The Assassin of the Tsar, on OVID.tv

It is highly unlikely Timofeyev, a mild-mannered Soviet mental patient, could have assassinated both Tsar Alexander II in 1881 and the final Tsar, Nicholas II along with his family in 1918, but the Soviet government heavily censored discussion of such events. As a result, most Russians knew very little about their respective deaths, even as late as 1991. Russian filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov really had to scrounge for background information while preparing this film. However, he had a big international star in Malcolm McDowell. Maybe he was not as hot as he was in the early 1970s, but the Caligula thesp still carried a good deal of cachet during the era of Glasnost. Regardless, McDowell convincingly makes Timofeyev’s delusions contagious in Shakhnazarov’s The Assassin of the Tsar, which premieres today on OVID.tv.

Assassin of the Tsar was produced at a time when Shakhnazarov was still an artist. Today, he is a propagandist, whom Putin regularly trots out to endorse his war crimes in Ukraine. Apparently, he forgot writing and directing this film, because its critiques of violent extremism could apply just as well to Putin’s regime.

The exact time period is hard to pin down, but references suggest Stalin is still in power. Perhaps that is one reason Timofeyev politely declined his previous doctor’s offers of increased freedom. As long as he remains an inmate of the asylum, he is safe from the outside world and provided sufficient food. Dr. Aleksandr Yegorovich has stepped back into a quasi-emeritus role, conceding day-to-day responsibilities to his younger colleague, Dr. Smirnov, who was specially recruited from the big city.

Smirnov is struck by Timofeyev, particularly the way his body exhibits signs of psychosomatic injuries on dates related to the assassinations. Of course, he assumes Timofeyev could not possibly have committed either murder, so he decides to cure his patient through confrontational role play therapy. However, instead of snapping Timofeyev back to reality, the patient pulls his doctor into his delusional visions of the past. Shakhnazarov realizes these scenes so subtly, they first seem like historical flashbacks for context. Yet, the treatment steadily takes a physical and emotional toll on Smirnov.

As the film progresses, it grows steadily clearer how the abject horror of the Romanov regicide hangs over the characters and Soviet society, like an evil curse. It is sort of like the regime’s original sin and Timofeyev is the holy fool, pointing out Banquo’s ghost at the banquet.

Two versions of Assassin were produced, one featuring an undubbed McDowell performing with the Russian actors phonetically delivering their lines in English and a Russian version, in which the Yorkshire-born thesp is overdubbed. This review is based on the subtitled Russian option, but OVID.tv offers both. Regardless, McDowell is perfectly weird as Timofeyev. He can be suitably twitchy, but somehow his moments of serene calm are more disconcerting.

The Arctic Convoy, in The Epoch Times

Like the U.S. Merchant Marine, Norway's merchant sailors suffered astonishingly hifgh casualty rates during WWII. THE ARCTIC CONVOY grippingly recreates their service and sacrifice. EPOCH TIMES exclusive review up here.

Retake (Japan Cuts), in Cinema Daily US

The teens in RETAKE have difficulty figuring out the endings for the movie they are making and the film they are appearing in, but the bittersweet nostalgia and their youthful exuberance are more important than the narrative gamesmanship. CINEMA DAILY US Japan Cuts review up here.

COBRA: Rebellion, on PBS

TV Prime Minister Robert Sutherland outlasted Boris Johnson Liz Truss, and Rishi Sunak. He might be the most reassuring PM since Jim Hacker on Yes, Prime Minister. However, Sutherland could use a Sir Humphrey, because many of his cabinet members follow their own agendas, often against the interests of his administration. It gets so bad, his flamboyantly arrogant Conservative Party rival Archie Glover-Morgan is more friend than foe this time around—or at least it’s a close call. That will be a problem when the next crisis strikes in the 6-part COBRA: Rebellion (a.k.a. season three), which premieres tonight on PBS.

To embarrass her father, Sutherland’s daughter Ellie joined an extremist environmental group occupying tunnels under a contested construction site. However, she needs daddy to save her when a freak sink-hole collapse traps her underground. The disaster site turns into a crime scene when remnants of an explosive device are discovered. Awkwardly, the activist trapped with her knows an awful lot about it. Logically, suspicion also falls on Ellie, requiring her father to maintain impartial treatment towards her.

That does not sit so well with his wife Rachel, with whom his marriage was already strained. Fortunately, he can finally count on the wise counsel of his chief of staff, Anna Marshall. Like Lloyd Bridges in Airplane!, she picked the wrong day to return from sick leave, after waking from her second season coma. Indeed, she wants to be in the cabinet briefings (the so-called COBRAs) to support Sutherland—and anywhere else he might need her . . . support.

Somehow, a fictional Middle East kingdom that is absolutely not supposed to represent Saudi Arabia is also mixed up in the expanding crisis. Apparently, they kidnapped the dissident Princess Yadira, who was a women’s rights activist back home and a legal resident of the United Kingdom. Sutherland is quite put out that they would conduct such an operation on British soil, but the ruthlessly ambitious Defense Minister, Victoria Dalton is determined to preserve British defense contractors’ lucrative deals with the oil-rich kingdom.

Uncharacteristically, Glover-Morgan, who ascended to the deputy PM position in season two, advises caution to both. While he wants to preserve the defense contracts, he also wants no part of the regime’s reported human rights abuses. In fact, the subtle evolution of Glover-Morgan, from jerky to rather waggish, is one of the best developments in Rebellion.

David Haig practically chortles with delight firing off zingers and scheming behind-the-scenes. He is like Frank Underwood or Francis Urquhart in either version of House of Cards, except Glover-Morgan is more human, more principled, and arguably a true patriot, despite his devious, roguishness. Honestly, if he were the lead of the next season, it would be jolly good fun.

In comparison, Robert Carlyle is still a bit bland as Sutherland, but he projects a sense of sound judgement and temperament that frankly a lot of Americans are currently yearning for. Lisa Palfrey is still appropriately shifty and morally ambiguous as Intelligence Chair Eleanor James. Edward Bennett is also entertainingly snide and pompous as Glover-Morgan’s former ally, press secretary Peter Mott, who has turned against the Deputy PM. However, Marsha Thomason is dull as dish water playing former Sutherland advisor and current Labour shadow minister, Francine Bridge, whose duties apparently solely consist of walking about looking heroically concerned. Similarly, a lot of viewers would prefer to leave Holly Cattle’s character, nauseatingly petulant Ellie Sutherland buried in the collapsed tunnel.

Fantasia ’24: Mash Ville

They might be moonshining siblings, but Joo Je-song and his two half-brothers are no Dukes of Hazard. For one thing, there latest batch is legitimately lethal and racking up a body-count among their regular customers. They try to retrieve the bad brew, but that takes them to a small provincial town where a doomsday religious cult has its own homicidal ideas in Hwang Wook’s Mash Ville, which screened during the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.

The film’s early rhythms are somewhat unsteady, like the shambling of a stoner zombie. Eventually, all these odd characters will come together in a small town that is about to become a ghost town. Fortunately, Joo’s half-bro’s were drunk on someone else’s product when he walked in on them, but their now deceased friend was pounding their Moonlight Whiskey. Obviously, they need to recall their bad batch, so they carjack Ms. Jeong.

At least she had the good sense to decline the Moonlight Whiskey the bartender pushed on her, during her latest bout of binge drinking. She got so drunk she forgot to pick up a corpse dummy for her demanding producer. “Fortunately,” a random woman decided to climb into her trunk, where she apparently died. The producer is thrilled by the corpse’s lifelike qualities, but she is freaking out trying to figure out what to do with it next.

Joo and the Bros maybe solve her problem when they carjack her. They need to get to the small town where they shipped their deadly stock. Meanwhile, a pair of religious fanatics are killing townsfolk one by one, until they have a dozen corpses, but not just any twelve. They need to have one that was born in each calendar month of the year.

That is the over-simplified version. Hwang and co-screenwriter Lim Dong-min have a whole lot of weirdness going on in this film. A lot of it is amusing in a “huh, wha…” kind of way. However, there are also times when it is just a lot.

Fantasia ’24: The Old Man and the Demon Sword

It is basically the anti-Excalibur. You don’t possess this sword—it possesses you. Wielding it necessarily entails a Faustian bargain. It is best possible weapon for killing demons, but by doing so, the demon trapped within will eventually build up enough power to break out. Old tipsy Tonho is no demon-slayer, but somehow the blade finds its way into his hands in Fabio Powers’ The Old Man and the Demon Sword, which screened at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.

Initially, the Demon Sword had a highly contentious relationship with its wielder, a fiery padre literally crusading against demons. When he dies in battle, the sword literally falls to Tonho. He might be drunk, but he is smart enough to resist picking it up. Nevertheless, the Demon Sword marks him anyway.

Ironically, Tonho is more devout than any of the film’s flawed clergy. The boozy widower truly tries to hew to a righteous path, which clearly does not preclude the old hair of the dog, at least in his judgement. That leads to constant squabbling with the Demon Sword, whom he can hear in his head. Regardless, they must work together eventually, when they enter a magically sealed-off Portuguese village harboring demons.

Powers’ deliberately exaggerated, lo-fi grungy DIY style is amusing, at least for a while. However, even the film’s relatively brief running time (a mere 64-minutes) starts to wear out its welcome, especially when it resorts to overly-familiar meta conventions. There is also a weird disconnect between the intentional low-budget aesthetic (for comedic effect) and its half-serious discussion of profound theological concepts. Frankly, this wild cocktail would have probably worked better as a twentysomething-minute short film.

Only the River Flows

Nobody tells provincial police detective Ma Zhe to “round up the usual suspects,” at least not in so many words, but that is clearly what his superiors have in mind. Under a regime like the CCP, this strategy offers cops two benefits. They can rid the regime of someone deemed undesirable and it makes work easy for them. Yet, for some reason, Ma Zhe is perversely determined to do things the hard way on this case—and it definitely makes life hard for him in Wei Shujun’s Only the River Flows, which opens this Friday in New York.

When a lonely granny’s body is found in the river, suspicion automatically falls on the mentally disabled man who often accompanied her. Ever so charmingly, the cops and villagers refer to him as the “Madman.” However, the discovery of a teenaged girl’s purse leads Ma Zhe in a different direction. Then again, the murder of her suspiciously older lover refocuses the local task force back on the Madman.

Intuitively, Ma Zhe doubts the Madman’s guilt. The situation also hits uncomfortably close to home. He and his very pregnant wife Bai Jie soon learn their baby has a ten percent chance of having some sort of developmental disability. Naturally, the clinic strenuously recommends an abortion and he agrees. However, she is determined to deliver their son and deeply resents any suggestions to the contrary.

Although Wei’s adaptation of Yu Hua’s novel, co-written with Chunlei Kang, adopts the style and form of film noir, it de-emphasizes suspense and proceduralism. Instead, it is most effective recreating the social and economic realities of post-Tiananmen 1990s China.

Throughout the film, it is unambiguously clear the police leadership have no real interest in justice. They measure success in police league ping-pong championships and checked boxes in bureaucratic reports. They want Ma Zhe to charge the Madman and be done with it, regardless of the truth.

Again, nobody uses the words “One Child Policy,” but they loom over all Ma Zhe’s discussions with his wife. For him, the risk of having a child disabled in any way is too great a risk. On the other hand, Bai Jie refuses give up a coveted boy, knowing they might not be so “fortunate” with another pregnancy.

For the role of Ma Zhe, Zhu Yilong did vintage Robert De Niro one better. First, he gained weight appropriate to a shlubby cop with bad dietary habits and then he lost the flab as the stress of the investigation took its toll on the honest cop. It is an understated, but enormously gritty performance.

Kubi (Japan Cuts) in Cinema Daily US

Since its a slow news day, here's a Japan Cuts review. KUBI has everything Takeshi Kitano fans associate with the master. It has brutal fight scenes, nefarious intrigue, and sly Kitano attitude. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Fantasia ’24: Brave Citizen

Mooyoung High could use a substitute like Tom Berenger (or Treat Williams in the sequels). Instead, it gets So Si-min, a former contender in Olympic butt-kicking, as a probationary teacher. She might be enough to restore order and decency in Park Jin-pyo’s Brave Citizen, which screened at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.

As a one-year “contract teacher,” So is constantly told to stay out of trouble if she wants to be hired as a permanent faculty member. That means looking the other way when Han Su-kang bullies his fellow students. As she quickly figures out, Han really runs the school, thanks to his powerful and litigious parents. Frankly, So only has her current position (ironically teaching ethics) because Han drove her predecessor to commit suicide.

So tries to look the other way, because she wants a permanent posting. She is deeply in debt due to her deadbeat father, So Young-taek, who was also her coach. However, she cannot ignore the savage bullying of Go Jin-hyung, who is told to take it and like it, or Han and his running mates will kill his street vendor grandmother. So refuses to stomach such injustice, so she dons a cat mask and starts anonymously administering frontier justice when Han tries to torment victims off-campus.

Brave Citizen could breakout in America if marketed correctly. If you believe the premise of a politically-connected bully wouldn’t resonate here, think again. Could Jewish students relate after enduring genocidal threats and harassment on campus, while university administrators did nothing to discipline the bullying “protesters?” How about the owners of small businesses that were looted during the 2020 riots, as the media cheered them on and big city DAs refused to prosecute? As a result, there are a lot of Americans who feel exactly like students at Mooyoung, who will applaud So.

Fantasia ’24: Tiki Tiki

Korney Chukovsky's Doctor Aybolit is a beloved icon of Russian children’s lit, but his similarities to Doctor Doolittle are so striking, it caused a scandal when Lofting’s earlier work was finally translated into Russian in the 1990s. It seems pretty clear Chukovsky ripped off Doolittle, so it is only fair that Canada plundered Aybolit right back in 1971. Filmmaker Gerald Potterton literally put new words in Dr. Aybolit’s mouth by redubbed the garish-looking Soviet children’s movie Aybolit-66, much in the tradition of What’s Up Tiger Lily or Fractured Flickers. Yet, that wasn’t even the weirdest part of Gerald Potterton’s animated-hybrid freak-out Tiki Tiki, which screens in its freshly restored weirdness at this year’s Fantasia International Film Festival.

In a way, Tiki Tiki is like Planet of the Apes, if primates had evolved to control the film industry. J.J. is a gorilla who runs the studio founded by K.K. (do those initials mean anything to you?). The mogul signed Dennis McShane, an up-and-coming hipster screenwriter (who is sort of equal parts George Carlin, Dennis Hopper, and Kinky Friedman), to make a picture for the studio. So far, he has spent a lot of money, but has no dailies yet to show for it.

McShane also has an experimental idea that scares J.J. He wants to use humans to play apes. The crazy thing is Aybolit-66 features a lot of people playing monkeys. The level of costuming is roughly on par with Santa Claus Conquers the Martians and their respective color palettes are comparable. Reluctantly, J.J. tags along with McShane in his special flying movie-camera airship, to film the humans as they embark on improvised sea voyage to Tiki Tiki, which is supposedly in Africa, even though the name evokes Polynesian associations.

Frankly, the Aybolit-66 footage is often painful to watch, like the toughest films the ‘bots riff on in MST3K. However, the animated segments are pretty cool, despite their counter-culture perspective. You can definitely see stylistic similarities with Heavy Metal, which Potterton directed, as well as Yellow Submarine and the bizarre Raggedy Ann & Andy movie, on which he served as an animator. He also incorporates baroque interludes that might remind fans of Terry Gilliams animated sequences for Monty Python.

Those About to Die, on Peacock

Vespasian is considered one of the better emperors (especially compared to Nero), but his death was fast approaching in the year 79 A.D. It will take almost 400 years for Rome to fall, but you might assume the Roman Empire’s days are also limited from the riots and corruption plaguing Roman society. Fortunately for the elites, blood sport still keeps the mob distracted, at least to an extent, but that sure makes it rough to be a gladiator in creator Robert Rodat’s 10-part Those About to Die, which premieres today on Peacock.

Vespasian subjugated Judea, but his oldest son and presumptive heir, Titus Flavianus, has taken the Judean Queen as his consort. Rome has not exactly welcomed her with open arms, but the locals are often hostile to new arrivals from the far-flung corners of the Empire.

That is even more true for Cala and her children from North Africa. When the youngest daughter, Jula, is assaulted by a Centurion, her older sister, Aura fatally defends her honor. Immediately, she is consigned into slavery as her punishment. Their unfortunate older brother Kwame suffers the same fate when he objects.

Off to Rome they go, but Cala follows with Jula, determined to buy their freedom. Unfortunately, Aura is purchased by the wife of Marsus, a powerful and perverse senator, who covets the emperor’s laurels for himself. Ironically, Kwame opts for a life as a gladiator, because they have a higher life expectancy than slaves sent to the mines. Obviously, buying the freedom of either children will not be an option in their current stations, so Cala’s bides her time working in the gambling salon operated by Tenax, the focal anti-hero.

Tenax has a plan to challenge Rome’s social and economic order by starting a fifth chariot racing faction. He has the best driver, Scorpus a hedonistic but winning charioteer based on a historical figure. He also has four deceptively small but incredibly fast and strong horses, purchased from three Andalusian brothers, who intend to stay in Rome to build careers as horse-trainers (at least that was the secret intention of the elder two and they figure their baby bro will reluctantly stay, despite his discomfort with Roman ways).

However, Tenax needs a powerful silent partner to convince the Emperor to grant the Gold Faction’s charter. Titus’s psychotic younger brother Domitian Flavianus is perfectly placed to do just that. He resents his father designating Titus as his heir. The younger Flavianus also needs money quickly, to cover his mounting debts and the gold he embezzled from the treasury. Consequently, agrees to Tenax’s proposal, but he makes no secret of his contempt for the grubby commoner. Likewise, he clearly takes an instant dislike to Kwame when he observes the gladiator in training.

Rodat’s loose adaption of the book by Daniel P. Mannix (who also wrote the source novel for Disney’s The Fox and the Hound), definitely leans into the decadent and violent aspects of Flavian Rome. The scenes of gladiatorial combat are far more graphic than anything seen in Ridley Scott’s Gladiator, while the many sex scenes (of multiple persuasions) leave nothing to the imagination. At times, it almost feels like a starter kit for Caligula. However, it is anchored by a powerful story of a mother fighting for her children’s freedom.

That unironic pursuit of freedom makes Those About to Die superior to the Spartacus series, which can never be forgiven for turning the iconic battle-cry of solidarity, “I am Spartacus,” into a self-aggrandizing howl of personal affirmation. However, the new series still represents a decidedly mixed bag.

One of the best aspects of Rodat’s adaptation is the messy, overlapping, and sometimes contradictory nature of the alliances. Sometimes, by working against their sworn enemies, characters cause complications for transactional allies, which leads to further problems down the line.

Bottle George & Nezumikozo Jirokichi (Japan Cuts shorts), in Cinema Daily US

BOTTLE GEORGE and NEZUMIKO JIROKICHI are very different animated shorts, but Daisuke Tsutsumi's stop-motion medition on alcoholism and childhood trauma and Rintaro's rollicking tribute to the silent era of Japanese cinema are both highlights at the 2024 Japan Cuts. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Lee Isaac Chung’s Twisters

It is time to twist again, like we did in 1996. Seriously, how could they pass up licensing Chubby Checker for this soundtrack? Sure, the new film is set in Oklahoma, so the country music makes sense, but still. They also could have been more conceptual and included some Weather Report tunes from the Heavy Weather album. Regardless, the Sooner State is definitely in store for some heavy weather in Lee Isaac Chung’s sort-of-not-really sequel Twisters, which opens Friday on almost every movie screen in America.

For a movie like this, viewers should be trained not to emotionally invest too heavily in the characters that appear in the prologue. Kate Carter survives, but she retires from storm-chasing to monitor weather patterns on computer screens, due to her paralyzing guilt and PTSD. Yet, Carter was clearly meant for field work, because she has an almost intuitive sense of how storms will behave.

Needing her “tornado whisperer” skills, her old [still living] research teammate Javi convinces her to join him for a week of storm-chasing. He claims the tech developed by his new start-up, Storm-Par, will help the people of Tornado Alley. Carter is a little rusty, but she quickly regains her storm-footing, out-navigating Storm Par’s rivals, a group of YouTube influencers led by Tyler Owens, a former bull-rider turned meteorology student-turned internet show-boater.

Owens’ temperament and style immediately rub Carter the wrong way, but he keeps trying to charm her anyway. Clearly, Javi’s financial backer, a bottom-feeding real estate developer is the real sleaze, but it will take a fair amount of time arguing with Owens before she realizes it. Of course, if she decides to dust-off her old Tornado-suppressing experiments, a swaggering storm-chaser like Owens might be just the kind of cat who is crazy enough to help her.

As was true for the previous film, the big swirling storms are the main attraction. They are bigger than ever, thanks to advances in special effects technology rather than any kind of climate-related trends. Yes, it is true: nobody mentions climate change, but viewers can sometimes infer it being implied. Regardless, the film’s reluctance to lecture the audience from its soapbox is appreciated.

Indeed, it is one of the ways that Chung, formerly an awards and arthouse darling for Minari, proved to be such a good match for this material. Throughout Twisters (with an “s”) you will not find any jokes about gun-racks in pick-ups or John Deere ball-caps. Chung knows rural America, because that is where his family settled, just like in the semi-autobiographical Minari, so he understands and sympathizes with those who still live there. Plus, as a former Arkansas resident, Chung might have more real-world research to draw from than he might have preferred at the time. Regardless, that sensitivity really adds a lot.

The Last Stop in Yuma County, on BluRay

If you grew up in the 1970s, you might remember a time when gas stations ran out of gas. With all the talk about reviving various price controls, we might just bring those bad old days back. For one “last chance” gas station, that reality is already here. Their re-supply track is running late, unnerving several dodgy characters who need to get out of town fast in Francis Galluppi’s The Last Stop in Yuma County, which releases today on BluRay.

This is a thriller in the tradition of The Petrified Forest, but the characters probably feel like they are stuck in Sartre play. Vernon’s filling station is out of gas, so his potential customers must wait for the truck to arrive in Charlotte’s diner, where the air-conditioning is on the fritz. The nebbish traveling salesman hawking knock-off Ginsu knives recognizes Travis and Beau match the description of wanted bank-robbers, which is no coincidence.

Essentially, the two fugitives hold them hostage, but they all try to act normal for all the other customers coming into the diner, including Deputy Gavin. Charlotte tries to send a warning through him to the Sheriff, her husband Charlie, but poor Gavin is an exceedingly dim bulb.

Yuma County is a reasonably successful desert noir, mainly due to its colorful characters and the experienced ensemble of genre-friendly thesps portraying them. On the other hand, the execution and pacing are somewhat uneven. After fifty-some-minutes of ever-so deliberately slow-building, Galluppi seems to say the heck with it and unleashes total bedlam.

Regardless, Richard Brake is appropriately sinister as Beau, the brains of the two-armed robber-operation. Sometimes, Jim Cummings takes over-the-top a bit too far, but he finds the right level of twitchiness for the knife salesman. The great Barbara Crampton also gets a lot of laughs in her slightly larger-than-cameo appearances as the Sheriff’s receptionist, Virginia.

Fantasia 2024: Curtain Raiser

It is that time of year again, so start boiling water for a steaming hot cup of Nong Shim noodles (the kind of sponsor a festival can be proud to have). The Fantasia International Film Festival is back, bringing plenty of cinematic weirdness to Montreal. Every year, they find out-of-the-blue discoveries as well as eagerly awaited genre releases. Once again, you can look forward to coverage here and also Cinema Daily US.

Considering how the Hong Kong film industry has been so profoundly corrupted by Xi Jinping’s puppet regime, genre fans need new sources of action and martial arts spectacles. Happily, South Korea has been stepping up Brave Citizen looks like the sort of over-the-top masked-vigilante riff on The Substitute that promises thrills, as well as a much-needed cathartic release.

Although based on a popular manga franchise, Don’t Call it Mystery sounds like it evokes the spirit of vintage Japanese mysteries set within powerful and mysterious families, like Kon Ichikawa’s The Inugami Family (both of them). Sorry Maxwell Smart, I guess I wasn’t supposed to call it “mystery.”

Every year, Fantasia always brings in terrific animated films. Ghost Can Anzu is about a big, mystical cat, so how can it go wrong? Kizomonogatari: Koyomi Vamp is a revised, reworked, and re-edited relaunch of 2016 films that essentially raises beloved (but intense) horror franchise from the dead.

The story of Mantra Warriors: Legend of the Eight Moons might be familiar, but this Thai science fiction re-imagining of The Ramayana promises to be very different from Koichi Sasaki & Yugo Sako’s classical Japanese-Indian co-production Ramayana: The Legend of Prince Rama, so it should be fun to compare and contrast.

Those are just a few promising selections. There is always plenty of good stuff to watch at Fantasia, so keep an eye out for reviews.

Modernism, Inc: The Eliot Noyes Design Story

IBM's Tom Watson, Jr. said: “good design is good business.” His old Army comrade Eliot Noyes convinced him that was true. Following that maxim, Watson Jr. built the company his father founded into a titan. Sadly, those who appreciate good design do not always recognize the value of good business. Arguably, Noyes was a visionary, who bridged the artistic and corporate mindsets. Viewers get a sense of how he shaped the look of the 20^th Century in Jason Cohn’s Modernism, Inc: The Eliot Noyes Design Story, which opens this Friday in New York.

Noyes trained and worked as an architect, but his lasting influence lays in the field of design. Yet, the intriguing discussion of his military service almost demands a documentary of its own. At the time, Noyes was attached to the Army Air’s little known glider program. Gliders might be largely obsolete today, but their silence offered a potential advantage during WWII.

A few years after returning home, he crossed paths again with Watson, Jr., who wanted to put his personal stamp on his father’s company. Using the elegant Olivetti showroom as an example, Noyes convinced him to spruce-up and standardize all graphical presentations of the company. As a consultant, he also played a leading role in product design, including the classically modernistic blockbuster-selling IBM Selectric typewriter.

Noyes is exactly the sort of figure whose contributions to our collective cultural lives has been criminally under-acknowledged. It is rather fitting if his career brings to mind Charles and Ray Eames, who designed the molded Eames chair, because he contracted the Eames to produce educational science films sponsored by IBM. (Probably not so coincidentally, Cohn also previously co-directed Eames: The Architect and the Painter.)

Noyes had a successful career, but the documentary is not all sunshine and success. Late in his life, the designer was deeply embarrassed when New Left activists invaded and disrupted the annual International Design Conference Aspen, which he had founded, to turn it into a stage to make political proclamations. They behaved disrespectful and chaotically, but decades later, the extremist conference-crasher Cohn interviews remains proud of his actions. Yet, this episode truly reveals how the New Left tried to impose its will, by intimidating others into silence.

Look Back, in Cinema Daily US

The aspiring manga artist-characters in LOOK BACK (screening at Japan Cuts) will resonate on a deep emotional level with manga/anime fans. It also has a particularly lovely piano-with-strings score. CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Japan Cuts ’24: Whale Bones

The disingenuous act like the tiktok divestment bill is an attack on the Interstate Highway system, but apps come and go all the time. When did you last check your Myspace page? In this film, the Mimi app is already past its prime, but one of its most viral users still pulls a frustrated office drone into the mystery of her life in Takamasa Oe’s Whale Bones, which screens today during this year’s Japan Cuts.

Poor tragically-average Mamiya is blindsided when his fiancée dumps him, so he goes on a traditional hook-up app, where he meets the woman whom he will know as Aska. This film really is not about that app. Instead, it is all about who Aska is, or was. Even though he quite likes her, their date takes a surprisingly dark turn, leaving him wondering about her.

Aska explained her status as one of the top users of Mimi, which is sort of like tiktok, except each video is geo-synched to a particular location. To see the video, you must be at the spot where it was “buried.” To sleuth out the truth of Aska, Miyami must discover all the videos she buried. Some are well known by her followers, who still revisit them often, but others remain largely secret.

In some ways, Whale Bones (a terrible, misleading title for an otherwise very smart film) feels more speculative than it probably is. Quite strikingly, Oe stages each buried video as if Aska is in the room talking to Miyami, like a full-size hologram, even though she is really just a video on his smart phone. As a dramatic technique, it is brilliantly effective—sometimes devastatingly so. It also would make an amazing double feature with Morel’s Invention, which would be spoilery to that Italian film to explain.

Japan Cuts ’24: The Box Man

It's a classic question: “who was that boxed man?” It turns out, it is considered bad form to ask, at least according to this Box Man. Although there is not a similar racial component, Kobo Abe’s character shares the nihilistic existentialism of Ellison’s Invisible Man. He also has a bit of Holden Caulfield and Oscar the Grouch in him. He might be an anonymous drifter, but people are weirdly fascinated with him in Gakuryu Ishii’s The Box Man, based on the Kobo Abe novel, which screens today as part of this year’s Japan Cuts.

According to the man who only calls himself “Myself,” you can see the reality of society from a box. He knows we’re all a bunch of phonies. Yet, he claims: “those who obsess over the Box Man, become the Box Man,” and he should know, because he is the Box Man.

The nefarious “General” and his accomplice, the “Fake Doctor,” are the latest to get fixated on his peculiar vagrancy. His box is a bit like Snoopy’s dog house. He managed to stash a lot of stuff in there, but like a Scot’s kilt you don’t want to look underneath his box. The General’s interest stems from a murky criminal plot, wherein he will assume the Box Man’s identity to evade justice. However, Box Man’s eccentric lifestyle appears to slowly seduce the Fake Doctor.

Meanwhile, the Box Man might be feeling something remotely human for Yoko, the Fake Doctor’s fake nurse. Apparently, her checkered past gives the Fake Doctor the leverage to force her to do his bidding. Of course, her shame only creates a stronger sense of kinship with the Box Man.

Before his death, Abe gave Ishii his blessing to adapt The Box Man, which means this film has been twenty-seven years in the making. It is easy to understand why it was long considered unadaptable. Clearly, Abe was addressing issues of identity and epistemology in a very postmodern fashion. However, Ishii manages to bring it to the screen in a way that still gives us something to watch, which is appreciated. In fact, it often has the flavor of an obscure Borgesian caper.

Obviously, The Box Man is not for everyone. If you are unsure, consider it a “no.” As a point of reference, it is somewhat more grounded than the films of Robbe-Grillet, but also less stylish. Ishii’s adaptation is deeply grounded in existential and post-structuralist philosophy, but Michiaki Katsumoto’s jazzy score is a blessing that greatly aids the film’s watchability. However, the deliberately elusive payoff is intentionally frustrating.

Project Silence, Starring Lee Sun-kyun

If you want to make something sound scary and evil, call it a project, like the Blair Witch Project, Colossus: the Forbin Project, or the 1619 Project. This project is also similarly sinister. It should have been called the “Cujo Project.” Any genre fan could have warned these government researchers that mutating dogs into assassins was a really bad idea, but they did it anyway. Unfortunately for Cha Jung-won, the dogs of war slip loose on the airport bridge he and his daughter find themselves trapped on in Kim Tae-gon’s Project Silence, which opens today in theaters.

Even though he is the deputy intelligence director in the current administration, Cha had no knowledge of Project Silence, until he gets stuck in the middle of it. Due to several Rube Goldberg-esque pile-ups, traffic on the bridge is blocked in both directions. Inconveniently, the super-secret military transport carrying the killer canines is part of the wreckage, which you know, lets the dogs out.

Initially, Cha believes he can coordinate a rescue operation from the ground, with the help of his boss, Jung Hyun-baek, the intelligence director, who happens to be their party’s presidential nominee. However, he eventually figures out what the rest of us knew from the start. Jung knew about Project Silence and he wants to bury the truth on the bridge.

Obviously, Project Silence cannibalizes elements from many other films. In some ways, it is Universal Soldier for dogs. It is also very a frustratingly dark film, not in terms of tone, but with respects to the actual lighting.

However, it is cool, in a decidedly bittersweet way, to see the late Lee Sun-kyun playing a morally complex action hero. He is rock-solid as Cha, but any fan of action movies or thrillers should catch out his brilliantly funny work in A Hard Day.

The Blues Under the Skin, Featuring Mance Lipscomb, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee, and Other Legends

The original, real-deal blues musicians made vast fortunes possible, because R&B, rock & roll, and soul were built on top of their music. Yet, they often lived modestly, sometimes even in poverty. It is clear poverty was part of what Greek-born French documentarian Roviros Manthoulis was looking for when he started filming his blues documentary in America. To make his point regarding the underclass, Manthoulis added a fictional hybrid component, but the music he documented is the reason to rediscover the newly restored The Blues Under the Skin, which starts its first proper American theatrical release today in New York.

Freddy and Hattie Feester could be considered Manthoulis’s ill-fated Frankie and Johnny. After his release from prison, Feester wants to go straight, but nobody will give the ex-con a chance. Living off his wife so damages his pride, he slowly turns abusive. Neither are musicians, but they are certainly familiar with the blues world. He spends most of his time drinking in neighbor dive-clubs and, awkwardly, they both live with his mother, who was once a blues piano player, somewhat in the mold of Sweet Emma Barrett (who was more jazz, but you get the idea).

Although the grim Feester vignettes are filmed in color, they are stylistically reminiscent of Shirley Clarke’s The Cool World, but less compelling. If anything, these segments come across as somewhat condescending. Many black Americans struggled like the Feesters, but they carried on anyway, rather than lashing out in acts of domestic violence. Fortunately, the music makes up for the dramatic misfires.

There are some terrific performances from true legends, including Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee (the greatest duo in American music, who tower over the likes of Sonny & Cher, Jan & Dean, and Hall & Oates) who deliver two standout performances, including a “John Henry” that is somehow profoundly bluesy and infectiously finger-snappable. Yet, nobody is as eerily powerful as Mance Lipscomb, whose “All Night Long” instantly transports viewers to the lonesome fields and railroads tracks of rural Texas.

Furry Lewis and Bukka White, whom some fans might have recently seen in The Blues Society also appear here—and it is always a pleasure to hear them. It does not get more legendary than B.B. King and Buddy Guy, but Manthoulis captured them in performance before they were nationalized recognized institutions, with clubs named in their honor. Plus, Roosevelt Sykes delivers the barrelhouse side of the blues with his rollicking “Runnin’ the Boogie.”

High Intellectual Potential, on Hulu

Forget lawers—happily. Cleaning ladies are the new go-to profession for TV series. This one is working on the right side of the law. Morgane Alvaro is also about the make the step up to lucrative consultant gigging when she helps point a police investigation in the right direction. Getting respect of her reluctant partner will be harder in co-creators Stephane Carrie, Alice Chegaray-Breugnot, and Nicolas Jean’s French series High Intellectual Potential, which premieres tomorrow on Hulu.

Alvaro has a high IQ, but her EQ is questionable. That is why she constantly gets fired from dead-end jobs. As the pilot episode, “West Wind,” opens, she is cleaning the Lille police station, where she notices Adam Karadec’s investigation is way off-base. Having a compulsive need for order, she ill-advisedly re-organizes his bulletin board. At first, he and his boss, Celine Hazan, throw her in jail, but of course, she is right.

Jeanne Levasseur was Karadec’s prime suspect, but Alvaro deducts from a quick perusal of the crime scene photos that she is a victim—and presumably in grave peril. Obviously, this makes Karadec look like an idiot, so he resents working with Alvaro when Hazan hires her.

Even after the third (of three episodes provided for review), Karadec and Alvaro still aren’t clicking as a team and she keeps showing him up. For their second case, “Malagasy Customs,” the bickering pair face a locked hotel room mystery, once they eliminate the victim’s lover, the last person seen leaving his room, as a suspect.

Once again, Karadec is woefully unobservant and not so inclined to reflect on his failings. However, the procedural takes sone interesting turns and it showcases Alvaro’s empathy. Far from unfeeling, she just has problems with authority, anger management, and impulse control. So, maybe she would not be super-fun to work with.

The second episode also introduces what will presumably the first season’s continuing story-arc, when Hazan agrees to investigate the disappearance of Alvaro’s first husband. The world assumes he absconded, but she believes he was the victim of foul play. As it happens, Karadec turns up something suspicious that hits close to home for Alvaro in the third episode, “Blind Man’s Bluff.”

The episode’s primary investigation focuses on the abduction of two young girls. The mother’s well-heeled parents initially suspect her ex-husband, but Alvaro quickly clears his name when she discovers his dead body. Lucky him. Regardless, the actually procedural and criminal business in the installment, written by the trio of creators, are probably the most suspenseful of the first three episodes.

Japan Cuts ’24: Kyrie

In one way, the timing is good for a busker like Luca (a.k.a. Kyrie), because she might find fame on privacy-invading, spyware-infecting, propaganda-spewing tiktok. However, the timing of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami during her childhood was absolutely tragic. The resulting trauma clearly persists in director-screenwriter Shunji Iwai’s Kyrie, which screens during the year’s Japan Cuts: Festival of New Japanese Film.

When Maori first met Luca, the orphaned girl could not speak, but she could sing. That is still true when she encounters a decade or so later, performing on the street, but they now call themselves Ikko and Kyrie. The former Luca has talent and Ikko still feels protective urges towards her, so she volunteers to manage Kyrie’s career.

Kyrie needs some help and Ikko’s intentions are honest, but there is something dodgy about her new manager. Not so surprisingly, Kyrie is too naïve to see that. For a while, Ikko’s street smarts serve them both well, but she clearly appears to be running from a mysterious man.

Frankly, Kyrie/Luca’s backstory is not so difficult to anticipate, but Iwai still takes great pains to tease it out across the film’s somewhat excessive three-hour running time. Yet, it should be fully stipulated when the film finally revisits the fateful day of March 11^th, it is agonizingly tense. Many viewers will be holding their breath, like they never have in any horror movie, even though they know what is coming.

Iwai can make viewers passionately love him and viscerally hate him, all in the same film. Kyrie is a perfect example. There is suffering and there is catharsis, but in this case, the synthesis of the two is somewhat off. The tunes are also integral to the story, but only Kyrie’s closing song really lands, either melodically or emotionally.

Japan Cuts ’24: Between the White Key and the Black Key

The 1980s were an unusually good time to be a jazz musician in America. Wynton Marsalis made acoustic bop commercially successful again and the venerable Blue Note Records was re-launched. Evidently, in Japan, the jazz scene more resembled 1930s Chicago. Most musicians played in Ginza clubs that were clearly controlled by the Yakuza, at least according to musician Hiroshi Minami. He survived to write about those times in his memoir, but director-co-screenwriter Masanori Tominaga splits his persona in half in the appropriately syncopated and stylized adaptation, Between the White Key and the Black Key, which screens as the opening night film of the 2024 Japan Cuts.

Hiroshi yearns to play jazz, but his hip teacher knows he needs some seasoning, so he recommends gigging in the seedy Ginza cabarets. Sure enough, Hiroshi quickly gets an education. Fatefully, a mysterious Yakuza freshly released from prison requests Rota’s “Love Theme from The Godfather.” Hiroshi obliges, even though the leader on the gig freaks out six ways from Sunday.

It turns out only Kumano, the boss known as “the King of Ginza” can call that tune and only Minami (Hiroshi’s future self, who coexists in the same time-frame) can play it. Fortunately, Hiroshi’s gig was at a club where musicians traditionally wear masks, because news of the transgression spreads quickly.

As it happens, the artistically frustrated Minami intends to desert Ginza to study real jazz at the Berklee School of Music. He only confides his plan to Chikako, who agrees to aid his getaway. That means they will need a sub to cover for him, so she recruits Hiroshi, an old friend from school.

Even though Tominaga and co-screenwriter Tomoyuki Takahashi have that Lynchian looping time thing going on, it is not what defines the film. Questions of artistic integrity and compromise are more important (and timeless) themes. Having played in Al Capone’s clubs, Armstrong would well understand Minami’s relationship with Kumano.

Even though little is done to physically distinguish Hiroshi from Minami, Sosuke Ikematsu is so good at creating such ying-and-yang personalities and carries himself so differently, viewers might start to wonder if he is the same thesp (which indeed is the case). Go Morita is also a wild chaos agent as the mysterious Yakuza. Whenever he shows up, the audience knows there will be trouble.

The Outlaws, Co-Starring Eric Roberts as Bloody Tom

What is the representative national food of Finland? Ruisleipa rye bread? Does that make this a Ruisleipa Western? Regardless, even though it was shot in the U.S., this film might have more Finnish crew in its closing credits than any other Western you might have seen. It also has Eric Roberts as a villain. That is definitely something. Bloody Tom waits for the third act to make his grand entrance, but he lives up to his name in Joey Palmroos (Finnish) & Austen Paul’s The Outlaws, which releases Friday on VOD.

Four hard-bitten outlaws just pulled off a daring train robbery, but the getaway will be the tricky part. They ditched their horses to mislead the posse, but they might just kill each other waiting for the boss, Bloody Tom, to bring fresh mounts. Or maybe they won’t. Palmroos, Paul, and co-screenwriter Anders Holmes (Danish) show viewers what could have happened, in between the various characters’ flashbacks.

John “JT” Tulsa, whom nobody really believes hails from Oklahoma, has good reason to keep his past secret. Henriette Parker is probably the craziest of the bunch, but we come to understand how life as a female outlaw took its toll on her emotional stability. William Higgins is supposedly the other “Wild Bill,” but he too carries a lot of baggage. Despite his prosthetic leg, Boone Collins is a creepy sociopath, so yeah for representation.

As B-movie Westerns go, the generically titled Outlaws is appealingly gritty and competently executed. It leans a little too heavily on the flashbacks, but whatever. Roberts is reliably and charismatically crafty as Bloody Tom, like you would expect. Celeste Wall and Jonathan Peacy are also both appropriately fierce and nutty.

Obviously, Outlaws is all about the villains—its right there in the title. However, Dallas Hunt offers a nicely understated counterpoint, as Tulsa, who is the closest thing the film has to a good guy. Plus, Sterling Scott has some interesting moments as the Preacher in Tulsa’s flashbacks.

The Blues Society: Furry Lewis, Bukka White, Mississippi Fred McDowell & Others

The Blues Revival was one thing the hippies got right—pretty much the only thing. Technically, the young fans who started the Memphis Country Blues Festival considered themselves more bohemians and beatniks than hippies—at least until they got into LSD. They admit that eventually made them hippies. They were still right about the music. Augusta Palmer, the daughter of music journalist Robert Palmer, chronicles the festival her father helped produce in The Blues Society, which releases tomorrow on VOD.

They were not particularly well-organized, but somehow the rag-tag Memphis Blues Society produced five years of the Festival, which had a special revival (of the revival) in 2017. A lot of amazing musicians performed during the original Revival years, including Mississippi Joe Callicott, Skip James, Nathan Beauregard, Piano Red, Booker T. Washington “Bukka” White, and Mississippi Fred McDowell.

Obviously, a lot of deep Memphis Delta Bluesmen had roots in Tennessee. However, probably the two most important artists in the Blues Society story are Furry Lewis and Rev. Robert Wilkins, who played with his son, Rev. John Wilkins, who also headlined the 2017 show (before tragically dying of Covid complications). The story fittingly all unfolds with the help of Robert Palmer’s writings, read by the Eric Roberts.

The music in Palmer’s documentary is amazing. Lewis’s rendition of “Let Me Call You Sweetheart” is an especially beautiful standout. Unfortunately, Palmer wastes a lot of time on “appropriation” grievances. Admittedly, the hippy fans maybe were not as sensitive to appearances of paternalism. However, they were the only valuing this music at the time.  It was the Blues Society and similar groups that generated gigs for these old school, real deal Bluesmen, so cut them some slack.

In-Flight: Break of Dawn

In Japan, their favorite Jetson must be Rosey, the family’s robotic maid. That is just a guess based on recent pop culture trends. In a few days, Apple TV+ viewers will meet Sunny, the Housebot, in the Japanese-set series named after her. Nanako is an autoboot, but she largely has the same functions. However, she has a much more sci-fi destiny in Tomoyuki Kurokawa’s Break of Dawn, which is available on American Airlines international flights (it never ceases to amaze what you can find on international in-flight entertainment systems).

Yama is crazy about space, but not so enthusiastic about robots, at least judging by his treatment of Nanako. His parents insist she is one of the family, but he acts like she is merely a kitchen appliance. Annoyingly, his friends like her too, because it is advantageous to play video games in “autobot mode.”

Suddenly, while retrieving the errant Yama, Nanako’s system fails. She successfully reboots, but then February Dawn, an alien AI, takes control over her body. As Yama and his friends, Shingo Kishi and Gin Tadokoro, soon learn, his ship crashed on earth over 10,000 years ago. Fortunately, he has gleaned some useful intel from an errant satellite that took on a mind of its own, after colliding with a comet. If Yama and his two cronies can retrieve a missing crystal, they can help him power-up his craft, before it is destroyed, along with the old Stuytown-like apartment building scheduled for demolition, where it is perched, apparently invisible to the naked eye.

When Nanako comes to and beholds the VR-visions February Dawn projects for Yama and his friends, she agrees to help, even though she is not programmed to deceive his parents. That might become an issue later. For the meantime, they need that crystal. They soon discover it is in the possession of Kaori Kawai, an upperclassman at their school, bullied by Kishi’s mean-girl older sister, Wako. That too will be an issue. However, the most surprising revelation for Yama will be the discovery her father and his parents were previously acquainted. They may even know something about February Dawn.

Sunny, on Apple TV+

Maybe Asimov's "Law of Robotics” will be more of a suggestion in the future. For Suzie Sakamoto’s husband Masa, it was just something to code around. Supposedly, he and her son “Zen” died in a plane crash, but his code is still out there. Much to the American expat’s surprise, Masa also left behind a specially programmed homebot (robotic housekeeping assistant) that will introduce herself to the grieving Sakamoto in creator Katie Robbins’ 10-part Sunny, which premieres this coming Wednesday on Apple TV+.

Sakamoto always resented robots, because her mother was killed by a self-driving car. She had been led to believe her late husband worked in the refrigerator division of his technology company, so she is shocked to learn he oversaw their robotics.

Masa’s mother Noriko Sakamoto is obviously Japanese, but she is also a classic mother-in-law. Consequently, Sakamoto would rather drink than deal with her. She also has little patience for the annoyingly chipper homebot delivered by Masa’s senior colleague, Yuki Tanaka. Sunny, as Masa named her, tries to help Sakamoto process her grief, but she is having none of that. However, Sakamoto discovers Sunny has other talents, so she recruits the bot to investigate the accident. The more she learns of her husband’s secrets, the more determined she is to recover the secret memories buried within Sunny’s directories.

Sakamoto does not make friends easily and she alienates them quickly. However, she somehow also recruits Mixxy, a part-time mixologist at her local cocktail bar, to help her investigation. She soon starts suspecting the involvement of a Yakuza clan currently mired in a power struggle. Hime’s cousin expects to succeed her father as chairman, but she has different ideas. To out-maneuver him, she must find the long-rumored codebook for reprogramming robots in illegal and potentially dangerous ways.

The robotics in Sunny represents comparatively light science fiction, but it is integral to Robbins’ story, based on Colin O’Sullivan’s novel. The humor is largely tied to Sakamoto’s incredibly profane mouth, but it is frequently amusing. It might have grand ambitions, but it is no Severance. Yet, Sunny is engaging and not overly taxing sf-dramedy, which is rather impressive when you consider it is centered around a grieving mother.

It turns out Rashida Jones can curse like a sailor. She needs to, because Sakamoto’s swearing plays an important role in the story. She gets a lot of laughs as a result and has some spectacular meltdowns. Judy Ongg’s Noriko is a lot to handle, but she humanizes her and ultimately flips viewers’ assumptions and sympathies in later episodes. Plus, veteran Japanese character actor Jun Kunimura is wonderfully wise and sly as old Tanaka.