Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Return of Mizuno (short)

Isn’t it convenient to have all your favorite 1980s plot points collected in one handy digital twenty-teens-friendly format? Hikaru Tsukuda has performed this public service, wackily mashing up Scanners, The Empire Strikes Back, Akira, Blade Runner, and obviously, Tampopo. It is time to hit the mean streets and noodle shops of Tokyo with a disillusioned psychic killer in Tsukuda’s Return of Mizuno (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Ithaca Fantastik film festival.

Instead of withdrawing to a convent or spiritual retreat, Mami, the retired and retiring former government assassin now delivers ramen for a noodle shop. However, when her last great nemesis Mizuno resurfaces in Tokyo, leaving a trail of exploded heads in his wake, her dodgy former boss tries to lure her back into service. However, it will be Mizuno himself who forces her hand when he kills a colleague at the ramen shop.

That makes it personal, but it will get even more personal. When the psychic battle is joined, Mami learns Mizuno’s Darth Vader secret. Then things really start to go bonkers.

Return has a deliberately low-fi, grungy aesthetic that matches its goofball sense of humor and sentimental nostalgia for 1980s science fiction and ramen films. Its defiant lunacy is reminiscent of Noboru Iguchi, but without the leering naughtiness (we’ll have you know Mami always maintains a dignified sense of decorum, thank you very much.)—or Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s Beautiful New Bay Area Project, with its tongue more firmly planted in its cheek.

Frankly, we’d probably hate Return if it were an American film, but we rather like it, since its Japanese. It starts with Naoko Matsuda, who makes one of the most endearing hard-bitten killers you are ever likely to meet. She also displays strong action chops and a healthy sense of humor is probably implied simply by her participation.

Return unleashes plenty of madness, but it never gets slapsticky, because Tsukuda always stays true to his inspirations. It is definitely the sort of film that is best seen with an “in the spirit” audience, so Ithaca Fantastik is a perfect venue for it. Likely to bring down the house, it screens this Sunday (11/13), as part of the Long Form Short Films showcase.

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Miruthan

How about a zombie movie for all the New Yorkers staggering around dazed and confused? We can make it a Tamil one, for extra added un-Trump-ness. Ooty is about to be over-run by the shuffling hordes and they’re not staying put in Shakti Soundar Rajan’s Miruthan (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Ithaca Fantastik film festival.

Karthik could have been a super cop, but since he is the sole support of his beloved kid sister Vidhya, he transferred to traffic to stay safe. Yet, somehow he managed to show-up the local political boss, while falling hard for his doctor daughter, Renuka. As a form of ill-timed payment, the pol’s followers kidnap Vidhya, just as the zombie apocalypse hits.

This makes things a little awkward when Renuka asked for assistance getting to the Indian CDC in Coimbatore. However, Karthik agrees once Vidhya is safely rescued. Actually, “safe” really isn’t the right word in the context of a zombie uprising.

There is no getting around the broad, schticky humor of the first half hour. Let’s just say Karthik has a portly, incompetent partner and man oh man, can he ever mug. However, when the film settles down the run-and-shoot zombie business, it gets pretty good. These are definitely fast zombies and they are decidedly fierce. They also have a cat-like aversion to water, which gives rise to a cool scene with a fire hose.

Jayam Ravi and Lakshmi Menon have decent star-crossed chemistry as Karthik and Renuka. Anikha Surendran is also rather poised as young Vidhya. However, Kaali Venkat and Sriman wage a pitched battle to see who can be the more annoying goofball, Karthik’s partner Malai or the mall rent-a-cop they pick up along the way.

So, have they called Michigan or Wisconsin yet? Miruthan might be the kind of brainless, brain-eating entertainment New Yorkers could use about now. Still, it pales in comparison to Train to Busan, the new gold standard for zombie cinema. Recommended as some meathead fun, Miruthan screens this Saturday (11/12), as part of this year’s Ithaca Fantastik.

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Nova Seed

In ancient Rome, the Christians were thrown to the lions. In this Romanesque future, the lion will be thrown to the kaiju. Technically, he is not a lion. He is a NAC (neo-animal combatant). Whatever you call him, he is not inclined to be cooperative, but he just might save the day anyway in Nick DiLiberto’s Nova Seed (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Ithaca Fantastik film festival.

Initially, it is not clear the giant lion will be our protagonist. He seems to be the beast a human gladiator is forced to combat, which indeed he is. The two-legged tool puts up a good fight, but he is no match for the NAC. Having proved himself in combat, the enhanced lion is shipped off to serve as humanity’s reluctant champion. The plan is to have him battle the evil Dr. Mindskull and his kaiju minions. The NAC must also pry loose the cosmic being known as the Nova Seed from the clutches of Mindskull, who has harnessed her powers of creation and destruction.

Understandably resentful of the shabby treatment he has received, the NAC goes rogue at the first opportunity (about five minutes after landing on the planet). However, he still stops to liberate the Nova Seed, out of a shared sense of underdog solidarity. At that point, the chase is on.

Although clocking in just over an hour, Nova Seed does not skimp on the action. It is pretty much pedal to the metal, just from the start. In terms of style and aesthetics, it is sort of a cross between ThunderCats and the original Heavy Metal, but DiLiberto and his co-screenwriter brother Joe toss in some intriguing world-building details for good measure.

In all honesty, Nova Seed totally shows up Dash Shaw’s My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, for being excessively twee and insufficiently ambitious. Both films use deliberately simple styles of animation for effect, but Shaw’s film just ambles around like cartoon mumblecore, whereas Nova Seed has story and attitude coming out of its snout. Recommended for nostalgic animation fans, Nova Seed screens Friday afternoon (11/11), as part of this year’s Ithaca Fantastik.

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Kammatti Paadam

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ithaca Fantastik ’16: Autohead

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

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

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

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

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

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