AICN Secret Screening #3: El Orfanato (The Orphanage)

Perhaps the pre-recorded introduction by producer Guillermo del Toro set my expectations a little too high, but I found The Orphanage to be an average affair that left me shrugging and saying "meh."

Laura returns to the home that was once her orphanage with her husband, Carlos, and son, Simon. They plan on reopening it as a home for orphans with special needs. Simon starts making invisible friends, which is cute until these friends lead Simon to papers that explain secrets the parents have kept from him. Agitated by these revelations, Simon acts up on the day of the orphanage’s open house, then disappears. The hauntings begin and the parents are forced to consider that Simon’s abductors may be supernatural.

The locale, the sets, the cinematography, many aspects of The Orphanage are wonderful and director Juan Bayona builds tension with a capable eye. The problem for me was the payoffs often weren’t there; too may times the slamming door is just a slamming door which disappoints after a while. The scary musical cues run a bit heavy in the second half as well. Basically, there’s a lot of hissing fuse, but very few firecrackers. All of the pieces seemed to be there, including the surprise ending twist, but the whole was less than the parts and The Orphanage didn’t quite satisfy.

Nikkatsu Crime Retrospective: The Velvet Hustler

I’m a total newbie when it comes to Japanese cinema from the 60s, but Mark Schilling’s Nikkatsu series has set me on the path. I hope the Alamo will consider a similar retrospective in the future. This time out, Nikkatsu creates one of the coolest gangsters on the planet, Goro.

Goro kills a Tokyo yakuza boss then lays low in Kobe for a year nonchalantly running a small band of street toughs. Since director Masuda was purportedly quite taken with Godard’s Breathless, chain-smoking Goro is gifted with a superhuman devil-may-care attitude which frustrates and impresses all who know him. But Goro’s become weary of both Kobe and his mistress, and so makes plans to return to Tokyo. Sadly his previous employers merged with the opposing gang and now they’ve sent a hitman for revenge (apparently gang consolidation is big problem in the Japanese underworld since this setup also occurs in A Colt is my Passport). Goro makes alternate plans to evade the assassin while trying to win over the daughter of an embezzler, the one woman immune to his charms. Mod club scenes pop, hearts are broken, trust is betrayed, and someone makes the slickest exit in any film I’ve ever seen.

Far more than a mirror of it’s inspirations, The Velvet Hustler makes for an unique look into Japanese cinema. Check it out if you have the chance.