Kazuo Miyagawa at Japan Society: Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold

Shintaro Katsu had quite a run with the Zatoichi franchise: twenty-six feature films from 1962 to 1989. For the final film he directed someone else in the role, but there were also four non-consecutive seasons of the 1974-1979 TV series. Tora-san still has him beat in terms of longevity (48 films, from 1969 to 1995), but Zatoichi definitely has a much higher body count. This time around, Katsu’s Zatoichi also gets to play Robin Hood. It is considered one of the more visually stylish entries in the popular series, so it is quite fitting Kazuo Ikehiro’s Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold screens during the Japan Society’s retrospective, Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

Zatoichi (often just plain Ichi) is coming to town, so you know there will be trouble. In this case, his motives are pure. He has come to pay his respects to a yakuza he mistakenly cut down. Apparently, mistakes like this can happen when you are a blind swordsman, even if you have Zatoichi’s remarkable skills. Unfortunately, while contemplating mortality, he sits down on a stolen chest of gold. That would be the villagers’ tax payment, which agents of the Intendant have stolen, so the corrupt official can double collect.

To be frank, Zatoichi maybe should have wondered what that wicker chest was doing in the middle of a field and why were people suddenly attacking him for it. Regardless, the villagers will somewhat logically suspect him of aiding and abetting the theft, so he will have too clear his name by finding their gold. Fortunately, he will have some help from Chuji, a rebel-bandit holed up in the mountains and Chiyo, the sister of the dead man Zatoichi laments.

The opening sequence is definitely one for the Miyagawa highlight reel. Bathing the foreground in darkness, Miyagawa creates a kabuki-like vibe for the sword fight, through judicious use of focused, golden light, approximating the chiaroscuro effect in Flemish masters. In fact, there is quite a bit of visual panache throughout the film. Shôhei Miyauchi’s fight choreography is also widely hailed as the roughest and toughest thus far (we’re six films into twenty-six at this point). Indeed, it definitely should hold up for Chanbara fans. One thing that might jump out at genteel viewers is the ugly contempt for the blind expressed by the villains, but that makes their anticipated comeuppance even sweeter.

Obviously, Katsu has a good idea of what he is doing as Zatoichi by this point. Machiko Hasegawa also has some amusing scenes with him and her femme fatale presence is definitely intriguing, but Ikehiro lets her disappear for far too long. However, Tomisaburo Wakayama (future star of the Lone Wolf and Cub franchise) really fills up the screen as the Intendant’s unrepentantly villainous Samurai enforcer, Jushiro.

Chest of Gold must be a fun movie, since they made twenty more Zatoichis (not including reboots). It definitely delivers the hack-and-slash, but the way Miyagawa lensed the action represents some true artistry. Highly recommended as a fan-pleasing, expectation-beating, formula-stretching Chanbara film, Zatoichi and the Chest of Gold screens this Friday (4/20) at Japan Society, as part of Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

Mercury 13: The Other First-Generation Astronauts

The great Clare Boothe Luce championed them in Life at a time when that magazine really meant something, but it was to no avail. They privately trained for the American space program, passing many of the same physical and psychological tests, but the fix was in to keep them out. Although the thirteen women never trained as a unit like the original Mercury 7 astronauts, they still developed their own group identity. Their careers and legacy are chronicled in David Sington & Heather Walsh’s documentary Mercury 13 (trailer here), which premieres this Friday on Netflix.

Each of the Mercury 13 were accomplished aviators. In fact, many of them were veterans of the Women Airforce Service Pilots organization, who ferried combat planes from the factory to wherever the military needed them, except the actual combat zones. You could argue this made them something very much like test pilots, but NASA rigidly used test pilot experience as a prerequisite to disqualify the Mercury 13, even though such duties were not open to them.

When telling the story of the 13, Jacqueline Cochran emerges as the Chuck Yeager figure. Having achieved national stature as an aviator, Cochran convinced NASA flight doctor and life science expert Dr. William Randolph Lovelace to start a pilot program for prospective women astronauts at his private clinic. However, she later undercut the program at a critical moment.

Several of the surviving 13 lament what a great propaganda loss it was when the Soviet launched the first woman into space with Valentina Tereshkova in 1963. Frankly, she was more of a sporting figure than a real pilot or scientist, so any of the 13 would have made far more credible astronauts. There is no question they were qualified pilots and when it comes to space travel, being smaller of stature is a plus. However, there is a nagging hypothetical nobody dares to explore. Suppose a woman astronaut had died in the Apollo 1 fire that killed Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee. The 13 were surely prepared to accept such risks, but you have to wonder if the reaction of the flawed 1967 media could have really set back the space program.

Regardless, the 13 deserved more respect from their male colleagues and NASA would have been much smarter if they had found high profile roles for them to play in the program, but not a lot of observers accuse NASA of being overly intelligent anymore. This is a fascinating story, but even at a highly-manageable seventy-eight minutes, Mercury 13 is conspicuously padded in places. If you enjoy footage of gliders, we have good news for you.

Even though Sington, Walsh, and most of their interview subjects direct plenty of criticism towards NASA, they are still obviously big believers in space exploration. After all, they are arguing for greater and wider participation, rather than less. That is why it is so frustrating to watch a space doc like this (or In the Shadow of the Moon, which Sington also directed, or Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo, which Walsh co-produced) knowing we have allowed our own space flight capabilities atrophy into nothing. Recommended for providing a unique perspective on the Space Race, Mercury 13 starts streaming this Friday (4/20) on Netflix.

#Screamers: The Horror of Viral Videos

Can you imagine the endless debates among the producers whether or not to include the hashtag in the title? They must have been excruciating. Tom Brennan and Chris Grabow have that sort of argument all the time at Gigaler.com. They are sort of like YouTube for viral videos, but supposedly more curated. It hardly sounds like a revolutionary business model and their tight cash flows bears out our skepticism. However, they believe some creepy jump-scare videos might be the opportunity they have waiting for in Dean Matthew Ronalds’ #Screamers (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

We really get to know Brennan and Grabow thanks to the corporate film their marketing guy Griffin is shooting. The in-house doc paints a rosy picture of a start-up on the rise, but we later learn the company’s financial position is much more precarious. The so-called “screamer” videos were just what they needed. Basically, an otherworldly goth girl distracts the viewer, setting them up for a jolt when the Screamer comes lunging at them from out of the corner. Traffic is booming, but they need exclusivity, so they (or rather Abbi, their best coder) tracks down the makers. The metadata leads them Rochester, NY, where the makers might be engaging in an elaborate but distasteful hoax, involving a local woman gone missing and Francis Tumblety, an American suspect in the Jack the Ripper case.

Frankly, it is sort of strange Tumblety’s Ripper connections have not inspired more horror movies. Yet, Ronalds and co-screenwriter Malloy only skim the surface of his eccentric weirdness. Instead, they vexingly devote almost the entire first two acts to establishing the interpersonal dynamics of Gigaler. Brennan is the obnoxious glad-hander, Grabow is nebbish and passive aggressive, while Abbi is the shy computer nerd (in this wacky alternate universe). We so get all that. What we want is more creepy stuff involving Tumblety and more backstory for the mysteriously missing Tara Rogers.

Indeed, it is frustrating how little time Ronalds and Malloy devote to legit horror movie business, because they actually created some intriguing mythology. Still, there is no question, as Brennan and Grabow, Malloy and Chris Bannow feel like annoying hipster tech partners, who are just itching to sell out their customers, like Facebook. All the Gigaler scenes feel totally believable and true to life, but that also means they aren’t a lot of fun.

There is just too much click-and-eyeball talk in #Screamers and not enough Rippers and missing persons. When the film finally gets down to business, it rushes through the third act, rather than trying to build extended tension. It is the sort of film that makes you want to do your own reshoots and re-editing. So frustrating, #Screamers releases today on VOD platforms.

Deep Blue Sea 2: Deeper, Bluer, Hungrier

Among fish, sharks are considered comparatively intelligent and sociable. However, bull sharks are such mean killing machines,even a touchy-feely shark conservationist like Misty Calhoun won’t go near them. So why would pharma billionaire Carl Durant make them his smart drug guinea pigs, like Bradley Cooper in Limitless? Maybe it has something to do with his reckless megalomania. Regardless, people are about to become fish food in Darin Scott’s direct-to-DVD sequel, Deep Blue Sea 2 (trailer here), which releases today.

It has been a while since the original Deep Blue Sea released in 1999, so you may have either forgotten it, or been faithfully pining for a sequel. In either case, you can feel free to dive into DBS2, because there are no returning characters. We just get another batch of smart sharks. As we know, sharks are Calhoun’s specialty. That is why Durant wants to recruit her for the project, even though her value-added seems minimal. At least she can tell just by looking Bella, the queen bee bull shark is mega-pregnant.

Of course, Calhoun is appalled by Durant’s scheme, as any rational person would be. Even his shark herder (or whatever) Trent Slater is pretty disgusted with his boss. Frankly, Durant was always arrogant, but he has become alarmingly erratic since he started dosing himself with the experimental cocktail. However, things really get ugly when the facility starts to flood—and Bella gives birth to a gaggle of piranha-like babies.

So yeah, killer sharks. Its definitely meathead stuff, but the execution is more competent than we would expect. Michael Beach is flamboyantly nutty as Durant and his motivating fear of an artificial intelligence-induced singularity is an interesting touch. Danielle Savre also makes Calhoun a pleasingly forceful protag. However, the rest of the ensemble bring little energy to their stock characters. Frankly, many of them look like they are just waiting around to get eaten.

Hopefully, The Meg will be better than this. However, as direct-to-DVD sequels go, this is much more watchable than most, but whether it is worth the nineteen-year wait is a question only you can answer for yourself. Probably decent hangover viewing material, Deep Blue Sea 2 releases today on DVD, exactly where it belongs.

Ghost Stories: Scary Stuff, with Martin Freeman

Ghostly yarns are meant to be told, person to person, as indeed happens here. In this case, they are prompted by a skeptic’s investigation (it still counts) that is rooted in a dare (which makes it even better). “The brain sees what it wants to see” is the motto of our intrepid paranormal investigator, but all bets are off during Jeremy Dyson & Andy Nyman’s pseudo-anthology film, Ghost Stories (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Prof. Phillip Goodman fancies himself a British Amazing Randi, but despite his TV show, he is not nearly as famous (or respected). His role model actually happens to be Charles Cameron, a famous TV debunker from the 1970s, who has disappeared from public sight in recent years. At first, Goodman is thrilled when the mysterious old man reaches out to him, but the camper-dwelling Cameron is surprisingly hostile when he pays a visit. Openly contemptuous of the logical materialism he and Goodman offered people in place of supernatural mystery, Cameron gives his follower three case files that you could say shook his lack of faith in the beyond. He challenges Goodman to investigate and explain them, thereby launching the film’s anthology structure, except there is rather a bit more to the wrap-around segments, as we will eventually learn.

The initial “proper” story focuses on an emotionally-broken night watchman, who reports being haunted on the job by a little girl. The second relates a pre-teen’s terrifying vehicular mishap along a remote stretch of road (a bit like Bryan Bertino’s The Monster, but more demonic), while the final tale relates the very personal and tragic hauntings experienced by City investment banker Mike Priddle. However, things are not precisely as they seem, but telling would be a shame.

Ghost Stories is based on Dyson & Nyman’s long-running play, which must have featured some inventive staging, judging from the film version. Even American horror fans who learn its secrets from the film would probably enjoy seeing it unfold on the boards. In large measure, this is because the framing narrative is so inventive—so much so, it eventually takes precedence over the constituent stories.

Co-writer-co-director Nyman is absolutely terrific as Prof. Goodman. He is a real character, with real flaws—and not just a device to introduce the next haunting. Martin Freeman similarly makes Priddle seem very real, but he also helps facilitate some big surprises (again telling would be telling). Yet, perhaps the rawest, most wrenching work comes from Paul Whitehouse (much better known in the UK), who really kills it as Tony Matthews, the literally and figuratively haunted night guard.

To put Ghost Stories into context, many critics and fans have invoked the name of Amicus, the Hammer-like studio that specialized in anthologies (like Dr. Terror’s House of Horrors, which featured Peter Cushing, Christopher Lee, and British jazz musician Tubby Hayes). However, you can also taste some of the flavoring of the decidedly existential British horror exemplified by Ben Wheatley and Gareth Tunley, but that rather makes sense, since producers Robin Gutch and Claire Jones performed like duties on films such as Kill List, Berberian Sound Studio, A Field in England, and Sightseers.

Arguably, you can see two traditions of British horror coming together in Ghost Stories, which is really cool. There is also real acting and stuff going on. The results are deliciously sly and sinister. Very highly recommended for horror fans, Ghost Stories opens this Friday (4/20) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Clouzot’s Le Corbeau

In the 1940’s, it took considerable effort to write poison pen letters. It was literally a matter of pen and ink. These days, it can be done so much easier through social media. Always controversial as a production of the German-owned, Vichy-aligned Continental Films during the (second) French Occupation, Henri-Georges Clouzot’s Le Corbeau feels timelier than ever. Freshly 4K-restored, it opens this Friday at Film Forum (trailer here).

Le Corbeau (The Raven) makes the provincial townsfolk so uncomfortable, because he or she is often correct in the accusations leveled against the apparently not so innocent villagers. For instance, Le Corbeau’s favorite target, Dr. Rémy Germain was indeed having an affair with the young wife of his colleague, grey-bearded psychiatrist Dr. Michel Vorzet. However, his main contention that Germain is an overzealous back-alley abortionist is most likely exaggerated. Nevertheless, he and Laura Vorzet find it prudent to put their affair on hold—at least temporarily.

Despite all the unwanted attention focused on Dr. Germain, he finds Denise Saillens, his landlord’s promiscuous sister is more than willing to take Vorzet’s place. He is not completely uninterested, but he has more than enough trouble without her attention seeking behavior. To clear his name, he will rather awkwardly team up with Dr. Vorzet, an expert in poison pen letter writers, after one of the Raven’s letters directly prompts a fatal suicide.

Le Corbeau is an absolutely fascinating film to analyze, both for what is on the screen and what was happening behind the scenes. Since it was produced by Continental Films, Clouzot and his two leads, Pierre Fresnay and Ginette Leclerc were banned from French film production and faced legal difficulties (including imprisonment in the case of Fresnay and Leclerc) after liberation. However, some critics read into it a subtle indictment of anonymous denunciations as well as a potent portrayal of the climate of paranoia that was true to life under occupation. Regardless, both the resistance and the establishment condemned the film, for either besmirching the French national character or traditional Catholic morality. Sometimes, you just can’t win.

Of course, it is easy to hear the Raven’s bitter moralizing voice in the social media cyber-lynchings of our times, such as the one that recently resulted in the death of adult film star August Ames. It is probably safe to predict there will not be a porn parody of Le Corbeau anytime soon, and certainly not with the participation of her harassers.  Social Justice Warrior intolerance has replaced Catholic prudery, but the psychology of their cold-blooded cruelty is strikingly similar.

Regardless, as Germain, Fresnay might be one of the most anti-heroic anti-heroes in motion picture history. At best, he is an adulterer and his professional bedside manner is distinctly frosty. Yet, as we come to know him and his backstory, Fresnay steadily stokes the audience’s sympathies. Pierre Larquey is just as terrific as the old but still sharp Dr. Vorzet. Modern viewers might find Leclerc a tad melodramatic as Mme. Saillens, but Liliane Maigné is wonderfully sly but sensitive as her scheming niece, Rolande.

Perhaps what most defines Le Corbeau is the ugly mob justice unleashed on the obvious (and therefore most likely innocent) suspect, Marie Corbin, Laura Vorzet’s rigidly judgmental sister. Again, this was probably not the messaging Vichy was looking for, but it would have been just as inconvenient for the épuration score-settling. Indeed, the Raven is an ornery beast, but it is wickedly clever. It also well-deserves its reputation as an early film noir forerunner, thanks to cinematographer Nicolas Hayer’s dramatically expressive use of shadow. Very highly recommended, Le Corbeau opens this Friday (5/20), at Film Forum.

Kazuo Miyagawa at Japan Society: A Certain Killer

Shiozawa is a sushi chef, so it makes sense he is good with a blade. That also helps in his other line of work. Most civilians think he is the proprietor of a neighborhood sushi and sake restaurant, but he also fulfills contracts for Yakuza families. He is cautious and exacting. When he takes an assignment, he is like money in the bank. However, this job might be different, because it involves accomplices. There is a chance he could get killed, but nothing can possible blow his cool in Kazuo Mori’s A Certain Killer, which screens during the Japan Society’s latest film series, Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

No luxury hotels for Shiozawa. Instead, he rents a grubby room in a flop house next to a cemetery (talk about appropriate). Eventually, a pretty party girl named Keiko joins him and a dour looking Yakuza named Maeda soon follows. How did he meet them and what are they doing in this de-populated post-industrial neighborhood? The flashbacks will explain all.

Essentially, Keiko was a good deed Shiozawa is still being punished for. He paid for her diner tab, sparing her the indignity of trading sex for a bowl of soup and then saved her from her abusive pimp. However, she followed him home and started worming her way into his life. Maeda also has complicated history with the hitman. Initially, he tries to hire Shiozawa’s services for a hit sanctioned by his boss, but he soon starts getting ideas of his own.

A Certain Killer is one of those films that leaves you baffled that it doesn’t have more of an international reputation. Seriously, how is it not a staple of best noir lists? This is a lithe and deadly little film that swaggers through the urban jungle like a shark swimming in the ocean. Raizo Ichikawa was known for historicals, but Shiozawa could very well be the role of his career. He has the world-weary look of nothingness, but he conveys steely grit beneath his bland, disinterested surface. There is a bit of Le Samouraï Alain Delon in him, but he is very much a disillusioned middle-aged cat.

On the other side of the spectrum, Yumiko Nogawa is all kinds of trouble as Keiko. She projects a flirty, candy-colored coquetry, but oh my, is she ever a femme fatale. Mikio Narita also holds up his end as the tightly wound Maeda. Put them all together and there is bound to be trouble.

Certain Killer has all the elements in place, including the twists and narrative flashbacks of Yasuzo Masumura’s screenplay that predates so many Tarantino clones in the 1990s. However, the X-factor is Miyagawa’s distinctive cinematography, which includes a number of striking wide God’s-eye shots, reducing the characters to tiny scale (like the rats that they often are).

Seriously, why aren’t Scorsese and Tarantino constantly yammering about how we have to see A Certain Killer. Apparently, its up to us, so consider yourself duly lectured. Honestly, this is a terrific hitman thriller so take advantage of the opportunity to see it when A Certain Killer screens this Tuesday (4/17) at Japan Society, as part of Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

SFFILM ’18: The White Girl

This unnamed teenager is a lot like Japanese singer-songwriter Yui’s character in Taiyou no Uta (Midnight Sun) and whoever in the lame American remake. She too is allergic to the sun’s ultraviolet rays—or so she has always been told. However, she is not a singer, but perhaps her mother was—and maybe still is—or not. She is an outsider in Pearl Village, Hong Kong’s last surviving fishing hamlet, but in some ways that helps her appreciate what it represents in Jenny Suen & (co-director) Christopher Doyle’s The White Girl (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

All her life, the “White Girl” has hid beneath floppy hats, sunglasses, and protective clothing, because her controlling fisherman father assured her she must. Given her resulting pale skin and shy manner, the villagers dubbed her “White Girl” or even “Ghost” and have become convinced she can contaminate their nets with bad mojo with a hard stare. Her only friend is Ho Zai, a scampish little boy living with an eccentric Buddhist monk, at least until Sakamoto, an emotionally damaged Japanese expat fleeing his troubles, starts squatting in the decrepit colonial mansion overlooking the bay.

For the most part, the White Girl and Sakamoto are drawn to each other, because they sense the shared empathy and comradery of a fellow wounded spirit. However, there is also an element of creepy sexual attraction that Sakamoto scrupulously represses. Yet, she will still lose much of her innocence for other reasons, as she comes to doubt the validity of everything her father ever told her. Meanwhile, the resourceful Ho Zai uncovers evidence of the mayor’s plan to sell out the village to a consortium of Mainland investors.

White Girl is a more focused and conventional film than Doyle’s Hong Kong Trilogy, which Suen produced, but it is still much more concerned with mood and vibe than crass plot points. Without doubt, we can see its aesthetic kinship with some of the classic Wong Kar-wai films he shot. It is a quiet, lulling film, but fortunately Angela Yuen and Joe Odagiri can emote though the humid languor as the girl and the squatter. Jeff Yiu is also unusually charismatic for a young thesp as Ho Zai, while Rayna Lee adds some unlikely sympathetic glamor as the village school teacher, Miss Wong. However, Leung Kin-ping probably scores the most points for dramatics with his poignant turn as the girl’s clueless father.

Honestly, nobody would have accused Suen & Doyle of selling out if they had cranked up the narrative a little. Clearly, they believe meandering is part of the journey. Of course, the symbolism of the hyper-connected Mainland developers out to obliterate Pearl Village’s way of life is tough to miss, but that doesn’t mean the message isn’t still needed. Regardless, the mostly attractive and uniformly expressive ensemble redeems the stylistic excesses. Recommended as an evocative and elegiac coming of age film, The White Girl screens again this Monday (4/16), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Kazuo Miyagawa at Japan Society: The Rickshaw Man

They call Matsugoro an outlaw, but he sure puts in an honest day’s work. The reformed rickshaw driver (or puller) has a dodgy past, but that is understandable given the meanness of his formative years. He is now a productive citizen, aside from some occasional drunken brawling and general rowdiness. He will even file off some those rough edges when he becomes a surrogate father to a grieving young boy in Hiroshi Inagaki’s The Rickshaw Man, which was shot by accomplished cinematographer Kazuo Miyagawa and therefore logically screens during the Japan Society’s new retrospective, Kazuo Miyagawa: Japan’s Greatest Cinematographer.

As the film opens, Matsugoro (Matsu-san) still likes his drink, but the community tolerates a bit of trouble-making from him, because he is a decent chap and he always tries to make things right afterward. However, his life changes drastically when he shuttles the injured Toshio Yoshioka and his alarmed mother Yoshiko to the doctor. Of course, Matsu-san refuses all compensation, so Toshio’s father, a junior government official, invites the good-hearted rogue for dinner and drinks. Everyone is charmed by Matsugoro, so when Yoshioka-san dies from a freak illness, he starts looking out for Toshio and Yoshiko. The widowed mother is particularly hopeful Matsugoro can toughen up Toshio and guide him into manhood.

Despite Matsugoro’s colorful background, Rickshaw is essentially a domestic drama, which has always been one of Japanese cinema’s competitive advantages. In this case, Matsu-san’s story is particularly poignant, because no matter how much he sacrifices for mother and son, class and social distinctions dictate he can never be a full member of their family or even considered an equal. That conspicuous fact might be one reason why Rickshaw, a consistently chaste and apolitical film, was censored by the wartime Imperial government.

If you need to layer more poignancy atop Rickshaw, take note Mother Yoshiko was played by stage thesp Keiko Sonoi, who perished in Hiroshima while performing there in a touring production. She is exquisitely delicate and haunting, while Tsumasaburo Bando is terrific as the gruff and gregarious Matsu-san. Rough and crude on the outside, but secretly sentimental and sensitive, he kind of hints at what it would have been like if Ken Takakura ever played Tora-san.

It is also easy to see why Rickshaw was selected for the Miyagawa series, even though Inagaki’s 1958 color remake with Toshiro Mifune and Hideko Takamine is better known. He frames and superimposes some surprisingly expressionist images, at times even approaching the surreal. Perhaps most memorably, Miyagawa makes hay out of the spokes in Matsu-san’s rickshaw wheels and dazzles with some nifty transition shots. Clearly, it is a film that is ripe for rediscovery. Highly recommended, The Rickshaw Man screens tomorrow night (4/14) at the Japan Society, as part of their Miyagawa tribute.

Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare

It is fitting this movie is inspired by drunken college students’ favorite naughty game, because many future players are sure to reference it. Truth: did you pay good money to see it in a theater? Dare: re-enact one of the death scenes with a straight face. It turns out Olivia would have been much better off building houses over spring break than partying with friends in Mexico, but we could have guessed that for ourselves. Regardless, she is stuck playing an evil game in Jeff Wadlow’s Blumhouse-produced Truth or Dare (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Somehow, Olivia’s flighty BFF Markie Cameron can always get her to do what she wants. It turns out guilt is a major reason why. Evidently, Olivia knows a secret about a childhood tragedy that she hopes to take to her grave. She also carries a wicked torch for Cameron’s boring boyfriend Lucas. These are exactly the sort of weaknesses the demon Calax enjoys exploiting. Thanks to Carter, a sleazy operator Olivia meets in a bar, she and her friends get lured into a sinister game of truth or dare.

Their decision to follow him into an ominous-looking abandoned mission in search of booze goes beyond any rational understanding, but they do it anyway. They also agree to play Truth or Dare, because it is so festive in there. Not that they have a choice. One of the peculiar rules of this game states: “if you’re asked you’re in.” Things get weird, but nothing gets seriously demonic until they return to college (where they apparently never have to study or write papers). Soon, Calax approaches them in visions, demanding truth or dare at the most inopportune times. Players that refuse get possessed and meet an ugly end. Secrets will be exposed, fraying friendships, but because Carter’s friends played with the “two truths and a dare” rules, Olivia’s pals cannot avoid Calax’s homicidal and suicidal dares indefinitely. So, can Trump build a wall to keep the demons out? And get Mexico to pay for it?

Any time a horror movie shares a title with a Madonna flick, it is just bad news. Reportedly, T or D is itself the product of a dare. Blumhouse started with the mere title and Wadlow talked his way into directing it with an extemporized elevator pitch. It all must make Roger Corman proud, but the slapdash development process definitely shows on the screen.

The truth is, you will laugh a lot during T or D, but it is the wrong kind of laughter. It is not even a question of laughing at the film rather than with it. You’re laughing at yourself for being a grown adult, sitting through this ridiculousness.

It is too bad because Lucy Hale (who will be news to anyone who doesn’t watch Freeform, the ABC teenager channel) definitely seems to have some potential as Olivia. Unfortunately, she is surrounded by morons and clichés. The only notable exceptions are Hayden Szeto and Tom Choi, as their gay friend Brad (still in the closet with his family) and his conservative cop father. They have some nice scenes together, so it is too bad they aren’t in a more respectable, thought-out movie.

Yes, truth or dare, that is the question. Whether tis nobler in the mind to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous Final Destination knock-offs or rise up against a sea of dubious franchises, yet they will never end, even by opposing them. In fact, I’m ashamed to say I would probably watch Truth or Dare 2, because this first round is such an unruly spectacle of a train wreck. Not recommended (like it matters), Blumhouse’s Truth or Dare opens today (4/13) pretty much everywhere with a screen, including the AMC Empire in New York.

An Ordinary Man: Ben Kingsley Plays the War Criminal

Arguably, Ratko Mladic was a terrible general, but he still won the war. In terms of military tactics, his strategic sense was highly dubious, but he was lethally efficient when it came to genocide. Unfortunately, the West still has no stock remedy for ethnic cleansing, so it often ends up codifying the results, as it did with the Dayton Accords. “The General” is transparently based on Mladic and he sleeps just fine at night. Time might be finally running out for the fugitive war criminal, but do not expect any apologies in Brad Silberling’s An Ordinary Man (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

There is no question The General is modeled on Mladic, right down to the daughter who tragically committed suicide out of shame for her father’s atrocities. He still lives rather comfortably in safe houses, thanks to a network of former comrades, but he must conduct himself in a more secretive manner. Of course, convincing him of that will be easier said than done.

As luck would have it, The General finds something to keep him distracted. That would be Tanja, the previous tenant’s cleaning lady. She has the misfortune of barging in on The General, who promptly humiliates her, both out of paranoia and for fun. Yet, she accepts a full-time servant position, because she recognizes the ethnic cleanser and generally subscribe to his world-view.

Ordinary Man is a very unsettling film, because it takes you into The General’s unrepentant, fanatical head-space, without delivering any decisive moral comeuppance to assure us that all is right with the world after all. To make things even more discomfiting, Sir Ben Kingsley plays The General with seductively sinister élan. It is easy to see how he could convince average people to commit horrific crimes. Although Hera Hilmar is rather naïve and innocent looking as Tanja, she is such an impressionable empty vessel, it is also rather chilling to see her getting filled up with hate.

For the record, Silberling is the same director who helmed Casper, A Series of Unfortunate Events, and Land of the Lost. It is nice to know he has a dark side too—and is Ordinary Man ever dark. The Belgrade locations definitely heighten the ominous vibe. However, these characters and the environment they inhabit are so amoral, it is hard to get what Silberling might have hoped audiences would have taken away from the film.

Nevertheless, there is no denying the power and accomplishment of Kingsley work (which would be interesting to watch paired up with Polanski’s Death and the Maiden, in case anyone is planning a Kingsley retrospective). Recommended for sophisticated viewers already well-grounded in 1990s and early 2000s Balkan history, An Ordinary Man opens tomorrow (4/13) in New York, at the Village East.

SFFILM ’18: Manhunt

Seriously, why didn’t Tenjin Pharmaceuticals just stick to making impotency pills? Instead, they decided to develop a super-soldier drug, because apparently, they have never seen any of the Universal Soldier or Bourne movies. The Japanese firm kept it a secret from their American-educated, Chinese lawyer Du Qiu, but they frame him for murder anyway when he tries to resign as corporate council. Fortunately, the mouthpiece kept in shape, because he is in for a lot of running and fighting in John Woo’s Manhunt (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

Considering how many cases Du Qiu won for Tanjin, you would think he would be more fluent in Japanese, but whatever. At least he is an old movie buff, a fact that helped endear him to Rain, a moody and sensitive assassin some months earlier. That chance encounter will be important later. First, Du Qiu chooses the wrong woman to go home with after Tanjin’s gala party announcing Chairman’s Yoshihiro Sakai’s official designation of his son Hiroshi as his successor.

Rather inconveniently, Du Qiu comes to next to the dead body of Kiko Tanaka. Even more discouraging, the initial investigating officer is the blatantly corrupt Mamoru Ito, who forces Du Qiu to escape by shooting a darned unlucky colleague. However, it turns out Du Qiu really has a knack for being a fugitive. Nevertheless, the honest but cynical Det. Satoshi Yamura deliberately lets him slip away many times, because the plot points are just as obvious to him as they are to us. Thanks to all the blind eyes Yamura and his new partner Hyakuta turn, Du Qiu starts to get some answers from Mayumi, the grieving fiancée of Tenjin’s former research director. At this point, Rain and her ambiguous partner Dawn re-enter the picture, to fulfill the contract on his head.

Manhunt is based on Jukô Nishimura novel that presumably made a lot more sense when it was adapted in 1976 with Ken Takakura. Certainly, the earlier film must have had more linguistic cohesion, whereas long stretches of Woo’s version feature Japanese and Chinese characters speaking English with odd syntax, in disembodied sounding voices. There is not much logic to the narrative either. Basically, Tenjin commits random acts of evil, which has to be bad for their bottom line—after all they have to keep two La Femme Nikita-style contract-killers on permanent retainer.

Yes, the screenplay is a mess, but it is still jolly fun to watch Masaharu Fukuyama snarl and brood as the world-weary Det. Yamura. He also develops some rather engaging chemistry with Nanami Sakuraba’s Hyakuuta, who happens to resemble his dearly departed wife, because everyone has to have a tragic backstory in this film. Korean superstar Ha Ji-won and Angeles Woo (daughter of the director) vamp it up nicely as Rain and Dawn. However, as Du Qiu, Zhang Hanyu always looks bored, even when he is running for his life and slipping out for an assignation with the soon-to-be late Tanaka (played by Tao Okamoto from The Wolverine and Batman v. Superman).

Frankly, Manhunt does not have the style or the high gloss of Woo’s best work. However, there is no denying the final action climax is a satisfying maelstrom of blazing guns, smashing batons, and drug-crazed test subjects. This is a minor Woo film, but it is still an idiosyncratic guilty pleasure. Recommended for anyone in the mood for cartoon violence with no real nutritional value, Manhunt screens tomorrow (4/13), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum

Technically, it is not fake news. CNN Travel called this abandoned Korean mental hospital one of the “7 freakiest places on Earth,” but they never explicitly claimed it is actually haunted (notable for Korean film fans, Battleship Island also made the list). There is no question the place is creepy, so it rather makes sense for a paranormal investigating web series to film an episode there. Horror fans know they are probably filming their final show in Jung Bum-sik’s Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum (trailer here), which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

The title pretty much says it all: Gonjiam is an asylum that is haunted—especially room 402. Reportedly, people have died trying to open this mysterious locked chamber. Naturally, that is what the producer of Horror Times has planned for their ill-conceived grand finale. Determined to reach one million viewers, the Horror Times boys have a couple of planned scares to throw at their four “lucky guests” chosen from a pool of fans. Not surprisingly, they selected three cute girls and a socially awkward guy. However, the two on-camera hosts will be screaming like little babies when things get real.

Basically, Gonjiam does exactly what the original Grave Encounters and Hollow Grove did, but somehow it is even eerier in Korean. Jung and co-writer Park Sang-min also manage to flesh out the characters to a greater extent than you see in most found footage horror films, at least with respect to their fan-guests (whereas the Horror Times crew are just bad karma-generating jerks). Moon Ye-won and Oh Ah-yeon are particularly notable as the rich, hip, and terrified Charlotte and the naïve but comparatively grounded Ah-yeon, respectively.

Jung skillfully builds the tension with small but unsettling bits of business, like doors ominously opening and candles extinguishing themselves. He also exploits the absolutely terrifying setting for all its worth (it is hard to believe the real Gonjiam was operational until 1996, because the movie analog looks like it has been moldering since the 1960s). As in franchising, location is often everything for horror films—and this one is profoundly malevolent looking.

So yes, this is another haunted asylum movie, just like the subtitle promises. Jung delivers on it. If you haven’t seen Grave Encounter, you will probably find Gonjiam a wildly chilling ride, but more experience may very well find themselves investing in spite of themselves, thanks to Moon and Oh. Recommended for K-horror fans due to some skillful direction and evocative set and prop design, Gonjiam: Haunted Asylum opens this Friday (4/13) at the Los Angeles and Buena Park CGV Cinemas.

Borg vs. McEnroe

Even tennis was better in the eighties, but as was often the case, we just didn’t appreciate it at the time. Frankly, many sports fans were rather embarrassed by John McEnroe’s slightly argumentative demeanor on the court, but once he resigned from the tour, everyone started to miss his passion for the game. In contrast, Bjorn Borg was the perfect model of a gentleman tennis champion, but he did not have a catch-phrase, so it is harder to remember him. Fortunately, we can now relive their defining meeting at the 1980 Wimbledon finals in Janus Metz’s Borg vs. McEnroe (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Borg had already won four Wimbledon titles. A record setting fifth would guarantee his place in tennis Valhalla, but that also raised the media’s expectations to a fever pitch. McEnroe was the second-ranked player behind Borg and widely acknowledged as the only real threat to five-peat. However, he was also known for expressing his disappoint from time to time when a line judge called a ball in a manner McEnroe disagreed with. The other players also thought he was a jerk. As a result, just about everyone in the stadium was rooting against McEnroe, except his father.

In some ways, Metz and screenwriter Ronnie Sandahl cast Borg and McEnroe as a perfectly matched pair of personality hang-ups, with the sullen and neurotic Borg on one side of the net and the obnoxious and immature McEnroe on the other. Yet, they still manage to make the film highly compelling and consistently fun. Although it is not as sly and subversive as I,Tonya, B vs. M still bears many similarities in the way it seamlessly recreates an era and then forces viewers to re-examine our assumptions and biases from those times. One thing comes through clearly, McEnroe might have been many things, but he cared about the game and always gave it his all.

There is no question Sverrir Gudnason is a spooky dead-ringer for Borg, but he is such an angsty cold fish, his long-suffering coach Lennart Bergelin becomes our primary POV figure in the Team Borg scenes. Not surprisingly, the eternally reliable Stellan Skarsgård becomes the film’s rock of dignity as Bergelin. However, the real surprise is how far Shia LaBeouf finally comes into his own as McEnroe. Although there is not a lot of natural resemblance between the actor and the mercurial athlete, LaBeouf so completely nails the mannerisms and persona, he just starts to look like McEnroe in our mind’s eye.

Metz also deserves credit for maintaining the suspense and drama of their 1980 finals match-up. Obviously, it had to be a barnburner, or nobody would have bothered making this movie (just like there will never be a film about the Yankees 4-0 victory over the Padres in the 1998 World Series, even though it was a lot of fun to watch at the time). Yet, Metz really stages it with cinematic flair.

Even if you are not a tennis fan, B vs. M still holds plenty of entertainment value as a carefully crafted time capsule from 1980. Needless to say, it is vastly superior to the 2004 rom-com Wimbledon (which, for what its worth, is actually not terrible). Highly recommended, Borg vs. McEnroe opens this Friday (4/13) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Clouzot’s Quai des Orfevres

Inspector Antoine makes Inspector Maigret look cheerful and chipper. The former was born into mean circumstances and his police career always keeps him close to his rough-and-tumble roots. He is not exaggerating when he claims to often identify with the criminals he investigates, but he still plays a ruthless game of cat-and-mouse with his prey. The flirtatious music hall star Jenny Lamour and her nebbish music director husband will learn that the hard way in Henri-Georges Clouzot’s freshly restored classic Quai des Orfèvres, which opens this Friday at Film Forum.

Jenny Lamour is a hot number, but Maurice Martineau most certainly is not. He is prone to fits of jealousy, but it is always misplaced. Lamour is a flirt, not a cheater—or so she assures him. She is also sure she can handle a cad like Brignon. The movie producer-tabloid publisher is sort of like the Weinstein of his era. The old reprobate frequently brings over naïve starlest for scandalous photo sessions with Dora Monier, a friend and neighbor of Lamour and Martineau. It is shady work, but a single woman has to make a living, especially when she is a “confirmed bachelorette.”

Unfortunately, Martineau made some rather public threats to Brignon before he was inconveniently discovered murdered. Technically, Martineau is the first to find the body, but he keeps quiet, because he had constructed an elaborate alibi with the intention of killing Brignon himself. Somebody just beat him to it. Unbeknownst to him, both his wife and Monier also passed through the crime scene that night, so the Columbo-like Antoine should be able to ferret plenty of inconsistencies in their stories to pester them with.

Quai is a film with a lot of sly noir details, but it is reportedly quite different from Stanislas-André Steeman’s source novel, because in those pre-internet days, screenwriter Jean Ferry did not have a copy handy, so he just adapted it from memory—so the story goes. Regardless, one of them must have had a solid familiarity with the backstage workings of music halls and the Quai des Orfèvres (the French national police known by their former address, 36 Quai des Orfèvres).

Either way, Quai becomes deliciously fun when Antoine ruthlessly sets his sights on Martineau, albeit in an almost sadistic kind of way. Celebrated theater actor Louis Jouvet is absolutely terrific as Inspector Antoine, who looks like a wisp of nothing, but displays guts of steel and the cunning of a fox. As Lamour and Martineau, Suzy Delair and Bernard Blier look like a horribly mismatched movie odd couple, yet we believe they have that weird sort of bickering chemistry that keeps them together. Simone Renant is wonderfully sad and sophisticated as Monier, while Charles Dullin is spectacularly sleazy as Brignon.

Like many of Clouzot’s great films, Quai basically plays us, but we never resent getting played. Entertainingly dark and cynical, it is a perfect example of the suspense auteur’s competitive advantage for film noir. Very highly recommended, Quai des Orfèvres opens this Friday (4/13) in New York, at Film Forum.

SFFILM ’18: The Other Side of Everything

Alas, revolutions often fail and one fallen regime usually just begets another that is equally corrupt, or worse. Those are the archly fatalistic observations of Prof. Srbijanka Turajlić—and she ought to know. She was a prominent leader in the Otpor resistance that overthrew Slobodan Milosevic. Before that, her family was branded suspicious bourgeoisie class elements by Tito’s Communists. In fact, her subdivided family townhouse still bears the witness to the Communist era of appropriation and plunder in Mila Turajlić’s highly personal documentary, The Other Side of Everything (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 San Francisco International Film Festival.

For Turajlić the personal is inescapably political, due to her mother’s activism. She stood shoulder to shoulder with her students, because she refused to be as passive as her parents had been when confronting injustice during the Communist era. It started when a jackbooted internal security agent arrived unannounced, consigning the large family to two rooms in their fashionable building. For decades, their own neighbors spied on them through peep holes within their [formerly] own home. As late as the mid 2010’s, Rada the nonagenarian is still holding on, in the two grubby rooms right behind Srbijanka Turajlić’s walls.

Although Other Side is ostensibly about family history, it is a remarkably helpful document for making sense of the current Serbian political climate. Partly, it is because Turajlić and her family have had such a unique vantage point to observe Serbian and Yugoslav history. In fact, her grandfather was a signatory to the original document creating Yugoslavia as a unified political entity, decades before Tito’s rise to power. Nearly a century later, he will play a small part in a tellingly ironic and symbolic development when a grand oil painting of the ceremony is discovered, walled up in the national legislature.

Most of the time, Other Side should not even be described as a two-hander, because Turajlić the filmmaker does her best to keep herself behind the scenes. However, Prof. Turajlić is an undeniably forceful personality, who easily commands the screen. Despite her disappointments, she is still razor-sharp and actively engaged socially and politically (despite her claims to the contrary).

Almost perversely, Prof. Turajlić will absolutely charm viewers, yet leave them deeply pessimistic regarding the prospects for free, democratic civil society in Serbia. She will never bore you, that’s for sure. Given its personal focus, Other Side represents a radical departure from Mila Turajlić’s previous documentary, Cinema Komunisto, but together they provide remarkably compelling, fully contextualized understanding of the Serb and Yugoslav national experience over the past eighty-some years. Very highly recommended, The Other Side of Everything screens today (4/0), tomorrow (4/11), and Thursday (4/12), as part of this year’s SFFILM.

Flock of Four: Last Call for Central Avenue

In twenty years of patronizing New York jazz clubs, I have heard live a lot of great musicians who are no longer with us. Yet, there are a handful of nights that haunt me, because I passed up what turned out to be one of the final opportunities to hear someone of stature before they passed on. Joey Grover does not want to make that mistake with Pope Dixon. He is determined to hear the jazz pioneer’s set at one of the few surviving Central Avenue clubs. However, he has even more personal reasons for wanting to hear his idol in Gregory Caruso’s Flock of Four (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Considering it is the early 1960s, Grover is a pretty hip kid with a real touch on the piano. It all goes back to his late father Joe Sr., who was his first piano teacher and passed along his love of Dixon’s music. He now leads a decent high school combo, but alas, the girls are more interested in rock & roll—a fact their obnoxious drummer Louie Walsh is keenly aware of. On this fateful night, Joe Jr. is determined to venture from Pasadena to LA’s storied Central Avenue, so he can finally hear Dixon in the flesh. Walsh would prefer to stay a be-clown himself in front of college coed way out of his league, but he reluctantly falls in with the rest of the group.

Of course, the lily-white kids are nervous about making the Central Avenue scene, but a talented young vocalist named Ava Moore takes them under her wing. Her drummer brother Clifford is not as gracious, especially when she allows Bud Garby, Grover’s bass player, to get a little flirty. However, he starts to respect their earnestness, especially when Grover and Garby keep up on a jam of Mingus’s “Better Git it in Your Soul.” Unfortunately, Grover’s control freak brother is determined to drag him home, while Walsh’s bad attitude constantly blows their cool.

Flock is an effectively nostalgic jazz drama, because it never tries to do too much. That might sound like faint praise, but the truth is an elegant three-minute trio recording beats the heck out of a twenty-minute, ten-piece train wreck. In this case, Caruso and co-screenwriter Michael Nader clearly have solid understanding of where jazz was in the early 1960s and how Central Avenue fit into the history of the music.

You can just hear the “Own Voices” Culture Cops gearing up their outrage machine to condemn Flock for the sin of following white protagonists into the world of Central Avenue jazz, but the hard truth of it is, during the 1960s, a Louis Armstrong-figure like Dixon would primarily attract white fans—and that would be especially true for teens. Of course, jazz has always been intertwined with issues of race and authenticity (if you really want to understand that dynamic, read Nat Hentoff’s sadly out-of-print YA novel, Jazz Country).

In fact, the character of Clifford Moore plays an important role in Flock, keeping things real and in perspective. Yet, at some point, you have to ask yourself, do you really love the music, or what you think it represents? Regardless, Nadji Jeter is terrific as Moore, subtly bringing out his humanity and empathy, as well as his understandable intensity and prickliness.

Vocalist-thesp Coco Jones has the chops for his sister Ava, as well as a warm screen presence. She develops some necessarily understated but still potent chemistry with Isaac Jay’s Garby. Frankly, Braeden Lemasters is almost too nebbish as Joe Jr. and Shane Harper is almost too scoldy as his big brother, but they come together quite poignantly down the stretch. Obviously, it will take a long time before Dixon appears, but the late Reg E. Cathey makes it worth the wait.

In many ways, Flock is a love letter to Central Avenue and the musicians who played there. The music also sounds great, mostly ranging somewhere between swing and bop, but always with a smoky after-hours vibe. Bittersweet and elegiac (in keeping with the outlook for jazz at the time), Flock of Four is recommended for getting so much right in the narrative, setting, and general mise-en-scene. Recommended as a very good jazz coming of age drama, in the tradition of Warren Leight’s Broadway drama Side Man, Flock of Four opens this Friday (4/13) in New York, at the AMC Empire.