Originally slated for release in January, the studio thought that it would fare better in the summer heat. So, here we are, June is here and Eli Roth's torture film has arrived on the big screen, sure to be a prime target of critics everywhere.

I was all set to go in and hate the movie, or at least dislike it. There is just something about how they go about marketing it as the most shocking horror film. I just cannot accept that the goriest most disturbing film will be one that gets through the modern MPAA system with an R rating. I cannot and will not believe that. Sure, there was The Exorcist, but that is not terribly gory and I believe the MPAA was a slightly different beast then. Anyway, back to the movie at hand. Surprisingly, I walked out satisfied with what I have seen, in contrast to the bits of early reviews saying that it was boring and/or not all that good.

Hostel Part II begins with a sequence aimed to horrify, yet I found it slow, boring, and ultimately not needed. Not a good start, if you ask me. The scene centers on Paxton (Jay Hernandez), the surviving hero of the first film, he is in hiding, afraid that the Elite Hunters will trake him down and finish the job. The scene really has no connection to the rest of the movie and only serves to tie up the perceived loose end from the original film. I have to question the need to even go back to the first movie. Why was it necessary to go back to Paxton's tale? Wasn't it enough that he got away, got his revenge, and returned to his life? I would have been much more satisfied with that, rather than the scene tacked on to kick this entry off. OK, not a good start.

After the opening scene, the movie slips into the formula mined for the first film, except instead of the three backpacking guys, it is a trio of young women off for a weekend getaway while studying in Rome. While on their journey, they are approached by a woman who tells them of these springs in Slovakia that they should visit. Now, we all know what is going to happen. While the first film had that lulling effect in the first half, where you are not sure what is going to happen or when, that feeling of building suspense is gone. We all know where this is leading, and at some points, I just wished they would hurry up and get to the gore already. Still, I found the journey of these women to be a bit more interesting than the journey of the guys last time. The movie did drag a couple of times, but I still felt oddly compelled.

With the lack of any real suspense for the audience in the first half of the movie, Eli Roth had to do something to keep us interested, and this is where the first of the additions takes place. Enter Roger Bart and Richard Burgi, reuniting for the first time since their time together on Desperate Housewives, as Stuart and Todd. These are two of the would be killers who are to become Elite Hunters. We get to spend a good deal of time with these two as we watch them approach the deed. These scenes are the best in the movie, they create these fascinating individuals, and while we do not learn much of their history, enough is revealed to make them just great to watch as they interact with each other and the potential victims.

Take those two threads, the girls lured into danger and the killers nearing their destiny, and weave them together and you have a movie whose suspense is restored as we near the second half, where the blood makes its appearance. I felt like there was less nudity and less gore this time around, but it seemed to be more effective. Then there is the "twist" ending, which, while not the "most shocking ending in horror history" as the commercials would like you to believe, was still surprising, it caught me off-guard anyway.

Eli Roth is a good director, may still have some issues with pacing, but he has a good eye, and an odd penchant for creepy kids. He has given this film a good look, and may have delivered a sequel that outdoes its predecessor (minus that opening scene nonsense, anyway). The performances were effective, for the most part, though I really wanted to see Bijou Phillips die. Bart and Burgi stole the show, and Lauren German does a fine job as the lead. Like the prior film, this one has a cameo by a horror director that has had an impact on Roth, Hostel had Takashi Miike, this time out we get notorious Italian director Ruggero Deodato (of Cannibal Holocaust fame), credited as The Italian Cannibal.

Bottomline. I wasn't sure at first, but it succeeded in winning me over and by the time the ending rolled around, I was sold. There is some nice gore, a weird horror/comedic vibe that was not executed all that well but still worked in creating this weird movie-universe where stuff like this actually happens. In the end, I liked it, I am unapologetic, and I am sure some of you may like it too.

Recommended.

Christopher Beaumont spends much of his time writing about entertainment when he isn’t sitting in a movie theater. He is known around the office as the “Movie Guy” and is always ready to talk about his favorite form of entertainment and offer up recommendations. Interests include science fiction, horror, and metal music. His writings can be found at Draven99’s Musings, as well as Film School Rejects.

Kon Ichikawa gets the Criterion treatment as two of his most popular films in the western world, The Burmese Harp and Fires On The Plain, get widespread release through the prolific distributorship. This means that you will finally have that flawlessly remastered DVD you always wanted at the cost of not being able to impress hipster friends with that bootleg PAL copy you've had for years. Such is the yin and yang of having superior tastes in everything.

The Burmese Harp is an anti-war movie. Not really, people just like to say that. It is more of a humanistic drama that takes place in the wake of a war, making it seem inherently anit-war. In the same way Bergman approaches existential dilemmas through the middle ages in The Seventh Seal, so does Ichikawa approach spirituality and morality through World War II.

Ichikawa's mouthpiece is Mizushima, a soldier in a worn down regiment plodding through the jungles of Burma. Their musically inclined Commander encourages them to sing to keep spirits up. Mizushima has taught himself to play the harp on an instrument he picked up along the way. Eventually, the troupe comes to find out that the war has ended several days earlier and begrudgingly surrenders.

Mizushima is asked to go on a mission to convince another platoon to do the same. However, this other group of soldiers would rather die fighting and Mizushima gets caught in the crossfire. When he doesn't return his comrades take him for dead. Mizushima, however, has been taken in by Buddhist monks. He dresses as a monk for protection and heads out to find his unit (who have been transfered to the Mudon POW camp, some 200 miles south). The carnage that Mizushima sees along the way deeply affects him as his fellow troops hold out on the belief that he may still be alive. Mizushima's journey of spiritual enlightenment causes an internal conflict of whether he can leave the dead of Burma behind for his home in Japan.

It is strange to think of this film as being a war film as their is only one battle scene and it takes place after the war has effectively ended. On the other hand, it is hard to see it as an anti-war film because Ichikawa paints his themes in broad strokes that, while subtly hinting at the pointlessness of war, are more general in scope.

Indeed, like many great directors, Ichikawa takes a period piece and makes it timelessly relevant. World War II, while hard to believe, acts as a stage for more important things. The journey of Mizushima stares death, cruelty, and human suffering in the face and asks why? Mizushima's gradual transformation takes place over his own physical and spiritual tribulations on the course of his journey. His quest to find his friends becomes an internal quest to know why the world must suffer so greatly.

While attacking deep-seeded human issues the film never loses a certain sense of sentimentality, almost to a fault according to some. It does have a certain theatrical aspect and some almost sappy moments. However, most of this is not hollow in its purpose. If the viewer looks closely enough they will see the message coming through. The English soldiers putting down arms and singing with the Japanese demonstrates both sides sense of loss and need for healing. The Japanese platoon's synchronized movement in nearly every situation seems campy at points, but hints at the group mentality of practicality that they follow whilst Mizushima remains on a solely individual journey.

And the film speaks on this idea as well. How the group, the general population, stresses practicality. For Mizushima's troupe it is the practicality of surrendering with the chance to return home and rebuild Japan. For the soldiers who refuse to surrender, even if that decision means death, it is the practicality of dying honorably. Initially, Mizushima cannot see much point in the latter. He knows that their deaths are now meaningless. However, the practical concerns of surviving for the better of his country begin to lose meaning too. As he wanders the Burmese country side he sees scores of other pointless deaths. He knows that even when the war was winnable the deaths still meant little. As he finds personal mementos on soldier's bodies he begins to envision the scope of destruction and the network of lives that are deeply affected by it.

Thus begins Mizushima's struggle. His love for his fellow soldiers and homesickness propel him to seek out the POW camp, to possibly return to Japan one day. The things he sees make him realize that their is no answer for the world's pain, only an opportunity to mitigate it. He believes he can stay on in Burma and somehow help in the spiritual healing of the people there. The film has a poignant ending where the viewer finally sees what Mizushima's choice is and why he made it.

Ichikawa treats a difficult subject with utmost humanity. The film toes a line between sentiment and reality, but does so in a way that perfectly demonstrates that our world needs both. The healing is just as real as the suffering. The characters remain real people with their own faults. Their individuality exposes a number of choices that we can makes when put against the harshness of the world.

Ichikawa also captures all of this brilliantly from a technical standpoint. He moves from quick, frentic cuts and pacing to slow, long takes that capture the essence of the scene, drawing the viewer in. He also makes great use of pulled back, wide shots showing the natural beauty of Burma contrasted to the carnage around it, to show the individual lost in a big and uncertain world. On the other hand, he gets the camera close into the individual's face, showing the wear eyes, the hard-lined faces and the glimmer of hope. Ichikawa moves about brilliantly from scene to scene taking each one as a microcosm to represent the whole of his objective.

This Criterion edition of The Burmese Harp benefits from the typical remastering and cleaning of the original film, but also features improved translation, interview features with Ichikawa (amongst others) and a 21 page booklet with an essay by critic Chuck Stephens (infinitely better than the one you just read).

Hopefully the wider release of Ichikawa's films will give him the kind of popular acclaim Kurosawa and Mizoguchi enjoy from the western world. The Burmese Harp remains one of the most moving unconventional war films, but hopefully it won't remain one of the more under appreciated.

“Made in America” wasn’t exactly an epic conclusion, but, like a lot of series finales, it’s a perfect summation of the series’ message, and as such, we shouldn’t have expected anything else. It’s at times frustrating, but in the end, I was satisfied by the episode, particularly the haunting mix of safety and menace in the final moments. It wasn’t the best episode of the season, in fact, it was one of the weaker ones, but the series ended in a good place and I don’t feel like I need any more.

The central conceit of the series was the idea that Tony is just like you, a family man with a wife and kids living in suburbia, only he’s also in the mafia. An ordinary person plus something special is usually the best way to make a TV show work. You need that other element as a hook, to lend some life-and-death stakes to the drama, but at the same time, drifting too far into a different world strips the show of relatability. I find this show more true to my life than any other in TV history. It perfectly captures the world of suburban New York in the early twenty-first century, the rhythms of everyday life.

So, in this episode, we retreat from the epic sweep of the recent run of episodes back to a more subdued status quo that’s actually pretty nice for Tony. Looking at the series in light of this episode, it’s clear that the operatic violence of “The Blue Comet” was an anomaly, this kind of war isn’t standard for the mob today. Phil was one of the last remnants of a dying age, something he made explicit in his speech last episode. He is the one who instigates this war by refusing to compromise on the asbestos dumping, and he’s the one who instigates violence by attacking Tony’s crew.

Thematically, it makes sense for him to die because his worldview just isn’t viable anymore. Even his own crew recognizes that what they’re doing doesn’t make business sense. Tony was right in “Kaisha” when he tried to smooth things over with Phil. They have lost all the higher principles of “this thing of ours,” and are left with just another business. Phil endangers the lifestyles they’ve all created, turning them back into soldiers, but even then, Tony leaves the safehouse to check in on his family. Carmela wants to return to their house, not ready to live the fugitive lifestyle. It’s just a matter of removing the threat and getting back to normal.

I think one of the most important scenes of the series was Little Carmine’s speech in “Stage 5,” in which he talked about how he backed off being boss when his wife told him she didn’t want to be the richest widow in Jersey. With so many characters dying over something as trivial as an asbestos dumping, the absurd incongruity of what they’re doing falls into place. The organization has no meaning beyond money, so they’re not really dying for anything. Phil is so frustrated at his prison stay because he gave twenty years of his life for something he believed in and when he got out, he found out that no one believed in it anymore. What they’re doing is just like any job. Would you put your life at risk for a promotion? Here, Carmine seems eager to stay out of the fray. He knows that one wrong word could lead to his death, so he just stays in the back and hopes that things will work themselves out. He has more important things that this war.

Tracking back a little, the episode opens with a lot of foreboding, heavy music on the soundtrack, snow swirling around, and Paulie and Tony drive out to meet with Agent Harris. Most people talk about Melfi as the viewers’ stand in, but over the course of the series, and in this episode in particular, Agent Harris serves the same role, infatuated with Tony and secretly helping despite knowing that he’s a bad man. I read one review of the finale that said Harris was in a relationship with a Brooklyn cop, and that brought a lot of things together. The whole arc makes a lot more sense if that woman is the one Phil set up to be beaten and raped, and Harris is now using Tony to get revenge for his girlfriend. I’m not sure where in the series we saw she was a Brooklyn cop, but it works for me, and is a nice counterpoint to Melfi’s rape storyline. There, we saw her refuse to go outside the law to get what was quite justifiable justice. However, the actual law officers feel free to use the mob when it’s to their advantage.

Even without that connection, the arc works. Harris gets vicarious thrills from being in Tony’s world, and after spending so much time observing him, he pays Tony back for the intelligence about the Arabs. On a thematic level, the arc is indicative of the declining power of the mafia. They aren’t a real threat to national security, they’ve been replaced by something much larger. So, the government doesn’t have a big problem working with Tony to help stop the chaos.

From the time the series began, the world has gone through a lot of changes. 9/11 caused a seismic shift in the country’s political landscape, and few shows have engaged with post-9/11 life in the way that this season did. The mob isn’t as much of a threat anymore, and, as a quintessentially American entity, they’ve gained the tacit acceptance of the government. Last episode, Harris told Tony how the mob protected the Brooklyn Navy Yard during World War II. Now, Tony is serving the same role. They’re a part of the defense strategy, and are tolerated for that reason.

I would argue that the episode’s central theme is engagement with the American dream, and this is contained most notably in the resolution of AJ’s arc. At Bobby’s funeral, AJ talks about the fact that people still come to America with hope, in search of a better life, but, according to him, you can’t find it here anymore. Disillusioned by his experience with how the other half lives, he has stopped believing in the myth of America and is obsessed with the hypocrisies of the war in Iraq and the way that the American people just go about like sheep when so much is wrong with the world. He says it’s ridiculous to talk about the Oscars when people are dying in Iraq, ignoring the fact that you need some lies to live with the world. Part of coping with problems is just accepting that there’s going to be some bad stuff in the world we can’t deal with, and just letting it go.

AJ felt an inability to change anything in the world, and that’s what drove him to his suicide attempt. However, his growing relationship with Rhiannon, who he would love to love, helps set him on the right path. The car explosion helps jar him out of his funk and makes him realize that he does want to live. Ultimately, what happens to him is that he learns to accept the lie again. He seeks to enlist in the army as a way to make a difference in the world. If he did that, then he could feel good about his place in the world. However, soon enough, he doesn’t even need that, moving away from his moment of pain, he buys back fully into the lie. AJ gets a BMW, that has good gas mileage, and takes an entry level job with Carmine because he doesn’t need to change the world anymore, just helping himself is enough.

I think it’s notable that AJ takes over for Christopher as Carmine’s partner. Tony has replaced one surrogate son with the other, ironically the thing he viewed as a distraction for Christopher becomes a salvation for AJ. Christopher does linger in the episode, with the cat, who incarnates all the people they’ve killed over the years. They’re still there, and even after Paulie drowns the cat, he returns. The conscience doesn’t clean that easy. But, it’s possible to live with the guilt, it’s there, but not actively bothering the characters.

I know people are going to talk about all the loose ends left open by the episode, but I think everything was resolved to a satisfactory level, as much as is possible without being contrived. Very few lives reach a real end point, things just go on, you could do a Six Feet Under-style hop through time, but other than that, there’s really no ending you can give a TV show other than we’ve reached a momentary stasis point and things will go in the future. In that respect, this reminds me of the end of Buffy. Some characters die, others go on to do new stuff, it’s not an ending so much as a stopping point.

To that end, almost all the long-running characters get a nice farewell. We see Janice becoming her mother, something that’s made literal in the great scene where Junior calls Janice Livia and her daughter, Janice. Janice already resents Bobby’s children and will likely be so overprotective of her own daughter that Nica will rebel in the same way that Janice did as a child.

Junior is left in a haze, remembering only vaguely the days when he and Johnny Boy were part of “this thing of ours.” The final scene with Tony is the closest you’ll get to a glimpse of Tony’s future. He could one day end up a prisoner of the federal government, out of his mind, staring at some birds on a windowsill. It’s tough to see a character we’ve known for so long, who was once so fierce and lively turned into a vegetable, but that’s what the passage of time does.

The reason TV is such a powerful storytelling medium is that we have watched these people get older in a natural way. Movies usually feel constructed, a story designed to make a specific point, whereas great TV shows are more like just dropping into a world and checking in with the characters every year to see what they’re up to. While the delays between seasons were frustrating, they allowed the cast to age and grow in unexpected ways. If the show had ended in 2005, there’s no way we would have gotten the great stuff with AJ that we did this year. This show is a testament to what TV can do, and while it’s not my favorite show of all-time, I think it is the best made.

Paulie ends pretty much where he began, sitting outside Satriale’s, looking back on some old times and getting ready to move to the future. The final scene with him and Tony is great. They’re the last two members of the old guard, the only ones with memories of Sil and Ralphie and Pussy. Tony’s generation is dying off, replaced by the Jasons and the random members of the crew. The faces change, but things are still basically the same.

Meadow, like her brother, buys into the lies necessary to believe in their family’s version of the American dream. One of the notable things about both kids is the way that they’ve each just accepted what their father does without any questioning or real moral trouble. AJ couldn’t stand the violence in Iraq, but never questioned the fact that everything he has comes from violence. Breaking down that lie would destroy his entire world and that’s why both he and Meadow ultimately choose to embrace their existence rather than run from it. While Tony succeeded in keeping them both out of the “Family” proper, they’re both involved in peripheral ways. AJ is working with Carmine, and if he was to have a club, he would certainly be involved with some of the criminal element.

Meadow’s arc is somewhat implicit. Over the course of the show we see her interrogate her father about his work, in the legendary “College,” move away from the family while dating Noah, then move back towards them when she was with Jackie Jr. At the end of season three, she has an outburst and disrupts the family order, and over the next couple of seasons, moves gradually away from her family. However, starting with last season, she and Finn become divided over her family’s criminal involvement, and ultimately she sides with her family rather than Finn. She could have stayed in California, but instead she moves back to Jersey.

Now, Meadow is a smart girl, she went to Columbia, she knows what her father does, but still, she expresses outrage at the way her father is treated by the government. She has bought into the myth, that they’re being persecuted because they’re Italian Americans, not because they’re criminals. This is absurd, but when you listen to her at the sushi restaurant, she fully believes it, and when Patrick is talking about his case, he says he’s defending a judge involved in some kind of corruption scandal, which Tony seems to be a part of.

By the time we reach the end of the episode, all the chaos of the past few episodes has essentially resolved itself and we’re back to as close to normal as we can get. I think one of the key things to understanding Chase’s work in the later seasons of the series, 6A in particular, is that he works based on the rules of real life, not of TV. So, exciting stuff isn’t always going to be happening to the characters. He’s not going to invent a lot of artificial drama that can resolve itself in a single hour, or give characters simple, easy to resolve arcs. Instead, in the style of real life, people will slip into patterns of trouble that repeat, most notably AJ and Christopher across the course of this two-part season.

Christopher’s constant relapses and recoveries from addiction make no sense from a dramatic point of view, shouldn’t his arc lead him somewhere? It does, but in a less obvious way. All that slipping and reversals are critical to bringing him to the place he is in “Walk Like a Man,” where he nearly turns on Tony and the crew. Similarly, AJ’s depression works so well because we saw the seeds of it in 6A then it got fully paid off in 6B. Most TV characters don’t really grow, but face a constantly rotating set of problems. The characters on The Sopranos change, but always have the same core issues, and I think that’s true of real people. I can’t relate to constantly being caught up in love triangles, but I can relate to AJ’s issues with the world or Christopher’s troubles with Tony. The beauty of the show is that the characters aren’t likable in traditional ways, but are always completely relatable.

Anyway, what I’m getting at is that the last few episodes were something of an anomaly. Everybody’s life got thrown into chaos, as it appropriate at the climax of the story, but Chase chose to include this episode to show that this isn’t the status quo. Our lives don’t build to a big ending then stop. Big stuff happens and people go on. Bobby dies, Janice moves on. The events echo, but they will gradually fade, and by the end of the episode, everything seems to be back to normal.

This brings us to the simultaneously brilliant and frustrating final scene. When the episode stopped, I, like many viewers, thought the cable had gone out and was incredibly frustrated. But, I realized it was past 10, so we had probably reached the end of things. It was tough to take in that moment, but I think the jarring nature of the cut out was a great choice, and a really bold one.

The scene directly follows Tony leaving Satriale’s, where he always gathered with the mob family. It used to be a bustling place, now it’s just Paulie left. Tony has lost a lot of friends, but ultimately, he never cared about the mob family as much as he did about his real family. He always claimed that everything he did, he did for them, and sitting there at the table, everything seems to have worked out pretty well for him.

There’s a number of critical things to look at in this scene. Let me start with the setting. This is a restaurant that’s not the cutting edge, sleek place where Tony and Meadow ate sushi. It’s an old style, classic family restaurant. Looking around him, we see a boy scout troop, a couple of teenagers, and a guy with a USA hat on. These are ordinary people who seem more Midwest than Jersey, all American people, out enjoying a meal with their families. Putting the Sopranos in this setting reinforces what I’d argue is the central point of the episode, that they are just one more piece of the lie that is America. As AJ makes clear, there’s all this awful stuff happening in the world, and even right next door, but does it matter?

That’s where the music comes in. Again, Chase doesn’t go for what’s cool, instead it’s a track that just says guy sitting in a pickup truck with a mullet, Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believin.’” Music is always carefully chosen on the show and this track sums up the core theme of the episode. America is a dream we all have, it’s built on blood and hate, but if we’re happy, does that matter? In this moment, Tony watches his family come together, AJ’s happy, Carmela is happy, things are good.

But, simmering under the surface are a myriad of threats. He may be indicted for the gun charge, Carlo has flipped, and there could still be gunmen out there. He’ll never be completely safe, but they can’t dwell on that. What AJ’s arc is telling us is that it’s not possible to fully engage with our world, there’s too much awful stuff. We just have to accept the lie, and we can’t stop believing in it. I absolutely love the way that song works in the scene, the cheesy, but great build as Carmela sits down. This is the kind of song she’d love, the kind of song they’d have played when they were younger together. They have a dream that they can hold on as long as they believe in it.

Watching the scene, I realized that Tony was going to get a happy ending, everything he really cares about is still there and he’s gotten pretty much everything he wants. Yet, hanging over all this was an inescapable sense of menace. A mysterious guy hovers at the bar, and Meadow struggles to parallel park. Tension is building under the serenity, a device that lets us understand how Tony views the world. Particularly after the hits on Bobby and Sil, everything around him is a potential threat. This is how he’ll always live, trying to believe in the lie, but fearing what’s around him.

The final moment of the show is extremely jarring, and I think that’s the point. Most of the seasons end with some kind of family tableau, and we seemed to be building to that, but just as Meadow is walking in, we cut in what’s probably the most jarring end of a series since the final moment of Twin Peaks. I read this ending as basically saying life goes on. The real world has no fade outs and music over the credits, things just happen and eventually we die. The show died in that moment, but the world carries on.

Will Meadow get to the table? Was the guy in the bathroom a killer? Will Tony be arrested? I think the answer is yes only to one of these questions. People are already talking about the way that Chase screwed them on the ending, but seriously, what do we need to know? Tony might be killed or might be arrested at any moment in the show. We don’t any sort of definitive closure at the ending. It would have been easier to end on Meadow sitting at the table, but he wanted to go out on a moment of tension, and that’s what we got, in a spectacular fashion. The lack of music over the credits was particularly jarring, just silence, no more from these characters. I don’t think we’ll ever see a movie, and I don’t think we need one. I am fully satisfied with how all the characters’ stories were resolved.

The series has always been about lies, the ones Tony tells himself to justify his actions, and the ones Carmela tells herself to justify her marriage. The characters who couldn’t accept the lie anymore, like Christopher, all ended up dead. You can’t challenge the world and you can’t leave the world. Instead, you simply need to believe in the myth that what they’re doing is meaningful and worthwhile, that it’s more than simple extortion and violence.

What this episode brings home is the way that Tony Soprano is no different than you or I. We all buy into this myth of America, the shared past and the uncertain future. We all think that the new generation’s going downhill, but really, things just go on. The generations cycle and people change, that is life in America. Tony has been a success because he’s found his place and he hasn’t challenged the status quo. He may be living in denial about all the bad things he’d one, but it doesn’t matter because all of us are. Sitting in that diner, he’s no different from you or I. We’re all a product of a culture that pushes the bad things below the surface so we can live in the dream. Watching his kids grow and surpass him, he’s living the American dream, going from criminal to lawyer in one generation. And, if you believe this series, there’s no real difference, it’s all a part of this one huge mosaic of lies and dreams that is America.