Tag: Indonesian

Alvin’s Harmonious World of Opposites has a lot of things going for it right off the bat.

One: It has an amazing title. We immediately know who the main character is, and we know that there will be some fucked up shit in this movie.

Two: It is the first film I saw for WorldFest here in Houston, in an actual theater. I saw 16 of them before the festival started, but they were in chairs in my homes and at work and on my phone, not in theaters.

Three: The promo image for the movie (seen below) has a large assortment of pandas. So many goddamn pandas. Stuffed, cute, pandas. I actually have 5 stuffed panda toys in my house right now! I am not as obsessed as this main character, but I can certainly, and will happily, relate.

Squeeeeeeeeeee!

Alvin (Teik Kim Pok) is a bit agoraphobic, and he hasn’t left his small apartment in about 18 months. He talks with his friend (Nitin Vengurlekar) on Skype, his job is translating manuals into Japanese with a boss (Ailís Logan) who thinks he is at an office, and he orders everything online. His groceries, a shit ton of knickknacks, and of course panda themed items. He is a bit obsessed, but he doesn’t notice that of course.

Most of his face to face interaction is with his neighbor, Virginia (Vashti Hughes), a vile mouthed racist who blames everything on everyone else and cares not about her volume. Oh, and there is an attractive girl who lives below him, whom he has never talked to, but he has a peep hole in his floor into her bedroom. Erm.

Problem’s begin to really arise when Alvin finds some black substance leaking from the attic into his room. He has some neat freak tendencies, and it is entirely too gross, so he goes to check on it. And what he finds up in his attic he would have never guessed in a million, panda billion, years.

Also featuring Tina Andrews and Dessy Fitri.

If he doesn’t watch it, his foul mouthed neighbor might accidentally eat him.

Alvin’s blahblah is a short film, only about 70 minutes with a handful of characters. Mostly just Alvin and his neighbor, along with the weird lady who lives in her attic. In case you are not ready for the film, the first scenes quickly give us the neighbor on a “cunt” fueled rant to wake up the viewer.

Personally, my favorite scenes were just Alvin hanging out in his Apartment, working, living his life. As advertised, the attic magical “adventure” that he went on was sure, yeah, quite weird. It had gibberish language and a lot of silence. It was bizarre and a complete tonal shift from the rest of the film.

With some thought, you can sort of figure out the purpose of his trip and what it means for his character, it is certainly not given to you on a platter. At the same time, I have no reason to suspect my own interpretation of events are correct at all, and I can easily be reading it wrong.

If this movie was entirely about a man who had slowly turned into a hoarder who never left his small room, I probably would have enjoyed it more. The attic makes the entire thing unique and stand out, but it is just so extreme. It was still quite well done given the subject matter and time.

With The Look of Silence, I will have completed all of the nominated documentaries for the 2016 Academy Awards!

This was the hardest one to find to watch and prepare for. Thankfully, Amazon Prime eventually had it available to rent.

If you didn’t see a month ago, I reviewed The Act of Killing, nominated a few years ago for best documentary (and losing to a music based Twenty Feet From Stardom). The Look of Silence is basically a sequel to that documentary. Yes, apparently documentaries can have sequels.

If you saw The Act of Killing, you will have learned that 50 years ago, there was a genocide in Indonesia. The people rebelled and the military took over, and all of the communists were killed. Communists are of course a loose term, and many thousands of people were slaughtered or raped. The people who did the killing became rich and are still the people leading the country politically today. And those people, for the most part, are PROUD of their acts.

It was really fucked up overall, and totally should have won that year.

So the director is back, with the sequel, to continue the story, but in a new way. (Which is good, no one likes the same fucking movie).

Look how fucking bored that guy is, watching the same movie twice.

Last time we talked with the killers, and for the most part, they showed no remorse. This time, our main character is Adi Rukun (seen above). He wasn’t born when the killing was taken place, but his brother Ramli was alive. He was also killed in a brutal fashion, despite just being a child and clearly not a communist. Because they felt like it. Adi is now an adult and has known about his brother’s death before, but thanks to Joshua Oppenheimer (the director), he has detailed information on exactly how and why his brother died. How so? From the killers, who explained the whole thing, and it was even written down in a book.

Now, Adi and his family are obviously not okay with any of this, but there is basically nothing they can do. Adi is an optometrist, and I guess they use that as a way for him to confront both the killers of his family, and people who killed in general. Offering them free glasses to help the vision and stuff.

So this time, outside of more backstory and information, a lot of it is just Adi talking to these people, asking hard questions and confronting them on their past. It is brutal. It is intense. And people don’t take these accusations kindly, and especially get pissed off at their past being brought up. They’d rather just forget the whole thing.

This documentary was fantastic. These are real people, a real genocide, and talking very uncomfortably about it all. This is the stuff that creates great drama, and it is on a subject people in the West know very little about.

Fuck, it was hard to make my eyes look away.

And I am annoyed, because most likely Amy will win Best Documentary. But I have put this film and Winter on Fire above it, because they were fan-fucking-tastic and important. I liked Amy, sure, but these documentaries feel so much more important. And I will be extremely disappointed if Oppenheimer loses a second time to a music bio documentary.

History is fucked up. There are so many fucky things that occured, learning about them all in school would probably inflect serious depression on the youth of the world and not lead to a happy future.

But that doesn’t mean we can ignore history. We have to take things that are relevant and have strict meaning to our world today. No one should care about a big village wiped out 2,000 years ago in Spain. That is not something relatable. But genocides over the last 50-100 years probably should qualify as important events to learn about. After all, if we ignore them, then the people who committed these genocides would live out their lives knowing they could do it again and never be punished. The Holocaust sucked, but the world is bigger than central Europe.

Military coups everywhere and lots of dictators and mass killings, especially during the cold war. You know, the one without the war? Tons of people died.

Like in Indonesia, in 1965-1966, where a failed military coup occurred, and then what was left over allowed fear to run the country. So street gangsters were able to form death squads that killed almost a million people. Which people? Communist people! And they also extorted Chinese people out of money to protect their shops. It was a bad year with a lot of blood shed and a lot of fucks not given.

In The Act of Killing, the director of this film goes to modern day Indonesia, to talk to these people who helped commit the atrocities.

Thankfully they loved to talk about it.

A documentary from these men’s point of view is already an almost insane idea. But the men involved are bragging about what they did, for the most part feeling no remorse and feeling like the heroes of their own life story.

But no, the director wanted them to not just tell their story, but to show their story. He provided material for them to make a movie about the killings, how it happened, how they interpreted it, so they can show modern people about their past.

So intertwined between their stories we have these people choosing actors, acting out scenes, describing torture, you name it. It was such a strange juxtaposition but it helped perfectly capture just how warped their own realities were, along with their own justifications for the murders.

The Act of Killing is powerful, and it is a surprise it did not win Best Documentary its year at the Oscars. I eventually did see the winner, Twenty Feet From Stardom, and it cannot compare to the same level of significance, both socially or historically.

I didn’t ever plan on watching this documentary because subtitles and I felt lazy. I eventually did so because a companion documentary came out last year, The Look Of Silence, and I before I get my reviewer claws on it I need to do my appropriate research. And hey, this documentary was phenomenal. It feels like a must watch and it is already three years old.

Indonesia must be the most violent place on Earth.

At least it appears that way in movies. I have only seen two now that take place in there, The Raid: Redemption and its sequel, The Raid 2.

The Raid 2 is 150 minutes and a very significant portion of that is action heavy. This movie is definitely not for the faint of heart, as it is violent, gruesome, and just so dang fast. I know I have said that before, but this might be one of the most real examples.

Things sure have gotten rough for Michael since Lost. Will he ever fine Walt?!

I probably should have watched The Raid again before watching this movie. I really don’t remember much of the plot, since the plot aspects actually were pretty poor in the first film. But this time? This time they want plot. The plot itself is more detailed, with quite a few more characters, some backstories, some personal issues and the like. I guess that is why the run time is so long, to fit all this extra plot in the film. Note: Plot is not the reason to watch this movie.

This takes place right after the plot of the first film. Rama (Iko Uwais) succesfully took down the tower, and is talking to the only supervisor he can trust, Bunawar (Cok Simbara). Well, Bunawar cleans up the leftover messes, despite Rama’s surprise. He wants Rama to join his team, undercover, to help clean up the dirty cops in the city. He refuses. Until one of his family members is killed as a result of his own earlier actions.

Shit. He is in.

So he has to get sent to jail to meet Uco (Arifin Putra), son of Bangun (Tio Pakusodewo), the local crime boss from the area. He needs to infiltrate their organization by befriending the son and hopefully get a list of names of corrupt cops. He knows that one head cop Reza (Roy Marten) is clearly bad, but without knowing the rest, there cannot be a cleanse.

But what ends up happening is Rama gets caught up in a gang turf war between the two rulings gangs, and a third new gang lead by Bejo (Alex Abbad) who wants to make his mark by going straight to the top. Can he survive and put an end to all of the threats?

Also featuring a slew of characters, such as the return of Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian)! We also get a second in command Eka (Oka Antara), and some very intense hit men: Hammer Girl (Julie Estelle), Baseball Bat Man (Very Tri Yulisman) and The Assassin (Cecep Arif Rahman).

Basically one of the people is a real life Talim from Soul Calibur!

Technically, this is a bit of a hard film to give any real analysis to, because there are only so many words I know that mean “gruesome” and “fuck yeah violence”. There isn’t much else to say really outside of that for the action. Some of the best action scenes I have ever seen, just a bit cringey at times (note: most times). The first hour or so could have probably been cut some. A lot more plot vs action in that part, although it featured some sad moments. Thankfully the entire movie didn’t take place in prison like I thought it might. Only had two fight scenes in there, although the mud one was a whole tier on its own. Only thing I wish about that scene was making it easier to tell who was who so early in the movie.

I’d like to think if a bunch of white people were caked in mud, I would have an equally difficult time.

This is the type of shit American action movies need to be like. Especially the serious ones. Action on type of action with some little bit of action on the side.

I am curious where the third film is going to go. Apparently it will take place two hours before the events of the end of this film? Initially, that sounds terrible. But oh well, as long as it looks cool while it happens, right?

I think the only thing I heard about The Raid: Redemption was to watch it. Maybe it was “watch the fuck out of it”. And I might have heard that from multiple sources before I was able to see that. Pretty strong of a recommendation for some Indonesian film (my first on the site, woo?) that I have never heard of.

Hopefully it is nothing like Tactical Force. I want my SWAT teams to actually be effective, and not you know, shitty. Fighting skills plus guns seems like a violent bonus.

The bodies? They kind of hit the floor in this movie.

In the heart of (Big City Indonesia) is an apartment complex, that is no where near normal. It is home to a lot of drug lords, criminals, murderers, people good at fighting, and the most corrupt thing ever. No one could take it down. Not until today. A SWAT team of 20 some men is sent in to stealthily take the apartment, floor by floor, hopefully with no murders. Just you know, arrests. Big ballsy idea, but one that might work.

Lead by Team Leader Jaka (Joe Taslim), the raid initially goes off without a hitch until they reach the sixth floor. During the mission, a young lookout spots them causing a tense momenet. He is able to escape and tell the next lookout before he is killed, alerting the head boss on the top floor, Tama Riyadi (Ray Sahetapy) of their arrival.

Our actual hero is young Rama (Iko Uwais), a soon to be father, who really really just wont die. Needless to say, shit hits the fan soon after. Snipers take out the ground floor crew, and some of the team members. The power is shut off, and free rent promised to any individual who takes out a SWAT team member. Jaka soon finds out that the raid is not officially sanctioned by the department, just Lieutenant Wahyu (Pierre Gruno), meaning the last five swat members (who are split up) are now on their own and must survive the onslaught.

They also have to worry about Tama’s right hand man, Andi (Donny Alamsyah) who is the head of the logistics and narcotics, and Mad Dog (Yayan Ruhian), an incredibly incredibly great fighter, who can pretty much fuck all the people up.

Whoa whoa whoa, wait a minute. WHOA. What is this!? Just wow.

Well first off, if you are like Hank Hill, and hate foreign movies (because if they are good they will get remade here anyways), then no worries, because that is totally what is happening. Similarly, a sequel and maybe third are already planned, with the rights bought my Sony. So if you like this movie, there is that to look forward to as well. I believe the same fight choreographers are involved for the US remake, but really, we will see what happens.

Despite my best attempts, the plot was actually pretty weak in this movie, and hard to grasp. Lots of betrayal. Lots of death.

BUT LOTS OF KICK ASS FIGHT SCENES. Holy crap! What all action movies try to do, basically, is have enough cool stuff happen that the plot doesn’t matter. And generally most of the time I find myself bored with them, and start analyzing the plot, and picking it apart. Really didn’t have that luxury with this movie. Was bad ass pretty much start to finish, and some of the sickest fight scenes I’ve ever seen. And lots of crazy death.

What a horrible way to recommend it I feel, but fuck the rest, just pay attention to the action.