Shyamalan Nights: Trap

Lady Raven's latest concert could be the next Altamont or Woodstock 1999, because Cooper Abbott bought a ticket. People often die around him, because he is a serial killer. Somehow, an FBI profiler figured out he would be at the concert, so she floods the arena with police. However, the killer will be extremely dangerous when cornered, so collateral damage is highly likely in M. Night Shyamalan’s Trap, which screens tomorrow as part of a retrospective of the hot-and-cold director’s work.

While conceived as a Hitchcockian thriller breaking out amidst a Taylor Swift concert, Saleka Shyamalan’s songs are frankly more appealing. She is also surprisingly forceful portraying the fictional mega-popular idol, Lady Raven, in key dramatic scenes. Abbott’s daughter Riley is a huge fan, so he bought floor tickets to celebrate her good grades and apparently as consolation for some bullying she has endured. Seriously, if anyone should be able to [permanently] handle a snobby mean girl, it ought to be Abbott. Maybe later.

Currently, he has Spencer, his latest victim, stashed in one of his lairs. The police are desperate to catch Abbott, so they have taken Lady Raven and the stadium staff into their confidence. Time is running out for poor Spencer and Abbott has some nasty tricks up his sleeve to keep his hunters off-balance.

It turns out working for the fire department is helpful for a serial killer, because you know about all the buildings that have been abandoned after failing fire inspections. That is a rather clever detail from Shyamalan. Abbott’s firefighter profession also adds a further ironic layer. Everyone loves firemen, because they are protectors, but Abbott betrays that public trust, as well as that of his family. (Indeed, Shyamalan shrewdly paired Trap with Hitchcock’s Shadow of Doubt, which also exposes a hidden monster to an unsuspecting family member.)

There is plenty to criticize in other Shyamalan films, but casting his daughter Saleka as Lady Raven should not be reflexively dismissed as nepotism. Her songs certainly fit the setting and she really delivers in the second half, when Lady Raven suddenly becomes personally ensnared in the manhunt drama.

Hartnett is sufficiently creepy as Abbott, but not beyond what we generally expect in these serial killer-next-door characters. However, Hayley Mills (yes, from The Parent Trap) brings a wonderfully steely presence as Dr. Josephine Grant, the profiler. Yet, the biggest surprise comes from Allison Pill, who is really terrific appearing in the third act, as Rachel Abbott.

Oh Lucy!: The Independent Spirit Award Nominee

American English is different from the Queen’s English. That’s what Setsuko Kawashima’s Yankee English teacher teaches, so it makes sense he has a pedagogy you won’t find in British public schools. John hugs a lot and deep down, she rather digs that. She is profoundly sad, so she might as well start taking risks, even when they are wildly ill-conceived. Free-spiritedness is harder to master than it looks in Atsuko Hirayanagi’s Oh Lucy! (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Kawashima is a quietly desperate office lady, whose only consolation is that most of her co-workers’ jokes are directed behind the back of her senior colleague. Her relationship with her drama queen sister is strained at best, because Kawashima still blames Ayako for stealing and marrying her former boyfriend. Generally, Kawashima is okay with her flighty niece Mika, but she is still cautious when asked for a favor. Mika is hoping she will buy out her spot in John’s prepaid English lessons.

John’s “school” is a room in a Yakuza owned love hotel, where he gives his students English names and ridiculous wigs to wear. Yet, somehow, being the blonde Lucy is liberating for Setsuko. Takeshi Komori, or “Tom,” a widowed ex-cop, also enjoys the informality and hugging. Frankly, he could be perfect for Setsuko, but when John and Mika abscond with her lesson fees back to America, she perversely decides to chase after him. To make things even more awkward, Ayako invites herself along to give her daughter a piece of her mind. However, when the arrive at their last known address, they find John has been dumped and abandoned by Mika. Now he is just a pathetic stoner on the verge of eviction, but Setsuko/Lucy is still interested.

Oh Lucy is a fix-up of Hirayanagi’s award-winning short. Basically, she took the crowd-pleasing English lesson gags and added a bunch of tragic reality. The result is a sad and wise character study that shares a distant but legit kinship with Kumiko the Treasure Hunter.

Shinobu Terajima totally deserves her Independent Spirit nomination for her portrayal of Kawashima. She has a tricky tight-rope to walk. She is achingly vulnerable, yet also a little off, but not in a conspicuous way that prompts viewers to keep their guard up. In a way, the role of John represents Josh Harnett’s career arc. At first, he looks hip and handsome, but then he becomes rather sad—yet there are still flashes of the old charm that shine through. Regardless how well he relates to the part, this is some of his best work in years.

Hirayanagi has two more aces up her sleeve. Kaho Minami (currently married to Ken Watanabe) is wonderfully tart as Ayako, but she also plays her smart and self-aware. Of course, Kôji Yakusho is money in the bank as “Tom” Komori, whom he plays with sensitivity and goofiness without compromising his manly screen persona one whit. Megan Mullally kills a brief cameo, but Reiko Aylesworth (Michelle Dessler in 24) is frustratingly under-employed as John’s ex.

Traditionally, it is the salarymen whose angst has been grist for cinema, so it is nice to see the frustrations of office ladies get some equal time. Even with its eccentricities, this is a messily realistic film that deliberately zigs when we want it to zag. That’s life folks. Hirayanagi and Terajima show that it can be both ugly and beautiful. Very highly recommended, Oh Lucy! opens tomorrow (3/2) in New York, at the Landmark 57 West and the Village East.

The Ottoman Lieutenant: Love in a Time of Genocide Denial

Late 1914 probably sounds like a fateful time for an American nurse to travel to Ottoman Turkey. Perhaps you are thinking of the Armenian Genocide, in which the Muslim Ottoman Empire systematically murdered 1.5 million ethnic Armenian Christians, but oh how wrong you are. It is significant because nurse Lillie Rowe is swept off her feet by the dashing Ishmail Veli. Genocide? There’s no genocide here. There’s just a spot of rough-housing that gets out of hand in Joseph Ruben’s historical white-wash, The Ottoman Lieutenant (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Rowe feels stifled by Mainline Philadelphia society, so after listening to an inspiring fundraising speech from Dr. Jude Gresham, she resolves to ferry an ambulance stocked with medical supplies to the American clinic in Anatolia. Unfortunately, her humanitarian aid is hijacked by Armenian bandits (those villains will do it every time), but at least she arrives safely with her nurse’s training, thanks to her escort, Lt. Veli.

Initially, the cynical clinic director, old Dr. Woodruff is less than impressed by her naïve do-gooder impulses, but Gresham is delighted to have her on staff. However, he is quickly frustrated by her flirtatious friendship with Veli and their habit of frequently crossing paths. She in turn is alarmed by his secret collaboration with the Armenian resistance—a clear violation of Starfleet’s Prime Directive.

Whether he intended to or not, Ruben (best-known for the Julia Roberts melodrama, Sleeping with the Enemy) hired onto a Turkish funded propaganda production that does its best to confuse, obscure, minimize, and ultimately deny the Armenian Genocide. Imagine a film set in 1930s Germany whose only Jewish characters were gangsters and cut-throats. Essentially, that is what we have in The Ottoman Lieutenant. Frankly, most of the bad stuff in the film is committed by Armenians. Granted, we witness noble Lt. Veli save a group of Armenian civilians from execution late in the third act, but that incident only seems to be there to suggest any atrocities were the unsanctioned work of low-ranking vengeance seekers.

When screenwriter Jeff Stockwell is not rewriting history, he gives us scenes of Veli and Rowe taking in cinematic vistas and cooing platitudes at each other, like “it’s like being inside God’s thoughts.” Michiel Huisman and Hera Hilmar have zero chemistry together, but his devil-my-care attitude wears better than her scoldy earnestness. Josh Hartnett is just embarrassing as the tightly wound Gresham. However, Sir Ben Kingsley lends the film some dignity and authority as the haunted Dr. Woodruff.

This film is an affront to history and a troubling indicator of Hollywood’s Dhimmi inclinations. Supposedly crimes committed by the Ottomans (all 1.5 million of them) need to be understood in a wartime context and probably weren’t that bad in the first place, whereas the racial segregation that appalled Rowe in Philadelphia is an original sin for which America can never be forgiven. Maybe we could forgive the film if the performances and dialogue were less wooden, but such was not the case. Not recommended under any circumstances, The Ottoman Lieutenant opens this Friday (3/10) in New York.

Roland Joffe’s The Lovers

James Stewart is a reluctant imperialist. He and his brothers are sort of gentlemen, but they hardly have a pound to their names. They are serving their military service during the time of the British Raj, to earn enough money to buy a farm in American. Stewart also happens to be Jay Fennel, a near future marine biologist. The spitting image of each other, the two men are somehow connected by destiny, the laws of physics, and a matched set of rings. Centuries pass, but love remains a painful force to reckon with in Roland Joffé’s The Lovers (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Jay Fennel and his wife Laura are ocean researchers, who get to use mega-expensive submersibles to scour the ocean floor for shiny objects that might catch their eye—like say a ring. When Laura gets excited by a potential find, she carelessly heads down to the site, getting trapped beneath some debris. Manning-up, Fennel free-dives down to rescue her, but without the proper decompressing, he comes back up essentially brain dead. While his wife and doctors agonize over his condition, the film flashes back to the Eighteenth Century.

Stewart and his brother Charles are decidedly outsiders amongst the colonial establishment. They still think they take their orders from King and Parliament, but the governor makes it clear the British East India Company is calling the shots. Based on the Company’s wink-and-a-nod encouragement, a coup is staged within the Marantha royal family. Much to the new king’s frustration, the beloved queen escapes thanks to her protector, Tulaja Naik, who assumes her identity to further safeguard her security.

In a case of good news-bad news, the queen’s party is to be escorted to Bombay (as it then would have been called) by the Stewart Brothers. Once they arrive at their destination, the queen will be little more than a hostage of the governor and his cronies. However, the Stewarts are probably the only officers resourceful enough to protect the Queen and her retainers from the army of assassins following them.

The Lovers is a very odd film. In many ways it is a throwback to 1940s exotic ports-of-call films, but with a generous helping of New Age mysticism layered on top. It is sort of like Gunga Din crossed with Titanic, as mashed-up by Richard Matheson, writing in his What Dreams May Come-Somewhere in Time bag. Once known as Singularity, the film is supposedly structured around the principles of physics, but that fact will not be immediately obvious to even reasonably attentive viewers.

Frankly, the Eighteenth Century storyline is rather appealingly old fashioned, even though Josh Hartnett’s Scottish accent is almost as big an adventure as their trek across the mountains. Still, he can swagger respectably and develops some rather nice romantic chemistry with Bollywood superstar Bipasha Basu. Without question, she is star of the film, shining in her considerable action sequences and smoldering in her scenes of passion.

Although clearly shot on a limited budget, Joffé shrewdly uses the sweeping backdrops to give the picture a suitably big look, even when he conspicuously lacked the swarming masses of extras. Regardless, the primary reason to see The Lovers is to witness Basu’s American coming out party. Somehow she carries it across the goal line, or at least makes it an interesting viewing experience. Uneven yet strangely absorbing, The Lovers will be better than a lot of things out there when it opens this Friday (3/13) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Dark Sin City of the Future: Bunraku

In the future, gangsters will respect the global gun ban, despite their willingness to murder, maim, white slave, and cheat at cards. This might seem to contradict the experience of thousands of years of human history, but it is really just an excuse to combine swords and cars in Guy Moshe’s Bunraku (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Our Easternized cyberpunky story takes place in a post-apocalypse not-Japan, where Eastern Europeans rule the underworld, and everything else by extension. Nicola the Woodcutter is the shadowy #1, who only leaves his hideout for his weekly poker game and the occasional meal at his favorite sushi restaurant. A nameless drifter wants in on that game. He seems to have a score to settle with the kingpin, but he lacks the funds to buy in.

Another mysterious stranger also wandered into town with a purpose. A master of a Zen-focused martial arts discipline, Yoshi has been charged with recovering his family’s heirloom medallion from Nicola. He happens to be traveling with a considerable roll. Yoshi and the Drifter ought to join forces, but perhaps they should first beat the snot out of each other for the sake of appearances.

Bunraku is one of the most frustrating action films of the year. Technically, it is consistently inventive, incorporating some hyper stylized animation inspired by the titular traditional form of Japanese puppetry. It also boasts some wickedly sardonic narration (by Mike Patton) and a funky score penned by jazz musician and film composer Terence Blanchard, who also added a brief but tasty trumpet solo to the opening sequence. It mashes up the imagery of retro-action and cyber-punk films quite effectively and features some very funny fight sequences clearly modeled after video games.

As an action protagonist though, Josh Hartnett simply does not have it. His Drifter is lethargic rather than quietly intense and that mustache just looks ridiculous on him. Japanese pop-star Gackt is not bad as Yoshi, but it is rather insulting to watch his character struggle to scratch out a draw against the Drifter. You probably already guessed Ron Perlman plays Nicola. It is his usual shtick, but it still works within the context of a self-aware B-movie. Arguably Woody Harrelson best acquits himself as The Bartender with no name, who guides Yoshi and the Drifter into an alliance, while seeming to be above it all in an amused kind of way.

Fifteen years ago or so, it would be hard to believe Harrelson and his Indecent Proposal co-star Demi Moore could reunite in a film with relatively little fanfare, but here it is. Echoes of that previous film can even be read into their characters’ relationship here. Moore is not bad either, but playing Nicola’s kept woman (to put it euphemistically) cannot be the most rewarding of gigs.

Yet, probably most distracting is Bunraku’s highly problematic use of Communist iconography and terminology. Eventually, the boys align themselves with the “Freedom” army of the “Proletariat,” who train under vaguely Cyrillic red letters decked out in Mao caps. Tragically though, the Red Cadres whom they evoke had nothing to do with freedom whatsoever, prosecuting the reign of terror known as the Cultural Revolution with wanton disregard for human life and dignity. Such sloppy symbolism in Bunraku is frankly rather shameful.

It is hard to think of a film so inspired in many respects that also got so much so far wrong. Credit cannot go to one man alone, it was a team effort. Though often cool looking, those hoping for a martial arts fix should wait for a future release from China Lion or Well-Go/Variance Film. Not recommended, Bunraku opens this Friday (9/30) in New York at the AMC Empire

BIFF: August

Indy filmmakers seem to share Hollywood’s contempt for the supposedly evil businessman, but if there is one exception to the stereotype, it is the tech guru. Internet start-up wizards who created business plans with no appreciable stream of revenue are not typically portrayed like the crass capitalist. A fresh example would be Josh Harnett’s Tom Sterling, a one-time Wired magazine cover-boy with an ugly neck tattoo, whose spectacular fall is told in the upcoming film August (trailer here), which screened at the Brooklyn International Film Fest.

Sterling capitalized on his younger brother’s innovations to create Landshark, the last of the tech start-ups to get Wall Street’s blessing. What they do is kept purposefully vague. Harnett tells a potential client: “We’re not the e-commerce, we’re the e.” So how is that “e” working out? Not well. After a blockbuster IPO, Landshark has come crashing down to Earth and desperately needs an infusion of capital to stay afloat.

Harnett’s Sterling is portrayed as a snake oil salesman without any oil. His brother’s breakthroughs are the real deal, but their revenue projections are not. There simply is no market for whatever Landshark has to offer—at least not yet. All Sterling really has to sell are image and rhetoric, running the company in his words: “on fumes.” When Sterling finally gets his comeuppance at the hands of old school moneymen, personified by David Bowie, it is stone cold business.

Sterling might be self-important, but he is also self-destructive, as witnessed by his sabotage of a second chance with Sarrah, an ex-girlfriend, played by Naomie Harris, who brings a distinct charm to a thankless role. He also has issues with his parents, former sixties radicals who sold out to academia, but cannot understand his dreams of capitalist glory. (They do listen to John Coltrane and Benny Goodman, so they can’t be all bad).

August moves at a lightning quick pace as the Landsharkers scramble against time to save the company, but it is hard to fully sympathize with Sterling along the way, due to the limitations of its lead. For his part, Hartnett is totally convincing as an arrogant jerk, but less so expressing more complex emotions, so director Austin Chick wisely plays to his strength.

When Landshark crashes, it is pretty dramatic, but August seems to keep it all in perspective. The title refers to the specific time in which it is set, August 2001, a month before September 11th. The implication seems to be that in a September 10th world, the doings of Sterling’s start-up could considered quite important, but in a post-September 11th world, much less so. In effect, August depicts an innocent time that thought it was cynical, as evidenced by clips of the moron media’s celebrity coverage and manufactured controversies.

August is pretty smart in its portrayal of the death rattle of the internet boom. Much of it will ring true to those who first heard constantly about stock options from friends at dotcoms, and then suddenly nothing, when their company’s stock certificates became cheap souvenirs of the late 1990’s. It effectively recreates a specific time and place, as well as the attitude that went with it. It opens in New York at the Village East on July 11th.