AAIFF ’24: We’re All Gonna Die

In this world, most insurance claims are probably filed under “acts of God,” because there isn’t a category for huge cosmic alien “spikes.” Whenever they appear, they cause a lot of death and destruction, before teleporting, or “jumping” somewhere else on Earth. After 1,500 jumps, give or take, people have gotten used to living with the constant threat of potential annihilation, but Kai and Thalia have yet to move beyond their personal grief. However, the spike literally gets them physically moving when it displaces their treasured belongings from Arizona to Washington State in Matthew Arnold & Freddie Wong’s We’re All Gonna Die, which screens tonight during the 2024 Asian American International Film Festival.

Frankly, nobody really seems to be curious about what the spike is and what it does. Even though its impact is bafflingly random, people just accept it as a plot device, including Thalia and Kai. She was delivering her prize honey bees, who had a hot date pollinizing a farm. He was figuring out where he should go in the mullet-worthy sportscar he inherited from his best friend. They nearly collided. Instead, a freak spike came down, swapping the area with her bee-trailer and his car, with some mountainside land they deduce must be up in Washington.

Since Thalia still has her truck, they eventually hit the road (after some pointless debate) to reclaim what is theirs. Of course, we know it will turn into a therapy session. Ironically, both his pal and her husband and daughter died of tragic but conventional ways unrelated to the spike, which in a way, makes their losses worse.

As you might have figured, Arnold & Wong’s screenplay is really an on-the-road story, spruced-up with science fiction window dressing. The comedy is inconsistent, at best. However, the way it depicts the vibe of life amid a slow apocalypse is surprisingly resonant. In a way, it is reminiscent of Israeli society, which chooses to embrace life, despite the constant threat of death and terrorism.

First Time Caller, Written by Mac Rogers

A lot of people thought they discovered something new with podcasts, but they were really just reinventing radio. It used to be the biggest form of mass entertainment in the 1930s, when it spawned the first media-driven end of the world scare with Orson Welles’s War of the Worlds. Presumably, that was an inspiration for this story, but the apocalyptic events are all too real in J.D. Brynn & Abe Goldfarb’s First Time Caller, written by Mac Rogers, which releases today on VOD.

As the film opens, Brent Ziff is right where he always wanted to be—making big money podcasting alone in his house. He sort of combines the conspiracy-laden subject matter of Art Bell and George Noory with the abrasive humor of Howard Stern. He also has an eccentric stable of regular caller-contributors, whom he similarly mocks, but his anti-woke politics lean more towards Glenn Beck or Dan Bongino. Regardless, Leo Short has been a longtime listener, but as you can guess, this will be his first night calling in.

“Shorty,” as Ziff quickly dubs him, has a bizarre warning: a freak tsunami is about to hit Seattle without warning. Of course, Ziff assumes he is a crank, who cannot even devise a doomsday theory he can profit off, until it happens. Then he hopes Short can be something like Bell’s The Day After Tomorrow for his show. However, he starts to grasp the stark reality of the situation when Shorty keeps predicting further natural disasters, one after another.

Adapting from his own podcast, The Earth Moves, Rogers nicely translates the aesthetics of classic radio dramas (and paranoid podcasts) to the feature dramatic format. It definitely has a stagey set-up, limited to a confined set, with most of the supporting cast literally “phoning in” their performances, but the story wouldn’t work otherwise. If Ziff were not so sequestered from the world, he would be swept up in the Armageddon rather than reacting to it.

In fact, the writing is quite smart. Rogers also wrote an amazing Karel Capek homage titled Universal Robots that would be tricky to adapt to the screen, but it would be fascinating to watch someone attempt it. Regardless, this is a terrific example of science fiction that is driven by ideas rather than visual effects. Arguably, it is somewhat stylistically and thematically akin to Andrew Patterson’s The Vast of Night, which also relied on analog phone calls and radio broadcasts, but that 1950s-set retro sf film is even more spellbinding.

Silent Night: Last Christmas, Ever

It is sort of like The Big Chill, but the suicide[s] haven’t happened yet. Unfortunately, the world is ending, so a group of old college friends decided to spend their last Christmas together before the inevitable. The government says we’re doomed, so it must be true, right? One of the kids is not so sure and he is willing to risk it in director-screenwriter Camille Griffin’s Silent Night, which releases in theaters and streams on AMC+ tomorrow.

Frankly, even if you had decades of holidays ahead of you, it is hard to imagine wanting to spend even one with some of these obnoxious people. The worst are Sandra, who clearly thinks she is Kim Cattrall’s Sex and the City character, her dopey husband Tony, and their massively spoiled daughter Kitty. The caustic Bella and her passive girlfriend Alex are not much fun either. Frankly, James and Sophie are far and away the most likable, but everyone is against her, because the younger woman is not part of their clique. Ordinarily, Nell and Simon are probably decent enough, in a British upper-crust kind of way, but they are on edge and trying way too hard. Their disgustingly precocious and sensitive son Art is not making things any easier.

For some strange reason Art is not ready to just give up and die. As in many end-of-the-world movies, Silent Night is cagey about the exact “science” of the apocalypse. Apparently, it involves a green cloud sweeping the planet. Regardless, it is surely our fault somehow. Fortunately, the British government has supplied all legal residents with a handy no-more-mornings-after pill. Yet, Sophie is reluctant to take it, because she is pregnant.

There is something in Silent Night to rub everyone the wrong way. Not bothered by the vacuous characters or a gratuitous swipe at the UK Conservatives? Well, maybe you will be put off by its invitation to doubt the pronouncements of governments and so-called “science” authorities (like, I don’t know, Fauci maybe?). As a result, you really have to respect Griffin for staking out some a-plague-on-both-your-houses territory. However, the people are still horrifyingly cringy.

Tribeca ’19: Only

The difficult thing about the apocalypse is how it puts a strain on romantic relationships. Frankly, Will is pretty lucky to be involved with Eva, because she just might be the last woman on Earth. A deadly virus has swept the planet, but it is only fatal to women. Beyond the catastrophic death toll, the social disruption is profound in director-screenwriter Takeshi Doscher’s Only, which screens during the 2019 Tribeca Film Festival.

It is kind of like Night of the Comet, but the disease spread in its wake is more discriminatory. Will and Eva tried to save her roommate Carolyn, but while waiting in the hospital, he notices all the incoming victims are women. Instead, he tries to save Eva by turning her apartment into a quarantine chamber, following the instructions of her father, an infectious disease specialist in India. They assume he will only have to keep her sequestered for a few days, but months go by without the discovery of a cure.

Eventually, the government starts sweeping up surviving women from their hiding places, to utilize their eggs in the re-population planning program. Yet, despite the dangers, Eva gets increasingly angsty to feel the sun again and get out from under Will’s controlling thumb.

So, according to Doscher, in times of crisis, women get emotional, while men get controlling.  Both are stereotypes, but at least Doscher gives solid grounding for every difficult and mistaken decision Eva and Will make. This is a deeply intimate apocalyptic film—probably the most since David Mackenzie’s Perfect Sense. Indeed, the Will’s loving and fraying relationship with Eva is far and away the most compelling aspect of the film. They feel like a real couple, with real history, and real issues.

Both Leslie Odom Jr. and Freida Pinto hold up under Doscher’s searing focus, carrying the nearly two-handed film quite well. They have genuine chemistry together, but they also convincingly portray the messiness of a relationship under extreme strain. Frankly, we have gone down this apocalyptic road before, with only a tragic couple to guide us (as in Orthwein & Sullivan’s Bokeh), but Odom and Pinto still make us give a darn.

Doscher’s calibration of societal breakdown is somewhat fresh and different. Things have completely fallen apart, yet there is still enough infrastructure and social framework for people to continue going through the motions of their previous lives. However, his vision of the Federal government turned into a dystopian jack-booted police state is a tiresome cliché. In reality, can you imagine the politically correct panic if a disease really hit women and children (by extension) hardest?

Regardless, Doscher’s leads keep us thoroughly invested throughout Only. It might not be the most original film of the year, but it effectively taps into the fear of H-something super-viruses that is still very much percolating within our collective subconscious. Recommended for fans of Armageddon, Only screens again this Thursday (5/2) and Saturday (5/4), as part of this year’s Tribeca.

PFF ’19: Last Sunrise

The sun doesn’t always shine, but renewable energy activists assume it will always rise again in the morning. It turns out they were wrong. When the sun mysteriously disappears, the world is plunged into darkness. However, an anti-social astronomer and his troubled neighbor will try to survive anyway in Wen Ren’s Last Sunrise, which screens as part of the 2019 Phoenix Film Festival.

When Sun Yang notices the strange disappearance of a distant star, he jumps to some apocalyptic conclusions. Wang Yung, the mind behind the post-fossil fuel solar power revolution dismisses him hard on an internet call-in program, but the next day he admits the truth over a private line. What happened to KIC846 will happen to our sun in a mere matter of minutes.

Sun (the scientist) forms a hasty alliance of convenience with his neighbor, Chen Mu, who needs someone to drive her to her parents’ home in an outer district. Sun hopes to meet up with Wang in his luxurious compound, in the assumption the revered scientist has an immediate survival strategy. In fact, there is a possible safe haven in remote District 4, but getting there will be tricky. Since society entirely converted to solar, all cars and electric devices are slowly dying. Of course, no sun also means no wind. Plus, without the sun in the center, our solar system has become unmoored. It is a stressful situation that brings out the worst in many people, but Sun and Chen will slowly form protective feelings for each other.

Frankly, Last Sunrise is probably the most emotionally devastating end-of-the-world film since Zak Hilditch’s These Final Hours. As Wen and co-screenwriters Elly Li, Mei Yankang, and Yu Min reveal more of Sun and Chen’s backstories, the more we come to care about them. There is also an ominous cosmic explanation for the apocalyptic disaster, much in the tradition of Cixin Liu’s Three-Body Problem trilogy that is intriguingly hinted at, but not explored to any great extent. Instead, Wen keeps his focus intimately micro.

Zhang Jue and “Ran” Zhang Yu hold up to the scrutiny remarkably well, as Sun and Chen, respectively. Their relationship dynamics are complicated, but believable and ultimately quite moving. Both take their characters on dramatic developmental arcs that always feel legit under the circumstances. In a way, their work is weirdly reassuring, since it suggests there are still opportunities for personal growth, even during Armageddon. Wang Dahong also adds some smart, psychologically complex seasoning as Wang Yung.

Wen Ren takes viewers to some dark places, figuratively and literally, yet he does not leave viewers bereft of hope, which is a neat trick. Cinematographer Matthias Delvaux really makes the newly visible constellations and heavenly bodies shimmer and shine, thereby giving the film a fable-like tone. It is a rewarding genre film that could conceivably go in a more science fiction direction should Wen Ren ever take on a sequel. Very highly recommended, Last Sunrise screens again today (4/13) and tomorrow (4/14), during this year’s Phoenix Film Festival.

BUFF ’19: The Unthinkable

What happens when a paranoid invasion thriller comes out of the country that gave us Ingmar Bergman and Lukas Moodysson? You can expect some serious angst. Alex, an emotionally damaged electro-experimental musician, has enough neuroses for all of Scandinavia. However, the mysterious crisis that befalls Sweden might just be the catalyst that reconnects him with his estranged father and the great love of his life in filmmaking collective Crazy Pictures’ The Unthinkable, which screens today during the 2019 Boston Underground Film Festival.

Alex and Anna were once a thing, but he let his family strife and resulting mental hang-ups undermine their pastoral teen romance. Years later, he is an arrogant musician (specializing in distorted piano stylings), who is out of touch with most of his old friends and family. Yet, he happens to cross paths with Anna again just as strange things start going down—like explosions in transportation hubs, drivers losing control of their cars, and planes falling out of the sky.

Everyone automatically accepts Daesh’s statement taking credit for the explosions, except Alex’s father Björn, who is good at connecting seemingly unrelated dots, because he is a paranoid conspiracy loon. He has some ideas about who might be responsible. Not to be spoilery, but they rhyme with Gagamir Spewton. Alas, the scruffy nutter hasn’t been wrong yet, much to his chagrin.

Unthinkable is basically a disaster melodrama that incorporates a handful of genre elements, but Crazy Pictures deftly keeps raising the stakes and cranking up the tension (and the family drama). Look hard enough and you can find elements of Red Dawn, X-Files, and Autumn Sonata. Frankly, Alex is more than a bit of a pill, who quickly taxes our patience, but it is rather fascinating to watch the older, wiser Björn suss out to the dastardly plot afoot.

There are also some remarkably well-coordinated scenes of multiple car collisions and plummeting helicopters, both in terms of special effects and stunt work. Unthinkable has stuff that can hang with most of what you find in Roland Emmerich’s latest films. Alas, it also has dreary old Alex.

If you want to see moody and petulant, then brother, Christoffer Nordenrot delivers it in spades as miserable Alex. On the other hand, Jesper Barkselius shows tremendous range as Björn, running the gamut from cringy abusive parent to remorseful alienated crank. Lisa Henni is also somewhat bland as Anna, but they are Swedish after all, and big, earth-shaking spectacles are usually not the most flattering actor’s showcases.

Perhaps the scariest thing about Unthinkable is how realistic it is, especially the closing coda, which clearly implies who is most likely the responsible supper-villain. It certainly establishes how much of a bummer Armageddon could be, yet it makes it all look tremendously cinematic. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic cinema, The Unthinkable screens tonight (3/24), as the closing selection of this year’s BUFF.

Slamdance ’18: Love After Time (short)

Taiwan is a democracy with the world’s fifteenth largest economy, but the UN and global diplomatic community wants to pretend it doesn’t exist. When nuclear disaster ravages the Other China, they just carry on ignoring, like business as usual. Radiation and isolation make things pretty dystopian, pretty quickly for the survivors, but life maybe has a way of hanging on in Henry Tsai Tsung-han’s short film Love After Time, which screens as part of the Anarchy shorts block at this year’s Slamdance Film Festival in Park City.

There is a new policy: only survivors with a clean health certificate are now eligible for emergency food relief. That does not sit well with the mystery woman. She sparks a riot and then shrewdly uses as a distraction to steal food. That doesn’t sit well with the officer overseeing the distribution. However, when he corners the thief in her makeshift shelter, he finds she has his number, in multiple ways. She happens to be surprisingly confident and seductive. She also realizes he is a mutant, just like her.

LAT might have the most bizarre sex scene you will see in Park City. Some survivors start growing organs in nontraditional places, if you get the picture. Eventually, we learn even the circumstances of reproduction have been affected. In some ways, LAT covers similar ground as Antonio Pandovan’s short film Eveless, but it has a more humanistic perspective. In fact, Tsai passes up many opportunities to gawk at the mutated deformities, preferring to focus on the evolving ways humans relate to each other—and whether such a term still applies to mutant survivors.

Nana Lee Chien-na also must be the spriteliest wasteland waif you will see in a month of apocalypses, but there is no denying her charisma. The Taiwanese pop idol-actress is an unusually big-name celebrity for a scruffy nuclear Armageddon short film, but good for her. Her courtship with Lee Hong-chi’s Army Officer is definitely intense and he looks pretty darned freaked and conflicted during the aftermath.

LAT directly addresses the question what does it mean to be human, which is a big theme for any film, of any length. Tsai creates a convincingly grubby dystopia that is worlds removed from his previous teen TV work. Highly recommended, Love After Time screens again tomorrow (1/22), along with Philippe McKie’s very cool Breaker, as part of the Anarchy shorts package at the 2018 Slamdance Film Festival.

It Comes at Night: Armageddon Can be a Downer

Do sudden catastrophes bring out the best or the worst in people? If you actually read actual boots-on-the-ground eyewitness reports, you invariably hear much more about folks rising to the occasion and neighbors helping neighbors. However, national media reports, typically filed from New York, trafficking rumors heard at the press club, are more likely to tell tales of looting and the like. That pessimistic view of humanity in times of crisis is particularly pronounced in Hollywood disaster movies. It is fair to ask whether those films are conditioning us to be worse people than we would otherwise be. Such is also the case in this undefined bio-outbreak survivalist drama. It will be every family for themselves in Trey Edward Shults’ It Comes at Night (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

The origins and vectors of the highly contagious doomsday virus are never really explained, but it seems to produce zombie like effects. Paul is the sort of person who comes hardwired to survive. When his father-in-law shows rabid signs of infection, Paul does what need to be done. He will do anything to protect his wife Sarah and their son Travis. However, when a desperate father invades their fortified cabin in search of water for his wife and young son, Paul is persuaded by Sarah to join forces with them. They have a water supply and a reinforced shelter. Will and Kim have livestock. It is a win-win for bother families. Yet, Paul still cautions Travis to only trust their nuclear family.

The two families get along swimmingly for about ten minutes, before suspicion starts to set in again, particularly on Paul’s part. Frankly, their falling out is as predictable as the phases of the moon. Indeed, that is the whole problem with ICAN. Bad things start to happen, simply because it is the time when those sorts of plot points typically surface in movies.

It is really a shame, because Shults does a masterful job setting the mood and establishing the mise en scene. In all honesty, ICAN is often remarkably intense, especially during the murky, flashlight-lit night-time scenes. There are times when the audience has no idea what is going on—and it is terrifying. Unfortunately, the fear and paranoia that fragments their alliance feels like it unfolds in agonizingly slow motion. In fact, it is so easy to see it coming, somebody ought to be able to stop it.

Still, Paul is the sort of tightly wound brooder Joel Edgerton was born to play. Frankly, it is an unfair dramatic mismatch when he hulks over twerpy Christopher Abbott as the supposedly wiry-tough Will. On the plus side, Kelvin Harrison Jr. shows real star potential as Travis, but rather frustratingly Carmen Ejogo and Riley Keogh are largely dramatically subservient to Edgerton and Abbott, as Sarah and Kim, respectively. At least Mikey is rock-solid dependable as Travis’s loyal dog Stanley (but sensitive viewers should not get too attached).

Shults and cinematography Drew Daniels masterfully control what we see and how we see it, prompting our subconscious to ominously fill in the shadows outside our field of vision. It is a pity the narrative is not as inspired. Shults also advances a conception of human nature that is more pessimistic than Hobbes, but it is almost knee-jerkingly consistent with prevailing media preconceptions. Let us all hope we have no occasion to test how fair and true to life that portrayal of humanity really is. Recommended solely for genre fans for its skillfully stage-managed home invasion scenes and the potent vibe of slowly mounting dread, It Comes at Night opens this Friday (6/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire and the Cinépolis Chelsea.

Panorama Europe ’17: The Erlprince

If “The Boy” is correct, there could be infinite alternate universes, but puberty is probably still miserable for him in each and every one of them. Unfortunately, he will not have time to grow out of it, because the end of the world is nigh. To top it off, he also has mother issues in Kuba Czekaj’s The Erlprince (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Panorama Europe, at MoMI.

The opening sequence deliberates echoes Goethe’s The Erlking, with key differences. The Boy’s oppressively controlling mother is driving through the night to their new digs. Physically he is fine, but emotionally he is far from hale and hearty. The rest of the world isn’t doing very well either. As part of his research into parallel dimensions, the physics prodigy has become convinced doomsday is fast approaching for his current universe.

Into this claustrophobic family unit comes “The Man.” Given his shared history with “The Mother,” he is most likely the Boy’s father, but he has never been allowed to serve in that role until now. His presence is a healthy influence on the boy, but it is probably too late for the prodigy and the world. Eventually, his psyche will shatter, with each shard reflecting a different parallel plane of reality.

Frankly, viewers shouldn’t get too hung up on the narrative arc of Erlprince. Czekaj is more interested in marrying up post-Einstein psychics with darkly fantastical romantic archetypes. Unfortunately, it all probably sounds more mind-blowing than it really is. The first two acts are dominated by teen angst and family dysfunction, whereas the third act largely compares and contrasts the Boy’s various possible Sliding Doors­-esque alternate fates. We see the Boy getting bullied by girls, before his mother comes to his rescue. There are also hints of gender-bending when the Mother adopts a boyish haircut, presumably to fill the Boy’s father figure vacancy (however, making out with the Boy’s homeroom teacher seems to be taking it to dubious extremes).

As the boy prince of physics, Staszek Cywka is a veritable picture of teen neuroses. However, Agnieszka Podsiadlik is an overpowering force to reckon with as the hot mess Mother, like a cross between Terminator’s Sarah Connor and Mommie Dearest’s Joan Crawford. Yes, you can certainly call her domineering.

The ambition of Erlprince is laudable, but it really more of a film to dispassionately analyze than a viewing experience to get swept up in. Still, Adam Palenta’s stylishly severe cinematography perfects suits the film’s cerebral alienation. Czekaj has loads of talent, but Erlprince will be limited in its appeal. Recommended for those who dig postmodern science fiction, it screens tomorrow afternoon (5/13) at MoMI, as part of this year’s Panorama Europe.

Bokeh: Doomsday in Iceland

Is it the rapture or some weird Icelandic tradition? Two American tourists wake one morning to find they are perhaps the only people left in Iceland and perhaps the entire world. At least the streets are clean and the automated geothermal power will hold out longer than fossil fuel plants. One will try to make the best of it, but the other will see the apocalypse as definitely a “glass half empty” kind of event in Geoffrey Orthwein & Andrew Sullivan’s Bokeh (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Riley was really stretching to fund this trip, but in retrospect, they could have gone first class all the way. Regardless, both he and Jenai were enjoying Iceland’s stunning natural scenery and distinctive architecture, until the end of the world happens. They just wake up one morning and everyone is gone. There are no bodies or heaps of clothes left behind. The internet still works, but social media is completely silent.

Initially, they are distracted by short term concerns and anticipating long term issues. However, around about the second act, fissures start to develop in their relationship. Riley is almost happy to accept an Adam & Eve existence with Jenai in the sensible Icelandic environment. In contrast, she is increasingly depressed by the notion everyone else she knows is apparently dead or relocated to the Hale-Bopp Comet.

The word “Bokeh” refers to the area of a photograph that is out of focus, often deliberately so for artistic effect. Even if you know Riley is an amateur photographer, who compulsively snaps away with his old school Rolleiflex, Bokeh is just a terrible title that is guaranteed to hinder the film’s business. That is a shame, because it is a pretty credible addition to the apocalyptic cinema canon. In fact, it would make a good pairing with von Trier’s Melancholia (essentially arguing the opposite thesis, regarding personality types under catastrophic stress).

It is still rather baffling that It Follows' Maika Monroe has not reached a JLaw level of popularity yet. Granted, the Independence Day sequel did not work out the way her people probably expected, but still. Bokeh is too small (and bafflingly titled) to take her to the next level, but it won’t embarrass her when she finally gets there. It is considerably moodier and more existential than Night of the Comet (the gold standard for last-people-on-Earth movies), but it works nicely as a chamber piece.

Monroe and Matt O’Leary develop some richly complex chemistry together, conveying a sense of Jenai and Riley’s significant shared history. The Icelandic setting, with its orderly streets and aesthetically severe Lutheran churches, is genuinely inspired. It resembles Planet Ikea, but with geysers. Cinematographer Joe Lindsay perfectly capitalizes on the icy loneliness of the backdrops, making the survivors look as small as they feel.

The ending is bound to be divisive, but upon reflection, audiences should accept the rightness of it all. It is a surprisingly accomplished film that deserves more eyeballs than the headscratcher title is likely to generate. Recommended for fans of doomsday movies, Bokeh opens this Friday (3/24) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Boston Sci-Fi ’17: The Open

This would be a rare case of a sports film without an equipment sponsorship. Perhaps Wilson did not want viewers to think their strings would not last through the apocalypse. At least the frames endure in Marc Lahore’s The Open (trailer here), which screens during the 2017 Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival.

Stephanie Tavernier was poised to dominate the French Open until nuclear Armageddon rudely sidetracked the world. However, she will survive and so will her dream, nursed by her denial-facilitating coach Andre. Taking refuge on the Scottish Hebrides, they continue to train as if the Open is still on. Of course, it will take two to play for the title, so Andre manages to abduct Ralph, a reluctant militia fighter, who was previously a low-ranked professional (#942) before doomsday. They still lack balls and strings for their rackets, but they Andre insists they go through the motions anyway.

Initially, Ralph finds the absurdity of it all too much to handle, but he eventually agrees training with Tavernier under Andre’s protection is probably preferable to waging a pointless urban war. Soon, he too acclimates to their mental game, but there is still a war going on out there and it makes Ralph particularly jumpy when it distantly intrudes on their strange oasis of tennis.

The Open is one of the oddest post-apocalyptic films ever made as well as the unlikeliest sports movie, but it respects the conventions of both genres, synthesizing them for its own ends. Obviously, it is considerably surreal, but Lahore largely steers clear of pretentiousness. Essentially, Lahore asks, all things considered, why shouldn’t they play tennis? It seems to be just as productive an option as anything else they might do, under the circumstances.

James Northcote and Maia Lavasseur-Costil are terrific portraying the players’ evolving relationship from ostensive rivals to something more supportive and considerably deeper. Pierre Benoist gives the film further tragic dimension as Andre, the coach who had already sacrificed so much for Tavernier, even before Armageddon.

Lahore (as director and cinematographer) makes the Hebrides look like they were dreamed up by Dalí. He might have trimmed ten or fifteen minutes while wearing his co-editor hat (with Benjamin Minet), but the film still avoids the listlessness you would expect from an absurdist allegory. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic cinema, The Open screens this Wednesday (2/15) as part of the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival.

Kadokawa at Japan Society: Virus

It is the sort of film that seems to go out of its way to sow confusion. Since its initial release, the original 156-minute cut and a truncated 108-minute international edition have both been widely circulated. There was also a Teo Macero-produced soundtrack, featuring funky tunes performed by 1970s jazz superstars, including Chick Corea, Ron Carter, David Sanborn, and Larry Corryell, but you will not hear those cuts during the film. Perhaps most bafflingly, Sonny “Streetfighter” Chiba appears in a largely passive supporting role. However, the narrative is clear enough. Thanks to the accidental release of a weaponized super-bacillus, all vertebrate life is pretty much doomed in Kinji Fukasaku’s Virus (trailer here), which screens as part of the Japan Society retrospective: Pop! Goes Cinema: Kadokawa Films and 1980s Japan.

You can blame us hawkish Yanks for developing MM88 and the East Germans for recklessly stealing it. However, it will rather unfairly be dubbed the “Italian Flu,” because that is where the first devastating outbreaks and consequential riots first manifested. Soon it is sweeping across the planet, masking its presence by amplifying existing viral diseases. President Richardson is quite disappointed in the situation, but his Chairman of the Joint Chiefs only has a mind to turn on our automatic nuclear retaliation system. This will loom large down the stretch.

Seven months later, humanity only survives on Antarctica, where the sub-zero temperatures force the virus into dormancy. It is a difficult situation, what with the eight women to three-hundred-some men ratio. It is particularly hard on seismologist Shuzo Yoshizumi. He was so obsessed with his research, he submissively allowed his pregnant lover Noriko Asami to break-up with him. It would be very Seinfeld-esque, if it were not so tragic. However, he develops feelings of protective affection for Marit, the sole survivor of the Norwegian station, and her recently delivered infant.

Directed by Fukasaku, the edgy studio hitmaker responsible for the Battles Without Honor and Humanity and Battle Royale franchises, Virus was the most expensive Japanese film of its era. Despite its considerable international distribution, it still bombed. A little distance was probably needed to appreciate how Fukasaku fuses the Western all-star disaster melodrama with a peculiarly Japanese foray into the surreal and the existential. At times, this film is just plain odd, but it also boasts a who’s who of late 1970s Irwin Allen and Alistair McLean movies, including the likes of Glenn Ford, Chuck Connors, Bo Svenson, Olivia Hussey (Zeffirelli’s Juliet playing Norwegian), Henry Silva, Cec Linder (Felix Leiter in Goldfinger), George Kennedy, and the recently departed Robert Vaughn.

Yet, far and away, the best performance comes from Masao Kusakari as the bereaved and neurotic Yoshizumi. The film really gets its heart and soul from his relationships with Yumi Takigawa’s Asami and Hussey’s Marit. However, most of his scenes were axed from the international hack-job, so you want to hold out for the long version (which of course, the Japan Society will screen).

There are a number of wonderfully over-the-top death scenes in Virus that really put it in a class by itself. Granted, it is hard to believe you could just saunter through the front door of a post-apocalyptic White House, even with 1980 security technology, but silly third acts come with the disaster movie territory. Arguably, Virus was way ahead of its time, staking a claim to pandemic territory before Outbreak, Contagion, and Twenty-Eight Days Later. It is also a lot of nostalgic fun to watch the so-of its-time cast, albeit in a rather pessimistic context. Recommended for fans of apocalyptic cinema, Virus screens this Tuesday (11/22) at the Japan Society, as part of their ongoing Kadokawa retrospective.