Man from Reno: Murder, She Alluringly Wrote

Mystery novelist Aki Akahori’s Inspector Takabe is like a Japanese Maigret, but her life is about to turn into a Mary Higgins Clark novel, except darker. A chance encounter with a seductive stranger leads to more intrigue than Akahori bargained for in Dave Boyle’s Man from Reno (trailer here), the best narrative award winner at the 2014 L.A. Film Festival, which opens this Friday in New York.

Although Takabe rules the Japanese bestseller lists, Akahori is uncomfortable with her success. Tired of her celebrity status, she deserts her publicity tour, taking refuge in San Francisco, where she once went to school. In her hotel, she meets a handsome Japanese tourist from Reno, or so she deduces. She did not have a tryst in mind, but she eventually yields to his charms. However, just when things start heating up, he precipitously vanishes. Even more disconcerting are the total strangers who suddenly want to take a quick look-see in her room for who-knows-what.

Just north of town, Paul Del Moral, the sheriff of San Marco, is also searching for a Japanese man. In this case, it is the individual he accidentally hit during severe fog-in, who up and left the hospital in a suspiciously rash manner. Soon a dead body turns up in San Marco who seems to have some connection to the fellow Del Moral dubbed “Running Man.” Inevitably, Del Moral’s investigation will lead him to San Francisco and the increasingly uneasy Akahori.

Reno represents a quantum step up for Boyle, whose previous films, like White on Rice, have been largely classifiable as romantic comedies. His frequent collaborator Hiroshi Watanabe is also back in the fold, but this time around he plays a strictly serious supporting role. Instead, Ayako Fujitani and veteran character actor Pepe Serna take star turns as Akahori and Del Moral, respectively. Expect to see more of them because they both make major statements with their smart, charismatic, yet understated performances.

As thrillers go, Reno (co-written by Boyle, Joel Clark, and Michael Lerman) has several fresh twists and it nicely captures the between-worlds vibe of the expatriate lifestyle. Technically polished, Richard Wong’s evocatively noir cinematographer also heightens the tension during several key scenes.

Murkier than one might expect, Reno is an effective somewhat romantic suspenser that never rushes to tip its hand. Yet, it even more appealing to see such a film anchored by people who look like Akahori and Del Moral. Granted, Fujitani is a beautiful woman, but in a mature, cerebral manner. Likewise, Serna is wonderfully grizzled, in a confidence-inspiring way. They are terrific, carrying the film relay-style during their many solo scenes. Highly recommended, Man from Reno opens this Friday (3/27) in New York, at the Regal E-Walk.

NYICFF ’15: Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet

He was born into a Maronite Catholic family and wrote his best known work in English, but Kahlil Gibran was subsequently embraced as a symbol of Arab culture. Without question, his best known work is The Prophet, arguably the original break-out New Age bestseller, whose celebrity admirers include Elvis Presley, John Lennon, and Salma Hayek. Her regard for the instantly recognizable Knopf title was such that she produced a big screen animated adaptation of the book few would have thought adaptable. The ambition and animation are definitely impressive, but the source material remains unwieldy in Roger Allers’ Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New York International Children’s Film Festival.

In order to give the film a central storyline, Allers took some liberties with the framing device. The exiled prophet Mustafa (here more of a hipster painter and poet) is indeed bidding a fond farewell to the citizens of Orphalese, but he will not simply hop on the tall ship and sail off into the sunset. The oppressive Pasha and his thuggish police sergeant are planning permanent measures to halt his progressive influence before they let him go anywhere. The resulting narrative is like a weird passion play, with the assorted peasants in the countryside and merchants in town celebrating his presumed release with much feasting and drinking. At each stop along the way, Mustafa gives the crowd a pithy bit of prose poetry wisdom that are impressionistically rendered by a diverse roster of animators.

No longer is Almitra a seer. She is now the rebellious mute daughter of Kamila, the widowed housekeeper hired to tidy up the prophet’s exile cottage. Sharing a connection with the island’s seagulls, she is the first to suspect the fate awaiting Mustafa. Presumably, these liberties taken with the text pass muster with the Gibran establishment, given their active role in the production.

Regardless, the film as a whole is necessarily uneven, since Allers and Hayek-Pinault (as she is billed here) deliberately embrace its episodic structure. Not surprisingly, the best sequences are “On Love” animated by Tomm Moore (Song of the Sea) and “On Marriage” crafted by Joann Sfar (The Rabbi’s Cat). The abstract nature of the texts are also particularly well suited to the styles of Nina Paley (Sita Sings the Blues) and Bill Plympton (Cheatin’). However, the other four parables largely blend together.

Following in the footsteps of Richard Harris’s Arif Mardin-produced musical interpretation of The Prophet, Liam Neeson continues the Irish Gibran tradition as the voice of Mustafa. To be fair, his husky, reassuring tones are rather well suited to the film. Hayek-Pinault is perfectly serviceable as Kamila. (Since she is once again playing a mother facing difficult circumstances, Prophet should really be considered a companion film to Everly and the two should be screened together whenever possible). Quvenzhané Wallis gets precious little actual dialogue as Almitra (but perhaps that is just as well), while Alfred Molina does his best to keep up with the slapstick humor directed at his pompous Sergeant.

Whatever you do, always observe the authorial possessive in the title, like “Bram Stoker’s Dracula.” Although the film’s cultish impetus is a little creepy, it is intriguing to see such a high profile attempt at impressionistic, non-narrative animated filmmaking. Unfortunately, some of the contributing filmmakers are better suited to the task than others. A strange hybrid, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet is recommended for animation enthusiasts who want to see something a little outside the norm (whereas younger viewers will probably find it indulgently lecture-y) when it screens again today (3/22) at the DGA Theatre, as the closing film of the 2015 NYICFF.

VFF ’15: What’s the Time in Your World

The question is not why someone decided to leave Iran, but rather why on earth would they ever come back. It seems especially strange for a woman like Goli to leave the still comparative safety of Paris, but she has indeed returned. She experiences a bittersweet homecoming, with the emphasis on the bitter in Safi Yazdanian What’s the Time in Your World (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Vilnius Film Festival. As our Baltic friends and allies cast a wary eye at their belligerent imperialist neighbors to the east, we salute their commitment to freedom and the arts, the latter most definitely reflected by this year’s “Kino Pavasaris.”

Considering Goli did not make the journey home for her mother’s funeral, many are quite surprised to see her now. It seems to have been a rather impulsively decision, but Yazdanian will slowly explain it through his examination of the expatriate psyche—at least to an extent. While her aunt is happy to see her, nobody is more pleased by the end of her exile than Farhad, the local framer. However, Goli is quite perplexed to receive so much attention from a man she does not remember.

It turns out, she and Farhad distantly traveled in the same extended social circles during her student days, but she obviously made a far greater impression on him than he did with her. Nevertheless, he stepped up considerably while she was in Paris, befriending her aunt and late mother. Given his vouched for status as a friend of the family, Farhad is now determined to woo Goli, but she remains confused and ambivalent about him.

Ostensibly, Time has nothing to do with politics, concentrating instead on fundamentally human issues, such as love, infatuation, and memory. Yet, there is a big conspicuous hole in the film where all of Goli and Farhad’s mutual friends should be. It becomes clear anyone with any talent and a minimal capacity for free-thinking finds a way to immigrate. There is a reason a drop-out like Farhad is the big man of the town. All the best and the brightest have left.

In many ways, Time is a tragic film, but its characters are too mature and world weary to engage in any sort of hand-wringing. Indeed, there is a lot of resignation, but that will not necessarily lead to reconnection and reconciliation. Frankly, that is why the chemistry between co-leads, Leila Hatami (A Separation) and Ali Mosaffa (The Past) is so hard to describe, yet so potent.

This is a small film, but it is acutely sensitive and arguably rather honest, in an oblique way. Clearly, Yazdanian is an actor’s director, but he also gives viewers a vivid sense of the northern coastal city of Rasht, as well as the considerable effort required to get there. Christophe Rezai’s distinctive guitar and strings score further heightens the melancholia, evoking both classic and contemporary musical forms.

It is a classy package well worth checking out. Should you head off to Vilnius to see it? Sure, if that is an option. If not, look for it as it continues to make the festival rounds. Recommended for thoughtful audiences, What's the Time in Your World screens this Monday (3/23) and Thursday (3/26) at this year’s Vilnius Film Festival. (Other notable highlights include Uncle Tony, Three Fools, and the Secret Service; Li’l Quinquin; Timbuktu; The Fool; Gyeongju; and Rocks in My Pockets.

NYICFF ’15: Moomins on the Riviera

With grace and naiveté, the oblivious Moomins face the perils of pirates and French snobbery. Naturally, the pirates are much more pleasant to deal with. Nevertheless, some of the Moomins will rather enjoy living the high life in the south of France, at least until the bills come due in Xavier Picard’s Moomins on the Riviera (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

In the film, Moominpappa says it straight out—they are not hippopotamuses. It is not clear just what they are, but they are clearly some sort of anthropomorphic animal. Already well known from Tove Jansson’s children’s book series, the Moomins made the transition to the funny pages, but they were abruptly canceled by a leftwing Finnish paper that found them too bourgeoisie. Subsequently, the comic strip was revived by a British syndicate. Eventually, the Moomins were adapted as a Japanese anime series, so they are quite well-established internationally, even though they never cracked the U.S. market. Still, there is no reason American kid will not appreciate a family of talking animals, ambiguous though their species might be.

All is pretty okay in the vaguely Northern European Moominvalley as the film opens. Young Moomin shyly pursues his flirty neighbor Snorkmaiden, when not out fishing with his friend Snufkin. When a pirate ship founders on the rocky shoals, the Moomins mobilize to salvage what they can. Of course, they gather up all the books and tropical seeds, neglecting the pirates’ treasure. Largely on impulse, the Moomins and Snorkmaiden soon set off on a nautical expedition of their own, rather irresponsibly sailing into a white squall. After a brief detour, the Moomins land on the Riviera, which the star-struck Snorkmaiden has always dreamed of visiting. She and Moominpappa soon fall in with the moneyed smart set, but Moomin and Moominmamma are uncomfortable with the shallow, indulgent lifestyle.

The animation of Picard’s Moomins is nowhere near as lush as a Studio Ghibli release or the work of GKIDS associated filmmakers like Tomm Moore or Michel Ocelot, but that is somewhat by design. The new Moomins feature deliberately evokes the feel of the vintage comic strip. In fact, that clean look is appealingly classy and well-suited to the Riviera backdrop.

Although Picard and a battery of four co-screenwriters faithfully adapted a story arc from the original newspaper strips, the film’s narrative is not exactly earth-shaking stuff. However, there are a lot of clever bits of business thrown in for seasoning. Moomin is also a decent sort of chap and the be-true-to-yourself-and-beware-of-phonies message should appeal to parents.

Despite skewing towards younger audiences, Riviera has a sophisticated vibe older viewers will appreciate. Considering it recently set the Finland record for two-week box office gross, it is probably safe to assume there will be more Moomins to come. Pleasantly upbeat and life affirming, Moomins on the Riviera is recommended for kids 5-10 (as per the festival’s guidelines) and animation fans who will enjoy its gentle quirks. It screens again this Sunday (3/22) at the IFC Center, as part of this year’s NYICFF.

The Walking Deceased: Shamble Hard, with a Vengeance

It is clear why Sheriff Lincoln survived the zombie apocalypse. He doesn’t have any brain for them to eat. Yes, that name is supposed to remind you of another zombie killing lawman. Despite taking a few respectful potshots from other franchises, this zombie spoof is to The Walking Dead what Galaxy Quest was to Star Trek and Space Balls was to Star Wars. The body count is also true to the spirit of the original source material when Scott Dow’s The Walking Deceased (trailer here) shambles into select theaters today.

Just like Deputy Rick Grimes in The Walking Dead (and Bill Masen in Day of the Triffids), Sherriff Lincoln wakes up from a coma to discover the world has largely ended. After an awkward meeting with ne’er do well survivors Chicago and Green Bay, Lincoln sets out to find his long neglected family before hopefully rendezvousing with the small moronic band of survivors holed up at the shopping mall. Oddly, that is one of the very few hat-tips to George Romero’s Living Dead series, which got the whole zombie party rocking in the first place. However, it cribs more liberally from zombie rom-coms like Warm Bodies and Life After Beth with Romeo, the sensitive zombie, who falls for hot-headed hottie survivor Brooklyn.

Since he seems to be getting better, the squabbling band reluctantly accepts him into their ranks. He still has difficulty communicating, but he serves as the film’s voice of reason through his interior monologues. He will duly trundle along when the group heads off in search of Safe Haven Ranch, because they did something similar in The Walking Dead.

Okay, so the humor in Deceased is usually pretty crude and dumb. Nonetheless, it must be granted Dow and screenwriter Tim Ogletree really know their Walking Dead. Unlike the hopefully abated plague of spoof movies so generic they literally had the word “movie” in their title, Deceased genuinely wants to send-up zombies and not whatever else happens to be playing in multiplexes.

Not surprisingly, Deceased is decidedly uneven. Nobody will ever mistake it for Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, but at least it is not afraid to be rude. In fact, the film generates a surprisingly number of laughs when it lets the dysfunctional characters tear into each other. Honestly, the cutting dialogue will exceed expectations (logically assuming they are on the modest side coming in). Dave Sheridan boldly doubles down on buffoonishness as the Sheriff, while Joey Oglesby and Sophia Taylor Ali bring the sharp-elbowed attitude, as Chicago and Brooklyn, respectively. Unfortunately, everyone else’s one-note characterizations wear thin over time.

Look, we’re talking about a meathead movie here. It is dumb, but sometimes amusing and often quite bloody. It does not pretend to be much more, but that is still more than most mash-ups deliver. If that is enough for you, The Walking Deceased opens today (3/20) in limited markets and also launches on iTunes.

Ghoul: Old Horrors Return to Ukraine

Andrei Chikatilo was an ardent Communist and a serial killer with over fifty confirmed victims. As a small child, he lived through the famine years of Stalin’s punitive collectivization of Ukrainian agriculture, so many have speculated the widespread suffering and rumors of cannibalism profoundly twisted his psyche over time. Ominously, just like the Soviet Russian Army, it seems the malevolent spirit of Chikatilo has returned to torment the Ukrainian people again in Petr Jákl’s Ghoul (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New Jersey.

Three Americans have come to Ukraine to finish their spec documentary on Twentieth Century cannibalism. Initially, it is not exactly Chikatilo’s story they have come to tell, but that of Boris Glaskov, a local man who was convicted but leniently sentenced for committing an act of cannibalism, while supposedly possessed by Chikatilo’s spirit. Through their dodgy fixer Valeriy and Katerina, a more trustworthy interpreter, they arrange to interview Glaskov in the spooky old farmhouse where it all went down. Naturally, he never shows, but for some reason Ina, the village “witch,” tagged along, thinking she might be needed.

By the time the crew realize Glaskov stood them up, it is quite late and everyone is rather drunk. Resigned to the situation, they resolve to spend the night there, so they can chase him down in the morning. Needless to say, a lot of weirdness happens that night. They do not necessarily remember most of it, but the cameras recorded it all. While they try to dismiss the psychic’s spooky talk, they will eventually accept her diagnosis of the situation—they will have to placate the vengeful spirit haunting the house if they ever hope to leave.

Reportedly, Ghoul had the highest opening gross for a horror film in Czech history. It is definitely informed by the tragic weight of Soviet history but some might find its use of archival images from the Great Ukrainian Famine to be problematically exploitative. One simply cannot picture an American horror film using photos of the Holocaust in a similar manner. Still, the Chikatilo and Ukrainian angles are what really distinguish Ghoul from the crowded field of found footage horror films. Jákl also skillfully utilizes some creepy sets and props, but that and the intriguing backstory are about all it has to offer.

In truth, the entire cast is pretty generic, but at least nobody stands out in a bad way. Perhaps Alina Golovlyova makes the strongest impression as the demure Katarina, but Ghoul is hardly a star-making vehicle. Rather, it is the eerie looking work of cinematographer Jan Šuster and the entire design team that earns the most props. Granted, horror connoisseurs have seen far schlockier found footage films, but it is disappointing Jákl started with such a genuinely intriguing premise, only to settle for so much mediocrity. Mostly just a standard time killer for genre fans, Ghoul opens this Friday (3/20) at the AMC Loews Jersey Gardens in Elizabeth, NJ.

Jauja: Viggo in the Wilderness

Imagine watching a pan-and-scan version of John Ford’s wide-screen masterpiece The Searchers on a smart phone. Even though the film is a classic, it would be a frustrating way to watch it. Yet, Lisandro Alonso intentionally does something similar. Probably the best thing going for his latest film is the stunning Patagonian backdrop, but he filmed the picture in the videographic 4:3 TV-like aspect ratio. Audiences should be warned, Alonso’s experimental aesthetic will always trumps their viewing experience in Jauja (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Captain Gunnar Dinesen is a Danish land surveyor serving during the so-called late 1800s “Conquest of the Desert” and therefore culpable for genocide in the film’s eyes. The only thing that interests him in Argentina is his daughter Ingeborg, for whom he seems to have an unhealthy attachment. Perhaps out of spite, she runs off with a rakish young military officer, so her father sets off in hot pursuit. He will follow and follow and follow, as the film slowly descends into a tiresome Beckett-like exercise in absurdism. However, in the final minutes, it throws a pointless surreal reality twister at us that is probably supposed to be Borgesian, but really just invalidates any lingering investment we might still have in the film.

Frankly, Jauja is the sort of film that mostly relies on intimidation to get by. Far too many critics are afraid to call out films that are high in pretension and low in substance for fear they will be dismissed as knuckle-dragging philistines or uneducated rubes. Take it from someone well versed in poststructuralist critical theory and reasonably conversant in the history of experimental cinema—damn little happens in Jauja.

Still, it is hard to believe Viggo Mortensen is the star of both the Lord of the Rings trilogy and this film. As Dinesen, he is credibly intense in a tunnel vision sort of way, but he is mostly just out there on his own. Someone ought to toss him Tom Hanks’ volleyball from Castaway.

Perhaps you thought Jauja was the third Gabor Sister, but in this context it is a mythical city of wealth and luxury that kind of sort of represents all manner of quixotic quests. However, the film is really about obsession and European guilt, which somehow manages to come out through the characters’ stilted interactions and the meager servings of narrative. It will have plenty of critical champions, but in this case the emperor has no clothes. Not recommended, Jauja opens tomorrow (3/20) in New York, at the IFC Center.

ND/NF ’15: Parabellum

When the end of the world comes, it will hit Buenos Aires just as hard as New York—maybe even worse, because we are more accustomed to grand scale emergencies. As social order starts to break down, they might start to miss the military junta. A group of schlubby middle class survivalists do not intend to wait that long. They will enroll in a post-apocalyptic training camp—just in the nick of end times. Prepare yourself for an aesthetically severe Armageddon in Lukas Valenta Rinner’s Parabellum (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Alarmed by the constant reports of civil strife, Hernan Oviedo the unassuming office drone is going off the grid. After cutting his utilities, he heads off for his preparedness boot camp. He is a scrawny cat, but he is still fitter than some of his more obese colleagues. Nevertheless, they have come to learn skills that will soon be necessary, like camouflage, explosives, hand-to-hand combat, and marksmanship. Rinner observes them going about their drills with a tone of quiet mockery, but his motley characters will have the last laugh before they even get to the third act. It seems their preparations are not simply physical. They are also ready to become ruthless predators for the sake of survival.

It is hard to believe a film about a cult-like paramilitary organization running wild during the apocalypse could be so quiet and narratively diffuse. Granted, plottish kinds of things do happen, but Rinner de-emphasizes them, often relegating them to the distant corner of the screen, where they are easily overlooked. He certainly shows no interest whatsoever in his characters’ personalities and interior lives, but he loves his wide shots.

Pablo Seijo totally nails Oviedo’s world-weariness and existential disillusionment, doing the best that he can in what is far from an actor’s showcase. To put it in perspective, Rinner is far more likely to shoot his cast from behind rather than face forward, by at least a ratio of two-to-one in favor of the backs of their heads. That is immediately distancing and it gets rather dull over time.

Ironically, Parabellum initially appears to ridicule its paranoid characters, but largely vindicates their paranoia at a relatively early stage. Roundabout or even openly experimental approaches to apocalyptic subject matter can yield fruit, but it seems they are better suited to short films, like Andreas Bolm’s The Revenants. In truth, Parabellum is a tough slog with a miserly payoff. Recommended for the small handful of admirers for conceptual filmmakers like João Pedro Rodrigues & João Rui Guerra da Mata, it screens this coming Monday (3/23) at MoMA and Tuesday (3/24) at the Walter Reade, as part of the 2015 ND/NF.

The Gunman: Sean Penn’s Congo Temp Gig

Seriously, why bother assassinating a government official of a failed state? A small team of mercs will do so anyway, because a job is a job. Unfortunately, the shadowy outfit managing the contract has started tying up loose ends. Those would be Jim Terrier and his former comrades-in-arms. He just might be the only left who isn’t part of the conspiracy, but he should be enough to bring them all down in Pierre Morel’s The Gunman (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

For a while, Terrier was really enjoying the Congo assignment. While secretly working for Lawrence Cox’s death squad, he volunteered as a relief coordinator by day to maintain his cover. That is how he met and fell hard for Annie, the professional do-gooder. Unfortunately, just when both their romance and the country’s civil war are heating up, Terrier is assigned to the team taking out an uncooperative natural resources minister looking to renegotiate terms (in real life, the mining companies would just say fine, call us when you have a working legal system). Since he will be the trigger man, Terrier will have to vanish afterwards, leaving Annie to the creepy advances of Felix, his smarmy corporate contact.

Haunted by his collective guilt, Terrier returns to Congo, hoping to do penance, like Jack Bauer in the two-hour special 24: Redemption. However, when an unusually well-equipped hit squad shows up gunning for Terrier, he realizes someone is out to get the old gang, but they all seem to be dead, except for him and the suspiciously chipper Cox. Felix also seems to be acting excessively obnoxious, but that is just sort of how he is. For understandable reasons, his wife Annie has mixed emotions seeing Terrier again, but the sparks are still there. She tries to guilt trip him, pointedly asking: “what did you expect showing up after all this time,” but since they just slept together, things are probably exceeding his expectations (but not necessarily ours).

Frankly, the early scenes of the hard-bitten assassins doubling as relief logistical specialists are rather intriguing and hint at dramatic possibilities the film opts not to take. Of course, we have to deal with the film as it is and not what it might have been. Granted, the narrative drive and internal logic start to sag in the second act, with the former rebounding and the latter utterly imploding down the stretch, but nobody can blame Sean Penn. Gunman is really his coming out party as a middle aged action figure, where he indeed shows he has the chops and the presence. He also clearly put in the time at the gym.

However, Idris Elba is even more impressive, getting second billing over Javier Bardem for maybe two days of work, tops. Appearing as DuPont, the Interpol agent, he just drops in, makes an extended treehouse analogy and then disappears until it’s time for the mopping up. Yet, he is still totally badass. Ray Winstone does his old hardnosed thing as Terrier’s trustworthy associate Stanley and Mark Rylance’s Cox chews on a fair amount of scenery. Frankly, it is hard to know what to make of former Bond villain Bardem, but at least he isn’t playing it safe as the whiny, petulant Felix. On the other hand, it is safe to say Jasmine Trinca (so subtle and earthy in Valeria Golino’s Honey) is woefully wasted as the problematically passive Annie.

There are some nicely executed old school actions scenes in Gunman, but some sequences are undermined by questionable editing. On several occasions it looks like Terrier is in the immediate path of assorted perils, only to find him safely outside the line of fire an abrupt cut or two later. Taken helmer Morel gets the attitude right, but he largely keeps the film on a medium tempo rather than a break neck speed. You just leave the theater suspecting in most alternate universes, this movie is totally awesome, but the one we get is just okay. It will satisfy hardcore Penn fans, but the rest of us should feel no urgent need to rush out to see it when it opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Tracers: Taylor Lautner Jumps and Climbs

Pay attention children. Taylor Lautner will demonstrate why you should stay in school. He is a bike messenger who keeps losing his bicycle. That is a shame, because he owes a lot of money to a loan shark. Most unfortunately, he did not borrow enough to save his dying mother’s house, so he is now practically homeless and on the hook for the principle and the fast compounding vig. This poor kid is so dumb, the shadowy leader of a gang of parkour thieves figures he might as well start exploiting him too in Daniel Benmayor’s Tracers (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Cam, the sullen bike messenger, needs all the runs he can get. He owes big time to the Chinatown mob and he is behind on his rent to the single mother, whose garage he is crashing in (maybe he has a room as well, but he never seems to use it). Unfortunately, his livelihood gets irreparably banged up when he swerves to avoid Nikki, a parkour chick falling out of the sky. Naturally, he responds to this crisis by obsessively watching parkour videos on his smart phone.

Nikki has no interest in a loser like him (and neither do we), but she feels guilty enough to drop off a new set of two-wheels for him at the messenger center. Logically, he has that one stolen out from under him when he sets off in search of her. After a few beatings administered his loan officer’s thugs, Cam manages to talk his way into Nikki’s gang. Her colleagues are pretty impressed, considering he developed some mean parkour skills in about twenty minutes. Miller, the mastermind, also sees a sucker he can use. However, Cam is always causing trouble, pestering him for dough and making swoony eyes at Nikki, who is stuck being Miller’s woman, whether she likes it or not.

Eventually, everyone in this line has to cover a Taylor Lautner film, so it might as well be something as innocuous as Tracers. Essentially, it starts out trying to be the old Kevin Bacon vehicle Quicksilver and then attempts to morph into a parkour thriller in the tradition of the Luc Besson produced B13 franchise. Sadly, it lacks the catchy 1980s soundtrack of the former and the pedal-to-the-metal energy of the latter. Even though parkour is the reason for Tracers’ being, the action is just sort of okay. To give an example, at one point Benmayor prominently frames the Empire State Building, getting our hopes up that the film will finally go for it like Remo Williams at the Statue of Liberty—but no, it’s just there for background color.

It is hard to really see why Lautner has a movie career from Tracers. He exhibits absolutely no charisma, but to be fair, he seems inoffensive and mostly rather polite. As Nikki, Marie Avgeropoulos is blandly attractive in much the same way. There are other members of the gang, but they hardly merit individual names. They just run, jump, and die, when necessary. On the other hand, Adam Rayner makes a reasonably competent lead villain as Miller and Johnny M. Wu serves as a relatively entertaining supporting villain as Jerry the loan shark.

Somehow Benmayor managed to find all the gritty, post-industrial riverfront locations left in New York. He has a decent eye for urban blight, but he lets the teeny-boppish melodrama intrude too much on the action. Nevertheless, the film ends with a surprisingly satisfying turn of events, but calling it a “twist” would be too strong a term. In all honesty, Tracers just isn’t worth your movie ticket dollars. Parkour fans are much better off revisiting the B13 movies, but it might suit the needs of DirecTV subscribers who want to turn off their brains and zone out in front of something harmless. Regardless, it opens theatrically this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

ND/NF ’15: Haemoo

There will be no shuffleboard for the passengers of this vessel. Nor will they find any class solidarity with the impoverished crew. Instead, the ethnic Korean illegal immigrants being trafficked from China will be treated with contempt, hostility, and lethal negligence, but karma will come back around good and hard as it always does in Shim Sung-bo’s Haemoo (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Co-adapted by Shim and lefty auteur Bong Joon-ho from a 2003 play, Haemoo somewhat fictionalizes the real life 2001 maritime tragedy that forced the Korean government to issue an apology to China for deaths of twenty-five illegal migrants. Of course, the Chinese government might have considered apologizing for creating the circumstances that made the hard passage seem reasonable, but apparently that would be asking too much. In this case, it is the Ahab-esque fishing captain Kang Chul-joo who takes on the trafficking run, in hopes of making enough money to buy back his beloved but decrepit trawler from its disinterested owners.

Obviously, the boat is ill-equipped to handle large numbers of passengers. Tempers flare when Kang hides them in the fish hold, but he silences protest with ruthless efficiency. The attractive Hong-mae further destabilizes the situation, inspiring lust and jealousy among the crew. However, she finds a surprisingly resourceful protector in the earnest engineer’s mate, Dong-sik. Thanks to his efforts, she will survive the initial wave of tragedy, but the ship soon descends into every-man-for-himself anarchy.

Shim and Bong (who also co-wrote Memories of Murder) unleash their inner B.Travens in Haemoo, combining class consciousness with close-quarters mayhem. Yet, it is never as abrasive as Bong’s more overtly didactic films, such as The Host and Snowpiercer. This is really old fashioned noir, at its most naturalistic and fatalistic. At one point, characters blame the IMF for their despicable actions, which is relatively reasonable by Bong’s standards.

Regardless, Kim Yun-seok commands with picture portraying Kang’s mounting mania with unnerving intensity. He is a terrific villain-in-denial, combining psycho-elements of Captain Queeg and Robert Ryan’s Slater in Odds Against Tomorrow. Han Ye-ri is also a terrific humanizing element, directly expressing Hong-mae’s fear and resiliency. Unfortunately, Park Yoon-chun’s Dong-sik looks rather stiff and awkward by comparison, but Moon Sung-geun adds the perfect note of ill-fated dignity as the veteran engineer.

Despite its relevancy to current controversies, Haemoo works as a taut Then There Were None thriller, with Perfect Storm-like atmosphere laid on top for extra added menace. This is exactly the kind of film Kevin Macdonald’s Black Sea should have been, but fell sadly short. Recommended for fans of nautical thrillers who appreciate dark irony, Haemoo screens this Friday (3/20) at MoMA and Saturday (3/21) at the Walter Reade, as part of this year’s ND/NF.

AFF ’15: The Editor

Obviously, editors are important to horror movies. They get to do all the cutting. Of course, these days, it is mostly done digitally, but for 1970s Italian giallo movies, it was all about sharp cutting implements. Unfortunately, journeyman editor Rey Ciso has somewhat lost his touch since a mysterious accident left him with four wooden fingers. In accordance with giallo genre conventions, Ciso will find himself tipped as the logical suspect when a psycho stalker starts knocking off cast-members of his latest film in Astron-6’s spoof, The Editor (trailer here), directed by Adam Brooks & Matthew Kennedy, which screens during this year’s Atlanta Film Festival.

After his freak accident, Ciso either spent time in a private clinic or a looney bin. He and his doctor apparently have very different memories of that time, but that does not necessarily mean Ciso is wrong. Regardless, his new student-intern Bella worships the editor. His past her prime actress wife, not so much. She seems somewhat obsessed the up-and-coming star, Claudio Calvetti. Inconveniently, he is also very dead, along with his frequently naked co-star, Veronica.

Since the killer hacks off the same four fingers from his victim that Ciso has lost, the violent but incompetent Det. Peter Porfiry naturally settles on him as the prime suspect. To make matter worse, the killer has taken an unhealthy interest in Ciso, sending him tapes of his work. At least good Father Clarke believes in his innocence, not that a sexually confused materialist like Porfiry takes much stock in what priests have to say.

The Editor might be a comedic send-up, but it outdoes Cattet & Forzani’s Strange Color of Your Body’s Tears with its loving attention to giallo production details. It looks and sounds terrific, incorporating the sinister Goblin-esque soundtrack, over-the-top bloodletting, and plenty of gratuitous nudity. The way Ciso and Porfiry never change their hideously 1970s outfits is also a nice touch. Clearly, co-writers Brooks, Kennedy, and Conor Sweeney understand what makes giallos tick, right down to the bafflingly incomprehensible finale.

Brooks also serves himself well as Ciso, the cracked up everyman. He is sort of like a straight-man for the gags, except he constantly gets to freak out. Kennedy’s Porfiry also gorges on plenty of scenery, looking like an appropriately low rent Donald Sutherland. Tristan Risk (a.k.a. burlesque performer Little Miss Risk) and Sheila E. Campbell duly vamp it up like good sports as the ill-fated Veronica and Porfiry’s ex-wife Margarit, respectively. Laurence R. Harvey scores some of the biggest laughs as Father Clarke, while the appearances of Udo Kier and Crime Wave’s John Paizs need no explanation.

In terms of tone and substance, The Editor is maybe seventy percent giallo and thirty percent Troma, so it is certainly not for the overly sensitive or easily offended. However, it makes you want to go back and re-watch classics of the genre, which attests to its legitimacy and the cleverness of its satire. Shamelessly lurid, The Editor is quite enthusiastically recommended for giallo fans when it screens this Saturday (3/21) at the 2015 Atlanta Film Festival.

Spring: Love Comes on Stealthy Tentacles

When Evan saw Louise, it is like a scene from a Sophia Loren film or Ruth Orkin’s famous photo. In this case, he is the visiting American, while she is very definitely a seductive Italian. Eventually, he learns there is considerably more to her than meets the eye. The truth comes as a shock, but it is not enough to dissuade him from wooing the mystery woman in Benson & Moorhead’s Spring (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Evan should have gotten out of his dead-end burg long ago, but his father’s untimely death and his mother’s protracted illness kept him anchored to their old home. When she finally succumbs, there is little holding him there, but a drunken brawl with a vengeful gang member gives him every reason to leave. On his buddy’s advice, his hurriedly departs on the Italian trip his father always wanted to take. Initially, he takes the youth hostel route, falling in with some obnoxious Brits. Frankly, Evan can hardly stand them, but he tags along on their excursion to Puglia anyway. When he sees the town’s old world charm and Louise’s sultry beauty, he decides to stay.

Initially, Louise is adamantly opposed to any sort of long term entanglement, but Evan slowly wears down her objections. He even finds lodging and employment with Angelo, a sympathetic farmer outside of town. However, unbeknownst to Evan, Louise requires regular injections to halt her transformation into something slimy and Lovecraftian. As she eventually explains to Evan, her cyclical condition is getting increasingly severe. When it reaches its regular twenty year apex, it will be dashed dangerous for him to be around her. As a trained genetic biologist who has gone through this process a time or to before, she knows of what she speaks. Yet, Evan is not prepared to cut-and-run on their relationship just yet.

Benson & Moorhead (as the filmmaker partners Justin Benson and Aaron Moorhead prefer to be billed) have really raised the dramatic standard of genre films with Spring. They take their time fully establishing the characters of Evan and Louise and the dynamics of their relationship, before introducing the exquisite bizarreness lurking below the surface. Frankly, their early courtship scenes work quite well on their own merits, separate and apart from the strange developments that follow. Yet, the particulars of who Louise is and how she continues to exist over time are well thought out and scrupulously observe their own internal logic. Indeed, the third act never feels like a tacked-on curve ball from left field, but rather the culmination of the careful groundwork laid by the cast and filmmakers.

A well-deserved award winner at last year’s Fantastic Fest, Lou Taylor Pucci is unusually compelling as Evan, offsetting his impulsive punkiness with a deeper sensitivity. He also develops some powerful romantic chemistry with Nadia Hilker’s Louise. Although much more reserved (when not writhing in the agonizing throes of her uncanny convulsions), Hilker vividly suggests the world-weariness and emotional baggage one might associate with the more romantic strain of vampires. Veteran Italian thespian also provides a rock solid moral anchor for the film as the gruff but compassionate Angelo.

Spring is a terrific film precisely because it takes its time and trusts the audience’s maturity and discernment. It takes a road not often taken in genre cinema, reaping distinctive results. Moorhead’s darkly stylish cinematography heightens the mood, both with respects to the romance and the creeping dread, perfectly serving the macabrely dreamy narrative. Very highly recommended for fans of crossover classics, Spring opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Lost and Love: Child Abduction in China

In China, you need a valid state I.D. to travel on a plane, attend university, secure a marriage license, and sign most legal documents, just like here in America (but we’re probably a lot more indulgent about things like voting). Abducted children who are trafficked into new homes are doubly victimized, because they will not be able to do any of these things without their birth certificates. They are effectively denied a future, through no fault of their own. That is definitely the outlook for teenaged abductee Ceng Shuai and Lei Zekuan’s long missing son is probably in a similar position. The two men’s related fates will lead to a bond of trust when they head out on the road together in Peng Sanyuan’s Lost and Love (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

For fifteen years, Lei has driven through China on a longshot quest to find the missing infant son who was snatched away from his grandmother. He doggedly hands out fliers and drives through town after town trailing a banner of the young baby taken shortly before his disappearance. However, when Lei spies a notice for a recently kidnapped Zhou Tianyi, he has a banner made for her as well. He is obsessed, but compassionate.

When life on the road leads to a spot of trouble for Lei, Ceng volunteers to fix his motorbike. At first, he cannot help resenting Lei as an extension of the birth parents he presumes to be negligent. However, as he comes to understand Lei’s story and his lingering pain, he slowly accepts the older man as something of a mentor. Together, they hit the road, following up leads to his possible home village posted on various abduction-resource web sites.

Evidently, the illicit trade of kidnapped infants is a growing problem in Mainland China. For victimized parents, the government’s only partly relaxed One Child policy makes it even more painful, consigning them to a permanently empty nest. Peng’s screenplay offers a peak into the criminal operations causing such anguish, but his primary focus is on the lasting emotional repercussions for birth parent and abducted child alike.

Much as he did in Ann Hui’s quietly moving A Simple Life, Andy Lau completely lets go of his movie star trappings to give a raw, earthy performance as the guilt-wracked Lei. For the most part, his work is reserved and understated, but when he fully explains what the loss of his son meant for him and his family, it is pretty devastating. Likewise, Jing Boran is completely convincing as the confused and angry, yet still down-to-earth Ceng. Viewers really get a sense that he is just a kid making his way in the world, but it is even more challenging for him, given his circumstances. Fans will also enjoy seeing “Big” Tony Leung Ka-fai turn up in a rather touching cameo as a brusque but compassionate traffic cop.

Although Peng’s roots are in television, L&L is remarkably free of manipulation and melodrama. It might be considered an issue-driven film to an extent, but it always feels more like a character study (or rather two character studies). It is indeed an intimate human interest story (supposedly based on real events), but Mark Lee Ping-bin’s arresting cinematography gives it a big, cinematic look. One of the best in the business, Lee vividly captures the expansive beauty of the countryside as well as the mean squalor of the cities. Despite some conspicuous loose ends, Lost and Love is a refreshingly mature and accessible drama, recommended for mainstream audiences when it opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the AMC Empire and the Village 7.

ND/NF ’15: K

This is Kafka like we have never seen him before: lusty and Mongolian. Our alienated protagonist is indeed a land surveyor stuck in a bureaucratic nightmare, but he is a rather surly slacker of a chap (and a bit of a horndog). Nonetheless, Inner Mongolia (the Chinese Autonomous Republic) stands in quite well for the vaguely Eastern European setting of Kafka’s The Castle in Darhad Erdenibulag & Emyr ap Richard’s K (trailer here) which screens during the 2015 edition of New Directors/New Films.

K, as he is still simply known, lacks the proper documentation to stay in the small provincial town governed by the nearby (yet conspicuously unseen) castle, despite having been summoned by the governor. Obviously, this causes a bit of an official quandary, especially when it is determined the original work request was sent out in error. Nevertheless, he is now an employee of the Castle, officially reporting to Minister Klamm, who has already palmed off the surveyor on the ailing town mayor.

Still believing he has actual work to do, K doggedly pursues a meeting with Klamm, unaware his actions constitute a serious breach of local protocol. He even takes up with Frieda, a tavern hostess who is rumored to be Klamm’s mistress, but his motives for that might be more carnal and less mercenary than many assume. Indeed, despite the precariousness of his position, K will have his share of hedonistic indulgences.

Although ap Richard’s screenplay simplifies the unfinished Kafka source novel, he is still relatively faithful to its overall storyline. K duly butts heads with Artur and Jeremias, the two locals assigned to serve as his assistants. He also becomes ambiguously involved with the family of Castle messenger Barnabas, particularly his older sister Olga.

Frankly, the oddest thing about ap Richard’s adaptation is how much fun it allows K. Up until the closing sequences, he and Erdenibulag maintain a tone that is better described as eccentric than surreal or, shall we say, Kafkaesque. Since they largely dispense with the paperwork motif, it is even more challenging to read allegorical significance into their updated re-conception. However, they certainly capture a grubby sense of provincial corruption.

As K, Bayin serves partly as the film’s straight man and partly as its madman, but he is a weirdly effective in both capacities. Jula similarly keeps the audience off balance as the possible femme fatale Frieda, while both Yirgui and Jüdengowa have surprisingly touching scenes as Olga and Pepi, Frieda’s barmaid successor, respectively.

It is entirely possible that there is only enough room in the world for one lascivious Mongolian Chinese Kafka adaptation, but K (co-produced by Jia Zhangke) fills that spot rather nicely. Erdenibulag and ap Richard create a strange and irrational world, but it is not as nearly as existentially soul-deadening as most takes on Kafka tend to be. It ends in a rather ambiguous place, but when you leave the theater the sun will still shine and the birds will still chirp. Recommended as an idiosyncratic but mostly successful cross-pollenated oddity, K screens this Saturday (3/21) at the Walter Reade and Sunday (3/22) at MoMA, as part of this year’s ND/NF.

SXSW ’15: The Theory of Obscurity

They were influenced by Sun Ra and toured with Penn Jillette. Few bands command the same degree of fan loyalty and fascination, but it is important to note The Residents might not actually exist. Fortunately, that will not deter Don Hardy from chronicling their careers in The Theory of Obscurity: a Film about the Residents (trailer here), which screens during this year’s SXSW Film Festival.

The identity of the musicians beneath the eyeballs remains one of the most closely guard secrets in show business. Right from the start, Hardy warns the audience everything fans think they know about the band might be false. Of course, the Residents are not about to set the record straight. After forty years of strict anonymity, they are not about to embrace the trappings of celebrity culture now.

They fact remains, nobody outside of the band’s most intimate circles know who is a member or what they look like. Reportedly, they originally hailed from Northern Louisiana, but made their way to San Francisco, for obvious reasons. The quartet (as far as we know) were just as interested in avant-garde art as music, incorporating both into their program. They adopted their tongue-in-cheek name and trade mark eyeball masks and top hat ensembles largely through unlikely happenstance, but the group’s interest in new technology and short form video put the Residents decades ahead of their contemporaries. It boggles the mind today, but there was a time when the Residents were in heavy rotation on MTV, which Hardy hastens to explain to young viewers was once the broadcast home of music videos.

It must be constitutionally impossible to make a dull film about the Residents, but if you are expecting a dramatic Scooby-Doo style reveal at the end, forget about it (however, there is an amusing stinger worth staying for). However, it sometimes feels like Hardy is too respectful of his subjects, never presuming to speculate about anything concealed by their costumes and myth-making, even though he has us well primed for some idle conjecture.

Still, even if you have yet to acquire a taste for their darkly hued, often discordant music, it is cool to see they never succumbed to the lure of fame and the ego-stroking that typically goes with it. They just keep doing their thing. That necessarily means Hardy had no interviews with his subjects, which presents an undeniable challenge. Nevertheless, he scored sit downs with former members of the Residents inner circle, including several former officers of The Cryptic Corporation, the band’s duly empowered business and logistical management crew, as well as Jillette, the intentionally over the top emcee of their notorious early 1980s tour.

That Hardy leaves all of the Residents’ secrets undisturbed is both laudable and frustrating, because let’s face it, the group inspires a virulent form of curiosity. It is not called mystique for nothing. We wonder just who played the Albert-Ayler-on-crack alto solos during their early performances and whether there has been any personnel turnover throughout the decades. Naturally, that mystery is a good part of the band’s allure. Hardy illuminates their appeal and cogently puts their work in the cultural context of the times. Recommended for Residents fans and those who appreciate a little eccentricity in life, The Theory of Obscurity screens again this Thursday (3/19) and Friday (3/20) as part of the 2015 SXSW.

Can’t Stand Losing You: Andy Summers Survives the Police

Andy Summers went from stadium tours as the lead guitarist of the Police to headlining at the Baked Potato, an intimate jazz club in Los Angeles. He had the chops for both and enough left over from the former style of gigs to enjoy the latter. Jazz listeners always knew Summers was the coolest member of the Police and that judgment is vindicated by Andy Grieve’s Can’t Stand Losing You: Surviving the Police (trailer here) which opens this Friday in New York.

Although Stand is based on Summers’ memoir One Train Later and features his confessional narration, it never has time to touch on his jazz work. For blindingly obvious reasons, Grieve’s film is mostly concerned with Summers’ tenure in the Police and his relationship with the other two band members, particularly Gordon Sumner, a.k.a. Sting. However, Summers’ early scuffling years will be surprisingly interesting to those who do not already kno them chapter-and-verse. He nearly caught on with a number of bands in the late 1960s and early 1970, even serving a stint in Eric Burdon’s The Animals, but he never managed to break out big.

Summers was about to chuck it in when he found himself playing a couple of one-offs with Sumner and Stewart Copeland. The two were trying to make a go of it with a pseudo-punk ensemble called the Police. Summers was not sure he had the right feel for the new style of music, but when he and Copeland happened to arrive for a meet-up on the same subway train, he took it as a sign (hence the title of Summers’ book). You basically know the trajectory the band took from there, but casual fans might have forgotten some of the details and diehards will enjoy reliving them from Summers’ viewpoint.

To his credit, Sting (as we must refer to him now) was reasonably cooperative with the film, even though he does come across as a bit of a prima donna. Clearly, he had no objections when the press focused in on him at an early stage. He just as obviously had one foot out the door for quite a while, yet he still tried to impose his my-way-or-the-highway will on the band. At least, that is how it looks from the candid archival footage. Perhaps most damning, it is decidedly not cool to see him act like a jerkweed to Martha Quinn in an MTV interview.

Yet, Summers oral history is just as hard on himself as it is on Sting (so apparently Copeland must have the patience of a saint). It would be fair to say he let the rock star thing sabotage his personal life. However, his third act was rather redemptive, in ways Grieve might have spent more time exploring. Instead, he essentially concentrates on their 2007 reunion (thanks to tour footage directed by Lauren Lazin) and a special exhibition of Summers’ photography, mounted in conjunction with Taschen’s publication of I’ll Be Watching You: Inside the Police 1980-83.

If you lived through the 1980s, Stand brings a lot of it back—and maybe delivers a little closure. It must be conceded their music still holds up pretty well, as does Summers’ jazz work, such as the Monk tribute album Green Chinmeys. He certainly emerges from the film as a relatively down-to-earth figure, as well as a survivor of considerable chaos. Highly recommended for fans of the Police and 1980s music in general, Can’t Stand Losing You opens this Friday (3/20) in New York, at the Village East and the AMC Empire.