The New York Asian Film Festival

I’ve been attending the New York Asian Film Festival/Subway Cinema film series for years, and it’s amazing. I highly recommend it! For each screening Brian Naas introduces the film and gives away prizes from the festival’s sponsors. This guy is hilariously and amazingly great, and he even writes the Subway Cinema blog and weekly email – a great way to find out about every Asian film (including India), playing in NYC each week.

I was lucky enough to preview some of this year’s festival picks, and they did not disappoint!

DYNAMITE WARRIOR

It’s showing on July 5th at the IFC Center, check it out!

If you only see one film from Thailand this year, it’ll probably be Dynamite Warrior. I recommend Dynamite Warrior as a typical NYAFF experience; it has weird twists and turns, a bit of blood, some martial arts, and in the end you come away a better person for having witnessed the spectacle. I had my doubts in the beginning, but by the end Dynamite Warrior won my heart.

Dynamite Warrior is part revenge tale, part Western, part wizards fighting, and part firework-powered martial arts. In some ways it is reminiscent of Brisco County Jr., but with magic instead of technology and Dan Chupong instead of Bruce Campbell. The film is set in Siam circa 1910 (?) – remember the costumes from The King and I? A tractor salesman, Lord Waeng, is angered when the Thai people refuse to buy his extremely expensive technological marvel. Instead of considering the economics of the situation, Lord Waeng hires thugs to steal water buffalo from buffalo traders, hoping to force people to buy tractors.

Jone Bang Fai the “Fireball Bandit” rescues the buffalo and attacks the traders and thugs indiscriminately in an effort to find the wizard that killed his parents. The whole wizard thing isn’t introduced in the first half hour, so it comes as a bit of a shock that there’s magic involved. Nai Hoi Sing turns out to be a powerful wizard/buffalo trader whom no one can touch. The Fireball Bandit is hired by Lord Waeng to kill Nai Hoi Sing. Are you following this?

In action films the love interest often seems like an extraneous addition to the plot; not so in Dynamite Warrior! The Fireball Bandit needs the menstrual blood of a virgin in order to combat Nai Hoi Sing. Fortunately, the Black Wizard’s daughter makes for a convenient *ahem* blood donor slash love interest. This leads to the most humorous “Waiting for a virgin to menstruate” scene ever witnessed on film.

Nevermind the magic, this movie has a dude riding a giant bottle rocket! The Fireball Bandit has his own kind of martial art, involving fireworks and hitting people in the face with his shins. The best part is that this isn’t a gimmick – THERE IS A TOTALLY REASONABLE EXPLANATION for the fireworks. That alone should get you in the door to see this film.

Dynamite Warrior is everything I could hope for in an NYAFF viewing experience. The movie starts off going left, ends up turning right, and after a little violence you get a solidly entertaining movie memorable for its weirdness. I couldn’t ask for more. (Also one dude uses elephant tusks as weapons.)

GAMERA THE BRAVE

Gamera the Brave is screening for free at Japan Society on July 8th!

I’m not a Gamera expert. Going into this film I knew only the following Gamera facts:

1. Gamera is a turtle.
2. About one dozen Gamera films exist.
3. Gamera fights for the children.

There is also a really great Gamera song that children sing in early Gamera films, and a perhaps greater adaptation of that song as sung my the Mystery Science Theater 3000 Crew:

Garmera is really neat!
He is made of turtle meat!

Gamera the Brave may be the highest budget Studio Toho film I have ever seen. Perhaps by no coincidence it also contains the finest acting I’ve ever seen in a Toho film. In the Toho school of film most “acting” is usually left to the men in the monster suits. (Spoiler!) Gamera the Brave contains actual human drama! (And also monster suits. End spoiler.)

Except for some brutal monster fights, Gamera the Brave is a solidly entertaining children’s film. It is also a great summer action flick, since the film takes place over summer vacation.

Sympathetic protagonist Touro is about 11 years old and just getting over the death of his mother. Touro’s fry-cook single father just happened to witness Gamera’s last stand in the 1970’s, wherein Gamera blew himself up to save the nearby human town, leaving behind a single egg. Touro just happens to find that egg around the time fishing boats are being mysteriously attacked at sea.

If you’re like me, and you loved Destroy All Monsters because there was a baby Godzilla monster that was just sooooo cute, then you’ll really love Gamera the Brave. Touro’s egg hatches into an adorable baby Gamera, which he names Toto. Toto is played by an actual turtle, occasionally enhanced with CG, until he grows to be several feet across and is replaced by a man in a monster suit.

While Toto is still a small and super-adorable flying baby turtle the film compares favorably to a Toho version of The Mouse and the Motorcycle for a solid 40 minutes.

It’s all fun and games until Zedus starts attacking the fishing village and kills Touro’s friend’s parents. Zedus (presumably named by the media in the Japanese monster equivalent of a hurricane-naming scheme) is a fearsome beast who looks like a cross between the Muppet version of the nine-tails from Naruto and the poison-spitting dinosaurs from Jurassic Park. Zedus also has an unintentionally humorous 15-foot-long purple tongue, poorly rendered in CG.

The only real irk I have with Gamera the Brave is that Gamera only fights Zedus in this film. Sure, you get a multi-monster flashback fight in the first five minutes, but I was kind of bummed that Gamera had only one opponent.

Touro and his buddies are evacuated from their town, and end up going to Nagoya to help Gamera win his fight against Zedus. There’s a really heartwarming scene of children running an impromptu relay race to give Gamera a magic/alien item he needs to win the fight – it brought a tear to my eye, but it’s also a little disturbing. Doesn’t this imply that Gamera has low-level psychic mind control over kids?

Gamera is not a bad choice out of the NYAFF picks. It’s more mainstream than Dynamite Warrior, but it might be a good intro to the festival for first-time attendees. It’s an obvious must-see for Gamera fans.