Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero

He put Lassie and the dearly departed dog from The Artist to shame. He even did something neither Trump or Obama could be bothered to do. He served his country in military uniform—and he was just a little terrier, but with a big heart. The documented true story of the 102nd Infantry Regiment’s mascot comes to animated life in Richard Lanni’s Sgt. Stubby: An American Hero (trailer here), which opens this Friday nationwide.

The story of the ferocious little canine hero of WWI might sound like a tall tale, but most of the high points of his chronicle are confirmed by the Smithsonian’s “The Price of Freedom” exhibition, where Sgt. Stubby was one of the stars. Like many war heroes, he came from modest beginnings. In this case, he was a stray, living paw-to-mouth on the streets of New Haven before he attached himself to the 102nd in general and particularly to Private Robert Conroy (eventually promoted to Corporal).

In theory, a military base is no place for a pet, but Stubby (he had yet to receive his “rank”) continued to impress Conroy’s sergeant and the commissioned officers above him with his military discipline and his obvious benefits to morale. They intended to leave him behind for his own safety, but he stowed away on the troop transport, like the dogs in The Incredible Journey. At least, that is how Helena Bonham Carter tells the story, in her voice-overs in the persona of Conroy’s beloved sister Margaret, his only family at the time.

Hats off to Lanni and his co-screenwriter Mike Stokey, because they pull off a rather remarkable feat in this film. They give viewers plenty of endearing canine pluckiness, without ever trivializing the harsh reality of war. Through the eyes of Stubby and Conroy with see the terrors of gas attacks, trench warfare, and heavy artillery bombardments. There is never any doubt how brutal the warfighting conditions were for WWI soldiers, yet is it completely appropriate and accessible for family viewing.

The CGI animation is also far better than you would expect from something produced outside the major studios and prestigious boutique shingles. Sgt. Stubby is expressive, while still being relatively dog-like in his movement. Conroy and his G.I. buddies are also reasonably well-developed characters, with very little reliance on shtick or cliché. His garrulous French comrade, Gaston Baptiste (voiced by Gérard Depardieu, doing his best work probably since Valley of Love) is initially a bit of a joie de vivre-stock character, but he has some surprisingly poignant moments in the third act.

Frankly, Sgt. Stubby is a refreshing film in many ways. It has none of the motor-mouthed hipster sarcasm found in recent studio animation. Instead, it takes time to establish its characters and finds lowkey humor in Sgt. Stubby’s appealing dog antics. In terms of tone, Ethel & Ernest might be the closest comparison. Although it forthrightly addresses the horrors of war, it is also still unabashedly patriotic. There is real heroism in this film, both human and canine.

It is worth re-emphasizing most of Sgt. Stubby’s heroics are legitimately documented. He really did go out into No Man’s Land to find wounded soldiers and provided early warning of incoming shells thanks to his superior canine sense of hearing. Heck, you have to wonder why it took so long for someone to make a film about him, but again, Lanni, Stokey, and their producers deserve credit for recognizing the value of his story. This is a classy production, featuring an era-appropriate score composed by regular Kenneth Branagh collaborator Patrick Doyle. Highly recommended for general audiences, Sgt. Stubby opens across the country this Friday, with considerable Thursday evening (4/12) screenings also scheduled, including at the AMC Empire in New York.

SFFILM ’18: Ulam (Main Dish)

There is a large expat Overseas Filipino population—an estimated 10.2 million, or roughly 10% of the 106 million in-country population. As a result, you would expect to find a growing international market for Filipino cuisine, but it might also morph and evolve as Filipino chefs incorporated other local culinary elements. It took a while, but both trends are finally coming to fruition, judging from the success of the Filipino restaurateurs profiled in Alexandra Cuerdo’s documentary Ulam (Main Dish), which premiered yesterday at the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival (trailer here).

As many of Cuerdo’s interview subjects note, there were always a number of Filipino head chefs overseeing high profile restaurant kitchens, but they were still cooking in French, Italian, or Continental styles. Most Asian cuisines were readily accepted by American patrons, but there was still a dearth of Filipino restaurants. However, the success of several new elegant but accessible Filipino fine dining establishments has led to a boom in interest among the culinary press.

Cuerdo is quite fortunate most of them are young and eloquent, especially on the subject of food. Amy Besa & Romy Dorotan, from Purple Yam in Brooklyn, are the veterans among the film’s participants, with twenty years of New York restaurant experience, but the camera loves them. Nicole Ponseca (from Jeepney) is probably the most sensitive to issues of authenticity, since her chef and partner, Miguel Trinidad, is Dominican, but they convincingly argue nobody applies such purity standards to the chefs at Italian restaurants (and besides, no Filipino chefs were willing to join her when she first struck out on her own).

In fact, Ulam is not just about food. It also pays tribute to the entrepreneurial spirit, which is very cool. Perhaps nobody better illustrates that than Alvin Cailan, who started working multiple kitchen jobs (often for free experience) but has since parlayed his Eggslut food truck into a mini-empire that includes “incubator” space for up-and-coming chefs. Of course, family is also critically important to these success stories, especially for Johneric Concordia and Christine Araquel-Concordia’s restaurant The Park’s Finest, where nearly every employee was a relative (often “drafted”), in its early days.

Cuerdo maintains a mostly upbeat, breezy tone, as most viewers would prefer when it comes to their food docs, but there are plenty of positive lessons to glean from it. Along the way, her interview subjects revisit some rather touching memories. They make it very clear that food, family, culture, and honest hard work are all closely intertwined in the Philippines.

The dishes we see all look delicious too. Ironically, in some cases they have taken roadside Filipino food and turned it into haute cuisine, but it is still more substantial and flavorful than most of what you might find in trendy Soho spots. Recommended as a low-stress, pleasantly engaging celebration of Filipino cuisine, Ulam (Main Dish) screens again today (4/8) and Tuesday (4/10), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Kino! ’18: The Final Journey

Historically speaking, Russia’s military aggression in eastern Ukraine is nothing new. Just ask the Cossacks—if you can find any left. There is one particular Cossack woman an elderly German man would dearly like to find. His connection to the Cossacks is news to his granddaughter, but their family does not talk very much. However, she might finally get to know the old man before it is too late in Nick Baker-Monteys’s The Final Journey (trailer here), which screens during this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

The recently widowed Eduard Leander was always a prickly cuss, but when he suddenly leaves on a seemingly inexplicable Ukrainian voyage, his daughter Uli still feels duty-bound to dispatch his slacker granddaughter Adele to retrieve him from the station. Much to her chagrin, Adele finds herself train-bound for Kiev instead. Old man Leander is somewhat put out having her tag along, as is she, but at least she finds some companionship with their hard-partying compartment mate, Lew.

Of course, once they reach Kiev, they realize his life is much more complicated than he prefers to let on. Lew is ethnic Russian, but still identifies as Ukrainian—as well as Russian. It turns out he is the only member of his family with such divided sympathies. He was a Maidan supporter, but his brother Boris has become one of the few fig-leaf separatists in Donetsk, providing cover to the plain clothes Russian troops. However, those connections make Lew the perfect guide for Leander as he searches for the mysterious Svetlana.

Frankly, Baker-Monteys and co-screenwriter Alexandra Umminger are tepidly cautious in the way they depict the fighting in Donetsk, preferring to cast it in brother-versus-brother terms, as if it were not unlike the American Civil War, then the conflict of neo-Soviet imperialism that it is. However, they clearly address the repression and ethnic cleansing suffered by Cossacks like Svetlana, whom we learn spent years in a Soviet Gulag (as did Leander, which is quite a surprise to his family).

In some ways, Final Journey is highly formulaic, but that also means it will be very accessible to non-German, non-Ukrainian audiences. In fact, one of its greatest merits is the appealing chemistry that develops between Adele and Lew. Petra Schmidt-Schaller’s turn as Adele is unusually subtle and earthy, while Tambet Tuisk is genuinely charismatic as Lew. Oddly, veteran movie bad guy Jürgen Prochnow largely relies on cranky old man clichés, at least until old Leander’s big third act pay-off.

Arguably, Lew is the film’s most compelling character, but the Cossack back-story is quite distinctive—and in many ways a tragically prescient prologue to the current Imperial Russian war against Ukraine. Recommended for general audiences, The Final Journey screens tomorrow night (4/8) and Tuesday (4/10), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

SFFilm ’18: Salyut-7

For the last nine years, if America wanted to get an astronaut into space, we had to hitch a ride with the Russians. However, in 1985, the American space program was so competitive, the Soviets worried we could permanently leap-frog them if we recovered their malfunctioning Salyut-7 space station. In what could be dubbed the “Russian Apollo 13,” two cosmonauts were dispatched on an emergency mission to repair or safely scuttle the station. While the circumstances of the mission were blacked-out by the Soviet media at the time, they are now the heroic stuff of Klim Shipenko’s big-budget, big-screen treatment, Salyut-7 (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

In the atheist USSR, seeing an angel during a space-walk is more than sufficient to get Vladimir Fyodorov permanently grounded (it probably wouldn’t have gone over so well with NASA either). Nevertheless, he is the best pure pilot available to TsUP when a power failure sends Salyut-7 into a precarious rotation. Fyodorov’s mission (which he duly accepts) will be to manually hard dock with the space station, so mission engineer Viktor Alyokhin can restore power and bring it under control. However, it is rotating faster than anyone at TsUP estimated and water leaks shorted put most of the electricals.

Although some of the Soviet authorities are depicted as loutish hard-liners, it is probably a safe bet Salyut-7 would never have been made in today’s Russia if it ended in failure. Nevertheless, if you can overlook some propagandistic nostalgia for the old Soviet days, it is a rather rousing ode to the daring spirit of space exploration. The effects are also first-rate, capturing the awe of the galactic view of Earth in all its glory.

Vladimir Vdovichenkov is credibly square-jawed as the seasoned Fyodorov (based on Vladimir Dzhanibekov) and Pavel Derevyanko is serviceable enough as the more nebbish Alyokhin (modelled on Viktor Savinykh). Their comradery is matter-of-factly convincing, but the scenes of their respective home-fronts are awkwardly manipulative (you know one of them will have to have a pregnant wife). However, probably the best work comes from Aleksandr Samoylenko as the veteran cosmonaut now serving as flight director. He doesn’t quite have the fire of Ed Harris’s Gene Kranz, but he is still notably intense and driven.

Cinematographers Serge Astakhov and Ivan Burlakov give the film an awesome sense of scope and the CGI crafts all look scrupulously true to the real-life vessels. It looks great, so the cheap, tinny-sounding score is an embarrassment bordering on an outright travesty. Despite that distracting shortcoming, the film offers an intriguing peak into the Soviet space program (and should cause viewers to despair over our recent presidents’ costly shortsightedness). Recommended as a manageably nationalistic space-faring adventure, Salyut-7 screens tomorrow (4/8), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

ND/NF ’18: Nervous Translation

Let’s look back to the hazy mid-1980s in the Philippines. It maybe makes some of us nostalgic, either for the idealism of the People Power Revolution or the stable business climate his administration provided. Either or both seem preferable to the current Duterte chaos, but such matters are far beyond 8-year-old Yael’s scope. Her world is largely confined to her home, her school, and a few random images gleaned from television. Nevertheless, the young latch-key kid will try to make sense of her life as best she can in Shireen Seno’s Nervous Translation (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Little girls need their fathers, but Yael’s dad has been working in Saudi for several years straight. For some reason, it seems like only his twin brother Tino ever visits home, leaving Yael yearning for her fatherly love and her mother Val craving the attentions of a husband. As a result, the relationship between mother and daughter has grown strained. Frankly, it looks like it is all Val’s fault, but we are only seeing the story from Yael’s vantage point. Generally, that gives the film a very “child-like” perspective, but there are also brief interludes, based on some of the more outlandish images Yael sees on TV, which approximate surreal daydreams.

Jana Agoncillo is extraordinarily expressive, but also remarkably disciplined as Yael. It is a scrupulously natural and restrained performance, but it also hits the viewer directly on an emotional level. Yet, in a way, it often feels like Seno is cheating. Agoncillo and the circumstances surrounding her character are so compelling, it is almost impossible to resist investing in her. Yet, it is highly debatable just how much value Seno adds.

Obviously for the sake of irony, Val works in shoe-cobbling sweatshop, but Milo Suegeco already mined the Imelda-shoe vein quite fully in Mariquina. Angge Santos portrays Val quite forgivingly, making her distance and impatience feel acutely human, but it is still hard to fathom how easily she abrogates her parental duties.

Agonocillo’s innocence is truly heartbreaking, but the film never invites us inside or kicks it up to the next level. Instead, we just contemplate how hard Yael has had it, as the film unfolds in a slow yet uneven manner. Still, the delicacy of Seno’s directorial hand and the evocative work of her battery of cinematographers is certainly impressive. We just wish there was more to love. Inspiring highly mixed reactions (so you might just save yourself the heartache), Nervous Translation screens tomorrow (4/7) at MoMA and Sunday (4/8) at the Walter Reade, as part of ND/NF 2018.

SFFILM ’18: No Date, No Signature

Terhan drivers might spend even more time in their cars than Angelenos. The Iranian capital might just boast the world’s most congested traffic. Reflecting that driving culture, entire Iranian films have been shot in cars, such as Jafar Panahi’s Taxi and Abbas Kiarostami’s Ten. It stands to reason there are plenty of auto accidents, but Dr. Kaveh Nariman’s incident is particularly tragic, assuming it really was the cause of a young boy’s death. The uncertainty will be agonizing in Vahid Jalilvand’s No Date, No Signature (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

It really wasn’t Nariman’s fault. A reckless driver side-swiped him on the left, forcing him into the motorbike carrying Moosa, his wife, infant daughter, and young son. Nariman duly pulls over and gives everyone a cursory examination, but he dissuades Moosa from calling the cops, because his insurance has lapsed. Instead, he hands over some money for repairs and offers to admit his son into his clinic at no charge. Perhaps not so surprisingly, Moosa takes the money, but blows off the clinic.

The next night, a report on Moosa’s now deceased son crosses Dr. Nariman’s desk as the local head of legal forensic medicine. According to the autopsy performed by Dr. Sayeh Behbahani (a colleague with whom Nariman has a very complicated and ambiguous relationship), the boy died of botulism. There is no denying he had the disease, but Nariman secretly suspects complications from the accident were the direct cause of death. Nevertheless, the revelation sends the guilt-ridden Moosa off in a blind rage, spoiling for a violent confrontation with the sleazy poultry worker who sold him contaminated chicken under the table.

It is amazing how dexterously Persian cinema handles moral dilemmas. In this case, everything is more intense, because all the players are operating outside the law, or at least stretching the boundaries beyond all recognition. Yet, there is something especially perverse about Dr. Nariman’s case, because the more he damns himself, the worse the outlooks gets for Moosa’s resulting criminal case (for battering the rotten chicken seller senseless—literally). Many times, the audience echoes Dr. Behbahani (or vice versa), asking “what do you think you’re doing,” with mounting alarm, while still weirdly admiring his strange sense of integrity.

Looking a bit like a Persian Trapper John M.D., Amir Aghaee gives a wonderfully subtle and quietly conflicted performance. In contrast, Navid Mohammadzadeh rages like De Niro in his prime as Moosa. Based on his meltdown, we understand how his son’s death was just the culmination of all the emasculating humiliations society had meted out on him over his lifetime. It is a very strong cast, most definitely including Hediyeh Tehrani, who is not merely an audience surrogate as Dr. Behbahani, but also a marginalized professional woman, a concerned friend, and perhaps even a spurned lover. That is a heck of a lot of internal contradictions to balance, but she does a fine job of it.

There is no explicit political commentary in No Date, but it is an Iranian film to its core. Everything that happens makes grim, fatalistic sense, but you could not credibly transpose it into another culture. It also proves it is possible to make a tense, suspenseful film with little or no crime genre elements, per se. Very highly recommended, No Date, No Signature screens Saturday (4/7), Tuesday (4/10), and Wednesday (4/11), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Kino! ’18: The Garden

The family dynamics are like something out of Osage County and the backdrop has a bit of Summer of Sam’s spirit, but nobody can get too worked up on a lazy summer day like this. Maybe that is part of the problem. A West German family gathers for what could be their last summer getaway on the wild, sprawling property of their late matriarch, while a child murderer remains on the loose in Sonya Maria Kröner’s The Garden (trailer here), which screens during this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

Just what will happen to the garden and the assorted summer cottages now is a very pertinent question. Ilse was Grandma Sophie’s caretaker and is now presumed to control the property. There are several hushed conversations about a potential sale, but they are quickly broken off whenever younger generations wander within earshot. Of course, Eva, the resentful wife of her grown grandson Bernd is convinced they will be swindled out of their share of the inheritance by his better-loved sister, Gitti. However, Gitti has plenty of her own problems, including a disinterested ex-husband. To make matters worse, her daughter blames her for the father’s absence.

Over the course of a late summer day, all the family resentments will slip out, but they never boil over. Kröner also does everything possible to cast suspicion on a creepy neighbor, short of tacking a note to his door that says “out killing children—back soon.” She juggles an awful lot of balls in the air, but none of them pay-off individually or add up to much collectively. In fact, her strategy of keeping most of the big drama off-screen gets hair-pullingly frustrating in the third act.

Nevertheless, as a mood piece and an accomplishment in mise-en-scène, Garden is quite impressive. All the textures and color schemes truly scream early 1970s. Kröner also totally nails the lazy, hazy, slightly-over-heated-in-a-Mersault-from-The-Stranger kind of way vibe. Plus, the cast is totally believable, especially Laura Tonke and Mavie Hörbiger as Eva and Gitti, the battling sisters-in-law. However, as you watch Garden it is hard to shake the feeling that there is a real movie going on in the room next door, but we can only see the players making their entrances and exits.

There is definitely a distinctive sense of time and place throughout The Garden, as well as an eerie feeling of foreboding percolating just below the surface. Unfortunately, it is too coy and too reserved for its own good. Earning a highly mixed response, The Garden screens this Saturday (4/7) and next Wednesday (4/11), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

Fashion in Film Festival ’18: The Inferno Unseen

It is maybe the most infamous unfinished film ever, with its poignancy heightened by its tragic star. Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Inferno is now probably every cineastes’ favorite lost movie, thanks to Serge Bromberg & Ruxandra Medrea Annonier’s documentary (released in New York in 2010), but Romy Schneider would probably be the favorite of far more movie fans had she not died prematurely at forty-three, from cardiac arrest. She should be considered an icon on the level of Marilyn Monroe and Sophia Loren. Viewers will understand that assertion when they watch The Inferno Unseen (trailer here), a collection of surviving rushes and screen tests from Clouzot’s film that never was, assembled into a master-cut by Rollo Smallcombe & Marketa Uhlirova, which screens on the opening night of the Fashion in Film Festival at the Museum of the Moving Image.

Clouzot was often dubbed the “French Hitchcock,” but his work seemed dated during the era of the Nouvelle Vague. However, the suspense auteur had a vision that would have leap-frogged all the New Wavers. As he originally conceived Inferno, it would have told the story of a jealous older husband possibly driven to murderous extremes by his highly desirable young wife, but there would have been experimental interludes that would have expressed his psychological turmoil through surreal imagery. Despite a lot of money spent by Columbia Pictures, it never came together.

The Bromberg-Annonier documentary tells that story quite compellingly. In Unseen, Smallcombe & Uhlirova invite us to engage with the images directly, with minimal filters, aside from a smattering of commentary from Bromberg. Taking in this footage is a weird experience. You feel like you are watching the ghost of a film that was stillborn, yet still haunts the cinematic collective unconscious, very much like the work print of Orson Welles’ The Deep that screened at MoMA in 2015.

Of course, Schneider makes it even more haunting. She was one of the few movie stars who could exude sexual magnetism through the screen yet was also totally credible playing classy and cerebral characters. In fact, the surviving footage is surprising steamy, thanks to Schneider and French starlet Dany Carrel, who both rock the frocks and swimwear designed by legendary film costumer Jacques Fonteray (whose credits include Barbarella, Borsalino, and Moonraker). There is indeed good reason Inferno Unseen is opening the Fashion in Film Festival.

Clouzot’s Inferno is one of the most tantalizing what-could-have-been stories in cinema history, along with Jodorowsky’s Dune and half a dozen unfinished Welles films. The assembled images in Inferno Unseen help satisfy our lingering curiosity, while also inspiring elegiac feelings for something that never was. It is highly recommended as a viewing experience this Friday (4/6) at MoMI, with a live electronic score accompaniment by Smallcombe, while the earlier documentary is highly recommended as some truly fascinating cinema history when it premieres on MUBI this Saturday (4/7).

Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country

He is an outlaw named Kelly from Australia, but his circumstances are entirely different from those of old Ned. Based on the historical figure of Wilaberta Jack, Sam Kelly will kill a white man in self-defense. It is entirely justifiable, but this is Central Australia in 1920, so Kelly immediately takes flight. His fictionalized treatment becomes the stuff of a revisionist Australian Western in Warwick Thornton’s Sweet Country (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

When Fred Smith talks about God and his Christian faith, he really means it. That is why Sam and Lizzie Kelly really are fortunate to work for him. Regrettably, Smith’s new neighbor, Harry March, a WWI veteran suffering from PTSD, is not so enlightened. He cynically exploits Smith’s Christian charity, guilting him into loaning Sam and Lizzie to help whip his station into working order. Unbeknownst to Sam, March will act in a predatory manner towards Lizzie and then dismiss them from his property. The next time they encounter each other, March is shooting up the absent Smith’s farmhouse, accusing the Kellys of harboring a young runaway aboriginal station hand, loaned to him by the exploitative Mick Kennedy.

Old Sam has little choice but to blast a load of buckshot into March. Having no faith in the white Crown’s justice, Sam and Lizzie head out into the wild country. Inevitably, the hard-charging Sergeant Fletcher forms a posse with Kennedy and the reluctant Smith to give chase. However, many of the town’s poor white rabble will be surprised by the professionalism of circuit court Judge Taylor.

Sweet Country would be something like an Australian fusion of Chato’s Land and To Kill a Mockingbird, if it were not so conscious of its own social significance. Thornton lays it on heavy and never passes up an opportunity for a teaching moment. Yet, response to the film will likely be particularly divisive because of his idiosyncratic practice of flashing forward to briefly depict a character’s most significant moment, either when they are first introduced or at times of extreme stress. Although it is initially disorienting, it gives the film a really distinctive vibe over the long run.

It is also intriguing to watch how Thornton observes and subverts Western cinema conventions. He certainly addresses the film’s moral issues in stark black-and-white terms, but it should be noted Smith is an entirely sympathetic and empathetic character and the grizzled Sgt. Fletcher evolves in intriguingly ambiguous ways.

The fact that Smith and Fletcher are played by two of Oceania’s most recognizable thesps, Sam Neil and Bryan Brown, certainly will not hurt the film’s prospects. Neil is particularly engaging and ultimately quite poignant as the decent Smith. Indeed, it is quite refreshing to see a devout Christian treated with such respect in a film. Likewise, Matt Day’s portrayal of the judge is intriguingly messy. He has his moments, both good and bad. Yet, it is the nonprofessional Aboriginal actors Hamilton Morris and Gibson John, who really power the film, as the taciturn Kelly and the more ingratiating Archie (just Archie, he says), Kennedy’s foreman, who serves as the posse’s tracker.

Both Thornton’s style and his conspicuous manipulations can be distracting, but his boldness earns the viewer’s respect. It is uneven, but it successfully differentiates itself from the scores of international Western riffs. Recommended on balance for fans of socially conscious revisionist Westerns, Sweet Country opens this Friday (4/6) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Kino! ’18: Bad Banks (series)

Jana Liekam’s new employer is too big to like. Deutsche Global is one of Germany’s largest investment banks, but they have recently been thrown off-stride by scandals and bad investments. It represents a second chance for Liekam, who might just save the bank, so she can help destroy it later in the German limited series Bad Banks (trailer here), directed by Christian Schwochow, the first two episodes of which screen during this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

Liekam has just been fired from Luxembourg-based Credit International for making her boss, Luc Jacoby, the chairman’s coked-up, entitled son look bad. Christelle Leblanc, the firm’s director agrees this is unfair, but cautions Liekam she must learn to play the game better. Thanks to her secret string-pulling, she gets Liekam a tryout at Deutsche Global working for their hotshot investment manager Gabriel Fenger. From time to time, Lebanc will supply Liekam with timely “insider” information, but she makes it clear she wants highly compromising information on Credit International in return.

Judging from the in media res opening, the junk bonds will eventually hit the fan in a big, panic-inducing way. Presumably, Liekam will play a major role in the meltdown. Obviously, there is a lot of intrigue building behind the scenes, but the first two episodes are relatively self-contained, thereby making a good festival showcase.

Paula Beer (so terrific in Ozon’s Frantz) is well cast as Liekam. She can be quite forceful and even cynical, but it is clear from her early breakdown, she probably has issues that will later come to the fore. Barry Atsma is also wonderfully flamboyant as Fenger, a true child of Gordon Gekko. May Duong Kieu also makes quite an impression as Thao Hoang, Liekam’s new team-member, who will either be her uneasy ally or a femme fatale rival, or something in between (just how their relationship shakes out will be one of the series’ intriguing uncertainties). Marc Limpach is a clammy mess as Jacoby the younger, but Jean Marc Barr promises plenty of steely skullduggery as Deutsche Global’s chairman, Robert Khano.

Schwochow, a veteran of both film and television, helms with style, hooking viewers right from the start. He lays a good deal of groundwork in the first two episodes, yet still manages to end each one in quite a satisfying manner. Hopefully, MHz or someone will pick up Bad Banks, because it is really smart and addictive television. Until then, the first two episodes are highly recommended when they screen this Saturday (4/7) and next Thursday (4/12), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

Tokyo Ghoul: The Flesh-Eating Superhero

They are not as sexy as vampires, but they have more individual agency and consciousness than zombies. Yet, they all share the same basic food source: people. Ghouls look a bit ghoulish around the eyes, but they can usually pass for human with a little touching up. However, when their koukaku tentacle weapons release under stress, they are quite a terrifying sight. It is all very confusing for Ken Kaneki, who was recently transformed into a ghoul by an organ transplant. Feeding will be an issue for him, but at least his ilk can still enjoy a nice cup of coffee in Kentaro Hagiwara’s live action adaptation of Tokyo Ghoul (trailer here), which releases today on DVD and BluRay.

In retrospect, Kaneki probably should have been suspicious when his crush suddenly demonstrated multiple common interests and agreed to a date. Not surprisingly, she is really a ghoul named Rize Kamishiro. Ordinarily, she would have feasted on him, but when she is crushed by a freak scaffolding collapse, an over-eager surgeon creates more complications than he realizes by transplanting her organs into the badly battered Kaneki.

As he recuperates, he is rather shocked to find he can no longer stomach traditional food. Fortunately, the good ghouls of Anteiku (you could say they subsist on road kill), the ghoul-managed coffee shop and mutual aid society take him under their wing—well, most of them do. Toka Kirishima is not very welcoming, but she will be the perfect tutor in ghoul self-defense when the over-zealous anti-ghoul Men-in-Black start hunting Anteiku’s most vulnerable members.

Tokyo Ghoul shares some common elements with a number of vampire franchises, like Underworld and Lestat, but the ghouls are by their very nature more brutal and instinctive. Yet, Hagiara and screenwriter Ichiro Kusuno clearly suggest many of the ghouls (such as Kaneki, the twelve-year-old Hinami Fueguchi, and Anteiki patriarch Kuzen Yoshimura) are more human than fanatics like Agent Kureo Mado, who has the sleepy eyes and stringy hair of Kill Bill-era David Carradine. Hagiwara also capitalizes on the manga franchise’s extensive world-building, in which the existence ghouls is generally public knowledge, but widely ignored by the see-no-evil populace, sort of like terrorism in our world.

Masataka Kubota is appropriately nebbish and high-strung as Kaneki, while Fumika Shimizu is impressively fierce as Shimzu. This is a good film for villains, with Yu Aoi (Japan’s national sweetheart and former Little Orphan Annie) wonderfully playing against type as the flamboyantly sinister Kamishiro and Yo Oizumi chewing the scenery with sleazy relish as Mado. However, Shoko Aida proves you can still do serious work in a gory urban fantasy with her heartbreaking turn as Royko Fueguchi, Hinami’s devoted mother.

Apparently, the source manga takes the long-term narrative in such radically different directions, franchise fans will probably find this return to the origin-story rather nostalgic. In any event, discerning monster movie viewers will appreciate the first-class effects and its dark sensibility (this isn’t Twilight, kids). Recommended for fans of the franchise and anyone in the mood for an evil cousin to the modern superhero movie, Tokyo Ghoul releases today on DVD and BluRay.

ND/NF ’18: Notes on an Appearance

This is a movie that is best watched with a finger on the pause button, yet it is only just starting its festival run. Hopefully, you read Vulcan-fast, because there is a lot of intriguing back-story that flashes across the screen in fictional news articles. Whether or not the mysterious disappearance of a recent college graduate has anything to do with the controversial life of the late political theorist Stephen Taubes is open to speculation, but the writer’s coy advocacy of ideological violence certainly seems to represent these divisive times. Look not for answers, but only more questions in Ricky D’Ambrose’s Notes on an Appearance (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

After an extended period of slackery, David Hidell accepts a Brooklyn-based research assistant position with his former college friend, Todd, who is working on a definitive Taubes biography, thanks to a considerable grant. Despite his Ivy League pedigree, Taubes is no bourgeoisie James Q. Wilson. He is an avowed anarchist, who railed against capitalism and democracy. Rather awkwardly for his admirers, it has also come to light that he pseudonymously wrote for a Europe journal with a reputation for fascist and anti-Semitic leanings.

There is the tantalizing possibility Hidell was made to vanish because he discovered something embarrassing about Taubes, but D’Ambrose steadfastly refuses to indulge in crass mystery/thriller conventions. Frankly, he is more interested in epistolary forms, sort of like Eric Baudelaire’s hybrid doc Letters to Max, which also has authoritarian sympathies. When it comes to the drama, such that he allows, his approach is not unlike the deliberate artificiality of Eugène Green and the extreme distancing of For the Plasma, which makes sense, considering the crossover personnel it shares with Appearance.

There are times when it is hard to tell if Appearance is deliberately satirizing the hyper-pretentious Brooklyn literary scene, or so deeply immersed in it, it inadvertently launches into self-parody. That uncertainty is highly problematic. Regardless, D’Ambrose does not want you to get involved in the narrative—and you won’t. The cast does everything they are supposed to, scrupulously following his direction. Yet, what really captures our imagination is Nation magazine contributor, Russia apologist, and Trump-collusion denier Stephen F. Cohen lending an eerie voice to Taubes and his ideology of menace.

It is almost enough to make us wish another movie splintered off from Appearance. It only runs for a mere sixty minutes, but it is chocked full of frustration. Clearly, D’Ambrose understands how murky conspiracy theories have a deeply religious impact on the modern psyche (they are our new articles of faith), but again, he will not deliver the pay-off. Only for self-conscious Brooklyn hipsters, Notes on an Appearance screens this Friday (4/6) at the Walter Reade and Saturday (4/7) at MoMA, as part of ND/NF 2018.

Kino! ’18: In Times of Fading Light

At one point in his career, Wilhelm Powileit thought he was being dispatched to Mexico to help assassinate Trotsky. At least that would have been an accomplishment. Instead, his masters temporarily forgot about him. It was one of many disappointments in his career, but he has lived to a ripe old age while remaining fanatically loyal to the Communist Party, so his birthday is now observed by a parade of minor Party officials. However, everyone can sense history is no longer on Powileit’s side when they gather for his 90^th celebration in Matti Geschonneck’s In Times of Fading Light (trailer here), the opening night film of this year’s KINO!: Festival of German Films in New York.

Probably nobody in the Powileit family has suffered more for their Communist faith than Powileit’s stepson, Kurt Umnitzer. Now a respected history professor, Umnitzer spent five years in a Soviet labor camp because troop transport train was sent in the wrong direction. Indeed, it was a costlier interlude in his life than he lets on. However, it is most likely why is so determined to convince his rebellious son Sascha to compromise a little, in order to get along. Alas, his counsel falls on deaf ears, as becomes profoundly clear when Sascha calls his father from the safety of West Berlin on the morning of his grandfather’s milestone party.

Right, super awkward. Unmitzer will try to keep the bombshell news under wraps, but it will be even more difficult when his bitter Russian wife Irina also ditches the party (with a small “p,” not the Party, with a capitol “P’), in favor of a bottle of vodka. Yet, Sascha’s defection just personalizes what all the guests already know—East Germany’s days as Stalinist colony are numbered.

Based Eugen Ruge’s family saga novel, boiled down to one pivotal day for dramatic purposes, Fading Light is a melancholy fin de siècle elegy, but it still has plenty of bite. The Powileit patriarch might be getting slightly dotty, but he is still vain, petty, and sometimes mean-spirited. His casual cruelty really comes out when he refers to Unmitzer’s workcamp confinement as “sawing logs in the forest.”

Without question, Bruno Ganz gives a ferocious lead performance as ninety-year-old Socialist ideologue, Bernie Sanders. As a portrayal of a true believing extremist facing the end of his era, it comes from a similar place as his legendary, often memed Hitler in Downfall, but it is quieter and sadder.

Ganz gets the showy parts, but Sylvester Groth gives it a messily human soul as the conflicted Unmitzer. Groth was an East German defector, who has played his share of Stasi agents and collaborators in films and series like Deutschland ’83 and A Pact, but the world weariness and self-contempt of Unmitzer is an even more representative expression of the GDR experience. It is a restrained, but deeply felt performance, whereas Evgenia Dodina blows the doors off their hinges as Irina Unmitzer. Good golly, can she make an entrance.

Fading Light shares a kinship with classic dinner party disaster movies like Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and Vinterberg’s The Celebration, but it has a Teutonic soul. It is a wryly sardonic, archly observed summation of all the denial and double-think required of GDR’s Powileit’s that is more bitter than sweet. Highly recommended, In Times of Fading Light screens this Friday and Saturday (4/6 & 4/7), as part of KINO! 2018 in New York City.

Jung Yoo-jung’s Seven Years of Night

You could say Jung Yoo-jung is like the Korean J.K. Rowling, except her books are psychologically complex and intended for mature grown-ups. She was first published at the age of forty-one, while she worked as a nurse, providing her family’s sole support. Instead of ripping off age-old fantasy tropes, she drew from her real-world experience. Out of four adult novels, this is the second to be adapted for film, with a third already under development. If you thought your parents were bad, wait till you see the impact two badly flawed fathers have on their children in Choo Chang-min’s adaptation of Seven Years of Night (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Seo-won has been somewhat disappointed in his father Choi Hyun-soo ever since he was convicted of murdering a twelve-year-old girl and subsequently causing the deaths of several local townspeople by sabotaging the dam. Of course, it is not as simple as that. Through agonizing flashbacks, we learn the truth. Tragically, Choi really did kill young Se-ryung when she dashed in front of his car, fleeing her abusive father, the well-heeled Dr. Oh. Drunk and panicked, Choi opted to cover up her death, inevitably bringing about his own downfall.

Almost immediately thereafter, Choi is consumed by guilt. Mostly it is his subconscious tormenting him, but there might also be mild supernatural elements at play. Unfortunately, there is also a very real human element working against him. Refusing to accept any responsibility, Oh looks for a scapegoat—and his investigators quickly place Choi’s car near the scene. Years later, as Choi’s execution approaches, he finally reaches out to the teenage son he had refused to see, out of shame.

Although the perpetrators and their respective degrees of culpability are always clearly identified, Seven Years shares a real kinship with the first season of Broadchurch. It is suspenseful and absorbing but is it ever dark and pessimistic with respect to human nature. Initially, the timeline shifts are a bit confusing, but Choo manages to maintain a great deal of uncertainty and tension regarding the final outcome.

Ryu Seung-ryong is equally comfortable playing villains and everymen, so he is a logical choice to do both as the brutish yet sympathetic Choi. Jang Dong-gun is unsettling cold and vicious as Dr. Oh, the dentist from Hell. Twelve-year-old Lee Re, best known as the star of Hope continues to utterly devastate viewers as the desperate Oh Se-ryung. Go Kyung-pyo somewhat underwhelms as the understandably resentful Seo-won, but Song Sae-byeok really gives the film heart and heft as Ahn Seung-hwan, Choi’s co-worker, who becomes Seo-won’s guardian.

Choo’s previous film, Masquerade, was surprisingly dark and morally ambiguous for a costume drama that could have been elevator-pitched as Dave in the Joseon era, but Seven Years is an even tougher and more accomplished film. Highly recommended for fans of angsty thrillers like Mystic River, Seven Years of Night opens this Friday (4/6) at the LA and Buena Park CGV Cinemas, as well as the Edgewater Multiplex in New Jersey.

(Art: CJ Entertainment)

ND/NF ’18: Our House

Japanese domestic architecture has been a wonderfully evocative blessing to world cinema. It can be warm and reassuring, as in Ozu’s masterpieces or eerily disconcerting, as seen in the J-horror film of your choice. Here it manages to be both. That is because Seri is not just sharing her home with her ambiguously single mother. Their house is also occupied by two mysterious women in an alternate dimension (or something like that). From time to time, their realities intersect in Yui Kiyohara’s Our House (trailer here), which screens during this year’s New Directors/New Films.

Seri’s father possibly passed away, but she has yet to fully accept his absence. Perhaps that is why she is so attuned to the sound of “ghosts” in the house. Most likely, those are actually, Toko and her new roommate Sana, if that is in fact her name. Late one night, the older woman woke up on the ferry, apparently suffering from amnesia. The lonely Toko took her in, no questions asked. However, viewers soon start to suspect it is the moody Toko who is mixed up in something nefarious, judging from her strange clandestine meetings and the ominous phone calls Sana picks up.

Frankly, it is a tiny bit frustrating that Kiyohara is not more interested in conventional genre thrills, because the elements of the Sana-Toko storyline are so intriguing, we really wish they were not so obliquely limned. In contrast, the very Japanese domestic drama involving Seri’s maturation and her difficulty accepting her mother Kiriko’s new romantic relationship is more fully sketched out, but it still pulls us in quite adroitly.

Kiyohara has a talent for turning small bits of business into huge reveals. In this case, a little bit more really would have been a little bit more, but the wonderfully sensitive yet restrained cast keeps us deeply invested emotionally throughout. As Seri, Nodoka Kawanishi is forceful and engaging, like a “young” Fumi Nikaido (from three or four years ago). Yukiko Yasuno truly radiates a mature elegance as Kiriko, while Mariwo Osawa and Mei Fujiwara powerfully convey a profound sense of Sana and Toko’s shared loneliness, even as they scrupulously maintain the characters’ cautious guardedness.

Our House is definitely a postmodern mind-twister, but it subtlety and humanism make it feel so much fresher and more inviting than its reality-warping cousins. You wouldn’t mind being neighbors with these sets of characters—either or both of them. A bit of patience is required as viewers adjust to Kiyohara’s aesthetic vibe, but it is worth it. Highly recommended for discerning cineastes, Our House screens this Friday (4/6) at MoMA and Sunday (4/8) at the Walter Reade, as part of ND/NF 2018.

Eran Riklis’s Shelter

It is impossible to claim the civilized world is winning the war on terrorism when Hezbollah is part of Lebanon’s ruling coalition. Frankly, most of the West now follows the “Obama Doctrine:” go easy on Hezbollah to curry favor with their Iranian masters. Israel still fights the good fight and it will continue to protect those who fought with them. Mona is a particularly sensitive example. As the ex-mistress of a high-ranking Hezbollah terrorist/Lebanese government official, she provided extensive intelligence to the Mossad. When she was exposed, her handlers smuggled her out of the country and into a Hamburg safe house. It will be Naomi’s task to protect her while she recovers from plastic surgery, but her assignment will be considerably more dangerous than promised in Eran Riklis’s Shelter (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

This will be Naomi’s first field work since a devastating personal tragedy caused her to take an extended leave of absence. It is supposed to be an easy way to get back into action, so initially, she is not even supplied a gun. It will be her job to masquerade as a nurse, tending to the bandaged Mona while she recuperates from plastic surgery. Eventually, she will be resettled into a new life, with a new identity. Yet, there are things Mona has trouble letting go, like the son still held in the custody of her very former lover, Naim Quassem.

Of course, there is friction between the two women at first, but respect and eventually friendship slowly but steadily develops between them. Not surprisingly, it turns out Quassem still holds a grudge against Mona. Quelle surprise. As Mona bonds with her charge, her instincts become hyper-aware of the danger swirling around them.

If you want to understand why the Mossad is the most successful intelligence agency in the world, watch Shelter. They protect their assets instead of burning them. In contrast, the German BND comes off looking pretty bad and it is rather clear our agencies would not have acted much differently. Riklis’s handling of Mona’s motivation for working with the Israelis is also smart and satisfying—it is deeply complex, yet profoundly simple.

It should be noted Riklis has bent over backwards to be sensitive to the circumstances of Arab Israeli women (who chose to political identify with the era of the British Mandate of “Palestine”) in previous films, such as The Lemon Tree. Indeed, empathizing with a strong Middle Eastern woman like Mona necessarily involves a critical rejection of militant terrorists like Hezbollah.

Israeli Neta Riskin and the Iranian-born, Paris-based Golshifteh Farahani (who has obviously given up all hope of returning home until there is a decisive regime change) are quite extraordinary together. Riskin is icily reserved, but clearly conveys how wounded and vulnerable Naomi is inside. Frankly, Farahani’s performance is genuinely brave in many ways. Arguably, she is just as fragile (if not more so), yet she vamps up the silk robe and surgical bandages better than even Bette Davis could have in her prime.

With its main characters confined to the claustrophobic flat, Shelter definitely shares a kinship with the classic films of Hitchcock and Polanski, but it engages with wider geopolitical issues. Frustratingly, it is likely to be overshadowed by Brad Anderson’s Beirut, but it is a vastly superior film. In fact, it is the best espionage-counter-terrorism film of the year thus far, and Riklis’s best since The Human Resources Manager. Very highly recommended, Shelter opens this Friday (4/6) in LA, at the Laemmle Town Center 5, Monica Film Center, and Ahrya Fine Arts.

CIFF ’18: Control

We’re a bit behind on the Vincke-Verstuyft Trilogy here in America. Sony Classics picked up the first film, The Memory Killer, but Dossier K. only had festival play. Fortunately, it shouldn’t be too hard to catch up for their third outing: Vincke and Verstuyft are Antwerp police detectives. They solve murders. Are you with us so far? The friendship between Eric Vincke and his younger, scruffier subordinate Freddy Verstuyft will be tested by the circumstances of their latest, entirely self-contained case in Jan Verheyen’s Control (trailer here), which screens during this year’s Cleveland International Film Festival.

Thanks to a poacher, a serial killer is scared off while disposing of a corpse. Apparently, the unknown subject has done this before, judging from the headless bodies that are subsequently discovered in the open field. Vincke and Verstuyft have very different ideas on how to pursue the case. The former brings in a profiler from Holland and focuses all the task force’s attention on suspects who had recently moved from Cologne, where similar victims had been discovered. However, Verstuyft is convinced that a possible intended victim holds the answers they need, if she can just recover her memories of what happened before she was discovered shivering, apparently drugged, with her hair mysteriously died red.

Rather awkwardly, in addition to being a hard partier, Rina is a psychologist with a history of testifying against cops in alleged brutality cases. Vincke wants nothing to do with her. He prefers to surveil the suspects he considers likeliest, including an American Foreign Service Officer and a video game developer, which is so Euro of him.

Control is an entertaining procedural, even if the final suspect isn’t such a big shock. Aside from viewers themselves, the un-sub the only one left alive or not conclusively eliminated. Still, it is a decent amusement ride getting there. As Vincke and Verstuyft, Koen De Bouw and Werner De Smedt convincingly bicker like old, annoyed friends. De Smedt also forges some surprisingly convincing romantic chemistry with Sofie Hoflack’s Rina, even though he is everything she should despise, and vice versa. Hendrik Aerts is appropriately brutish and twitchy as her most suspicious patient, while Greg Timmermans makes a likably luggish audience proxy as Wim Cassiers, the plugger detective caught between Vincke and Verstuyft’s power games.

At times, Control seems to be hat-tipping elements of Basic Instinct, but it arguably uses its Euro-ness to mislead its domestic viewers, at least with respect to the killer’s true identity. Verheyen keeps it zipping along, while his co-leads dial up their grizzled cynicism and world-weariness. While not exactly a reinvention of the genre, all the elements come together quite entertainingly. Recommended for fans of procedurals and serial killer movies, Control screens this Thursday (4/5) and Friday (4/6), as part of the 2018 CIFF.