Rithy Panh’s Graves Without a Name

The history of Communism is littered with mass graves, from the Holodomor in Ukraine to the Killing Fields of Cambodia. Coming to terms with the past is particularly difficult in the Southeast Asian country for at least two reasons. For one thing, the Khmer Rouge is still in power. They simply changed their name and rebranded themselves. Even more troubling for families, the lack of proper burials makes it nearly impossible to hold the Buddhist rituals necessary to help loved ones move on with their after-life. Acclaimed filmmaker Rithy Panh searches for his father’s earthly remains in the meditative documentary, Graves Without a Name, which releases today on DVD.

Even though they often focus on the crushing enormity of the Cambodian genocide, Panh’s documentaries tend to be acutely personal in scope. In The Missing Piece, his defining masterwork (thus far), Panh told his family’s tragic history with carved wooden figurines. Graves is possibly even more personal, but less narrative-driven. We watch as Panh undergoes purification ceremonies to prepare him for further rites that will hopefully lead to the location of his father’s body. However, it seems there is just too much mournful static around the work camp where his father was executed.

In between rituals, Panh intersperses long-take interviews with genocide survivors. One was a peasant “Old Person,” who initially fought with the Khmer Rouge before becoming sickened by their torture, rape, and mass murder. The other was a much abused and despised “New Person” from the city. Both give harrowing testimony in a matter-of-fact tone produced by their resignation they will never see justice done in their lifetimes.

There have been many documentaries produced on the Cambodian genocide (several of them by Panh), but the crimes described in Without a Name still pack a visceral punch. At times, Panh’s closeness to the subject matter leads to a slight blurriness of focus and Randal Douc’s French narration is undeniably overwritten, but the power of this film remains raw and immediate.

The Onetti Brothers’ What the Waters Left Behind

The devastation of Epecuen was even worse than the hardest hit wards during Hurricane Katrina. The former tourist city on Argentina’s coast was wiped out and it is never coming back. Of course, that makes it an intriguing shooting location for an irresponsible film crew. Their documentary is doomed and so are they in the Onetti Brothers’ What the Waters Left Behind, which releases today on DVD.

Vasco, his hired crew, and his faithless girlfriend Vicky are driving to Epecuen to make a documentary. Their star will be Carla, who is revisiting the site of the disaster she barely survived as a child. However, they should have turned right around when they got an eyeful of the rustic yokels at the last-chance gas station—and their sketchy Sweeney Todd-esque meat pies—but they don’t.

Naturally, the Texas Chainsaw-style freaks proceed to kill them off in brutal fashion. There is one outsider added to the mix: “Senor X,” who is looking for a missing loved on, but he doesn’t amount to much. There is maybe one surprise in store for horror fans, but The Waters still has little to offer that is new and absolutely nothing that is pleasant to watch.

The Onetti Brothers’ foray into the slasher sub-genre really only has three things going for it: location, location, and location. The Epecuen backdrops are truly haunting. They are also arguably exploitative. This is the scene of a massive tragedy, so the film’s depiction of knuckle-dragging survivors is really quite questionable.

Proximity: Alien Abduction, but Different

Presumably, it would be expensive for extraterrestrial civilizations to attempt first contact or more ominously engage in abductions or even an invasion. Therefore, they need a darned good reason. Just messing with the listeners of Coast to Coast A.M. isn’t sufficient. It turns out there is a reason the Gray People have been popping-in on Earth and it makes for a heck of a third act revelation in director-screenwriter Eric Demeusy’s Proximity, which releases this Friday on VOD.

Isaac Cypress has a cool job with very little responsibility at NASA’s JPL facility, but he never really seriously considers the possibility of intelligent alien life, until he encounters it first-hand, losing three days in the process. As luck would have it, he happened to be filming a video diary during his abduction-encounter, so he has proof—sort of. Rather rashly, he posts his footage online, where it quickly goes viral. Much to his frustration, most of the subsequent media attention focuses on attempts to debunk him. However, it also allows him to connect with Sara, an attractive fellow abductee, who should be well out of his league. Of course, it also brings him to the attention of the UN’s evil Men-in-Black agency.

After escaping from the clutches of the UN’s MIB and their Tron-like motorcycle-driving androids, Cypress and Sara seek the help of Carl Miesner, a reclusive former abductee who has been monitoring alien transmissions and may have made contact. To get from Costa Rica (the site of the UN’s secret facility) to Miesner’s secret transmitter in British Columbia, they enlist the help of Zed, an off-the-grid hippy hacker.

In some ways, Proximity is obviously derivative of MIB, The X-Files, and maybe even WarGames a little. Plus, the score often sounds transparently “borrowed” from John Williams’ “Imperial Marches” from the Star Wars franchise. Yet, Demeusy has some huge surprises teed-up for viewers that you absolutely will not see coming. In fact, it is totally shocking where it goes, because it does not telegraph that inclination. It is actually really cool, but more narrow-minded audiences are likely to have a problem with it. It is also quite refreshing to see the villainous Men-in-Black are not Feds, but work for the United Nations (it also makes more sense, considering the lawlessness of UN “peace-keepers”).

O Pai (Curta): Esperando Que Seja Exibido Em Breve Em Um Festival Perto De Você [Portuguese Translation]

Tiago Abubakir & Luiz Humberto Campos are clearly talented young Brazilian filmmakers, so I’m happy to make my review of their latest short film, The Great Father, available to Portuguese-speaking audiences, thanks to a translation courtesy of Angelica Sakurada. (You can find the original below here.)

 

O ano de 1755 marcou um momento de virada para Portugal. Era o ano do Grande Terremoto de Lisboa e da indicação de Sebastião de Melo como primeiro ministro. Mesmo hoje, a administração do de fato chefe de estado permanece controversa. Algumas liberdades são tomadas com nomes e eventos históricos, mas o espírito da época se mantém o mesmo no curta O Pai do diretor-produtor-editor-co-roteirista brasileiro Tiago Abubakir e do co-roteirista-co-produtor-co-ator Luiz Humberto Campos, que estaria sendo exibido no circuito dos festivais de cinema neste momento, se não fosse a pandemia de  Xi Jinping.

O fogo e o terremoto sacudiram Lisboa. Entretanto, para a rainha Maria Victoria (originalmente uma princesa espanhola antes do casamento com o rei José I) e sua filha princesa Maria I, a emergência real é a doença do rei e o seu afastamento da governança do dia-a-dia. Enquanto “o Pai” está doente, o “Barão Negro” comandará Portugal, com mãos de ferro. Claro que a rainha e a princesa estão mais preocupadas com o seus lugares no palácio do que o bem-estar dos seus súditos.

É bem impressionante quanto o jovem Tiago Abubakir atingiu com o micro-enxuto orçamento, com a colaboração de Luiz Campos e seus familiares. Foi realmente algo de trabalho em família, pois a tia de Tiago Abubakir, Ivone Biscaia, atua como a rainha e o pai de Luiz Campos, Humberto Campos, atua como o Barão Negro. Todo mundo faz sua parte, mas sinceramente o elenco é muitas vezes ofuscado pela locação maravilhosa do filme, incluindo o Convento do Carmo, uma abadia do século XVIII, e o Museu da Misericórdia de Salvador na Bahia.

The Great Father (Short): Hopefully Coming Soon to a Festival Near You

1755 marked a turning point for Portugal. It was the year of the Great Lisbon Earthquake as well as Sebastiao de Melo’s appointment as prime minister. Even today, the administration of the de facto head of state remains controversial. Some liberties are taken with names and historical events, but the spirit of the era remains the same in Brazilian director-producer-editor-co-screenwriter Tiago Abubakir & co-screenwriter-co-producer-co-star Luiz Humberto Campos’s short film The Great Father, which would be screening on the festival circuit right now, were it not for Xi’s pandemic.

The fire and earthquake have shaken Lisbon. However, for Queen Mariana Victoria (originally a Spanish princess before her marriage to King José I) and her daughter Princess Maria I, the real emergency is the King’s illness and withdrawal from day-to-day governance. While the “Great Father” is sick, the “Black Baron” will rule Portugal—with an iron hand. Of course, the Queen and Princess are more concerned about their place in the palace than the well-being of their subjects.

It is quite amazing how much the teenaged Abubakir achieved on a micro-shoestring budget, with the collaboration of Campos and their families. It really was something of a family affair, since Abubakir’s aunt, Ivone Biscaia, plays the Queen and Campos’s father, Humberto Campos, plays the Black Baron. Everyone does their part, but frankly the cast is often overshadowed by the film’s amazing locations, including the Covento do Carmo, an 18^th Century Abbey, and the Museu da Misericordia in Salvador, Bahia.

Festival Tribeca 2020: Pacificado [Portuguese Translation]

The 2020 Tribeca Film Festival has been drastically curtailed, but the selected films still deserve attention and coverage, so I’m thrilled to be able to post a Portuguese translation of my Pacified review for potential viewers, both in the United States and in Brazil, courtesy of Angelica Sakurada (you can find the original below here):

 

As vistas das favelas do Rio valem milhões de reais, mas nenhum incorporador imobiliário pensaria em se arriscar no seu interior. Periodicamente, o BOPE (dos policiais de Tropa de Elite) lançam incursões na favela, mas eles nunca ficam muito tempo. No lugar, o líder do tráfico funciona como lei. Na favela da Tati, o seu quase estranho pai Jaca era conhecido por arbitrar as disputas da comunidade de maneira justa. Seu sucessor jovem e revoltado, nem tanto. Por esse motivo, todos estão ansiosos para que ele retome o papel de liderança que ele não quer mais no filme Pacificado do gringo Paxton Winter, falado em português e produzido por Darren Aronofsky, que seria exibido este ano no Festival de Cinema de Tribeca, se este não tivesse sido cancelado devido a triste falta de respeito pela vida humana pelo Partido Comunista da China, junto com a cumplicidade da OMS.

Tati é mais temperamental e mais alienada do que a maioria dos adolescentes, mas sua mãe fica falando a ela que as coisas vão melhorar com a saída da prisão logo mais de seu “pai”, que se chama José Ferreira. Os Jogos Olímpicos já terminaram e todo mundo está voltando a vida normal. Entretanto, os grandes chefes do morro estão contentes com a truculência que Nelson está dirigindo a favela e Jaca também está perfeitamente ok com isso. Mesmo assim, os residentes da comunidade continuam vindo até ele com seus problemas.

Francamente, Jaca tem bastante problemas dele mesmo. Seu irmão Dudu pisou na bola feio na gestão de uma das bocas de Nelson, enquanto também sofre com o abuso de drogas e depressão. A mãe da Tati, Andrea, é provavelmente até mais viciada. Entretanto, ele está começando a apreciar a inteligência e resiliência da Tati, apesar dos rumores sobre sua paternidade.

Mesmo Paxton Winters sendo um ianque, Pacificado definitivamente segue a tradição dos dramas realísticos de favelas, melhor exemplificados para audiências internacionais com Cidade de Deus e Cidade dos Homens. Ainda assim, o filme também possui as características de muitos filmes de gangsteres de Hollywood das décadas de 40 e 50, em que as estrelas como George Raft sempre aprendiam que voltar para casa é uma proposta complicada para ex-bandidos.

Tribeca ’20: Pacified

The views from Rio’s favelas are worth millions of Reais, but no developer would think of venturing inside. Periodically, the BOPE (the cops from Elite Squad) launch incursions, but they never stay long. Instead, the local gang leader functions as the law. In Tati’s favela, her semi-estranged father Jaca was known for arbitrating neighborhood disputes fairly. His young, punky successor—not so much. That is why everyone is looking forward to him reclaiming the leadership role he no longer wants in Gringo filmmaker Paxton Winters’ Portuguese language film, Pacified, produced by Darren Aronofsky, which would have screened at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, had it not been canceled due to the CCP’s deceit and disregard for human life, along with the WHO’s complicity.

Tati is even moodier and more alienated than most teenagers, but her mother keeps telling her things will get better with the impending release of her “father,” real name Jose Ferreira. The Olympics Games are over and everyone is getting back to normal. However, the big bosses are content with the ruthless Nelson running the favela and Jaca is also perfectly okay with it. Nevertheless, residents keep coming to him with their problems.

Frankly, Jaca has plenty of his own troubles. His brother Dudu has badly mismanaged one of Nelson’s bocas, while also struggling with drug abuse and depression. Tati’s mother Andrea is probably even more addicted. However, he is starting to appreciate Tati’s intelligence and resilience, despite the rumors regarding her true parentage.

Even though Winters is a Yank, Pacified definitely follows in the tradition of realistic favela dramas, best exemplified for international audiences with City of God and City of Men. Yet, it also shares a kinship with many 1940s and 1950s Hollywood gangster movies, in which stars like George Raft always learned going home is a tricky proposition for reformed racketeers.

Into the Dark: Delivered

Remember the 1950s way to be pregnant? Basically, it involved regular calming treatments of bourbon and cigarettes, before the hospital finally dispensed a good dose of the hard stuff. There was no yoga back then. In retrospect, the old school approach would have been far safer for a mega-pregnant mother-to-be in Emma Tammi’s Delivered, the latest installment of Blumhouse’s Into the Dark, which premieres today on Hulu.

Valerie is pregnant and more or less okay with it. Her husband Tom is thrilled. He even goes to “Momma-ste” yoga with her. Unfortunately, that is where they meet Jenny Booth. Initially, the single-mother seems very hip and funny, so they happily accept her dinner invitation way out in the boonies. Of course, viewers know right from the start Booth is not exactly what she pretends to be, as Valerie discovers when she comes to. It turns out Booth isn’t even pregnant—that’s what she wants from Valerie.

The Into the Dark franchise has a hit-or-miss reputation that continues with Delivered. Frankly, Tammi’s direction is tight and disciplined, while her thesps are all quite earnest. The problem is the predictability of Dirk Blackman’s screenplay. For instance, as soon as we encounter Valerie’s desperate-to-talk ex-boyfriend Riley, we can pretty much guess his fate with a high degree of accuracy.

What really stands out this time around is the character of Booth and Tina Majorino’s portrayal of her. Although Kathy Bates’ Annie Wilkes will always cast a shadow over a film like this, Majorino plays her with more humor and attitude than we usually see in our psycho-captors. That also helps the film’s overall credibility, because it makes it more believable Valerie and Tom would accept her invitation.

Shudder: Z

It turns out Dr. Spock and most horror movies agree on at least one thing. It is definitely a bad thing when kids over 4-years still play with imaginary friends. However, horror movies are more vehement on the subject. That is especially true of the “imaginary” monster plaguing the Parsons family in Brandon Christensen’s Z (not to be confused with Costa-Gavras’s film), which premieres today on Shudder (in time for Mother’s Day).

Joshua Parsons used to be a good kid, until he started playing with an ominously controlling imaginary friend, who prefers to go by just plain “Z.” Since then, young Parsons has become disruptive in school and violent with his classmates. His parents even take him to a noted child psychologist, but Dr. Seager is not very Spockian. He assures them their son is fine, but it gives him a moment of pause when he hears the name “Z.”

Z is built around a familiar concept, but the execution is strong. There are some very creepy elements, as well as moments that will truly horrify any parent. Having previously helmed Still/Born, Christensen really seems to have it in for parenthood, but this is a much more effective film.

Z himself is nicely designed and seen on-screen just enough to maximize the dramatic impact and sufficiently withheld to build a sense of mystery. Of course, Christensen also has a genre ace-in-the-hole with Stephen McHattie, who plays a good doctor this time around, as Dr. Seager.

A Good Woman is Hard to Find

She is a vulnerable young woman with a cache of drugs hidden in her Northern Ireland council estate flat. She is not blind, like Audrey Hepburn in Wait Until Dark. She is a young widow with two young children and no money to speak. That means her prospects for survival (short-term and long-term) are probably much worse in this class-conscious thriller. Living day-to-day was already a struggle for Sarah before she found herself in the middle of a drug score gone-wrong in Abner Pastoll’s A Good Woman is Hard to Find, which releases on VOD this Friday.

Sarah and her husband Stephen were never rich, but they got by before he was murdered. Their little boy Ben witnessed the attack, but the trauma struck him mute. Sarah’s stern mother offers cold comfort, so it is largely her against the world. The cops are not even investigating Stephen’s death because of his criminal record, so when the lowlife Tito literally bursts into her flat and life, she feels she has nowhere to turn.

Tito managed to rob a shipment of illicit white powder from Leo Miller’s drug syndicate. In addition to being a pedantic grammarian, Miller is vicious when crossed. That is why the sleazy Tito wants to use her flat as his stash house. His presence is definitely a threat to her children’s safety, but Miller and his associates are even more dangerous.

Arguably, Good Woman is street-smart and naturalistic to a fault, with the social realism occasionally threatening to overwhelm the thriller elements. Still, when Pastoll (who previously helmed Road Games) lets things get violent, the blood splatters and pools quite spectacularly.

Better Days: Bullying in China

It was a big hit in China, but its theatrical release was mysteriously delayed by the increasingly censorious and censoring state film authorities. Outsiders were baffled what led the Party to also pull the film from international film festivals, but we might hazard a few guesses. For one thing, the punky Xiao Bei is keenly aware of the surveillance cameras posted throughout the city. Perhaps more fundamentally, the Chongqing police always side with the privileged, no matter how viciously their entitled teenagers bully the children of the less fortunate. The students of Hong Kong can definitely relate. However, one smart but socially disadvantaged girl finds an unlikely guardian angel in HK filmmaker Derek Tsang’s Chinese-production, Better Days, which releases today on BluRay.

China’s “gaokao” national university entrance exam is fast approaching, but one of Chen Nian’s classmates will not be sitting for it after all, because she just killed herself. It wasn’t the academic pressure. It was the bullying from Wei Lai and her clique. Unfortunately, Chen becomes their next target, after she covers the face of their dead classmate, to prevent even more social media posts.

Chen Nian is one of the smartest in the class, but she rarely sees her mother, who is constantly on the run, from creditors and unhappy customers for her dodgy, distribution-marketed cosmetics. She really has no support system, until Xiao takes it upon himself to protect her (after she tries to interrupt a group of thugs who jumped him). He initially intimidates Wei, but when she returns to her old ways, he escalates the violence—perhaps fatally. Or not. Just what happened on that fatal night is a secret screenwriters Lam Wing Sum, Li Yuan, & Xu Yimeng will tease out over the third act.

Better Days is in fact a film brimming with social conscience and moral outrage. None of its bite is softened by the ludicrous tacked-on epilogue, wherein lead actor Jackson Yee reads off a laundry list of recent government initiatives to fight bullying. That many programs proves the government really doesn’t care, because if Xi-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed Jinping really wanted to stop bullying, he would just tell his underlings to have it stopped.

The Queen at War, on PBS

When Queen Elizabeth II gave her rousing CCP-Virus speech, you could tell she was her father’s daughter (he was King George VI, the subject of The King’s Speech). She watched her father rally his nation first-hand, with the full knowledge she would one day succeed him. Viewers learn how World War II shaped young Princess Elizabeth into the iconic monarch we recognize today in the one-hour special, The Queen at War, produced and directed by Christopher Bruce, which premieres tomorrow on PBS.

Princess Elizabeth was only 13 years-old when the war broke out, but she was already keenly aware of her altered destiny. Unlike other privileged aristocratic children, Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret were never shipped off to the Americas for safe-keeping. As a result, they were keenly aware of the dangers of the Blitz. In fact, a German bomb nearly killed her parents, when it fell on Buckingham Palace. Ironically, that narrow miss was considered a blessing by the royal family, because it allowed them to console bombed-out East-Enders as equals. Tragically, they also shared their countrymen’s sense of loss when Elizabeth’s beloved uncle, Prince George, the Duke of Kent became the first Royal to die in military service in approximately 450 years.

Young Elizabeth was rarely further than Windsor, unless she was on a morale boosting tour, which was often. She also followed in her father’s footsteps, making war-time broadcasts to British children abroad. However, Elizabeth really felt like she had joined the war effort in earnest when she enlisted in the Auxiliary Territorial Services (somewhat equivalent to the WACS), making her the first woman in the Royal Family to serve full-time in active military service.

The Queen at War will definitely give viewers keen insight into the Queen’s famous stiff upper lip public persona and her iron resolve. It will also inspire genuine waves of new respect. Princess Elizabeth looks so young in the archival footage and still photos Bruce and editor Laurence Williamson intelligently and effectively incorporate throughout the program. It is rather amazing to imagine how much responsibility she assumed at such an innocent age.

I Led 3 Lives: Railroad Strike Attempt

One common misconception Millennials have regarding socialism is their belief it will allow them to work whatever way they want, whenever they want to. However, the textbook definition of socialism is state control of the means of production: natural resources, capital, and labor. So, if you consider yourself labor, the state would tell you what to do and when to do it. There is no reason to think this control will necessarily favor the working class. Today’s China is a perfect example. It rigidly controls the labor market to favor Party-connected oligarchs, consigning the lower classes to lives of economic hardship. This isn’t an anomaly. It is the essence of socialism.

Of course, Party propaganda frequently targeted the working class, but during the Soviet era, trade unions that were not puppets of the Party were harshly oppressed. Just ask Lech Walesa and Solidarity about that. Here in America, there was a pitched battle between the Soviet-backed labor faction led by William Z. Foster and the free labor unions represented by former Communist Jay Lovestone. Herbert Philbrick would definitely line-up with Lovestone and so would his dad, as we see in “Railroad Strike Attempt,” the next episode of the I Led 3 Lives binge, which is findable online and on Alpha Video’s non-chronological I Led 3 Lives Volume 3.

Philbrick starts his day with an unexpected visit from his father, a railway man, who is rather baffled by all the strike talk swirling around the station. Philbrick has a suspicion who might be behind it that is quickly confirmed by his Communist Party masters. They are indeed agitating for a railroad strike, to hamstring American industry. The Party has need of Philbrick’s copywriting talents for their pro-strike leaflets, which should not sound like Communist propaganda, but must also clearly threaten violence against “scabs.” Needless to say, these are not mere threats. The Party will dispatch strong-arm thugs to make good on the promise of Philbrick’s flyers.

AMEX/PBS: George W. Bush

Back during the dog days of 2005, Pres. George W. Bush rather upended his administration when he had them assemble an action plan for a doomsday pandemic scenario. He did not think the nation would use it during his term, but he presciently foresaw its need in the not-so distant future. Fifteen years later, the current administration dusted off the Bush plan, because that is what they had. Without George W. Bush, things would be even worse during this CCP-virus crisis. Unfortunately, that is the sort of greatly needed perspective that is largely missing from American Experience’s two-part George W. Bush, which premieres this Monday and Tuesday on PBS.

If nothing else, American Experience pretty much definitively proves the left-wing bias of the media, because the vast majority of its talking heads are journalists, nearly all of whom are determined to keep litigating the Iraq War. Time and again we were told there were no weapons of mass destruction when the truth is more complicated. Even the New York Times reported considerable discoveries of chemical weapons, which definitely qualified as WMDs—they just weren’t WMD-enough for the media’s preferred narrative.

Fittingly, AMEX starts with the fateful day of September 11^th and then flashes back to Bush’s formative years in Texas. To give credit where it is due, co-writer-producers Barak Goodman & Chris Durrance and their on-screen commentators are relatively sympathetic when addressing the awakening of Christian faith that transformed Bush from a hard-drinking slacker into a focused professional—with political aspirations. Of course, much is made of his somewhat strained relationship with his father Bush 41, as one would expect, with good reason.

The AMEX profile is also quite strong when it chronicles Bush’s political rise in Texas (particularly his wooing of Democratic Lt. Gov. Bob Bullock), his PEPFAR campaign to treat AIDS in Africa (saving approximately 5 million lives, according to estimates), and his handling of the financial crisis (in fact, the talking heads are so laudatory, it will start to make many viewers suspicious). Weirdly, the pivotal and defining period of 9/11 and its aftermath is handled rather perfunctorily, like it embarrasses Goodman & Durrance to consider the full implications of a coordinated terrorist attack that killed nearly 3,000 people.

The Pierce Brothers’ The Wretched

It is summer vacation—prime time for slashers. However, a sullen teen working at a marina will face a danger that is earthier and more supernatural and pagan in nature. Of course, he still has the universal teen problems relating to girls and his family, but he also suspects some kind of forest entity is preying on the summer renters next door in the Pierce Brothers’ The Wretched, which releases today at select drive-ins and on VOD platforms.

Ben’s parents are divorcing and he is not so subtly siding with his mother, so he is anticipating spending summer vacation working for his marina-managing father Liam like it is root-canal. To make matters even more awkward, he soon discovers the old man is already dating a co-worker. Hanging out by the lake might sound like a cool summer job, but Ben is keenly aware of his “townie” status. He even ruins a promising flirtation with Mallory, a cool co-worker.

As if his teen alienation were not bad enough, Ben starts noticing strange behavior next door. One night, he returns to Liam’s house, finding the neighbors’ six-ish year-old son Dillon shivering in fright of his mother. Eventually, his father collects him, but the following day Dillon has disappeared and his father seems to have no memory of him. With the help of the internet, Ben soon concludes an ancient tree-witch has gotten its claws into the next-door family. Unfortunately, it also knows that he knows.

Wretched never tries to get to fancy, but it doesn’t need to, because the Pierces so effectively balance elements from the pagan and randy teen horror traditions. Without question, the best parts of the film involve Ben’s relationship with Mallory. It would be overstating matters to directly compare The Wretched to WarGames or Rear Window (seriously, no), but you can see how those films might have influenced their scenes together, which is definitely something.

Nightfire (Short Film), Co-Starring Dylan Baker

Ukraine could use a few good action heroes right about now. Unfortunately, these two American super-spies will probably not qualify. However, the aftermath of their latest mission gets so complicated, they might end up doing the right thing anyway in director-co-screenwriter-co-editor Brando Benetton & cinematographer-co-editor Garrett Nicholson’s longish (43-minute) short, Nightfire, which releases today on streaming services.

In the very-near future, the American government has essentially purchased the embattled nation of Ukraine for two billion dollars, so Putin launches a nuclear strike, ending the world and the picture, except apparently not in this alternate universe. Instead, Agents Carter and Ross are dispatched to recover micro-drives holding sensitive information regarding the transaction. In the process, they also rescue Prof. Olivetti, an Italian national held hostage by the terrorists—or so it seems.

After returning to a hero’s welcome, Carter discovered they were being played by shadowy conspirators, which makes him a target, (whereas the more cynical Ross sort of figured as much from the start). Thusly launches an admirably cinematic chase through the streets of Verona.

Nightfire started out as a student film, so its professional sheen, legit distribution, and casting of the highly recognizable Dylan Baker in a supporting role are impressive. The action sequences are also nicely produced, but Benetton & Los Silva’s narrative is really a tangled web of credibility issues and predictable clichés. Maybe we should be grateful the American operatives are not the villains here, but that dubious honor is still reserved for an American senator (who weirdly seems to wield presidential-level power).

Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin

“Clothes make the man,” Mark Twain told us. In this case, they make a French loser obsessive and delusional. Georges turns outlaw after donning a vintage Davy Crockett-style jacket. Indeed, he is so taken with it, he wants it to be the only jacket in the world, which is fine by the jacket in French provocateur Quentin Dupieux’s Deerskin, which opens virtually tomorrow.

Apparently, Georges has gotten the boot from his wife, but he rebounds with the jacket. Unwisely, he blows all his cash on it, before he discovers his wife froze their joint account. It wouldn’t have mattered anyway. The deerskin fringe just called to him. Fortunately, the seller threw in an old digital video camera that will allow him to pose (dubiously) as a filmmaker while hiding out in a provincial tourist town, during the off-season.

Despite his cluelessness, Georges recruits Denise, the local bartender and an aspiring film editor, for his film project. She can tell he is an amateur, but his supposedly experimental footage appeals to her hipster sensibility—especially when he starts filming the murders his jacket tells him to commit.

It is rather baffling how a dreary misfire like Deerskin could be picked up for distribution when Dupieux’s drolly subversive Keep an Eye Out has yet to get a real American release. Frankly, the best things about Deerskin are composer Janko Nilovic’s Bernard Hermann-esque musical cues. Unfortunately, the playfulness of Dupieux’s past films (especially Wrong, Reality, and Keep an Eye Out) is largely missing this time around. Instead, Dupieux belabors tired themes of “toxic masculinity.” If you don’t know what that term means, it is the kind of swagger the G.I.’s had when they liberated Europe from fascism. Obviously, they look askance at that kind of “toxic” thing in France.

An Engineer Imagines: Appreciating Peter Rice

Generally speaking, architects are the ones with the visions. Engineers are hired to get the job done. However, as designs have become grander and less conventional, engineers have had to be more creative in realizing their visions. Peter Rice is a perfect example. He was the lead structural engineer on iconic buildings such as the Sydney Opera House, the Centre Pompidou, the Louvre Pyramid, and the Lloyd’s of London Building. In his relatively short life, Rice helped drastically alter the look and possibilities of urban architecture. Marcus Robinson celebrates Rice’s legacy in the quietly reverential documentary An Engineer Imagines, which releases virtually today, in select markets.

During his tenure with the Arup Group, a design and engineering consulting firm, Rice played a leading role in the construction of the aforementioned landmarks, as well as Paris’s La Grande Arche de la Defense, the science museum and park complex of La Villette, and the new façade of Lille Cathedral. They are all stunning looking buildings, but Robinson weirdly spends a disproportionate amount of time discussing the lighting scheme Rise designed for the Full Moon Theatre, exclusively utilizing moonlight. Granted, it is a neat idea, but the Full Moon gets more screen-time than the Louvre Pyramid.

Frankly, the cinematic look of Rice’s projects really is the saving grace of Robinson’s film. The pace is slow to the point of even being sluggish, while the remembrances of Rice’s friends and colleagues are as respectful as you would expect, but not especially colorful. To make matters worse, Rod Morris’s score is exactly the kind of unobtrusive background music that could very well lull many viewers to sleep.

Shatter: Hammer’s Second Shaw Brothers Co-Production

This would be Peter Cushing’s final feature film for Hammer, but he did not reprise any of his famous gothic characters. He only shot for four days, but they were all on-location in Hong Kong, so at least he got an exotic trip out of it. Stuart Whitman played the title character but the real stars are the gritty 1970s-era HK locations seen throughout Michael Carreras’s Shatter (a.k.a. Call Him Mr. Shatter), Hammer Film’s second not-so great co-production with the Shaw Brothers, which releases today on BluRay.

Shatter is a hitman who usually contracts out his services to the Western intelligence agencies. Unfortunately, the Hong Kong drug syndicate tricked him into executing the particularly nasty and destabilizing assassination of an African dictator. When Shatter complains to his regular HK contact, he finds he is now persona non grata. Even worse, Hans Leber, the money man for the contracting cartel, refuses to pay his fee.

Paul Rattwood, the local British station chief gives Shatter one day to leave town, but he is not going anywhere until he gets his money and some payback. Fortunately, he recruits a talented martial arts expert, Tai Pah, who can help keep him alive. However, Shatter is even more interested in Tai Pah’s sister Mai-Mee, a strictly professional masseuse working in a dodgy massage parlor.

Hammer’s first Shaw Brothers co-pro was the unfairly under-rated Legend of the 7 Golden Vampires, in which Cushing returned to the iconic role of Van Helsing. However, Shatter was sort of an additional throw-in from the start. It probably did not help that the original director, Monte Hellman, was fired early during the production, with Hammer president Carreras taking over.

Nevertheless, Lung Ti has several cool fight scenes as Tai Pah and his fellow Shaw Brothers regular Lily Li is warmly charismatic as Mai-Mee. The real problem is Stuart Whitman, who was badly miscast as the steely Shatter. Reportedly, he was physically ill during production—and he looks it. Of course, Cushing does his thing as Rattwood, but Anton Diffring (whose spotty previous Hammer tenure included their unsold 1958 pilot, Tales of Frankenstein) basically phones it in as Leber.

Tribeca ’20: Somebody Up There Likes Me

During rare nights-off from the Rolling Stones’ constant tour, their saxophonist-sideman, Tim Ries is allowed to book gigs for his “Rolling Stone Project” at nearby jazz clubs. When I saw him play Dazzle in Denver, Ronnie Wood was also there, checking out the show incognito in the back. It was nice to see him digging the music. As the last full official band-member, Wood has an interesting place in rock & roll history, but he wasn’t plucked out of obscurity. Wood reflects on his career in music and chaos that came with it in Mike Figgis’s documentary profile Somebody Up There Likes Me, which would have screened at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival, had the CCP and their loyal stooges at WHO not lied to the world regarding human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus.

Figgis has always been very hands-on composing music for his films. He is probably best-known for Leaving Las Vegas, but his subsequent career has been very up-and-down. Fortunately, his approach with Wood is quite similar to Red, White, and Blues, his laidback contribution to Martin Scorsese’s PBS anthology, The Blues. Figgis’s musical background also presumably helped build rapport with Wood, who discusses health and addiction issues with great frankness.

Figgis does not interview a lot of talking heads, but the ones he does are pretty impressive, including fellow Stones Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, and Charlie Watts. He also talks to fellow Faces member Rod Stewart, Imelda May (who played with Wood early in her career), and Wood’s wife, Sally. We also get to hear Wood rehearsing informally in the studio.