The Frontier: In the Noir Tradition

Business is slower at Luanne’s greasy spoon than at the diner in Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks. Like the eatery in Petrified Forest, it seems to attract more criminals than customers. Laine is one of the former, but at least there are extenuating circumstances surrounding her crime. The rest of the bunch are just back-stabbing thieves, but they keep things interesting in Oren Shai’s The Frontier (trailer here), which releases today on digital VOD, from Kino Lorber.

Laine is clearly on the run, but the motel-diner called The Frontier might look like a good place to hide out. Frankly, she is not inclined to stay put for very long, until she hears two guests talking about a delivery of laundered money. Hmm, maybe that could be the proceeds of the big heist that went down a few towns over. That gives her an incentive to accept Luanne’s job offer. Of course, there is also the recent murder of a local political bigwig’s son. Everything is definitely connected, so do not trust anyone.

Although she is definitely an ambiguous anti-heroine, Laine will be the closest thing we have to a rooting interest. Her boss Luanne (at least for a day or two), is a former Hollywood starlet who never made it, but still drifts along in a haze like Norma Desmond. Flynn, the Michael York-esque guest is a lot more fun to have around than Gloria, his mentally unstable arm-candy. However, Lee, the closest thing to the boss of the gang, is just mean as a snake. Throw them all into the same room and there is bound to be trouble.

Frontier is gritty neo-noir thriller that wears its Jim Thompson and James Cain influences on its sleeve. It has an unplaceable period feel, but cinematographer Jay Keitel’s pulpy, Hopper-ish look could fit anytime from the early sixties through the late seventies.

Jocelin Donahue probably continues to be best known for House of the Devil, despite working steadily since then. However, this could be the film that breaks her out. She is terrific as the squirrely Laine. She covers tremendous ground, acting the vulnerable babe-in-the-woods one minute and a scheming femme fatale the next. Jamie Harris is just a boozy trip as the roguish Flynn. Jim Beaver makes a seriously evil cuss as bad old Lee. Somehow, even in a film like this, Kelly Lynch seems to overplay Luanne’s Blanche DuBois act. However, AJ Bowen adds some destabilizing arsenic as the erratic Officer Gault.

Seeing the relatively unheralded Frontier might give those of us who were too young to have been there an idea what is was like when the Coen Brothers’ Blood Simple just sprang up, seemingly out of nowhere. Shai had the benefit of an experienced, indie-centric ensemble, but it is still likely to catch most folks by surprise. It looks great and clearly enjoys its twisty ways. Highly recommended for noir fans, The Frontier launches today on digital VOD platforms, including iTunes, with a DVD release scheduled for December 6^th.

Saving Mes Aynak: A Wake-Up Call for the Civilized World

It is an ancient Silk Road settlement dating back centuries, but it is built upon the ruins of a 5,000-year-old Bronze Age community. Its archaeological significance is incalculable, but it is slated to be destroyed by a Chinese mining company. The fate of Mes Aynak ought to be a leading issue in this interminable presidential election, but our major party candidates either don’t care or were probably on the take from the start. Filmmaker Brent E. Huffman sends the world a warning of what we stand to lose and how close we are to losing it in Saving Mes Aynak (trailer here), which releases today on DVD, from Icarus Films.

Geography has placed the Mes Aynak site between a rock and a hard place. It is situated above a vast copper deposit, in prime Taliban insurgency territory near the Pakistani border. Having secured a mining contract (amid widespread reports of bribery and corruption) the China Metallurgical Group (MCC) still very much plans to blast an enormous crater in the ground where archaeological teams now race to excavate the remains of Mes Aynak. Nothing they uncover that is not portable will be preserved. They can only document humanity’s losses as best they can.

The fact this is happening in the country where the Bamiyan Buddhas were obliterated is not lost on anyone. In fact, the prospective PR disaster is probably the only reason the destruction of Mes Aynak has been put on hold for several years. However, the archaeologists still face the risk of jihadists wishing to destroy Mes Aynak for reasons of Islamist intolerance (as did Huffman and his crew). It is therefore no exaggeration to call Afghan archaeologist Qadir Temori the hero of the film. The devout Muslim family man does his best to oversee work at Mes Aynak every day, despite the very real threat of violence (including rocket attacks) as well as constant funding shortfalls. Frankly, he and his colleagues should be considered heroes by all civilized people.

Saving Mes Aynak is short, but it makes its points loud and clear through straightforward reporting. The film’s conciseness could indeed be a virtue for Huffman and Kartemquin Films, who promoted free online screenings of the film for all interested Afghan citizens earlier in the year. It is also a film that needs to be widely screened for Americans as well. You probably did not think over two thousand American lives were sacrificed in Afghanistan so that China could raze one of the world’s great heritage sites, but apparently, that is the state of things—and the current administration (and those seeking to succeed it) have no objections (tellingly, a search for “Mes Aynak" on the White House website yields no results).

A persuasive portrait of courage and an infuriating indictment of utterly pointless barbarism, Saving Mes Aynak deserves a much wider audience. The stunning visuals of the site itself are also definitely worth seeing, especially since they might not necessarily be there in the future. Very highly recommended, Saving Mes Aynak is now available on DVD, from Icarus Films.

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Kammatti Paadam

It is like Jake Gittes’ Chinatown or the Korean thriller Gangnam Blues, but with “untouchables.” There will be big money to be made in Ernakulam real estate, particularly if the developers can scoop up tomorrow’s prized tracts today. Evicting the current landholders should be easy, particularly when they are marginalized Dalits. That is where Balan Chettan’s gang comes in. However, when the muscle develops a conscious it leads to a bad end for nearly everyone in Rajeev Ravi’s three-hour Malayalam crime drama, Kammatti Paadam (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Ithaca Fantastik film festival.

Mumbai security guard Krishnan thought he had put his criminal days behind him, until he gets a call from his old running mate Ganga. When a subsequent call is terminated under suspicious circumstances, Krishnan returns to the title village in rural Kochi to investigate. Given the D.O.A.-style in media res structure, it is safe to say Krishnan will eventually get stabbed in the gut for his troubles. However, Krishnan will be harder to kill than Edmond O’Brien.

As Krishnan clings to consciousness on a slow bus from Kochi to Mumbai (at least he’s not going to New Delhi), we watch flashbacks of his childhood and early gangster years. Despite his caste, he was always attracted to Ganga’s Dalit cousin Anita and in awe of his older brother, the local gang leader, Balan Chettan. Like Joe Pesci in Goodfellas, Chettan could be laughing and scratching one minute and then carving up body parts the next.

Frankly, Chettan takes more of a shine to Krishnan, especially when the high caste thug does a stretch of prison time for Ganga’s sake. Ater his release, he quickly shows an aptitude for their new booze-running business. Yet, Ganga still assumes Anita will be his rather than Krishnan’s for reasons of caste and family.

As one might expect of a juicy Indian gangster movie, the one hundred seventy-seven-minutes of KP zing along at a gallop. Frankly, the film could have been a bit longer, allowing more time to establish the complicated web of relationships. There will be moments when viewers realize: “oh, so that’s so-and-so’s uncle.”

One thing is clear from the start, Vinyakan is all kinds of badass as Chettan. It is a massively physically performance, convincingly portraying spectacular beatdowns and decades’ worth of aging, but it is also a tragic turn that roots Chettan’s eventual downfall in his profound insecurities. Likewise, Dulquer Salmaan (DQ) looks like two distinct actors, one being Kochi Krishnan and the other the Mumbai Krishnan.

Ravi keeps the pace pacey, while instilling a vivid sense of place. You can feel the grit and mud under your feet while watching the film. It rather figures he would have an affinity for the genre, since he served as cinematographer on Anurag Kashyap’s Hindi gangster epics Bombay Velvet and The Gangs of Wasseypur. He delivers the goods and stays true to the realities of the region and its people. Highly recommended for fans of South Asian cinema, Kammatti Paadam screens this Friday (11/11) as part of this year’s Ithaca Fantastik.

For Veteran’s Day: USS Indianapolis—Men of Honor

There have been a lot of posthumous service medals bestowed in recent years, which maybe isn’t a bad thing, but the Navy has made it pretty dishearteningly clear one of them will absolutely not be the Navy Cross for chaplain Lt. Thomas Conway. According to survivors, he tirelessly swam through shark-infested waters administering spiritual comfort and last rites to the men of the USS Indianapolis. However, the bureaucrats were able to reject a recent petition on technical grounds, allowing them to add further insult to the injury of the 880 fatalities, many of whom possibly could have survived were it not for procedural snafus. The horrific, heroic stories of the heavy cruiser’s captain and crew are told in Mario Van Peebles’ USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage (trailer here), which opens this Friday (Veteran’s Day) in New York.

Technically, the Indianapolis’s final mission was an unqualified success. They were delivering parts and uranium for what would be the Little Boy atomic bomb to Tinian in the Marianas. It was a highly classified mission, so they were not allowed destroyer escorts. They made it to their destination safely, but they were forced to fatally push their luck on the unescorted return trip. To make matters exponentially worse, since their mission was off the books, nobody noticed when the Indianapolis failed to arrive home on schedule.

The gist of what happened after the cruiser was struck by multiple torpedoes will be familiar to many from either Doug Stanton’s bestselling nonfiction account or Quint’s monologue in Jaws. Captain Charles Butler McVay would have preferred to go down with his ship, but through a perverse twist of fate, he survived to become the scapegoat. Historians and screenwriters Cam Cannon & Richard Riondo Del Castro agree it was a dubious court martial, especially when some future presidents received medals for losing PT-boats under roughly analogous circumstances.

The Nic Cage renaissance continues with another surprisingly restrained yet deeply tormented performance as CAPT. McVay. Tom Sizemore does his thing as crusty Chief Petty Officer McWhorter and Thomas Jane channels his dashing inner Errol Flynn as seaplane pilot Lt. Adrian Marks. Awkwardly, the two blandly played Seamen rivals competing for the same girl adds a distracting and unnecessary soap opera side show. However, the unexpected soul of the film comes from terrific character actor Yutaka Takeuchi as Mochitsura Hashimoto the future Shinto priest, who (reluctantly) commanded the submarine that sunk the Indianapolis.

Thanks to the humanistic portrayal of Hashimoto, USS Indianapolis celebrates the courage of the officers and crew, while reproaching the injustices done to McVay without demonizing the Japanese people. However, the dehumanizing aspects of the Imperial war machine, particularly the manned Kaiten suicide torpedoes (so rarely seen in cinema), is depicted in no uncertain terms.

Van Peebles marshals the large-scale battle sequences, multiple sub-plots, and fleet of supporting characters fairly effectively. He also manages to racially integrate the Navy three years before Executive Order 9981, which is quite a feat. Still, he conveys a good sense of the realities of service during wartime and the military mindset. Recommended as a cautionary yet patriotic examination of one of the worst Naval tragedies in American history, USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage opens this Friday (11/11) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

DOC NYC ’16: How to Build a Time Machine

George Pal’s 1960 adaptation of H.G. Wells’ Time Machine is considered a classic. It featured Rod Taylor’s first leading man performance and won an Oscar for best special effects. However, if I had realized the kind of cult following the film still claims, I would have pushed harder for a backlist promotion for the fifty-fifth anniversary last year (it’s a long story, with no pay-off). It all comes down to the machine itself. Several fans have lovingly reproduced life-sized facsimiles, but nobody can match the perfectionist details of animator Rob Niosi. However, if you really want to make a functional time travel vehicle, physicist Ron Mallet is the man you need to talk to. Their complimentary obsessions are explored in Jay Cheel’s How to Build a Time Machine (trailer here), which screens during DOC NYC 2016.

Niosi had been fascinated with the George Pal film and distinctive prop, ever since he saw the film at the theater where his father worked as an usher. The fifty-some intervening years were clearly good to Niosi. He now lives in an old Hollywood-style mansion and can afford to have custom parts hand-crafted out brass and copper rather than the wood and tin used for the original.

Niosi seems to enjoy the building process so much, he may never finish his time machine. In contrast, Mallet would dearly love to build a functional time machine. Like Niosi, he takes inspiration from the George Pal film and the original novella, but he is motivated by the tragic early loss of his beloved father. Mallet focused his research on black holes, because their time-warping characteristics definitely applied to his long-term goal, but it was a more academically respectable manifestation of extreme theoretical physics.

Frankly, Mallet makes a shockingly convincing case some kind of time travel might be possible. Of course, he is building on the work of eccentrics like Albert Einstein. Yet, rather poignantly, he concludes it will most likely not allow him to visit with his father, as he hoped.

In fact, Mallet emerges as quite a sad, tragic figure, albeit a brilliant one. On the other hand, Niosi seems like a bit of loon, but a relatively well-adjusted one, who brings good business to various pipe-bending and metal-dying facilities. If he enjoys tinkering with his time machine than he should just have at it.

There are some borderline revelations regarding the science of time travel in How To. Unfortunately, there are also plenty of slack moments in which we simply watch Niosi putter about in his workshop. Yet, Cheel brings the themes and strands together in the closing scenes. Twenty minutes could easily be edited out, but any film with this much food for thought is worth seeing. Recommended for DIY geeks and time travel science fiction fans, How to Build a Time Machine screens this Friday (11/11) and the following Monday (11/14) as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

Kadokawa at Japan Society: Sailor Suit and Machine Gun

American publishers are still trying to catch up with Kadokawa. In the late 1970s, media mogul Haruki Kadokawa started a film production division and began cranking out hit after hit, based on his publishing properties. So, how’s Random House Studio doing? Oh right, sold to Freemantle Media. For Hiroko Yakushimaru, they developed one of the first and arguably still most successful vehicles for a Japanese Idol. It would spawn two television series (decades apart) and a sequel re-boot this year. It doesn’t have the cult following in America of other violent pop culture phenomena, but it is hard to miss its lasting influence of Japanese cinema when Shinji Sōmai’s Sailor Suit and Machine Gun (trailer here) screens as the opener of the Japan Society retrospective: Pop! Goes Cinema: Kadokawa Films and 1980s Japan.

Izumi Hoshi looks fragile, but she is surprisingly tough. She was already somewhat delinquent, even before she inherited control of her great-uncle’s Yakuza gang. Technically, he had named his nephew as his successor, but before the surviving Medaka gang members can find him, the traveling salesman dies in an accident. Logically, leadership of the gang then falls to Hoshi, as his rightful heir. Rather bizarrely, Hoshi also inherits Mayumi Sandaiji, her father’s lover, whom she never met. You can bet she has a secret or two.

Understandably, Hoshi tries to beg off leading the Medaka gang, but when she learns the remaining core group will launch a suicide attack against their rivals if forced to disband, she accepts her new position. Of course, her new fellow clan leaders do not take her seriously. They assume they can finish off Medaka at their leisure, but there is a limit to the disrespect and condescension Hoshi will take.

Sailor Suit and Machine Gun takes its title and iconic poster image from the climatic shootout that is basically what it sounds like, but the film in toto is far moodier and more ambiguous than the Noboru Iguchi and Yoshihiro Nishimura movies it subsequently inspired. Hoshi is not a cartoon. She is a confused kid, who quite logically grabs onto the support system being offered after the death of her father, her only family and sole support.

Yakushimaru is terrific as Hoshi evolving from slightly jaded but largely naïve kid into full-fledged gangster and finally we’re not really sure what. She also plays some powerful scenes with Yuki Kazamatsuri as Sandaiji, the profoundly damaged femme fatale.

There is something appealingly grungy about SS and MG. This is not a slick video-game-style gore fest. It is street-wise and world-weary, but with a sugary pop idol soundtrack. Nor does it glamorize the violence it inexorably leads up to (despite spawning the catch-word “kaikan” with Hoshi’s big gun-down). Innocence is lost in Sōmai’s film—and it’s a darned shame, but life goes on. Highly recommended for students and connoisseurs of misunderstood cult cinema, Sailor Suit and Machine Gun screens this Tuesday (11/8) at Japan Society as the launch of their Kadokawa series—and it is guaranteed to make happier viewing than anything on television that depressing night.

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Autohead

A hipster filmmaker set out to make a poverty-porn documentary, but he shot the Hindi version of Natural Born Killers instead. Moto-rickshaw driver Narayan Srivastav is already violent, misogynistic, and sexually frustrated, but the camera only encourages his anti-social behavior in Rohit Mittal’s Autohead (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Ithaca Fantastik.

Srivastav’s desperately poor life ought to be the stuff of foreign film festival plaudits, but the director, his sound man, and his cameraman will get a nasty surprise when they meet Roopa, the prostitute. Srivastav clearly fancies himself her pimp and lover, but she clearly sees him as a creepy guy who occasionally refers clients her way. Srivastav’s interest in her gives sexual obsession a bad name. It also further poisons his problematic opinion of women in general.

As a mass of seething resentments, it does not take much to push Srivastav into violence. Of course, once he starts, it is hard to stop. Indeed, the resulting feeling of power stokes the hypocritical cabbie’s delusions of moral righteousness.

Like its obvious inspirations, Oliver Stone’s NBK and the NC-17 Belgian mockumentary Man Bites Dog, Autohead has as much to say about media malpractice as it does about the sociological causes of violent crime. The line between reportage and voyeurism is similarly porous in all three films. Salman Khan also gets name-checked a lot (so good luck getting a wide release in India).

It is pretty eerie watching Deepak Sampat turn on a dime from pathetic sad sack to sociopathic psychopath in a matter of seconds. It is a bold, fiercely unsentimental performance that really drives the film. In contrast, Ronjini Chakroborty’s Roopa is a potent, sexualized force, whose heedlessness just makes viewers wince. Frankly, we have seen the gist of this before, but the work of Sampat and Chakroborty, as well as the Mumbai setting, makes it feel relatively fresh all over again.

It is hard not to think about the horrific death of Jyoti Singh (documented in India’s Daughter) while viewing Autohead, which is definitely a buzz kill. Yet, that sort of reaction is exactly what Mittal is hoping for. It is a violent indictment of misogynist violence—and it mostly works as it was intended. Recommended for those who appreciate extreme social criticism, Autohead screens this Thursday (11/10) during Ithaca Fantastik.

To Save and Project ’16: Legend of the Mountain

It was the biggest drum battle since Chick Webb faced off against Gene Krupa and the rest of the Goodman orchestra. When a demon and a Buddhist lama join engage in combat, their weapon of choice is the hand drum. The resulting percussion further disorients her profoundly confused newlywed scholar husband in King Hu’s freshly restored classic 1979 supernatural epic, Legend of the Mountain (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 edition of MoMA’s To Save and Project.

Ho Qingyun is an underachieving scholar who agrees to painstakingly copy a Buddhist sutra solely for the money. He did not believe in anything otherworldly before he accepted this gig, but that will soon change. While in transit from monastery to monastery he stops in a sparsely populated village that effectively became a demilitarized zone after an unfortunate uprising and an armistice that was even more embarrassing for the Imperial government.

Advisor Tsui is still on duty, but he is probably not a good influence on Ho. After a heavy night of drinking, the scholar wakes to find he has promised to marry Melody, whose drumming combined with the booze really did a number on poor Ho. However, since she is played Hsu Feng, the scholar is prepared to make good on his commitments. She also happens to be a demon, but he does not know that yet.

Shortly thereafter, Advisor Tsui takes Ho out for drinks at the local inn, where he meets the proprietor’s daughter, Cloud. She too makes a strong impression, but she also has her own supernatural secrets. Everyone does in the mountain village (practically and perhaps literally a ghost town), but nobody is telling Ho anything. Even the Buddhist lama who will challenge Melody’s powers of hypnotic percussion and his ally, the Taoist priest keep Ho in the dark.

Although Legend is a story of ghosts and demons (inspired by Pu Songling’s Stories from a Chinese Studio) rather than a rousing wuxia epic, all the King Hu hallmarks are present and accounted for. The restoration looks phenomenal, which allows viewers to soak in his stunning mountain vistas and dramatic wide-angle god’s eye perspectives. This is a big picture in every way, including the three-hour running time. Yet, Hu turns around a stages intimate scenes of comic farce worthy of Blake Edwards.

As usual, Hu repertory player Shih Chun is pitch-perfect, making Ho a guileless comic foil, but not a shticky caricature. Hsu Feng commands the screen as Melody, playing the demonic femme fatale to the hilt. It is also remarkable to watch the young and arresting Sylvia Chang making her mark as Cloud, especially knowing how she would shatter glass ceilings in the HK film industry as a director and screenwriter (for both her own vehicles and often for films reflecting male perspectives). This is a significant early role in an altogether remarkable career.

It seems self-evident in the post-Crouching Tiger era, but Hu was one of the first filmmakers who made snobby cineastes understand a film could be high art and also kick a lot of butt. You could think of Legend as the Chinese ghost story Washington Irving never wrote (it even starts with Ho dozing off in a mountain gazebo). Highly recommended for fans of HK/Taiwanese historical epics of any genre, Hu’s restored director’s cut of Legend of the Mountain screens again this Wednesday (11/9), as part of MoMA’s annual To Save and Project film restoration series.

The Shelter: Make Yourself at Home

Thomas Jacobs is about to take a descent into Hell or an excursion into the Twilight Zone. Whether his host will be Dante or Rod Serling, he only has himself to blame. Nobody understands that better than the guilt-wracked Jacobs himself, except maybe the supernatural-cosmic forces at work in John Fallon’s The Shelter (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

It turns out Thomas Wolfe was right about coming home. Jacob regrets it, even though few people still remember the disgraced former Lothario. After a pity hook-up with an old flame, he braces himself for a night on the streets. A kind-hearted bar-tender offers him a spot at the homeless shelter she volunteers at, but that isn’t his scene. Instead, Jacobs stumbles into a well-appointed but apparently abandoned townhouse—as if he had been drawn there by a mysterious force.

There is rotisserie chicken in the fridge and good whiskey in the liquor cabinet, but the chain holding his cross pendant won’t stay latched and his lighter just won’t light a cigarette once he crosses the threshold. More ominously, the house will not let him leave either.

At first, Fallon seems to be going for a foreboding horror movie vibe, but the third act spins out into trippy Jacob’s Ladder territory. It is a strange film, filled with intriguing bits of business, like the blank Bible that seems to be writing Jacob’s judgement, in Latin, but Fallon never really takes them full circle. Still, compared to all the middling horror films that come and go (you’re not still around are you, ClownTown?), you have to give him credit for trying something original.

Casting Michael Paré as Jacobs is also pretty inspired. It is hard not to think of The Shelter as Eddie and the Cruisers: The Final Chapter. Frankly, the Cruisers sequel would have been much more satisfying if it had opted for a similarly mystically spooky tack. On the dark side, oh yeah.

Paré is pretty impressively world-weary and self-loathing as Jacobs. It is nice to see he still has the chops after all those unfortunate Timothy Woodward Jr. bargain basement productions (we checked out after Checkmate). It is nearly a one-man show, but Lauren Thomas (a.k.a. Lauren Alexandra) makes a memorable-highlight reel impression as Josephine the voluntarist-barkeep.

It would be bizarrely fascinating to watch The Shelter with a strict Freudian and a committed Jungian. However, the sheer volume of loose ends and dangling metaphors will ultimately stymie any attempt at systemized analysis. Probably worth watching just to see how out there it gets, The Shelter opens today (11/4) in Los Angeles, at the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts.

The Charnel House: Gentrification Horror

It might be a landmark, be the architecture of the former Fairmount Meat Company is pretty severe. Basically, was a slaughter house with a clock tower (always a cause of bad karma). Yet, one developer had a dream of turning the hulking building into luxury lofts, despite its notorious history. Of course, the dream quickly becomes a nightmare in Craig Moss’s The Charnel House (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Everyone knows the Fairmount used to be a slaughterhouse. However, Alex Reeves is not exactly advertising its lurid criminal history. Let’s just say the former owner Thomas Schect was putting more than just beef in the ground round. Eventually, the cops caught up with him, but not before he took a header off the tower. Devin Pyles’ father was a longtime employee of the meat processing plant, before his mysterious disappearance. Pyles has purchased a unit hoping to sleuth the fate of his father and that of Schect’s missing son Rupert. Meanwhile, Reeves’ precocious daughter Mia takes up with a rather demanding imaginary friend, also named Rupert.

A title like Charnel House sounds like it should be a gore-fest, but the film is surprisingly restrained. Moss and screenwriters Emanuel Isler and Chad Israel are far more interested in exploring psychological and supernatural themes than engaging in torture porn. However, they rather cruelly create some surprisingly likable tenant characters, but then kill them off mid-way through. Ironically, it demonstrates just why so many horror movies play it safe with shallow stock characters.

Regardless, Erik LaRay Harvey’s smart, commanding presence as Pyles really elevates the film. Callum Blue effectively portrays Reeves descent into Shining-style madness, without slavishly imitating Nicholson. Andy Favreau and Danielle Lauder add dimension and human interest as two neighbors developing a romantic relationship (but don’t get too attached), while Akron’s own Neil Thackaberry adds some attitude and comic relief as Blaine Cornish, the officious landmark commission chairman.

These must be salad days for the Cleveland film office, with the Cuyahoga County-shot Charnel opening the same week as Dog Eat Dog. You can certainly find buildings like the Fairmount around those parts. It is significantly better than the accurate yet misleading title suggests, even though the pacing is a bit slack at times and the third act makes virtually no sense whatsoever. Destined to be a better-than-average Netflix streaming experience, The Charnel House opens tomorrow (11/4) in LA at the Monica Film Center and in New Jersey at the AMC Cherry Hill.

SDAFF ’16: The Unbidden

They say a friend will help you move, but a real friend will help you move a body. In that case, Lauren Lee has three real friends. Twenty years after her husband’s “mysterious disappearance,” the four women hold a séance to exorcise his spirit, but the ceremony will expose a lot of messy secrets in Quentin Lee’s The Unbidden (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

The four friends should well complement each other when it comes to spirit rousting. Lee is a successful mystery novelist, Rachel is a medium (or whatever), Kat is a doctor (plastic surgeon, but it still counts), and Anna was a tiger-mother before the term was stereotyped in the media. Jake was a bad husband, but not always. Initially, it looked like he and Lee would be happy together, until his bottled-up demons reasserted themselves. He really forced Lee to supply the killing he was asking for, but the circumstances were awkward. That is where Lee’s friends came in.

Of course, Jake’s spirit has been restless ever since. As the fateful date approaches (fittingly Halloween), the hauntings have dramatically increased in their invasiveness, taking a pronounced toll on Lee’s mental state. Unfortunately, the ritual will be interrupted by a mysterious stranger, who has a personal stake in their drama.

Get ready for a barrage of revelations and recriminations. Unbidden is one of the least gory horror films you will see all year, but the fab four still draw plenty of blood. Being such close friends, they know exactly where to slip the knives in. In many ways, Unbidden represents the road too often not taken when it comes to horror films. This is a character-driven, dialogue-rich film featuring an overwhelmingly female cast, covering the full moral-ethical spectrum.

There are also some reasonably clever twists down the stretch, but for many the 1980s nostalgia will be the real attraction. Notably, Unbidden stars fan-favorite Tamlyn Tomita (Karate Kid II) as Lee and co-stars Julia Nickson (freedom fighter Co Bao in Rambo: First Blood Part II, one of three women to exchange dialogue with Stallone throughout the entire franchise) as the boozy and cynical Dr. Kat.

Tomita is terrific as the literally haunted and guilt-ridden Lee. It is also pretty remarkable how well her performance meshes with that of Michelle Krusiec as the flashback Lee. Nickson and Elizabeth Sung both have great fun chewing the scenery as the contemporary Kat and Anna, while Akemi Look vamps it up something fierce as flashback Kat. As Jake (flashbacks only for him), former champion kickboxer Jason Yee vividly conveys a sense of sexualized danger and slow-burning angst.

Indeed, Unbidden is a great ensemble piece. Quentin Lee’s handle on horror movie mechanics is just okay, but he gets some wonderfully acid-tongued exchanges from the first class cast. Recommended for supernatural horror fans with a mature sensibility, The Unbidden screens tomorrow (11/4), during the 2016 SDAFF.

SDAFF ’16: White Lies, Black Lies

Constantly working around disembodied mannequin heads could slightly warp someone’s perspective (ever seen William Lustig’s Maniac or the remake?). Working as a journalist could potentially corrupt one’s ethical values even further. Viewers can judge for themselves when a sensational criminal investigation and the resulting media frenzy engulf three former high school classmates who chose very different career paths in Lou Yi-an’s White Lies, Black Lies (trailer here), which screens as part of this year’s San Diego Asian Film Festival.

Su Junjie and his wife used to supply wigs and model heads to beauty parlors, until she either slit her own throat out of jealous spite or he murdered her. Su duly calls the police and accompanies her to the hospital, but he up and bails during her surgery. This seems rather suspicious to the police, especially when they learn he has since fled town with his former high school sweetheart, the also very married Chou Xiaochen.

This is not their first intimate brush with death, as Jade, a junior reporter for a popular weekly tabloid knows only too well. She was once Chou’s BFF, but they grew apart after the untimely death of Chou’s abusive father. At the time, there were questions regarding Su and Chou’s proactive involvement, which now seem highly pertinent in light of recent events.

WLBL has a strange vibe that blends the intrigue of a real life 1960s murder mystery with the intimate, in-the-moment recklessness of Godard’s Breathless. The past is never dead and buried for Lou. In fact, he often lets flashbacks bleed into the current timeline. This is definitely noir on the moody side. The sun never seems to shine and love always leads to more problems.

Annie Chen is absolutely terrific as Jade, wrestling with her own guilt from the past, even as she exploits her old relationship with Chou. She depicts a genuine ethical developmental arc, but it is an unusuallly subtle one, completely lacking any lazy moralizing. Likewise, Tiffany Hsu Wei-ning portrays Chou with great sensitivity and vulnerability, even as she reveals a torrent of shocking secrets late in the third act. Wang Po-chieh is definitely a slow-burner as Su, perhaps to a fault. However, he still generates plenty of heat with Hsu.

Despite his somewhat lurid subject matter and undisguised contempt for the media, Lou is unflaggingly rigorous in his approach. He sets the external scene with care, while steadily drawing viewers into Su and Chou’s internal conflicts. It is a stylishly severe mystery that avoids cliché and sentimentality like the plague. Highly recommended for discerning viewers, White Lies, Black Lies screens this Saturday (11/5), during the 2016 SDAFF.

The Eagle Huntress: A Girl and Her Eagle

Aisholpan Nurgaiv is a thirteen-year-old ethnic Kazakh nomad in Northwest Mongolia, who became the sort of internet sensation every hipster aspires to be when a picture of her with her father’s golden eagle went viral. As her eagle-handling skills developed, she became the first girl to ever compete in the ancient Golden Eagle Festival. By the way, she is also a straight-A student. Otto Bell managed to arrive in the Altai Mountains (the most remote, least populated region in the world) in time to document her hunting milestones in The Eagle Huntress (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Young Aisholpan always had more affinity for her father Nurgaiv Rys’s hunting and herding than traditional women’s roles. Although he is a devout Muslim, Nurgaiv is progressive enough to teach his daughter traditional hunting techniques. She could not ask for a better teacher, considering he twice won the Golden Eagle Festival and placed highly on several other occasions. Recognizing Aisholpan’s abilities, Nurgaiv decides it is time to corral a wild eaglet of her own in the first of the film’s three centerpiece sequences.

Eventually, Nurgaiv allows the increasingly proficient Aisholpan to enter the annual contest, despite his understandable fatherly concerns. She is barely a teenager—and many of the competitors will not welcome her trailblazing participation. However, the real test of Aisholpan’s rapport with her eagle will come during their first hunt.

Words like “inspirational” often inspire kneejerk snark in response, but anyone who watches Eagle Huntress is pretty much guaranteed to feel great by the time the closing credits roll. Aisholpan is a terrific kid, whose charisma absolutely radiates off the screen. Nurgaiv is also totally cool, giving his daughter exactly the sort of encouragement she deserves. Even her grandfather is surprisingly hip, offering his blessing for her eagle hunting training.

The soaring eagles and the Altai vistas are as stunning as you could imagine. Yet, the really exciting thing about the film is the groundbreaking significance of Aisholpan’s eagle hunting aspirations. It represents open-minded social change that respects and even strengthens cultural traditions. After all, the estimated ranks of eagle hunters have dwindled to something in the neighborhood of 250. Frankly, Aisholpan is exactly what they need.

Since Eagle Huntress screened in Sundance’s kids section, a lot of press and programmers probably had to play catch-up after Sony Classics swooped it up. The distributor knew what it was doing, because this doc is going to catch-on in a huge way. It is just the sort of film that leaves you with a big dopey grin on your face, so word-of-mouth will be rapturous. This is tremendously accomplished filmmaking on a technical level, as well as a wonderful trip to one of the furthest flung corners of the world. Enthusiastically recommended for mainstream audiences of all ages, The Eagle Huntress opens today (11/2) in New York, at the Landmark Sunshine downtown and the Lincoln Plaza uptown.

Stagecoach: The Texas Jack Yarn

Nathaniel Reed prefers to rob coaches rather than trains. As he explains to his fellow outlaws, that way you only have one or maybe two cowboys riding shotgun to contend with. He declines to mention his disastrous episode at Blackstone Switch, but we get the picture anyway. It is all good times until one soon-to-be Hellbent Marshal loses an eye. He will then pursue vengeance with little or no respect for the law in Terry Miles’ Stagecoach: The Texas Jack Story (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

After the misadventure with the now one-eyed Woody Calhoun, Reed tried to retire to a life of farming with his wife Laura Lee. Judging the late mortgage payments, this probably wasn’t the right time for Reed to go straight, but his hand will be forced by the vengeful lawman. Receiving a few hours warning from his scummy fellow gang member Frank Bell, Reed manages to make a break for it. Deliberately misled into thinking Laura Lee was killed by Calhoun, Reed re-starts the old gang, but this time it is more of a trio, with good old Sid adding some stability.

Not wanting to sully his partly rehabilitated name, Reed now does his outlawing under the name “Texas Jack,” an alias derived from Apple Jack whiskey and the state they happen to be in. Of course, Calhoun is still on his trail. He and his bounty hunter associate Bonnie Mudd have no scruples when it comes to violence. Unfortunately, the shifty Bell might represent an equal cause for concern.

In many ways, screenwriters Dan Benamor and Matt Williams take liberties with Reed’s already dubious life story, but they never come up with anything appreciably more interesting. On the plus side, Trace Adkins is a wicked likeness of the Reed, as preserved in vintage photographs, but that means he looks way too old and crusty to have any kind of romance with Michelle Harrison’s Laura Lee. At least he some flinty genre-appropriate screen presence. To everyone’s surprise, Judd Nelson disappears into the role of Sid rather admirably. Gary Chalk and John Emmet Tracy also add some flavor as Doc Forrester and Hank Holliday, an unusually sympathetic bank manager. However, Kim Coates is so over-the-top and shticky, it is almost impossible to buy into a rogue lawman gone so far rogue.

Stagecoach is basically an unremarkable oater, so it is begging for bad karma by lifting the title of the 1939 John Wayne-John Ford classic. Problematically, the film never looks like it takes place in Texas, which will be an issue in the Lone Star State (it is officially a Canadian production—and it looks it). It is just a time-killer that moseys along at its own place. Ordinarily, a western fan will have to take what they can get, but the Stagecoach opens hard on the heels of Ti West’s In a Valley of Violence, which is ridiculously bad timing. Only for western diehards, Stagecoach: The Texas Jack Story opens this Friday (11/4) in New York, at the Village East.

Donnie Yen is the Lost Bladesman

The Guandao is the Gibson Les Paul of spears. It is named after the heroic “Three Kingdoms” General Guan Yu, even though he likely predated the weapon’s earliest documented existence by several centuries. It hardly matters. At this point, most of the stories surrounding the virtuous warrior are largely fiction, but they all boil down to him being the good guy fighting against the despised Cao Cao. However, Alan Mok & Felix Chong (best known for the Infernal Affairs and Overheard franchises) give the legend a twist in The Lost Bladesman (trailer here), which releases today on DVD, from Weinstein and Anchor Bay.

Guan Yu (Yunchang) was faithful to Shu Han warlord Liu Bei, arguably to a fault. Recognizing the loyalty and heroism Guan inspired, Cao Cao tried compromise his integrity, but he found he couldn’t corrupt a righteous man. Granted, Guan was willing to make common cause with his nemesis, under narrowly defined conditions, for the sake of the public good. Of course, he never did so at the expense of his higher principles.

Still, a devious schemer like Cao Cao was not willing to give up without a fight. Zeroing in on Guan’s Achille’s heel, the Imperial Chancellor arranged for him to escort Qi Lan, Liu’s intended consort and the love of Guan’s life, back to the Shu Kingdom, forcing them to run a gauntlet of Imperial forces and hopefully weakening them to amorous temptation.

Considering Donnie Yen will soon be even more world famous a Chirrut Ȋmwe in Rogue One: a Star Wars Story, it makes perfect sense a solid, representative 2011 Yen film would finally get a somewhat belated release. Bladesman features impressive work from Yen as both lead actor and action director. His close quarters spear battle with Andy On’s Gen. Kong Xiu is definitely worth multiple viewings. However, the real attraction is watching fellow Rogue One-co-star Wen Jiang swagger and conspire as Cao Cao. Yet, he also displays such dry wit and sly subtlety, he totally challenges and subverts preconceptions of the notorious figure. It is impossible to reduce his version of Cao Cao to an easy strawman caricature, yet he always looks like he is having a jolly good time.

Regardless, Yen is still the star and he develops some agonizingly tragic romantic chemistry with Betty Sun Li’s Qi Lan. Bladesman is all about denial and yearning rather than consummation, which makes it quite a refreshing change of pace. Although Mak & Chong are more at home in a cops-and-gangsters milieu, they have crafted a classy looking period drama. It boasts a terrific cast, but it is also fascinating the watch Mak & Chong present a complex and humanized portrait of Cao Cao, ranking somewhere between the sympathetic Chow Yun-fat in The Assassins and the scenery-chewingly villainous Zhang Fengyi in Red Cliff. Highly recommended for martial arts connoisseurs and fans of the starry cast, The Lost Bladesman is now available on DVD, from the Weinstein Company and Anchor Bay.

Rurouni Kenshin: Origins

The Meiji Restoration brought stability, modernization, and westernization to Japan. That was good news if you wanted to quietly work and raise a family, but bad for business if you were a super-villain. Hitokiri Battosai was the exception who proved the rule. He did his duty as a cold-blooded killsword to hasten in the new era, but renounced his old violent ways once the Shogunate fell. However, he might have to break his vow to protect the innocent in Keishi Ohtomo’s Rurouni Kenshin Part 1: Origins (trailer here), which releases today in a DVD/BluRay collector pack, from Funimation.

Kenshin Himura’s backstory will be teased out over the course of the full live-action trilogy, but Origins establishes who he is right now and how he fell in with the friends who stand by him throughout the chaotic events of Kyoto Inferno and The Legends Ends. As Origins opens, a rogue killer is further besmirching the Battosai name, by impersonating the killsword while committing a series of murders. He also falsely claims to adhere to the “life-affirming” style of martial arts taught by Kaoru Kamiya’s late father. After a bit of miscommunication, Himura and Kamiya will team up together to clear their respective reputations.

Things will get even more awkward when the mysterious Megumi Takani also takes refuge at the Kamiya family dojo. However, her medical skills will come in handy. She has fled from Kanryu Takeda, an opium smuggler determined to undermine the Meiji government, who forced her to concoct especially addictive designer drugs. The spacey but flamboyant drug lord has made common cause with several former samurai, who also wish to return to the old days of warlordism. However, Himura’s old nemesis, Hajime Saito has opted for law and order, so he now serves the new government in a similar, hard-charging capacity. Yet, just like the sinister assassin Udo Jine, Saito is determined to push Himura back into the killing business.

Of the three films, Origins most easily stands on its own. It also gives significant screen time to Takani, which helps explain why a major star liked Yu Aoi occasionally drops into the second two films to offer a bit of sage advice or bandage a wound. She is terrific as Takani, wringing all kinds of intrigue and dignity out of the mysterious role. Takeru Satoh and Emi Takei notably start to develop the subtle chemistry that will be so appealing as the trilogy progresses. Yosuke Eguchi also already starts to steal scenes as the flinty Saito. Teruyuki Kagawa is bizarrely weird as Takeda, but that is a good thing. Likewise, Koji Kikkawa is appropriately menacing as Jine. When he and Himura finally face-off, it does not disappoint.

The live action trilogy clearly demonstrates why the manga series had such a long run. The swordplay (skillfully directed by Kenji Tanigaki) is spectacular, but the characters and their relationships really keep you hooked. You can see it coming together right from the start of Origins. Very highly recommended for martial arts and manga fans, Rurouni Kenshin Part 1: Origins is now available on DVD/BluRay from Funimation.

Reign of Assassins: Michelle Yeoh Can Still Bring It

It is the stuff dreams are made.  However, in Ming-era China, it is not a little black bird, but an ancient monk’s corpse—two halves of it to be precise.  While her Dark Stone assassin guild will kill or die for the martial arts-infused body, one former femme fatale-killer opts to go straight and responsible in Su Chao-pin’s Reign of Assassins (trailer here), “co-directed” with the John Woo, which releases today on DVD, from Weinstein and Anchor Bay.

According to legend (and Reign’s cool animated prologue), when the Bodhi monk came to China, he perfected the practice of martial arts.  So profound was his kung fu enlightenment, it became ingrained in his very body. Hence, his divided cadaver was plundered from the tomb for the sake of the power it might bestow.  Wheel King, the shadowy leader of the Dark Stone, is determined to find and unite the monk’s remains.  Yes, he wants that martial arts mojo, but he has other secret motivations as well.  However, Drizzle, one of his top lieutenants, has gone rogue at an in/opportune time.

Changing her features, Drizzle becomes the beautiful but mild mannered Zeng Jing, a street vendor with a huge stash of silver under her floor.  Naturally, she turns the heads of all the men in town, but only the foot courier Jiang Ah-sheng is worth a second look.  It turns out he is worth marrying.  Unfortunately, when bandits strike close to home looking for the Bodhi body, her façade starts to slip.  Suddenly, Zeng’s former colleagues come knocking.

Reign has a massive karmic twist that might be guessable, but still packs an archetypal punch.  It also has Kelly Lin as the before Drizzle, Michelle Yeoh as the after Zeng (talk about twice lucky), and Barbie Hsu as the red-hot psycho Dark Stone recruit, Turquoise Leaf.  Indeed, Reign is blessed with a great action heroine in Yeoh, who is still impressive in the fight scenes, as well as several memorably colorful villains, most definitely including Hsu.  Once again, Wang Xueqi does his thing, making Wheel King one heavy old cat.  Yet, Reign also has some nice quiet moments shared by Yeoh’s Zeng and Jung Woo-sung as the apparently genial Jiang.

While Reign does not exactly reinvent fight choreography, its execution is pretty spectacular, especially sequences featuring Drizzle/Zeng’s “water-shedding-sword” technique. The symmetry of its fight scenes is also cool and clever. Reign might not display very many Woo-isms, but it has a well-crafted period look. Plus, there are some stone-cold Buddhist elements, including Calvin Li memorably playing a monk-to-be appropriately named “Wisdom.” It is a relatively brief appearance, but he looms large. It is also fun and wonderfully reassuring watching Yeoh bring it once again. She still has massive skills and super screen presence.

Reign was on the festival circuit several years ago, so its absence on home video has been mystifying. It will be worth the wait for wuxia and Yeoh fans (presumably there is a lot of crossover between the two).  Recommended for those who appreciate elegant, character-driven martial arts cinema, Reign of Assassins is now available on DVD, from the Weinstein Company and Anchor Bay.

Last Girl Standing: What it Means to be the Final “Girl”

You’d think the “men’s rights” movement would be more up-in-arms over horror movies. Granted, survival rates are low for everyone, but they are practically nil for dudes. Camryn is a case in point. She was the sole survivor of the so-called “Campfire Murders,” committed by a psychopath dubbed “The Hunter.” Five years later, she is still a basket case in Benjamin R. Moody’s Last Girl Standing (trailer here), which releases today on DVD in multiple territories, including the U.S. (from MPI) and the UK (from Icon).

Camryn survived, but she has not gotten on with her life. She works a dead-end wash-and-fold laundry job during the day and sequesters herself in her apartment at night. Despite her standoffishness, Nick, the new register guy, obviously kind of likes her. She also trusts him enough to seek refuge with him and his houseful of hipster roommates after an incident with an intruder. Frankly, Nick seems like he could be a candidate to be the final boy, but that probably isn’t going to happen.

However, Camryn’s worst fears might finally be coming true when she starts to suspect the Hunter is stalking her from beyond the grave. She was meant to be the final victim in his macabre Pagan-Wiccan-Occult blood sacrifice ritual. Now, she is worried he will start over again with Nick and his friends.

LGS is one of several recent genre films to deconstruct the “final girl” tradition, including Todd Strauss-Schulson’s best-of-the-bunch The Final Girls and the similarly titled The Final Girl (shouldn’t that be “final women?”). Moody takes a radically different tack, emphasizing the psychological and emotionally scars resulting from a horrific trauma. As a result, horror fans might lose patience with its slow burn. It will eventually get down to horror movie business, but in ways that will numb rather than thrill genre fans.

Still, it all works rather well on a dramatic level thanks to the cast (who have to do more legit acting than most slasher ensembles). Akasha Banks Villalobos’s lead performance is tremendously vulnerable and ferociously raw. It is up there with Alex Essoe’s work in Starry Eyes and Isabel Adjani’s subway freak-out in Possession. Brian Villalobos also plays Nick with the right mix of guilelessness and a vaguely ambiguous sense of potential danger. Chad Warren (who looks more familiar than his imdb credits would suggest) adds memorable real world grounding as David, the laundromat owner.

LGS is definitely more of a character study than a slasher movie. It also seems to be one of those horror movies that hates horror movies. Inevitably, that sort of inner conflict leads to the cinematic equivalent of a personality disorder, but it is rather fascinating to watch Moody’s screenplay turn on itself. For horror fans, it is more of thematically interesting film rather than a fully emotionally satisfying one. Recommended genre fans receptive to its critiques, Last Girl Standing releases today on VOD and DVD, from MPI Home Video.