El Hombre Invisible (DrBenway)

What in the shit happened here?

When veteran director Kinji Fukasaku died during the making of Requiem, his son Kenta took up the reins. Does it ever show. One can't help but compare the film to its' predecessor which focused on the personal dynamics of the students and left the audience to draw their own conclusions as to what the film had to say. The dark humor and social commentary in the first film (which can still be debated) are replaced by highly cartoonish action and even sillier interaction. Also, we have Beat Takeshi's "wearied school-teacher" character replaced by Riki Takeuchi, who looks as if he's stepped off a tour bus with rap group Public Enemy. His acting is just too over-the-top and without any emotional depth to be taken seriously. His scenes would be perfect in director Takashi Miike's tongue-in-cheek action flicks but in this film, it's a waste of credibility.

Some points are awarded to the editing and the rhythm of the film. Camerawork is nice and you can say that too about the sound design. I'm sure this looked really good on paper, but without a strong director at the helm, you end up with results like this.

Battle Royale With Cheese.

A Serious Man works a lot more like Barton Fink in its' lack of glamour with "Physics vs. Fate" serving as the platform. It begins with a strange prologue that plays like Fiddler on the Roof written by Franz Kafka. Seeming to be the Coen's most intensely intimate film, it's also one of their most difficult to deconstruct as God puts main character Larry Gopnik through one test after another. And by God, I mean the Coen Brothers through the eyes of cinematographer Roger Deakins.

Jeff Bridges is The Dude, and it's hard to imagine anyone in the role. Someone else would've come off as just a pot-smoking hippie with some funny lines. Roger Deakins, the cinematographer, is a craftsman of unsurpassed skill and an artist with an amazing capacity to transform the mundane (like um, bowling) into something truly beautiful to behold. The plot is an afterthought and is more about the journey than the destination.

Even if you don't know what it all means, even if it's ultimately puzzling and unexplainable, there is a feeling, an emotional response that persists. There is a strange logic to this film. A logic of death, of evolution, of birth. This is the strangest kind of logic that must be felt and seen, instead of pondered.