HARD REVENGE, MILLY: BLOODY BATTLE (2009) - 3/5 stars

Release: 2009

Director: Takanori Tsujimoto

Writer: Takanori Tsujimoto

Cast: Miki Mizuno, Nao Nagasawa, Kazuki Tsujimoto, Rei Fujita, Masahiro Komoto, Mitsuki Koga

Soundtrack: Hikaru Yoshida

Claim to fame: "Call it hyper-violence or splatter-gore, this is the latest piece in Japanese nihilism"-Vortexan at Netflix; part of a double feature DVD that contains both the 45-minute "Hard Revenge, Milly" and the 75 minute "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle"

Rating: 3/5 stars

20 years ago in Japan, we had the hallucinatory masterpiece that is Shinya Tsukamoto's "Tetsuo: The Iron Man" - truly a work of art comparable to "Eraserhead." In 2001, we had the likes of Takashi Miike's "Ichi the Killer" to keep pushing the boundaries of Japanese extreme cinema. Flashforward to modern times and, uh, it seems like something has gone horribly wrong.

Somewhere along the way I think these "shock movies" became more popular in America than they did in Japan and movie producers over there realized they could recoup an investment very easily as long as they targeted Western gorehounds and perverts. How else can you explain the transition from Shinya Tsukamoto to the likes of "Machine Girl" and "Tokyo Gore Police"?

Sure, they might have their moments but something has been lost in translation. There's no context or meaning behind the depravity onscreen, just a string of increasingly horrific images designed to appeal to cinema-goers' most base desires. Which is, apparently, mutated girl sex and dicks being sliced off.

Sorry, pal, that's what you get for wearing a gaudy red and green track suit

Out of this crop of current direct-to-DVD splatter flicks comes "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle," which is actually…pretty good. Damn, looks like I just contradicted myself. Fortunately, I can explain. See, "Hard Revenge, Milly" is essentially two films that come on one disc. The first feature, titled "Hard Revenge, Milly," is only about 45 minutes long - and it's bad. In fact, it manages to illustrate everything that I find distasteful about Japanese shock cinema right now. The second film, "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle," is significantly longer and improves on the first installment in every way possible.

Yup, this guy is still firing a gun even after his head has been sliced off

"Hard Revenge, Milly" is set in a post-apocalyptic Japan, a setting not unlike the "Mad Max" films. Milly was a good woman with a husband and child, until a roving band of sadistic thugs brutally murdered her family before her very eyes. She was left for dead herself but ultimately rebuilt by scientists, who outfitted her with cybernetic weapons. Now a shell of the woman she used to be, she roves the wastelands of Japan in search of the maniacs who stole her life. Her only purpose in life, revenge.

It's a predictable set-up but a satisfying one. Who doesn't love a good revenge story, as played out as these things tend to be in our post-"Kill Bill" world? We still like to see bad guys get their comeuppance. The problem is, the first movie gives you no sense of scope for what's happening onscreen. There's absolutely no world-building done; we don't feel like Milly is roaming a post-apocalyptic landscape so much as she is moving from one abandoned building to another, engaging in bloody fights with random Japanese punks.

One of the gory kills is actually repeated in its entirety twice, before and after the credits, a sure sign that your movie is scrambling for content. By the end, no matter how spectacularly graphic things get you can't help but feel like what you're watching is violence for the sake of violence.

That's why the sequel, "Hard Revenge, Milly: Bloody Battle" works. It provides context for everything. An increase in production values means that we actually get to see more of the post-apocalyptic world any how it as affected society. Suddenly, the homicidal thugs are not just random killers but a new breed of criminal that has begun to pocket the landscape. We see how society has broken down in the wake of nuclear armageddon but also how the last vestiges of humanity are surviving.

All the violence and depravity makes sense because we see a reason behind it: the world has changed. Moral codes don't mean much when everything is about survival - and if you're insane enough, it's all about getting your kicks, even if that means randomly sodomizing members of your own gang or lighting babies on fire.

In "Bloody Battle," the kills are more outlandish and creative - I'll try not to spoil any - but feel warranted, as Milly is constantly fighting for her life. This was also the first time that I bought Milly as a bad-ass warrior who was capable of surviving in a ruined future; she no longer seemed like a former soccer mom with an asymmetrical haircut, but a well-trained killing machine.

And with an increased runtime there also comes more room for character development. We meet the eccentric doctor who is tasked with keeping Milly's internal machinery running. The interesting wrinkle that Milly's mind may not even be her own is tossed out there. Is her bloody quest for the revenge merely the product of someone else's memories? Perhaps she's left a pile of her corpses in her wake for nothing.

The villain in "Bloody Battle" is also a hell out of a lot more fun than any character in the first movie. Okay, I'm sure there are a lot of people who'd call him an offense gay stereotype but…you've got to have a sense of humor about these DTV flicks. Besides, this dude is not in the closet at all: he loves the gay lifestyle and he mourns the loss of Jack (the guy Milly spectacularly killed at the end of her first outing), who claims was the "sexiest" and "most violent" man he ever knew.

This guy frequently steals the show with his one-liners espousing the virtues of the gay lifestyle. At one point he catches one of his henchman trying to rape a tied up female prisoner and he literally smashes the guy's face into a wall and then remarks, "That's why I hate bisexuals."

For sheer gory outlandishness, I don't know if anyone will be able to top the scene in "Machine Girl" where a Yakuza wife makes a sushi chef eat his own severed fingers as sushi rolls…but that's just it: that's really the only thing I remember from "Machine Girl." It was an otherwise forgettable exercise in gratuitousness. "Hard Revenge, Milly" proves that the only way this particular subgenre Japanese cinema is gonna last - and believe me it's proven to be quite popular, with the producers AND directors behind "Tokyo Gore Police" all having projects on the way - is by tempering its shock value with actual evidence of filmmaking skill.

In "Bloody Battle," director Takanori Tsujimoto shows that he has a flair for directing action sequences; he deftly balances scenes of Milly cutting down henchmen like cannon fodder with more elaborate and choreographed battles against skilled opponents. At the same time he proves that with a decent budget he's able of creating a believable cinematic world so that the violence has context and (relative) meaning. I look forward to seeing where he does in the future, with the hopes that he won't devolve into the deviant parody of "Tokyo Gore Police."

If it seems like I'm particularly hard on the makers of Japanese extreme cinema, it's because I like them a lot and, frankly, I expect more from them than their American contemporaries. The legacy of gonzo Japanese flicks from the past 20 years are part of the reason I became obsessed with movies in the first place.

The problem is, "Versus" came out in 2000 and "Ichi the Killer" came out in 2001 - and we're STILL witnessing the outright theft of shots and motifs from both those movies. I want to see a Japanese splatter flick that stimulates more than just the viewer's gag reflex. Fortunately, "Milly"'s hard-edged portrayal of the apocalypse is a step in the right direction.

Something about all this...

feels a bit too familiar

POST-NOTE: Now that I've realized just how easy it is to make screen grabs of Instant and DVD flicks, expect the blog to become much improved. To that effect, I went back to reviews of "China Heat," "The Octagon," and "D.C. Cab" and added my own screen captures. There will be more to come. Thanks for reading!

ANTICHRIST (2009) - 3/5 stars

Release: 2009

Director: Lars von Trier

Writer: Lars von Trier

Cast: Willem Dafoe, Charlotte Gainsbourg

Soundtrack: N/A except two appropriated pieces written by Georg Friedrich Händel

Claim to fame: one of 2009's most "shocking" films; won a first ever "anti-award" at Cannes for misogyny; Lars von Trier's attempt at "torture porn"? (read on!)

Rating: 3/5

"Antichrist" was one of 2009's most controversial films, simultaneously outraging critics at the Cannes Films Festival who decried its perceived misogyny and developing a small following cult following of fans who embraced the movie's mantra of "Chaos reigns." Then what happened?

Well, it's 2010 and the world (and when I say "the world" I mean the internet, of course) has since moved on to this year's batch of films that are considered shockingly offensive or borderline-pornographic. Now that the hubbub over Lars von Trier's latest film has died down, perhaps it's time to take a more level-headed look at "Antichrist," which as luck would have it is streaming in high definition via Netflix.

This is not, I repeat "not," the feel good hit of the year

The world of "Antichrist" is comprised entirely of two people, played by Willem Dafoe and singer/actress Charlotte Gainsbourg. They both give phenomenal performances. Dafoe is almost a parody of the ultra-rational psychoanalyst type. After the loss of their child, he buries his own grief deep inside and takes up the task of "healing" his wife to distract himself. Dafoe adopts an extreme clinical detachment towards Gainsbourg, believing he can cure her depression with pyramid charts and fear exercises.

Some of these scenes are hard not to laugh at: instead of comforting or consoling his wife, he views her like she's part of a control group or medical journal study. Considering that Lars von Trier himself suffers from extreme depression and at least some form of obsessive-compulsive disorder, it's not hard to imagine that he's projecting much of his own experiences with doctors onto Dafoe's character. In fact, I spent much of this movie shaking my head, thinking "Trier must really hate his therapist."

Husbands-to-be, take note of everything Willem Dafoe does in this movie

and then do the exact OPPOSITE in real life

Charlotte Gainsbourg is incredible here. Anyone who has listened to her music knows that she has a soothing yet distant, chanteuse-like quality to her voice and it's used quite effectively in "Antichrist." A scene where she is hypnotized to recount her nightmares of traveling through the woods is made highly poetic by the dream-like visuals unfolding onscreen and Charlotte's lulling tones.

Towards the end of the film, when Gainsbourg is asked to summon all the fury of her feminine rage, she really gives her all…no, I mean, really. She goes farther than just about any other actress would have and was clearly fully committed to the role. It's a fearless performance.

Don't fuck with Charlotte Gainsbourg

For a film that seeks to expose the evil inherent in nature and the darkness waiting for all of us there, it's worth noting that "Antichrist" is an almost paradoxically beautiful-looking movie. Although I suppose even that fits the theme of the film, with nature luring us into a false sense of security with its outward appearance.

But there's no getting around it: as photographed by Anthony Dod Mantle, "Antichrist" is gorgeous.

Mantle has previously lensed "28 Days Later," "Julien Donkey-Boy," and "Dear Wendy," all visually striking works. He shot "Antichrist" primarily using Red One cameras, the digital camera that is helping make high-definition digital photography extremely affordable for independent productions.

This is a (relatively) low-budget film with photography that rivals most any Hollywood film. But even amidst the serenity of our characters' surroundings, Trier is quick to peel back the skin and reveal what lies beneath: a stillborn deer fetus, blood-sucking ticks, battering acorns, and a wounded fox who charmingly informs us that "Chaos reigns!"

I'm not gonna lie, this little guy is probably my favorite part of the movie

Don't be misled by the hucksters at Entertain Weekly or Rolling Stone: the fact that "Antichrist" has been likened to "torture porn" is more of a comment on our sensationalist, headline-grabbing media than it is on the film itself. Guilt-wracked, cathartic self-mutilation is about as far from the questionable merits of Eli Roth's "Hostel" as you can get; about all they have in common is the use of special effects prosthetics and make-up.

That said, there are certainly times in "Antichrist" when Lars van Trier could toned things down a bit. If you have to go so far as to hire "porno body doubles" for scenes that your actors won't film, then maybe it's a sign you should suggest rather than depict during that particular scene. Considering how far Dafoe and Gainsbourg are willing to go for Trier's art, I don't think that's an unreasonable request (or a call for self-censorship).

I would do anything for your art, Lars von Trier...but I won't do that.

I.e. show my balls onscreen

The audience for this film is admittedly slim. It's too thoughtful and intentionally-paced for gorehounds and it's too graphic for arthouse critics. All that's left are those viewers who are interested in a "transgressive horror film" and who are willing to experience Trier's bleak, neurotic view of the world without passing immediate judgment on the man.

John Waters said it best when he named "Antichrist" one of his top ten films of the year: "If Ingmar Bergman had committed suicide, gone to hell, and come back to earth to direct an exploitation/art film for drive-ins, [Antichrist] is the movie he would have made." This is a film about making love in Satan's womb. Enter at your own risk.