Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Mantra Warrior (Fantasia '24), in Cinema Daily US


MANTRA WARRIOR: THE LEGEND OF THE EIGHT MOONS is a cool looking science fiction retelling of THE RAMAYANA that screened at this year's Fantasia. The characters are a bit one-dimensional, but who wouldn't dig a giant monkey mecha suit? CINEMA DAILY US review up here.

Batman: Caped Crusader, on Prime

There have been a lot of different Batmans, ranging from the Adam Westverse Batman to the Dark Knights of Christopher Nolan and Frank Miller. This Batman of this 1930s looking cartoon-universe probably “knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men.” He is still very much the Dark Knight and Bruce Wayne fans know and love, but several regular supporting characters have been altered for dramatic and/or other purposes in creator Bruce Timm’s 10-part animated series Batman: Caped Crusader, which premieres tomorrow on Prime.

For a lot of fans, the absence of a Robin is maybe goods news. Regardless, the gist of Batman’s backstory remains the same, but he is not yet working cooperatively with Commissioner Gordon. He is still considered a vigilante, whom the conspicuously corrupt mayor wants behind bars. However, crooked cops like Dets. Flass and Bullock clearly are not up to the challenge.

Since those two are on the take, new crime lord (or rather lady) Oswalda Cobblepot, a.k.a. The Penguin, only has Batman to worry about. Rather colorfully, Timm and co-writer Jase Ricci reconceive the supervillain as ribald torch-singer in the Sophie Tucker tradition. Minnie Driver’s voice perfectly positions her as the psychotic Auntie Mame of super-villainy. It is the rare case of gender-swapping that comes across as clever rather than unnecessarily forced.

In fact, Timm and Ricci nicely balance the usual suspects with some fresher choices, like Oenomania and Clayface. The latter’s civilian alter-ego, horror movie actor Basil Karlo, is appropriately given features reminiscent of Boris Karloff and Peter Cushing.

However, Greg Rucka’s script for “And Be a Villain,” directed by Matt Peters, does not embrace the 1930’s Universal monster aesthetic to the extent Timm did in his 2014 short film,
Batman: Strange Days, the unofficial, retroactive pilot for Caped Crusader. In a mere three minutes, Timm stylishly created a “Batman vs. Frankenstein,” using Hugo Strange and his “Monster Man” as surrogates for the infamous mad scientist and his creation.

Arguably,
Strange Days, is more visually arresting than anything in the series, but the Film Noir, vintage Warner Brother gangster movie world-building hospitably suits this alternate Batman. Timm and company also deviate from standard lore in unexpected but not disrespectful ways when they introduce Selina Kyle in “Kiss of the Catwoman” and Harley Quinn in “The Stress of Her Regard.” Again, Christina Ricci and Jamie Chung are shrewdly cast as the respective super-femme fatales.

In between, the fourth episode, “Night of the Hunters,” boldly ends on an ironically pessimistic note. Even though Batman averts tragedy, some of the bad guys are empowered. “Night Ride” also takes a risk breaking format to allow for a supernatural storyline, without a Scooby-Doo explanation. Linton Midnite is a cool and intriguingly morally ambiguous addition to the “Caped Crusader” universe. Voice performer Cedric Yarbrough brings a lot to later episodes, both as Midnite and Rupert Thorne, the mob boss trying to corrupt DA Arthur Dent, who appropriately looks and sounds a lot like Norman Mailer.

Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Freedom's Fury, in The Epoch Times


For the 1956 Hungarian men's water polo team, the so-called "Olympic spirit" meant facing the USSR team mere weeks after the Soviet army brutally invaded and occupied their nation. However, the Hungarian team had the chance to fight back in the pool, as the terrific FREEDOM'S FURY documents. EPOCH TIMES review up here.

The First Omen, on DVD

Recently, nuns have been like the red-shirted disposable crew-members of horror movies, especially in Immaculate, which wasn’t otherwise special in any way. A new novitiate is duly in for very similar treatment in this film. In fact, it could almost be considered a remake, even though it only opened in theaters a few weeks later, but [badly] retconned into the Omen franchise. One thing is for certain, someone must be getting pregnant eventually in Arkasha Stevenson’s prequel, The First Omen, which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

Ironically, the prologue serves up the film’s scariest scene, featuring a slightly younger Father Brennan (played by Patrick Troughton, the second Doctor [Who] in the original film). Alas, it is mostly downhill from there. Eerily like Sydney Sweeney in
Immaculate, naïve prospective “Sister” Margaret has been lured to an ominous Italian convent-orphanage by Cardinal Lawrence, her old trusted priest, who now is part of a shadowy cabal within the Church.

Again, she befriends a comparatively free-spirited fellow novitiate, Luz, in whom Margaret confides her concerns, including the apparent abuse of Carlita, an orphan who suffers from disturbing visions. Sound familiar yet? However,
First Omen has Father Brennan to warn Margaret there are sinister things afoot at the convent, if she hadn’t noticed yet.

By far, the best thing going for
First Omen is the perfectly cast Ralph Ineson as Father Brennan. He definitely has the right sort of grizzled Peter Cushing-esque intensity for Antichrist-busting priest.

However, the film waters down Fr. Brennan’s backstory, ditching his past sexual transgressions, which allowed the Satanic faction temporarily corrupt him. Stevenson and co-screenwriters Tim Smith and Keith Thomas go further, somewhat de-Satanizing the secret Devil-worshiping cabal, turning them into bizarre uber-Catholic fanatics seeking to hasten the Antichrist’s arrival to “scare” people back to the Church. Right, what could go wrong with that plan?

Monday, July 29, 2024

War Game

Extremism is always the other side’s problem. Sure, your wing of the political spectrum might have a few people who are a bit “over-enthusiastic,” but their hearts are in the right place. That is the attitude that allows extremism to flourish and it is reflected throughout the real-time crisis roleplay simulation documented in Tony Gerber & Jesse Moss’s War Game, which opens Friday at Film Forum.

In recent months, America has witnessed violent protests on behalf of Hamas terrorists, record numbers of hate crimes targeting Jewish Americans, and an apparent lone wolf attempting to assassinate the former and perhaps future president of the United States. So, what is the crisis the Vet Voice activist group will simulate? Of course, an insurrection made possible by MAGA-like infiltration of the American armed forces.

To be clear, the villains in this scenario are undisguised proxies for Trump and company. At one point, actors are told: “you’re the Bannon, Stone figures,” presumably meaning Trump’s advisors, Steve Bannon and Roger Stone. Yet, one senior military veteran assures viewers he only agreed to participate because it was a non-partisan project.

The “nonpartisan” group includes three former Democrat politicians, Doug Jones, Heidi Heitkamp, and Steve Bullock, former Democrat presidential candidate Wesley Clark, former Obama appointees Louis Calder, Doug Wilson, and Gwen Camp, Clinton appointee Joe Reeder, Bush II CIA staff holdover from the Clinton administration David Priess, Bush II appointee (and Trump critic) Jack Tomarchio, Trump-appointee-turned-Trump-critic Elizabeth Neumann, Alexander Vindman, the prime witness against Trump during the first impeachment hearing, and Peter Strzok, the FBI official who was fired because his anti-Trump texts compromised the Mueller investigation. Indeed, like “extremism,” “nonpartisanship” is very definitely in the eye of the beholder.

It also somewhat negates the value of this exercise, because everyone already shares the same fears regarding the premise. It would have been fascinating if the game-managers had secretly flipped the script on their players, forcing them to confront a scenario where Antifa and anti-Semitic extremists were violently refusing to accept the election of a strongly pro-Israel president, which anyone watching events on college campuses over the last six months must recognize as a terrifying possibility. Unfortunately, such a scenario would not advance the game-managers’ ideological goals.

Sunday, July 28, 2024

The Story of G.I. Joe, Restored on BluRay

There was a time when G.I.’s expected war correspondents to be on their side. That was during WWII and maybe sometimes the Korean War. Nobody had more sympathy for the grunts in harm’s way than Pulitzer Prize winner Ernie Pyle. Sadly, Pyle was killed-in-action during the Battle of Okinawa, two months before the film based on his newspaper stories was released. We missed the humanity of his journalism in future wars, while Pyle missed out seeing his words done justice in William Wellman’s The Story of G.I. Joe, which has been freshly restored and released on DVD and BluRay, by Ignite Films.

When Pyle first embeds with Company C (18
th Infantry) in Tunisia, the GIs see an undersized middle-aged pencil-pusher, but they respect him when he proves he is tough enough to keep up with them. Subsequently, they immediately accept as a foxhole-mate when he rejoins them in Italy. Pyle remembers them all well, especially battle-hardened Lt. Bill Walker, who is now Capt. Walker, because he “outlived” the other Lieutenants.

Mired underneath an ancient monastery serving as a German observation post, Pyle serves as a sounding board, counselor, and too often a eulogist for Walker’s men. Sgt. Steve Warnicki constantly fiddles with a victrola, hoping to hear the special pressing his wife sent of his newborn son’s voice. Pvt. Dondaro is a Jersey ladies man, who conveniently speaks Italian. In contrast, Pvt. Robert “Wingless” Murphy will marry his sweetheart, “Red,” a Red Cross nurse (played by Wellman’s uncredited wife, Dorothy Coonan Wellman. However, this is war, so not everyone will live to see the end of the film, just like the real-life Pyle did not survive to cover the end of the war.

The Story of G.I. Joe
was added to the National Film Registry and it earned Robert Mitchum’s only Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Capt. Walker, so it is hardly an unheralded film. Nevertheless, if you discover it by watching Ignite’s stunning restoration, you might rightfully wonder why rarely appears on all-time best lists.

Seriously, this is a masterwork. Although Wellman largely maintains an intimate squad-level focus, there are realistic battle scenes that still hold up post-
Saving Private Ryan. It presents war with brutal honesty, making it clear every starring or supporting character could very easily fall in battle. The writing is consistently sharp and sometimes even hilarious, as when Pyle humors the men with ribald Hollywood gossip, which the sound of artillery “censors” for viewers.

Burgess Meredith is famous for classic
The Twilight Zone episodes, the Rocky franchise, and dozens of other films, but Pyle might be the greatest screen performance of his entire career. He has the perfect look for the 43-year-old journalist, even though he was specially discharged from the Army expressly for this film. When he talks in-character about war, viewers believe he speaks from experience, which indeed was true for Burgess on a personal level.

Saturday, July 27, 2024

Fantasia ’24: The Silent Planet

If he is the only man on this world and she is the only woman, they must either be murderers or terrorists (or possibly guilty of “political crimes”). In the future, those are the only reasons for their exile on a distant uninhabited planet. Frankly, they never would have sent Niyya had they known Theodore was still alive. Given the state of his health, mental and physical, he probably will not be for long. The question is whether they will work together or tear each other apart during the time they cohabitate penal colony planet #384 in Jeffrey St. Jules’ The Silent Planet, which had its world premiere at the 2024 Fantasia International Film Festival.

This lonely planet has at least driven Theodore half-crazy, if not fully so. He is convinced the mysterious sentient-like gasses literally create hallucinations and plant false memories. From what viewers see, he might be right, or alternatively, he is just nuts. One day he carves his embedded tracker monitor out of his shoulder, so he can finally sleep in. As a result, the systems assume he is dead, so the recently convicted Niyya lands to replace him mining rare galactic minerals.

At first, Theodore and Niyya are leery of each other, which quickly segues into overt hostility. However, when the realization they are literally the only two people on the planet sets in, they try to make nice. However, Theodore’s sudden flashes of memory leads Niyya to suspect their lives are intertwined in a notoriously nasty way. Yet, the coincidence of them both ending up in the same isolated planet seems highly unlikely to Theodore, so he assumes the gas is toying with them.

Frankly,
Silent Planet is a lot like a whole lot of other films. Unfortunately, this silent planet is usually also rather slow going. St. Jules clearly assumes Niyya’s backstory as the adopted daughter of Oe parents, an alien race meant to represent and generate sympathy for undocumented/illegal migrants, adds depth to the story. Unfortunately, every Oe flashback is so clumsily didactic, they sabotage everything that works in the film.

Mostly, that means they leave Elias Koteas hanging, even though the way he portrays Theodore piecing together his fractured memories is by far the best thing going for this film. He compellingly depicts the destruction wrought by guilt and isolation, while the paranoia he stokes regarding the nature of the planet is a nice bonus.

Friday, July 26, 2024

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.

Thursday, July 25, 2024

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.

Wednesday, July 24, 2024

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.

Tuesday, July 23, 2024

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.

Monday, July 22, 2024

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.

Sunday, July 21, 2024

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.

Friday, July 19, 2024

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.

Thursday, July 18, 2024

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.

Wednesday, July 17, 2024

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.

Tuesday, July 16, 2024

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.

Monday, July 15, 2024

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 20th 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.

Sunday, July 14, 2024

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.

Saturday, July 13, 2024

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.

Friday, July 12, 2024

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.”

Thursday, July 11, 2024

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.