"The Return of the King" (1980 version)

I recently bought this DVD in a fit of nostalgia. What a terrible cover! It's nothing that appears in the movie (and are those dwarves!? The dwarves don't even appear in this movie) and in a completely misleading style.



What about the movie itself? Well, I've always had a fondness for these old Rankin/Bass animated productions. "The Last Unicorn" is still my favorite fantasy novel adaptation (and maybe my favorite fantasy movie, period.) "The Hobbit" is a close second (if you accept it as a musical!). For me, "The Return of the King" comes in somewhere behind "The Hobbit". For Rankin/Bass, it's both a sequel to "The Hobbit" and a sequel to Ralph Bakshi's completely unrelated "Lord of the Rings" animated movie covering the first half of the story. Nowadays, of course, everyone thinks of the Peter Jackson trilogy when you mention the "Lord of the Rings". Perhaps surprisingly, I actually prefer the Rankin/Bass animations in many respects!

For Rankin/Bass to attempt to make a 90 minute animated movie of (basically) the entire "Lord of the Rings" trilogy as a fun musical for little kids was COMPLETELY BATSHIT INSANE! That they succeeded as well as they did was a miracle. Obviously, they had to chop out major sections of the plot and dump most of the characters and skim quickly over what remained. They chose to focus on Sam and Frodo's quest to destroy the Ring, with the battle of Minas Tirith in the background. Not a bad decision. (Now, choosing Glenn Yarbrough to be the "Minstrel of Gondor" and warbling "Frodo of the Nine Fingers" in that irritating way...THAT was a bad decision.)

So. I think the best way to view this is NOT as a movie, but as a selection of set pieces punctuated by amusing musical numbers. Keep the books in the back of your mind and ignore the narration where it's forced to make up some kind of coherent story and find something for Merry and Pippin to do. Then you find that this movie in fact presents many scenes word for word straight from Tolkien! In fact, many of the best ones, the very ones I was hideously disappointed about when Peter Jackson choose to leave them out/distort in his version! (For example, Sam and the Watchers at the tower at Cirith Ungol, Denethor's death, Gandalf vs the Witch King, Eowyn vs the Witch King, Sam and Gollum, Frodo's "I have come. But I do not choose now to do what I came to do." at the Crack of Doom, etc.)

Voice actors: On the whole, pretty good. The accents were all over the place, and many of the names mispronounced, but it could have been worse. Orson Bean is fine as Frodo, and Roddy McDowall does a great Sam! John Huston is good as Gandalf (who serves as the narrator here). And Theodore returns to play Gollum. Ever since I watched "The Hobbit" as a kid, he will be THE Gollum to me.

Art: The visual design is good. Not as good as "The Last Unicorn" or "The Hobbit", I thought, but still impressive. Minas Tirith! Mordor! Mount Doom! The scenery was all excellent. The characters were mostly good, too, except for Frodo's eyes, which I found irritating (especially when you see him next to Sam). Worst design: Skeletor Nazgul on flying black horses?! No no no! This is especially egregious when you see the Witch King himself finally riding the big reptilian/draconian creature, and you realize they did the horses ON PURPOSE. I just feel it was a bad idea! The animation itself is obviously low-budget, and you can see them re-using bits over and over.

Music: Not bad. Again, not as good as in "The Hobbit" (which they did re-use some music from) or "The Last Unicorn", and the minstrel's songs were especially grating, but it's all made up for by the "Where there's a whip, there's a way!" song! YES! That one! It's hilarious! It's wonderfully catchy! Highlight of the whole musical! And "The Bearer of the Ring, the wearer of the ring" isn't bad, and the Men's Chorus of Mordor has a few decent songs. Although "Dooom...the cracks of doom!" was a bit generic.

My thoughts as I watch the movie:

• Gandalf's "This is an epic" voiceover and segue to Bilbo's birthday party at Rivendell: Not bad as a framing device. Takes away some of the suspense (you know everyone survives) but probably reassuring for little kids as things do get grim later. And this was even in the book (sort of) with Bilbo asking "what's become of my ring, Frodo?" But I want to strangle that minstrel already.
  
• Time to summarize the first two books! They "had many brave adventures" indeed! Ha ha ha! Stop saying "Ssseeerith Ungol!"
  
• Take a drink every time Gandalf says "festering malignancy"! The tower of Cirith Ungol looks good, though. Right. Time for another song and the opening credits. And yay, show them walking down the map. Yeah, they sure did a lot of walking in the books!
  
• Why is the Ring just lying there on the ground? Never mind, I'm sure Sam will pick it up after he's done hammering at the gates. Oh look! There's Sting and Frodo's "hero's cloak" (his what?) also on the ground. There's webs on the tunnel walls suggestive of Shelob, but they never actually mention any giant spider.
  
• "The Bearer of the Ring, the wearer of the Ring": Is Sam getting anywhere yet? No, wait, time for Sam's temptation. I think they had to condense all the Ring's evil corrupting effect onto Sam and Frodo, hence the extended hallucinatory scenes. (No Galadriel, no Boromir, no Faramir, etc. means it's down to the hobbits and Gollum to show the power of the Ring.) "Beware, the power that was simple now has grown"...to explain why the lifesaving tool of "The Hobbit" now has to be destroyed!
  
• DID THAT ORC JUST TURN INTO A LEMUR!? It's little touches like this that Peter Jackson would never in a million years have put into his version! And some may deride the little hobbit babies as the antidote to the Ring, but Sam has a point: the Ring grants immortality in its way, but it's not life, in contrast to living on by having descendants.
  
• Minas Tirith and the lands by the river: Beautiful! Oliphaunts! No! Not the flying horses! *facepalms*
  
• "Denethor?" "He's gone loony, I tell you!" says Pippin in one of the most ludicrously un-Tolkien lines in the movie (but still the sort of thing Pippin would have said, if he had been an American hobbit in the book). And Denethor has indeed gone loony! And he DOES have his lines from the book, one of the most memorable death scenes in it! "Soon all shall be burned. The West has failed..." "Ash! Ash and smoke blown away in the wind!" "Pride and despair! Didst thou think that the eyes of the White Tower were blind?" Wow. Just wow. Even without Faramir, this was a striking scene. (Ok, so they have to explain the Palantir quickly as a crystal ball, but still...) "So passes Denethor, son of Ecthelion. And so pass also the days of Gondor, for good or for evil."
  
• The stone watchers at the gate of the tower of Cirith Ungol! Yes! I'm really glad they put that in as I loved that bit in the books. Nice design on them, very spooky, and they managed to convey the psychic force-field effect...though the phial was pretty random... "Hey, what's this in my pocket? How conveeeeenient!" And they skip all explanations by claiming it loses its power if explained! LOL.
  
• The whole sequence where Sam goes up in the tower and rescues Frodo is lovely. And Frodo's reaction at Sam having the ring: that's it! That's how it was! But "malevolent trickery" doesn't exactly roll trippingly off the tongue.
  
• Sam and Frodo trudge endlessly through Mordor. Their weariness and the bleakness of the landscape come through very clearly. But don't despair...it's time for...
  
• The song! "Where's there's a whip *whip cracks* there's a way!" I never knew orcs were such talented musicians! Sam says "I'd rather be singing a good old hobbit song myself," but what does he know? But I like the scene where he eggs on the orcish leader to fight the Men! All those stomping orcish feet!
  
• Grond the battering ram! Another excellent set-piece, the breaking of the gates and Gandalf's confrontation with the Witch King. "Go back to the abyss prepared for you!" "Old fool! This is my hour! Do you not know death when you see it? Die now and curse in vain!"
  
• Frodo's nightmares and dreams: I love the orcs giving the hobbits a cheery wave as they walk by. It's so silly it's brilliant!
  
• "Who causes the minutes to fall dead, adding up to no passing hour, bringing no change from day to night, as the unseen sun fails to filter into the ever-present shadows? Who is this dark lord who turns starless nights into sunless days? How does his piercing eye see through the ever-present darkness? Seeing all and nothing. The Restless Eye, in his dark tower, wearing a veil of protective shadow he has woven from fear. And yet he fears, too. In the security of his protective realm, he fears the winds of the world are turning against him. Tearing aside his veils and troubling him with tidings of bold spies that have passed through his fences." --- Gandalf. Best original (i.e. not by Tolkien) bit of writing in this movie. Amazing stuff, from a writer (Romeo Muller) probably better known for "Rudolph" and other holiday specials!
  
• "Wicked master! Cheats us. Mustn't go that way. Mustn't hurt Precious!" It's Gollum! No, it's not really explained in the movie, but as we already know the story, we don't care! As long as we get all his Gollum-y goodness! And Frodo. "Begone and trouble me no more! If you touch me ever again, you shall be cast yourself into the Fire of Doom!" And Sam sparing Gollum's life. "Let us live. Just...a little...longer. Lost! Lost! We are lost. And when Precious goes, we'll die. All of us, die. Into the dust. Die. Into the dussssst."
  
• "Begone, foul dwimmerlaik!" EOWYN! It's Eowyn! "Come not between the Nazgul and his prey!" And the Witch King! Another of the highlights of this movie. Great scene! (But of course there's insufficient information in the movie itself to justify it!)
  
• The timing is completely off. They definitely messed up here. Sam and Frodo hang out inside a volcano for days and days (weeks!?) while the Gondorian alliance marches slowly around Mordor to the Black Gate, where...
  
• ...they are greeted by the Mordor marching band and men's chorus! "Win the battle, lose the war. Choice of evils lie beneath your feet. Retreat! Retreat! If you win then you will lose! Choice of evils yours to choose. Retreat! Retreat! You are standing in the eye of the storm. Move an inch and you'll be dead. You are standing underneath the Towers of the Teeth and the Eye blazes red!"
  
• The Mouth of Sauron! Looking very Grand Moff Tarkin. "It needs more to make a king than a rabble such as this!"
  
• "I am glad you are with me, here at the end of all things, Sam." *wipes away a tear* Awww.
  
• Gondor's army airlifted out of a collapsing Mordor by a flock of giant eagles! Either a tiny army or a much much larger population of giant eagles than seems ecologically likely.
  
• Let's see, does the ending go on and on and on for as long as it did in the Peter Jackson movie? Let's join them in song: "The end of the ring, the return of the king!" And back to our frame story with Bilbo, in which we learn that this all "really happened", but the elves went over the sea and the hobbits turned into humans! Which is close enough to Tolkien's idea of making up a "mythical past" for England, I suppose. And we say good bye, the elves and Gandalf and the Ring-Bearers sailing away on a rainy day.
  

In conclusion:

Strictly speaking, it doesn't stand up on its own as a movie, the animation is clearly low-budget, too much story is crammed into too small a space, it's torn between being a happy kiddie musical and a serious epic adventure, and there's plenty to quibble about. On the other hand, if you watch it as a sequence of dramatized scenes from the book linked together by dodgy narration and music, it's great. The art is lovely, the voice actors are good (mostly), and it's all surprisingly respectful of the original work by Tolkien. Don't tear your hair out because it throws out 90% of it. I'd rather they depict 10% of it well than depict 80% but distort it to turn it into a Movie (well, I'll enjoy the Movie, too, if it's good, but it's not the same kind of experience.)

Bian Cheng Lang Zi/Bordertown Wanderer

("Bordertown Wanderer", aka "The Black Sabre" and "A Warrior's Tragedy")

I originally saw the movie version of this ("A Warrior's Tragedy"), which
piqued my interest enough to hunt down the books it was based on.
After I read the books, I tracked down the TVB serialization of the story
and watched that.

The books: A three volume set by Gu Long, set as a sequel about a generation
after his "Duo Qing Jian Ke, Wu Qing Jian" ("Romantic Swordsman, passionless
sword") (featuring Flying Dagger Li, Li Xun Huan, and the swordsman
A Fei). As I can barely read Chinese at all, I won't attempt to
critique the writing style, except to say that it's rather choppy and
distinctive to read.

It features the usual convoluted plots and crazy characters. Fu Hongxue
is kicked out of his home with only one purpose: revenge! His mother has
raised him to pursue and kill his father's killers. Apparently, his father
and his entire family (Fu Hongxue's mother was a lover, not the wife, and
Fu Hongxue himself only an infant when his father died) were murdered by
a group of masked assassins. Fu Hongxue, trained in the use of his father's
famous black sabre, now has to figure out who the assassins were and kill
them all. He seems to have one lead, which takes him to the Bordertown
and the local lord there, Ma Kongqun, of Ten Thousand Horse Hall.

Things get violent very quickly. Fu Hongxue is not the only martially
inclined visitor: there is also Yue Kai (who claims not to need a sword),
a famous thief "Flying Spider", an arrogant young lordling, a hunchbacked
assassin, and many others. When people start dying at Ten Thousand Horse
Hall, everyone is a suspect.

As for the women...there's Shen San Niang, Ma Kongqun's mistress. Ma Fang Lin,
his daughter. Cui Nong, a local prostitute. Ding Lin Ling, who's in love
with Ye Kai. Fu Hongxue ends up in a tragic relationship with Cui Nong...

Once they leave the Bordertown, Fu Hongxue starts coming across evidence
that perhaps his quest is not as black-and-white as he once thought. Maybe
there was a good reason so many people ganged up to kill his "heroic"
father? Thick-headed and gullible he may be at times (a contrast to the
quick-witted, smooth-talking Ye Kai), Fu Hongxue doggedly pursues truth
and revenge.

The most annoying thing (for me) was probably the preachiness (especially
towards the end) and the hero-worship of Li Xun Huan. While the parable-like
encounter with the Guo family was amusing in taking the inherited vengeance
obligation to ridiculous extremes (in lining up the whole family, grandparents
and grandchildren alike --- if we're going to feud, let's get it all over
with once and for all!), the lectures got old quickly, and the ending
felt cheap.

Movie: maybe 50-60 % accurate to the books.

Someone wanted more chariot chases, guns, and explosions.
The golden armor vest seems to be taken from the prequel novel series.
The cloak of invisibility...I have no idea. Maybe it really was in one
of Gu Long's other novels. The stories of the women was probably the most
mangled, followed by the Lu Xiaojia storyline (they didn't even give him
his trademark peanuts!)

I'm really very fond of the movie, actually. (Despite a few silly bits,
and the unfortunate moustache on Ye Kai.) Just watched it again. Ti Lung
as Fu Hongxue is awesome. The man has charisma.

And compared to, say, Tsui Hark's adaptation of Jin Yong's "Smiling Proud
Wanderer" (the "Swordsman" trilogy of movies), this is totally faithful
to the original story. (Why quibble about relatively minor changes, heh.)

TVB series: maybe 80-90% accurate.

Looked cheap! Ten Thousand Horse Hall looked like any other TVB "ancient"
rich guy's house. The wilderness sets and cave sets looked ridiculously
fake. Costumes on the drab side, too, and the Spiderman costume for the
"Flying Spider" takes the cake for sheer silliness. Didn't like Fu Hongxue's
hairstyle. And I watched the Mandarin dub, which in TVB serials, usually
lacks somewhat. Ha.

All those interpolated scenes! They take away from the mystery, although it
may make things easier to understand (and avoid too many scenes where
Ye Kai explains what's going on). And they often use the actual dialogue
from the books, but change the context (and the speakers, sometimes!)
which can be irritating.

Both movie and TV series made drastic changes to the ending.
In this case, I felt they made the right decision. I didn't like the book's
ending very much myself. And the story started with Fu Hongxue and his
mother. I'm glad they let him have some sort of "closure" with her.
They treated Ma Fangling a bit more sympathetically in the series, too,
and I liked the way they concluded her storyline.

Bottom line: enjoyable, but rarely brilliant, and sometimes annoying

The Illusionist

Decent movie, but forgettable. I watched it shortly after I saw "The Prestige,"
which came out around the same time.

By the trailers, it seemed like another Victorian era stage magician movie, this time in Vienna. Well, actually, Prague stands in for Vienna, but it plays its part beautifully. Pseudo-Euro accents, I suppose just to avoid sounding like Americans. But I don't care too much about accents, or I would have complained about Christian Bale's in "The Prestige".

Oddly enough, this movie also uses the same type of "end back where we began, except this time we know what it means" technique that "The Prestige" did. However, the tone of one movie was very different from the other.

Hmm. This one is not so much about revenge and obsession, nor the philosophy of magic, nor magic itself, nor even obsession with magic, but rather obsession with love. A more romantic story with more fantastical elements visually. A magician in Vienna (around 1900) ("Eisenheim", played by Edward Norton) is a master of his art, but he is still a "commoner", and being in love with his childhood friend, now a duchess (Jennifer Biel), well, it won't do. It won't do at all. Especially when the Prince (Rufus Sewell) wants to marry her. The Prince, an arrogant, highly intelligent rationalist fed up with the chaos and incompetance he sees in the empire he plans to inherit, sets his pet police inspector (Paul Giamatti) on the magician. The Chief Inspector is also anintelligent man, but more sympathetic to the magician. As for the duchess, she has always been in love with the magician. So they must perform their ultimate illusion, their audience the Prince and the Chief Inspector.

I preferred the "Prestige". While that one did have one very "unrealistic" (SF/fantasy) element, it did treat it honestly. And everything else felt solid. I thought the "Illusionist" cheated a little. Too many effects were too obviously CGI. Even if it was meant to be a subjective point of view (what the audience thinks it sees), it still was too much, I think. I didn't believe
in it. And if I didn't believe, the whole movie was...not as satisfying.
If we decide that it had a fantastical element a la "The Prestige", that also
is unsatisfying in this case. For "The Prestige", it didn't matter. For
"The Illusionist", it renders the movie rather pointless.
Perhaps the whole thing took place in the Matrix.

While the story, acting, music (Philip Glass!), and visual style of it were
good...yet...

It was all rather predictable. And this time I didn't have the excuse that
I'd read the book first! When the characters say things like "Make us
disappear!" and "He won't stop hunting us until we're dead!" and the
quarry is an illusionist, what else are we to expect? Eh?

Iconic image: an empty wooden chair alone on a stage...

The Prestige (book and movie)

This was a novel by Christopher Priest which was later adapted into a movie, directed by Christopher Nolan ("Batman Begins", which I didn't like, and "Memento" , which I did).


It's not the secret. The secret is trivial. It's how you use the secret that's important. It's how the secret contorts your life around it. It's how the secret affects those around you. THAT matters. Deeply. That's why it doesn't matter if you know the "twist" or not. It's still a great
story. For the same reason, it doesn't matter (to the meaning of the story) that a device that works in the story might not be possible in reality.

We have two young stage magicians in Victorian England. One way or the other, they end up as bitter rivals, constantly provoking each other and spying on each other to learn the other's secrets. In the book, it starts when Borden attempts to expose Angier as a fraud (when Angier performs as a spiritualist). In the movie, the two are initially friends under the same mentor. Borden is perhaps guilty in the death of Angier's wife.

Either way, it's bound to end in tragedy.

Now add in the magic and mystique of Nikolai Tesla! It's the dawn of the modern age, and where does science begin and magic end? Which is the true performance? The man onstage, or the
man offstage? Are you watching closely? Do you see what you see or what you expect to see? Illusion, deception, obsession.

I thought the movie was a very good adaptation. It dropped most of the framing devices (with the modern-era man who finds out about the past by reading diaries and so on), but still keeping some of the diary/journal idea by having the two rivals read each other's diaries instead.

In fact, this is one of the few cases where I felt the movie version was a bit stronger!
In the book, the ending just made me go "eh? what was that? why end it that way?" (But then, I thought that about Christopher Priest's The Glamour, too.)

The movie, of course, Hollywoodized it with extra doses of drama, but that isn't always a bad thing (for a movie!). Nolan did that "end where we started, except this time the same scene means something different". Perhaps he tried a little too hard (making the movie seem pretentious or heavy-handed at times, especially the very end), but it was still excellent. I really felt for the characters, even though they were not very likeable as people. Talk about making sacrifices for your art!

Since I'd read the book first, it wasn't really a surprise. The changes weren't quite what I expected. They made the character's choices scarier, I think, and the tone as a whole was perhaps darker/more violent. And Angier's machine...I felt it made more sense for it to work (if such a thing was possible at all!) the way it did in the movie rather than the way it did in the book. It felt as if Christopher Priest wimped out on it,
and went the less troublesome path with it.

Memorable novel, memorable film!

Iconic image (movie): a bunch of Victorian top hats strewn in the woods...
(And the rows and rows of birds in cages...very unsettling. Strips the humor
away when it's birds rather than hats.)

A Warrior's Tragedy

A Warrior's Tragedy

("Bian Cheng Lang Zi")

Fun martial arts (mostly swords) soap opera movie from 1993, directed by Frankie Chan (who also played the "comic" hero) and starring Ti Lung as the "dark" hero.

Gu Long /is/ Gu Long.

Even though I've never read the book this movie is based on, the dialogue is distinctively Gu Long. I'm not sure how much of the book made it into the movie (now I'll have to look it up and read it!) but what's there is enough, maybe more than enough. I had a hard time keeping track of the various characters.

Lovely movie. Before the wirework and CGI got out of hand! But stylish looking, with decent actors and a good story (even if it does feel like the complicated plot was ruthlessly chopped down for the sake of the movie. If they made a series based on this of the same quality, that would be even better! Apparently the DVD version is already cut down from the original 3 hour theatrical release.)

The usual Gu Long tropes. Cool heroes, seemingly cold-blooded until their sentimental side is revealed. Beautiful sexy women throwing themselves at the men. A dark hero (who plays the assassin) and a light hero (who plays the clownish skirt-chaser). An old feud. Revenge and more revenge. Secrets. Gadgets. A bit of magic. Invisibility! Super armor! Houses blowing up! And much much more!

Ok, it's a bit silly, but I had lots of fun watching it. I liked it a lot better than many of the more recent "epics" (e.g., "Seven Swords", "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon", "House of Flying Daggers", etc.). The fight scenes weren't as ridiculous, the characters more appealing, and the ending less artistically tragic and pointless.

Bad, but fun: Sanitarium

Sanitarium (the movie, not the computer game)

Directors/writers: James Eaves and Johannes Roberts

Heh. I went into this with low expectations. And ended up rather liking it. I
found this at imdb.com when I was looking up "Sanitarium" (the computer game). I loved the game, so I decided to give this movie a shot.

Dr. Max Warick (now apparently a mental patient) is being questioned about his experiences some twenty years ago with an experimental drug. It seems to work perfectly, yet...yet...something is wrong, as Max slowly comes to realize. The patients NOT taking the drug are getting worse. And then there's the mysterious deaths among the hospital staff.

Obviously low budget. Reminded me of those Bill Baggs not-the-Doctor movies with Colin Baker, Nicola Bryant, Sylvester McCoy, and other Doctor Who actors that came out when Doctor Who was cancelled in the 1990s. Except a bit better.

Yes, as a fan of "old" Doctor Who, I obviously have a high tolerance for wooden
acting, over the top acting, non-acting, and cheap effects. Overlooking all that (and the bad audio), I totally enjoyed this movie. As much as, say, Revelation of the Daleks.

Uri Geller is in this. Uri Geller! Ha ha ha. Actually, he was ok as one of the detectives questioning Max. Maybe it's because I had no idea what he looked like, it didn't stick out in any way. I have no idea WHY Uri Geller, except, why not
Uri Geller? Eh? Even if he's not known for being an actor, neither are any of the other people in the movie, and at least he's known.

Young Max did look quite mad towards the end.

Wish they'd done better with the sound quality. And video quality. I had to turn the volume way up. Was it dubbed? Looked that way at times.

Music...well. They composed one spooky 'insane' sounding tune and played it
over and over, sometimes obtrusively.

Story hung together surprisingly well. At first I was like, this makes NO sense
scientifically (why would giving one set of patients a drug make another set sicker? And why wasn't it a double blind experiment anyway?). But that was explained later. And ok, it was still a horror movie explanation, but it made sense within the logic of the story itself.

Not the most original concept ever (Now, "Saw" was a clever concept...) but not
bad. Some freaky images, some real, some memories, some hallucinations. Just stop with the rotating camera bit. Please.

Oh, and I loved the "Ah, that's the air conditioning. Someone should fix it" moments at the beginning (when reality was obviously warping and so on.)

So, any relation to the game? According to Johannes Roberts, no, but it's an interesting coincidence. The title was originally "Diagnosis." The U.S. distributors changed it to "Sanitarium", maybe to make the connection.

The protagonist in both is a doctor named Max. Both went a bit insane.

Game: more of an inner journey. Max coming to terms with the death of his little sister when they were children. And they're Americans. This movie is British.

Movie: more of an external horror. There was something similar with the death of Max's mother. Ah, hell, I'm a sap...I found their stories moving. Maybe because they weren't such Actors, I could almost believe in them as actual people.

I preferred the game (a classic in the "point and click adventure" genre) but the movie's all right.

Can I recommend this movie to you? Only if you have a taste for "bad" low-budget SF/horror. If you do, sure.

Asian Extremes: "Dumplings" and "Audition"

I recently watched Dumplings (a cut down version was collected in 3 Extremes) and Audition.

Both were decent movies, watchable but not great. Directors Fruit Chan ("Dumplings") and Takashi
Miike ("Audition") each take a simple idea to an extreme, but I felt that both of them dragged, "Audition" with a slow start and "Dumplings" sagging towards the middle, and came to unsatisfactory ("Was that it?") ends.

"Dumplings": "Aunt Mei" sells very expensive dumplings from her crappy apartment in Hong Kong, guaranteed to restore youth due to their special ingredient. A washed-up middled-aged TV star comes to her for help, wanting her youth and her husband back. Balking at the first bite, Aunt Mei tells her to think of the results, not the source. Meanwhile, her lecherous husband is cavorting with a younger woman and partaking of his own elixir (baby chickens still in the egg) but to less effect. Alas, he barely notices the changes in his wife. Youth is one thing, time is another. How can she recapture the happier times of the past? She can't. The acting is good, especially Aunt Mei with her old woman in a young woman's body. I liked her character: heh, am I sick or what? But she knew when to let go and live an independent life. Her comments about the thread of cannibalism throughout Chinese history and literature seemed accurate enough. And the dumpling-making scenes were lovely: authentic except for the meat filling used.

"Audition": A middle-aged widower is lonely, so his producer friend sets up an audition for a movie that will never be made, as a pretext for the widower to "audition" prospective wives. He obsesses on one girl in particular, despite his friend's misgivings, and is delighted when she seems to appreciate his attentions. But what is he about, chasing after a woman barely
older than his son? Another randy old goat, as revealed by his hallucinatory visions (lusting after his son's girlfriend, and even his secretary, though afterwards he never even gave her a look), not honest to himself or to the women. It's his misfortune that the girl he chooses has a few issues herself. She's a total psycho! Abused as a child, she now uses torture to reveal the
"truth" about her lovers. (This is hardly a spoiler, seeing as how the DVD cover shows her in Evil Pain-inflicting Mode.) So after the widower finds out a few disquieting tidbits, she captures him and the Truly Disturbing Scenes ensue (depending on your tolerance for watching various forms of torture.) And then it ends. I found it a bit abrupt.