CCI-IFF ’13: PostHuman (short)

We might be in for a dystopian future, but there are those among us who won’t go down without a fight, perhaps including Terrance the hacker. He will demonstrate his talents to a mysterious woman and potential audiences for further and longer exploits when Cole Drumb’s animated short film PostHuman (trailer here) screens at the 2013 Comic Con International Independent Film Festival.

Evidently, the beautiful but deadly Kali was once an involuntary test subject in a secret government ESP lab.  She intends to rescue her last surviving fellow guinea pig, with Terrance’s help at the keyboard, while his faithful dog Nine looks on.  There’s your backstory, now its go time.

PostHuman is the perfect short for fans of the original Heavy Metal movie and magazine, both in terms of the hardboiled action and Kali’s wardrobe.  It is short, but it is violent, in a good anti-authoritarian sort of way.  Co-produced and co-edited by Jennifer Wai-Yin Luk, PostHuman is a muscular film with a striking anime-ish look that could easily serve as the prelude for a longer film or an ongoing series, like the 21^st Century indie version of a backdoor pilot.

There are three reasons Comic Con attendees should queue up for PostHuman.  It is short, so it will not take too much time away from standing in other lines.  It is action-driven, so it is easily processed.  Perhaps most notably, it also stars the voice of geek pin-up Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica.

PostHuman is a cool short film that hopefully leads to future follow-ups.  It is exactly the sort of screening press attending Comic Con should be covering.  Fans on-the-ball enough to get their tickets in the ten minutes they were on-sale and then organized enough to arrange lodging should check out whatever they wish and get plenty of guilt-free swag. 

However, my colleagues ought to bear in mind Christopher Nolan was once indie.  Those who were in front of the curve on Following probably feel pretty smart now. Indeed, the CCI-IFF has a lot of talented filmmakers who have the potential to become big names, definitely including the team behind PostHuman.  Highly recommended, it screens this Thursday (7/18) in San Diego, along with Dawn Brown’s charmingly nostalgic House of Monsters and Lee Dae-hee’s surprisingly bittersweet and mature Padak, as part of Comic Con’s 2013 Independent Film Festival.

Nicky’s Family: The Father of the Kindertransport

As a proper British gentleman, Sir Nicholas Winton never boasted of his heroic efforts in the days leading up to World War II.  Fifty years after the fact, his beloved wife chanced upon a treasure trove of documents in their attic.  Much to his surprise, she was rather determined to make his story known to the world.  A BBC special later, the newly knighted Winton became known as the “British Schindler.”  Czech filmmakers Matej Mináč and Patrik Pašš reveal the full extent of Winton legacy in Nicky’s Family (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Alert and active at 104, Winton is clearly somewhat bemused by his new found celebrity.  Since his parents converted to Christianity, Winton is not officially recognized as a “Righteous Gentile,” but that hardly matters.  As a young man, Winton was a promising banker, poised to become one of his generation’s “Masters of the Universe.”  However, when a friend pulled out of a planned skiing vacation, Winton agreed to join him on a fact-finding trip to the Sudetenland-less Czechoslovakia.

More clear-sighted than many of England’s blue bloods, Winton was already alarmed by the rise of National Socialism.  Seeing the conditions in Czechoslovakia’s refugee camps only compounded his concerns.  He resolved to at least save as many children as possible launching what would become known as the Czech Kindertransport.  Winton’s fascinating story of intrigue, involving beautiful German spies and a less than indulgent boss, came to an abrupt end when Britain formally entered the war—until the BBC started tracking down survivors of the Kindertransport for their benign ambush.

When Winton comes face-to-face with the grown children of the Kindertransport, it is powerful real life drama.  It is also rewarding to hear how the survivors and their children and grandchildren have embraced humanitarian causes as a way to repay (or pay forward) Winton’s defiant compassion, at least up to a point.  However, director Mináč and his editor-co-writer-co-producer Pašš, rather overdo the feel-good call to service which ends their documentary.  After a while, the cavalcade of classrooms working to save the world becomes numbing. 

Still, the documentary’s undeniable strength is the story of Winton’s rescue operations, told through his on-camera recollections and dramatic recreations.  Gripping like an espionage thriller but also inspiring, these sequences really constitute the guts of the film.

Yes, many documentaries have addressed historically related subjects in recent years.  However, the presence of Winton and the participation of many of his “children,” such as rocket scientist Ben Abeles and Canadian journalist Joe Schlesinger, who serves as a supplemental narrator, sets Family apart from the field.  Just hearing from the centenarian Winton is sufficiently significant.  Recommended for students of history and parents ready to start teaching their children about the tragedies of WWII, Nicky’s Family opens this Friday (7/19) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

Computer Chess: Analog Dreams of a Digital Future

In 1980, all music was analog.  So was just about everything else.  Computers were generally recognized as the coming thing, but they were still too large, bulky, and slow to be a part of most people’s daily lives.  However, these zero-point-zero generation computers could be programmed to play chess.  A motley assortment of early computer pioneers will pit their chess programs against each other in Andrew Bujalski’s retro Computer Chess (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

In a tacky suburban chain motel, some of computer science’s shabbily dressed elite have come together for a computer chess tournament.  The winner will face off against the arrogant human host, Pat Henderson, who has never lost a match to a machine—at least not yet.  He and his opening night panel predict that will end by 1984, a year rife with significance.  The defending champs from Cal Tech are still the presumed favorites, but their TSAR program is acting decidedly buggy.  It is so bad, the project director, geek superstar Dr. Tom Schoesser, hastens his arrival for an emergency diagnostic session.

Things seem to be going well for the MIT contingent, with Shelly Flintic receiving an inordinate amount of attention as the first woman team-member in the competition.  In contrast, nobody wants to deal with the prickly, borderline homeless Michael Pappageorge, even if he is a mad genius.

Bujalski fully embraces the technology of the era, shooting Chess in black-and-white, on now archaic late 1970’s video cameras.  The film is even rougher and grainier than viewers will expect, yet Bujalski’s nostalgic vision will win them over.  Indeed, it is clear throughout the inspired first four-fifths of Chess that the game of chess is really just a stand-in for innumerable AI applications to come.  We can also recognize Pappageorge as the sort of social drop-out who either became the Bill Gateses of the world, or more likely remained marginal figures, haunting tech clearance auctions, buying bizarre obsolete hardware to continue building their mad visions.

Myles Paige arguably deserves award consideration as Pappageorge, finding pathos in his obnoxious behavior.  Texas-based film editor Robin Schwartz is also gives Chess some soul as Flintic, one of the few competitors with any facility to make human connections.  University of Chicago professor Gordon Kindlmann’s Schoesser has a knack for making his theory-heavy dialogue sound smart and accessible, while in his on-screen debut, film critic Gerald Peary chews the scenery nicely as the pompous Henderson.

Considered one of the godfathers of Mumblecore, Bujalski now demonstrates how handy it is to have some plot and an underlying concept supporting a film.  Still, he overplays his hand in some respects.  Initially, the hippie-dippy encounter group sharing the motel is a rather brilliant piece of era-appropriate cultural satire that could have been lifted from 1980’s uber-zeitgeisty Serial.  However, whenever Bujalski contrives ways for the two groups to intersect, the forced comedy falls flat.  Likewise, the genre payoffs he offers late in the third act are head-scratchers that make little sense in the film’s overall context.

Frankly, Chess works best when suggesting TSAR might just be the not so distant ancestor of WarGames’ Joshua and 2001’s HAL 9000.   Nonetheless, Bujalski presents a consistently compelling time-capsule that captures the innocent fascination and single-minded commitment to innovation that drove the digital revolution.  A sly period production with a keen understanding of early computing, Computer Chess is recommended for Wired readers when it opens this Wednesday (7/17) at New York’s Film Forum.

Japan Cuts ’13 & NYAFF ’13: The Kirishima Thing

Is he a teenaged John Galt or is something more sinister afoot?  Either way, the mysterious absence of a high school’s top BMOC leaves a void his peers will struggle to fill in Daihachi Yoshida’s The Kirishima Thing (trailer here), which screens tonight as a co-presentation of this year’s Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival.

Even though he was selected to the state squad, Kirishima has reportedly quit the volleyball team.  His friends and teammates have yet to hear it from him directly, because he has not been to class lately. He has not even contacted his bombshell girlfriend Risa, whose insecurity mounts when everyone turns to her for answers. 

She is still at the top of the social pyramid, but the interregnum loosens her hold on Kasumi Higashihara, a geek-turned-hottie.  Temporarily falling back into old habits, she even attends a Tetsuo screening where she runs into Ryoya Maeda, the socially awkward leader of the school’s film club.  Picking up on the spirit of anarchy, Maeda convinces the club to defy their faculty advisor by shooting the sort of zombie film they always wanted to make.

As Maeda starts to get ideas about everything, including Higashihara, prize-winning band saxophonist Aya Samashima considers acting on her attraction to Kirishima’s elitist crony, Hiroki Kikuchi.  However, these are not pleasant times for the bench-warmer taking Kirishima’s place on the team, thanks to Kubo, the punishing team captain.

Will the established social order breakdown or will knuckle-draggers like Kubo maintain it the hard way?  Just how irreplaceable is Kirishima to the school’s social ecosystem anyway?  It is hard to say for certain, because K Thing presents so many conflicting viewpoints. Kirishima and his absence mean many things to many people.  He is probably a better chap than Kubo, but viewers never have the chance to see for themselves.  Instead, he serves as a giant Rohrschach to evaluate his peers.

Frequently doubling-back, K Thing excessively analyzes relatively mundane encounters from just about every POV.  At times, it really is overkill, but in the process, Yoshida fully develops his large cast of characters and their intricate relationship dynamics.  When the film is over, alert audience members will be able to produce flow charts of who likes who.  Despite the mysterious vibe lurking over the proceedings (and an occasional zombie flight of fantasy), these kids and their school feel really real.

Evidently, some things about high school are universal, but this student body is unusually good looking.  Nevertheless, Ai Hashimoto is fantastic as the chameleon-like Higashihara.  Who she is largely depends on who she is with, but Yoshida never condemns her for that. Arguably, it is a reflection of human nature. Suzuka Ohgo is compellingly intense as Sawashima, even though she hardly looks like a band-geek. Appropriately ambiguous, Ryunosuke Kamiki’s Maeda comes across as a half-victim and half-provocateur, which suits the film nicely.

K Thing will not shake viewers to their souls like Tetsuya Nakashima’s thematically related Confessions, but it will still get under their skin.  One could argue it is also more genre than it initially appears. Yoshida skillfully balances his large ensemble, getting brutally honest performances out of the young but accomplished cast-members. Recommended for those who appreciate dark teen dramas, The Kirishima Thing screens tonight (7/14) at the Japan Society, as a co-programmed selection of Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival.

Japan Cuts ’13 & NYAFF ’13: Thermae Romae

When in Rome, do as the Japanese do.  Time-travelling Roman Architect Lucius Quintus Modestus unwittingly adopts this strategy.  Sure, you might think he looks more Japanese than Roman, but there is no need for pedantry when Hideki Takeuchi’s Thermae Romae (trailer here) screens tonight as a co-presentation of this year’s Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival.

Nursing his wounded pride at a Roman civic bath, the recently fired Modestus is inexplicably pulled through the drainage system into modern day Japan.  Initially contemptuous of the old-timers soaking in the neighborhood bath, the man has to admit their facilities beat anything Rome has to offer.  It all rather overwhelms his Roman pride, while his chiseled looks overwhelm aspiring manga artist Mami Yamakoshi.  After causing a great deal of naked commotion, Modestus quickly returns to his era, just as mysteriously as he left.  Soon, he is the toast of Rome, applying the innovations he observed in Japan.

His new found fame earns Modestus the ear of the stern but wise Emperor Hadrian and his thoughtful counselor Antoninus.  Of course, the Emperor’s hedonistic adopted son Ceionius is a different story.  Each time Modestus needs inspiration for a major commission, he somehow finds his way back to Japan and Yamakoshi, whether it be the upscale bathroom showroom where she works part-time or her mother’s rustic mountain spa.  Eventually, she will pulled back to classical Rome with him, just in time for a major imperial power struggle.

Based on a popular manga series that also spawned a short-lived anime incarnation, Thermae Romae has plenty of pratfalls and fish-out-of-water humor, but the cast plays it surprisingly straight. In fact, Masachika Ichimura and Kai Shishido play Hadrian and Antoninus as if they thought Sir Derek Jacobi might be popping round the set in his I, Claudius costume.

Hilariously stone-faced Kore-eda regular Hiroshi Abe does not really have that option, given how much time Modestus must run about in his altogether.  Still, he conveys a sense of the architect’s principled rectitude, even when embroiled in truly outrageous situations.  In a role original to the film, Aya Ueto is likable enough as Yamakoshi, but she is saddled with a problematically passive character.  There are plenty of Euro-looking Romans as well, dubbed into perfect Japanese to keep the madness chugging along at full steam.

Partly filmed in Italy’s celebrated Cinecitta studio, Thermae’s period production scenes frankly look better than they needed to.  It also observes the conventions of time travel movies, without getting bogged down in them.  Lightweight but entertaining, it is a goofy romp that avoids all the cheap excesses of recent “Blank Movie” spoofs.  Recommended for fans of time travel and manga-inspired films, Therma Romae screens tonight (7/14) at the Japan Society, as a co-programmed selection of Japan Cuts and the New York Asian Film Festival.

Japan Cuts ’13 & NYAFF ’13: A Story of Yonosuke

He was the sort of guy who would always help a friend move.  He would also loan them money without grumbling.  Yonosuke Yokomichi was a mop-topped tool, but he had a good heart.  The impact he had on his college friends is slowly but surely revealed in Shuichi Okita’s massively bittersweet A Story of Yonosuke (trailer here), which screens today as a co-presentation of the 2013 Japan Cuts and this year’s NewYork Asian Film Festival.

In the 1980’s, Japan’s booming economy had our opportunistic politicians worked up into a protectionist fury.  As a freshman business administration student, Yokomichi would seem well placed to join the economic elite, even if he is a naïve kid fresh off the bus from the coast.  However, our protagonist’s college years will be more defined by his involvement in the samba club than his course work.

Actually, the samba club looks like a blast.  Characteristically, it was something he just fell into.  Joining on freshman orientation day with two recent acquaintances, he would stay, even after an unplanned pregnancy forced Kuramochi and Akutsu to drop-out.  Yet years later as a happily married couple they reflect on how Yokomichi brought them together.

Yusuke Kato also has found memories of the title character, even though it took him a while to warm up to the earnest doofus.  Nonetheless, it would be Yokomichi’s tolerance that the jaded Kato remembers so fondly.  Ironically, it is Kato who introduces Yokomichi to Shoko Yosano, the great love of his life and perhaps vice versa.  It takes a while for them to realize it though and given the film’s elegiac tone, it is probably safe to assume they never really get in synch.

There are no big known-down drag-out melodramatic episodes in Story.  The film is too smart for that kind of acting-out.  Instead, Okita focuses on the sort of small telling moments that become indelibly etched in memory.  When he finally delivers the film’s Rosebud moment, it is devastatingly effective because of its casual simplicity.

Somewhat resembling a Japanese Louis Garrel, Kengo Kora is gangly and weirdly fidgety, but he plays Yokomichi with a fresh-faced charisma that grows over the long haul.  The on-screen chemistry he forges with Yoriko Yoshitaka’s Shoko Yosano is mature, complicated, and highly credible.  Likewise, her work as the one who got away (or let him get away) is remarkably honest and multifaceted. As her character evolves day-by-day and year-to-year, it is hard to say just what their relationship truly meant to her, but it was definitely something. Yet, Ayumi Ito is the film’s secret weapon, giving it unexpected bite as Chiharu Katase, a scandalous older woman with whom Yokomichi develops a long-term flirtation.

Deceptively simple sounding, Yonosuke is an epic film about the sort of people and events that are typically not portrayed in a grand manner.  Combining good humor and an elegant sensitivity, A Story of Yonosuke is an excellent film that is likely to be sadly overlooked by arthouse distributors because it lacks a sexy hook.  However, those who see the film will remember it warmly just like the title character’s friends.  Highly recommended, it screens this afternoon (7/13) at the Japan Society, as a joint presentation of this year’s Japan Cuts and New York Asian Film Festival.

Japan Cuts ’13 & NYAFF ’13: It’s Me, It’s Me

The expression “delete bad copies” sounds like relatively benign office work, until you start encountering your own personal doppelgangers.  Much to his surprise, Hitoshi Nagano gets along rather well with his first other “me.”  He is okay with the next one too.  Then things start getting complicated in Satoshi Miki’s It’s Me, It’s Me (trailer here), which screens tonight as a co-presentation of the 2013 Japan Cuts and this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

Nagano does not have a lot going on in his life.  Having thrown in the towel on his photography ambitions, he limps through each day as a clerk in a big box appliance store.  One fateful day at a fast food restaurant, a loud mouth young wheeler-dealer named Daiki inadvertently leaves his smart phone on Nagano’s tray.  Acting on a perverse impulse, he uses the phone to con Daiki’s mother into depositing a few hundred thousand yen into his account.  Feeling remorseful, Nagano tries to return the money.  However, Daiki’s mother will not take it back.  She also seems to think he is her son, Daiki. 

As it happens, they could indeed be twins.  Yet, when Nagano visits his own mother, she does not recognize him.  Instead, she insists Daiki the Doppelganger is actually Hitoshi Nagano.  Later, the man who admits he kind of, sort of is Daiki explains to Nagano his mother was particularly upset because a third doppelganger had been coming round, making scenes.  That would be Nao, the hipster student.

When the three get together, they are like three peas in a pod—different but the same.  They start calling their bolt-hole “Me Island” and cover for Nagano when he needs to bail on work.  As if meeting his second selves were not eventful enough, he also starts cautiously pursuing Sayaka, an attractive older customer, who is married to a gangster. The mood darkens drastically though when Nao starts bringing round even more doppelgangers.

Based on the novel by Hoshino Tomoyuki, IMIM is one of the most original takes on the doppelganger archetype since Capt. Kirk battled his evil twin in the late Richard Matheson’s “The Enemy Within.”  Part urban fantasy, part dark thriller, and part surreal head-trip, it is devilishly difficult to classify.  In a way, IMIM has a vibe similar to Sion Sono’s Love Exposure, in which strange and bizarre circumstances take on nationwide significance that everyone accepts with matter-of-fact nonchalance.  Indeed, the straight-faced media reports on the mushrooming “copy deletion” phenomenon serve as a sly social commentary, but they are deadly serious for the original Nagano.

J-pop star Kazuya Kamenashi nicely steps into the postmodern Alec Guinness role of Nagano et al, creating intriguingly distinct personas for each “me.” Yuki Uchida adds some grace and sophistication as Sayaka, while Ryo Kase is all kinds of creepy clamminess as Nagano’s abusive store manager, Tajima.

It’s Me, It’s Me is a very clever film that patiently establishes its character(s) and premise.  As a result, the payoff is subtle but satisfying.  A smart genre hybrid, It’s Me, It’s Me is recommended quite highly when it screens tonight (7/13) at the Japan Society, as a joint presentation of this year’s Japan Cuts and New York Asian Film Festival.

Killer Toon: Death By Webcomics

Maybe those fuddy-duddies at the Comics Code Authority were not completely off-base regarding the corrupting influence of comic books.  Take for instance Kang Ji-yoon’s webcomics.  Her lurid depictions of supernatural vengeance are certainly popular, but they also seem to be coming true in real life. How exactly does she get her ideas?  That will be the question in Kim Young-gyun’s Killer Toon (trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles at the CGV Cinemas.

Kang is not great when it comes to deadlines, so her editor Seo Mi-sook is initially quite relieved to finally receive her latest comic via e-mail.  Then she starts reading it.  Oddly, the first panels self-referentially depict her working late on the very same webcomic, but then flashes back to her deepest, darkest secret.  A malevolent presence starts terrorizing the understandably freaked out Seo, eventually forcing her to commit suicide, both in the comic and real life.

Responding to the call, Detective Lee Ki-cheol finds Seo’s body and the suspicious comic open on her computer.  Having evidently never seen a horror movie before, he decides this could be a career making case.  Logically, Kang becomes their prime suspect after she mysteriously arrives on the scene of another ostensive suicide foretold in her comics, at least until yet another interested party kidnaps her.

Like the E.C. Comics that obviously inspired it, everyone is guilty of something in Toon and therefore has it coming to some extent.  Combining live action with liberal samples of Kang’s work presented in a motion comic style, Kim’s film clearly evokes Creepshow and Tales from the Crypt, but it takes the concept even further.

As a result, Toon looks very cool, but it has a unfortunate habit of contradicting itself.  In fact, it seems compulsively driven to pull late inning switcheroos with the true nature of a primary character that simply become exhausting.  Still, Kim consistently maintains the heavy atmosphere of portent, slickly transitioning between Kang’s comics and the film’s objective reality.  The past clearly haunts the present, regardless of the exact nature of the machinations at work.

In probably his darkest role to date, musical theater veteran Um Ki-joon is surprisingly good as Det. Lee, an arrogant and ambitious man, but not a dumb flatfoot by any stretch.  Likewise, popular rom-com movie star Lee Si-young is quite the convincing basket case as the gruesome graphic novelist.  Kim Do-young’s ill-fated editor makes a memorable opening scene victim and Hyun Woo is also appropriately cold and clammy as Det. Lee’s twitchy junior.

Indeed, Toon boasts a strong ensemble and a darkly stylish look.  Unfortunately, screenwriter Lee Sang-hak’s adaptation of Lee Hoo-kyung’s novel just doesn’t always add up.  There are far too many “wait, why did” moments.  Still, for fans of horror movies and comics, there is some fun stuff to be found here, as well as some hardcore retribution to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.  Recommended for genre enthusiasts who value visual flair over narrative logic, Killer Toon opens today (7/12) in LA, at the CGV Cinemas.

Pacific Rim: Kaiju vs. Jaegers

At least, they do not destroy New York City.  For an apocalyptic film that constitutes real restraint.  The bad news is it is only a matter of time before all of mankind finds itself on the business end of the next major extinction event in Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

In the not too distant future, way down in Deep Thirteen . . . a mysterious alien race has begun rising through a breach in the Earth crust, sending gigantic monsters up to ravage Pacific coastal population centers.  They become known as “Kaiju” in honor of the great Japanese genre monster movies.  To combat this threat, the frontline nations joined forces to create giant Iron Man-like fighter-crafts they call “Jaegers” (the German word for hunters).  For a while, the Jaegers were taking care of business, but the Kaiju evolved, becoming bigger, stronger, and harder to kill.

Nobody understands this better than Raleigh Beckett.  Siblings like Beckett and his brother Yancey were often recruited as Jaeger pilots, because they are highly “drift compatible,” meaning they can form a strong neural bond with each other to control their massive fighting machines.  Unfortunately, when Yancey dies in battle his surviving brother shares the experience.  Shortsightedly, the Jaeger Project is discontinued in favor of a public works boondoggle of a barrier wall.  When that predictably fails, Beckett’s former commanding officer Stacker Pentecost rounds up all the mouth-balled Jaegers and a motley crew of pilots for a last stand.

There are the odd environmental implications to Rim, but frankly the film only mentions the ozone depletion mumbo-jumbo explanation in passing.  Of course, in old school Kaiju movies, the atomic bomb was always responsible for creating the monsters.  Ironically, a nuclear warhead might represent humanity’s salvation in Rim, if Pentecost’s team can slip one past the goalie, deep enough down the breach.

Even if it is an effects driven tent-pole, most cineastes will be interested in any film starring Idris Elba and Oscar nominee Rinko Kikuchi.  As one would expect, Elba is one of the very few name actors who has sufficient presence and masculinity to pull off the gruff on the outside, but slightly less gruff on the inside Stacker Pentecost (by the way, is del Toro’s Ronco character name-generating machine still under warranty?). 

Yet, the real breakout star is Kikuchi, who exhibits both acute sensitivity and legit action cred as rookie Jaeger pilot Mako Mori.  Charlie Hunnam is basically adequate as the out-for-redemption Raleigh Beckett, but that constitutes a significant improvement from his embarrassing turn in the laughable atheism advocacy potboiler, The Ledge.  Mana Ashida also deserves great credit for her tremendous green screen work as the young Mori, but viewers will start to absolutely despise del Toro for making her look so terrified.

Obviously, Pacific Rim is inspired by Kaiju classics, like the Godzilla and Daimajin franchises, but in terms of tone, the film feels more closely akin to anime, with its battling bots and angst-ridden crews.  In fact, the Jaegers bear a distinct resemblance to the Eva units in the Evangelion series. Frankly, a cheesy j-pop theme song would have come as a welcome relief from Ramin Djawadi’s ridiculously ominous score.

The visual effects are suitably impressive, particularly when rendering a sense of the enormous mass and scale of the Jaegers and creatures.  Still, it is too dark overall, never really giving viewers a good daytime shot of the Kaiju.  You start to wonder if they are allergic to Vitamin D.  As usual, the 3D adds little to the experience.

Frankly, the 3D surcharge might just price Rim out of a recommendation.  Kikuchi and Elba are excellent and the concept of a big budget, updated take on the Kaiju genre is pretty cool.  However, the script is rather workaday and a little of the bickering scientists’ comic relief goes a long, long way.  For Kaiju fans looking to beat the heat, Pacific Rim opens today (7/12) nationwide, including the Regal Union Square in New York (screening both the 3D and glorious 2D versions).

Japan Cuts ’13 & NYAAF ’13: I’m Flash

Rui Yoshino’s family heeded the advice of a certain science fiction novelist.  They started their own religion.  Perhaps cult would be a more accurate term.  Regardless, his telegenic looks have served the church well during his tenure as “Guru.”  Unfortunately, scandal threatens to disrupt the family business in Toshiaki Toyoda’s I’m Flash (trailer here), which screens tonight as a co-presentation of this year’s Japan Cuts: the New York Festival of Contemporary Japanese Cinema and the New York Asian Film Festival.

The Guru has not been himself lately.  Physically, he is fine.  He walked away from the car crash that killed a motorcyclist and left his single young lady passenger in a coma.  However, the incident has left its mark in other ways, as viewers will learn over time.  To protect their frontman and their interests, the family sequesters the Guru in his tropical compound, recruiting three unnamed underworld types to serve as his bodyguards.  Their services will indeed be needed.

A controversial figure in his own right, Toyoda bounced back from his unplanned filmmaking hiatus with two wildly idiosyncratic films.  His hard-rocking period fantasy Blood of Rebirth is a redemption allegory of unusual power, which will reverberate in viewers’ heads, perhaps for all eternity.   His subsequent Monster’s Club, an austere invitation to sympathize with the devil, might have been more about exorcising some of his own tortured demons.  Happily, I’m Flash is an eerie return to form and arguably Toyoda’s most accessible film since his “troubles.”  In fact, I’m Flash often seems poised on the brink of a caustic noir portrait of corruption in the Chinatown tradition, yet it always remains slyly elusive.

Death Note’s Tatsuya Fujiwara nicely hints at the imp of perverse lurking inside the not-as-dumb-as-he-looks Guru and Ryuhei Matsuda sets off all the right alarms bells as the bodyguard who is not too young and impetuous or old and cantankerous, but just deadly right.  Kiko Mizuhara also keeps viewers thoroughly off balance in her flashback sequences as the mystery woman.  Still, everybody wilts when sharing the screen with Michiyo Ookusu as the Guru’s Machiavellian mother—have mercy.

Like everything about Toyoda, I’m Flash is bound to be divisive.   Those with a taste for intelligently challenging films will appreciate its genuine air of mystery.  It is also a surprisingly handsome production, capitalizing on the evocative locale and subtly creepy set design, most notably the Guru’s villa, which looks as if it could grace the cover of both Architectural Digest and Cult Living.  

Toyotarô Shigemori’s cinematography is also weirdly effective, in a way that is difficult to pin down.  Over-used as a form of critical shorthand, the term “fever dream” does not really apply here.  This is clearly our world, in broad daylight, but something still feels not quite right. Very highly recommended for the moderately adventurous, I’m Flash screens at the Japan Society, this evening (7/11), the opening night of this year’s Japan Cuts, in conjunction with the New York Asian Film Festival.

Pawn Shop Chronicles: Don’t Hock What You Can’t Afford to Lose

How did we get so pathetically starved for entertainment as a society that we made reality TV stars out of pawn shop dudes?  At least this slightly macabre anthology film puts hock shops back in their properly sleazy place.  Everyone doing business at the General Lee Pawn Shop will be getting the shaft, but it will be fate and human nature doing the dirty work in Wayne Kramer’s Pawn Shop Chronicles (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Alton and his crony Johnson sit about the store grunting and guffawing, pausing to deal with the occasional pawn.  Each transaction will cause big time trouble and regret for the General Lee’s walk-ins, like Vernon the meth head, who hocks his shotgun right before meeting up with his white supremacist buddies, Raw Dog and Randy, to hold-up their dealer.  Of course, they are rather disappointed in his short-sightedness.

On paper, “The Shotgun” sounds like a cheap bit of hicksploitation, but it features some of the wickedest dialogue in the film, which Paul Walker and Kevin Rankin chew on with proper relish.  Gleefully embracing cartoonish violence and a bizarre redneck brand of tolerance, PSC arguably puts its strongest foot forward first.

“The Ring” also has its exploitation merits, but viewers should be warned it is the most explicit and disturbing installment of the film. Making amends for Crash, PSC’s pretentious evil twin, Matt Dillon plays a newlywed who chances into the General Lee, only to discover his presumably late first wife’s custom ring in the display case.  Following the chain of wrongful ownership takes him into the lair of Johnny Shaw, the latest serial killer to be played by Elijah Wood.

Despite a sly riff on the crossroads legend, “The Medallion” is PSC’s weakest link.  Seriously, a little bit of Brendan Fraser shticking up the joint as Ricky Baldoski, the low rent Elvis impersonator, goes a long, long way.  Eventually, strands of the previous stories will transect this Faustian tale, but first viewers must sit through an extended gag involving the town’s rival barbershops that feels like it runs longer than The Winds of War.

Many have long awaited the film that features Wood, Lukas Haas, and DJ Qualls, but since they never appear here in the same scene together, we still cannot definitely say they are not one and the same person.  Vincent D’Onofrio and Chi McBride are mildly amusing in the General Lee framing segments, but it is Walker, Rankin, and Dillon who are the film’s overachievers.

Much like a chaotic pawn shop, the inspired and the stupid comfortably sit side-by-side in PSC.  To his credit, Kramer (in a radical departure from his excellent more-or-less feature debut, The Cooler) helms the madness with considerable energy and absolutely no shame.  On balance, b-movie connoisseurs will enjoy checking it out when it releases on VOD this Friday (7/12).  It also opens theatrically in New York at the AMC Empire and in Colorado at the AMC Westminster Promenade.

Terms and Conditions May Apply, Unevenly and Sporadically

Did anyone check the fine print when they voted for Obama?  Those of us who did not click “I agree” are wondering if it said “will freely rummage through your e-mail and track your every digital move.”  Cullen Hoback occasionally expresses a bit of (presumed) voter’s remorse when surveying the state of internet privacy in Terms and Conditions May Apply (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

They talk a progressive game, but Google and Facebook clearly emerge as the dastardly villains of Hoback’s documentary.  It is not just that they collect and disseminate users’ data.  They changed the rules in the middle of the game.  For new sign-ups, it might be spelled out in black-and-white, but in small all-cap sans-serif type.  Users are not supposed to read those unwieldy terms and conditions and they don’t.

TACMA spreads its outrage far and wide at the expense of the core issues under discussion—the fine print.  The question what users are agreeing to would be pertinent even if the NSA never existed.  As a case in point I have heard of but never verified, musicians reportedly using a European website to host their scores as means promoting their music reportedly signed away their publishing rights in the process.  Aside from privacy concerns, just what sort of intellectual property implications do those terms and conditions secretly hold? Frustratingly, TACMA never delves into such territory.

Understandably, Hoback is rather disturbed that Facebook, Google, and Yahoo are so willing to funnel information to the government.  However, his tone-deafness is rather laughable when he calls on Anonymous hacker-spokesman Barrett Brown to bemoan the death of privacy.  Of course, Pres. George W. Bush is frequently invoked as a bogeyman, but Hoback reluctantly admits things are the same or perhaps worse under Obama.  Indeed, he rightly points out the current administration has criminally prosecuted more government whistleblowers than all its predecessors combined.

More focus and a truly nonpartisan approach would have strengthened TACMA’s case.  (Red herrings like the UK phone-hacking scandal, apparently thrown in to give Rupert Murdoch a good tsk-tsking, frankly do the online privacy cause a disservice.)  The real truth is only a Libertarian like Rand Paul or Gary Johnson will curtail such wholesale data collection if elected, but perhaps Hoback can’t handle the truth.  A mixed but timely bag of facts and anecdotes, Terms and Conditions May Apply should at least prompt some pointed questions when it opens this Friday (7/12) in New York at the Quad Cinema.

NYAFF ’13: Beijing Blues

Fred Dryer would approve of this Beijing police detective named after his famous TV character.  Brother Zhang Huiling (Hunter) is a broken-down, asthmatic copper, pursuing workaday crooks on Beijing’s bunco squad, but there is no denying his work ethic.  After years of hard drinking and hard policing, Zhang encounters his personal Moriarty in Gao Qunshu’s Beijing Blues (trailer here), which screens today during the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival.

There is a lot of money on the streets of Beijing, but many of the flim-flam artists Brother Zhang’s team investigates prey on their fellow proletarian.  Shot in a hand-held, on-the-fly docudrama style, Blues is initially rather episodic, capturing Brother Zhang on the job, stalking and eventually busting assorted counterfeit pushers, traffic accident scammers, and fortune-telling hucksters.  However, the legendary con artist Gold-Digger Zhang has reportedly blown into town and dispatched his minions for an impending crime wave.  A street level chess match ensues between the two old dogs.

Having established his blockbuster credentials in recent years, Gao returns to the gritty aesthetic and unconventional casting of his kind of brilliant, NYAFF selected Old Fish.  Like the real life cop who played Fish’s protagonist, many of Beijing’s Finest appear in Blues, usually playing cops, logically enough.  However, most of the cast were well known Chinese bloggers and social media figures, including former publisher Zhang Lixian, who is sensational as Brother Zhang.  Zhang perfectly expresses his namesake’s world-weariness, as well as his steadfast commitment to principle, while still suggesting he is always an inch away from doing a full Howard Beale.

Gao could have easily trimmed some of Brother Zhang’s plugging away from the repetitive mid-section, yet his character is always engaging.  When Gao kicks it into gear, the tension truly mounts, but in subtly ironic ways.  Much like Fish, Blues consistently defies cop movie conventions.  While his earlier film presented a jaundiced view of the corrupt and ineffectual police bureaucracy, Blues lets Brother Zhang’s colleagues and superiors off the hook.  Instead, contemporary Chinese go-go-don’t-get-involved society falls under Blues’ withering glance.

Who knew China’s micro-bloggers, street buskers, reality show contestants, and screenwriters were such good actors?  From stem to stern, the entire ensemble appears true-to-life and completely believable in character.  Led by Zhang’s richly textured lead performance, Beijing Blues delivers entertaining idiosyncrasies and unexpected depth.  Highly recommended, it screens today (7/9) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.

NYAFF ’13: The Peach Tree

It would have been a Sophie’s Choice worthy of Solomon, but a devoted father was understandably reluctant to make it. Instead, he raises his two sons, conjoined twin brothers fused at the neck, in seclusion.  When they finally encounter a young woman, both will be profoundly affected in Ku Hye-sun’s The Peach Tree (trailer here), which screens today during the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival.

Dong-hyun is the sullen brother who controls their shared body.  Sang-hyun is literally the superfluous one, who can only watch passively from his backward looking vantage point.  He is the one doctors wanted to “remove,” but their father could not bear to consent.  Both bear the emotionally scars of their mother’s rapid descent into madness.  Thinking it best to shelter them from an insensitive world, their father raises them in a remote farmhouse, with their mother hidden away like Rochester’s wife.

Concerned by his increasing resentment of Sang-hyun, the well-meaning father tries to realize Dong-hyun’s ambition to become a published writer by recruiting Park Seung-ah, a struggling children’s book illustrator.  Shrouded in a hoodie to appear unremarkable, Dong-hyun starts falling for Park as they work on a book transparently based on his own experiences: The Peach Tree.  Yet, even though Sang-hyun cannot see Park, he still shares his brother’s growing attachment.

Throughout Peach Tree, Ku’s approach screams to be compared to Tim Burton, in both good and bad ways.  Visually, she commands the screen, while showing an acute affinity for outcasts and underdogs.  There is a comparable attention to detail, but unfortunately there is also a somewhat similar slackness to her narrative.  It is no surprise where this film is headed, but Ku takes her time getting there.

Still, there is no getting around the fact Peach Tree looks incredible.  Cinematographer Kim Soon-yong gives it all a rich, sun-drenched look appropriate for a fairy tale.  Formerly a major Korean TV star, Ku has become an artistic polyglot, producing well received works in a variety of media, like a Korean James Franco, except more talented and less annoying.  Clearly, she is an actor’s director, coaxing some finely wrought work from her cast.  Ryu Deok-hwan nicely expresses all the complicated and conflicted turmoil roiling within Dong-hyun.  In contrast, Cho Sueng-woo is mostly just called upon to look sad as Sang-hyun, but he does so convincingly.  However, Nam Sang-mi finds unexpected depth in Park, who turns out to be more human than your typically noble Miracle-Worker.

It is hard to watch the first and last ten minutes of Peach Tree and not get choked up.  It is also difficult to miss the naked manipulation.  Ku’s film is lovely to look at and features some finely drawn performances, but it would have been nice to have a bit more life in the middle.  Recommended for those who appreciate high-end melodrama, The Peach Tree screens this afternoon (7/9) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s NYAFF.

Latinbeat ’13: AninA

It seems like everybody picks on Anina Yatay Salas.  She’s a kid, you see.  She’s a good kid though, who will be getting the sort of lessons that will make her a good grown-up in Alfredo Soderguit’s animated feature, AninA (trailer here), which screens this weekend during the Film Society of Lincoln Center’s 2013 Latinbeat.

The Spanish work for palindrome is capicúa, a fact young Anina knows only too well.  She has three of them in her name, which she finds rather excessive.  Her Ned Flanders-ish father thought it was delightful, but the bratty kids at school delight in taunting her with the word “capicúa.”  Still, she has good friends, like Florencia, but certainly not Yisel.  During one fateful recess, an innocent stumble leads to a playground dust-up and a mutual trip to the principal’s office.  As punishment, both she and Yisel receive mysterious sealed envelopes only to be opened in the principal’s presence, the following week.

Obsessing over her scarlet envelope, Anina and Florencia start following Yisel, in hopes of sneaking a peek inside hers.  However, to her considerable surprise, Anina starts sharing strange bonding moments with her nemesis at school, stemming from their gossip-spawning punishment.

AninA is a wonderfully innocent and endearing film with absolutely no objectionable material whatsoever.  Adults will probably have a good idea where it is headed, but they will approve every step of the way.  Adapting Sergio López Suárez’s book for young readers (which he illustrated), Soderguit maintains a similarly gentle style.  His simple figures are rather soothing, evoking nostalgia for the old fashioned children’s books of eras gone by.

There are thoughtful bits of adolescent experience throughout AninA, but it is the title character (sensitively voiced by Federica Lacaño) that makes it such a winner.  Boys of a certain age and immaturity level might grow restless during the film, but girls and adults of all varieties will find it completely charming.  Recommended with enthusiasm, AninA screens this coming Saturday (7/13) and Sunday (7/14) afternoons at the Beale Theatre, as part of Latinbeat ’13.

The Collage of History—Israel: a Home Movie

Technology has been a blessing to historians, resulting in an explosion of primary sources.  This is particularly so in a country as small as Israel, where great historical events often intrude on personal day-to-day life.  Assembling a collage of amateur video, director Eliav Lilti and project creator-producer Arik Bernstein create a fragmentary portrait of the Middle East’s only democracy in Israel: a Home Movie (clip here), which opens this Wednesday in New York at Film Forum.

Bernstein’s team is blessed with a wealth of source material, dating back to the 1930’s well before the formal establishment of the State of Israel.  There are weddings, celebrations, and people just fooling around with their cameras.  Yet, the resulting footage serves as a time capsule of each era. In some cases, the informal videographers documented undeniable history as it happened.  Easily the most dramatic example is the footage shot by beach partiers of Egyptian MiGs shot of the sky by pursuing Israeli fighter pilots after executing the sneak attack that launched the Yom Kippur War.

A film like Home Movies arguably says more about the editorial hand shaping it than those who originally shot the constituent videos.  In this case, Bernstein and Lilti’s team clearly reflects the inclination of liberal humanism (broadly defined) to hold one’s self or one’s country to a higher standard than those who inveigh against us.  It is a noble, forgiving instinct, but it is often misplaced.  Time and again, the disembodied narrators bemoan Israel’s inability to make peace with the Arab populations, asking what they could have done differently.

In contrast, little attention is paid to the terrorism Israel has faced since her inception—just the occasional ghostly picture of a relative cut down before she reached thirty.  Still, the rockstar treatment afforded to journalist Dan Shilon at a swinging 1970’s wedding after his uncompromising reporting on the murder of the Israeli Olympians is certainly a telling moment.  Yet, the resilient hope peace might finally follow each successive war is a refrain heard from Israelis throughout Home Movies, speaking volumes about the inherent difference in values held by Israel and its haters.

Indeed, Home Movies is a deliberate and knowing exercise in subjectivity, in which truth seeps in through the conspicuous margins.  It should therefore neither be the first nor the last word on the Israeli experience.  (Viewers looking for a quick primer should check out the lucid and comprehensive The Case for Israel featuring Prof. Alan Dershowitz.)

There are many striking (though grainy) images and several intriguing anecdotes in Home Movies.  Where else will you see such candid footage of Moshe Dayan (courtesy of his son)?  Nonetheless, it is important to understand it is a product of an Israeli film establishment not so very different from our own.  Recommended for history buffs, but with reservations, Israel: a Home Movie opens this Wednesday (7/10) at New York’s Film Forum.

NYAFF ’13: The Last Supper

The Biblical echoes are slightly misleading, but not wholly inappropriate.  For those present, the notorious Hongmen Banquet is the betrayal that keeps on betraying.  The murky events in question will continue to haunt the first Han Emperor until his final tormented moments in Lu Chuan’s The Last Supper (trailer here), which screens today during the 2013 New York Asian Film Festival.

Everyone realizes Emperor Gaozu, a.k.a. Liu Bang, is not long for this earth, including the common-born emperor from Pei County.  However, he is not going out gracefully.  Haunted by nightmares and visions of his past, Liu Bang sees conspiracies in every shadow.  He ought to know.  He reached the throne through some shrewdly timed treachery.  Once sworn allies with Lord Yu and General Xin, he has killed the former and imprisoned the latter to solidify his hold on the throne.

Liu Bang has not exactly been scrupulously faithful to his wife, the Empress Lü Zhi either.  Regardless, she will act ruthlessly to protect his legacy.  The empress decides it is time to be well rid of Xin once and for all, but his prominence and his highly placed friends in court provide him a slim measure of protection.

Frankly, we are quite fortunate to have Last Supper screening at NYAFF, considering its release was held up for four months by government censors.  It is not hard to see what troubled the obedient apparatchiks.  Even a bureaucrat could pick up on the film’s “absolute power corrupts absolutely” implications.  This is the high tragedy of a man who gains an empire but loses his humanity (a point that also emerges, albeit somewhat less forcefully, in Daniel Lee’s White Vengeance, which also dramatizes the circumstances surrounding the Hongmen Banquet.)

For Lu, this represents a dramatic change of pace from his stark portrayal of Japanese war crimes in City of Life and Death.  Obviously less politically correct for the powers that be, Supper is further differentiated by a feverish atmosphere that often approaches the outright demonic.  Yet, it is also a grand period production, with enough imposing sets and palace guard extras to satisfy Cecil B. DeMille.

Supper is also notable for the geographically diverse casting of the main triumvirate that surely ought to pay dividends at the respective box offices.  Mainlander Liu Ye nicely portrays the raging paranoia of Liu Bang’s twilight years without descending to shtick or gimmicks.  Hong Kong super-star Daniel Wu captures the nobility of the tragic Lord Yu, while Taiwanese Chang Chen is impressively steely as General Xin.  Nonetheless, Qin Lan (Lu’s wife and frequent collaborator) dominates the film with her spellbinding Lady Macbeth-like portrayal of Lü Zhi.

The strangely timely Supper comes as a welcome rebuttal to Chinese films like Hero or The Guillotines that celebrate or at least excuse strong centralized authority.  Lu’s vision of Liu Bang clearly suggests the emperor’s madness and absolute power are two sides of the same coin.  In addition to its challenging subtext, The Last Supper also happens to be an excellent film, well worth seeing for its striking look and Qin Lan’s commanding performance.  Highly recommended, it screens tonight (7/7) and Wednesday afternoon (7/10) at the Walter Reade as part of this year’s New York Asian Film Festival.