lowest of the low. There's no honor among thieves, and apparently no self-respect either, and not a whole lot of intelligence. When the end comes for them - and it comes for an awful lot of them, whether it's at the end of a gun, a corkscrew or down a garbage disposal - it feels like nothing more than an inevitability.

The Pusher films are astoundingly good, astoundingly vicious and bloody, and astoundingly fresh. There's probably too much depravity and viscera for them to get a chance in North American theaters, but they're eventually going to get over here on DVD.

And when they do, they're going to spread like wildfire.

The Quiet (2005, directed by Jamie Babbit)

At this point, dystopian visions of suburbia have become a genre unto themselves (one that's probably ripe for a Zucker-style parody, come to think of it.) After the Ice Storm and American Beauty and Far From Heaven and, heck, Serial Mom, there isn't a whole lot left to say about abouty the decaying, tranquilized souls of the American middle class.

There are, however, still some interesting ways to say it.

The Quiet tells the story of Dot, a teenager who went deaf and mute at the age of 7 after her mother died. Orphaned when her father also passes away, she's taken in by her godparents the Deers (indie stalwart Martin Donovan, and Edie Falco in top form, plus Elisha Cuthbert as their daughter.) If you'll forgive me for lapsing into reviewerese for a moment, "Dot's role as passive observer becomes threatened when the full details of the desperate torture of her new family's routine are revealed to her."

While its great to see Cuthbert prove that she can in fact act, and then some (Goddess knows they never gave her much to work with on 24...), and Camilla Belle as Dot marks herself as a talent with a bright future, the real revelation here is director Jamie Babbit. I'm not a fan of her first feature, But I'm a Cheerleader - it struck me as John Waters Lite, with half the fun and none of the calories - but aside from some fetching uniforms on Cuthbert and her closeted best friend, this film is nothing like that one. In fact it's a huge step forward. The look of the Quiet is very neo-expressionist, all cool desolate blues and streetlight creeping in like smoke through half-drawn venetian blinds, while the soundscape expertly conveys and plays with Dot's deafness. Combine those with excellent performances all around and you have a smart, sophisticated piece of work that proves Babbit is clearly someone to watch. If she makes a similar exponential jump with her next movie she's going to be demanding some attention from Oscar.

(Oh, and the sneaky Matrix reference was a nice touch... see if you can spot it.)

The Proposition (2005, directed by John Hillcoat)

The thing everybody forgets about faustian bargains is that somebody is going to lose their soul. If the bargain is between a human and the Devil, the loser is easy to spot. When it's between two humans, though...

John Hillcoat, working from a Nick Cave script, has fashioned a very Aussie Western here. Not just in location - although the brutal heat of the OUtback is almost a character unto itself in the film - but in theme and feel as well. The Proposition is really the first Western I've seen to pick up the gauntlet Unforgiven threw down. There are no heroes here, only damaged people draped in shades of dark gray, with enough innocent bystanders around to make every choice a hard one.

Ray Winstone stars as Capt. Stanley, a policeman who, along with his wife (Emily Watson, radiantly fragile), moves to Australia to try and start a better life. Lost in a sea of lawlessness and moral uncertainty, he strikes a terrible bargain with Charles Murphy (Guy Pearce), the middle of three outlaw brothers. With his younger, naive sibling locked in a jail cell and awaiting the gallows after the gang brutally rapes and kills a townswoman, Stanley offers Charles a deal. He'll let both younger Murphy brothers go free, if Charles will track down his older brother Arthur (Danny Huston), the gang's evil head, and kill him.

The film follows two parallel tracks. Charles sets out into a very Australian heart of darkness to find his brother, never certain exactly what he will do once he finds him. Meanwhile Stanley, desperately trying to keep his deal a secret from the enraged townspeople howling for Murphy blood, begins to disintegrate as the awful weight of what he's done bears down on him.

The Proposition is a taut, tight, messy, nasty piece of work, from Cave's excellent script on up. The stink of bodies rotting in the sun nearly wafts off the screen. No festering wound of human relations -- English/Irish, white/abo, male/female -- goes unpoked and unsalted. The performances are all top-notch, including John Hurt in a small role as a bounty hunter, although from my perspective Huston's work might be the most noteworthy (as I expected the least from him). Hillcoat's direction is brutally effective. No slow-motion violence here. Gunfire comes suddenly and shockingly, and tears apart a man's head when it does. This is truly not a film for the faint of heart.

Anyone with more than a passing interest in the evolution of the Western should see this film post-haste.