I lack any good rationale for linking these three films under a loose “point” about genre, but I’m lazy and haven’t posted in forever.
Prachya Pinkaew’s Tom yum goong (renamed in the US The Protector by some dolt) is in many ways simply a showcase for Tony Jaa jumping really high and kicking people in the face, or flying through the air to land with his knees on someone’s nose, or jumping from a standstill to smash a lightpost over a guy’s head, or doing a backflip and landing on a narrow scaffold over a long fall to escape a crazy BMX guy trying to run him over. And so on. It’s got a prototypical faux-classical schmaltzy set-up: the ancient protectors of elephants lose an elephant–and her baby!–to mafiosi in Sydney. Revenge/rescue ensues. Cue Tony Jaa’s thighs and steel toes.
But there is some crazy fun stupid stuff: a completely ludicrous mosquito-boat race that ends with two boats being shot through the air into a helicopter, everything exploding in a patently fake matte shot, and quick cut to “Sydney, Australia–Two Weeks Later.” I love that the silly narrative arc is treated as a patent excuse for all kinds of shenanigans. Later, there is a fight between Jaa and about 30 skateboarders, roller-skaters, and BMXers. These hoods are summoned by a strange mafia siren, and they run from all over the streets of Sydney. They are never referenced before or after this fight. Their weapons of choice are florescent lightbulbs.
And, finally, there is a 4-minute tracking shot with fight after fight after fight up the circular stairs of a resort hotel, and it’s just lovely to watch–give up on everything else, watch that, and you’re sold. I watched it three times, kind of enraptured by the foolish bravado of the whole thing. (It apparently took a month to film.)
How to Train Your Dragon is quite pleasant, a kick for a kid’s film, ‘though not in the same league as the crop of classics from last year. But I’ll single its vision and aesthetic out–once again, I was struck dumb by the beauty of some of the textures and color schemes of its 3d aerial and land scapes; Roger Deakins had a hand in capturing certain qualities of the golden hour folks like Haskell Wexler have so brilliantly captured on film. But I’m talking skin, stones, beards, vests, scales, surfaces — god the film looks like you could grab it. (I will take this over the bloated Avatar any day.)
Finally, and the pick of this litter, Lake Mungo is another faux-documentary-style horror film, or at least that’s how it begins. A family out swimming realizes one member–the teen daughter–hasn’t come out of the water. Hours later, her body is recovered. The film follows their mourning–and a growing sense that some presence haunts their home–over the course of a couple years. The film certainly has its suspense and quiet unsettling dread, but it slowly becomes more of an oblique examination of grief. And then it morphs yet again, into a precisely-framed (in terms of narrative and image) exploration of the relationship of the filmed image to our memories, our knowledge, our sense of history. I don’t want to oversell–or undersell-this as some abstract film-theorist’s wet dream: it’s a strong character study, and genuinely haunting in the best sense. But I loved what it did with photos, video footage–like many of the best horror films, it was about what we see and why we look, the death- and life-haunted uncanny of the photographic image. I was expecting some cheesy but fun horror, a la Paranormal Activity, and this was a fantastic surprise.