Realive: Disney’s Dream Come True

Who knew the future would be so uncertain? It turns out to be quite different, yet maddeningly the same. Go figure. This is especially frustrating for Marc Jarvis, because he will have to live in it. The first cryogenically frozen terminally ill patient to be successfully revived and cured experiences buyer’s remorse in Mateo Gil’s Realive (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

It was tragic bad timing for Jarvis to get a one-year cancer diagnosis. His hipster advertising agency was thriving and he was finally settling into a healthy long-term relationship with Naomi, his former girlfriend several times over. She quits her job to make the most of what time they have left, but Jarvis has a different idea. He will technically kill himself before the disease can ravage his body, so he can be frozen and presumably revived later. Apparently, those bucket list items will have to wait—sixty years to be exact.

That is how long it takes for Jarvis to be defrosted—and boy is he surprised. Thanks to his precautions, he was a perfect specimen for the restoration process. However, instead of elation, Jarvis falls into a deep depression. Even Elizabeth, the pretty RN assigned to monitor his recover and “encourage” him in ways acceptable in the swinging 2080s, can’t make him forget about Naomi. To further boost his angst, Jarvis eventually learns Naomi also had herself deep-frozen, but not in as pristine condition, making her an unlikely contender for revival anytime soon.

There are some powerful moments in Realive that bear comparison to Mark Slutsky’s provocative short film Decelerators. Unfortunately, there is just no getting around the weakness of Tom Hughes as a lead (de ja vu, anyone?). Instead of brooding darkly, he just seems to lay about in a funk. It is impossible to believe Naomi (played by Oona Chaplin, Charlie's granddaughter) and Elizabeth (played by Charlotte Le Bon) could both be so concerned about his cold porridge personality.

Poor Chaplin is stuck with an under-cooked character, but she still manages to wring some poignancy out of the extreme situation she faces. Always reliable, Le Bon is actually the one who really sells the big emotional payoff, which must have been quite a challenge playing opposite Jarvis’s bald head and lifeless eyes.

At least Gil marshals his resources quite effectively. He and his design team realized an evocatively ambiguous vision of the future. It is a good-looking film, but Hughes still can’t carry it. That is a crying shame, because even though Gil’s script addresses some heady speculative themes, the relationship between Jarvis and Naomi is really what is supposed to drive it. Another film to stream later on Netflix or Shudder, Realive opens this Friday (9/29) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

The Promise: Love Survives Genocide

A $100 million budget is almost unheard of for an independent film, but the late billionaire philanthropist Kirk Kerkorian wanted to make a statement. In the past, Turkish Islamist deniers of the Armenian Genocide have been remarkably successful censoring Hollywood and other prospective producers of films depicting the Ottoman-orchestrated mass murder of ethnic Armenia Christians, but they couldn’t silence Kerkorian, who entirely financed the production of Terry George’s The Promise (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The Promise releases in theaters a mere six weeks after Joseph Ruben’s irredeemably shameful The Ottoman Lieutenant, a Turkish-produced attempt to obscure and trivialize the Armenian Genocide, but it should generate considerably more interest due to it’s A-list cast (Christian Bale vs. Josh Hartnett) and infinitely superior intentions. As the film opens, ambitious young apothecary Mikael Pogosian has agreed to marry the earnest Maral after first using her dowry to attend medical school in Constantinople. It is not love, at least not on his part, but he recognizes her goodness and so assumes he will grow to love her over time.

Yet, as soon as he sets foot in the fashionable home of his father’s wealthy merchant cousin, Pogosian falls head over heels with the children’s music tutor Ana Khesarian. She too is already in a problematic but committed relationship with crusading American journalist Chris Myers, so both try to deny their burgeoning attraction. However, as anti-Armenian violence erupts throughout the Sick Man of Europe, Pogosian and Khesarian are thrown together in ways that breaks down their resolve.

Inevitably separated from Khesarian, Pogosian finds himself detailed to a work brigade that will consigned to a mass grave once they finish the road they are toiling on. The doctor-in-training will escape the fate assigned to him, but he will witness far more horrors as he makes his way through the formerly Armenian provinces, ultimately arriving at the fateful Musa Dagh.

The Promise is not anti-Muslim. Indeed, it takes great pains to introduce Emre Ogan, Pogosian’s Muslim colleague at medical school, who consistently tries to shield his friend from anti-Armenian discrimination and persecution. Of course, the fun-loving Ogan will not be any Islamist’s idea of a Muslim, but it makes him all the more sympathetic to rational viewers.

Frankly, we have yet to see the defining, hearts-and-minds changing film on the Armenian Genocide, but at least in the case of The Promise, it was not for a lack of trying. Oscar Isaac and Charlotte Le Bon develop decent Yuri-and-Lara chemistry as Pogosian and Khesarian. Bale is terrific as the heroic but deeply flawed Myers. However, the great Shohreh Aghdashloo and Angela Sarafyan (technically the only true Armenian cast-member) really pack an emotional wallop as Pogosian’s tough but loving mother Marta and his loyal intended Maral, respectively.

In fact, there are dozens small but accomplished supporting turns distributed throughout The Promise, including Rade Serbedzija as the steely mayor leading the resistance at Musa Dagh and Marwan Kenzari as the likable but ultimately tragic Ogan. Plus, James Cromwell memorably gives the Ottoman authorities a stinging moral rebuke as American Ambassador Henry Morgenthau Sr.

The Promise is a big, sweeping film, but it suffers from its formulaic predictableness. George and co-screenwriter Robin Swicord were clearly looking towards David Lean’s Doctor Zhivago as a model, but there is no analog for Sir Alec Guinness’s wild card performance as Lt. Gen. Yevgraf Zhivago. No matter how many times we watch Zhivago, we still do not quite know what to make of him, whereas we can quickly pigeonhole every character in The Promise.

Still, there is quite a bit to recommend George’s film. The war scenes are impressively brutal and viewers can viscerally feel the resulting emotional devastation experienced by the Armenian community. It certainly does not deserve the one-star reviews tens of thousands of Genocide deniers have robotically posted on imdb, despite the film only having screened publicly a handful of times at the Toronto Film Festival. Recommended for general audiences, The Promise opens this Friday (4/21) in New York, at the AMC Empire and Loews Lincoln Square.

The Take: Idris Elba Celebrates Bastille Day

It is a thriller built around a phony terrorist conspiracy, but its European openings were complicated twice by very real terrorist attacks. First, the film previously known as Bastille Day was slated for a UK opening in February, but it was pushed back immediately following the November 2015 terror attacks. Later, it logically opened in time for the titular French holiday, but was yanked from theaters less than a week later, because of the Nice terror truck attack. Its timing was terrible, but the on-screen action and intrigue are not bad. As usual, Idris Elba takes care of business in James Watkins’ The Take (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

CIA agent Sean Briar is not afraid to cowboy-up or go rogue. He would probably be out on his ear, if the Paris station chief had not interceded on his behalf. He arrives just in time to do some major damage control when lowlife American expat Michael Mason is caught on CCTV leaving a bomb in Pigalle. Actually, he is just a thief, who didn’t know what he was discarding. He swiped the bag in question from Zoe Naville, the social justice warrior mule, who was supposed to leave it at a Le Pen-esque political party headquarters, before she got cold feet—and robbed. She in turn received the bomb from her activist boyfriend, but he is really a phony planted by a corrupt team of French SWAT commandos.

The plan was to frame various Islamist groups for a terror conspiracy while inciting outrage at their treatment amongst the easily agitated, plunging Paris into chaos hours before the Bastille Day parade. Amid the resulting confusion, they could pull off their planned heist at their leisure. Of course, they did not plan on Briar’s interference.

The Take is not Luther, but it certainly shows why so many have latched onto Idris Elba as a potential James Bond. He is all kinds of hardnosed steeliness, without even trying very hard. It is easy to just sit back and enjoy him doing his thing. We can also readily understand why the distributor wanted to jettison the Bastille Day title and hopefully the bad karma that dogged it. Yet, you almost have to wonder if they are trying to confuse fans of the enjoyably trashy hit Takers.

Regardless, Kelly Reilly and José Garcia add some nice flair and energy as Briar’s boss Karen Dacre and her French counterpart, Victor Gamieux. Charlotte Le Bon is pretty and almost supernaturally wide-eyed as gullible Naville. However, Richard Madden just becomes tiresome as the whiny Mason.

The Take is the rare sort of film that became less politically correct than intended, due the passage of time and unfortunate events beyond Watkins’ control. The way a few hashtags whip up mob frenzy is uncomfortably believable and highly relevant to the current state of the world. Be that as it may, The Take is all about Elba throwing it down, which he does. Recommended for fans of the actor and polyglot Euro action thrillers, The Take opens tomorrow (11/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Yves Saint Laurent: Bio-Pic Number #1

He was the first fashion designer to be given his own exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was recently the subject of a comprehensive retrospective at the Denver Art Museum. However, Yves Saint Laurent’s did not always act in a manner appropriate for such hallowed institutions. Jalil Lespert gets the first crack at dramatizing Saint Laurent’s storied career and chaotic private life with Yves Saint Laurent (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Lespert’s treatment reaches international audiences before Bertrand Bonello’s even more simply titled Saint Laurent (sort of like the competing Ip Man films), but they are both trailing Pierre Thoretton’s should-have-been-better documentary, L’Amour fou. Like Thoretton, Lespert set sail with the blessing of Saint Laurent’s longtime life partner, business fixer, and co-collector Pierre Bergé. Ironically, this seems to have given Lespert considerable license to explore some of the darker corners of the designer’s psyche.

We meet Saint Laurent as an earnest young French Algerian, who is too delicate for a settler’s life, but still considers Algiers as French as the Champs-Elysees. Soon he relocates to Paris, working his way up the design ranks at the house of Dior. When it is time for Saint Laurent to strike out on his own, it will be Bergé who raises the necessary funds. As the responsible one, Bergé will also patch Saint Laurent together after his various breakdowns. Yet, despite his efforts, keeping Saint Laurent away from the temptations of fast living becomes a full time losing battle.

While Lespert offers up plenty of Saint Laurent’s dark nights of the soul, he still knows what most patrons want from a movie like this: pretty clothes and pretty people. Thanks to the YSL archive and Charlotte Le Bon appearing as Saint Laurent’s former favorite model Victoire Doutrelaeu, Lespert’s film has plenty of both. In fact, Le Bon adds a wonderfully melodramatic edge to the proceedings.

Laura Smet is also nicely decorative as Doutreleau’s replacement, Loulou de la Falaise, but she is just overwhelmed by the psychedelic trappings of the late 1960s-early 1970s era. Frankly, the same largely applies to Lespert’s ostensive lead, the feather-light and paper-thin Pierre Niney (of the Comédie Française). Perhaps by design, his Saint Laurent is largely a cipher, unto which everyone else projects the YSL they need or want.

Somewhat logically given Bergé’s support, Saint Laurent’s long suffering partner emerges as the emotional center and dramatic anchor of Lespert’s bio-pic. Guillaume Gallienne (also of the Comédie Française) is terrific balancing the YSL CEO’s jealousy and wounded pride, as well as resoluteness and maturity. It really is Bergé’s film and Gallienne carries it, accordingly. In fact, you have to give the real life Bergé credit for having the guts to throw China’s human rights record back in its face when they demanded the return of two Winter Palace bronzes he put up for auction as part of the collection he amassed with Saint Laurent.

There is plenty of scandal and heartache in Lespert’s YSL, but it is a rather pleasant viewing experience thanks to his light touch and spritely pace. Ibrahim Maalouf’s upbeat soundtrack, stylishly mixing elements of jazz and 1960s pop also provides a key assist, as well as one of the film’s most accomplished creative collaborators, Italian alto and tenor saxophonist Stefano di Battista. It all looks and sounds great, which its subjects would most certainly appreciate. Recommended for fans of high fashion and fashionable House of Eliott-style drama, Yves Saint Laurent (the first one) opens this Wednesday (6/25) at New York’s Film Forum.