Momentum: Olga Kurylenko’s Action Chops

Alex Faraday and her accomplices thought they were simply stealing diamonds from a Cape Town bank vault, but they also inadvertently scooped up an ominous MacGuffin. You might wonder why a corrupt U.S. senator would keep an incriminating flash drive in a South African safety deposit box. Better yet, you might wonder why he kept it at all. Regardless, Faraday has it, so his goons will do whatever it takes to get it back in Stephen S. Campanelli’s Momentum (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Kevin Fuller lured Faraday back into thievery with the promise of a big score, but he never fully revealed the nature of the game he was playing. However, she figures it out pretty quickly when the American senator’s British enforcer, Mr. Washington, kills Fuller while she is hiding under the bed. Obviously, this puts Faraday in a tight spot. She is already wanted for capping a freelancer Moss brought on board when he started menacing the innocent bank customers.

Evidently, Fuller was manipulated by Washington into stealing the chip and the diamonds from the super-secret vault-box, which makes no sense whatsoever, but here we are, so what can you do? If you are Faraday, you keep one step ahead of Mr. Washington, while doing her best to protect Fuller’s ingrate widow and her young son.

Basically, Momentum has one thing going for it, but it is significant: Olga Kurylenko as the action lead. She was the best part about Philipp Stölz’s middling Erased and here she fully realizes that potential. Kurylenko displays terrific action chops and even does some credible whatchamacallit . . . acting. James Purefoy’s Mr. Washington has a decently loathsome presence, but he would arguably work better as a secondary villain rather than the antagonistic lead. Instead of filling that void, Morgan Freeman literally phones it in as the senator, who only exists to give orders on his cell phone. Yet, the biggest problem is Adam Marcus & Debra Sullivan’s screenplay, which has the brains of a punch-drunk kangaroo.

To give Campanelli credit where it is due, the initial heist scene is tight, tense, and mysterious. It utterly puts to shame the utterly shameful Checkmate. However, after Faraday’s big entrance, the causes and effects no longer make much sense. Still, the fight scenes, shootouts, and chases are all rather appealing in an old school, down-to-earth way. Campanelli keeps the pace cranked, but Kurylenko’s steely badassery is the film’s trump card.

Although there are some appealingly gritty action scenes, the film ultimately panders to the lowest, most vile conspiracy theory paranoia, so good job ending on a buzz-killing note. Therefore, as a dramatically mixed bag that implodes down the stretch, it is hard to recommend Momentum, despite Kurylenko’s best efforts. For her diehard fans, it opens tomorrow (10/16) in New York, at the Cinema Village.

Tales of Halloween: Tis the Season

Ever since Silent Night, Bloody Night, it seems like there are more horror movies set during Christmas than Halloween. While there is something appealingly subversive about some Killer Kringles, the exploitation of a holy day remains less than edifying. Finally, eleven filmmakers (two working in tandem) put horror in its proper season—Halloween. By the way, that is seventeen days from today. All sorts of malevolent monsters and men come creeping out in the multi-director anthology film, Tales of Halloween (trailer here), which opens this Friday in select theaters.

Adrienne Barbeau will guide us through the assorted stories and give us warm nostalgic feelings as the voice of the radio DJ working Halloween night. When she warns us this town goes nuts on Halloween, she is not kidding. The film starts with Dave Parker’s Sweet Tooth as a candy-themed warmed up. It is a pretty traditional bogey man-is-more-real-than-the-stupid-teenagers-using-him-to-scare-a-naïve-kid sort of story, but like many of the constituent tales, Parker’s execution is strong.

Frankly, The Night Billy Raised Hell might be Saw franchise veteran Darren Lynn Bousman’s best work to date. Again, a young trick-or-treater is led astray by older siblings. Peer pressured into pranking their rarely seen neighbor, Billy discovers the hard way he is a rather Mephistophelean gent. Alas, the lad is whisked off into a bacchanal of mischief and violence that will definitely leave a mark. Seriously, you have never seen Barry Bostwick this evil before, but it is worth the wait.

Adam Gierasch’s Trick easily boasts the most sinister twist of the entire film. It starts out reminiscent of Bruce McDonald’s Hellions, with its Hellspawn trick-or-treaters, until it isn’t. It’s the sort of story that depends on the reveal, but Gierasch totally pulls it off.

Finally, the bullies start to get their comeuppance in Paul Solet’s The Weak and the Wicked. Grace Phipps and her two sociopathic running mates have tormented their meek victim well past reason—until tonight. Cue the gruesome transformation effects. Again, this tale is relatively conventional, but Solet gives it a distinctly creepy vibe.

Perhaps the weakest link, Grim Grinning Ghost, comes from the film’s conceptual organizer, Axelle Carolyn. When a Halloween party guest is so freaked out by her host’s story, she bolts for home, where she will be completely alone and vulnerable. We pretty much know what will happen beat-by-beat, but at least fan favorite Lin Shaye gets to tell the spooky yarn.

In a twist, it is the trick-or-treaters that are in jeopardy in Lucky McKee’s Hansel & Gretel riff, Ding Dong. Let’s just say an unstable middle aged woman without children is a little too eager for Halloween each year. It is not the best in show, but it is certainly a weird little bauble.

Andrew Kasch & John Skipp’s This Mean War is a mere trifle about rival neighbors and their Halloween decorations. However, things really heat up with Mike Mendez’s Friday the 31^st. What starts out as an homage to old school slasher movies quickly goes totally nuts. There will be Claymation and delirious gore. It is a total treat.

The same is true of Ryan Schifrin’s The Ransom of Rusty Rex. Yes, as a transparent horror take on O. Henry, we know exactly where this is going, but Schifrin (son of Lalo, who scored the film) keeps the energy and attitude cranked way the heck up. The voice of John Landis gleefully declining their ransom demands is the icing on the cake.

Neil Marshall ends Halloween strong with Bad Seed, a sort of “Attack of the Killer Pumpkins” story that is considerably moodier and far less campy than it sounds. It also features the highest density of cult movie cameos, with Joe Dante getting the most screen time.

Anthologies are always uneven, but since it all happens in the same put-upon town on Halloween night, the constituent tales mostly share a consistent look. Frankly, the score card is pretty good: four really strong tales and maybe three or four that are mixed bags, but still have something interesting to offer. Recommended for horror fans, especially those who follow the assorted filmmakers and cast-members, Tales of Halloween opens this Friday (10/16) in select cities, including the Littleton Alamo Drafthouse in Colorado.

Tab Hunter Confidential: from Warner Brothers to John Waters

He was part of the final generation of stars groomed under the old fashioned studio system. Tab Hunter’s Warner Brothers contract would be considered exploitative by today’s standards, but it provided him the protection from the tabloid press he needed. Once that was gone, his name became closely linked with scandal. The former heartthrob takes stock of his career highs and lows in Jeffrey Schwarz’s Tab Hunter Confidential (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Unless you are a big John Waters fan, Damn Yankees! might just be all the Tab Hunter you know. However, at one time he was James Dean’s biggest rival and the star of Battle Cry, one of the biggest hits of 1955. He was also mostly closeted, except for a gossipy story in the infamous scandal sheet Confidential, a tawdry bit of business later incorporated in L.A. Confidential.

Doing it the traditional way, Schwarz (who also helmed the thoroughly entertaining Spine Tingler! the William Castle Story) starts with Hunter’s difficult childhood and proceeds forward in chronological order. Aside from his uber-California good looks, Hunter (born Arthur Gelien) never got a lot of breaks early in life, but he eventually found his niche in Hollywood. To open doors, he signed with Henry Wilson, who also happened to be Rock Hudson’s agent, which we are indeed supposed to find significant.

Even without the issues of sexuality, Confidential paints an intriguing picture of the waning days of mogul-era Hollywood. In the day and age, it seems bizarre the studio constantly photographed Hunter stepping out with his friend and frequent co-star Natalie Wood. At least they enjoyed each other’s company, even if the implication was bogus. Frankly, Hunter’s career rise, fall, utter cratering, and cult comeback are rather fascinating to behold. Arguably, no prior documentary subject ever had as much experience with dinner theater as Hunter, which he forthrightly addresses.

As an interview subject, Hunter comes across as a rather matter-of-fact and unassuming kind of fellow, not so very far removed from the earnest soldiers he so frequently portrayed. He does not seem bitter or out to prove anything to anyone. Therefore, it is rather pleasant spending time with him.

Of course, there is no getting around the ironies of Hunter’s life. He is now considered kitschy, but he grew as an actor. Unfortunately, some of his best work was done for the moody television drama showcases, so it is not widely available now. Yet, neither Hunter nor Schwarz cares to claim martyrdom for the retired actor, preferring to position him as a show business survivor. They are also both impressively nimble when traversing the film’s trickiest territory: Hunter’s relationship to the late and very married Anthony Perkins.
Adding his cult movie seal of approval, John Waters turns up as he usually does in docs about marginalized cinema figures, reliably delivering the Polyester sound bites. With its peppy pace and insider’s perspective on old school Hollywood, Tab Hunter Confidential is quite engaging stuff. Recommended for fans of Hunter and his big screen contemporaries, it opens this Friday (10/16) in New York, at the Village East.

CIFF ’15: The Laundryman

It is both his cover and euphemism for what he does. Ostensibly, he works for a neighborhood laundry service, but he specializes in removing “stains” from clients’ lives. He is a coolly dispassionate hitman, with support staff to help with the cleaning. However, he will have to seek professional help of a different sort when his recent victims start haunting him in Lee Chung’s The Laundryman (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Chicago International Film Festival.

His boss A-gu is the rainmaker and he does the dirty work. For years, this arrangement has worked for “No. 1, Chingtian Street.” Yes, that is what he is known as, to the few who know the contract killer (it is a long story that will be revealed in due time). He leads a rather solitary life, but that makes it easy for the stunningly beautiful A-gu to manipulate him. They go way back, in an ambiguous way. When he finds himself genuinely haunted, she refers him to nightclub psychic Lin Hsiang. Despite her hipster style, she is legitimate enough to see the abusive self-styled ladies’ man he just offed and the old couple he whacked before him. However, he has no idea who the silent young woman ghost is or was.

With Lin’s help, he will track down the customers who paid for their hits, in order to satisfy their curiosity and hopefully move them along into the spirit realm. Complicating matters, a sinister party seems to be trying to thwart them. The resulting chaos also attracts the attention of a soon to retire police inspector. It gets to the point where a hitman doesn’t know who to trust.

Although Laundryman starts out as a comedy, it gets real serious, real fast. Lee and Chen Yu-hsun have written a surprisingly complex tale of betrayal and dark secrets from the past, freely incorporating all kinds of genre elements cafeteria-style. It is a wild ride, but they keep us safely buckled into the roller coaster.

Rising star Joseph Chang Hsiao-chuan has the perfect brooding physicality for No. 1, Chingtian Street, not unlike his quietly ominous work in Soul. He also develops some radically different but equally credible chemistry with Sonia Sui Tang as the particularly fatal femme fatale A-gu and Wan Qian’s Lin, the increasingly sober and freaked out party girl psychic. These are not your standard genre film types, even before Lee thoroughly disrupts their worlds.

Lee fully capitalizes on the cinematic creepiness of A-gu’s laundry facility, settling into a zone best described as supernatural noir. Yet, despite the general moodiness (heightened by Yao Hung-i’s eerie cinematography), he maintains a vigorous pace. Frankly, The Laundryman is exactly the sort of foreign film that feels ripe for a wildly inferior Hollywood remake, but it would be especially daunting to follow in Sui’s compulsively scene-stealing footprints. Highly recommended as a first class supernatural mystery, The Laundryman screens Friday (10/16) and Tuesday (10/20), as part of this year’s Chicago International Film Festival.

The Inhabitants: Nobody Checks Out of this Bed & Breakfast

You have to assume any New England building dating back to the Seventeenth Century must have been involved in witchcraft in some way. The historic Noyes-Parris House, former home of Rev. Samuel Parris of Salem Witch Trial infamy, is a good example. Fittingly, the early Colonial house serves as the central location of brothers Michael & Shawn Rasmussen’s old school The Inhabitant (trailer here), which releases today on iTunes.

Despite the freakiness of Rose Stanton, the somewhat age-addled retiring proprietor, a married couple is delighted to buy the March Carriage bed & breakfast—and for such a reasonable price. Dan and Jessica Coffey believe it is an investment in their future, but they really did not poke around enough. If they had, they might have noticed the weird witchcraft paraphernalia in the cellar and the video surveillance monitors still functioning in the attic. They also might have been curious to learn Lydia March, a midwife accused of witchcraft, met her grisly end while living there.

The first few days are filled with rustic charm, but when Dan is suddenly called away on business, he returns to find a radically different vibe. If only their dog Wiley could talk. Instead, he will have to look for answers in the surveillance tapes and the local witchcraft museum.

There is no question the Noyes-Parris/March Carriage is an absolutely terrific location for a horror film. The Rasmussen Brothers fully exploit it, taking viewers into all sorts of dark rooms and passageways. The Inhabitants bears obvious comparison to Ti West’s The Innkeepers (some of his fans were down on it, but we were bullish on it here), with good reason. Both films seem to absorb and project the eerie energy of their backdrops, creating claustrophobic terror. However, The Inhabitants also brings to mind films like Ted Geoghegan’s We Are Still Here and, believe it or not, the first V/H/S film (they both make grainy video tape pretty damn blood-chilling).

Of course, you can also see stylistic hat-tips to the ambitious low budget horror films of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Everything feels real and hand-crafted. Presumably, any computer generated effects were used sparingly. Fortunately, the Brothers Rasmussen intuitively understand what we do not see is always scarier than what we clearly can (especially if it is cheesy looking). They also created an intriguingly eerie backstory that rings true to local lore. While we’re at it, let’s give Wiley (a.k.a. Bailey) some credit. He’s very well trained and rather expressive for a canine performer.

The humans are not bad either, particularly Michael Reed as Coffey, the out his depth everyman. He seems reasonably proactive and intuitive for a horror movie husband, while Judith Chaffee is suitably unsettling as Stanton. Elise Couture-Stone holds up her end well enough, but Jessica Coffey is just the sort of role that demands disciplined consistency rather than method emoting.

Perhaps most impressively, the Brothers Rasmussen demonstrate a really strong eye for visual composition. You can tell throughout The Inhabitants that they have carefully determined who and what should be in the foreground and background of each shot. It is a surprisingly well-crafted and satisfying ultra-indie film that deserves a wide genre audience. Highly recommended for horror fans, The Inhabitants is now available on most major VOD platforms.

The Raid: Uncle Choy Fights the Good Fight

Uncle Choy is like the Nick Fury of HK comic books. He is an old cat, but all kinds of tough. His comics were published from the late 1950s into the early 1970s, but they really found their stride when the veteran Republican era military doctor started taking the fight to the Imperial Japanese and their cringey figurehead, last Emperor Pu Yi. The good doctor uncle will indeed heed the call of patriotism in Ching Siu-tung & Tsui Hark’s The Raid, which releases today on DVD from Well Go USA.

Since Uncle Choy is a comic book character, he will get comic art for his opening credits and transitions in the Creepshow tradition through the film. Uncle Choy carries garlic and red pepper for medicinal purposes and dynamite for emergencies. Unfortunately, he cannot save the colonel ailing from a Japanese poison gas attack. However, he can make jolly well certain it never happens again. Initially, the dedicated Lt. Mang does not understand how handy Uncle Choi is have around, but he will soon learn to appreciate his resourcefulness. Likewise, Choy have reason to thank his young adopted niece Nancy for disobediently trailing him, just as she will be happy her Oliver Twist-ish admirer invited himself along.

Choy’s misfit commandos will finally reach full strength when they rendezvous with Mang’s spy in Pu Yi’s camp, Tina, a.k.a. WO-1 and the smitten junior warlord Bobo Bear, who joins up to impress her. Together, they will challenge the schemes of the local Japanese commander Masa and the treasonous movie star Kim Pak-fai. Ostensibly, she is the puppet emperor’s mistress, but she is betraying him and her country with Masa.

There is a good deal of physical humor in The Raid, but happily, it is much cleverer and far less shticky than one might fear. Ching (the action director on the Tsui-produced New Dragon Inn) and Tsui never water down their fight scenes with slapstick foolishness.  They recognize there is a time for comedy of errors and a time for getting down to business.

Although he was only forty-two at the time, Dean Shek is remarkably convincing as the crafty old uncle. He balances to comedy and his unlikely action smackdowns quite adroitly in his final screen appearance before his early retirement. He also seems to forge a comfortable rapport with almost the entire ensemble, except perhaps the “Big” Tony Leung Ka Fai’s gleefully moustache-twisting, unapologetically villainous Masa, with whom he rarely shares screen time. Jacky Cheung is also appealingly earnest as Bobo Bear, but Fennie Yuen upstages nearly everyone as Tina, the film’s smartest character by far.

As Tsui fans would expect, there are some big, suitably chaotic set-piece sequences in The Raid, including a crazy bit of business involving a plane that prefigures the conclusion of The Taking of Tiger Mountain. In many ways, it is like a live-action cartoon, but Ching and Tsui maintain a vibe of rugged camaraderie that is pleasantly distinctive. It is a fun film that holds up quite well for action connoisseurs twenty-four years after its initial theatrical release. Recommended for fans of Hong Kong film, The Raid (not to be confused with the Gareth Evans franchise) is now available on regular DVD, from Well Go USA.

The Avenging Fist: HK Dystopia Gone Nuts

Oddly enough, the Federal government is actually popular in this dystopian future. It is just ridiculously ineffectual. Combat 21 and his storm-trooper cult basically terrorize the futuristic capitol city with impunity. Only a group of genetically-enhanced twenty-something looking teenagers can stop them in Andrew Lau & Corey Yuen’s wildly over the top The Avenging Fist (trailer here), which releases today on DVD from Well Go USA.

Sadly, Mega Nova and Belle never knew their father Thunder, an elite policeman killed in the line of duty—except not really. Thunder and their mother Wing were part of the Power Glove pilot program, one of the unpleasant secrets of the former government. Nova and Belle were tests cases in the next phase of the government’s efforts to harness the supposed unused 80% of the human brain (which implies mankind is devolving).

Rather than consign them to a guinea pig’s life, Wing spirited them away. Now they live an underground existence, if by underground you mean constant clubbing and jet-scouter drag racing. However, when Combat 21 gets wind of their X-Men like abilities, he unleashes his brainwashed army in their National Socialist uniforms, which tragically enough includes Thunder. At least they might have an ally in Inspector Dark, Thunder’s former colleague—the one who supposedly killed him, but he clearly didn’t do it decisively enough.

Everything about this film is totally nuts, in both good and bad ways. It started out as a rip-off of the Tekken video game franchise so blatant it led to billable hours, but apparently screenwriter Sap Sam (Thirteen) Chan resorted to time-tested strategy of convoluting the plot into such a nonsensical rat’s nest, nobody would want to claim it resembled their I.P. Seriously, this is a film in which a glove is used to access unused portions of the brain. If you are waiting for logic to show up, you will see the closing credits first.

On the other hand, The Avenging Fist also features Master Sammo Hung sporting a shiny silver fedora and Gigi Leung rocking an Afro-cut. Indeed, there is something reassuring about his presence and Cecilia Yip adds some class as “Aunt” Wing. Frustratingly, the cosmic fireballs and psychic force fields water down Yuen’s action choreography, but Biao Yuen still has his moments as Thunder. As for the special effects, they might have been considered state of the art in 2001, but they have not aged well. Gee, the cast is cute though, especially Leung as Erika, the supermodel.

Frankly, it is hard to fathom how Avenging Fist managed to miss becoming a midnight tradition at the Alamo Drafthouse. It is absolutely impossible to explain the film’s bizarre chain of events or how any of its internal systems supposedly work, but it is kind of fun to stare at it in utter disbelief. Recommended for fans of cult film lunacy, The Avenging Fist is now available on DVD from Well Go USA.

Sex in the Comix: Not Approved by the Comics Code Authority

Yes, R. Crumb is still alive. In fact, he seems to be doing better than ever. Of course, he should be in a good head space when discussing his favorite topics: sexually explicit comics and his own life. The two subjects are often deeply intertwined for the artists profiled in Joëlle Oosterlinck’s Sex in the Comix (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

They are not kidding about the “x” in Comix. Explicit Comix make X-rated films look restrained and prudish. You can find just about every transgressive hang-up given free rein and you can thank the 1960s counter-culture. As Crumb explains, the underground press would publish anything he submitted, no matter how shocking, but they paid a pittance.

So there you pretty much have it. Oosterlinck basically gives viewers a breezy survey of some of the leading lights of redlight district comic book history, essentially introducing their major themes and motifs and then moving on to the next participant. It offers a reasonably broad cross-section, including the classical eroticism of Milo Manara and the macabrely baroque work of Suehiro Maruo (a favorite of John Zorn). However, there seems to be a slight bias in favor of homoerotic and feminist artists and storylines.

Rather tellingly, only the late Tom of Finland and Alison Bechdel’s work are still discussed even though they do not appear as an interview subjects. Yet, it is ironically debatable whether the film passes the Bechdel Test (probably, if we count French autobiographical comic artist Aude Picault discussing her work, presumably with Oosterlinck).

It is hard to really get bored by any combination of sex and comic books, but the fifty-two minutes of SITC never has sufficient time for any truly revelatory analysis. Burlesque performer and comic artist Molly Crabapple’s coquettish persona is not particularly well suited for hosting duties either. Still, it is nice to see Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky-Crumb looking well, especially considering how much convincing it took for him to consent to Zwigoff’s film.

Having previously co-directed Art of Spiegelman, a documentary profile of Maus creator Art Spiegelman, Oosterlinck clearly has a passion for comic book art as a mature adult form of creative expression. However, the earlier documentary worked better because of its greater focus. Basically a time killer that might have greater meaning for passionate fans of Crumb or Crabapple, Sex in the Comix is now available via VOD platforms, from Doppelganger Releasing.

The Amazing Nina Simone: There’s More to Her Story

She was an icon of the black power and feminist movements, but Nina Simone had also married a white husband and appeared on Playboy After Dark.  Few artists better represented the complexity and tempestuousness of the 1960s better than her. Classically trained but adopted by the jazz world, she eventually found crossover popularity with soul audiences. To use Ellington’s words, she was truly beyond category. Simone’s life, music, and cultural significance are surveyed in Jeff L. Lieberman’s independent documentary The Amazing Nina (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Yes, Liz Garbus’s high profile Netflix documentary recently started streaming, but there is always room for a new film on an artist of her stature. Ironically, her fiercer fans might just appreciate Lieberman’s film more than the earlier release, even though Garbus’s film had the backing of Simone’s family, whereas Lieberman’s did not. What Happened, Miss Simone? boasts a number of revelations regarding Simone’s mental health problems and her alleged emotional abuse of her daughter. It is eye-opening stuff, but maybe not the way her fans want to remember her.

In contrast, Amazing is a more balanced chronicle in nearly every sense. There is a good deal of material on her early life that will be mostly new to viewers of the earlier doc, especially her first marriage to the white hipster Don Ross, who turned out to be a lazy ne’er do well. We also hear how her defiant spirit manifested itself during her early childhood years. Clearly, Lieberman did his research, delving deeper into the circumstances surrounding her unsuccessful audition for the Curtis Institute of Music.

While daughter Lisa Simone threw her chips in with Garbus and Netflix, Lieberman’s production was not without its own Simone/Waymon family support. Most notably, Simone’s brother, band member, and former manager Sam Waymon is an enthusiastic participant, guiding viewers through the highs and lows of Simone’s life. He is a lively and engaging screen presence, who seems to be quite forthright in his reminiscences.

Simone’s longtime guitarist-musical director Al Schackman again offers his memories of the pianist-vocalist, which are always welcome. However, Amazing is further enriched and diversified by interview segments with Chinese Canadian guitarist Henry Young, whose stint in Simone’s band was relatively short but undeniably eventful. He might just deserve his own doc treatment.

Wisely, Lieberman never loses sight of the music, because for Nina Simone fans that is really what it is all about. If you think you knew her from previous documentaries or the infamous Montreux performance, it turns out there is even more to her story. It is richer and considerably more complicated. Briskly paced but appropriately sensitive when addressing delicate subjects, The Amazing Nina Simone should please the fans who were left somewhat cold by the previous film. In fact, the two documentaries supplement each other quite nicely. Recommended for all fans of jazz-soul-folk crossover music, The Amazing Nina Simone opens this Friday (10/16) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Screamfest LA ’15: Naciye

How scary can a middle aged woman with long knitting needles truly be? So maybe she is not a classic cinema bogeyman, but you would totally want to avoid her in real life. In this case, she happens to be Turkish, making her even scarier to Greeks. She refuses to leave the house she considers her home, despite having no legal rights. Like most squatters, she will do what it takes to get her way in Lutfu Emre Cicek’s Naciye (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Screamfest Horror Film Festival in Hollywood.

The hugely pregnant Bengi is a little surprised her husband Bertan decided to rent a stately old home off the Marmara Coast without telling her. Frankly, this does not seem like a good time for her to travel, but they make the trip to the Princess Islands anyway. Arriving late, they are rather put out to find their key is not where the rental agent promised. Of course, we know that is because Naciye already killed him good and dead.

Granted, Bengi is going out of her way to scold Bertan, but the house really looks suspiciously lived in. In fact, Bengi is convinced someone is inside. Before long, the cat-and-mouse commences, escalating lethally.

To be honest, Naciye is a lot like dozens of movies, but the Turkish setting somehow adds something. In Istanbul or any modern city, Naciye could never expect to hunker down indefinitely without expecting a constant stream of people asking after her victims and generally looking to clear her out of a prime piece of real estate. However, the provincial islands are a different story.

The house itself is also a triumph of location scouting and art design. Indeed, it looks grand during the day, but darkly ominous at night. It is also decked out with appropriately creepy bric-a-brac, like doilies and potpourri from Hell. Cinematographer Kamil Satir gives it all a suggestively sinister sheen. Unfortunately, Cicek badly mishandles the flashbacks, at the expense of narrative clarity and atmospheric cohesion. In one particularly egregious case, he jarringly introduces the late former tenants to no appreciable purpose (except maybe to pad out a comparatively short feature).

Still, Derya Alabora is impressively fierce and deranged as the title character. As Bengi, Esin Harvey seems genuinely exasperated with Gorkem Mertsoz’s clueless Bertan. If you do not object to scenes of a pregnant woman in jeopardy than Naciye is not bad for a squatter horror film, but its nothing you haven’t seen before. Yet, it is probably a good idea to encourage manifestations of Turkish modernity, exactly like horror movies with sex scenes, so it is maybe worth taking the time to catch Naciye when it screens this Thursday (10/15) at the TCL Chinese 6, as part of this year’s Screamfest LA.

Experimenter: Stanley Milgram Shocks Yale

Dr. Stanley Milgram was not a one-hit wonder in the field of social psychology, but his career arguably peaked in 1961. Yes, he continue to produce original and even groundbreaking research throughout his professional life, but he would always work under the shadow of the Yale experiments that bear his name. Miligram’s life and work are dramatized in an aptly psychologically expressive fashion in Michael Almereyda’s Experimenter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

You have heard of Milgram’s work whether you know it or not, but in the early 1960s, plenty of unsuspecting subjects volunteered for his study on obedience and authority. Each participant agreed to serve as the “Teacher,” whose role is to administer electric shocks of increasing and potentially lethal power to the “Learner” for every wrong answer. Despite the pre-recorded screams of pain, they continued to mete out the punishment, because a man in a lab coat told them to.

The high percentage of subjects administering he maximum voltage startle even Miligram himself. For years, the implications of the test and the underlying deception are hotly debated. They make Milgram’s name and establish him as an expert, but he regularly finds himself re-debating his techniques and assumptions. Of course, his critics did their best to ignore the elephant in the room, which Almereyda boldly represents with a real elephant trailing Milgram down hallways. He was after all, the American-born son of Eastern European Jews, who was understandably fascinated by the Eichmann trial roughly coinciding with his [in]famous experiments.

Experimenter is a relentlessly stylized film that deliberately eschews any pretense of verisimilitude. Yet, it almost has to reject the trappings of conventional drama too accommodate Almereyda’s comprehensive survey of Milgram’s work and the criticisms he faced. He is a decidedly cold fish, but his constant fourth wall breaking commentary is fascinating stuff. Ranging freely between arrogance and defensiveness, Peter Sarsgaard gives one of the strangest, but still unconventionally effective performances you will see this year.

Throughout it all, we still get a sense of his personality and watch him develop relatively convincing chemistry with Winona Ryder’s Sasha Menkin Miligram. We get a sense of him as a husband and family man, who went to work to warn Americans they could easily carry out any number of atrocities, if they were duly ordered to while in a compliant “agentic state.”

Frankly, it takes a while for viewers to banish their reservations and buy into Almereyda’s rear-screen projections and self-consciously artificial backdrops. However, the artistry of Ryan Samul’s cinematography and the wonderfully exaggerated but not quite over period look crafted by production designer Deana Sidney and art director Andy Eklund is immediately impressive. It is also hard to beat the surreal eccentricity of Milgram meeting William Shatner and Ossie Davis (played with fitting attitude by Kellan Lutz and Dennis Haysbert) on the set of a TV movie based on his experiments.

It is rather encouraging to see a film as ambitiously cerebral as Experimenter let loose in theaters. Yet, it comes at an opportune time, when fewer people seem to have the skills to rigorously question and dissect what the media tells them. Intellectually challenging and visually playful, Experimenter is a film that engages on multiple levels. Recommended unruly freethinkers, it opens this Friday (10/16) in New York at the Landmark Sunshine.

NYFF ’15: Miles Ahead

Miles Davis was like Picasso. He had highly influential, readily identifiable periods. Each of Davis’s stylistic shifts usually heralded the birth of a new trend in jazz. However, in the late 1970s, Davis was in the midst of his “silent” period. Withdrawing from public performances and recordings, his reclusive hedonistic lifestyle further fueled fans’ obsession with the Miles Davis mystique. An aspiring music writer tries to snag the interview everyone wanted, but gets pulled head-first into the chaos of the Miles Davis experience in Don Cheadle’s Miles Ahead (clip here), which premiered as the closing night selection of the 53^rd New York Film Festival.

If you can’t tell it is the late 1970s from Davis’s wardrobe, you’re never going to figure it out. Earlier in the decade, Davis released some of his most commercial recordings ever with Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson (heard prominently early on), but everyone still prefers his classic stuff, like Kind of Blue and Sketches of Spain. After several years away from the studio, Davis has finally cut a new session, but he refuses to relinquish the tapes. This rather irks Columbia Records, since they paid for it, but considering how much they make off his back catalog, Davis does not feel he owes them anything.

Due in part to his heavy cocaine use, as well as his self-imposed state of isolation, Davis might be losing his grip on reality. He frequently experiences visions from his earlier life, particularly his marriage to first wife Frances Taylor (that’s her on the cover of Someday My Prince Will Come). Yet, his erratic behavior will make him even more formidable when an unscrupulous agent steals the master he has been so closely guarding. Pressing would-be journalist Dave Braden into his service, Davis lights out after the ambiguously mobbed up talent manager—and Hell follows after them.

As an actor, Cheadle channels the mannerisms, voice, and most importantly the attitude of Davis so well, it is truly eerie. In contrast to the secluded years of the 1970s, Davis was true media presence in the 1980s, even appearing in an episode of Miami Vice and a commercial for Honda Scooters. We know exactly what he looked and sounded like around this time—and Cheadle nails it completely.

As a director and screenwriter, Cheadle’s choices will be more controversial, but they are mostly defensible. Everyone can probably agree the traditional short pants to long teeth bio-picture approach really does not fit a Miles Davis. Sort of like Danny Boyle’s Steve Jobs, Cheadle uses the flashback structure to hopscotch back and forth in order to get at the essence of the musician’s life. It works for the most part, but the central fictional narrative following madcap scramble for his mystery master tape is pretty bogus.

Frankly, it is impressive how well Cheadle and his co-screenwriters understand his music, yet it is somewhat frustrating how much they cover through cinematic shorthand. Most Miles fans well understand what a substantial role producer Teo Macero played in shaping his fusion sessions, but he only gets name-checked. Likewise, you just have to know Cannonball Addderley and John Coltrane are the saxophone players on the sextet sessions, but Davis’ relationship with Trane was one of the most significant associations of his career. Still, Cheadle earns major credit for a scene showing Davis' close collaboration with arranger Gil Evans (nicely played by Jeffrey Grover) on the Miles Ahead sessions. (To this day, many fans do not realize the extent of the uncredited work Evans did on innumerable Miles Davis albums as an unclassifiable musical fixer.)

The choice of Robert Glasper to adapt the classic Davis music to fit within the film’s dramatic framework and to compose original tribute-ish themes with Cheadle was also inspired. Not only is Glasper comfortable with modal, fusionistic, and bop-based forms of jazz, he also has an ear open to contemporary forms of music. He is precisely the sort of musician Davis would be working with today if he were still with us.

Cheadle’s work as Davis is genuinely award-caliber and Emayatzy Corinealdi gives a strong, forceful performance as Taylor (one wonders what Cicely Tyson will make of the film, but you can’t please everyone). However, Ewan McGregor is basically dead weight as Braden, while Michael Stulhbarg makes an embarrassingly lame villain as the exploitative agent (is there any other kind?).

Regardless, Cheadle’s go-for-broke ethos is definitely cool and he shows unerring good judgment with respects to music placement. You will get the essence of Davis from the film, which is saying something. It might take fans a bit of time to chew on what is and is not incorporated into the film (no Charlie Parker, but the scandalous police assault outside the Vanguard is dramatized, with surprising restraint), but it is worth wrestling with. Recommended with largely good feelings, Miles Ahead is scheduled to open in spring 2016, following its closing night screenings at the 2015 NYFF.

Classroom 6: Found Footage on Campus

1960s institutional buildings are basically what they look like—projects designed and constructed by the lowest bidders. They are pretty horrifying from an architectural perspective, even without a portal to Hell. Rumor has it that is precisely what has led to a series of mysterious disappearances tied to a shunned college classroom. For the sake of journalism, an ambitious local reporter locks herself in the creepy academic building, but all that remains of the ill-fated crew is the surviving video that ostensibly makes up Jonas Odenheimer’s found footage horror film Classroom 6 (trailer here), which is now available on iTunes.

We are watching the disturbing tape recorded before Annie Monroe’s disappearance, because that is what she would have wanted. At least, that is what the station manager claims and she isn’t around to contradict him. Like the missing student and professor she came to investigate, Monroe and her team vanished without a trace—as in no bodily remains. Prof. Harrold Thomas used to teach a class on witchcraft in the notorious room six, which really seems like he was asking for trouble. Since then, the administration decided to close off that room to any further use, merely out of sensitivity mind you, but they do not seem to be doing a very good job of securing it.

To get to the bottom of things, Monroe and her skeptical crew will lock themselves in the building overnight. For expert advice and commentary, she also brought along the campus psychic Jack Doggett, who immediately starts getting bad vibes. However, he cannot put his finger on what exactly he is sensing. Unfortunately but predictably, the media morons disregard his warnings until it is profoundly too late.

This should go without saying, but if you plan to lock yourself into some spooky old building as some kind of PR stunt, you really ought to have an escape route scoped out, just in case. Seriously, haven’t they seen reality TV crews do the same dumb thing in Hollows Grove and Grave Encounters, with the same grisly results? At least the location scout found an impressively crummy, cut-rate International style-looking building for everyone to die in. The creepy New Agey mural is also a particularly nice touch.

You know things are bad when the psychic is the voice of reason, but Monroe and her colleagues are from the old media, so what can you expect? It is hard to really develop character within the found footage conceit, but Mike McLaughlin’s Doggett still comes across as a smart, intense cat. As Monroe, Valentina Kolaric wrings a few laughs out of her shallowness, but the rest of her crew is rather bland and featureless.

To his credit, Odenheimer takes his time establishing the ominous atmosphere and physical layout of the infernal building. He seems to understand simple things, like McLaughlin’s business with a tennis ball, are often much creepier than big swirling special effects. However, we have just seen this sort of thing too many times before. Odenheimer does not add enough fresh wrinkles to withstand comparison to the original Grave Encounters, in whose conspicuous shadow C6 so obviously stands. Still, if you cannot get enough found footage horror, Classroom 6 is arguably somewhat better than average. For hardcore subgenre junkies, it is now available on VOD platforms.

Reversion: Thanks for the Memories

These days, kids will stick anything in their ears, even if it causes hearing damage or memory loss. You cannot blame the latter on earbuds. That is all Jack Clè’s doing. He has developed the Oubli, a Blue Tooth like device that vividly recalls your happiest memories. One of the so-called side effects is a generally dimming of unpleasant recollections, but opinions differ as to just how bad that really is. However, his daughter and marketing director starts to experience some rather nasty malfunctions on the eve of their product launch in Jose Nestor Marquez’s Reversion (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Sophie Clè is not just an Oubli user. She is unhealthily dependent on it. Rather than living in the present, she constantly revisits the last happy memory she has of her late mother. Thanks to her hype and some creative regulatory evasion, Jack Clè stands to make a fortune off the Oubli, but his triumph is jeopardized the night before their big Steve Jobsian media event, when Ms. Clè is kidnapped by a disturbed woman raving about her implant. Unfortunately, she seems to fiddle with a similar implant Clè never knew she had. She manages to escape soon thereafter, but Oubli use no longer has the same soothing effect. Instead, she starts experiencing violent flashbacks of her mother’s death that seem to implicate her father.

With the help of her loyal driver-bodyguard Ayden, Clè will seek answers from the unstable Isa and her father’s estranged research director, Elizabeth. Clearly, some kind of conspiracy is afoot, but like Tom Cruise in A Few Good Men, it is not clear whether she can handle the truth.

For the most part, Reversion is a slickly competent near future thriller, but rather than being cool and exciting, the implications of its new technology are quite sad and depressing. Granted, we should always remember our loved ones, but we still need to move on. That is a worthy message, but Reversion still has its strange headscratchers, like why does the bodyguard know where all the corporate secrets are tucked away?

As Sophie Clè, Aja Naomi King (How to Get Away with Murder) comes apart at the seams pretty convincingly. Of course, a smooth talking ambiguously villainous figure like Jack Clè is right in Colm Feore’s power zone. Arguably, he is the best part of the film, especially considering how he carries out the big reveal. On the other hand, Gary Dourdan’s Ayden looks like he hasn’t slept for days, which could in fact be true. Unfortunately, the tragically twitchy Isa is also rather underwhelming, while Amanda Plummer phones in her near cameo as Elizabeth.

There are worse films opening this weekend (looking at you, Knock Knock), but Marquez’s pacing is a little too slack and Dourdan is a little too vacant looking for it to really come together in a big way. Conceptually, it is an interesting little oddity, but it could have used more spring in its step. Still, you can’t argue with all the screen time it gives Feore. For King’s fans, it opens today (10/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

Tibetan Warrior: Loten Namling Campaigns Against China’s Occupation

An optimist might argue Tibetan Buddhism has already defeated Maoist Communism, because it continues to rapidly gain converts around the world, while nobody believes in the CCP, not even the Politburo. His Holiness, the Dalai Lama is globally revered, whereas those who know of Premier Li Kequiang are generally not favorably disposed towards him. However, pessimists will counter nonviolence is doomed to fail against a government that ruthless massacred its own people at Tiananmen Square. Traditional Tibetan musician and activist Loten Namling is definitely a glass-is-half-empty sort of person, but he continues to do his part to advance the cause of Tibetan freedom through nonviolent means. However, the increasingly oppressive situation in occupied Tibet and the alarming reports of self-immolation protest-suicides escalates the urgency of his efforts in Dodo Hunziker’s documentary Tibetan Warrior (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and VOD.

Namling is Tibetan, but he has never set foot in his country. He was raised in Dharamsala, but Switzerland has been his home for many years. Namling has achieved some prominence popularizing Tibetan music, even performing for His Holiness. Not surprisingly, music will play a role in his latest campaign, but that will be the easy part. First he will make a pilgrimage from Bern to Geneva, on foot, dragging a coffin to raise awareness of Tibet’s plight. Once he has completed his journey, he will play in a consciousness-raising concert, co-organized by Franz Treichler of the New Gods.

When Namling set off on his trek, thirty-some Tibetans had self-immolated. In a relatively short period of time, the number rises above one hundred thirty. Maddeningly, the only media outlet reporting on the phenomenon is the Chinese propaganda media, which blames the “Dalai Clique.” Ironically though, His Holiness advocates a non-confrontational policy of coexistence known as the Middle Way Approach. Namling is losing confidence in the Middle Way and his is deeply disappointed in the Swiss government’s proposed free trade agreement with Beijing. Nevertheless, he is only too aware of the Chinese government’s overwhelming military and economic power.

This is a grim conundrum viewers will grapple with, along with the frustrated Namling. He might be an activist, but Namling is not an idiot. In fact, he is refreshingly down to earth. He never claims to have all the answers, but he is certainly eloquent explaining the problems. His concern for the long-term survival of Tibetan culture and the health of the country’s once pristine environment are entirely justifiable.

One can immediately see why Hunziker focused in on Namling as his subject. He is a charismatic, interesting looking figure who really fills the screen. He is not a poseur chanting slogans. His life has been shaped by the occupation, fragmenting his family. It is a sobering and timely film that gives audiences a fuller perspective on the Tibetan exile experience. Respectfully recommended for everyone concerned about human rights in Tibetan and the predatory destruction of ethnic cultures, Tibetan Warrior is now available on DVD and VOD, from Garden Thieves Pictures.

NYFF ’15: Carol

Ironically, one of the most literarily significant lesbian novels of the pre-Stonewall era was written (pseudonymously) by a notorious anti-Semitic mystery and suspense novelist. Yes, the same difficult mind that created the talented Tom Ripley also gave birth to Carol Aird. Journey back to Manhattan in the early 1950s, when Madison Avenue wasn’t so mad yet. Lesbianism might have been a love that dared not say its name, but the sophisticated Aird is still not one to mince words in Carol (trailer here), Todd Haynes’ adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s The Price of Salt, which screens as a Main Slate selection of the 53rd New York Film Festival.

Therese Belivet is a mousy but proper young woman working in a Manhattan department store, while secretly harboring ambitions of a photography career. When assisting Carol Aird schedule a delivery, she is quite taken by the older woman, in an uncertain kind of way. After she haltingly reaches out to Aird, she is surprised and pleased when Aird reaches back. Soon, they are spending more and more ambiguous time together. However, the development of their relationship is complicated by Aird’s messy divorce proceedings with her future ex, Harge, who still refuses to let go. (With a name like Harge Aird, he must be Ivy League, possibly even a future CIA director.)

In order to win her back, Harge is willing to play dirty. That includes calling out Aird’s past fling with Abby Gerhard, her childhood friend and now platonic confidant. Feeling overwhelmed by the tawdriness of it all, Aird packs up Belivet for an impulsive road trip. Naturally, further complications will ensue.

Cineastes generally get Haynes’ affinity for the era and its attendant angsts, but the quality of Carol’s period details are still impressive in their seamless accuracy. As we see, this is a time that predates the LP, when music stores stocked ten inch records in brown paper sleeves. The film also has the good taste to prominently feature Billie Holiday’s rendition of “Easy Living,” recorded with the great Teddy Wilson. In fact, Holiday is a rather fitting choice, given the film’s themes. However, it should also be noted the uncharacteristically lush orchestral score is one of Carter Burwell’s best.

Carol looks great and sounds great it is not quite the instant classic some represent it to be. Despite the breathless plaudits it has generated, there is something rather affected about Cate Blanchett’s performance as Aird. Instead of truly submerging herself into the character, she looks and sounds like she is doing Aird as if played by Joan Crawford or Rosalind Russell. Still, who wouldn’t like to see either of them dig into such a juicy role?

In contrast, Rooney Mara delves inward for an unusually brittle and disciplined turn. You would half expect her to shatter if she tipped over. However, Sarah Paulson steals scene after scene as the earthy, no-nonsense Gerhard, while Kyle Chandler manages to humanize square old Harge remarkably well.

As a recreation of the 1950s, Carol is richly realized, but it is less convincing as a relationship drama. Nevertheless, it takes viewers to a specific time and place, where it duly scores it points. Earning a moderate recommendation for its technical merits, Carol screens tomorrow (10/9) and Saturday (10/10) at Alice Tully Hall, as part of this year’s NYFF.

Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse

Yakuza and vampires depend on carefully balanced ecosystems that are not so different from Social Security. There absolutely must be more people bleeding money and plasma into the system than sucking it out. Due to his inexperience, a freshly turned Yakuza vampire threatens to upset the long term equilibrium, but he will have more pressing concerns when three agents of doomsday start wreaking cosmic havoc in Takashi Miike’s Yakuza Apocalypse (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Genyō Kamiura is a benevolent Yakuza boss and a vampire, who refuses to drink civilian blood, even though it is sweeter and more nourishing than the bitter swill running through Yakuza veins. He has taken earnest Akira Kageyama under his wing, even though the lad’s skin is too sensitive to tattoo. They see eye to eye when it comes to giving civilians a fair shake, so when Kamiura is fatally jumped by Kyoken, a martial arts maniac and his boss, a Spanish priest carrying a disintegration ray in a casket, the last thing his severed head does is turn Kageyama into a vampire. Unfortunately, the unprepared Kageyama then accidentally turns a civilian, who immediately turns another, and so on. Soon nearly the entire town consists of vampires sporting supernatural Yakuza tats.

Obviously things are a mess, but they will only get worse with the arrival of the third representative of the cosmic syndicate. Kaeru-kun might look like a guy in a fuzzy green frog costume, but he is as lethal as the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Man. What part of this being a Miike film didn’t you get?

Yakupoc has been dismissed as a Miike greatest hits package and there is a kernel of truth in that. One might have thought he worked through all his Django riffs in Sukiyaki Western Django, but apparently not. However, Miike is such a gleefully kitchen sink kind of filmmaker he constantly throws in inspired bits where you least expect them. Indeed, the audience’s introduction to Kamiura, in which a small army of earthly Yakuza learn the folly of trying to whack a vampire is truly vintage Miike. There are also a number of wonderfully droll lines sprinkled throughout the film and without question, it features some of the best fight choreography ever conceived for a dude in a downy soft animal costume.

Hayato Ichihara is shockingly engaging portraying Kageyama’s maturation process from awestruck henchman to hardnosed vampire. Largely playing against his usual hound dog type, Lily Franky is off the hook awesome as Kamiura. Unfortunately, Yayan Ruhian (the unrelated Mad Dogs in the Raid films) does have much of a character to work with in Kyoken, or much room to chew scenery. At least he still has all kinds of moves. The rest of the Yakuza underlings largely blur together.

When Miike is working in his chaotic one-upsman bag, his films are sort of like the weather. If it isn’t working for you, just wait ten minutes and it will change. Yet, even it clicks in fits and starts, it is exhilarating to watch him embrace the bedlam. His prolific work ethic is also pretty darn impressive. Recommended for Miike fans, but maybe not the best starter film for the uninitiated, Yakuza Apocalypse opens tomorrow (10/9) in New York, at the Village East.