Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Gyo

The end of the world is nigh and it smells like feet.  Mutant fish flatulence is a tough way for humanity to go out, but it looks like our number is up, nonetheless.  Prepare yourself for a messy apocalypse in Takayuki Hirao’s Gyo (trailer here), which must be poised on the brink of taking the world by storm after it screened yesterday as a co-presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

Kaori and her friends are spending their last spring break together vacationing in Okinawa.  This will not be a good time to be near the water.  She is hot but nice.  Erika is hot and mean.  Aki, the third one, is plain and dumb.  They will act accordingly throughout the impending crisis.  It turns out the trio is on the front line.  They are the first to record an encounter with the stinky fish with strange bio-mechanical legs.  It turns out there were plenty more where that one came from and they have already overrun Tokyo.

Fearing the worst from a disconnect with her fiancé Tadashi, Kaori rushes back to the fish-battered city, hooking up with Shirakawa, an only slightly sleazy photojournalist.  Ostensibly acting as her protector, Shirakawa really wants to get a story from Tadashi’s at least partially mad scientist uncle, who has apparently become the world’s preeminent authority on “walking fish” in a matter of hours.

Nothing says End of Days like hordes of walking fish cascading over Tokyo’s boulevards.  However, it is the death stench that is the real poison, mutating humans through their open wounds.  It looks like it is payback time for all that sushi Japanese chefs served up.

By the way, Gyo is not for kids.  As if all the mutant mayhem were not enough of a red flag for parents, let’s just say Kaori’s friend Erika is kind of a tramp.  It did not screen as part of the Anime from Hell sidebar for nothing.  Considering how gleefully notorious it will surely become, Gyo is sure to be picked up by other festivals, so you’ve been warned.

Give Gyo credit—it takes the wild premise of Junji Ito’s manga and runs with it.  There are times it plays like the anime equivalent of a Roger Corman film, but how can that be a bad thing?  To Gyo’s further credit, it features a strong female protagonist, though it would probably be a stretch to call it empowering, unless you’re a fish.  It should also be noted those mutant farting fish seem to be the result of a nefarious Imperial Japanese research project during WWII.  Frankly, North Korean lunacy would be a more likely culprit, but it is just nice to see this one not blamed on the American military, as in Bong Joon-ho’s overrated The Host.

This is a good film to see with an audience.  Indeed, it is surely fair to say most of the patrons at the Japan Society felt they got their money’s worth, even if nobody will be mistaking it for a Miyazaki film anytime ever.  Worthy of a long run of midnight festival screenings, Gyo was an entertaining bit of strangeness for this year’s NYAFF and Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Japanese Cinema.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Chips

After the devastating 2011 earthquake, the city of Sendai could use something to cheer about.  An unassuming burglar could too.  He has a girlfriend considerably out of his league and a mentor who cares about him in his own gruff fashion, but he has a lot of issues gnawing at him.  However, redemption may yet arrive through the most unlikeliest of agencies in Yoshihiro Nakamura’s graceful knockout punch of a film, Potechi (Chips), the official closing film of the 2012 New YorkAsian Film Festival, co-presented with the 2012 edition of Japan Cuts: The NewYork Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema (trailer here).

Tadashi Imamura dresses like a gasman, but it is just a front.  He works pretty steadily though, since the ringleader (a.k.a. “the CEO”) of a burglary ring has taken a shine to him.  Earnest to a fault, the young thief is pretty good at his job, having been trained by one of the best—the glacially stoic Kurosawa.  Breaking-and-entering has been good to Imamura.  Through a strange set of circumstances, a job led to his relationship with the attractive Wakaba.  However, Imamura gets an odd sensation of déjà vu when he drags his indulgent girlfriend on a fateful break-in.

Imamura did not just happen to be in a certain baseball player’s apartment when the phone rings.  Ozaki has long been his sports idol.  The player used to be Sendai’s local hero during his high school years, but for several seasons he has been stuck riding the pine for the local pro franchise.  Imamura still has faith though, feeling a certain connection to the player.  As it happens, he and Ozaki share the same birth date.

Potechi (or Chips depending on which website you visit) is driven by a confluence of coincidences, yet Nakamura never bashes the audience over the head with them.  Instead, he allows them to quietly accumulate over time.  What could have been heavy as an anvil is quite subtle and beguiling, until Nakamura dexterously lowers the climatic emotional boom.

As the felonious Obiwan figure, Nao Ohmori (still best known as Ichi the Killer) displays super-heroic powers of understatement, dominating his scenes with his uber-gravitas.  Still, it is Gaku Hamada who truly sets the tenor of the film as Imamura with a performance so sincere, it sort of hurts.  Fumino Kimura’s spirited Wakaba keeps the proceedings nicely grounded, while Nakamura himself steals a few scenes as the CEO.

Potechi (Chips) is a fantastic little film, but the sixty-eight minute running time might make it difficult for some fests to program (fyi, stay for the stinger during the closing credits).  Fortunately, Japan Cuts and NYAFF will screen anything they jolly well feel like, which is why they rock.  In an elliptical way, it is a film about healing that earns its payoff fair and square.  Very highly recommended, Potechi (Chips) screens this Sunday (7/15) as the 2012 NYAFF closes and the 2012 Japan Cuts continues with its independent selections.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Monster’s Club

Not content with the sarin gas cult and the United Red Amy, transgressive auteur Toshiaki Toyoda has also relocated Ted Kaczynski to Japan.  He’s welcome to him.  Toyoda’s takes the audience inside the cabin of Ryoichi Kakiuchi, as he is called in this context, if not necessarily his soul in Monster’s Club (trailer here), which screens as a joint presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

Kakiuchi likes to send bombs to prominent members of the economic establishment.  Everyone should have a hobby.  If you are wondering why, he’d be happy to explain.  His Henry George-ish ideas on labor and production are the whole point of his terrorism.  He was not always a psychopathic loner.  Viewers will come to suspect his evil evolution was initiated by some profound family trauma, most notably involving the radical brother he idolized, when the mad bomber is visited by either ghosts from the past or hallucinations.

While not exactly soliciting sympathy for Kakiuchi, Toyoda expects viewers to appreciate his complexity.  However, the soul-deadened fanatic seems a rather simplistic, emotionally frozen character.  After a few setbacks in life, suddenly everyone is either an exploiter or an unenlightened slave in his judgment and therefore fair game for devices that go boom.

Frankly, patrons are well within their rights if they decide they are disinclined to identify with someone who kills people to serve his extremist ideology right from the outset.  To make matters more daunting, the severe reserve of Eita’s performance and the chilly detachment of Toyoda’s approach do little to pull in the reluctant, in spite of themselves.

A bold stylist, Toyoda creates some striking visuals in Club.  Yet, the epic catharsis of his last film, Blood of Rebirth, is conspicuously missing here.  A metaphysical allegory largely considered a veiled commentary on his much publicized legal trouble, Toyoda dragged the archetypal Buddhist hero Oguri Hangan Daisukeshige through the dark recesses of his soul, ultimately embracing life on the other side.   Conversely, Kakiuchi withdraws from life, while rhetorically berating those who live an unexamined existence.  Rebirth also had some monster drum breaks.  Still, Mayuu Kusakari, who was so devastating in Toyoda’s prior film, again has some finely turned moments in a smaller role, Kakiuchi’s sister, who is alive and well and beginning to understand her brother is out of his mind.

If you are looking for whizbang plotting, this is not the film for you.  If your aesthetic sensibility leans more towards the austere, then maybe.  It is certainly a challenging cinematic statement by any measure, but at least it clocks in at a manageable seventy-two minutes.  Toyoda is a filmmaker who always merits attention and his work has a tendency to appreciate in the viewers’ subconscious.  In retrospect, Rebirth has become one of my most vivid cinematic memories of 2010, so who knows how Club will ferment over time.  Narrowly recommended for hardy and slightly unkempt cineastes, rather than us tragically unhip bourgeoisie, Monster’s Club screens Sunday (7/15) as a co-selection of this year’s Japan Cuts: The New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema and the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Scabbard Samurai

What do you get when you combine the labors of Hercules with Make Me Laugh in feudal Japan?  A disgraced samurai with a lot of deep bruising.  Yet, his dignity will take the hardest hit in Hitoshi Matsumoto’s physically demanding Jidaigeki dramedy Scabbard Samurai (trailer here), which screens this weekend as a co-presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

Kanjuro Nomi is not even a ronin.  He is a deserter, who symbolically emptied his scabbard after his wife’s death from the plague.  He aimlessly roams the countryside with his young daughter Tae, who makes no secret of the higher expectations she had for her father.  Thanks largely to his thick head, they elude three distinctive looking bounty-hunters: O’Ryu the Shamisen Player, Pakyun the Pistol Boy, and Gori Gori the Chiropractikiller.  However, his luck runs out when the Tako Clan captures him.

Rather than a quick execution, Kanjuro will have to face the “thirty day feat.”  Like a Gong Show Scheherazade, Kanjuro has thirty days to make the lord’s emotionally catatonic son smile, or its hara-kiri time.  At first Tae is disgusted by the sight of her father performing belly dances and shoving foreign objects up his nose.  However, when his well-meaning guards start coaching him, she also gets with the program.  As his stunts become more elaborate Sisyphean exercises, the entire town rallies behind Kanjuro, but Matsumoto is not going for the easy Hollywood ending here.

Scabbard’s period details are passable enough, but they are hardly the point.  Frankly, it is hard to think of another film that mixes such liberal helpings of slapstick humor, maudlin sentiment, and high tragedy.  Yet, somehow it all blends together easily in Scabbard.  The impressively straight-faced Takaaki Nomi is quite the good sport, putting up with all sorts of Fear Factor humiliation, while managing to maintain Kanjuro’s dignified bearing.  As Tae, Sea Kumada is truly something else giving the old man what-for, but she is also shockingly good in her big dramatic scenes.  One-named actress-model Ryō also brings an icy charm to the proceedings as the lethal shamisen player.

Kanjuro is no Sanjuro, that’s for sure.  Yet there is something deeply heroic about him.  It is that unlikely integrity that gives the film such a unique spirit.  Sensitively helmed by Matsumoto, Scabbard Samurai is definitely not for the jaded, but that is what makes it such a nice surprise at the overlapping festivals.  Recommended without reservation for those who appreciate earnest father-daughter stories, as well as the odd pratfall, Scabbard Samurai screens this Saturday (7/14) as a joint-selection of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Hard Romanticker

It feels like the 1970’s again, in a good way.  Strutting through the streets of Shimonoseki in a leather coat, slapping about petty thugs like little girls, while some funky soul-jazz s chugs away in the background, Gu Su-yeon’s latest film certainly follows in the tradition of vintage 70’s era exploitation films.  Yet, Gu’s story of life amid the zainichi underworld is reportedly based on real life experience.  His alter-ego namesake should definitely be considered an anti-hero throughout Gu’s Hard Romanticker (trailer here), which screens as a co-presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

Bleached-blond Gu is a lone wolf freelancer, who treats the North Korean gangs with the contempt they deserve.  He enjoys the limited protection of his childhood friend Shoji, who has risen up through the ranks of the legit Yakuza.  However, when a couple of knuckleheads bludgeon to death the grandmother of an up-and-coming NK delinquent (supposedly with Gu’s encouragement), it ignites a war among street gangs that threatens to engulf the unaligned Gu.  With a crooked cop dogging his trail and his pal Shoji playing a dangerous game with the boss’s wife, Shoji is in for a rocky patch.  Of course, that does not stop him from making enemies among mobbed-up lowlifes or putting the moves on the ostensibly demur Naksuko Chieko.

Romanticker might be intended as a cautionary confessional, but its pure testosterone and adrenaline will key-up viewers to the point many will be ready to grab a length of rebar and jump into the fray.  If you want to see some spectacularly violent street fights, than this is the movie for you.  Yet, despite the wardrobe, attitude, and greasy soundtrack, Gu is no Shaft.  Frankly, there is a decidedly mean-spirited misogyny to the film that Gu the character explicitly contributes to.

An electric presence, Shôta Matsuda is all kinds of intense as the hardnosed Gu.  Sei Ashina looks great in Chieko’s sailor suit and she is quite affecting in her big dramatic scenes, almost completely undercutting viewer sympathy for the ethically challenged protagonist, as a result.  While the large ensemble of juvenile delinquents does not look particularly youthful, they are all pretty convincing when either giving or receiving a massive beatdown.

In Hard Romanticker’s world, life is cheap and sex is cheaper.  The action and attitude are highly cinematic, but the nihilism becomes a tad exhausting over time.  Recommended specifically for those who enjoy hardcore blaxploitation or Yakuza films, Hard Romanticker screens this Friday (7/13) at the Japan Society as a joint presentation of the 2012 editions of Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Tokyo Playboy Club

Do not think retro-hipness with regards to this Shinjuku hostess club.  Think more along the lines of the quickly canceled NBC TV show, squalidly trading off a rapidly fading brand name.  It is a decidedly low-rent establishment, but that is how small-time gangster Seikichi gets by.  However, a whole mess is trouble is headed towards the seedy night spot in Yôsuke Okuda’s Tokyo Playboy Club (trailer here), which screens as a co-presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

A stoic hardnose like Katsutoshi does not belong at Seikichi’s dive, but after sort of accidentally killing someone at his last straight gig, the not really reformed gangster needs to lie low in Tokyo for a spell.  He ought to be at the right place for that, but this is a chaotic time at the TPC.  Seikichi’s goofer Takahiro made off with the petty cash, only to be double-crossed by a pregnant lover.  Now he and his live-in girlfriend Eriko are stuck working off the debt.  Katsutoshi does not help matters much by picking fights with Yakuza lieutenants.  This means more tribute must be paid.  At this point, things really start to get complicated for the TPC proprietor and his staff.

Nao Ohmori of Ichi the Killer fame is all kinds of bad as Katsutoshi.  He looks like existential alienation walking.  Yet, he slowly develops some hard-earned chemistry with Asami Usuda’s Eriko.  Despite being required to spend about a third of the film in near catatonia, she also nicely handles some intriguing moments of deep self-awareness.  Raising sleaziness to new heights, Ken Mitsuishi’s oily turn as Seikichi is also certainly effective, in a contempt-inspiring way. 

Unfortunately, Okuda’s pacing is not nearly as breakneck as it ought to be, while he is hell-bent on undercutting any lasting sense of emotional payoff.  Frankly, it seems like he is too enamored with this sordid world, refusing to allow any of its characters to escape.  Ultimately, TPC is a film with several wickedly clever scenes that all hang together rather awkwardly.  Recommended more for committed aficionados of Japanese Yakuza and crime films than general patrons of Japanese cinema, Tokyo Playboy Club screens this Saturday (7/14) at the Japan Society as a joint presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and the New York Asian film festivals.

Japan Cuts ’12 & NYAFF ’12: Asura

Never nurtured, a ferocious young beast-child is entirely the product of his environment—a desperate feudal Kyoto where many resort to cannibalism to survive.  Frankly, the boy has hardly known any other food, tearing through the countryside like taboo-shattering Pac Man.  However, there are those who are able to reach his scarred soul in Keichii Sato’s Asura (trailer here), which screens as part of the Anime from Hell sidebar of the 2012 Japan Cuts, co-presented with the 2012 New York Asian FilmFestival.

Born into a world not of his making, it is minor miracle Asura lived through his first day.  Somehow he was not eaten by the rabid wolves or his hunger-deranged mother.  Those first hours will set the tone for his young life.  The juvenile berserker will inspire the wrath of the local lord when he kills and subsequently chomps down on the only heir.  However, a wandering monk tames Asura’s wild spirit with a mantra the boy cannot even understand—at least temporarily.

You will be hard pressed to find a more hardcore Buddhist than Asura’s occasional companion, but he is a decidedly ambiguous figure, apparently more content to watch the world descend into flames than to actively engage with it.  It is the kindly village girl Wakasa who has a more lasting and profound influence on Asura.  Yet, Asura remains a dangerous figure, despite or perhaps because of his growing emotional attachment to the innocent beauty.

Based on George Akiyama’s controversial manga, Asura is absolutely not for children, under any circumstances (unless parents feel like this is a good time to have the old eating-human-flesh-is-wrong talk).  Beyond the cannibalism and violence, it paints an unremittingly brutal portrait of human nature.  Indeed, the film clearly implies the line separating humanity and overt savagery is rather tenuous at best.

Though soaked in blood, the animation of Asura has a lush, painterly look.  It also features some top anime voice talent, including Madame Masako Nozawa, the seventy-five year old Dragonball veteran, viscerally expressing the title character’s existential anguish.  Yet, it is commanding tone of Kinya Kitaohgi as the monk that really packs a punch.

Again, Asura is completely inappropriate for young viewers.  A lot of adults will have trouble with it too, but for those looking to plum the depth of humanity through animation, it is rather bracing, in an uncompromisingly naturalistic way.  Recommended for patrons of extreme anime, Asura screens this Thursday (7/12) at the Japan Society, as a joint presentation of the 2012 Japan Cuts and New York Asian film festivals.

NYAFF ’12: Korean Short Film Madness

People think it’s so great to get back to nature, but it can be dangerous.  Just ask the luckless fisherman of Park Chan-wook’s groundbreaking short film.   Shot by the Oldboy auteur with his brother Park Chan-kyun entirely on an iPhone4, Night Fishing briefly made the world giddy about the possibility of cell phone cinema, before subsequent experiments brought everyone back down to earth.  A notably strange short of considerable length, the Brothers Park’s sinister tale of angling headlines the Korean Short Film Madness programming block, which screens this coming Tuesday as part of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Hard to classify, Night Fishing (trailer here) begins with a trippy musical interlude from the UhUhBoo Project, blending alt rock with traditional imagery.  Eventually settling into the story, a man sets up a camp for a spot of fishing.  According to the radio, there is a storm brewing.  There certainly is, but it turns out to be of a more metaphysical variety.  The man’s night starts to go bad when he pulls in a woman’s dead body that further alarms him when it suddenly reanimates.  Then things start getting really weird.

Considering it was shot with a consumer handhold device, the Parks achieve an impressive array of visual effects.  Stylistically, it is quite distinctive and the cast is definitely professional grade, including Park alumnus Oh Kwang-rok as the unhappy man, but it turns out to be a bit of a downer.  Imagine, a dark film from Park.

Though nowhere near as desperate as Night Fishing, it is still not easy being a kid in Choi Shin-choon’s The Lucky Gumboy.  The sad sack protagonist is definitely on the bottom of his school’s social ladder.  While he does not suffer bullying of a King of Pigs magnitude, he must buy Pikachu stickers for the stronger, more popular kids.  When a boy acting slightly off transfers into his class, he accepts responsibility for showing the newby the ropes.  The kid does not talk much, but he is a wizard with gum, blowing fantastically large bubbles.  Ironically, the drooling kid achieves recognition from their peers the awkward protagonist so craves, but he hardly seems to notice.  While it does not say much for the sensitivity of Korea’s teachers, Gumboy has a good heart and Choi displays a nice touch with the elements of magical realism.

At seven minutes, Moon Byoung-gon’s Operis Finis is definitely more of an ironic mood piece than a full fledged story.  An elderly man appears to be engaged in some rather macabre home renovations.  Actually, it is not headed where you think it is, but you might wish it were, even though it concludes on an unusually upbeat note for the Madness block.  By the way, this would be an appropriate point to note the overall program is not entirely suitable for children (but teens and pre-teens might appreciate Gumboy on its own).

Korean Short Film Madness includes two other shorts that are probably well worth seeing.  NYAFF has a good curatorial eye for film in general and they have a tradition of programming Korean shorts, largely drawn from the Mise en Scène Short Film Festival, founded by filmmakers like Park to foster emerging talent.  Recommended for connoisseurs of Korean cinema and moody short films, the Madness program screens this coming Tuesday afternoon (7/10) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYAFF ’12: Golden Slumbers

Martin Scorsese needs to dispatch an emergency film preservation team to Cambodia.  From 1960 to 1975 about 450 films were produced in the Southeast Asian country.  However, only about thirty films survived the Khmer Rouge.  The Chinese-backed Communists considered cinema just another form of capitalist decadence (which is sort of true when it is really good).  NYAFF special guest Davy Chou surveys what was lost with the handful of surviving film industry veterans in his outstanding documentary Golden Slumbers (trailer here), which screens during the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Despite seeming to have an “in” as the grandson of once prominent Cambodian director Vann Chan, many of the filmmakers who were able to escape execution (most of whom endured harsh transit conditions en-route to France) were initially reluctant to talk to Chou.  However, Yvon Hem eventually relents, taking Chou on a tour of his long abandoned Bird of Paradise studio (named for the Marcel Camus film that launched many film careers in the country, including his own).  Less reticent is Dy Saveth, the former Elizabeth Taylor of Cambodian film, now working as a dance instructor.  To this day, the hill where she once filmed a climactic scene still bears her name.

Obviously the genocidal murders and forced labor camps are the greater crimes of the Khmer Rouge regime.  Yet, the devastation of the nation’s cinema is not merely a footnote to the wider tragedy—it is a tragedy onto itself.  Listening to the movie patrons and movie-makers discussing their beloved films, now presumably lost forever, is deeply moving.  Clearly, lives and livelihoods were lost, but average Cambodian’s treasured memories and cultural heritage have also been destroyed by an ideology of death.  Watching Slumbers stirs the same emotions as the sight of a charred family photo album at a fire scene.

Slumbers also bear an unexpected but apt comparison to Jafar Panahi’s This is Not a Film, featuring many directors and actors forced to relate their films like oral history.  Yet Chou is able to convey a sense of them through movies posters, radio commercials, and soundtrack records (many of which remain widely popular).  He also stages his talking head interviews in ways that are often quite visually striking, making Slumbers unusually stylish, by documentary standards.

For any movie lover, the loss of any nation’s cinematic legacy is truly lamentable, but it is particularly so in this case.  From the tantalizing descriptions heard throughout Slumbers, many of the popular Cambodian films of the pre-Khmer Rouge era sound like high-end Bollywood, but incorporating darker supernatural and mythological elements.  Though it is impossible to know with certainty, if you are attending other NYAFF screenings, there is indeed a strong likelihood these films would have been your cup of tea.

One can only hope Chou’s documentary leads to the re-discovery of some of these lost treasures in forsaken film vaults someplace.  Nonetheless, as a film in its own right, Slumbers is quite accomplished.  It is an intelligently constructed and elegantly executed cinematic elegy that absolutely puts to shame the vacuous tributes to Hollywood glamour of recent vintage.  Profoundly moving, Slumbers is one of the best documentaries selected for a major festival this year.  Earning the highest of recommendations, Golden Slumbers screens this coming Tuesday (7/10) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYAFF ’12: Secret Love

Jin-ho and Jin-woo are not just brothers.  They are twins with Shakespearean bad luck.  Each has suffered from a coma-inducing accident, but not simultaneously.  In fact, it is when both are finally conscious and ambulatory that things really get complicated for Jin-woo’s wife.  Starring NYAFF special guest Yoon Jin-seo of Oldboy fame, Ryu Hoon-i’s Secret Love (trailer here), screens for free this coming Tuesday as a co-presentation of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival and the Korean Cultural Service in New York.

Two months after their wedding, an exhausted Yeon-yi dutifully cares for her comatose husband.  She knew he had a brother, but she is not prepared for the sight of Jin-ho.  Much to her consternation, the prodigal twin seems more interested in her emotional condition than his brother’s physical prognosis.  Yet, slowly but surely, she starts to fall for Jin-ho.  Frankly, he might just be the better of the matched set.  Of course, right when she is poised to embrace her new love for Jin-ho, Jin-woo pops up again.

The premise of Secret might sound vaguely like Sandra Bullock’s While You Were Sleeping, but it is anything but.  It starts out as a classier if more or less conventional Korean melodrama, but pivots into a sinister psychological thriller.  Indeed, it does not take Jin-woo long to figure out the reason his wife and brother are acting so awkward around him and he is slightly put out by it.  Before long, she is looking at Jin-woo like he is Charles Boyer in Gaslight—or at least she thinks it is Jin-woo.  When he changes his look to match his brother, it makes it devilishly difficult to tell them apart.

Secret begins with a rather confusing prologue that will eventually be explained during the denouement.  It is worth sticking with it though, thanks to Ryu’s wickedly stylish approach to both the forbidden love story and psychological thriller aspects of the film.  To top it off, his dizzying climax would appeal to the old master himself.

Of course, there is a reason Secret was chosen as part of the Korean Cultural Service’s mini-Yoon Jin-seo tribute series.  Her performance is sensitive, but also brittle and raw, making it far more realistic than anything you will see in a Hollywood tearjerker.  Basically hitting for the cycle, she creates a convincing portrait of a woman struggling with depression, while also appearing in some scorching love scenes.

For a time, it looked like circumstances would force Yoon to cancel her trip to New York, but she subsequently rescinded her cancelation.  If she can make it from Korea, New York cineastes have no excuse for missing Tuesday’s screening.  It’s free after all, so plan to arrive early.  A strange but compelling thriller-tragedy hybrid, Secret Love is definitely recommended for anyone who likes their cinema dark and moody when it screens this Tuesday (7/10) at the Tribeca Cinemas, courtesy of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival, in conjunction with the Korean Cultural Service.

NYAFF ’12: Nasi Lemak 2.0

Every country has its native rice dish.  In Malaysian, it is nasi lemak.  They also have their local political rabble-rousing rapper, known by his handle Namewee.  The Malaysian government was not thrilled at the prospects of the latter extolling the virtues of the former, which is why they were less than supportive of his foodie movie.  It was a hit nonetheless.  Prepare yourself for generous helpings of multi-ethnic humor (that you might not fully get) when Namewee’s Nasi Lemak 2.0 (trailer here) screens at the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Having studied abroad with a master, Hero Huang is an uncompromising specialist in Chinese cuisine.  He is beloved in the neighborhood because he stands up to all the punks, but everyone prefers the street vendors’ Malaysian food.  However, Xiao K. has need of a skilled Chinese chef.  Control of her family’s upscale restaurant depends on a Chinese cooking competition instigated by her greedy aunt, who hopes to turn the establishment over to her lover, Lan Qiao. 

Xiao K. and her father need a champion like Huang, but he has never beaten his old class rival Lan before.  After enduring a few beatings and some official harassment at the behest of Xiao K’s aunt, Huang gets with the program and sets off on a roadtrip with her to discover the mystical secrets of Malaysian cuisine in all its ethnic varieties.

Supposedly, there are a lot of jokes in Lemak that only Malaysians will understand, but the silly slapstickiness of it all is hard to miss.  Reportedly, a few local professionally-offended Muslims were upset with the film, but it is hard to understand why, unless you happen to be barking mad.  The film could also have more cameos than Around the World in Eighty Days, but many of them will be lost on Western audiences.  For instance, former Miss Malaysia Nadine Ann Thomas appears as Curry Daughter, whom Huang and Xiao constantly press to enter the Miss Malaysia contest while they stay with her curry-master father.

Namewee might have his Public Enemy moments in Malaysia, but Lemak is all rather gentle and well intentioned stuff.  Essentially, it extols unity and tolerance through Don Rickles and Jerry Lewis style humor.  Most of the musical numbers are comedic novelty numbers, such as the Bollywood parody, but the closing hip hop version of the Malay folk song “Rasa Sayang” is pretty cool.

Given his comfort with physical comedy and his big lummoxey screen presence, Namewee acquits himself just fine as Huang.  Malaysian pop idol Karen Kong is also quite a good sport, buried under prosthetic Dukakis eye-brows, Pippi Longstocking pigtails, and Clark Kent glasses, but still projecting a vivacious earnestness. 

Innocently goofy, Nasi Lemak 2.0 is ultimately more interesting to international audiences for what it represents for Malaysia than the on-screen humor.  It is not the only film at this year’s NYAFF to mix music with beatdowns.  Grandmaster Y.K. Kim & Park Woo-song’s The Miami Connection (video here) also screens at the festival, ahead of its in-your-face re-release later this year, courtesy of Drafthouse Films.  The Miami Ninjas pick a fight with the wrong band when they try to roust Dragon Sound from their new gig at “Central Florida’s hottest new night club.”  The ninjas and drug dealers might have formed an alliance, but they are no match for the one-two punch of Tae Kwon Do and cheesy 80’s synthesizer rock. 

The plot is maybe a touch hackneyed (you know when a Dragon Sound member puts on a fancy new suit for a special occasion, he is in for a world of hurt) and the dialogue is what it is, but the fighting is pretty awesome—and since co-director and motivational speaker Grandmaster Kim will be attending the screening (demonstrating the power of Tae Kwon Do and motivating your lazy butt), you had better agree, if you know what’s good for you.

This is why we love NYAFF.  You don’t see films like this at most other snobby festivals.  So take note, Miami Connection screens this Saturday (7/7) and Nasi Lemak 2.0 screens this coming Monday (7/9) and Thursday (7/12) as the New York Asian Film Festival continues at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYAFF ’12: The King of Pigs

If the professional worrywarts really wanted to end bullying, they would start subsidizing karate lessons for the small and less assertive, but it seems they’d rather wring their hands—on national TV.  Yes, it is a problem in many cases, but the peculiarly American disinclination towards hierarchy is positive countervailing influence.  This is not necessarily the case in Korea.  What we might call bullying is the institutionalized order of things in Yeun Sang-ho’s thematically mature animated feature, The King of Pigs (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

As King opens, it appears safe to say two formerly bullied grown adults have not broken the chain of abuse.  Both Hwang Kung-min and Jung Jong-suk are having bad days—lives might be more accurate.  Finding himself at a particularly low point, Hwang reaches out to Jung, whom he has not talked to in years.  Eventually, we will learn why they drifted apart.

Hwang wants to talk about Kim Chul, the mysterious transfer student they befriended in their middle school years.  Though they came from different backgrounds, Hwang and Jung were both “Pigs,” the proles of their school, who were merciless picked on by the ruling “Dogs,” by virtue of their superior social status or brute strength.  An outsider in every sense, Kim threatens their established order like a violently rage-stoked James Dean.

For obvious reasons, Hwang and Jung fall under the spell of their rebellious protector.  However, the deck is stacked against Kim by the Dogs and their enablers.  As he realizes the futility of his position, Kim really starts to get dark and stormy.

This is no after school special.  King easily features some of the festival’s most brutal beatdowns.  Playing the Battle Royale would be like a reprieve for these kids.  Yet, as surely exaggerated as it must be, one cannot help feel Yeun is tapping into something very real and deep in his countrymen’s collective psyche.

While at times hallucinatory, Yeun’s animation is mostly straight forward and in the viewer’s face, keeping the film rooted in a sense of urgency.  His characters are profoundly flawed and painfully human.  Actions have consequences that ripple outward, impacting others, years after the fact.  There is also no small degree of class warfare at play, notwithstanding Hwang’s relatively well-to-do, but socially shunned Karaoke owning family.  Yet, viewers can also see how Jung’s class envy metastasizes into something quite ugly and anti-social.

Holding the distinction of being the first Korean animated feature to screen at Cannes, the angry but cinematic King is absolutely not for children.  It lands a heck of a punch though.  Despite the somewhat inconsistent pacing, it is viscerally effective.  Recommended for hardy animation fans, The King of Pigs screens as part of the 2012 NYAFF this coming Saturday (7/7) and Sunday (7/8), with screenwriter-director Yeun in attendance both dates.

NYAFF ’12: 10+10

Taiwan is a country with a tragic history and rich legacy of pop music.  Both factor prominently when ten established Taiwanese filmmakers and ten emerging new talents were commissioned by the Taipei Golden Horse Film Festival to create a five minute films expressing the country’s unique character.  The resulting anthology 10+10 screens this coming Thursday as an official selection of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Viewers going into 10+10 should not get hung up on consistency.  These twenty filmmakers will cover a lot of emotional and thematic ground.  The tension between tradition and modernization will be a recurring motif, beginning with Wang Toon’s opener, in which a bickering pair of cousins treks up to a remote shrine.  They intent to curry favor with the spirits by showing them the 3-D DVD of Avatar.  It is a quiet but clever piece.

Nostalgia is also on tap in Wu Nien-jen’s A Grocery Called Forever.  Depicting a spirited elderly woman who insists on keeping her family’s corner store open, it is a pleasant slice of life.  Taiwan’s aging population play central roles in several constituent films, perhaps most touchingly in Cheng Wen-tang’s Old Man and Me.  Told from the persona of a now deceased man suffering from Alzheimer’s, it serves as his thank-you to the townspeople who searched the countryside for him when he wandering off to his demise.

Given the approximate five minute durations, many of the installments are rather sketch-like.  Indeed, entries like Wang Shaudi’s Destined Eruption and Yang Ya-che’s The Singing Boy seem to end just as they are getting started.  However, several pack quite a bit of narrative into their limited running times.  Somehow, Chang Tso-Chi’s Sparkles shoehorns the entire 1949 Battle of Kinmen Island into less than ten minutes.  A powerful war film, it follows an innocent girl being escorted to the island’s doctor by the Nationalists, as they desperately try to hold off the invading Communists.

Featuring plenty of explosions, Sparkles is probably one of the most NYAFF-esque films in 10+10.  The other would be Chung Mong-hong’s satisfyingly dark Reverberation.  What starts as a teenaged bullying drama takes a dramatic u-turn into gangster territory.  Karma will be a hard thing.

Easily the strongest shorts are those directly inspired by music.  Chen Kuo-fu’s The Debut is a lovely ghost story, portraying the spectral encouragement offered to a discouraged pop ingénue by one of the great torch singers from yesteryear.  Likewise, Rendy Hou Chi-jan pays tribute to the sentimental ballads of the 1960’s, depicting one song’s power to transcend time.  Ranking just a notch below the lyrical pair, Cheng Yu-chieh’s Unwritten delivers some ironic laughs satirizing the concessions made by the Taiwanese film industry to the mainland market.  Frankly, it is increasingly relevant to Hollywood as well.

Not every film works particularly well.  Wei Te-sheng’s Debut ought to be a DVD extra for his aboriginal war drama Seediq Bale, essentially following his first-time actor Lin Ching-tai as they take the epic to the Venice Film Festival.  Arguably, the low point comes with Kevin Chu Yen-ping’s uncomfortably manipulative and awkwardly didactic The Orphans.

Surprisingly, there is a fair amount of star power in 10+10, including Shu Qi looking typically radiant in marquis contributor Hou Hsiao-hsien’s slight but nonetheless engaging closer La Belle Epoque.  Kwai Lun Mei also graces Leon Dai’s oomph-lacking Key.  Despite attempts to glam her down, she remains a vivid screen presence.

By their nature, anthology films are inherently uneven.  Yet, there are enough good things going on in 10+10 to satisfy connoisseurs of either short films or Asian cinema.  On balance, it is an effective sampling of Taiwanese cinema, well worth a look when it screens this coming Thursday (7/5) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

NYAFF ’12: Dead Bite

If a group of bikini-clad women are attacked by marauding zombies, you are apt to see a lot of bikini-clad zombies before long.  That inescapable logic is pretty much the guiding principle for Joey Boy’s Dead Bite (trailer here), which screens with authority during the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Joey Boy is a Thai rapper, who convinced his group, Gankor Club, to play themselves in his scrappily independent zombie-mermaid religious cult movie, probably with the help of their co-stars’ wardrobe.  Due to the framing device, we know Gankor Club’s latest gig went profoundly wrong.  Basically, it was supposed to be the old three hour cruise, shooting promotional videos while partying with some gorgeous women.  Unfortunately, they chose the wrong isle: Mermaid Island.

The first clue would be the marine zombies shambling out of the waves.  Trying to take refuge inland, they run smack into the Forest Goddess, who rules her Mermaid sect through fear and sexual tension.  Of course, Joey Boy and his mates had no idea what they were stumbling into.  Yet, for some reason inexplicably connected to WWII, Japanese tourist Miyuki intentionally came to Mermaid Island to plunder a mermaid mummy.  It might hold the secret of immortality or something.  Meanwhile, the Gankor dudes are dying like flies and then popping up again as the undead.

Dead Bite is sort of like a Piranha 3D, except it is 2D and Thai, both of which make it way cooler.  Evidently, Joey Boy and Gankor Club are the real deal in Thailand and also have major cred with their American counterparts.  As actors they certainly do not seem very self-conscious, throwing themselves into their Scooby and Shaggy roles with admirable energy. 

As an auteur, Joey Boy keeps it all quite snappy.  There is also a strange postmodern aspect to his self-referential story that might be purely accidental.  Of course, Dead Bite would not be possible without its game supporting cast of attractive women, including Kumiko Sugaho and Lakana Wattanawongsiri as Miyuki and the Forest Goddess, respectively, whose contributions are obvious.  Despite all the lunacy and ogling, they more or less maintain their dignity throughout.  Surely, their next stop will be Cannes with Joe “Uncle Boonmee” Weerasethakul.

It is nice to see a director’s vision up on-screen, knowing he made exactly the film he intended.  Gleefully manic and unabashedly randy (in a PG-13 sort of way), Dead Bite is everything a zombie beach movie ought to be.  Just good, clean, blood-splattered fun, it is highly recommended for fans of a wide array of B-movies when it screens next Friday (7/6) and the following Wednesday (7/11) as this year’s NYAFF continues at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYAFF ’12: War of the Arrows

Sure China invaded Korea, but it was all for the sake of greater regional stability.  The year is 1636 and only an unemployable archer with an attitude problem stands between Joseon and an army of Manchurian invaders in Kim Han-min’s War of the Arrows (trailer here), which screens tomorrow during the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Choi Nam-yi and his sister Ja-in should not be alive.  When their father is wrongfully branded a traitor, they barely escape to the home of his lifelong friend, who raises them in secret.  Unable to live a productive public life, the grown Choi becomes a sullen slacker, wasting his life with his Falstaffian cronies.  He only excels at one thing: archery.

In contrast, his sister has fallen in love with Kim Seo-goon, the son of their protector.  Believing they can lead a normal existence together, Kim has convinced his parents to allow their marriage.  Unfortunately, the Qing army happens to choose their wedding day for their invasion.  They only make one mistake, scooping up Choi’s sister and new brother-in-law along with the rest of their prisoners.  Somewhat put out by this, Choi dogs the returning Qing forces, becoming a guerrilla army of one.  Of course, the trail of arrow-impaled bodies he leaves in his wake attracts the attention of an elite company of archers led by the seriously hardnosed Jyushinta.

A commanding screen presence, Ryoo Syeung-ryong makes quite the villain as the relentless Jyushinta.  He seethes with authority and projects a quiet sense of menace perfect for his role as the Qing commando leader.  While Park Hae-il’s Choi lacks a similar gravitas, he is a convincing action figure, letting the arrows fly as he careens through the forest.

War is one fierce archery film.  Those who considered Hawkeye the biggest take-away from The Avengers are in for a treat.  This is warfighting at its most personal level.  Though already available on DVD, it is the sort of film that should be a blast to watch with an appreciative NYAFF audience when it finally gets an overdue New York ovation tomorrow.  Well worth seeing on a big screen, it would have also made a good 3-D fixer-upper (unlike say, Clash of the Titans), considering how many projectiles come flying out towards the audience.  Like the best action historicals, War of the Arrows is both high tragedy and a total blast.  Enthusiastically recommended, it screens Friday night (6/29) at the Walter Reade Theater as part of the intrepid 2012 NYAFF.

NYAFF ’12: The Sword Identity

The Ming Dynasty valued stability.  For the four martial arts masters of coastal Guancheng, a new discipline based on forbidden Japanese swords represents anything but.  The nameless warrior will have to prove his late master’s sword the hard way in Xu Haofeng’s The Sword Identity (trailer here), which screens during the eagerly anticipated 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.

Anyone who has seen Donnie Yen, this year’s Star Asia Award recipient, in the Ip Man franchise knows full well what a new master in town has to do before they can open a new school.  They have to fight through the martial arts establishment, even if that means going toe-to-toe with Sammo Hung on a rickety table top.  Coincidentally, Xu is the screenwriter for Wong Kar-wai’s long-awaited competing Ip Man epic, so he must have an affinity for innovative masters.

The unnamed swordsman and a somewhat less fierce comrade duly smack their way through the first three vested interests, but the fourth will be a trickier proposition.  Labeling them Japanese pirates because of their sword, the acting fourth Master Qie and his predecessor, the reclusive Qiu Dongyue, will not play ball.  Suddenly a fugitive, the man with no name teaches a foreign dancing girl (and potential love interest) Sailan a secret move to hold off all comers, while he sneaks over to Qie’s, spoiling for a fight.  Again, he cannot connect with his slippery nemesis, but there he enlists the unfaithful wife of old Qiu to similarly defeat hordes of martial artists single-handed, allowing him to continue his skulking about.

Essentially, the swordsman’s second secret move boils down to blindsiding people as they come through the door, but Xu makes it sound mysterious and mystical.  If it works, it works.  The sword is what is really important.  The invention of the nameless man’s master, the late illustrious General Qi Jiguang, it was devised specifically to counter the verboten swords employed by real Japanese pirates, which makes its current identity crisis so frustrating for the disciple.  Indeed, Identity is more about notions of legacy and loyalty than martial arts spectacles.

Still, there are some memorable fight scenes in Identity, but Xu’s approach is distinguished more by its cleverness than full-throttled adrenaline.  While some of the drama going on with Qiu, Qie, and Madame Qie is a bit awkward, there is some nice chemistry developed between the swordsman and Sailan, played by Song Yang and Xu Fujing, respectively.  Frankly, they should have had more scenes together.

The austere look of Identity is a refreshing change of pace from the many lushly produced post-Crouching Tiger Wuxia epics, chocked full of CGI.  Song Yang is an engaging Spaghetti Western martial artist and Sailan’s attractive dancer colleagues provide some appealing comic relief (though not so much the pompous officer of the guard they adopt).  Distinctive and ultimately quite satisfying, The Sword Identity screens this Sunday (7/1) and Wednesday after next (7/11) as part of this year’s NYAFF.

NYAFF ’12: Nameless Gangster

Though still a young democracy, by the early 1990’s the South Korean government had run out of patience with the unchecked lawlessness of organized crime.  Choi Ik-hyun became one of their top targets.  He did not look like much of a criminal, but he was very organized.  It is time to get your gangland beatdowns on as the New York Asian Film Festival comes roaring in with a whole new slate of fresh selections.  Yun Jong-bin’s Nameless Gangster: Rules of the Time (trailer here) will deliver plenty of said when it screens at the 20012 festival this Saturday.

Choi is a low level customs inspector, corrupt in the pettiest of ways.  His family was once wealthy and respected, but their fortunes have fallen.  However, he remains hyper connected amongst the larger Choi clan hierarchy.  Stumbling across a shipment of heroin, Choi parlays it and his surname into a business relationship with the Busan mob’s top gun, Choi Hyung-bae. 

This Choi looks the part of a gangster.  Though initially skeptical of the doughier Choi, the steely cool gangster comes to appreciate the value of the older man’s connections and his skill at exploiting them.  For a while, they become a very profitable team.  However, Choi Ik-hyun’s greed and vanity will lead him to flirt with his “god-son’s” chief rival, Kim Pan-ho, destabilizing their alliance.  Gangsters always do that kind of thing.

Nameless is far broader in scope than a mere series of gangland rumbles.  Nonetheless, when the Choi and Kim factions start bashing each other fifty shades of black and blue, it is quite impressively cinematic.  Still, Yun is more concerned with the zeitgeist of the time, the ROK’s years of transitional democracy, while depicting the base cunning of a wanna-be consigliere.

Indeed, special festival guest Choi Min-sik is quite compelling as his slovenly namesake.  It might sound like a role quite removed from the ferocious serial killer he played in I Saw the Devil.  Yet, both characters are small men who react desperately when their method of empowerment is threatened.  However, it is Ha Jung-woo who really makes a lasting impression.  Icily fatalistic, but not without the capacity for explosive rage, his Choi Hyung-bae is exactly the sort of performance that makes great gangster films tick.  Likewise, Kim Seong-gyoon has a nice flair for ruthless and reckless villainy as the younger’s Choi’s lead enforcer.

It’s been a while since there was a mob movie with the sweep and ambition of Nameless.  It certainly is good to have another one.  Despite the wider historical context, Yun keeps the action gritty and violent.  It is a big picture, but it has a tight focus.  Enthusiastically recommended, it screens this Saturday (6/30) and next Tuesday (7/3) as part of the 2012 New York Asian Film Festival.