Three... Extremes -- (Hong Kong/South Korea/Japan- 2004) -- Directors: Fruit Chan, Park Chan-wook, Takashi Miike.

Three reigning masters of Asian cinema team up on these macabre tales. DUMPLINGS finds a woman willing to go to extreme lengths to stay young. CUT features a film director faced with a diabolical dilemma designed by a disgruntled extra. And a young woman with a tragic past is confronted by Takashi Miike’s BOX.

Dumplings (Fruit Chan)-- An aging TV actress with a cheating husband takes extreme measures to regain her youthful appearance by going to Aunt Mei (played by Bai Ling) for dumplings containing a very special ingredient. (Urp!) It's probably best that I don't give you even a hint of what it is, but if you really want to know, inbox me. This one was definitely my favorite of the three. The cinematographer is Chris Doyle, btw. I didn't know beforehand that there is an extended 90 minute version of this film, so I'm downloading it now. A-

Cut (Park Chan-wook) -- A bitter and sadistic extra holds a film director and his wife hostage in their own home/movie set. He strings up the wife, a pianist, with wire and superglues her fingers to the piano keys, threatening to cut off each of her fingers unless the director strangles a child he (the extra) supposedly picked up off the street. For a situation so intense and torturous, I thought there was a little too much humor injected into the story, but maybe that's just me. This was my second favorite of the three. B

Box (Takashi Miike) -- This was a weird one. (Well, they all were, but...) It reminded me a bit of Carnivale (the few episodes I've seen of it) because as a little girl, Kyoko was a dancer in her father's (assuming he was her father) travelling show. In a fit of jealousy, she was responsible for the accidental death of her twin sister as a little girl. Every night, she is haunted by nightmares of being locked in a box and buried alive. It was certainly beautiful to look at...all those shades of blue and the snow...and the costume design was great. But the story was lacking...something. I can't help but think this would've been a little better with another 20 minutes or so to flesh out what was Kyoko's dream and what was reality. The ending confused me a bit, but someone on IMDb likened it to an Edgar Allan Poe story and that made a lot of sense to me. B-

Overall: B



36 -- (France/2004) --Director: Olivier Marchal

An atmospheric neo-noir thriller. Two legendary stars of French cinema, Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu, play police division heads striving for a promotion. The retiring chief tells them it’ll go to whoever brings down a gang of armored truck robbers, which sets off a brutal competition.

This film certainly had its flaws, most of all the out-of-the-blue subplot thrown in late in the game to set up the all too implausible and convenient ending. Very stylistic...if not for the French language and actors, you might think it was an American cop drama, perhaps by Michael Mann. Some of the night shots reminded me of Collateral. I'm not saying that's necessarily a bad thing, just that for a French film, it wasn't very French. Daniel Auteuil did an excellent job with what he had to work with, and I did find it highly entertaining. Considering it didn't start 'til 9:40 (25 minutes late) and I was sleepy from the heat, that I managed to stay wide awake has to count for something, right? B+


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