Renfield, Co-Starring Nic Cage & Shohreh Aghdashloo

You can't say Dracula’s familiar never got any recognition, because Alice Cooper wrote a ballad to Dwight Fry, who played the nervous bug-eater in the classic Bela Lugosi film. However, this will be the first time he carried his own film. Of course, the master does not take kindly to his attempts to assert his independence in Chris McKay’s Renfield, which opens today nationwide.

Having just survived another encounter with vampire hunters, Dracula is looking more like his old Max Schreck self, but worse. They have found a new lair in New Orleans, where Robert Montague Renfield is supposed to nurse him back to his full power, once again. However, he goes a bit off-script when he stumbles across a support group for people trapped in toxic co-dependent relationships. Renfield can definitely relate, so he starts preying on their manipulative narcissistic tormentors, instead of the innocents his master craves.

Renfield really goes rogue when he crosses paths with Rebecca Quincy, one of the few honest cops in New Orleans. Using the super strength and agility he gains from eating bugs (one of the few benefits of being a familiar) saves Quincy from a hit squad dispatched by the Lobo crime family. At first, she considers Renfield a hero, but then she connects him to Dracula’s victims. Despite her reservations, Renfield and Quincy will have to work together when Dracula forges a self-serving alliance with the Lobos.

Despite a considerable amount of gore, Renfield is definitely played for laughs, but its blood spurting gags are usually pretty funny. Yet, McKay and screenwriter Ryan Ridley (working off Robert Kirkman’s concept) show a lot of affinity and affection for the classic Universal Dracula films. The early flashbacks superimpose Nic Cage’s Dracula and Nicholas Hoult’s Renfield over scenes from the 1931 Lugosi classic. The score also incorporates excerpts of Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake, just like Tod Browning’s film. Plus, what look like snippets of deleted scenes are recycled and given an early silent cinema look for Renfield’s closing credits.

Surely, Cage appreciated those touches. According to The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari is his favorite film—and everyone that meta-comedy is more truth than fiction. Renfield is also set in his hometown of New Orleans, but viewers should understand they cannot just assume there will be open tables at Café du Monde, like Quincy does.

The Cuban, Featuring the Music of Hilario Duran

Afro-Cuban jazz exploded in late 1940s New York when Dizzy Gillespie collaborated with musicians like Mario Bauza and Chano Pozo. The fictional Luis Garcia was very much a part of the scene, but he had disappeared by the time of the second Afro-Cuban boom in the 1980s. Sadly, the years were not kind to Garcia, but a young care-giver at his long-term nursing facility reawakens some of his memories through good music and good food in Sergio Navarretta’s The Cuban, featuring the music of Hilario Duran, which opens virtually this Friday.

The Canadian nursing home staff only knows him as “Mr. Garcia,” whom they consider “difficult.” He hardly ever eats and he will lash out from time to time. However, Mina Ayoub notices his Benny More poster, so she starts humming one of the Latin Jazz songs she learned from her grandfather, which seems to get a glimmer of recognition from Garcia. Soon she is sneaking him Cuban food (in violation of the head nurse’s strict rules) and letting him listen to Afro-Cuban jazz during meals.

Ironically, Mina’s sudden deep dive into Cuban culture leads her protective Aunt Bano to suspect she is getting carried away with a man. As it happens, Ayoub has started seeing Kris, a grad student, who has some expertise in vascular dementia and music therapy, but she hasn’t let it get serious yet. Since they still maintain social ties with friends and family from Kabul, it would be difficult for her to pursue a relationship with a non-Muslim, as her cousin’s recent arranged marriage awkwardly illustrates.

Navarretta and screenwriter Alessandra Piccione pull off a tricky balance, allowing Ayoab to make just enough of a connection with Garcia to justify the film’s enthusiasm for music therapy, without raising unrealistic expectations. Sadly, he will never be self-sufficient or even lucid by any meaningful standard, but he might just play again. Of course, Ayoab’s hazy resemblance to his great, lost love is an easy contrivance, but Navarretta and company try their best not to overplay it.

The best part is everyone involves understands the importance of the music itself. Duran composed, adapted, and performed a real-deal Afro-Cuban soundtrack. His opening theme captures the perfect tone of elegant melancholy, while tracks like “El Canonero,” “Mambo Rico,” and “Descarga En Changui” are exuberantly brassy and percussively rhythmic. Duran also puts his stamp on crowd-pleasing standards like “Guantanamera,” (one of the best versions recorded in quite a while, thanks one of several terrific trumpet solos from Alexis Baro). Plus, Alberto Alberto and lead actress Ana Golja contribute some soulful vocals.

A Simple Wedding

There is a good chance an Iranian wedding will at some point feature a reading from Hafez, the great Persian love poet. Nousha Husseini would probably prefer his satirical work. She is under tremendous pressure from her mother Ziba to marry, but the bi-sexual DJ-artist she falls for is not exactly the kind of husband her family had in mind. Nevertheless, Ziba is determined to have a big ceremony, even if it kills her daughter in Sara Zandieh’s A Simple Wedding (title irony), which opens today on Long Island.

Husseini works at the sort of public interest law firm where they talk about protesting patriarchy as if that actually meant something. (Try protesting patriarchy in her native Iran and we’ll all be much more impressed.) Regardless, Husseini is rather grateful when Alex Talbot and his band of feminist performance artists show up for her friend’s latest sparsely attended demonstration. There is definitely something sparking between them, even though she is initially a little unsure of Talbot’s sexuality. Needless to say, they quickly become an item, but Husseini tries to forestall his introduction to her parents for as long as possible—with good reason.

When they do finally meet, Talbot finds himself agreeing to marry Husseini, much to their mutual surprise. Yet, they go along with the plan, because they are crazy about each other. As viewers will expect, things start to get awkward when Husseini’s traditional Persian family meets Talbot’s divorced parents, as well as his father’s new husband. At least Husseini’s reassuring Uncle Saman manages to slip through the Iranian travel restrictions in order to attend.

It is hard not to think “Big Fat Persian Wedding,” especially since Rita Wilson plays Talbot’s romantically frustrated mother Maggie Baker (a little shticky, but could have been worse). However, the humor is usually sharper than the obvious comp and sometimes racier. Frankly, Zandieh & Stephanie Wu’s screenplay is surprisingly amusing, even though it is painfully obvious everybody will eventually come together and learn to appreciate each other’s differences.

Sundance ’20: Run Sweetheart Run

You can’t hardly call horror films “date movies” anymore, because its like they’re trying to keep people apart. The horrors of blind dates are already pretty well established, but you’d think you could trust a fix-up from your boss, right? Sadly, Cherie will learn otherwise in Shana Feste’s Run Sweetheart Run, Blumhouse’s latest women vs. men horror production, which premiered at the 2020 Sundance Film Festival.

Cherie’s last boyfriend was such a violent thug, she has been a bit skittish to start dating again, so her boss fixes her up with a wealthy client, who owns a picturesque mission-style mansion in the middle of downtown LA. Of course, the well-heeled Ethan is profoundly bad news. The date is great, but the coffee-after at his place turns nightmarish. Suddenly, is on the run from her date-turned hunter, who confidently promises their “game” will end at sunrise, one way or another.

The cops won’t help (they’ve either been bought off or just don’t care) and the hookers and street people are too scared to get involved. The only helpful advice Cherie gets is to seek out the mysterious Blue Ivy. She is so desperate, Cherie even seeks refuge with her ex’s gun-wielding friends, but they are no match for Ethan. He has superhuman strength and can literally smell her blood. To make matters worse, it is a certain time of the month for Cherie, as the film establishes with a number of uncomfortable scenes. Ethan’s only weakness seems to be a fear of dogs.

Unlike Blumhouse’s Black Christmas remake, the gender politics of RSR do not drown out the blood or the fun of its fundamental horror business. However, there is a rather glaring credibility issue. It makes no sense for Cherie’s boss to pimp new victims for Ethan so close to home. Regardless, Feste builds the tension and exploits the generally creepiness of LA night life quite effectively. She also riffs on ancient monster legends in hip and clever ways.

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.

TIFF ’16: Window Horses

Poetry is highly valued in both Persian and Chinese cultures. Yet, tragically, both the current Iranian and Chinese governments frequently curtail free expression. Rosie Ming, a half-Chinese, half-Persian Canadian poet will discover just how complex the world is when she accepts an invitation to an Iranian poetry festival in Ann Marie Fleming’s Window Horses: The Persian Epiphany of Rosie Ming (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Ever since she was seven, Ming was raised by her supportive grandparents. She turned out okay, despite harboring deep resentments towards her absent Persian father. It was always Paris Ming dreamed of visiting, but when she self-published a book of verse, it is Shiraz that comes calling.

Obviously, Ming cannot resist such an adventure, but she is not prepared for the realities of Iranian life or the competitiveness of the festival. She is also shocked to find so many people who seem to know the father she assumed absconded shortly before her mother’s accidental death. She will also learn lessons in poetry (which of course can be applied to life) from Mehrnaz Filsoof, a professor and senior advisor to the festival, who becomes a mentor figure for Ming, and Didi, a Chinese poet, who became a dissident in exile following the Tiananmen Square massacre.

While Window Horses does not have the heft and punch of Satrapi & Paronnaud’s Persepolis (an obvious comparison film), it is clearly intended for a younger teen-ish audience. It is a sweet, plucky film, but it directly and forthrightly addresses issues of censorship and repression, in Iran and China. Viewers do get a sense of what Ming’s father Mehran went through after the Islamic Revolution. Yet, it will also resonate as the story of a “New adult” woman trying to find her voice and come to terms with her thorny family history.

Fleming’s animation is simpler and more expressionistic than in her widely screened short I was a Child of Holocaust Survivors, but its style is somewhat akin, rather fittingly, to Nina Paley’s Sita Sings the Blues. She evokes Eastern mysticism through colorful abstract backgrounds, yet manages to convey considerable emotion through the minimal use of line (as in the case of Ming, based on Fleming’s “Stick Girl” character). The film also boasts some very impressive voice talent, most notably including the great Shohreh Aghdashloo as Filsoof and the legendary Nancy Kwan (The Suzie Wong) as Ming’s mother, Gloria. Sandra Oh convincingly plays a generation or two younger as Rosie Ming and prominent Iranian-American actor Navid Negahban (another Stoning of Soraya M. alumnus) lends his commanding voice to Mehran.

Window Horses is a charming film for adults, but its target teen demo should keenly identify with Ming on a very personal level. It calls out censorship and intolerance, while keeping the mood light and the narrative accessible to mature pre-teens. Smart and endearing, Window Horses is very highly recommended when it screens again this Wednesday (9/13), as part of TIFF 2016.

DVD Revisit: The Stoning of Soraya M.

A film that won the NAACP’s Image Award for Outstanding Foreign Motion Picture and was the toast of the right-leaning blogosphere would sound like it must have reached the broadest-based audience a film could hope for. Yet, it was essentially shut-out during the rest of the recent award season and was sadly neglected by the critical community. That is because Cyrus Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M. fearlessly addresses a controversial topic: the appalling lack of rights granted to women in the Islamist world.

The United Nations estimates as many as 5,000 Islamic women fall victim to so-called “honor killings” every year. Whether reported or not, each instance is an appalling crime, utterly incompatible with any concept of honor. It is the true nature of such honor killings Nowrasteh and his co-screenwriter (and wife) Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh graphically dramatize in the viscerally intense The Stoning of Soraya M. (trailer here), which richly deserves to be revisited now that it has been released on DVD.

Freidoune Sahebjam was a French-Iranian journalist who exposed many of the Islamic Revolutionary regime’s human rights abuses. When passing through a provincial town, a chance encounter with Zahra, a sophisticated older woman of the Shah’s secular era, leads to the biggest story of his career. Just the day before, her niece Soraya was gruesomely executed for the crime of inconveniencing her husband. As Sahebjam interviews Zahra, she bears witness to the terrible injustice that befell Soraya.

Zahra explains the abusive Ali wanted a divorce, so he could marry the fourteen year old girl he lusts after. However, he did not want to financially support Soraya or their two daughters. Of course, none of this violates Islamic notions of honor according to the local mullah. Rather than live up to his obligations, Ali conspired with the mullah to falsely accuse Soraya of adultery. In post-Revolutionary Iran, this was clearly the easiest (and cheapest) course of action for him. After all, as the town’s mayor explicitly explains, if a husband accuses his wife of adultery, she must prove her innocence, but if a wife accuses her husband, she must prove his guilt.

Given the film’s title and the framing device, it is no secret where Stoning will end. It is not called the Narrow Escape of Soraya M., after all. However, Nowrasteh (the Iranian-American writer and producer of The Path to 9/11) creates such a sense of mounting horror, it seems like the actual stoning will come as a relief. And then it happens.

Stoning is Soraya’s story, but it is Shohreh Aghdashloo’s film. The Oscar-nominated Iranian-American actress gives a powerful, fearless performance as Zahra. Not simply the film’s noble conscience, she is a nuanced, fully realized character—an intelligent, assertive, but ultimately vulnerable woman in a society which grants her no legal standing. As Soraya, Mozhan Marnò avoids simply playing the innocent victim, investing her with surprising inner strength and resolution. While only briefly seen during the wrap-around segments, Jim Caviezel is nearly unrecognizable but effective as the intrepid Sahebjam.

Re-watching Stoning on DVD, one is also struck by the work of David Diaan as Ebrahim, the town’s mayor, who reluctantly allows the stoning to proceed. It is a quiet, perfectly pitched performance that conveys the all too human failings of cowardice, guilt, and resentment in a time of moral crisis.

Filmed on location at an undisclosed Middle East locale, Stoning completely immerses the audience in its forbidding world. It was not an easy shoot either, according to the more interesting than usual behind-the-scenes DVD extra featurette. It is an uncompromising film, fueled by outrage, but also a truly moving human drama. Aghdashloo deserved to be in Hollywood this weekend as an Oscar nominee (again), but alas . . . At least Stoning now has a chance to reach on DVD. Highly recommended, Stoning is a rare example of both genuinely bold filmmaking and compelling storytelling.

Photo courtesy of MPower Pictures

The True Story of Soraya M.

The United Nations estimates as many as 5,000 Islamic women fall victim to so-called “honor killings” every year. Whether reported or not, each instance is an appalling crime, utterly incompatible with any concept of honor. Now the true nature of honor killing has been graphically dramatized in Cyrus Nowrasteh’s viscerally intense The Stoning of Soraya M. (trailer here), opening in select cities this Friday.

Freidoune Sahebjam was a French-Iranian journalist who exposed many of the Islamist regime’s human rights abuses. When passing through a provincial town, a chance encounter with Zahra, a sophisticated older woman of the Shah’s secular era, leads to the biggest story of his career. Just the day before, her niece Soraya was gruesomely executed for the crime of inconveniencing her husband. As Sahebjam interviews Zahra, she bears witness to the terrible injustice that befell Soraya.

Zahra explains the abusive Ali wanted a divorce, so he could marry the fourteen year old girl he lusts after. However, he did not want to financially support Soraya or their two daughters. Of course, none of this violates Islamic notions of honor according to the hypocritical local mullah. Rather then live up to his obligations, Ali conspired with the mullah to falsely accuse Soraya of adultery. In post-Revolutionary Iran, this was clearly the easiest course of action for him. As the town’s mayor explicitly explains, if a husband accuses his wife of adultery, she must prove her innocence, but if a wife accuses her husband, she must prove his guilt.

Given the film’s title and the framing device, it is no secret where Stoning will end. It is not called the Narrow Escape of Soraya M., after all. However, Nowrasteh (the Iranian-American screenwriter and producer of The Path to 9-11) creates such a sense of mounting horror, it seems like the actual stoning will come as a relief. And then it happens.

Watching Stoning, you become acutely conscious of all the conventions of American legal dramas which do not apply here. There will be no heroic appeals or a last minute stay from governor. Once Soraya is declared guilty, the die is cast. However, it is also just as evident this is not a case of mob rule overwhelming the town’s better nature. What happened was deliberate, allowing plenty of time for cool heads to prevail while Soraya’s execution pit was dug.

Stoning is Soraya’s story, but it is Shohreh Aghdashloo’s film. The Oscar-nominated Iranian-American actress gives a powerful, fearless performance as Zahra. Not simply the film’s noble conscience, she is a nuanced, fully realized character—an intelligent, assertive, but ultimately vulnerable woman in a society which grants her no legal standing. As Soraya, Mozhan Marnò avoids simply playing the innocent victim, investing her with surprising inner strength and resolution. While only briefly seen during the wrap-around segments, Jim Caviezel is nearly unrecognizable but effective as the intrepid Sahebjam.

Filmed on location at an undisclosed Middle East locale, Stoning completely immerses the audience in its forbidding world. It is an uncompromising film, fueled by outrage, but also a truly moving human drama. Following the Iranian regime’s violent attacks on democracy protestors, Stoning’s theatrical release could not be timelier. Yet, this would be an important film, even if the regime was not dominating headlines with its thuggish crackdown. It is a well-crafted, absolutely absorbing film that demands a wide audience. It opens in New York this Friday (6/26) at the Sunshine Cinema.

Photos courtesy of MPower Pictures