Movie Reviews: The Disappeared and Tokyo!

The Cleveland Film Fest is here from March 19 - March 29 and this weekend I saw a couple movies.

First, we saw The Disappeared (dir. Johnny Kevorkian) on Saturday evening. We ended up getting there at about 15 minutes until showtime so we had to sit in the front row, which totally sucked. Then, they started the movie and it was so blurry that I thought I was losing my vision until someone started a chorus of people shouting "FOCUS!" to the projectionist. They couldn't resolve the blurriness and eventually lost the picture entirely on and off for about 5 - 10 minutes. Of course they couldn't pause the movie though so no one knew what was happening in the beginning of the movie, and you really can't miss the first 5-10 minutes of a thriller. Anyway, once all that baloney was resolved, the movie was just kind of "eh". It may be because at the scene where the main character realizes "who done it" you couldn't see what he saw that made him think he knew, but whatever. The story wasn't too bad, but it wasn't the best either. I think Tim put it best when he said it really left more questions unanswered than he would have liked. I agree.
3/5

On Sunday, Tim and I went alone to the theater and tried to get there nice and early to avoid terrible seats again. We left home over an hour early and were the first people in line for Tokyo!, which was fantastic.

Tokyo! is three short films all set in Tokyo by three different directors. The first short was called "Interior Design" and was directed by Michel Gondry (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Be Kind Rewind, Science of Sleep, etc.). This was my favorite of the three, although I really liked them all. It's a story about a couple who move to Tokyo (go figure) to make it in the big city, but there is a bit of the twist at the end that I won't share becuase you'll never see it coming. Really.

The second film was "Merde" (which means shit in French) by Leos Carax, who I admittedly don't know much about. It was really funny though my least favorite of the three. The story is about a man who lives in the sewers underground and comes up (in Tokyo!!) to eat flowers and just generally scare the crap out of the population. The police finally catch him and a trial ensues, but I sort of agree with a review on imdb that suggests it could be about 10 minutes shorter.

The third and final film was called "Shaking Tokyo" by Joon-ho Bong (another director I admittedly know nothing about). This was the story of a hermit who hasn't left his house for 10 years and he falls in love with the girl who delivers him pizza. It was really cute and I don't want to say anything else because I don't want to spoil it.

Anyway, I would give the whole thing 4.5/5. I thought the three movies worked together really well without being tied together in any concrete way. Also, all three were funny and quirky in their own way, which I love. These directors obviously have a lot in common.