Like Tears in Rain, on Viaplay

Rutger Hauer’s early lifestyle could fairly be described as Bohemian and he first came to international prominence in the sexually charged film Turkish Delight. Yet, he was happily married to the love of his life for forty years. One of his best friends was his brother-in-law and his other closest friends were the parents of his god-children. Fittingly, his new biographical documentary is a family affair, directed by his goddaughter. Obviously, Bladerunner will be discussed, but Sanna Fabery de Jonge devotes more time to the doting godfather she knew in Like Tears in Rain, which premieres Thursday on Viaplay.

Hauer extensively documented his personal life and film shoots as an amateur videographer, but a freak flood destroyed the bulk of his archive, robbing Fabery de Jonge of a wealth of primary sources. However, several boxes of video footage were discovered after his death, which, seen here for the first time, supply an intimate perspective on Hauer’s early life.

Young and dashing, Hauer essentially lived in a hovel and squandered his paychecks on things like motorcycles. Yet, he was charming. After buying the motorhome Fabery de Jonge’s parent put up for sale, Hauer became lifelong friends with the couple and godfather to their daughter and son. He first made friends with Ineke ten Cate’s brother, but they soon fell for each other hard. However, there was actually a first wife, with whom he had a daughter, both of whom go conspicuously unmentioned throughout Tears.

Still, Hauer’s loyalty to the people from this period of his life is quite touching. Indeed, Fabery de Jonge and ten Cate revealingly discuss how painful the Nighthawks shoot was, due to his brother-in-law’s illness. Ten Cate’s pilgrimage to the modern-day Roosevelt Island tram (the setting for his famous face-off with Stallone) was a nice touch.

From the Dutch perspective, there was one voice from Hauer’s past whose absence would be so glaring, it might have undermined the entire documentary, but Paul Verhoeven is indeed present. In fact, he rather forthrightly admits forcing Hauer to appear as yet another villain in the poorly received Flesh+Blood unfairly set back the actor’s career. It turns out their professional relationship even predates Turkish Delight, going back to the Medieval swashbuckling TV series Floris (which looks like a ton of campy fun, so a streamer like Viaplay ought to consider picking it up).

Argento at Lincoln Center: Dracula 3D

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.

The Sonata: The Devil is in the Score

Everyone thinks heavy metal is the music of the Devil, but there are way more demonic classical compositions, like Night on Bare Mountain, Danse Macabre, Totentanz, and the good parts of Carmina Burana. Richard Marlowe’s last masterwork could very well take it to a whole new level. It could literally raise Hell, but his violinist daughter will have to first figure out the bizarre score he left behind in Andrew Desmond’s The Sonata, which opens this Friday in New York.

Rose Fisher never knew her reclusive father, but hardly anyone really did. At one point, he was considered the great hope of classical music, before he mysteriously disappeared. It turned out, he was quietly working on his masterwork sonata in a creepy old French chateau, up until the point he decided to self-immolate. Fisher is a socially awkward prodigy who has trouble forging human connections, but the revelation of her father’s fate still unnerves her.

Fisher’s agent-manager-enabler Charles Vernais does his best to shield her from the world, but she is poised to drop him out of impatience with his slow-build approach to her career. However, they call a truce when Fisher discovers the score of her father’s final composition. The premiere of a new and final Marlowe work could be a sensation, but it will require some investigation, especially the strange occult symbols marking each movement. Those would be the power-signs used by an ancient secret society, who reportedly believed music held real, earth-shaking power.

The Sonata is a horror movie, but it is one of the few narrative films in the last few years that presents classical music with deadly earnestness. It is at least fifty times—perhaps one hundred times better than Richard Shepard’s The Perfection. It also features one of the late, great Rutger Hauer’s last screen appearances, rather hauntingly as the deceased Marlowe.

Drawing Home: The Whytes of Canada

You could say Peter and Catharine Robb Whyte were the Wyeths of Banff. They were definitely the first family of Canadian landscape painting. She originally hailed from Concord, MA, but she took to Banff and the husband who brought her there, like her WASPy, society family could hardly believe. Their outdoorsy love story is the focus of Markus Rupprecht’s Drawing Home (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Catharine Robb was always closer to her father than her mother, but Edith Morse Robb quite encouraged her relationship with John D. Rockefeller III. Yet, it was fellow art student Peter Whyte who won her heart. He was rather at a disadvantage living in the Canadian Rockies, but when she finally visited Banff, she fell for him and the rugged countryside. Before too long, the It Happened One Night-style Jericho Wall curtain separating the couple comes crashing down.

Lady Edith just doesn’t get it, but they have the support of Whyte’s parents and his mentor, naturalized German landscape painter, Carl Rungius. They are happy together, until tragedy strikes the ski lodge operated by the Whyte Brothers in 1933. Frankly, their mathematician pal Kit Paley acted like a jerk, but Whyte still takes his death hard.

Frankly, the screenplay co-written by Rupprecht and Donna Logan short-changes Peter Whyte in favor of his wife. They completely ignore his WWII service, taking him on a steep decline from the Paley accident to his eventual death, interrupted only by the brief redemption made possible by CRW.

Nevertheless, Rupprecht manages to integrate the work of both painters reasonably well and he fully capitalizes on the picturesque Banff landscape. Drawing also features a warm supporting turn from Rutger Hauer, letting him show a side we rarely get to see, with his charismatic portrayal of Rungius. Julie Lynn Mortensen and Juan Riedinger are relatively pleasant and credibly down-to-earth as the Whytes, but neither really puts a distinctive stamp on the film. Kate Mulgrew is also largely stuck playing a stereotypical snobby mother-in-law, but Kristin Griffith brings some heart and energy to the proceedings as Jean Caird, the Robb family nanny-housekeeper-busybody.

Cinematographer Patrick McLaughlin, composer Ben Holiday, and the design team all contribute to the film’s gauzily nostalgic vibe. The Whytes painted landscapes, but at times, the late 1920s and early 1930s scenes suggest the look of fellow Massachusetts resident Norman Rockwell’s work. It is generally a nice film—sometimes too nice. Recommended for sentimental patrons of nature art and conservation, Drawing Home opens tomorrow (12/22) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

24 Hours to Live: Ethan Hawke Gets an Extension

Travis Conrad is a bit like Edmond O’Brien in D.O.A., except he knows exactly who killed him and why. Frankly, he would be the first to admit he had it coming, so when his shadowy employers give him a brief extension, he will ironically spend it protecting the Interpol agent who shot him dead. Redemption better not dally in Brian Smrz’s 24 Hours to Live (trailer here), which is now playing in New York.

Even though he still grieves for his wife and little boy, Conrad agrees to come back and do one last assignment for the Red Mountain merc agency. They are offering two million very good reasons. The job is to rub out a former operative turning state’s evidence in South Africa, but Lin Bisset, his Hong Kong-based Interpol handler has proved unusually resourceful thus far. Conrad tries to get to the target through Bisset, but he just cannot stomach killing the single mother, so she does him instead.

However, mean old Wetzler at Red Mountain secretly funded a project to bring back the recently deceased for twenty-four hours. The plan was to revive Conrad, extract the safe house location, and then put him down again, but the groggy assassin goes rogue before they can get to the third step. Rather disappointed in his colleagues, Conrad decides to protect the understandably distrustful Bisset and her witness, as a means of getting a little payback for the crummy things Red Mountain did to him.

So yes, Ethan Hawke sort of plays a zombie as Conrad, the dead man walking. Be that as it may, Smrz downplays any possible science fiction or horror angles, doubling down on action instead. Indeed, this definitely looks like a film helmed by a longtime stunt-performer, which it is. There is no nauseating shaky-cam to endure. His fight scenes and shoot-outs are crisply and clearly executed.

Hawke is decently hardboiled, but Xu Qing (a.k.a. Summer Qing) really emerges as the action star. As Bisset, she demonstrates impressive dramatic and action chops. We really pull for her rather than Conrad. Usually Liam Cunningham makes a reliably flamboyantly villain, but he sacks off a bit as Wetzler. On the other hand, Paul Anderson really makes things interesting playing the morally conflicted Jim Morrow, Conrad’s supposed friend and former supervisor. Rutger Hauer is mostly misused and under-employed as Conrad’s genial father-in-law, but at least he has a nice Hobo-with-a-shotgun moment.

Believe it or not, 24HTL is way better than you think it is. Granted, this is probably much more of a VOD release than a theatrical happening, but as a working-class action film, it has its merits. Smrz definitely knows what he is doing, while Xu and Anderson elevate the whole show. Recommended for action fans, 24 Hours to Live is now playing in New York, at the Village East.

Black Butterflies: Madness and Apartheid

Ingrid Jonker was on the right side of history. Unfortunately, she was nearly impossible to live with. Often dubbed the “South African Sylvia Plath,” her Afrikaans verse passionately condemned Apartheid, but her inner demons would eventually prove fatal. Though undeniably a symbol of white South African dissent, Jonker’s deep emotional turmoil trumps the social strife of her times in Paula van der Oest’s bio-drama, Black Butterflies (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Jonker and her father were never close, nor did they ever agree on much. It was only after the death of her guardian grandmother that Jonker met the father whom her late mother had walked away from just before her birth. While even as a child she exhibited precocious poetic talent, Abraham Jonker served as a hardline state censor. Clearly, conflict between them would be inevitable.

Conversely, the novelist Jack Cope would look like an excellent match for Jonker, at least on paper. Both were liberal Afrikaans writers with children who were in the process of divorcing their spouses. They certainly meet under fortuitous circumstances, when Cope saves her from drowning. Indeed, they quickly become an item, but it is not long before Jonker’s erratic behavior undermines their relationship. Needy does not begin to describe her, nor does faithfulness.

While Cope adamantly ends their affair, he stops short of cutting ties altogether. In fact, it is the novelist and a mutual literary friend who package Jonker’s breakthrough collection while she is institutionalized. Through their efforts, her poem “The Dead Child of Nyanga” (which Mandela would read at his inauguration) would be published and duly censored (by her father).

Rather than revisiting Apartheid era non-controversies yet again, Butterflies is much more a portrait of the artist as profoundly disturbed woman. Yet, this is actually quite a legitimate biographical-cinematic strategy. While the film provides plenty of reminders of Apartheid’s unjust nature, its depiction of Jonker’s mental illness is often quite harrowing and more visceral. It is also arguably far more relevant for contemporary audiences.

Carice van Houten gives a truly brave performance, portraying a cultural icon coming apart at the emotional seams. Frequently self-destructive and often unsympathetic, it hardly constitutes hagiography, but it is true to her troubled life. However, the real lynchpin of the film is Liam Cunningham’s rock solid turn as Cope, making him a fully-dimensional flesh-and-blood human being. Though we can anticipate the tragedy that will result, we can never blame him for ending his involvement with Jonker. Frankly, it is hard to see any what else he could have done under the circumstances. While Cope benefits from Cunningham’s nuance, Rutger Hauer plays Abraham Jonker as a stone cold villain, but in his defense, this seems to essentially match the historical record.

Despite its serious subject matter, Butterflies never feels preachy, thanks to van der Oest’s intimate focus. Though certainly celebrating her artistic integrity, her film never whitewashes the tragic nature of her life. Several cuts above standard bio-pic fare, Buterflies is definitely worth seeing when it opens tomorrow (3/2) at the Cinema Village.

Bruegel & Majewski’s The Mill and the Cross

Pieter Bruegel the Elder was a truly subversive old master. Known for his paintings of the Dutch peasantry as well as Biblical episodes, his five hundred character masterwork The Way to Cavalry depicted the Spanish Militia then occupying Flanders as the Roman soldiers crucifying Christ. While Bruegel’s pointed commentary on the Spanish occupation is inescapable, the painting is rife with hidden signifiers, which the painter himself explains in Lech Majewski’s unclassifiable The Mill & the Cross (trailer here), a painstakingly crafted cinematic recreation of The Way to Cavalry, which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Employing state-of-the-art computer generation, scores of seamstresses and artisans, and an enormous 2D background recreation of Bruegel’s celebrated work (painted by the director himself), Majewski brings the great tableaux to life on the big screen. Amongst those five hundred characters are Brueghel and his friend and collector, Nicholas Jonghelinck, to whom he explains his projected new painting, The Way to Cavalry.

It is impossible to hang a pat label on Mill. Though it screened as part of the 20111Sundance Film Festival’s New Frontier track for more experimental work, such a rubric really does not fit Majewski’s film. It certainly is not non-narrative filmmaking, since it encompasses the greatest story ever told. However, it completely challenges linear notions of time, incorporating Christ’s Passion and the world of 1564 Flanders, in which Bruegel and Jongelinck are simultaneous observers and active participants.

Years in the making, Mill is an extraordinarily ambitious undertaking. Majewski represents the complete social continuum of Sixteenth Century Flanders, recreating the mean living conditions of the peasants, the clean, unadorned quarters of the relatively middle class Bruegel, and the privileged environment of the well-to-do Jongelinck. Majewski’s visuals are often arresting, like the scenes of art director Stanislaw Porczyk’s towering mill, which resembles the enormous set pieces of Terry Gilliam films. Perhaps most stunning are the wide shots of the Cavalry landscape, with the figures literally coming alive on Bruegel’s canvas. Yet, Majewski also captures moments of both tender intimacy and graphic torture, rendered with powerful immediacy.

Indeed, the wealthy collector clearly serves as the conscience of the film, decrying the capricious religious persecution that was a fact of life for Flanders under the Spanish Militia. Despite the almost overwhelming visual sweep of the film, Michael York gives a finely tuned performance as Jongelinck that really sneaks up on viewers. Rutger Hauer (worlds away from his other 2011 Sundance film Hobo with a Shotgun) also brings a forceful heft to the rather mysterious artist.

A brilliant personal triumph for Majewski, who also served as producer, co-cinematographer, co-composer, and sound designer, Mill effectively blurs the distinction between film and painting, yet it is more of a “movie” than nearly anything ever deemed “experimental film.” A unique, category-defying viewing experience, Mill is very highly recommended indeed when it opens this Wednesday (9/14) in New York at Film Forum.

Dutch Soap: Bride Flight

It was a flight that came with a lot of baggage. Scarred by World War II, demoralized by economic recession, and wiped out by floods, many Dutch citizens chose to immigrate to New Zealand in 1953. A number of them were brides-to-be, hitching a ride on the Flying Dutchman, Holland’s entry in an air race from London to Christ Church. Four such Dutch settlers start new lives as New Zealanders despite the lingering shadows of their past in Ben Sombogaart’s Bride Flight (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Esther’s entire family was killed by the Germans. Understandably, she will struggle with her Jewish faith during her years in New Zealand. Marjorie is a born homemaker, whereas poor Ada had little choice in the matter, deferring to her family’s strict Puritanism. Frank also experienced tragedy, losing his family in a Japanese POW camp, but his adventurous spirit remains indomitable. All four become fast friends on the fateful 1953 flight. Though the various trials of life will pull them apart, the three women will eventually reunite for Frank’s funeral, which serves as the film’s framing device.

Only Marjorie will find happiness in marriage to the faithful Dirk. However, when they secretly adopt Esther’s out-of-wedlock baby, it sets up the first of Bride’s primary plot lines: will the increasingly remorseful Esther try to have a Darth Vader “I am your mother” confrontation with the son she and Dirk love as their own? Meanwhile, Frank tries to convince Ada they were meant to be together, regardless of minor details like her marriage and religion.

Unapologetically melodramatic, Bride is at its best recreating the hip Mad Men-esque vibe of late 1950’s-early 1960’s New Zealand. To really stoke nostalgia, it even features people smoking during a transcontinental flight. However, it is a surprisingly judgmental film, scathing in its depiction of Calvinist Christianity and openly contemptuous of Marjorie’s bourgeoisie values.

Rutger Hauer and Waldemar Torenstra do not even look distantly related, but they both project the appropriate devilish charm as old and young Frank, respectively. Unfortunately, Elise Schaap seemed to be under strict instructions to make Marjorie as uptight and shrewish as possible. Likewise, Anna Drijver’s brittle and neurotic Esther also taxes viewer patience to the point that it affects dramatic credibility. Arguably, Karina Smulders takes the honors as Ada, creating a sensitively nuanced character, despite the rather harsh representation of her brand of Christian faith.

To its credit, Bride refrains from overplaying the irony of its conclusion, instead ending on a deftly understated note. Yet, its tendency to play favorites is a consistent drawback. An appealing period production, but an only just okay soap opera, Bride opens this Friday (6/10) in New York at the classy uptown single-screen Paris Theatre.

Hippies Smell: Happiness Runs

The idea of Rutger Hauer running a drug-infested hippie cult should sound scary enough. Though not a horror movie per se, the parents’ free-loving commune does irreparable damage to their children in Adam Sherman’s Happiness Runs (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

It seems like unorthodox parenting is simply always a self-serving practice on a fundamental level, leaving the resulting adult children in desperate need of analysis. Young Victor is a case in point. His wealthy mother has funded the commune because she is completely enthralled by the creepy guru Insley. Victor wants out, but selling drugs is the only method he can envision to raise traveling money. Evidently, getting a part-time retail job at the nearest town never occurred to him. Of course, he is a product of his environment.

Though perfectly willing to push grass on the brain dead commune kids, his plan is torpedoed by a price war launched by two rivals. He is also distracted by Becky, his childhood sweetheart recently returned from college to care for her terminally ill father. Regrettably, Becky’s self-destructive drug use and sexual promiscuity proves you can take the kid out of the commune, but you can’t take the commune out of the kid. By contrast, Victor never had the commune in him. Though a loner by temperament, he struggles to reconnect with Becky, while haunted by nightmares of her gruesome demise.

Happiness is the sort of film one might euphemistically call interesting when asked if it is good or bad. It is true to an extent. Based on his childhood experiences, Sherman never pulls his punches depicting the chaos and moral lassitude of the commune environment. Unfortunately, the recurring dream sequences are poorly realized and the protagonist is moody to the point of petulance. In addition, the very young looking cast’s frequent nudity and simulating sex is disturbing on a different level.

Hanna Hall is reasonably engaging as the troubled Becky. While Mark L. Young is certainly earnest as the disillusioned Victor, he lacks a naturally charismatic screen presence. However, the film’s “name” actors, Hauer as the smarmy Insley and Andie MacDowell as Victor’s manipulated mother, are large utilized as stock characters.

There is no denying the honesty of Happiness, but the execution is hit or miss. Though flawed, it is mostly an interesting muddle. At least there is enough here to suggest Sherman’s next film will be worth checking out. It opens Friday (5/7) in New York at the Quad.