Ukrainian Mykola Voronin went on the same journey as Ron Kovic, but in the reverse
direction. He started out as a hippy, dovish ecology professor, before the
brutality of the invading Russians turned him into the Ukrainian Sniper. Sadly,
his pacificist principles did not deter Putin’s war criminals from their
scorched earth tactics. Channeling his rage, Voronin reinvents himself into a
warrior in Marian Bushan’s Sniper: The White Raven, which opens tomorrow
in New York.
Voronin
is a real-life figure and the events in this film are as real as it gets.
Before the invasion, he and his wife moved to the Donbas region to live in the
windmill-powered sustainable cottage he devised, where they also intended to
raise their unborn baby. Then the Russians came. Only Voronin survived.
Given
his bike-to-class lifestyle, Voronin was already reasonably fit, but he was
completely untrained in modern war-fighting. However, his desire for revenge
motivates him to learn quickly. Eventually, he volunteers for sniper training,
developing a talent for it, but he still needs to work on the required
patience.
After
all the flag-waving Russian propaganda movies set during WWII several genre
distributors embarrassingly proceeded to release during the early days Putin’s
full-scale invasion, it is nice to see the Ukrainian perspective finally get
some representation. (Make no mistake, Russians believe with a religious fervor
that their victory in Great Patriotic War gives them the right to control and
dictate life in Eastern Europe.) Yet, the psychological complexity of Pavlo
Aldoshyn’s portrayal of Voronin will still appeal to New Yorkers who are put
off by the faintest whiff of “jingoism,” (which only seems to apply to Western
democracies).
In
fact, everything about White Raven is scrupulously realistic, especially
the scenes of combat. They should look credible, because the large-scale
sequences often feature active-duty Ukrainian military personnel as extras.
Presumably, this is a story they could all relate to. Again, that makes sense,
since Bushan co-wrote the screenplay with Voronin himself.
When the world ends, it is apparently due to vaguely defined environmental
causes, but our overreliance on artificial intelligence did not help. Consequently,
three survivors in orbit must deal with some deadly serious issues of “life”
and “choice” in Magdalena Lauritsch’s Rubikon, which opens Friday in New
York.
Hannah
Wagner is a soldier in one of the private corporate armies (this being a
dystopian future) who has come to the Rubikon space station to appraise the
progress of Dr. Dimitri Krylow’s experimental algae-based self-sustaining life support
system and hopefully shuttle it back to Earth. Then, the big catastrophic event
happens. At least the algae works as promised. It will do its job, keeping
alive Krylow, Wagner, and Gavin Abbott, the entitled environmental-activist son
of a high-ranking executive. However, Krylow’s system was optimized for six
crew members and requires at least three to function, so they are all in this
together.
Through
fate and happenstance, this happens to be a very interesting film to see at
this particular time. Choices the suicidal Abbott (temporarily banished to
Rubikon) might make could directly impact Wagner and Krylow. Likewise, when
they contact a pocket of survivors on Earth, it prompts another round of life-and-death
decisions. It also forces viewers to confront class-based prejudices from both
sides of the divide.
Frankly,
the lifeboat-ethics presented in Rubikon are so complex and intriguing,
there is no way the children throwing tantrums on Twitter can deal with it.
Throughout the film, it is clear characters’ choice involve severe
externalities. It also dramatically depicts the law of unintended consequences.
Thematically, it is a bit like George Clooney’s The Midnight Sky, but it
is exponentially smarter. Lauritsch’s story is not heavily-dependent on special
effects, but the Space Station quarters and the shrouded Earth below look
pretty credible.
Usually, you have to be born into a family of superheroes, like the Incredibles.
Charlie Clark was unofficially adopted. They wanted to keep the superpower
stuff away from the gringo, because he is a bit of a screw-up, but somehow it
rubs off anyway. Now, they’ll have to work together to save their Nana, the
world, and pretty much everything in Michael D. Olmos’s Green Ghost and the Masters
of the Stone, which releases today on VOD.
Eons
ago, there were aliens, stargates, stones of power, and whatever. Cut to the
chase, Nana is a keeper of the power stone and she invested her grandchildren
Marco and Karina with its power. When Clark was a boy, Nana took him in, because
his own family was a mess. Then one night, Nana protected him from her rogue
sister, the Sauron figure after the stone. He assumed it was all a dream, but
obviously it wasn’t.
He
was also touched in the process. To save Nana, Marco and Karina need grown Clark
to awaken his qi and join it with theirs, but he will need a lot of quick
training from the “Masters.” Even though Clark has served for years as cage-fighting Marco’s
masked luchador-ish sidekick, the “Green Ghost” (not “gringo”), he still hasn’t
picked up many skills.
It
is easy to see Green Ghost was an ultra-microbudget DIY affair, but its
energy level is infectious. You can practically envision co-screenwriter Clark,
who plays a somewhat fictionalized version of himself (in terms adoptive family
relationships) yelling out: “you guys, lets make this movie ourselves.” The
thing is, they did and the generous helpings of martial arts action are not half-bad.
In fact, they somehow recruited Chilean martial arts star Marko Zorar to play
Drake, the champion warrior of the forces of darkness (and to sign-on as a
producer).
Gyms and the Book-of-the-Month Club have to envy cults’ member-retention
rates. Obviously, its really simple for them. Whenever one leaves, they catch
them and bring them back. For the so-called “California Cult,” Clara Holmwood
was the one who got away, but she is still haunted by her ordeal decades later
in screenwriters David Birke & Nicholas McCarthy’s Disciples,
illustrated by Benjamin Marra, which is now on-sale wherever graphic novels are
sold.
In
1978 Marin County, Holmwood’s high school bestie Wendy fell under the spell of
the Charles Manson-like Billy Joe. He even used his self-produced folk-rock
music to seduce new female members. Five months after meeting Wendy’s new
friends, Holmwood crawled to safety somewhere in the Mojave Desert. Since then,
she changed her name to Lucy and tried to keep a low profile.
Her
daughter Wren knows at least the broad strokes of her mother’s history. Even
though she is a teenager, she understands how heavy it is. Perhaps
surprisingly, they have a reasonably functional relationship, even though they
have the added family drama that comes from living with Wren’s unmarried cousin
Phoebe and her infant son Silas. Unfortunately, they will all be in jeopardy
when the California Cult comes to reclaim Clara/Lucy.
Screenwriters
Birke (13 Sins) and McCarthy (The Pact and At the Devil’s Door)
do a nice job evoking all the creepy Manson-esque hippy-cult vibes of the 1970s
and give it a fan-pleasing twist you might not immediately expect. Marra’s
black-and-white noirish art stylishly reflects the sinister nature of the narrative.
However, readers should understand there is an unsettling sexual component that
is so very provocative on the page that it might need to be toned down for any
possible screen adaptation.
Pretty soon, this attack on our Scandinavian friends could legally be an attack
on us as well. That is because Finland has made an official bid to join NATO.
As it presciently happens, preventing such a bid is part of the motivation
behind the terrorist plot in Aku Louhimies’s Attack on Finland (a.k.a. Omerta
6/12), which opens this Friday in theaters and on VOD.
Finnish
secret agent Max Tanner and Swedish agent Sylvia Madsen were working an op
together that turned out very, very badly. However, Tanner still thinks they
work well together. You know, really well. Therefore, he is happy to see Madsen
coming to Finland as the “bodyguard” of Jean Morel, a French EU official
attending their 12/6 Independence Day celebration. In reality, she is also
investigating Morel for potential corruption and security breaches, but she will
have to concentrate on the protective part of her assignment when
Russian-backed terrorists take the entire presidential palace hostage.
While
Madsen and Morel are held at gunpoint inside, Tanner serves as the official “negotiator”
on the outside. Unfortunately, the FSB-controlled terrorists intend to
demoralize the Finnish people, whether their demands are met or not. The
Finnish security service can count on help from their Swedish and Estonian
colleagues, but Madsen’s boss at the EU is not so reliable.
Based
on Ikka Remes’ novel, Attack on Finland could not possibly be more
zeitgeisty. It is also a lot like the 24 series in that a lot of “unthinkable”
national tragedies will actually happen. Perhaps most importantly, Louhimies
and company show the action film can be a viable vehicle to address serious
geopolitical and national security issues.
I am not an aviation authority by any standard, but as the son of a late
Naval aviator, I am only one degree removed from the cockpit of an A6 Intruder.
I’ve heard stories and met people, so I feel like some kind of expert on
military culture. As a result, Top Gun: Maverick rings pretty true to my
ears, so it is cool to see a relatively accurate and sympathetic depiction of
the American military crushing it at the box office.
As
Maverick opens, Captain Pete Mitchell is posted to a Naval Air Station
in the Mojave Desert. Presumably, this is China Lake NAS, where I was born,
because it’s the only Naval Air Station in the Mojave that I know of. Maverick
is testing an experimental hyper-sonic aircraft, in a scene that compares to
Chuck Yeager’s final flight in The Right Stuff film. China Lake would be
the perfect place to do so—because it is in the Mojave.
Maverick
thought his defiant final flight would be the end of his checkered career, but
his old Top Gun rival-turned-buddy, Admiral Tom “Ice Man” Kazansky saves
his butt one last time, transferring him back to Top Gun, for a final mission—a
training mission.
Maybe
the most unrealistic aspect of the original film were the cool sounding call
signs. These handles are not chosen, they are bestowed on pilots. Typically, they
refer to an incident or hang-up that will keep the aviator humble. In Top
Gun 1, “Goose” was probably the most true-to-life call sign, so in addition
to its symmetry, “Rooster” is also a believable call sign for his son, Lt. Bradley
Bradshaw. “Hangman” might sound cool for Lt. Jake Seresin, but it is actually
an unflattering reference to his showboating. In practice, the call sign “Bob” wouldn’t
work, because it could confusingly apply to other pilots, but it seems to fit
the apparent blandness of nebbish Lt. Robert Floyd.
Maverick’s dialogue is not
bad, but it can’t match the spot-on perfection of the first film. Original
screenwriters Jim Cash & Jack Epps Jr just nailed Naval Aviator attitude
and humor with gems like: “Whose butt did you kiss to get in here?/The list is
long but distinguished” and “The plaque for alternates is down in the ladies’
room.” If that offends you, I don’t care, because it captures the swagger you
need to dogfight with enemy planes in a multi-million-dollar piece of hardware that
experiences mechanical failures far more often than it should.
Perhaps
even more than the original film, Maverick does a nice job fleshing out
the other pilots at Top Gun. Bashir Salahuddin is a notable standout playing “Hondo,”
Maverick’s non-commissioned sidekick. I’ll defer to other experts, but to my
untrained eye, Kosinski does a great job recreating the sensation of pulling
multiple G’s. The dog-fighting sequences maintain the high standards of the
first film. Admittedly, Maverick and Rooster’s adventures behind enemy lines
are a bit far-fetched, but they are fun to watch.
Maverick
is
also one of the best decades-later sequels (2010 and Psycho II are
also surprisingly successful examples) because it explains how Maverick got to
where he is in ways that stay true to original character. Despite countless
commendations for combat bravery, he just kept sabotaging his career, simply by
being Maverick. Admittedly, his bad blood with Rooster is a bit contrived.
However, the way the tactically conservative Rooster’s rivalry with the
hot-dogging Hangman echoes Maverick and Iceman in the original Top Gun adds
a lot of fan resonance to the new film. Some might miss Kelly McGillis, but do
you really think it would have worked out between those two? If you rewatch the
original, Penny Benjamin is indeed mentioned by name and Jennifer Connelly appeals
to 1980s/1990s fan nostalgia (thanks to classics like Labyrinth and Rocketeer).
Awakening from suspended animation is supposed to introduce you to a brave new
world, like it did for Rip Van Winkle, Buck Rodgers, and the main character of Looking
Backward (which ironically inspired a lot of backward thinking). Instead,
these five experiment subjects are about to be reanimated in a dystopian
environment. At least it sure appears to be so. It is a little hard for them to
judge, because they all wake experiencing amnesia in Barrett Burgin’s Cryo,
which is now playing in Los Angeles.
Nobody
knows their names, so they initially call each other by their numbers, 01-05.
Then they generally use their apparent functions: “Engineer,” “Doctor,” “Biochemist,”
“Soldier” and comms specialist, and “Psychologist.” The Engineer also seems to
think there was an “Inventor” involved in the project somehow. Their muscle
memory and specialized knowledge kicks in, but they still have no clue who they
are or what the general plan might be. However, everyone is suspicious that Soldier’s
number was cut from his jump suit.
There
also might be someone else running around the underground compound.
Nevertheless, they remain below, because they fear the outside air is lethally
contaminated—despite Soldier’s lingering doubts.
Cryo
has
the vibe of a lot of post-apocalyptic bunker movies, but in its defense, it has
a pretty good twist at the end. Rather, it isn’t so much the twist as insight
on human nature that it offers. Unfortunately, it takes forever to get there,
especially slogging through the lifeless first act. The whole film should have
been snappier and shorter. Clocking in at almost two hours is really pushing it
for a film like this.
Dario Argento is considered a Giallo master, but has also taken on classic
staples of horror, including Dracula, the Phantom of the Opera, Poe, and to
some extent the terrors of wax museums. It totally makes sense he would also
try to channel Alfred Hitchcock, who basically started the whole slasher
tradition. You can also see some precursor Giallo elements in Dial M for
Murder, especially those gloves. The homages are pretty clever in Do You
Like Hitchcock, which screens as part of the ongoing Beware of Dario Argento
retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center.
Giulio
is your stereotypical film geek, who often observes his sexy neighbors Rear
Window-style, especially Sasha Zerboni. As a result, he can’t help noticing
Zerboni and another attractive woman bonding in the video store over Strangers
on a Train. When Zerboni’s wealthy but controlling mother is subsequently
murdered, at a time when her daughter was conveniently alibied, Giulio
immediately suspects they arranged to “switch murders.”
Of
course, his girlfriend Arianna (who really ought to be out of his league)
thinks he is a nut. However, when an unseen stranger breaks into his apartment,
Giulio realizes he might be on to something, so he starts obsessively snooping
around both women.
The
stripped-down simplicity of DYLH really serves it well. Compared to
Argento’s previous films, there is considerably less blood and gore in this
made-for-Italian-TV production, but there are still all the hallmarks of Argento’s
hallmark Giallo style (like the close-ups on gloved hands and tumblers turning
in locks). Perhaps most importantly, Argento really gives us a full sense of
the Torino neighborhood, very much like Hitchcock did for the building facing
Jimmy Stewart’s apartment in Rear Window.
What you see on social media isn’t necessarily real. Everyone should know
that by now, but this new series acts like it is a major discovery. In this
case, Becky Green always thought her former pre-teen best friend Chloe
Fairbourne had a perfect life while following her from a far, via Insta-whatever.
She is therefore shocked by her suicide, as were her closest friends. However,
when Green insinuates herself into Fairbourne’s circle, she starts to suspect
her perfect life was not everything it was cracked up to be in creator Alice
Seabright’s six-episode Chloe, which premieres today on Prime Video.
Evidently,
Green and Fairbourne had a falling out as teens and never talked since then.
The full details will not be revealed until late in the series. In the
intervening years, Chloe married a wealthy local politician, whereas Green has
worked depressing temp jobs, while caring for her increasingly dementia-plagued
mother. Green wanted Fairbourne’s life and weirdly she might just get it.
Under
the assumed name of “Sasha Miles,” Green befriends Chloe’s bestie, Livia Fulton.
She manages to pass herself off as a gallery marketer, freshly returned from
Tokyo, largely relying on the skills she developed as a party-crasher and what
she gleans from social media. Soon, she is working with Fulton’s
event-marketing firm and sleeping with Elliot Fairbourne, the grieving husband.
Rather inconveniently, Josh Stanfield, a one-night-stand from a previously
crashed reception, recognizes Green, but he will not blow her cover, as long as
he is amused by her masquerade and their periodic hook-ups.
The
start-and-stop Chloe just cannot seem to decide whether it is a thriller
or not. At times, it promises to turn into a Brat Farrar-style imposter
suspenser and other times it threatens to veer into Sleeping with the Enemy territory,
but always returns to mushy melodrama. It is frustrating, because there are
times it really appears to be building steam (especially around the second half
of episode four), only to deflate sometime thereafter.
Erin
Doherty is all kinds of nervous and squirrely as Green/Miles, which certainly
fits the character, but makes you wonder why everyone isn’t more suspicious of
her. Poppy Gilbert has more screentime than you would expect as the dead title
character, but it mostly comes in Instagram posts that morph into fantasies or
dream sequences.
After the brutal Russian invasion of Ukraine, we almost forget the
thuggishness of Viktor Yanukovych, the deposed president, who aspired to be Putin’s
puppet. However, this young gymnast will not forget it anytime soon. Following
the attempted assassination of her journalist-mother, she will be forced into
exile, for her own protection, in Elie Grappe’s Olga, which opens
tomorrow in New York.
Olga’s
late father was Swiss, so Olga’s rattled mother arranges for her temporary
residence in the neutral nation. Olga also happens to be a very talented
gymnast, so the coach of the Swiss junior team is happy to have her. Initially,
she is a bit rusty, but she quickly rises to the top of the team. However, she will
be distracted by news from Ukraine.
Before
she left, her mother complained about the Ukrainian public’s apathy. Then, the
Maidan demonstrations start. At first, they give Olga hope, but when Yanukovych
unleashes his violent Berkut shock troops, Olga fears for her mother and her
friends, who are often present at the protests. She believes she should be
there, especially as some of her friends start to resent her absence.
Much
like the Latvian film January, Olga incorporates real footage from
Maidan Square, alongside the dramatic scenes featuring the titular Ukrainian.
For additional authenticity, Olga and her main teammates, both in Ukraine and
Switzerland, are portrayed by real-life gymnasts. They have the athletic chops,
but they are also pretty good thesps, especially Anastasia Budiashkina, who
does excellent work conveying the guilt and confusion of simultaneously dealing
with the pressure of competition, teen angst, and national trauma.
You can still find out-of-service pay phones left installed in the walls of
old school diners, decrepit bus stations, and past-their-prime school buildings
that seem to offer the promise of ghostly communication they cannot possibly
fulfill. This serial killer assumes the disconnected phone in his basement
dungeon is just like that, but his latest abductee will receive supernatural calls
on it from previous victims in Scott Derrickson’s Blumhouse-produced The
Black Phone, which opens tomorrow nationwide, after screening at this year’s
Tribeca Film Festival.
He
is called the Grabber for obvious reasons. He uses balloons and magic tricks to
lure kids off the street, but even after grabbing them, he never lets them see
his face unmasked. Unfortunately, Finney Shaw will be his next victim, following
his friend Robin Arellano and his friendly softball rival, Bruce Yamada. Arellano
was more formidable taking on bullies at school, but Shaw is the first to draw
the Grabber’s blood during the abduction.
Thanks
to the ghostly calls he receives on the supposedly kaput phone in the Grabber’s
sound-proofed basement, Shaw also avoids all the mistakes his past victims
made. They also offer advice regarding potential avenues for escape, but he
will have to work quickly. So far, Shaw’s kidnapping has been so unsatisfying
for the Grabber, he is starting to lose patience with his latest victim. Of
course, the clueless cops are looking for him, but so is his younger sister
Gwen. She has a bit of the shine, but she can’t necessarily summon it whenever
she wants. Instead, it comes irregularly in dreams.
Based
on the Joe Hill short story, Black Phone features an abusive father,
similar to the many examples found in the works of his own dad, Stephen King.
Critics of the psychoanalytic school can make of that what they will, if they
dare. At least Derrickson and C. Robert Cargill’s adapted screenplay explains
the Shaw siblings’ father acts they way he does, because their late mother was
driven crazy by her clairvoyant gift/curse.
Regardless,
Black Phone is insidiously effective (if you will) because the young
cast is so compelling. Yes, the always reliable Ethan Hawke is all kinds of
creepy as the Grabber, but the sinister masks are also a big part of his screen
presence. However, Mason Thames really holds the audience’s attention and
sympathy as the somewhat nebbish Shaw. When he is not on-screen, Madeleine
McGraw steals numerous scenes and scores the film’s only laughs as his sister
Gwen. You do not often see such an endearing and cooperative young
brother-sister relationship in films—but it is done really well in Black
Phone.
Technically, these tapes weren’t lost, they were suppressed. The Soviet Union wanted
to document their nuclear industry’s “finest hour” in the face of crisis, like
NASA’s response to Apollo 13. However, when it became glaringly clear how
ineffective, dishonest and counter-productive their crisis management was, to
the powers-that-were (ultimately, that was Gorbachev), the Party reverted to censorship
and propaganda to bury the truth. James Jones assembled the newly recovered
footage into a vivid step-by-step chronicle of the nuclear disaster, as it really
happened, in Chernobyl: The Lost Tapes, which premieres tonight on HBO.
Right
from the start, the authorities’ disregard for human life is shocking apparent.
We watch unprotected families allowed to visit playgrounds the day after the core
melt-down and massive release of radiation. Several times, Jones contrasts
footage of the oblivious citizenry with the desperate crisis management
underway at the reactor.
This
pattern would continue after the incident, when the Communist Party basically
declared an end to Chernobyl-related illness by fiat, mandating all physicians
diagnose resulting radiation sickness as “Radiophobia.” Jones also discovered
damning footage of the under-equipped reclamation teams, who were dispatched to
clean and close-down the V.I. Lenin Power Station with insufficient warning of
the risks they were running. Viewers can make that judgement, because we
literally see their superiors sending them out with a few sheets of lead
strapped to their torsos (like “cannon-fodder,” as one survivor puts it).
If
anyone truly emerges as a villain in Lost Tapes, it would be Gorbachev,
who lied to the world and to his people about the severity of the disaster, at
great cost to Russian and Ukrainian lives. Far from the Soviet Nuclear bureaucracy’s
“finest hour,” the incident almost blew up into a global catastrophe. Instead
of slowing the reaction, an ill-conceived plan to drop sand on top of the
reactor nearly caused it to collapse into earth beneath. There is a reason why
the former General Secretary consistently polls so low in Russia.
You don't have to get every reference to Euro cult cinema to pick up on this
film’s vibes, but why wouldn’t you? Regardless, this horror movie wears its
influences on its sleeve. That’s just part of its style, which is heavy and
often effective. Atmosphere is everything in Kevin Kopacka’s Dawn Breaks
Behind the Eyes, which releases Friday on VOD.
A
bickering couple are visiting the decrepit family manor house she inherited, despite
the lateness of the hour. It is all because of Dieter’s obnoxious attitude. He
refused to stop at a hotel to make some kind of point. Critics will probably
try to hang the “toxic masculinity” label on him, but there is nothing manly
about him. That will not stop him from trying to compensate, as when he becomes
fascinated by a whip he finds in a trunk.
And
then everything changes, in a big, landscape-altering kind of way,
but without the gentle humor of an obvious but spoilery comparison. Also, maybe not everything changes. There is
still something very wrong about the German chateau.
That
would be the Gothic Herrenhaus Vogelsang, which is definitely a creepy setting.
Indeed, everything about the look and design of Dawn is quite masterful.
Many are making the obvious comparison to Helene Cattet & Bruno Forzani’s
Giallo pastiches, like Amer and The Strange Color of Your Bodys' Tears, but Kopacka’s screenplay is much more narrative driven. Initially,
that makes it more accessible, but it also causes greater frustration when it
takes an arty detour into oblivion.
Back when Hong Kong was a British colony … wait, Hong Kong was a British
colony? Of course, it was, but the United Nations refuses to recognize it as a
former European colony, because of the CCP’s influence. In fact, the Chinese
Communist regime is in gross violation of the 1997 handover agreement (“One
China Two Systems” is now as dead as a doornail). If ever Hong Kong needed a
hero like Ip Man, it would be now. Instead, the villains in his latest highly
fictionalized movie are all British, but at least viewers should be reminded of
some awkward HK history when watching Li Xi Jie & Zhang Zhu Lin’s Ip
Man: The Awakening, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.
It
will be Wing Chun versus Baritsu, the British martial art cobbled together from
other styles that apparently impressed Arthur Conan Doyle, because it is mostly
know remembered from Sherlock Holmes references. The baristas are in for
some hurting.
This
time around, Ip Man is freshly arrived in Hong Kong from Foshan. Almost
immediately, he befriends Buefeng, a fellow Wing Chun practitioner, but not
like Ip Man, obviously. Buefeng advises him to keep his head down and not get
involved, but when Ip Man witnesses an English-backed gang of white-slavers
abducting women, he naturally rescues them. Inevitably, that leads to conflict
with the British boss, Mr. Starke (played by the ever so British Sergio De Ieso).
Frankly,
Awakening’s screenplay is a predictable, bare-bones string of cliches, even
more so than the last Ip Man movie (Ip Man: Kung Fu Master). At times,
it does not even make sense, as when Buefeng feels compelled to drug Ip Man
before his big public bout with one of the chief Baritsu henchmen, even though
he has already seen his friend thoroughly kick the butt of his partner.
Seriously, why would he lose confidence when Ip Man was facing the smaller
dude?
Technically, charging interest is forbidden under Islam, but Islamic nations have developed
workarounds, because no country can function without a working banking system.
Those workarounds are definitely working against the upright Reza. However, the
struggling fish farmer really resents the many bribes and kickbacks he refuses
to pay. As a result, his family is on the brink of financial ruin in Mohammad Rasoulof’s
A Man of Integrity, which opens Friday in LA (and is now showing in NY).
Reza
never graduated from college, because he took a futile stand on principles.
Instead, he moved to the provinces, but he found society just as corrupt there.
A large company is trying to force him off his land. They act with impunity,
even poisoning the water feeding into his fish pond, because they have bribed
the local police and regulators. Reza might have bought more time to pay off
his foreclosing mortgage, but, of course, he refused to grease the necessary
palms.
His
wife finds him almost perversely rigid, but he is not a moralizing Islamist. In
fact, he secretly ferments his own home brew, which he successfully hides from
the morals police (instead they confiscate his riffle, which is telling, isn’t
it?). The truth is, Reza is right on every point, so when he finally gets
pushed to far, things will really get ugly.
It
is easy to see why this film launched Rasoulof’s prolonged legal difficulties
with the Iranian authorities (it first screened internationally in 2017, but it
is only now getting an American theatrical release), which are still not
resolved. He has yet to serve the prison sentence that was imposed just before
Covid hit. Yet, from the regime’s perspective, Reza’s battles with corruption might
be embarrassing, but the real arsenic in Integrity are probably the
storylines involving his wife Hadis’s work as the headmistress of a girl’s
school.
There we see her comply with the mandated expulsion of a student, because her
family was exposed as non-Muslims. We also learn just how disposable girls are
in Iranian society, when she tries to use the daughter of Reza’s main nemesis
(without her husband’s prior knowledge or approval) to put pressure on her
father.
Integrity
is
a powerful film, but it can be difficult to watch, because Reza’s endures almost
as much woe as Job himself. Yet, it steadily builds to a bitterly ironic
payoff. It might seem like the way Rasoulof piles on the humiliations
approaches overkill, but each one is intertwined with the others and they all
play a role in his caustic climax.
The Dracula story involved fangs, crosses, wooden stakes, and swarms of bats,
so it provides plenty of stuff to jut out or fly into the camera. That all could
make it appealing for 3D, but it was horror master Dario Argento who finally
went there. The results are certainly mixed, but he still takes care of the
essential vampire business in Dracula 3D, which screens as part of the
ongoing Beware of Dario Argento retrospective at Film at Lincoln Center.
Tania
agrees to meet her lover after dark, despite the town’s constant curfew. This
is a mistake, but removing the cross her caddish lover gave her will be even
costlier. Before you can say “prologue,” she has been bitten, killed, turned,
exhumed, and living at Dracula Castle. Of course, that is where Jonathan Harker
is headed. Instead of a real estate agent, he is now a librarian hired to
catalog the Count’s holdings. Dracula actually wants that work done, so he
halfway tries to protect him from the newly fierce Tania.
Harker’s
fiancée Mina has followed after him. She will stay with her old friend Lucy
Kisslinger, who is looking a little peaked herself. When she also “dies,” Mina
turns to visiting scholar Abraham Van Helsing for help.
The
screenplay credited to Argento and three other screenwriters could have been
generated from of randomizer of old Hammer Dracula scripts, but that is not
necessarily a bad thing. The Carpathian village feels artificial rather than
lived-in, but somehow, cinematographer Luciano Tovoli makes it look like it
radiates sinister energy. It also features some of the most impressively brutal
killing scenes of any Dracula adaptation.
Biden tells us Zelenskyy refused to believe him when he warned the Ukrainian
President of Putin’s full-scale invasion, but that seems unlikely. After all,
the Ukrainian military volunteers interviewed for this documentary back in 2014
and 2015 all predicted it, sooner rather than later. Some of them have very
personal experiences with Russia’s attempts to undermine their nation, as they
explain in Lesya Kalynska & Ruslan Batytskyi’s documentary, A Rising Fury,
which screens as an “At Home” selection of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Pavlo Pavliv and Svitlana Karabut are trying to
maintain a relationship, but the war in the Donbass region makes it difficult.
His activism started while maintaining the protective barricades at Maidan, but
his military training began earlier, when an older man named Igor, call-sign: “Berkut
(Hawk),” took him under his wing and recruited him for his Airsoft team.
Eventually, Pavliv and Karabut deduce Igor is
actually an undercover Russian operative deliberately targeting marginalized
young Ukrainian men, to turn them against their country. It is chilling example
of organized subversion that ought to make all viewers take note, especially
considering how successful Igor was.
In fact, it is probably the most newsworthy element
of the film, because even though Kalynska & Batytskyi’s coverage of Maidan
and Donbass includes some dramatic footage, it is not radically unlike other
Ukrainian documentaries. However, when taken together with its insights into
Russia’s long-game psy-ops, as represented by Igor, it is quite valuable
indeed.
A Chinese inventor’s new AI implant is a lot like socialism and every
other utopian scheme. The pitch might sound appealing, but as soon as you
experience it first-hand, you realize it is a nightmare. Two lovers are manipulated
into taking the nano-operating system that detects lies, but the reality of its
usage is predictably more likely to split them apart rather than bond them
together in Neysan Sobhani’s Guidance, which releases today on VOD.
Ten
years before the start of the film, there was a catastrophic war that left Han
Maio deeply scarred emotionally. Before the war, she was ambiguously involved
with her childhood sweetheart, Su Jie, the heir to a big tech empire. Now, she
is in a relationship with Mai Zi Xuan, whom she suspects has been unfaithful.
He also has reason to suspect her.
Rather
fatefully, she happened to visit Su Jie the very day Luddite terrorists
launched an attack on his company. Consequently, she spent six hours alone with
him in a safe room. Of course, Mai understands that gave them more than enough
time to revisit old times. As a parting gift, Su Jie gave her two pre-release
doses of NIS, for her and Mai, so they can get a jump on the Brave New World
before everyone else. They literally get red-pilled together, during a romantic
getaway that gets much less romantic once the new computer voices in their
heads call them out each time they bend the truth and point out signs of
deception in their partner.
As
a Chinese language film, Guidance is particularly interesting (and
timely), given it presents a cautionary tale of artificial intelligence
over-reach, at a time when AI surveillance software is identifying Uyghurs to
be rounded-up and incarcerated. Arguably, what the CCP is doing now in Xinjiang
and Tibet is even more dystopian than anything portrayed in the film.
Nevertheless,
Sobhani and co-screenwriters Anders R. Fransson and Daniel Wang vividly
illustrate the perils of the utopian temptation and its unintended
consequences. This is largely character and idea-driven sf, but Sobhani still
offers up an intriguing looking future world.
Asako Adachi is a mother worthy of Greek tragedy. When her daughter is murdered,
she offers a grim choice to the girl’s four friends who saw, but could not
identify her killer. Either spend their lives hunting for the murderer, or
eventually accept a karmic retribution that she approves of. That is pretty heavy
for elementary school students, so it is hardly shocking they all turn out to
be emotionally damaged fifteen years later in Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s
five-episode Penance, which premieres today on OVID.tv.
For
some reason, the killer deliberately chose Emili from her group of friends,
when he approached them on a pretext. They all had a perfect view of him, yet they
all insist they cannot remember his face. Fifteen years later, their bill of
penance starts to come due, but it is not necessarily Adachi who will collect.
Somehow fate, karma, circumstances, and their own bad choices and character
flaws will precipitate crises for all four survivors. Although they each have
very different personalities and perspectives on that fateful day, they all
contact Adachi as they find themselves facing personal disaster.
In
some ways, shy Sae Kikuchi never fully matured, so she married a profoundly
flawed control-freak husband. Maki Shinohara became a strict martinet high
school teacher, who feels compelled to enforce rules without exception. Akiko
Takano is a borderline hikikomori with family issues that are about to get much
worse. Likewise, Yuka Ogawa has an extreme case of sibling rivalry, as well as a
weird cop fetish, born out of that horrific experience.
What
really makes Penance so intriguing is Kyoko Koizumi’s haunting
performance as Adachi. Instead of a ruthless Medea-like vengeful mother, she is
not without sympathy for the four young women. In fact, she even offers them
help, at times. Yet, her eyes are always obsessively on the prize of just
payback. As a result, Koizumi’s work as Adachi is cool and detached, but
weirdly easy to identify with and root for.
Yu
Aoi, Eiko Koike, Sakura Ando and Chizuru Ikewaki all create radically different
personas as the four grown women, but they are all fully developed, with no
shortage of flaws and weaknesses. Together, they demonstrate the perverse and
lingering effects of trauma. Shinohara’s story is possibly the richest, because
it clearly offers extensive commentaries on the compulsive face-saving and CYA-ing
of the Japanese educational system, which in turn is a proxy for society at
large. Takano’s is probably the weakest, because it is pretty easy to predict
where it goes.
Everybody digs the Phantom of the Opera, right? Especially Italian and Chinese genre filmmakers. I dive into the Giallo and Chinese adaptations of and riffs on the Phantom at Nightfire here.
If
you were around in the early 1980s, you might remember how John McEnroe
and Tatum O’Neal were like J-Lo and A-Rod, but with exponentially more
paparazzi interest. Their marriage didn’t last, but he always maintained a
relationship with tennis. The notoriously outspoken athlete is profiled in
Barney Douglas’s documentary McEnroe, which screens during the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
Yep,
McEnroe used to argue calls on the court from time to time. He addresses his
famous outbursts quite frankly in the doc. He is not proud of them, but he explains
the issues he was experiencing at the time. He also rarely let them influence
the next point.
Watching
McEnroe reminds us just how long he has been in the public eye. Children
of the 1980s who only vaguely remember the media circus surrounding his
marriage to O’Neal will find Douglas’s coverage eye-opening. Fortunately, he
also handles the tennis stuff well too. Even if you followed his career at the
time, or if you’ve seen Janus Metz’s thoroughly entertaining Borg vs.McEnroe, you will probably get caught up in the drama of McEnroe’s Wimbledon
battles with Bjorn Borg.
In
a bit of a score, McEnroe’s great rival-turned-friend appears on camera to
discuss their comradeship, despite largely retiring from the tennis world and
public life. O’Neal is absent, but the rest of his family discusses McEnroe,
with pretty much the same candor he brings to the film. (We even see his
current wife, Patty Smythe performing on American Bandstand, which is
another blast from the 1980’s past.)
Nobody could match the moves of Fayard and Harold Nicholas. This short documentary
[inadvertently] proves it. Although their prime Hollywood musical numbers were
often cut out to appease the segregationist South, they eventually received
Kennedy Center Honors and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They appeared
in the clip montage movies That’s Entertainment and That’s Dancing,
but strangely, neither selected their most iconic performance. Contemporary
dancers look back in awe at their leaping steps in Michael Shevloff & Paul
Crowder’s Nicholas Brothers: Stormy Weather, which screens during the
2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
Stormy
Weather was
a star vehicle for Lena Horne, so there would be no call for cutting out the
Nicholas Brothers’ big number. Fittingly, they uncorked one of their greatest
filmed performances, culminating with the brother leaping over each other,
landing into splits, as they worked their way down a grand, Busby Berkeley-ish
staircase. Backed by the Cab Calloway Orchestra, they nailed it in one take,
with no rehearsals.
Dancers
like Savion Glover give unnecessary explanations as to why their performance is
so impressive. Frankly, you can totally get it just from watching them.
However, the short film builds up to the contemporary dancers, Les Twins,
choreographing and performing their own tribute to the Nicholas Brothers’ Stormy
Weather performance—which will absolutely not be a recreation, an important
distinction.
Roy Hargrove was considered one of the “Young Lions” because he was anointed
by Wynton Marsalis, but he was one of the first big jazz headliners to
collaborate with hip hopers, at a time when Marsalis was especially critical of
their aesthetic. Hargrove always stayed true to his own musical conceptions,
like all true jazz artists, but he died too soon, again like far too many jazz
greats. Eliane Henri followed the musician during his final international tour,
documenting what would be his last days in Hargrove, which screens as
part of Tribeca at Home.
Clearly,
we see Hargrove is a bit tired from the road during the opening scene.
Eventually, we also learn his health was also ailing. The musician had been on
dialysis for years. His doctors wanted him to get a kidney transplant, but he
was reluctant, for financial and professional reasons, to take the time off. These
scenes in which Hargrove talks about his health problems are eerily powerful,
like the posthumous anti-smoking PSA Yul Brynner recorded when he was dying of
cancer.
Of
course, Hargrove’s music is also virtuosic, especially the beautiful way he
could caress a ballad. However, none of Hargrove’s originals can be heard
throughout the documentary, because his manager, Larry Clothier (who remains in
charge of his music company), would not approve their release. That leads to
one of the great issues with Henri’s doc.
Henri
makes it very clear she and Clothier often clashed during the making of the
film. The way she put together the film, it certainly looks like Hargrove sided
with her in most matters. Arguably, this reflects the concerns that preoccupied
the musician in his final days, but it ends up injecting her into the film. It
is a more than a minor subplot—it is a major part of the doc.
Is
this really the best way to introduce Hargrove to viewers who might be checking
out Hargrove because of the involvement of his friends Questlove and Erykah
Badu? Admittedly, this is a tricky terrain to navigate, but perhaps removing
all traces of his manager might have been a better option.
After years of futility, Brian has finally invented something that works: an
eco-friendly robot. It runs on cabbages (everyone knows electricity mostly
comes from coal, right?). Somehow, he really cracked the artificial
intelligence, because it largely taught itself to talk by reading the
dictionary. The rest of the maturation process will take more time in Jim
Archer’s Brian and Charles, which opens Friday in New York.
When
we first meet Brian, he is an affable fellow, but he tries too hard to be
chipper, to cover for his loneliness. We see several of his precious DIY
inventions, none of which has any prayer of working. His eccentric-looking robot,
Charles Petrescu, appears to be more of the same, but somehow, after a little
rattling about, he comes alive, like Frosty after the first snow.
Of
course, Brian is delighted to finally have company. However, he tries his best
to keep Petrescu out of sight, because he justifiably fears the Welsh village’s
bullying family of thugs will target his creation. Eventually, the equally shy
Hazel meets Petrescu, who duly impresses her. That in turn builds Brian’s
confidence, to the point he can actually pursue a relationship with her.
However, Petrescu’s restlessness soon leads to rebelliousness.
Initially,
Brian and Charles feels almost toxically cute and quirky, but it
develops some substance and soul during its second half. Petrescu does a lot of
goofy robot-shtick, but Brian’s growth is the arc that really lands. This is a
story of empowerment, as well as the obvious surrogate parenting analog.
Never stand in the way of a man in a gas mask, who is on a mission. In this
case, the nature of his mission is somewhat open to interpretation, but his
sense of purpose is admirable, as is true of his creator. After thirty years of
intermittent production, special effects wizard (celebrated for his work on Star
Wars, Jurassic Park, and Starship Troopers) Phil Tippett’s truly
long-awaited stop-motion animated feature Mad God premieres tomorrow on
Shudder.
The
“Assassin” travels via a diving bell down to a weird shadowy world that is
beyond dystopian. His assignment is to leave a briefcase bomb within this enemy
netherworld—and then just wait to die. Plenty have failed before him and he
will probably fail too, judging from the pile of briefcases. Unfortunately, an
ugly fate awaits the Assassin, if and when he is captured by the “Surgeon”
(a.k.a. the “Torturer”).
Visually,
Mad God is an amazing film. The design of the Assassin sort of recalls some
of the militaristic animated sequences in The Wall, yet Tippett’s
attention to hair and fiber is also somewhat akin to the style of This Magnificent Cake. Nevertheless, storytelling remains an aspect of filmmaking—and in
this respect Mad God is a little weak. Things like causal effects, motivations,
characterization, and inter-character relationships are only vaguely implied at
best. Clearly, Mad God is intended first-and-foremost to be a spectacle,
which indeed it is.
The
whole point of Mad God is to tour Tippett’s macabre world, much like
Piotr Kamler’s largely narrative-free Chronopolis. Indeed, it truly
looks amazing. Tippett also instills a sense of forward moment thet brings to
mind Frank Vestiel’s underappreciated Eden Log, which also shared a
similarly Boschian aesthetic.
Hotel Portofino looks lovely, but it is hindered by shallow characterization. Exclusive Epoch Times review up here.
Even though it scattered New Orleans musicians, Katrina never the silenced
the music. Jazz Fest continued on-schedule and the Frenchmen and Bourbon Street
clubs were undamaged and reopened for business. However, Covid closed
everything and canceled all the gigs, including Jazz Fest. At least documentary
filmmakers appreciated what we were missing, because there has been a recent boomlet
of NOLA music docs released in theaters or screening at festivals. This one is
a welcomed addition. Ben Chace profiles four stylistically different—but not
too disparate—veteran New Orleans musicians in Music Pictures: New Orleans,
which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Part
one focuses on Irma Thomas, “The Soul Queen,” a highly fitting and logical
place to start. Unlike Martin Shore’s Take Me to the River New Orleans, which
felt compelled to team Thomas up with a younger artist, Ledisi, Chace finds her
sufficiently interesting on her own, because she is. However, he also gives a
bit of time to her sidemen, particularly drummer Johnny Vidacovich, whom Thomas
is happy to share the spotlight with. Hearing them put together a smoldering and
swinging “My Love Is” is a treat.
Likewise, hearing Thomas casually land an a cappella “Our Day Will Come” and
then carefully caress it while recording a lush studio arrangement will give
you good chills. Honestly, watching Music Pictures will make NOLA music
fans realize she is even cooler than they understood.
Benny
Jones Sr. is now the leader of the Treme Brass Band (who were regularly seen in
HBO’s Treme), but he was also a founder of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band,
who really deserve a documentary of their own, for re-popularizing a funkifying
the NOLA brass band tradition. NOLA brass bands have an infectious rhythmic
drive and as a bass and snare drummer, Jones is one of the best putting the
beat on the street. Of course, the entire band makes their groove swing, but
vocalist/alto-player John “Prince” Gilbert gets the time to tell some of the
band’s reminiscences, like when they opened for the Grateful Dead, in Oakland,
on New Year’s Eve.
Little
Freddie King probably lived the blues as much as anyone, if not more so. Yet,
he survived to find fame in Europe and play regular gigs in New Orleans. He probably
has the film’s most colorful anecdotes, but the important thing is he can still
play—and he is a heck of a snappy dresser. It is definitely King’s segment, but
his drummer-manager “Wacko” Wade Wright gets credit for handling all the
business, as well as a lot of King’s personal, medical logistics.
Appropriately,
Music Pictures concludes with New Orleans’ first family of modern jazz,
the Marsalises, whom Shore dubiously ignored. It was a wise choice, considering
Ellis Marsalis, the NOLA jazz patriarch, passed away due to Covid complications
in 2020. Chace focuses on Marsalis’s first and only album length collaboration
with his son Jason (brother of Wynton and Branford) on vibes (whereas on their
previous recordings together, Jason had played drums).
You Know how Tolstoy wrote unhappy families are always unhappy in their own
unique ways? Well, the Jacobs’ dysfunction is in a league of its own—of
fantastical dimensions. The Jacobs all develop a “gift” that always manifests
itself in a different way. Those powers can be dangerous, but the family would
also be in great peril if they were ever discovered, as they very well might be
in Patrick Lowell, Estelle Bouchard, and Charles-Olivier Michaud’s ten-part
French-Canadian series Premonitions, which premieres tomorrow on MHz.
Clara
Jacob is the matriarch of the Jacob family, but she is definitely a cool
grandmother. She even wears a snappy fedora to prove it. Her power is the
ability to see into the future of anyone she is not related to by blood. That
comes in handy for her chosen line of work: professional gambler. She tends to
know when hold them and when to fold them.
She
has few qualms about wielding her powers, but her son Arnaud considers his “gift”
an intrusive violation. He can read people’s minds and even get in there to
erase memories. Having sworn off using them, he has been plagued by severe
migraines. His sister Lilli on the other hand, constantly employs her powers to
bewitch potential lovers. That seems like a bad idea, but viewers will halfway
sympathize when they see the burn scars on her back.
As
a teen, Lilli was thrown into a bonfire by a shadowy member of a witch-hunting
cult dedicated to killing so-called “aberrations” like the Jacobs.
Unfortunately, one of the last survviors of the brethren will try to use her
latest “lover” to get to the Jacobs. Arnaud tried to wipe Pascal Derapse’s
memories of Lilli, but being out of practice, he might have erased too much and
maybe even left a mental connection to himself behind.
Premonitions
is
an unusual and addictive take on the themes of superhero franchises like The
X-Men and Heroes. Although we root for the Jacobs, the plain truth is
Derapse is a victim of the family several times over. First Lilli’s enchantment
drives him into a state of psychotic jealousy and then Arnaud really does a
number on his head. Yet, when the vicious brotherhood enters the picture, Premonitions
even takes on some elements of the horror genre (much more so than Firestarter).
Regardless,
Pascale Bussieres is a terrific lead as the steely Clara. She also has some
keenly compelling and deeply conflicted chemistry with her ex, Jules Samson,
who remains a close friend of Arnaud’s. Nicely played by Benoit Gouin, Samson provides
sympathetic human perspective on the chaos that unfolds.
Marc
Messier is creepy as heck as William Putnam, the aberration-hunter, while Eric
Bruneau is spectacularly unhinged as the brain-scrambled Derapse. Likewise,
Mikhail Ahooja is impressively squirrely playing Arnaud, especially when under
the influence of Derapse.
