Tribute to Donald Richie: After Life

Eventual all film critics will go to the great screening room in the sky. According to Hirokazu Kore-eda, there really will be screenings for those who have shuffled off their mortal coils. Whether or not it takes place among fluffy clouds hardly matters. It is really about the process of taking stock of the lives the recently deceased led and choosing the best part to hold onto for the rest of whatever.  Fittingly, Kore-eda’s modern classic After Life (trailer here) screens on the one year anniversary of Donald Richie’s death, as part of the Japan Society’s tribute to the highly influential film scholar, who indeed championed Kore-eda at a crucial point of his career.

When you die during earthly winter, you will find it is still winter when you arrive at After Life’s processing center, which is a shame, because the cherry blossoms are lovely there during the spring. Regardless, recently departed souls will only spend one week there.  Counselors Takashi Mochizuki and Satoru Kawashima will help them chose the one memory they wish to retain and oversee its production on film. At the end of the week, everyone will gather for the screening of their group’s memories and then continue on their cosmic ways with their sole designated memory preserved.

At least that is how it is supposed to work. Some souls cannot or will not choose.  They are known as difficult cases.  Several are on the docket this week. However, Mochizuki and his trainee Shiori Satonaka cannot judge them too harshly.  They too were unable to chose, which is how they came to be employed at the celestial halfway house. Presumably their earthly lives were somewhat disappointing, but Kore-eda will only reveal so much—that is until a chance connection sneaks up on everyone.

The spiritual element of After Life might sound out of place in Kore-eda’s work, considering his reputation for gently mining the terrain of family dysfunction and drama, in the tradition of Ozu. Yet, his subsequent films, like Still Walking and I Wish are very much about observing those small but tellingly significant moments the souls in After Life struggle to remember. In a sense, it is like a summation film that came early in his career.

Of course, there are no floating clouds in After Life (well, actually there are, but they are merely special effects for one of the memory films. Kore-eda deliberately keeps everything low-fi and low key to emphasize the basic humanity of the characters and the memories that mattered to them. For added realism, many of the sessions involve real people relating their own memories.  They are often quite moving, especially those of an elderly lady, who still fondly remembers dancing for her doting brother as young girl. Yet, perhaps the most powerful element of the film is the sad and touching way the pseudo-romantic relationship between Mochizuki and Satonaka never comes together.

In his first big screen role, Arata (Iura) is quite impressive slowly establishing Mochizuki’s angst and regrets. It is a role that gets progressively trickier with each reveal. Likewise, Erika Oda is extraordinarily moving as Satonaka. The way their performances evolve and deepen is also a tribute to Kore-eda’s firm but nearly invisible directorial hand. Indeed, he shows a knack for dispensing necessary information in a way that is unobtrusively organic.

There is no cheap melodrama in After Life.  Kore-eda does not set out to play on viewers’ emotions. Yet, by treating his characters’ afterlives with such respect and gravity, he lowers a mighty boom in third act.  Highly recommended, Kore-eda’s After Life perfectly concludes the first part of the Japan Society’s tribute to Donald Richie when it screens this Wednesday (2/19) in New York.

Martin Scorsese Presents: To Kill This Love

Can a rotten political system corrupt the youth? It certainly will not do Magda and Andrzej any favors.  The two attractive lovers should have a bright future ahead of them, but there is no space for either of them in Communist Poland’s universities. The critical strategies of Socialist Realism are turned back on the Socialist state in Janusz Morgenstern’s To Kill This Love, which screens tonight as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

It was always Magda’s ambition to be a doctor, but it appears she will have to settle for being an orderly. Andrzej never had a calling per se, nor does he have a job of any sort. He would seem to have a future of manual labor to look forward to (if he is lucky), but Andrzej is not the settling type. Hoping to move into their own place, Magda and Andrzej will scrimp as best they can and put the arm on their problematic parents. However, Andrzej will take short cuts that could poison their relationship.

In a way, Magda and Andrzej are the Polish Jack and Diane—two kids growing up the best that they can. It will not work out. Like a good Socialist Realist, Morgenstern is not exactly subtle in his approach.  Frankly, it is a small miracle To Kill did not give some poor apparatchik a cerebral hemorrhage.  The contrast between the grim prospects faced by Polish young people tossed aside by the state’s educational system and the constant reports of Neil Armstrong’s moon landing (a pinnacle of Yankee scientific achievement) is hard to miss.

Perhaps even more heavy-handed are the more impressionistic interludes featuring a corrupt night watchman (who fences the goods he is supposed to protect) and his faithful-to-a-fault canine companion. When he chooses graft over love an entire class of petty Party hacks stand indicted.

Every frame of To Kill screams 1972, in both good and bad ways. One can readily detect the influence of the youth culture and the tripped out psychedelic cinema of the age, as well as old school proletarian social drama.  Maybe Andrzej Malec’s namesake would have been considered a catch at the time, but his charms have not aged well. While it is hard to fault his mercurial performance, the character’s dubious motivations and self-destructive tendencies are a quite a load to labor under. In contrast, Jadwiga Jankowska-Cieslak brings an innocent yet passionate presence, like an early (straighter) forerunner to Adèle Exarchopoulos in Blue is the Warmest Color.

To Kill is clearly a product of its time. For an intimate story of an affair on the outs, it ranges pretty far and wide. Still, despite its stylistic eccentricities, it retains considerable bite. Recommended for dedicated connoisseurs of Polish cinema, To Kill this Love screens tonight (2/15) at the Walter Reade, as part of the Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, which will continue on its thirty city North American tour following it New York run.

Murder on the Home Front: It Beats Being a Land Girl

What good is a bomb shelter if nobody feels safe in them? It is 1940 and the Blitz is in full swing, but crime still continues on and below London’s darkened streets. With most able-bodied men in military service, a squirrelly pathologist finally has an opportunity to apply modern scientific methods in Murder on the Home Front (promo here), a one-off (so far) that premieres this Sunday as part of the current season of PBS’s Masterpiece.

Molly Lefebure became a popular British writer in multiple genres, who found early source material as a clerical assistant in the London pathologist’s office. She will be known as Molly Cooper in Home Front, which adapts her memoir, or at least the first big composite case she works with Dr. Lennox Collins, an academic crime fighter in the tradition of Wire in the Blood’s Dr. Tony Hill.

There is no shortage of deaths in London, but the recent rash of murdered women cannot be blamed on the Germans. The cops have a particularly convenient fall guy: a social outcast of German descent. However, Collins identifies several more likely suspects, but the powers that be might have reasons for protecting them. The hidebound chief pathologist is also not so keen on Collins’ new fangled methods, but Cooper might be able to win over the working class coppers to his rigorous style of investigation.

Someone high up in the PBS hierarchy must have a personal interest in the early history of forensic criminology, considering Home Front comes on the heels of Poisoner’s Handbook and How Sherlock Saved the World. It duly features a fair amount of CSI business, but there are also the requisite flirtations between Cooper and Collins.

While Home Front is currently a one-shot, it looks an awful lot like a backdoor pilot for a regular series. The basic concept is sturdy enough and Tamzin Merchant (previously seen in Masterpiece’s Edwin Drood) brings some engaging Jessica Chastain-ish screen presence as Cooper. However, prospective follow-ups will have to refrain from falling back on the old Germans-bombed-the-crime-scene and the-suspect-fled-into-the-bomb-shelter plot devices. Patrick Kennedy should also step-up his game a little, either taking Collins in a twitchier Robson Green direction or a crank up the geeky charm.  The various cops will also need a bit more personality, but Richard Bremmer adds a touch of class as Charlie Maxton, the rumpled morgue attendant with a big heart.

As Brit crime dramas go, Home Front has respectable looking period trappings and fairly solid procedural mechanics. It suggests decent series potential, but it is not yet near the level of a top shelf historical mystery like Endeavour. Recommended for Anglophiles and CSI junkies, Murder on the Home Front airs on most PBS outlets this Sunday night (2/16), following Downton.

Beijing Love Story: Valentine’s Appropriate

Beijing is a lot like New York. It is a tough city, but you can still find some wildly romantic backdrops there. Five couples of varying ages and degrees of matchedness will go through love’s ups and downs all over the Chinese capital, as well as during a romantic side-trip to Greece in Chen Sicheng’s Beijing Love Story (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Unlike his married boss Wu Zheng, Chen Feng is a decent enough guy. Unfortunately, he does not have much money or legal Beijing residency. Nonetheless, the outrageously cute Shen Yan still falls for him at a hipster singles’ party. Can their romance survive the pressures of money woes and a surprise pregnancy? Her wealthy ex and the painful in media res opening say no, but viewers should not put too much stock in either.

Meanwhile, Wu’s tomcatting is about to catch up him. Somewhat disappointed by his lack of faithfulness, his wife Zhang Lei tries to take a page from his playbook, possibly complicating the life of her boss and platonic friend, Liu Hui in the process. He has an assignation of his own to worry about. He is meeting his mysterious mistress, Jia Ling, for a weekend in Greece. Since the two lovers are played by “Big Tony” Leung Ka Fai and Carina Lau, you would expect things to heat up here and they do.

Liu will play Jia’s games in Greece, but he is always serious about being Liu Xingyang’s father. However, she is rather upset with him, because he will not allow her to appear on a national talent show with her string ensemble. Smitten Song Ge is happy to lend a sympathetic ear and maybe even her transportation money if he can earn enough from after school jobs and maybe borrow some from his grandfather, “Old Wang.” Of course, Wang has his romantic difficulties as well. His cousin keeps fixing him on with blind dates, but his heart is never in it, even with a recently returned expat, who should be well out of his league.

Without question, Beijing works best when it follows the Liu family. Leung and Lau have scorching chemistry and the Greek locale inspires the film’s most visually stylish sequences. In contrast, the innocence and exuberance of Song’s courtship of Liu Xingyang is like a breath of fresh cinematic air. As teenaged Liu and Song, Nana Ou Yang and Liu Haoran come across like good kids at heart, but with massive screen presence.

The other interrelated couples are not necessarily dead weight, but they do not deliver the same satisfaction.  Frankly, Yu Nan is absolutely terrific as the wronged Zhang, but her storyline functions more as a transition from Chen & Shen to Liu & Jia than as a fully developed arc in its own right. Wang Qinxiang is also surprising moving as Old Wang, but Chen really pulls out the manipulative stops for the closer. He also shows big city Beijingers at their most annoying during the initial tale of his namesake (played by the writer-director). Tong Liya’s Shen has all kinds of charisma, but there is only so much she can do for this underwhelming slacker love story.

It is not often we have a Valentine’s appropriate film to recommend for February 14^th, but this year we have one. Based on Chen’s hit television series of the same name, Beijing Love Story hits more ambiguous notes than viewers might expect, but that is a good thing. Ultimately, it is the veteran superstars (Leung and Lau) and the ridiculously young looking stars of the future (Nana Ou Yang and Liu Haoran) who really sell it. Recommended for Valentine viewing, Beijing Love Story opens tomorrow in New York at the AMC Empire, from China Lion Entertainment.

A Stranger in Paradise: Under-Employing Gary Daniels

Bangkok is quite a cosmopolitan city. It is also mired in corruption. An American money manager will team up with his expat brother, a British bodyguard, and a Colombian troubleshooter with a social conscience, hoping to untangle their issues with the Thai mafia. At least he will have the chance to enjoy some of the nightlife in Corrado Boccia’s A Stranger in Paradise (trailer here), which opens in select theaters this Friday.

Josh is basically an idiotic, but his winning smile and hearty handshake earned him an early partnership in his hedge fund. Unfortunately, his boss is deeply mobbed up with the Thai syndicate. Ostensibly to celebrate his promotion, Josh is trundled off to Thailand to visit his brother Paul, a night club proprietor, who happens to be an old college pal of his corrupt mentor.

As soon as he lands, Josh meets Jules, one Paul’s ambiguous retainers. She is hardly impressed by the younger brother, for good reason. Shortly thereafter, word comes the Feds have pinched Josh’s senior partner. Before long, the Thai mob and their bought-and-paid-for lackeys in the police force start popping round, asking not so nicely for their account numbers. Of course, Josh does not know Jack Straw.

Easily, Stranger’s greatest asset is the action cred of former UK kick-boxing champ turned actor Gary Daniels as Paul bodyguard Derek. Yet, the film only capitalizes on his skills in two frustratingly short scenes that are practically over before they start. Probably best known to fanboys for Fist of the North Star and most recognizable to general audiences as Eric Roberts’ British henchman in the original Expendables, Daniels has real presence, in marked contrast to the boring fratboy Colin Egglesfield. As the Yankee action lead and clichéd fish-out-of-water in an exotic locale, he will make viewers nostalgic for Kellan Lutz’s meathead turn in Java Heat.

Arguably, Stranger assembles a pretty good supporting cast, by B-movie standards. Catalina Sandino Moreno (from Maria Full of Grace and Fast Food Nation) shows some presentable action cops of her own as Jules. Stuart Townsend (Lestat in the franchise killing Queen of the Damned) also has his moments as Paul. The villains are not a memorable lot, but Byron Mann still chews on a fair bit of scenery as the villainous mob enforcer, Lek.

Unfortunately, Egglesfield’s Josh fatally undermines any good will his colleagues might create with his constant whining: “Why are you driving so fast?” “Why are people following us?” “Why am I such a tool?”  Whenever he is talking, it is bad for the film.

Stranger needed far less talking and way more action. It also would have been nice if there had been a sympathetic Thai character of some narrative significance. Still, despite all the murder and graft, the film makes Bangkok look like a fun place to visit, so at least that’s something. Disappointing (especially for Daniels fans), A Stranger in Paradise will leave little impression when it releases on VOD and in select theaters this Friday (2/14).

Martin Scorsese Presents: The Hourglass Sanatorium

Smuggling a censored film was a trickier proposition in 1973. Instead of a flash drive, you had to schlep cans of film. Nevertheless, Wojciech Has managed to convey his banned mind-bending prestige production to Cannes, where the jury led by Ingrid Bergman awarded it the Jury Prize. While never explicitly political, it is easy to see why Has’s The Hourglass Sanatorium (trailer here) would be too much for a risk averse Communist apparatchik to countenance when it screens as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Based on the novel and short stories of Bruno Schulz, Hourglass is never intimidated by the constraints of narrative. Józef is traveling to a remote sanatorium, where his lower middle class merchant father Jakub is a patient. Actually, his father is already dead everywhere else except the decaying sanatorium. Within the crumbling walls, the randy inattentive staff apparently has the power to roll back time to a point where his father is still living. Through the strange power of the sanatorium, Józef is able to revisit his past through his subconscious (or vice versa) for a series of chaotic encounters with his sort of late father. Or something like that.

You could debate just what Hourglass is until the cows come home, but no way, no how is it Socialist Realism. Meaning that densely ambiguous spells nothing but trouble for a professional censor. To make matters worse, Has chose not to soft pedal the main characters’ Jewish heritage while the Polish Communist Party was still engaged in its campaign of anti-Semitic purges. At times, Has even evokes images of the Holocaust, even though the work of Shulz (himself a fatal victim of National Socialism) predated WWII.

Good for Berman for digging Hourglass. It will not be to everyone’s tastes. However, it is visually stunning. The depth of vision Has employs with his swooping camera is truly dizzying. It might be heresy to suggest, but Hourglass could be that rare classic worth giving the 3D fixer-upper treatment. Ironically, the film authorities clearly opened the coffers during the production stage. The work of art director Andrzej Halinski is absolutely baroque, even decadent in an evocatively decayed way. Viewers may well wonder if Hourglass was an early influence on a young Tim Burton or Terry Gilliam.

Hourglass is an auteur’s film in just about every way, rather than an actor’s showcase. It is dashed difficult to forge an emotional connection with the audience amid all the trippiness, but at least Jan Nowicki looks convincingly lost as Józef.

Undergarments are rather loose in Hourglass, so parents should be strongly cautioned. More to the point, it is sure to raise questions with no objective answers. This is definitely high-end cult cinema, but those who appreciate extravagant set pieces and dark fantasyscapes will dive into the experience. Recommended for the adventurous and literarily inclined, The Hourglass Sanatorium screens this Friday (2/14) and Sunday (2/16) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

The Returned: The Post-Zombie Future

This is why we really shouldn’t demonize pharmaceutical companies. We might really need them sometime, especially in the post-zombie future. Medical science has developed a cure for newly infected zombies. Naturally, there is a catch. It depends on a protein extracted from the spinal columns of full blown, incurable walking dead and must be administered shortly after contamination. However, as treatment improves, there are fewer sources of the serum and more cases requiring it. This leads to an inevitable problem of scarcity in Manuel Carballo’s The Returned (trailer here), which opens in Los Angeles this Friday.

You would think they would hardly notice an influx of zombies in Canada, but there is indeed a rabble rousing crowd of fear mongers making life difficult for Dr. Kate. She is the lead physician for her hospital’s “Returned” ward and a prominent fundraiser for synthesizing the serum. She also happens to be romantically linked with Alex Green, a Returned musician, whom she met while overseeing his treatment.

With stockpiles of the protein growing scarce, the mob is turning on the Returned and those who treat them. Things get really bad when a band of radicals attack her ward, making off with confidential Returned files.  Already exhausting their black market options, the doctor and her hipster patient will soon be forced to take desperate measures.

Clearly, the market for zombie-related entertainment remains undiminished if even the post-zombie scenario of BBC America’s In the Flesh is subject to the old “homage” treatment. At least series writer-creator Dominic Mitchell gives viewers a fair number of old school zombie flashbacks. In contrast, The Returned is distinctly light in the shuffling horde department, but it takes its message of tolerance painfully seriously.

As a zombie film almost entirely without zombies, The Returned is bound to disappoint the majority of zombie junkies. Still, Emily Hampshire and Kris Holden-Reid make a ridiculously attractive couple, who show flashes of chemistry in their scenes together. They are actually reasonably compelling when navigating the ethically ambiguous terrain of post-zombie (or maybe not so post) life.

To its credit, The Returned offers up a clever bit of business involving the Bela Lugosi near classic White Zombie (still under-appreciated as the granddaddy of all zombie movies). Frankly, it is a better vehicle for Hampshire than Good Neighbors, so it might lead to more work for her down Hollywood way. Regardless, Carballo really should have dialed down the teaching moments and ratcheted up the action around the midway point, instead of going all in for angst. The Returned is a competent production, but it is already late for the party. For die-hard Canadian zombie fans, it releases this Friday (2/14) in L.A. at the Laemmle Music Hall, just in time for Valentine’s Day.

Jimmy P: Head-Shrinking on the Plains

Georges Devereux credited his time in the field with Native Americans for turning back towards Freudian analysis, because they convinced him of the power of dreams. Fittingly, his “Dora” would also be a Native American patient, whom Devereux treats at the behest of the VA in Arnaud Desplechin’s Jimmy P. (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

James Picard saw just enough action in the waning days of WWII to have his skill fracturing.  Suffering from debilitating headaches and dizziness, Picard checks into the Topeka VA hospital, from where he is soon transferred to the nearby Menninger Institute. There is nothing physically wrong with Picard, but the good Dr. Menninger never doubts his pain. Trying a different tact, Menninger calls in the controversial Dr. Devereux for a one time referral, hoping his anthropological expertise will facilitate a psychiatric diagnosis.

Like anyone, Picard made plenty of mistakes in life, which may weigh on his psyche. Devereux will do his best to untangle them for the sake of Picard’s well being and his own checkered career. Representing the best of Jimmy P, Desplechin’s scenes of their analysis sessions are written and performed with intelligence and unusual sensitivity. However, there is a great deal sluggish connective tissue, wherein Desplechin establishes and compulsively re-establishes the dry and sleepy late 1940’s Kansas setting.

Still, there is something to be said for the restraint exhibited by Desplechin and lead actor Benicio Del Toro, who draws us into Picard’s interior torment, rather than howling at the moon and bugging out his eyes, like a Blackfoot Meryl Streep. Wisely, Desplechin allows Picard to maintain his dignity instead of using him as an easy figure of victimhood.

In fact, Desplechin and co-writers Kent Jones and Julie Peyr maintain an ambiguous stance regarding Devereux’s ethical sensibilities, allowing space for viewers to interpret him as either exploiter or altruist, which is usually how life works. Clearly, the film is deeply informed by revisionist criticism of manifest destiny, but it never hyperventilates with outrage. Frankly, aside from an orderly calling Picard “Chief,” the VA is largely depicted in positive terms.

As Picard and Devereux, Del Toro and Mathieu Almaric play off and complement each other quite other quite well. Almaric brings an especially welcome roguish energy as the Austro-Hungarian born French-American psychoanalyst (who happened to be Edward Teller’s cousin). While Del Toro’s lack of histrionics is a blessed relief, his extreme reserve sometimes has a lulling effect.  In support, Larry Pine does right by American psychiatry, conveying Menninger’s authority and compassion (anyone who has not yet seen him in Vanya on 42^nd Street should catch up with Louis Malle’s ultra-New York take on Chekhov at their earliest convenience), while Misty Upham adds a note of graceful tragedy as Jane, Picard’s great flashback love.

Desplechin’s pace is a tad on the leisurely side and Howard Shore’s score would better serve an unabashedly weepy melodrama. Nevertheless, the small ensemble shoulders through, making it all work at the end. It is a quality period production, but it never overwhelms viewers’ emotions or senses. Not quite at the level of David Cronenberg’s A Dangerous Method, but considerably superior to the recent French import Augustine, Jimmy P is recommended for fans of head-shrinking cinema when it opens this Friday (2/14) in New York at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

Easy Money: Hard to Kill

When on work release, convicted cocaine smuggler Johan “JW” Westlund seizes the opportunity to get back to “work.” This was not always his world, but he will find there is no going back to the upright, respectable existence he once led in Babak Najafi’s Easy Money: Hard to Kill (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

There were a lot of casualties at the end of the first Easy Money film, but somehow Mrado Slovovic survived, despite being run-over by a car and shot at close range by Westlund. One might expect the wheelchair-bound hitman to hold a grudge, but he and Westlund bond when they become cellmates. It must be all that shared history. Once a promising business student, Westlund lent his analytical skills to an up-and-coming coke syndicate to subsidize his extravagant lifestyle. In retrospect, it was not such a great plan for the future. Trying to go straight, Westlund develops a game-changing stock-trading program, only to find during his first furlough his so-called partner has double-crossed him.

Slightly put out, Westlund chucks in the work-release song-and-dance, arranging to break Slovovic out instead. He might be paraplegic, but Slovovic is still one bad cat. He also knows the daily routine of the Serbian mob’s unassuming money launderer.  While they work on their hasty caper, small time South American trafficker Jorge and lowly Lebanese enforcer Mahmoud are also making their desperate plays for survival. Naturally all three alumni from the first film will come together in some fashion during the third act.

Viewers should be able to readily follow Hard to Kill even if they did not see the franchise opener, but the constant parade of faces that are supposed to be familiar will be more rewarding to those who have. Regardless, HTK is slick, stylish, and strangely multicultural, but hardly in a way that embraces global fellowship. This is not a film that will have you humming “It’s a Small World,” but it might scare you straight, unless you live in Colorado, where these sorts of things are practically legal.

Joel Kinnaman, the star of AMC’s The Killing and the RoboCop reboot so coincidentally opening just before HTK, is suitably flinty as Westlund, but Dragomir Mrsic out hardnoses everyone as Slovovic, while still expressing his acute disappointment in himself as a father. Likewise, Fares Fares makes a compelling sad sack as the luckless Mahmoud.

Since Easy Money: Life Deluxe has already released in Sweden, it is a safe bet anyone who survives the second cut will be back to try their luck a third time. HTK does not break a lot of new ground, but the intriguing relationship that develops between Westlund and Slovovic elevates it above more routine Scandinavian crime dramas. Recommended for those who enjoy gangster films with healthy doses of violence and irony, Easy Money: Hard to Kill opens this Friday (2/14) in New York at the Cinema Village.

Frontline: Syria’s Second Front

You can draw a lot of conclusions about people simply from judging the groups trying to kill them. Most western observers are utterly baffled by the bedlam of the Syrian Civil War. However, it is pretty easy to side with the initial rebel groups who rose up against the Assad regime and now find themselves battling a virulently Islamist faction in the north, once the particulars of the conflict are established.  This Tuesday, PBS’s Frontline broadcasts Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo (promo here), two boots-on-the-ground reports from Syria documenting the precarious state of the original, largely secular rebels and the dire conditions faced by sympathetic civilians.

ISIS, the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, is supposedly so extreme and violent, al-Qaeda wants to keep them at arm’s length. Presumably, they will patch things up if ISIS takes operational control of Syria, which is not outside the realm of possibility. They have little use for secular society and a special enmity for reporters, whom they are perfectly willing to execute on sight. Nevertheless, Muhammad Ali, a daring independent journalist with a memorable name, has infiltrated ISIS controlled territory with a team of Free Syrian Army aligned rebels.

When ISIS eventually leaves town, everyone is relieved to see them go. Frankly, many of the local citizenry are quite courageous expressing their hopes for a free secular democratic state. However, the prospects are rather iffy, even if the fractious rebel forces can unite against both ISIS and Assad. Second Front offers some cautious optimism on this score, but it is tempered by the shocking footage of the better organized ISIS brutally administering Sharia Law.

According to Children of Aleppo, an estimated 11,000 children have been killed in the course of the Syrian conflict. Most parents opted to shelter their sons and daughters outside the country. One FSA captain is a notable exception. He and his wife still live in their once fashionable Aleppo flat with their son and three daughters. The captain’s comrades are now like extended family to his girls, which would be almost heartwarming, if their familiarity with the sounds of war were not so tragically well developed.

Those who have seen Matthew VanDyke’s Not Anymore will also recognize his footage of a twelve year old protest singer, who just started performing for his camera as a shell landed nearly on top of them. Both survived, but she evidently now lives in Qatar. Frankly, VanDyke’s film is even more effective than the Frontline films at putting a human face on the Syrian civil war. Although it is now available online, interested New Yorkers can see VanDyke’s short doc on the big screen on February 28^th as part of the 2014 Winter Film Awards. In contrast, Syria’s Second Front better establishes the ideological and geopolitical context for the various factions.

The one-two punch of last month’s Secret State of North Korea and the upcoming Syria’s Second Front make this Frontline’s strongest season perhaps ever. Both Broadcasts represent solid investigative journalism conducted in countries that do not recognize press freedoms. Highly recommended, Frontline’s twofer of Syria’s Second Front and Children of Aleppo airs Tuesday night (2/11) on most PBS stations nationwide.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Jump

He is possibly a con man or a holy fool. Either way, the Stranger has a rather torturous relationship with reality. Nobody remembers him, yet he quickly finds himself enmeshed in the town’s Twin Peaks-ish intrigues. It will be a decidedly strange civic celebration when the Stranger teaches the town to dance the “Salto” in Tadeusz Konwicki’s Jump, which screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Presumably, the man who might be named Kowalski or possibly Malinowski, has a good reasons for jumping off a speeding train. Barging in on his unsuspecting host, he claims to have known the older man when he lived in town way back when. The hospitable chap does not remember the Stranger, but he assumes this is due to the lingering effects of his wartime post-traumatic stress disorder. However, the Stranger’s paranoid ravings suggest his mental state is far more questionable than his host’s. Nevertheless, he sort of pulls it together when he is around Helena, his host’s temptress daughter (whom the Stranger makes a show of mistaking for her mother).

As he ambles through the town and the plot, the Stranger apparently cures sick children, freaks out a fortune teller, and underwhelms in his efforts to seduce Helena. Konwicki will reveal all in the closing minutes, but not before indulging in sorts of trippy weirdness. Jump (a.k.a. Salto) is indeed a product of the 1960’s and Konwicki certainly captures the tenor of the time.

Unfortunately, Jump also carries some rather unintentional and uncomfortable irony. In real life, Zbigniew Cybulski (often dubbed the Polish James Dean) tragically died making a leap from a moving train, much like the one that opens the film. Konwicki penned some brilliant screenplays and novels, but his Jump script is more of an invitation to play than a cohesive narrative. Still, there are bits and pieces that stick in the soul, particularly the old man who survived the war despite looking like Blumenfeld, a famous Jewish actor—and might indeed actually be Blumenfeld, as the Stranger insists.

Regardless of what fate had in store, Cybulski is perfect as the Stranger, somewhat resembling Marcello Mastroianni in 8½, when not raging like a madman at whomever and whatever. The large ensemble is definitely a hodge-podge, but Wlodzimierz Borunski taps into some deeply sad places as the man who claims not to be Blumenfeld.

Konwicki and cinematographer Kurt Weber craft some striking images and the overall tone of the film is considerably more playful than you would expect from a Warsaw Pact-era head trip. In fact, things get pleasantly funky when it comes time to do the Salto. Recommended for adventurous viewers, Jump screens tomorrow (2/9) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

7 Boxes: Cart or Die, Dude

The wheelbarrow jockeys trolling for delivery work amid Asuncion, Paraguay’s giant open market have the sort of recklessness we would associate with New York bike messengers. The work is hard for carters, but it often brings them into uncomfortably close proximity with the criminal element. All kind of skullduggery is unleashed when a teen carter picks up an ominous load of “merchandise” in Juan Carlos Maneglia & Tana Schembori’s 7 Boxes (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Victor is a carter, but in his daydreams, he is a TV celebrity waiting to be discovered. Usually, the hard-charging Nelson out hustles Victor for business, but not on this morning.  With Nelson running late because of his sick child, Victor is able to scoop up a lucrative job carting seven mysterious boxes.  It does not matter where. The dodgy kitchen worker just needs them “on street” until the heat blows over. Eventually, someone will call Victor on the cell phone they provided to arrange a rendezvous. At that time, he will receive the other half of a $100 bill. That’s American money, which is riding especially high in the exchange market.

Of course, Nelson is rather put out over losing the job. When he protests, he jumps to the wrong conclusions regarding the contents of the boxes. He assumes it is cash and enlists his violent carter cronies to waylay Victor. Soon everyone is after the punky kid. Meanwhile, in a subplot that will eventually be woven into the main thread, his older sister Tamara searches for the absentee father of her soon-to-deliver best friend, with the help of their Chinese restaurant boss’s smitten son.

When it comes to dodging and weaving in and out of traffic, 7 Boxes is aces.  The chase scenes are quite inventively staged and duly adrenaline charged. Yet, the film’s most intriguing relationship is the cautious attraction shared by Tamara and her admirer.  Indeed, it is one of the few films that take into account the under-examined phenomenon of Asian immigration to Latin America.

Nelly Davalos and Jin Hyuk Johnny Kim are terrific as Tamara and her maybe sort of suitor. Likewise, Lali Gonzalez brings an admirable energy level as Liz, Victor’s frienemy-possible love interest. The problem is every character is more appealing than the shallow and delusional Victor, most definitely including Victor Sosa’s Nelson, who is impressively ferocious, but also acutely human and ultimately quite tragic.

Fortunately, the strong sense of place and general scrappiness largely offset the film’s heavy handed class consciousness and shallow media criticism. When it is on the move, it works. Recommended for those who appreciate street level, bottom-of-the-criminal-food-chain exploits, 7 Boxes opens today (2/7) in New York at the Cinema Village.

Monuments Men: The Best and the Brightest of the Greatest Generation

They were the elite of America’s elite, but they readily answered the call to serve. Recruited for their knowledge of art and architecture, this special corps was tasked with preserving important cultural landmarks and restituting plundered artwork, despite having no real operational authority. The nearly 345 men and a handful of women who served in the Allied armies’ Monuments, Fine Arts, and Archives (MFAA) program are boiled down to eight cultured but courageous souls in George Clooney’s The Monuments Men (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Even today, the scale of the National Socialist war machine’s systematic looting boggles the mind. Old masters were eagerly sought to fill Hitler’s Fuhrermuseum, a grandiose monstrosity planned for his hometown of Linz, while art deemed “degenerate” was destroyed. Alarmed by the threat to Europe’s artistic legacy, Frank Stokes (modeled after George Stout) is given the go-ahead to form the Monuments Men. Like a Harvard-educated Billy Ocean, he proceeds to recruit a clean half-dozen, including James Granger, the Met’s curator of medieval art (based on James Rorimer), sculptor Walter Garfield (strongly suggestive of Walker Hancock), and ballet impresario Preston Savitz (transparently inspired by one of the best known Monuments Man, Lincoln Kirstein).

Initially, Stokes mostly encounters hostility from his fellow officers, who understandably place the safety of their men far above that of a few statues or a pretty fountain. However, with the help Sam Epstein (based on Harry Ettlinger, one of the last surviving Monuments Men), a German-speaking Jewish immigrant enlisted man, Stokes’ men start developing leads on the National Socialists’ vast caches of stolen art. Nevertheless, even though the military tide has turned in the Allies’ favor, the clock is ticking furiously for the Monuments Men. Retreating Nazi forces have been instructed to destroy the secret art stashes, as part of the infamous Nero Decree. Making matters more complicated, the Soviets also deployed so-called Trophy Brigades on a mission to re-plunder art looted by the National Socialists as supposed “war reparations.”

To their credit, Clooney and co-screenwriter-co-producer Grant Heslov (adapting Robert Edsel’s nonfiction book) make the distinction between the Monuments Men and the Trophy Brigades as clear as day and night. They consistently honor the sacrifices made by the Monuments Men, getting genuinely patriotic down the stretch. In a big picture sense, the film does right by its heroic subjects.  However, it gets rather bogged down in a draggy midsection, wherein the Magnificent Seven plus Epstein split up for a series largely unnecessary misadventures. Still, the third act picks up the tempo quite nicely.

Stokes/Stout is a perfect vehicle for the smooth-on-the-outside, deep-on-the-inside screen persona Clooney has developed over the years. We can easily believe he is both a learned scholar and officer material. John Goodman, Bill Murray, and Bob Balaban just sort of do their shtick as Garfield/Hancock, architect Richard Campbell, and Savitz/Kirstein, but Downton’s Hugh Bonneville gives the film unexpected heft and tragic dignity as Donald Jeffries, an art world cad seeking redemption.

Anyone interested in the Monuments Men and the National Socialist campaign of pillage should watch Berge, Newnham & Cohen’s The Rape of Europa, which is easily one of the best documentaries of the last ten years. Clooney dramatizes their story well enough, but just barely legs out a double rather than knocking it out of the park. Still, for those looking for a stirring war story with a dash of American exceptionalism, it is the only game in town this week. Recommended as a serious but reasonably entertaining WWII film, Monuments Man opens in wide release today (2/7), including the AMC Empire in New York.

The Attorney: He Also Does Taxes

Depending on who you ask, the late ROK President Roh Moo-hyun was either a principled idealist or a corrupt demagogue. A new film unequivocally holds to the former view. A thinly fictionalized Roh will argue a life-altering, inspired-by-true-events case in Yang Woo-seok’s The Attorney (trailer here), which opens this tomorrow in New York.

Even though he never graduated from high school, Song Woo-seok became a self-taught bar-certified attorney (sort of like Lincoln). He even briefly served as a judge, but resigned to pursue a more lucrative practice, for the sake of his family. Recognizing an early opportunity, Song becomes one of the first to take advantage of a legal change allowing attorneys to register property deeds in place of a notary. At first, the legal establishment is openly contemptuous of the bounder. Then the business starts pouring in.

Eventually, other attorneys starting competing for Song’s real estate business, so Song once again makes a shrewd move into a tax practice. Ironically, when the paper-pushing Song finally litigates a case, the fix is in right from the start.  In acknowledgement of a debt from his early scuffling years, Song reluctantly agrees to represent Jin-woo, the son of a forgiving noodle shop proprietor. Unfortunately, this is no ordinary criminal case, but a dubious national security prosecution, with confessions already lined up courtesy of the ruthless Captain Cha Dong-young.

When it gets down to political business, The Attorney is certainly not shy about waving the bloody martial law shirt. However, the first half of the film is actually a rather touching story of hard work and sacrifice rewarded, in the tradition of The Pursuit of Happyness.  Song Woo-seok (a fusion of the director and star’s names) is an earnest everyman, who earns his piece of the pie the old fashioned (but unfashionable) way.

Of course, once the sainted Soon-ae’s son is arrested, The Attorney shifts into high moral outrage gear. Korean box office superstar Song Kang-ho leaves it all on the field as his half namesake, wringing all the righteous indignation and heroic sincerity he can out of the courtroom cross examinations. At least Yang and co-writer Yoon Hyun-ho step back from the Few Good Men, acknowledging an experienced government employee like Cha will never cop to ordering a “Code Red” on the stand.

Fans of Song Kang-ho, Korea’s top domestic movie star, should probably seek out The Attorney, despite its excesses, because there is no telling how much of him will be left once Harvey Weinstein finishes editing Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer with a hacksaw. Yet, it is veteran actress Kim Young-ae who really instills the film with dignified sensitivity as honorable gravitas as Soon-ae. It is also amusing to see Oh Dal-su (Oldboy’s sleazy private prison warden) do his shtick as Song-Woo-seok’s sitcomish office manager. Unfortunately, Kwak Do-won (a great villain in A Company Man) largely phones in Cha, the cold fish.

In a way, The Attorney sort of confirms the theory political liberty inevitably follows economic liberty.  After all, Song Woo-seok sure is busy with real estate transactions in the early 1980’s. While the performances are mostly quite impressive, it never really captures the telling period details. Without the narrative reference points, viewers might mistake it for a contemporary legal drama. While it is sure to stoke political debate in Korea, The Attorney is only recommended for American viewers with a crack cocaine level addiction to legal table-pounding melodramas when it opens tomorrow (2/7) in New York at the AMC Empire.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Pharaoh

As the country that gave the world Quo Vadis, Poland has always appreciated a good epic. After all, Henryk Sienkiewicz’s short stories ran about five hundred pages. In the spirit of grand historicals, Jerzy Kawalerowic unleashed his inner Cecil B. DeMille in Phaoraoh, which screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as a handpicked selection of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Ramses XII will soon be Pharaoh, but his father’s long, slow decline has allowed the priests to consolidate their hold on behind-the-scenes power. For decades, their coffers have swelled, while the Pharaoh’s have shrunk. Acutely aware of the situation, Ramses the younger makes no secret of his disdain for the clerical class and the superstitions they use to control the populace. He is also spoiling for a war with the Assyrians—a fact that suits the Phoenicians just fine. However, Ramses’ reckless nature will be his conspicuous vulnerability. Taking the Jewish Sara as his favorite mistress also raises eyebrows.

Throughout Pharaoh one can easily pick up on Kawalerowic’s affinity for shots of characters marching with a purpose, often culminating in an extreme close-up in the foreground, with a striking vista of sand dunes in the background. This is definitely big picture, cast-of-thousands filmmaking, shot in Łódź soundstages and on location in Uzbekistan and Egypt (for a handful of pick-ups). For obvious reasons, Pharaoh features a color palette heavy on the yellows and golds, as well as costumes decidedly on the skimpy side, especially for the standards of 1966. It is hardly Caligula, but there is at least one scene of old school revelry.

On one level, Pharaoh is a big juicy historical melodrama, with all kinds of intrigue and betrayal. Yet, the dynamic below the surface is also quite fascinating, particularly when considered as another celebrated collaboration between Kawalerowic and Tadeusz Konwicki, who would subsequently move in very different directions politically.  Konwicki would become a Solidarity supporter and pen the highly personal protest novel, A Minor Apocalypse. In contrast, Kawalerowic would basically sign-off on whatever was demanded of him (which greatly complicated his later career).  We can readily discern an “absolute power corrupts absolutely” theme reflective of Konwicki’s principles, whereas the depiction of priestly authority actively exploiting the masses would have surely satisfied Kawalerowic’s minders.

As the impulsive Ramses, Jerzy Zelnik came to play, unleashing all kinds of passion and fury, while staying grounded in the tradition of classical tragedy. There is indeed of touch of Hamlet in his Ramses. One could argue they both had father issues. And mother issues. And issues with women. Speaking of which, Barbara Brylska truly scorches the screen as Kama, the Phoenician priestess charged with seducing Ramses.

The Polish cast playing ancient Egyptian characters might sound a little odd, but it really is no different from the sword-and-sandal films Hollywood cranked out in the 1960’s. Elizabeth Taylor was not anymore Egyptian than Brylska. Lusty and sprawling, Pharaoh is an enormously entertaining cinematic indulgence, with unexpected bite in the third act. Highly recommended, it screens this Friday (2/7) and Sunday (2/9) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.

A Field in England: Ben Wheatley Goes Historical

The ‘shrooms will do little to clarify the fog of war—not that they are supposed to. Instead, they will make matters considerably worse for a ragged band of English Civil War deserters trying to forge their separate peace in Ben Wheatley’s ultra-low budget historical mindbender, A Field in England (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Whitehead is coward, who is incapable of functioning as any kind of self-respecting soldier. He is such a sniveler he can barely summon the courage to desert. Essentially, he lets three of his former enemies pull him through the archetypal hedgerow serving as the battlefield’s boundary, in search of a pub. However, Whitehead has a secret mission to fulfill on behalf of his alchemist master. He is to capture O’Neill, an Irish sorcerer.

Unfortunately, Whitehead’s quarry has the jump on the mismatched comrades. Much to their chagrin, they will be forced to do O’Neill’s bidding as he searches for an ominous treasure buried somewhere in the deceptively peaceful meadow. Clearly, this will not turn out as well as the WWI Christmas Eve truce.

In one sense, the black-and-white uber-moody hyper-stylization of Field is quite a departure from the working class grit of Wheatley’s Kill List and Sightseers. Yet, there is a kinship in the way all three films place unassuming proles smack dab in the center of a burgeoning maelstrom of horror. Much as he did with Kill List in particular, Wheatley builds a sense of steadily mounting dread, while instilling the feeling something sinister looms just outside the audience’s range of vision.

To that end, Wheatley regular Michael Smiley fulfills all O’Neill’s villainous duties with malevolent aplomb. Considering Wheatley’s surreal approach often borders on the experimental, Smiley’s O’Neill adds that much needed element of fun. In contrast, the deserters are a motley lot of Falstaffian variations that only start to differentiate themselves during the third act.

Had Samuel Beckett ever collaborated on a horror film with Ken Russell for Sam Arkoff, it might have looked a lot like Field. At times, its absurdist impulses are rather exhausting, but when Wheatley unleashes his inner madness it is a sight to behold (but epileptics should take the opening strobe warnings to heart). Cinematographer Laurie Rose gives it all an extraordinarily eerie look, befitting the clammy, hallucinatory vibe. Consciously exploring the nexus between psychedelic cult movies and rarified art cinema, A Field in England is recommended for high-end horror connoisseurs when it opens this Friday (2/7) at the Cinema Village.

Martin Scorsese Presents: Mother Joan of the Angels

In 1994, Polish jazz trumpeter-composer Tomasz Stańko recorded a tribute album to a film whose only music was diegetic, liturgical, and largely intended to be disturbing. It might sound like an odd source of inspiration, but Stańko is a genius and the film is a true touchstone of Polish cinema.  Handpicked by the ambassador of film restoration, Jerzy Kawalerowicz’s Mother Joan of the Angels (trailer here) screens with newly translated subtitles and a restored print as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema, hosted by the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

The nuns of provincial convent have not been themselves lately. Four priests have already been dispatched to restore order, after their local Father was burned at the stake. The neurotic Father Jozef Suryn seems like a dubious candidate to reinforce the quartet of exorcists, especially to the naïve cleric. However, his earnest spirit might somehow forge a connection with Mother Joan.

Supposedly possessed by nine demons, she is considered the key to the convent’s occult hysteria. If she can be saved, the evil spirits controlling the rest of the nuns should duly fall away. She will be a devilishly hard case, but at least the scandal will entertain the rustic locals.

Visually, Mother Joan is one of the most arresting black-and-white films perhaps ever.  Jerzy Wójcik’s cinematography is absolutely gorgeous yet eerie as all get out. Each frame reflects the soul-shattering stakes in play.  Based on the same notorious Loudun witchcraft inquisition that inspired Ken Russell’s The Devils, it is one of the few non-genre films to seriously depict demonic possession. It is highly charged sexually, but it is distinctly austere and ascetic, much like the self-flagellating Father Suryn. Among lurid nunsploitation films, it is the spiritually severe stylite.

Lucyna Winnicka’s titular performance is a legitimate tour de force, revealing everything while still maintaining a world of ambiguity. Is she truly possessed, psychotic, or repressed? Sure, take your pick. Mieczyslaw Voit provides the perfect counterpoint as the increasingly alienated Father Suryn, as well as a small but significant dual role held in reserve for the third act.

One of the great collaborations between Kawalerowicz and screenwriter-novelist Tadeusz Konwicki, Mother Joan is loaded with enough symbolic significance for several dozen cinema studies theses.  It is a heavy film, with a theme of eternal sacrifice that predates The Exorcist by more than ten years. Not horror, but profoundly unsettling, Mother Joan of the Angels is highly recommended when it screens this Saturday (2/8) and the following Tuesday (2/11) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of Martin Scorsese Presents: Masterpieces of Polish Cinema.