Submitted by Poland: Cold War

Death is not the natural enemy of love—ideology is. Academy Award-winning auteur Pawel Pawlikowski understands that better than anyone. He saw how exile, separation, and transience took a toll on his Polish defector parents, but it never quelled their mutual ardor. Their story inspired the perfectly yet tragically matched lovers in Pawlikowski’s Cold War (trailer here), Poland’s official foreign language Academy submission, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Neither Wiktor or Zula is all that interested in folk music, but they both see Mazurek, a traditional dance troupe, as a vehicle to help them get what they want. For the classically-trained, Western-influenced Wiktor, it is a chance to travel and possibly escape, whereas Zula merely sees it as a means of avoiding her abusive father. However, they share an immediate connection that only becomes more potent and passionate over time.

Right from the start, their romance is a rocky one, especially when Zula confesses she agreed to inform on Witkor as part of her terms of employment. Inevitably, they agree to defect one fateful night in pre-Wall East Berlin. However, Witkor slips across alone when Zula fails to met him at the designated time. By doing so, he becomes an enemy of the state, but that will not be enough to halt their romance.

Thus, begins a long, agonizing period of hasty meetings, unsatisfying encounters, assorted defections, and costly repatriations. Cold War is only a mere 89 minutes, but it tells an epic, decade-spanning story. Frankly, it could be considered a 21^st Century Doctor Zhivago, chronicling an intimate love story against the sweeping backdrop of historical chaos and oppression, but Pawlikowski does it all with elegant narrative economy—and jazz.

Music is important to this love story, starting with Mazurek’s choral performances, but fully blossoming with the hardbop-style jazz Witkor plays in Paris and the torchy LP he tries to produce for Zula. It all sounds perfectly era appropriate and in the case of the jazz, smoky and swinging, thanks to Marcin Masecki’s arrangements and piano stylings. It really helps us understand the depth of his feelings and the melancholy of his blues.

Tomasz Kot also seems very attuned to the music as he broods, yearns, and chafes under authority. As Wiktor, he raises world weariness to a high art form. The romantic rapport he forges with Joanna Kulig’s Zula is palpable and often quite painful to witness. Kulig melts microphones with her sultry vocals and rivets viewers with the sensitivity and brittleness of her performance. It is no exaggeration to say they represent one of the finest on-screen pairings of the post-millennium era.

The design team faithfully recreates the mean cruddiness of Communist Poland and East Berlin, but Lukasz Zal makes it all look strikingly beautiful with his award-worthy black-and-white cinematography. Every frame of every shot is truly a work of art. In terms of technical craftsmanship, Cold War could well be the strongest film of the year, but it also connects on a deeply emotional level.

There are many good reasons Cold War dominated the European Film Awards. It is easily the best looking and sounding narrative film of the year. In fact, it is the best of the year, even eclipsing Never Look Away. Very highly recommended, Cold War opens this Friday (12/21) in New York, at Film Forum.

An American Christmas with PJ Rasmussen and the Boardwalk Jazz Band

Christmas just wouldn’t be Christmas without jazz. If you doubt it, just imagine a world without Vince Guaraldi’s a beautiful swinging score for A Charlie Brown Christmas (“Skating” is especially nice) or Nat King Cole owning Mel Torme’s “The Christmas Song.” PJ Rasmussen embraces the jazz yuletide tradition with a swinging set of Christmas carols recorded live at City Winery in lower NYC. Jazz fans get an early Christmas present when An American Christmas Featuring PJ Rasmussen and the Boardwalk Jazz Band (promo here) airs in syndication on terrestrial broadcast networks during the holiday season (including WCBS-TV in New York).

You have to give Rasmussen credit for starting with “Go Tell it on the Mountain,” instead reindeer or snowman. There is no “War on Christmas” here. Rasmussen’s arrangement gives it a hard-charging swing worthy of the vintage Basie band. Vocalist April May Webb brings out the inherent gospel flavor of the lyrics, while baritone saxophonist Andrew Hadro further cranks up the funkiness. One of the cool things about American Christmas is the it identifies each band-member during their respective solos, so everyone gets their due credit.

Rasmussen’s chart for “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen” has some Oliver Nelson-ish colors to it, which is high praise again. Generally, this is a rather dour carol, but Webb and the band perform it as an upbeat, up-tempo groover. Again, there are legit solos (maybe somewhat brief by club standards, but quite fully-developed for television), in this case, from Dave Pollack delivering on tenor and Richard Polatchek keeping it real on trumpet.

“Deck the Halls” is maybe even a tad too fleet, but it is nice vehicle for Rasmussen’s guitar and Joe Spinelli on drums. “What Child Is This” is probably their gutsy choice, given how many listeners might be familiar with John Coltrane’s recording of “Greensleeves,” but conductor Charlie Dougherty’s arrangement definitely takes it in a brassier, more swinging direction. It is a surprisingly fun performance (devoid of the usual folky moodiness), propelled by the impressive power and clarity of vocalist Candice Reyes’s voice.

“Jingle Bells” is probably the most straight-over-the-plate, sing-along-if-you-want-and-happen-to-know-the-later-verses rendition, but it is followed by an original. “Christmas Card Blues” is a pleasant and sometime rather clever lampoon of the year-in-review letters some people include in their Christmas cards. Rasmussen and Kate Victor perform it with just the right degree of theatricality (a little, not a lot), while Billy Test shows all kinds of taste and touch during his piano solo.

The “We Three Kings/Silent Night” medley is the softest piece of the night, but Webb and the band swing the former pretty hard. Test’s transitional solo and Webb’s bluesey “Silent Night” are about as hushed as the set gets, but they are still quite nice and Christmassy. Rasmussen and company close with a brisk, head-bobbing “Auld Lang Syne,” which is an appropriately celebratory note. It sure beats another rote run-through of “The Theme.”

Holiday music and celebrations are supposed to be fun—and that is definitely true of Rasmussen’s An American Christmas. It will not replace Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas or Ellington’s Nutcracker Suite, but it is easily one of the best Christmas musical specials of the season, recommended for everyone in the family. For jazz fans, it is also offer an opportunity to hear all the talented young musicians who make up the Boardwalk Jazz Band. Air dates and times vary by city, but here in New York, it airs on Christmas Eve (12/24) at 12:35am, which would be a tough time slot, but it follows Midnight Mass, so maybe it will catch people in the spirit.

Inoue at the Japan Society: The Eagle and the Hawk

A rusty slow boat is always a good noir setting. The crew and stowaways on the good ship Kaiyo Maru would not be so out of place in classics like Across the Pacific and Journey into Fear, but they sing more. It seems like a stretch to call it a musical, but there is still a fair amount of crooning and uke strumming in Umetsugu Inoue’s The Eagle and the Hawk, which screens as part of Japan’s Music Man, the Japan Society’s weekend retrospective of Inoue’s musicals.

First Mate Goro’s father was murdered shortly before he shipped out with Captain Onizame, his dad’s old sea crony. They both always assumed he would marry Onizame’s daughter Akiko, but she has him pegged squarely in the raised-like-siblings corner of the friend-zone. Rather awkwardly, she is more attracted to the rebellious new sailor Senkichi Nomura, who rather recklessly implies he is the murderer to Sasaki, another new crewman.

Frankly, Akiko was not supposed to join her father on this run to Hong Kong, but she decided to play stowaway. She is not the only one. The dysfunctionally codependent Akemi has also followed her contemptuous lover Nomura on-board, setting the stage for a four-way romantic conflict. In all fairness, it should be stipulated Nomura and Goro are quite civil towards each other, considering the former most likely killed the latter’s father and is definitely romancing his presumed fiancée. For a hot-headed rebel, Nomura also gets on quite well with Sasaki, whom he and Akiko suspect to be an undercover cop. That is all fine and reasonable, but somebody must be behind the mysterious accidents plaguing the ship.

Eagle helped launch Yujiro Ishihara’s career, along with Stormy Man, but the real star for contemporary noir fans will be Rentarô Mikuni as the often bare-chested Sasaki, out-Mitchuming Robert Mitchum, in a way that is both steely and laidback. Ishihara might be the brooding heartthrob, but Mikuni is just ultra-cool. Of course, he leaves the singing to Ishihara’s Nomura.

The ensemble is packed with colorful characters, but Tôru Abe is probably the saltiest as Matsu, the fugitive bosun, who doubles as the voice of the film’s conscience. Ruriko Asaoka is the picture of plucky purity as Akiko, but Yumeji Tsukioka is far more engaging and poignant as the defiantly lovestruck Akemi.

Inoue’s narrative starts out as a gritty revenge thriller, but evolves into an even darker B. Traven-style tale of high seas exploitation. Yet, the music and mismatched romance give it a deceptively light vibe. Once again, he shows a knack for slightly bittersweet endings that still satisfy, but could never be dismissed as cop-outs. Highly recommended as some good old-fashioned entertainment, The Eagle and the Hawk screens today (12/15) and tomorrow (12/16), as part of the Japan Society’s Inoue musical series.

Inoue at the Japan Society: The Winner

What do a boxer and a ballerina have in common? They both understand the importance of footwork. In this case, they also have the same patron. Both will pursue their ambitions, even if it means deferring questions of love in Umetsugu Inoue’s The Winner, which screens as part of Japan’s Music Man, the Japan Society’s weekend retrospective of Inoue’s musicals.

Eikichi was a contender, but he could have been a champ had he not allowed himself to get distracted by his love for Natsuko. He now manages her father’s Ginza nightclub and tries to mold professional boxers on the side. The palooka who just got knocked out by the rank amateur Shuntaro Fuma was supposed to be his last fighter, but he signs up Fuma instead. Natsuko is not thrilled about it, but she continues to patiently wait for their long-promised marriage. However, Eikichi will have a harder time explaining why he impulsively decides to sponsor Mari Shiraki’s ballet studies, after he was forced to fire her from the club’s floor show.

The truth is, Shiraki’s relationship with her “sensei” is strictly chaste, even though she might have mixed feelings about that. Inevitably, she also meets the surly Fuma, who falls head-over-heels. So yes, it gets really complicated, but Eickichi sort of simplifies matters by insisting neither of his protégés can act on their feelings until they have achieved their goals. Cue the training montages.

Despite the Ginza setting, it would be a stretch to call The Winner a musical without the ballet sequence directly inspired by The Red Shoes. Obviously, there is a strong Venn diagram overlap between fans of the Powell & Pressburger ballet fable and boxing movies like Rocky, because The Winner was a big hit in 1957. Frankly, the tone is decidedly Runyonesque, as boxers and dancers mingle and the smart set rubs shoulders with low life thugs.

Yûjirô Ishihara turns on the punky charm as Fuma and develops some endearing chemistry with Mie Kitahara’s Shiraki. Kitahara exudes waifish vulnerability and aptly looks the part of a classically trained prima ballerina throughout the slightly surreal ballet fantasia. Yoko Minamida also brings sophistication and attitude as the chic Natsuko. Yet, it is Tatsuya Mihashi who holds it all together as driven, world weary Eickichi, boosting everyone around him. In terms of tone, think of Harrison Ford in the Sabrina remake, but with more hardbitten cynicism.

The screenwriting battery of Toru Kino, Toshio Masuda, and Isamu Onoda devise an ending that is messier and more bittersweet than the standard big title fight ending (although that is still definitely part of the mix). Of course, Inoue marinates it all in post-war style. Highly recommended, The Winner screens today and tomorrow (12/15 & 12/16), as part of the Japan Society’s Inoue musical series.

Aleksey German’s Khrustalyov, My Car!

Aleksey German only completed six films as a director. Ordinarily, that would be a rather limited body of work for an auteurist reputation to rest, but German did not just make movies. He built worlds. This one could be considered Stalinist World. Life there is nasty, brutish, short, disorienting, and surreal. Fortunately, it is also about to come to an end in the late German’s newly restored 1998 classic, Khrustalyov, My Car! (trailer here), which opens today at the Metrograph.

The film starts on the day of Stalin’s death, before flashing back to Gen. Yuri Klensky, the chief commissar of the Soviet military medical service, who has been hoping Stalin’s virulently anti-Semitic “Doctors’ Plot” purge would skip over him. Alas, Klensky’s optimistic illusions are shattered when he encounters his double in the cellar. Shortly thereafter, a foreign provocateur arrives with a supposed message from a family member living abroad. Klensky is coarse and corrupt, but he can recognize a power play, especially when he is the target.

In response, Klensky launches into a mad-dash escape attempt, careening out into the dark night of Stalinist Russia. However, the forces of darkness have the jump on him. Soon, his sprawling, bickering family will be evicted into the streets, as the Black Marias circle like sharks. However, all bets are off when Klensky comes face-to-face with the NKVD puppet-master, Lavrentiy Beria. There will even be a cameo for Stalin, but the expiring dictator hardly looks like himself.

Shot in starkly illuminated black-and-white, Khrustalyov, My Car! (an apocryphal quote attributed to Beria on learning of Stalin’s impending demise) offers a vision of what it might have looked like if Honoré Daumier had drawn caricatures of Stalinist Russia. The mise-en-scene is dingy, but baroque, much like his epic Hard to Be a God.

In just about every way, Khrustalyov represents some blisteringly uncompromising filmmaking from German, who doesn’t give a toss how uncomfortable viewers get when he openly compares Stalinism to violent forced sodomy. (There is no missing the significance of that scene.) German starts dark and goes progressively darker, until he reaches a Miltonian state of darkness visible.

As Lensky, Yuriy Tsurilo is about as animalistic as German could get, short a casting an actual raging bull. He is not exactly subtle (or pleasant company), but he commands the screen, even while enduring a torrent of humiliation. Frankly, it is rather remarkable how much his presence dominates the film, given the overwhelming nature of the maelstrom German orchestrates around him.

Clearly, Khrustalyov is not the sort of film you plop down in front of the couch to watch on a lazy Sunday afternoon. The viewing experience is more like walking through a fun house or a Stalinist house of mirrors. Wherever you look, there is something new to see, but it is usually deeply unsettling. It is like a waking nightmare, yet Vladimir Ilin’s black-and-white cinematography is strangely beautiful. Frankly, this is a towering work of cinema that stands beyond mere thumbs or tomato ratings. It also provides the withering final word on the collectivist experiment. Anyone serious about film as art and historical testament should it and hold on for dear life. Recommended for iconoclastic cineastes, Khrustalyov, My Car! opens today (12/14) in New York, at the Metrograph.

Inoue at the Japan Society: The Stormy Man

It is hard to imagine a jazz critic appearing on American television to discuss rival drummers in a national jazz poll, but it certainly is fun to imagine. On the other hand, Jazz has had considerably more mainstream commercial acceptance in Japan during the immediate post-war years. It is still a bit of a stretch, but we can suspend our disbelief as bad boy drummer Shoichi Kokubu becomes a media sensation in Umetsugu Inoue’s The Stormy Man, which screens as part of Japan's Music Man, the Japan Society’s weekend retrospective of Inoue’s musicals.

“Charlie,” the current #1 drummer, just broke up with his manager, Miyako Fukushima, both professionally and romantically. That leaves a vacant chair her band, the Six Jokers that needs to be filled pronto. Taking a chance, Fukushima bails out disorderly Kokubu, taking him directly from the overnight lock-up to the bandstand.

Of course, Kokubu rises to the occasion, really surprising everyone with his teen heartthrob vocals. He also makes quite the impression on Mary Oka, a nightclub dancer, who happens to be Charlie’s girlfriend. Inevitably, they become bitter rivals. Kokubu has all the initial advantages, including greater energy and talent. He also strikes a Faustian bargain with slimy jazz critic Toru Sakyo, who will champion his career in exchange for help wooing Fukushima. However, Sakyo will turn on the drummer when he starts his own relationship with Fukushima, threatening to sabotage the premiere of his virtuous little brother Eiji’s symphonic jazz tone poem (clearly based on Rhapsody in Blue). Yet, if you think Sakyo is mean-spirited, wait till you meet Kokubu’s ultra-judgmental mother, who thinks very little of his career choices.

Stormy is a delightfully lurid melodrama filled with music, gangsters, and angry young man angst. In many ways, it is an ode to the sights and sounds of Tokyo’s Ginza district, which looks like a total blast, but also more than a little dangerous, in an old school kind of way. This is definitely a jazz film, even though Shoichi’s vocals venture into the realm of jump-blues and Eiji’s composition approaching the sounds and textures of Stan Kenton’s progressive third-stream explorations.

This is also the film that launched Yûjirô Ishihara as a James Dean-esque teen idol, who relentlessly rages and seethes as the resentful drummer with mother issues. Ironically, he looks much younger than Kyoji Aoyama, portraying the unshakably sensible Eiji. Mie Kitahara is terrific bringing the sly attitude and show-stopping glamor as Fukushima, like a femme fatale, without the fatalness. In contrast, Nobuo Kaneko makes quite a slimy, clammy, forked-tongue impression as the manipulative Sakyo. You can think of him as a combination of the absolute worst traits of Tony Curtis’s Sidney Falco and Burt Lancaster’s J.J. Hunsecker in The Sweet Smell of Success.

There is a lot of violent gangster business going on in Stormy Man, but somehow Inoue still manages to keep it bopping along quite buoyantly. It looks colorful and splashy, whole sounding swinging and modern. The Ginza jazz life was probably never really like this, but it is fun to think that it was. Enthusiastically recommended for hip audiences, The Stormy Man screens this Saturday and Sunday (12/15 & 12/16), as part of the Japan Society’s Inoue musical series.

SuperGrid: The WolfCop Team Goes Post-Apocalyptic

They used to be so polite, but in the dark and stormy future, Canada will be known for cannibalism. Hard to believe, but that comes straight from a new Canadian-produced Saskatchewan-shot post-apocalyptic action-road movie-family drama. Of course, the United States is not much better since the outbreak of the Black Lung plague. Things are bad everywhere, but there are serious smuggling opportunities to be found on the lawless titular SuperGrid highway connecting Fargo country to the Great White North. The guilt-ridden Deke convinces his brother Jesse to come back for one last contraband run in Lowell Dean’s SuperGrid (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select Canadian cities.

Deke has black lung, but at least he is not dead yet, like his sister. He recruited her to drive during an unusually dangerous run forced on him by post-apocalyptic gangster Lazlo. Even though she was killed, Deke still owes him his cargo, whatever that might be. After some brotherly angst, Jesse agrees to join him, but the bickering only stops when they know they are in dire trouble (actually, that is pretty often). Fortunately, Jesse’s ex-wife North and her partner Owl form the Overwatch security agency are discretely riding shotgun, as an off-the-books favor to Deke.

There is nothing particularly original about this foray into the near-future wasteland, but SuperGrid is still an enjoyable time at the movies, because it has so much humanity and attitude. Dean and several of several cast-members of his wildly entertaining WolfCop movies, including the big dog himself, Leo Fafard, truly bring out the human element in this tale of estranged brothers. Viewers quickly invest in them and North. The island of civilization represented by a resilient First Nations community is also a smart piece of world-building.

Fafard really commands the screen playing it straight-as-an-arrow as Jesse, the no-fooling-around brother. He and Marshall Williams really sound like brothers who get on each other’s last nerves. Natalie Krill also shows some decent action chops as North. Plus, Tinsel Korey helps boost the film’s intelligence and sensitivity as Eagle, the First Nations doctor.

SuperGrid has tons of logical holes, but it is impossible to dislike such a dashed resourceful, bootstrap-pulling film. Based on this film and the Wolfcops, we would watch anything Dean and his repertory company took a swing at. But seriously, when’s the new WolfCop coming out? Recommended with weird affection for fans of the post-apocalypse, SuperGrid opens this Friday (12/14) in Toronto at the Carlton Cinemat and in Ottawa at the Mayfair Theatre, with a VOD release coming on both sides of the border next Tuesday (12/18)—and special thanks to GAT.

The Quake: Norway Takes Another Hit

You might think after their experiences in The Wave, Kristian Eikfjord and his family would have moved someplace flat, dry, and stable. Alas, they are still in the geological death trap that is Norway, but post-survival stress has ruptured their family unit. Eikfjord the geologist has become paranoid and anti-social, but that certainly does not mean he is wrong about the big shake he predicts in John Andreas Andersen’s sequel, The Quake (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Denver and San Francisco (where they know their earthquakes).

Eikfjord was a hero in The Wave, but he still has some serious PTSD to work through. His wife Idun Karlsen has been willing to give him time and space, but he is pushing it. She is particularly annoyed when Eikfjord cannot handle the scheduled visit from their eight-year-old-ish daughter, Julia (we’re not particularly impressed either). He forces himself back to Oslo to make it right, only to get sidetracked by the research papers of a recently deceased colleague who was even more paranoid. Of course, his prophetic warnings are only too accurate, but Eikfjord cannot convince his ultra-bureaucratic former colleague to pay attention.

Seriously, how many times can you look at ominous seismic charts and dismiss them as vibrations from construction sites? What are they building there anyway, mammoth particle accelerators? In downtown Oslo? You would think he would eventually say, “okay, let me take another look at this,” but no, not until it is too late.

That is the main problem with The Quake. Far too much time is devoted to Eikfjord howling in the wilderness and being a terrible parent. Anderson and screenwriters John Kåre Raake & Harold Rosenløw-Eeg keep their powder dry, saving the earthquake until the third act, but when it comes, the cataclysm is pretty impressive. In the previous film, they often teased viewers with potential dark tragedies, but always took the safe way out at the last minute. Not to be spoilery, but they do not always opt for the sentimental cop-out this time around.

Kristoffer Joner was rather blandly likable (in an aptly Scandinavian way) portraying Eikfjord in The Wave, but this time around, he is such a miserably sullen jerk, viewers will want to hit him over the head with a plywood plank to snap him out of it. As Karlsen, Ane Dahl Torp also seems much less interested in him and the film this time around, but her character has a right to be short on patience. On the other hand, Sondre, their now college-aged son played by Jonas Hoff Oftebro, is more responsible, proactive and just generally less annoying to spend time with, so at least one member of the family is maturing.

In the future, the Eikfjords have to figure out a way to avoid hotels during times of natural disaster. Regardless, the big catastrophic centerpiece scene is definitely memorable. Viewers who have not seen The Wave will still be able to navigate The Quake just fine. Frankly, the distributor is not marketing it as a sequel. It is just a showcase for buildings getting all shook up. Worth seeing (eventually) for its effects, but not so much for the drama, The Quake opens this Friday (12/14) at the Mayan Theatre in Denver and the Opera Plaza in San Francisco.

Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki

Don’t call it a comeback. Sure, legendary animator Hayao Miyazaki announced his retirement yet again, but everyone hoped he still really didn’t mean it. It turns out we might just get a little bit more from him after all. Kaku Arakawa captures the auteur as he comes to grips with the current state of animation and his mortality in Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyazaki (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York and also has two special nation-wide Fathom Events screenings.

When Arakawa first visits the master in his retirement, he is clearly bored, but leery of starting any new projects, due to his age. Rather regrettably, he has recently attended several funerals for former Ghibli colleagues. The absence of so many past collaborators contributes to his reluctance. Yet, Miyazaki just can’t stop himself.

Before long, he is working on a short for the Ghibli Museum titled Boro the Caterpillar, but the kicker is this time around he is working with a team of CGI animators. Initially, Miyazaki is convinced only computer techniques can replicate the movement of a caterpillar, but he soon falls back only his old working methods. Inevitably, that includes stressing out his long-time (long-suffering) producer, Toshio Suzuki.

Admittedly, there is a lot of puttering in Never-Ending Man, but it eventually evolves into a surprisingly philosophical meditation on the nature of creativity and maybe even the implications of the singularity. A key moment comes when a CGI start-up pitches their technology to Miyazaki using a stunningly poor choice of animation clips. It is an awkward scene in which the master makes it crystal clear how appalled he is by the grotesqueness of it, but to Miyazaki, it becomes an example of something no human animator could stomach if they had to hand illustrate it frame-by-frame. Indeed, sometimes it takes a cranky humanist like Miyazaki to remind us how process and technology shapes an artist’s vision and values.

This happens to be an excellent time to dig deep into Ghibliana. In addition to Arakawa’s documentary, Susan Napier’s Miyazaki World: A Life in Art, a popular scholarly analysis of his oeuvre, just released a few months ago (look for a review this week, hopefully). Not to be spoilery, but it has been widely announced Miyazaki has even more to come, which is happy news. If anyone can be the next Manoel de Oliveira helming films well past his centennial, Miyazaki could. Quiet but smart, Never-Ending is a slyly revealing film that really says more to those interested in the creative process than fans looking for a rose-tinted history of the storied studio. Recommended for cerebral animation connoisseurs, Never-Ending Man: Hayao Miyzaki opens this Friday (12/14) at the Metrograph in New York and screens via Fathom Events on Thursday (12/13) and the following Tuesday (12/18).

Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse—Marvel Animated

You have to give Marvel credit for not playing it safe with their first theatrical animated feature. For starters, they revisit the “Ultimate Marvel” continuity universe that they essentially put on indefinite hiatus in 2015. It also prominently features Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham (he’s a pig, get it?), whom Time magazine dubbed one of the “Ten Oddest Marvel Characters,” not without justification. Yet, all the unlikely elements combine into a rather inspired whole: Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey, and Rodney Rothman’s Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (trailer here), which opens this Friday nationwide.

Miles Morales is a bright prep school scholarship kid from Brooklyn, who is pushed hard by his police officer father. Most of the time, he feels like his black sheep Uncle Aaron understands him better, especially when it comes to his passion for graffiti art. Then one day, he is bitten by a radioactive spider. You know how that works. In fact, screenwriter Phil Lord frequently revisits that familiar origin story throughout Spider-Verse, for sly comedic effect.

Young Morales has trouble mastering his new powers, but he soon comes mask-to-mask with a potential tutor. That would be Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man. Thanks to a rift in the multiverse caused by the recklessness of Wilson Fisk (a.k.a. The Kingpin), several more alternate Spider-Beings cross over. Most of Morales’ lessons will come from Peter B. Parker, who is a lot like the Parker we know, but slightly schlubbier. He is not perfect, but the black-and-white, tough-talking Spider-Man Noir is not exactly the mentoring type and it would be embarrassing to get schooled by Spider-Ham.

It is usually a bad sign when comic book companies resort to reboots and alternate continuities, but Marvel has repurposed the Ultimate experiment quite shrewdly. Waste not, want not. Visually, Spider-Verse is a trip and a half, incorporating elements of the entire history of comic books, including manga—as represented by Peni Parker—all of which is rendered in a unique style of CGI animation, with traditional hand-drawn elements layered on-top.

Spider-Verse looks terrific, but what really distinguishes the film is the quality of the writing. Morales and his family are all fully developed characters, who have very real issues to deal with. Morales also has a smartly developed relationship with an alternate Gwen Stacy, a.k.a. Spider-Woman, a.k.a. Spider-Gwen (not to be confused with the deceased and resurrected Jessica Drew Spider-Woman). Frankly, there are some shockingly poignant moments in Spider-Verse, especially for viewers who are or ever have been Marvel fans.

Marvel really tempted the fates by enlisting Nic Cage, who nearly played Superman in Tim Burton’s never-realized Superman Lives, to give voice to Spider-Man Noir, but once again their gamble paid off with some fantastic hardboiled voice-over work. The rest of the voice cast is quite strong as well, particularly Hailee Steinfeld as Spider-Woman and Brian Tyree Henry as Morales’ father, Jefferson Davis (is that irony intentional?).

Regardless, all superhero movies should be as well-written as Spider-Verse. The animators produced some striking cityscapes and a truly dynamic sense of motion. Watching their work recaptures the feeling of seeing the first two Sam Raimi live-action Spider-Man movies and being blown away by how good the web-slinging looked. Even if you love GKIDS and Studio Ghibli, you will be impressed by what the filmmakers have done here. Very highly recommended, Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse opens this Friday (12/14) across the country, including the AMC Empire in New York.

Russian Film Week ‘18: Sobibor

It was hard being a hero of the Soviet Motherland. Alexander Pechersky’s service during WWII was indeed truly heroic. The Jewish Red Army officer-conscript was instrumental leading the mass escape from the Sobibor concentration camp. In later years, Pechersky wanted to continue to fight against his National Socialist captors, but the Soviet Union denied him exit permission to testify against any accused war criminals, including the celebrated Eichmann trial. He was also dismissed from his position during the anti-Semitic “Rootless Cosmopolitan” campaign. It is worth keeping the frustrations of his later life in mind when viewers revisit the triumph of the uprising he sparked in Konstantin Khabenskiy’s Sobibor (trailer here), Russia’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

As a Russian, Pechersky was considered suspect by the rest of the Jewish prisoners, especially when they learned of the disastrous revolt he led in Minsk. Nevertheless, he had the right combination of military experience and practical know-how to lead the camp’s resistance cell. The group had been working on various escape schemes, but Pechersky insisted on an everybody or nobody approach, based on the reprisals he witnessed in Minsk. Of course, the actually planning and execution was still confined to the core group.

Obviously, Khabensky’s Sobibor depicts the same historical events chronicled in the TV-movie Escape from Sobibor, starring Rutger Hauer and Alan Arkin, which was quire respectable, especially by the standards of its day. Frankly, Khabensky’s film is not as strong in terms of characterization, but it captures the horrors of the camp with far more visceral intensity. Especially disturbing is a night of SS revelry that might be one of the most nightmarishly surreal sequences ever recorded on film over the last several years.

However, the greatest surprise in this Sobibor is Highlander’s Christopher Lambert, who is nearly unrecognizable playing camp commandant Karl Frenzel. If anyone ever writes a book length survey of his career, this film will factor significantly within it. Instead of trying to outdo Ralph Fiennes ragingly demonic performance in Schindler’s List, Lambert takes it the other way. His Frenzel is emotionally detached and socially awkward, even with his own colleagues. There is also an aspect of self-loathing to his persona that manifests itself it truly horrific ways. It shows range we rarely get to see from the generally dependable genre star.

Khabensky himself (primarily known as a thesp in Wanted and the Night Watch franchise) is also witheringly intense as Pechersky. He definitely has the right hardened battle-veteran presence (much like Hauer). The entire ensemble is quite credible, but they most blend in, looking like they belong in the grim environment, whereas Khabensky and Hauer stand out.

It is a shame the film overlooks Pechersky’s difficulties during the Soviet years, but admittedly, Khabensky and the trio of screenwriters chose a logical ending point. In fact, one could argue it is one of the few Holocaust films that has a partially positive ending (but “happy” is still probably too strong a term). Respectfully recommended, Sobibor screens this Friday (12/14) as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

Russian Film Week ‘18: In the Hood

As the home of the USSR’s Pacific Fleet, Vladivostok was off-limits to foreigners during the Cold War. It looks like we weren’t missing much. The post-industrial Vladivostok is positioned as something like the Detroit of Russia in model-turned-thesp Olya Zueva’s feature directorial debut, In the Hood (trailer here), which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

Vladimir (Vova) and Kisa are two knock-around meat-headed thugs, who have done pretty well by doing the dirty work of Shamir, an up-and-coming gangster. Initially, their latest assignment sounds like fun: shadowing Shamir’s hard-partying girlfriend as she hops from night spot to night spot. However, Vova draws a line in the sand when they are told to administer a beating in punishment for her unfaithfulness.

Vova wants to go straight, but the crooked system constantly pushes him back towards the thug life. Isn’t that always the way? Plus, the self-destructive Kisa is always going to be a destabilizing influence. Do you think Vova might agree to do him one last solid?

All the archetypes are here. There are two potential love interests: Sonya, a singer in the choral group led by Vova’s mother, who represents purity, and Lida, the nouveau riche scenester Vova meets during their shadow work, who stands for temptation. Plus, there is Kisa, Vova’s tragically flawed brother-from-another-mother and his own long-suffering mom.

Frankly, it is all a little too familiar, even though the crummy Vladivostok setting adds a new, cinematic wrinkle, with its abandoned Soviet-era industrial projects and the grand architecture of its ultra-modern, people-dwarfing bay bridges. Maybe it is a great place to live and rise a family, but Zueva certainly makes it look chilly and grim.

Maybe we have seen these elements before, but In the Hood feels like it is still rather gutsy depicting crime in the Russian underclass at a time when the state news agencies are trying to convince the citizenry they are living in a golden age. You also have to give Zueva credit for taking on the unsympathetic role of Lida, instead of the virtuous Sonya. (Presumably, Zueva is a draw in her own right, having appearing in the Hollywood movie Salt and a high-profile Russian sports film.)

Ilya Malanin and Danila Kozlovsky (a new addition to History Channel’s Vikings next year) are so convincing as the two strong-arm buddies, we can believe they were plucked straight out of skid row, instead of being cast because they are well known Russian actors. Zueva is also quite intriguing as Lida, but her subplot quickly falls by the wayside (which happens fairly frequently in ITH).

Frankly, In the Hood is not a bad film, but anyone who has seen a few Western urban dramas will always be several steps ahead of it. Mostly recommended for the cast’s Russian fans, In the Hood screens this Thursday (12/13), as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

Russian Film Week ‘18: Anna Karenina. Vronsky’s Story

Few literary characters are as universally despised as Count Vronsky in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. Generally, he is pegged somewhere between a cad and a heel. Nevertheless, he deserves the chance to tell his side of the classic story, especially since he has an interested listener in Karen Shakhnazarov’s Anna Karenina. Vronsky’s Story (trailer here), which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

There might be subtle differences in interpretation, but the events that happened in St. Petersburg are still quite faithful to Tolstoy’s novel. The wrap-around segments are based on the fictionalized but still very autobiographical writings of Vikenty Veresaev. Anna Karenina’s son Sergei takes Veresaev’s place as a doctor during the 1904 Russian-Japanese War. Clearly, the fighting in Manchuria has gone poorly for the Czar’s army, when even a staff officer like Col. Vronsky has been wounded. Of course, Vronsky and Karenin know exactly who they are. They also have unresolved feelings for Anna. As he recuperates, Vronsky explains the tragic events, most of which were kept secret from Karenin by his controlling father.

What happened was the story of Anna Karenina, which you really ought to be familiar with. It is rather fascinating how closely Shakhnazarov and co-screenwriter Yuriy Poteenko hew to the original Tolstoy, yet they still manage to recast Vronsky as an unexpectedly sympathetic character. On the other hand, the senior Karenin comes across like a bitter, moralizing misanthrope, while Karenina is portrayed as a problematically unstable and self-centered drama queen.

That is all quite an interesting take on Tolstoy, but the biggest surprise is the success of the Veresaev-inspired scenes in Manchuria, which are quite compelling. Max Matveev necessarily digs deeper as the older, more remorseful Vronsky. He also forges a rather poignant rapport with Sofia Sun’s Chunsheng, a Chinese orphan girl Vronsky takes under his wing.

The feature cut of Vronsky’s Story is culled from Shakhnazarov’s eight-part miniseries, but it really does not feel like it is missing anything. The way it marries together Tolstoy and Veresaev is really very clever, but Tass still manages to overstate matters. It erroneously claims Vronsky’s Story would be nominated for an Academy Award and Shakhnazarov, the Putin supporting director general of Mosfilm has already been nominated for Oscars three times before. The truth is Russia previously submitted three of his films in the foreign language category, but the Academy chose not to nominate them. This time around, Russia declined to submit Vronsky’s Story, in favor of Sobibor. Despite the disinformation disseminated on Shakhnazarov’s behalf, Anna Karenina. Vronsky’s Story is a classy and engaging film, definitely recommended when it screens Sunday (12/9), as part of this year’s Russian Film Week in New York.

Hospitality

The location is terrible, but Donna’s bed & breakfast used to be known for service that was quite solicitous, if you follow. Now she only provides lodging and food. It is a family business now, involving her developmentally challenged teen son Jimmy. Unfortunately, they are about to get a lot of the wrong kind of business in Nick Chakwin & David Guglielmo’s Hospitality (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

The last time Cam stayed at the B&B, Donna was still providing “room service.” In the meantime, he served a prison sentence. However, he has not returned first thing after his parole solely because of her charm. He also stashed the loot in one of her air-conditioning ducts. Finding it proves harder than he anticipated, thanks to her renovations. Fortunately, he is in no hurry to leave, nor is she inclined to hustle him on his way. In fact, they have something nice going, until the arrival of additional interested parties spoils the mood.

Hospitality could have been a reasonably watchable trashy movie, but it has serious issues involving radical tonal shifts, starting with the buzz-killing wife-beater slap Donna takes within the first five minutes from Hirsch, her former pimp turned small town sheriff. From there on, Chakwin & Guglielmo’s screenplay flounders about, trying to figure out whether or not we should also sympathize with Cam, but never giving us a reason to care.

Emmanuelle Chriqui and Sam Trammell are not exactly Tracy & Hepburn or Bogart & Bacall, but they have chemistry coming out of their ears compared to Aaron Paul and Emily Ratajkowski in Welcome Home. In fact, the relationship between Donna and Cam ebbs and flows in interesting, less cliched ways. It is also quite amusing to watch Jim Beaver chew the scenery as Donna’s second mysterious guest. You also sort of have to give JR Bourne credit for fully committing to Hirsch’s utter contemptibleness.

Ultimately, it is a shame Hospitality could not be more offensive, because that would have also made it more memorable. It is both small in scale and limited in thrills. Not recommended, Hospitality opens today (12/7) in the LA area, at the AMC Universal City.

Ron Perlman is Asher

Sure, the pay is great, but hitmen do not have any benefits. You have to build your nest egg without any matching contributions and your medical is 100% co-pay. These things start to matter when you get to be Asher’s age. He doesn’t think he is going anywhere, but his body is not so sure in Michael Caton-Jones’s Asher (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Frankly, Asher would not have lasted this long if he were not so lethally effective at his job. However, his latest assignment got a little complicated. A hot day combined with an out-of-order elevator leads to a fainting spell he recovers from in Sophie’s apartment. Of course, she has no idea he is there to kill her neighbor, but his gruff, socially awkward behavior will make her think twice when he returns to ask her out. Nevertheless, she is curious enough to eventually accept, at which point they start to click.

Arguably, this is the perfect time for Asher to get serious about a relationship and ease out of the business. His former protégé has been getting all the really choice contracts lately. However, it hard for a cat like Asher to change his ways. Unfortunately, that also means Sophie could be at risk when a dodgy assignment he was talked into taking turns into a full-blown vendetta.

Asher is a relatively small, unassuming film, with a little bit Tarantino style action, but it works on its own level. In some ways, it could be considered Ron Perlman’s Gran Torino or Harry Brown, in which he contemplates his own mortality within the sort of off-center genre film that he is certainly no stranger to. He was probably born to be Asher, but he plays the part with surprising restraint—and even a little bit of soul.

Famke Janssen is also terrific as Sophie, portraying her as smart, seductive, and vulnerable, as well as a little naïve. She and Perlman develop some pleasantly easy-going chemistry together. On the other hand, it is depressing to see Jacqueline Bissett cast as yet another dementia-troubled mother. In fact, the side-plot involving Sophie’s mom Dora threatens to drag the film down the same unrewarding narrative path as Grace Quigley (Katharine Hepburn’s final big-screen star vehicle), but Caton-Jones pulls it out of that nose-dive.

In fact, Caton-Jones has the right touch for this material, maintaining a vibe that is dark and serious, yet somehow also light. Despite all of Asher’s brooding and seething, the film moves along at a spritely tempo. This is not a monumental cinematic statement, but it is an entertaining (yet surprisingly honest) film that Perlman’s fans will particularly enjoy. Essentially, it is grittier than The Hitman’s Bodyguard, but more humanistic than Schneider vs. Bax. Recommended fans of Perlman and hitman comedies, Asher opens today (12/7) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Anchorage ’18: The Last Fiction

It is deeply embedded in Iranian culture and the national character, but its roots go back to early Zoroastrian traditions, rather than Islam. Yet, you can find many archetypal elements throughout Ferdowsi’s epic Shahnmeh (a.k.a. The Book of Kings) that have western analogs. Heroes must rise to depose a tyrant in league with evil supernatural forces in Ashkan Rahgozar’s The Last Fiction (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Anchorage International Film Festival.

King Jamshid was once a just monarch, who enjoyed divine favor, but he has been blinded by ambition and a lust for conquest. He has been absent for years on an ill-conceived campaign (much like Richard the Lionheart), leaving the nation in the hands of the ruthless Zahhak, who is in league with the demonic Ahriman. Suspicions were already running high, due to the many men who entered into the castle on the pretext of construction work, only to disappear without a trace. However, Zahhak irrevocably loses the confidence of the people when he orders the death of every infant, to prevent the prophecy of his downfall from coming true. Right, does that sound familiar at all?

Afaridoun is the target of Zahhak’s wrath, but he escapes, thanks to his mother’s sacrifice and the heroism of Kaveh, the blacksmith. However, the angry orphan will need to mature considerably and train harder, before he can effectively lead the resistance.

Last Fiction is considered Iran’s first animated feature, which is a little surprising, considering the levels of accomplishment and recognition Persian cinema has reached. Regardless, it is pretty impressive, especially as the pioneering trailblazer. The character designs are quite striking and the world-building is richly detailed. There is a bit of herky-jerkiness here and there, but so what? In contrast, some of the stylized sequences relating episodes of legend and lore are truly elegant.

Rahgozar shrewdly adapted passages from the Shahnameh (considered the world’s longest epic poem) that best lend themselves to dramatic visuals. Frankly, anytime Iranian filmmakers depict the overthrow of an oppressive dictator, the world becomes a sunnier place and at least a dozen angels get their wings. It is also just a cool semi-fantastical story, with generous helpings of hack-and-slash action.

In addition to the swordplay, there is also a good deal of magic and intrigue, as well as a few nice Persian songs. There isn’t much romance though, since this is an Iranian film. Still, there is plenty to hold the interest of rowdy animation fans and refined patrons of Persian culture. Enthusiastically recommended, The Last Fiction screens this Saturday (12/8), as part of this year’s Anchorage International Film Festival.

Russian Film Week '18: Hoffmaniada

It surely would have been a classic, but instead it is one of the best-known unmade films not associated with Orson Welles. In Andrei Tarkovsky’s script for Hoffmaniana, German Romantic fantasist E.T.A. Hoffman would have interacted with characters from several of his classic stories. This is a very different film, even though it has a similar title and premise. Stylistically, this is not very Tarkovskian, obviously starting with the painstakingly rendered stop-motion animation. E.T.A. Hoffman and his alter-ego vividly come to life in Stanislav Sokolov’s Hoffmaniada (trailer here), which screens as part of Russian Film Week in New York.

Hoffman is a young advocate with artistic ambitions, who unfortunately looks like a much older man. As a result, he lives vicariously through Anselmus (of “The Golden Pot”), the dashing young archivist in love with Serpentina, who is in fact, rather serpentine. Unfortunately, his courtship with be interrupted by Coppelius (the notorious villain of “The Sandman”), who bewitches Anselmus/Hoffman with the alchemical automaton Olimpia. Along the way, there are also cameos from an unfortunate child name Zaches, as well as a certain Nutcracker and Rat King.

Hoffmaniada really makes one wonder about the Tarkovsky film that never was, because Sokolov and screenwriter Victor Slavkin so cleverly and seamlessly integrate Hoffman into his own stories. It sounds very contemporary, in a self-referential hipster kind of way, but it really follows in a meta tradition that go all the way back to Don Quixote. Admittedly, sometimes the transitions from story to story can be a bit abrupt, but that is a minor flaw, especially considering how visually striking the film truly is.

Frankly, the sets, backdrops, and costumes alone make Hoffmaniada one of grandest literary period dramas of the year. It also might be the best stop-motion animated feature since My Life as a Zucchini, even on a par with Jiri Barta’s Toys in the Attic.

Those who know their Hoffman will find Hoffmaniada an even richer viewing experience. However, those who only know the tale of the Nutcracker, will still get swept up in it (and if you don’t know that one, just sit quietly in your shame). For Sokolov’s Hoffman (and Hoffman’s Anselmus) love and literature are both very difficult to pursue, but they are worth the hardships that come with them. Very highly recommended, Hoffmaniada screens this Sunday (12/9) as part of this year’s Russian Film Week in New York.