DOC NYC ’18: A Little Wisdom

It is sort of like the Buddhist Garden of Eden, except it really exists. At least you can visit the Sacred Garden of Lumbini in Nepal, where Lord Buddha was born. Rather logically, the pilgrimage site is home to a number of monasteries, including this one dedicated to training young potential novice monks. Yuqi Kang follows five-year-old Hopakuli as he goes about his cloistered life in A Little Wisdom (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 DOC NYC.

The young children in this unidentified monastery are under no obligation to take their vows once they come of age. They are free to leave whenever they want, but where would they go? Most have been left in the monks’ care by desperately poor families, both to ease their financial burdens and so the young boys can enjoy better food and living conditions. In fact, most of the novices readily concede their lives are much easier in the monastery than they were back home.

Unfortunately, life is still tough for Hopakuli. Even though the boys are wearing robes, they still do all the rotten things you would expect from ordinary kids. In this case, they bully Hopakuli because he is the youngest. Frankly, his older brother Chorten is one of the worst offenders. In many ways, Vija is more of a brotherly figure to Hopakuli, but the fifteen-year-old is approaching a crossroads, when he will have to decide if he will stay or return to secular life.

Many viewers expecting something serene and meditative in the tradition of Walk with Me will be utterly shocked to find it is more of a cross between Kundun and Lee Hirsch’s Bully [Project], which, ever so awkwardly in retrospect, was distributed by the Weinstein Company. Poor Hopakuli is just a kid, who really is not that bratty for his age, so he really deserves a break.

Nevertheless, Kang and her co-cinematographers, Amitabh Joshi and Paola Ochoa, vividly capture the hushed vibe and tranquil surrounding environment of Lumbini. Clearly, she developed a high degree of trust with the young novices, because they obliviously forget she was filming when they really start to let Hopakuli have it. Yet, there are hopefully moments too. To her credit, Kang has also been quite fair to the monks, especially in her publicity interviews. Seriously, if you think you can do a better job sustaining a monastery full of kids in a remote corner of Nepal than you’re welcome to try.

A Little Wisdom will definitely transport viewers to Lumbini, but it is not the transcendentally immersive experience many patrons will be hoping for. Yet, they will find a bit of that wisdom therein, if they look for it. Recommended for viewers intrigued by monasticism and exotic locales, especially on a full-sized theater screen, A Little Wisdom has its New York premiere today (11/10), as part of DOC NYC, ahead of its arrival on iTunes scheduled for 11/20.

River Runs Red: The Judge Turns Jury and Executioner

If a conservative is a liberal who got mugged, what happens when a liberal judge’s son is killed by cops? Apparently, he turns vigilante. Frankly, we will be much better without cops who are this rock-stupid. Of course, they are racist too, or at least the really obnoxious, loud-mouthed one is. Alas, this movie is not so bright either. Any resemblance to logic or reality is purely a coincidence in Wes Miller’s River Runs Red (trailer here), which opens today in New Jersey.

C.J. Coleman, Jr was driving to his first day at the Police Academy, where he hoped to follow in the footsteps of his father, Judge Charles Coleman, a former cop, after having spent the last six months caring for lepers in Mother Theresa’s former Kolkata mission. Okay, we made the last part up. Regardless, it is pretty hard to believe two of the biggest meathead cops you ever laid eyes on could get away with planting a gun on the police cadet son of a sitting judge, after blowing him away in a hail of bullets during a completely gratuitous traffic stop, but that is what happens. In our world, they would be crucified by the media and politicians, but in Miller’s alternate universe, the city’s African American mayor circles the wagons around them.

Frustrated with the perfunctory investigation, Coleman turns to his former partner, Horace, a hardboiled undercover cop, who did a stint in Internal Affairs. He digs up the shooters’ dirty history, which leads the Judge to Javier Garcia, another grieving father. Initially, Coleman approaches him with a half-baked notion of suing the city, but they eventually agree on a more direct and Biblical course of action.

RRR is a strange mishmash of a film that seems carefully calibrated to alienate everyone and appeal to nobody. Black Lives Matter-style polemics sit uneasily side-by-side with cathartic payback in the tradition of Death Wish. Taye Diggs is actually rather intense and brooding as Judge Coleman, but he does not have five consecutive minutes of screen time in which his character’s behavior and decisions ring true. George Lopez looks alarmingly old and out of shape as Garcia, but at least he maybe deserves credit for De Niro-ing-up to play the schlubby, soul-sick father.

Surprisingly, the most interesting character is John Cusack’s Cassandra-like Horace, who powerlessly watches the all the tragedy go down. Arguably, it just might be Cusack’s best work since The Numbers Station, for whatever that dubious claim might be worth. In contrast, the two trigger cops are mirror image stereotypes: Luke Hemsworth portrays the guilt-ridden basket case, while Gianni Capaldi plays the abrasive, unrepentant racist.

Clearly, Miller desperately wants the right people to take RRR seriously, but he also tried to maintain its commercial appeal to mainstream, big-box-store-shopping consumers. That strategy is nearly always doomed to fail—and this is no exception. There are some nice performances in here that will make open-minded viewers root for the film to eventually pull its act together, but it just doesn’t happen. Not recommended, River Runs Red opens today (11/9) in the Tri-State Area, at the AMC Loews Jersey Gardens.

HIFF ’18: The Unity of Heroes

What Christopher Lee is to Dracula, Vincent Zhao Wenzhuo is to Wong Fei-hung. They were not the first to play the characters, nor are they the most iconic, but over the years, they kept getting pulled back into the part. Zhao took over from Jet Li portraying the late Qing era Foshan martial arts master in the last two Once Upon a Time in China films and the mid-1990s TV show. He now returns to dispense beatdowns, acupuncture, and stern warnings of the insidious influence of all things Western in Lin Zhenzhao’s The Unity of Heroes (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Hawaii International Film Festival.

Wong is a lot like Ip Man. He is not wealthy, but his skills are so much sharper than any of his rivals, he must be magnanimous to upstarts like the newly arrived Master Wu. He has more pressing business anyway. In addition to training the local militia, Wong must also look out for Lady 13, his thoroughly Westernized, medically trained in-law and possible romantic interest. On top of all that, Wong is determined to investigate a rash of kidnappings possibly connected to the rage-fueled madman Zhao subdued when after he trashed the dojo courtyard.

It turns out that was one of Dr. Vlad [Feelgood]’s test subjects. Supposedly, his Western-style clinic was founded to treat opium addiction, but he is really dosing patients with an ultra-concentrated opium extract, in hopes of creating some sort of super-soldier. Of course, naïve Lady 13 has gone and joined the staff there.

Zhao has massive chops and all kinds of steely badness, so it has always been rather baffling that he never seems to get the respect he deserves (fight scene-for-fight scene, Wu Dang remains one of our favorite under-heralded martial arts films of the decade). Twenty years after his last outing as Wong, Zho remains comfortable and confident in the role. Unfortunately, he cedes way too much screen time to his three goofball disciples and the ridiculously unintuitive Lady 13. Without question, there is way too much shticky humor in the cobbled together screenplay (credit to the battery of Gao Yuhao, Li Zhenyi, Niu Xinyao, and Ning Yang).

However, Wei Xiaohuan comes out of nowhere to basically steal the film out from under Zhao, as Captain Lu, Vlad’s morally conflicted chief henchperson. She has the moves and the screen presence to be an action star in her own right. Plus, Lu is by far the film’s richest, most intriguing character.

The fact that the evil Westerner is named Vlad is truly laughable. It is not exactly a stereotypically Western name, but maybe it signals a welcome return to the anti-Russian caricatures that were a hallmark of Chinese films in the early 1980s. Regardless, the anti-Western slant is clumsily didactic. Yet, fans should definitely enjoy the wildly over-the-top, high-flying martial arts action. The tone is often pretty silly, but Zhao and Wei still deserve credit for taking care of business. Easily watchable and nearly as forgettable, The Unity of Herpes screens this Saturday (11/10) and Monday (11/12), as part of this year’s HIFF.

Shunji Iwai’s Last Letter

Paper letters seem old fashioned these days, but they have their advantages, like being hack-proof (but they do leave a literal paper trail). They certainly played a significant role in the lives of Yuan Zhihua and her recently deceased sister Zhinan. In fact, letters from the past might even provide some closure to her family in Shunji Iwai’s first Chinese language film, Last Letter (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

Yuan Zhinan struggled with poor health, abuse, and depression throughout her life, so her sister and parents were not shocked by her suicide, but they still passed it off as the tragic result of an unspecified illness. Rather conveniently, it happened during the school break leading up to Chinese New Year, so Zhihua’s preteen daughter will temporarily move in with Zhinan’s teen daughter Mumu, while her little brother stays with her aunt and uncle.

As fate dictates, notice of a middle school reunion comes soon after the funeral. Zhihua attends with the intention of informing her former classmates of Zhinan’s death, but she panics when everyone mistakes her for her sister. Yin Chuan is especially eager to renew their acquaintance, making things incredibly awkward for her. He was her high school crush, while he carried a torch for her more popular sister. She even offered to deliver his love notes, but that did not go according to plan. However, Zhihua cannot resist sending him hard copy letters, sans return address, to prevent her tech savvy husband from discovering her correspondence.

You can think of Last Letters as a cross between Beaches and Cyrano de Bergerac, produced in Mandarin. Fortunately, it is a remarkably effective tear-jerker, since Iwai is apparently already at work on a Japanese language version. He and the first-class cast are not shy when it comes to manipulating our emotions and yanking on our heart strings. However, this film works so surprisingly well, because the characters are always quicker to figure out each deception than the would-be deceivers realize. Granted, these people are damaged, but they are not stupid.

It is a little odd to see the radiant Zhou Xun playing Zhihua, the ugly duckling sister, but she is terrific and deeply moving in the part. Qin Hao also brings a rumpled, sad sack dignity to the film as the older, disillusioned Yin. However, Zhang Zifeng is absolutely devastating two-times over as young Zhihua and her daughter Saran. She also develops a wonderful rapport with Enxi Deng, primarily in her scenes as Mumu, but also in flashbacks as young Zhinan—rather significantly, the adult Zhinan is never seen on-screen, as if she only exists for Zhihua and Yin as her high school ideal.

Arguably, Chinese cinema has a comparative advantage when it comes to tearjerkers and Iwai is no stranger to the genre himself, making this a shrewd choice for his first Mainland project. Last Letter will totally choke you up, but in a way that is ultimately rejuvenating. It is the kind of film that makes you feel good about people. Of course, the ridiculously attractive cast does not hurt in any way. Highly recommended for fans of sentimental romance and family dramas, Last Letter opens tomorrow (11/9) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

DOC NYC ’18: It Must Schwing—The Blue Note Records Story

As record labels go, Blue Note almost had it all. They had the greatest artists, the best recording sound, the most striking covers, and the most legit street cred with fans and musicians alike—everything except money. Yet, that was okay with label co-founders Alfred Lion and Francis Wolff, because they were only interested in thee music. The history of the label that has consistently brought us “the finest jazz since 1939” is finally done justice in Eric Friedler’s outstanding It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Records Story (trailer here), which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

Lion and Wolff were forged a life-long friendship in their native Germany, based on their mutual love of jazz. Swing was the style of the day, but their Blue Note recordings essentially codified the “Hard Bop” sound as we now know it. Yet, their sessions still had to swing, or “schwing,” as it sounded with Lion’s thick German accent. He was the first to arrive, with little prospects and hardly a penny to his name. Nevertheless, Lion started recording and issuing sessions in 1939, starting with the Boogie-woogie pianists, Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. Even today, they sound like a freight train coming at you.

Even hardcore aficionados might not understand how close Wolff cut things when he finally joined Lion in New York. According to Blue Note producer and archivist Michael Cuscuna, Wolff was on the last ship that left Hamburg without Gestapo inspection. Indeed, even those who think they know the Blue Note story pretty well might be stunned (and deeply moved) by some of the revelations regarding Wolff.

On the other hand, any jazz fan worth his salt peanuts will recognize Wolff’s arresting session photography. They are a major reason why vintage Blue Note LPs are so desirable as objects in their own right. Of course, what was in the grooves was even more important—and it always sounds wonderfully warm and clear, thanks to the techniques perfected by Blue Note’s regular engineer, the legendary late Rudy Van Gelder.

Frankly, Friedler made his documentary just in the nick of time, because it represents Van Gelder’s final interview. He pretty much gets everything else right too. Whereas Sophie Huber wastes a lot of time in Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes flailing around, trying to make political statements, Friedler zeroes-in on Lion and Wolff and their relationship to musicians. We hear from nearly all the surviving greats, including Sonny Rollins, Herbie Hancock, Wayne Shorter, “Sweet Papa” Lou Donaldson, Kenny Burrell, Ron Carter, Sheila Jordan, and perhaps most memorably, Bennie Maupin (but not Dr. Lonnie Smith, which is odd, considering how photogenic he is).

Granted, Schwing is not perfect. Like Huber’s film, it largely overlooks Blue Note’s commitment to free jazz (or at least freer, more exploratory) artists, aside from a brief discussion of Jackie McLean. Friedler completely ignores the 1980s re-launch, but instead concentrates on Lion’s tenure with the label, up through the sale to Liberty Records and Wolff’s death in 1972. However, the narrower focus allows Friedler and his interview subjects (nearly all of whom knew Lion or Wolff personally) to do justice to that classic Hard Bop era.

Naturally, Schwing sounds terrific, thanks to the extensive Blue Note recordings heard throughout (including classics, like Coltrane’s “Blue Trane,” Horace Silver’s “Song for My Father,” and Sidney Bechet’s still staggering rendition of “Summertime”). It is also unusually dynamic visually, thanks to Tetyana Chernyavska and Rainer Ludwigs’ black-and-white animated sequences, recreating pivotal moment in the label’s history. Again, Friedler and company just get it right. It is a pleasure to spend time with the film and it will send you out of the theater eager to revisit all these classic recordings that really ought to be in your collection. Very highly recommended, It Must Schwing: The Blue Note Records Story screens this Saturday (11/10) at the SVA Theatre, as part of DOC NYC 2018.

DOC NYC ’18: China Love

They are the wedding pictures before the wedding pictures. In China, “pre-wedding photos” are often so elaborate and ostentatious, they must be compensating for something—as indeed they are. The lingering horror of the Cultural Revolution, the social disruption caused by the One Child Policy, rigid gender roles, and the crushing demands of filial piety—take your pick, because they all apply. Olivia Martin McGuire finds a unique window into the Chinese national soul in China Love (trailer here), which screens during this year’s DOC NYC.

Allen Shi is the Bill Gates of pre-wedding photography. His company can realize just about any fantasy for the hundreds of thousands of fabulously wealthy couples that still lack passports and must therefore rely the Jiahao Group to create the illusion of Paris by night. He has already expanded throughout Asia and has his sights set on the American market next.

Initially, China Love starts out as an exercise in gawking at nouveau riche excess, but it soon evolves into something deeper and more significant. McGuire quickly positions the pre-wed-phenom as a pendulum swing back from the austerity of the Cultural Revolution, when marriages were often arranged by cadres and your only photo was a black and white snapshot, barely bigger than a passport photo that often doubled as the marriage certificate.

McGuire also thoroughly explores the pressures placed on a single, loan son to continue the family legacy during the period in which the full impact of the One Child Policy is still being felt. We also see emotions roiled up when a bride is expected to essentially switch her primary familial loyalties to the in-laws. In this context, if they want to take pictures walking on a fake moon drinking Dom Perignon, why begrudge them?

Frankly, it is amazing how deeply McGuire delves into the Chinese psyche. There are also some surprisingly poignant moments, particularly the scenes of older couples who survived the Cultural Revolution, who are finally able to get decked out and take some proper wedding photos (or rather post-pre-wedding photos), thanks to a new non-profit. Yet, McGuire manages to have her documentary cake and eat it too, because there is still plenty gaudy spectacle to gape at.

China Love had the questionable fortune to come along at the perfect time for every group-thinking critic to compare it to Crazy Rich Asians, but there is so much more to McGuire’s film than that. It is actually quite engrossing to watch McGuire take this eccentric looking industry and trace its roots back to some very serious social and historical causes. This is simply terrific filmmaking. Very highly recommended, China Love screens this Friday (11/9), as part of this year’s DOC NYC.

Death House: The Cast is Killer, but the Movie is Dead

Abandon all hope, because you are in for some half-baked Nietzschean platitudes. It is not the Nazi and Satanist mass murderers who are the real bad guys in this subterranean super-max prison. It is the lab coats who want to move humanity beyond good and evil. Alas, this film makes you wish you could materialize Nietzsche out of thin air to tell the filmmakers what a hash they have made of his philosophy, like Marshall McLuhan in Annie Hall. For some reason, a who’s who of horror also parades through B. Harrison Smith’s enormously problematic Death House (trailer here), which releases today on VOD.

Toria Boon and Jae Novak are FBI special agents who have just apprehended two of the most notorious terrorists at-large (foreign in his case, but she collared Sieg, a home-grown Neo-National Socialist), or so they have been told. However, they quickly start to suspect they have experienced Death House’s brain-scrambling technology first-hand before. They both committed horrible crimes to accomplish their objectives, but Doctors Eileen Fletcher and Karen Redmane assure them they shouldn’t concern themselves over the eggs they had to break to cook up a tasty law & order omelet.

It turns out Boon and Novak chose the wrong day to get brainwashed at Death House, because a full-scale escape attempt will trigger a complete lock-down. Unfortunately, it is not nearly as locked down as it should be. This puts the bargain-basement Mulder and Sculley in an awkward position, but instead of making a break for the surface, they head towards the “Five Evils” housed in the bottom-most level.

So, basically, Harrison builds towards a climax wherein the Rudolf Hess-like Giger, the Elizabeth Bathory clone, Balthoria, and Crau, a freak who looks like Michael Berryman from The Hills Have Eyes, because he is played by Michael Berryman, help regulate the world, because you can’t good without their borderline supernatural manifestations of evil. Blah, blah, blah, whatever.

Indeed, Death House is so well-stocked with horror-specializing character actors, it is trying to get other people to call it the Expendables of horror. However, the film scandalously squanders much of their talents. Dee Wallace and Barbara Crampton have some moments as Fletcher and Redmane. Sid Haig chews plenty of scenery as the Icicle Killer, but his character conveniently disappears after his big scene. There is also Tony Todd playing a serial killing farmer in utterly baffling, completely unrelated wrap-around segments.

Frankly, Tiffany Shepis and Debbie Rochon have such inconsequential cameos, the film’s marketing does not even bother to mention them. On the other hand, prominent use is made of Adrienne Barbeau’s name, yet her only participation is narrating a training video Boon and Novak watch. At least the great Kane Hodder tries to give fans their money’s worth as Sieg.

For what its worth, Cortney Palm and Cody Longo are reliably bland as Boon and Novak. This film just craters so thoroughly, not even Hodder can save it. It is all just rather messy and eh. Not recommended, Death House releases today (11/6) on VOD.

Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird

Does instrumentation necessarily imply destiny? Maybe so in the case of the Kita Uji High School Concert Band. Mizore Yoroizuka plays oboe, so it is hardly surprising she is shy and unsure of herself. On the other hand, the popular Nozomi Kasaki plays flute, the instrument of Jean-Pierre Rampal, James Galway, and Herbie Mann. Yet, Yoroizuka is the more talented player. Of course, she does not see it that way. Their deep but strained friendship will find parallels in the Heidi-like children’s fable that inspires their senior competition suite in Naoko Yamada’s Liz and the Blue Bird (trailer here), which opens this Friday in most cities (screening Saturday and Tuesday in New York).

The band room and many of the supporting characters found within will be familiar to fans of the anime series Sound! Euphonium, but this is an entirely self-contained stand-alone story, with enough emotional resonance to justify itself to viewers coming cold. It might sound like a Yuri story, but it is really too chaste and too subtle for such a heavy label. Instead, it is really about the inequalities of friendship and the misunderstandings that often come as a result.

Yoroizuka and Kasaki joined the band together as freshmen, but the latter dropped out her sophomore year, moving on to other activities. Yoroizuka stayed, taking refuge in its familiarity, while hoping for Kasaki to return, which she does at the beginning of senior year. Their big competition number will be based on Kasaki’s favorite children’s book, Liz and the Blue Bird, about a blonde German teen, who befriends a blue bird mysteriously transformed into a young girl her age, only to inevitably lose her when the seasons finally turned. Yoroizuka sees this tale as an analog of her relationship with Kasaki, but she will eventually find even more analogous significance buried within it.

Yamada treats these themes with the respect they deserve. Although Liz is not quite as masterful as her previous film, A Silent Voice, it is still a serious examination of young friendship and the surrounding pressures of high school life. Frankly, these kids seem to have it a little easier, especially since social networking is largely absent from the film (whatever their parents are doing, they should keep it up), but they are still forced to make decisions that will affect the rest of their lives.

Despite an occasional lapse into melodrama, Reiko Yoshida’s screenplay is quite smart when it comes to teens and their attitudes. She and Yamada also take great care to prevent their main characters from falling into shy girl-popular girl caricatures. They are much more complicated than outsiders realize and therefore also more apt to be misunderstood. Kensuke Ushio’s delicate but catchy score perfectly captures the nostalgic mood, but ironically, the big suite inspired by Liz and the Blue Bird is the least distinctive music heard during the film.

There is no question Yamada is poised to become a breakout international brand name, on the level of Miyazaki. She is that good. Throughout Liz, Yamada displays a keen visual sense. Her style evokes pastels, with the sequences featuring the titular Liz and said Blue Bird getting a slightly Old World stylization. It looks great, but more fundamentally, it really is a gift to see high school students rendered with such sensitivity and maturity. Recommended for fans of animation and teen dramas, Liz and the Blue Bird screens this coming Saturday (11/10) and Tuesday (11/13) in New York, at the Village East and it is currently playing at the Laemmle Playhouse in Pasadena (find other cities and showtimes on Eleven Arts’ website here).

HIFF ’18: Little Pyongyang (short)

New Malden is part of a London swing district that has periodically changed hands from the Conservatives to the Liberal Dems (but interestingly, Labour has not been in the mix). It also happens to be home to approximately 600 freedom-seeking North Korean immigrants, making it the largest concentration of North Koreans outside of the Korean Peninsula. Joong-wha Choi is a leader of their small community and an outspoken human rights advocate. Frankly, we fear for his safety, given the methods employed by the Kim Dynasty for dealing with its detractors, but the better-known he becomes, the harder it will be for him to disappear. Yet, Choi seems untroubled by these concerns. Instead, he is plagued by persistent survivor’s guilt, as he explains in plain-spoken terms throughout Roxy Rezvany’s intimate short documentary, Little Pyongyang, which screens during the 2018 Hawaii International Film Festival.

There are about six hundred people who can truly appreciate how Choi feels, but his children are not part of that sub-set. He tries to explain how bad things were, but they just do not get it. Choi misses many things from his homeland, but conditions got so dire in the 1990s, he had no choice but to leave. A few years later, he was reunited with his mother for a matter of months, but that maybe made their ultimate parting even harder. Not surprisingly, Choi’s emotions are mixed regarding his new suburban London home, but he remains unflaggingly critical of the appalling living conditions and utter lack of individual freedom in his native North Korea.

Choi does not just talk the talk—but merely speaking out against a petulant tyrant like Kim Jong-un takes guts. However, he also volunteers a great deal of his time to help new arrivals from North Korea acclimate to life in England. Honestly, it is tough to watch Choi beat himself up, because he is clearly a good man.

This is also a very good film. It is part of a batch of short docs presented under the banner of The Guardian newspaper, but it stands head-and-shoulders above the rest of the field. That almost sounds like a case of damning with faint praise, but it is important to understand Rezvany’s film is deeply humanistic, displaying none of the extremism viewers would expect from the Guardian imprimatur. It is also boasts some unusually well-crafted visuals for a short doc, which is a nice added bonus.

Frankly, Little Pyongyang will make viewers want to get involved (Liberty in North Korea is a good resource to start with), which was probably one of the main goals. Very highly recommended, Little Pyongyang screens this Friday (11/9), as part of the Mind the Gap shorts program at this year’s HIFF.

DOC NYC ’18: Quincy

A while back, I went to hear the great Harold Mabern at Smoke. As is sometimes the case, he was in the mood to talk, but this night his subject was Quincy Jones. Mabern was particularly delighted Jones had just been awarded a fresh honor (perhaps this was around the time of the Kennedy Center Honors, but it also cold have been a dozen awards since then). While going through a list of Jones’ accomplishments, Mabern stressed “and he did all his arrangements in ink! Do you know what that means?” I happened to say sotto voce: “no mistakes,” but it wasn’t sotto voce enough. Mabern’s jazz ears picked it up and he loved it. “That’s right, no mistakes,” he said with glee.

The whole point of this anecdote is to demonstrate how much fun it is to go to a Harold Mabern gig, because you never know what might happen. The corollary is if a musician of Mabern’s caliber thinks so highly of Jones, you’d damn well better show some respect too. If Mabern isn’t enough to convince you, we could have problems you and I, but perhaps Rashida Jones’ loving documentary profile of her father will do the trick. Co-directed by Alan Hicks, who helmed Keep On Keepin’ On, a chronicle of the final years of Jones’ longtime friend and band-mate Clark Terry, Jones’ simply-titled Quincy (trailer here),  screens as part of the “short list” section during this year’s DOC NYC.

In addition to Terry, Jones played with, arranged for, and/or produced just about all of the jazz greats, including Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Milt Jackson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ray Charles, and Count Basie. Jones had a particular knack for arranging for Basie and his big band, which caught the ear of Frank Sinatra. Arguably, Jones’ charts for Sinatra’s sessions with the Basie band really established the mature Sinatra sound that immediately comes to mind. Jones also gives Sinatra credit for essentially single-handedly reversing the backwards discriminatory policies of the major Vegas hotels.

You might be thinking, wasn’t there an earlier doc on Jones? Yes, there was and it was pretty good: Ellen Weissbrod’s Listen Up: The Lives of Quincy Jones. Both films do a solid job covering Jones’s classical studies in Paris with Nadia Boulanger, his film scores (In the Heat of the Night, The Pawnbroker, and The Deadly Affair still sound fantastic), his work producing Michael Jackson into the “King of Pop,” his growing interest in hip-hop, and his deeply problematic relationship with his mother.

Of course, there have been eighteen years since Weissbrod’s film, during which time Jones produced Fresh Prince and Mad TV. He also reached a whole new audience when his “Soul Bossa Nova” became the Austin Powers theme. Yet, filmmakers Jones & Hicks gloss over these years, largely presenting them as a blur of awards and concerts, punctuated by two of his more recent health scares. The film climaxes with the gala opening of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture, which Jones produced. Obviously, that was a big event, but they could have slipped in one of his appearances at the Jazz Foundation’s A Great Night in Harlem benefits, like the night in 2004 when Clark Terry presented him with an award for his philanthropic work.

Obviously, Rashida Jones had access most documentarians would kill for. She covers plenty of the “valleys,” including his mother’s mental health issues and his several divorces. However, it leaves Weissbrod in an awkward spot, since her film covered most of this material two decades earlier. It also lacks the drama of Hicks previous documentary, in which the ailing Terry tries to hold on long enough to see his final protégé, young, blind Justin Kauflin establish a toe-hold in the music business. Kauflin is also seen performing briefly in Quincy as an official “Quincy Jones Artist,” so we can at least rest easy on that score. It is a good film with good stuff in it, but the final twenty minutes could have been tightened up considerably. Recommended for fans of Jones and the dozens of legends he worked with, Quincy screens this Thursday (11/8) and Saturday during DOC NYC and currently streams on Netflix.

Buffalo Dreams Fantastic ’18: Eullenia

Marcus Hammond is the Monte Hall or Howie Mandell of serial killers, but he always offers his victims the same deal: their life willingly exchanged for a desperately needed sum to be provided to their loved one. Admittedly, he is not a very sporting serial killer. He’s no Count Zaroff, that’s for sure. He preys on hopelessness, but karma might just come back around for him in Paul Spurrier’s Eullenia (trailer here), which screens during the 2018 Buffalo Dreams Fantastic Film Festival.

Hammond notices the little people. That is a great trait to find in a micro-finance tycoon, but not so hot for serial killer. He happens to be both. As the chairman and guru-in-chief of the Eullenia Group, he has enough money and clout to buy as many corrupt cops and public officials as he might need in Thailand, but his manservant-accomplice Boo (sort of an evil Alfred Pennyworth) is still scrupulously careful. Nam is the first victim we see dispatched in the film, but it is clear there were many more before her. Her death follows step-by-step according to Hammond’s plan, except perhaps for the note she leaves for her beloved sister—the one who needs money for chemotherapy.

In the second act, poor Em does not fully realize what she is dealing with, but Boo will make the terms crystal clear. However, there is something very different about Lek. She seems to be stalking Hammond more than he is stalking her. Viewers will probably guess her motives (no surprise, it involves revenge), but she and Spurrier still have some twists in store for the audience.

Apparently, Eullenia was originally produced as a six-episode limited series, mostly in English to cater to the foreign market. Presumably, many of the edits to accommodate this 129-minute feature-festival cut came from Em’s storyline. Regardless, the version that will screen in Buffalo (or rather Williamsville right outside) is quite grabby, thanks in large measure to the terrific cast.

Vithaya Pansringarm has become the international face of Thai cinema, with good reason. This could very well be his best work in an unambiguously villainous role (that of Boo), precisely because it is so subtly turned. As Hammond, Alec Newman manages to create a whole new variation on the monstrous serial killer: the benevolent philanthropist who takes his life-altering power to dark extremes. You could just as easily compare him to Warren Buffet (and his weird obsession with over-population) as any other movie serial killer.

Newcomer Aomkham Kamonrattanan is also dynamite as Lek. She keeps us guessing and makes us care. Likewise, Apicha Suyanandana is absolutely heartbreaking as Nam. Krittima Chockchal’s appearances as Em do indeed feel abbreviated, but thesp-director Manasanun Phanlerdwongsakul has a very effective cameo as a financial journalist who brings out Hammond’s craziness.

Spurrier is now an expat filmmaker based in Thailand, but he was once a child actor, best known for playing Richard Harris’s son in The Wild Geese. There is a bit of irony that he would introduce to the world the ultimate predatory expat, but his sympathies are always with the marginalized and his skepticism obviously falls on their supposed benefactors. Yet, the film cuts deeper than mere class warfare. After all, Hammond was once a striving lower middle class kid who made good. There is something fundamentally broken in him that has been accentuated and exacerbated by all his laudatory press as a Lord Bountiful. It is a pretty twisted film, but it is definitely compelling stuff. Enthusiastically recommended for fans of serial killer thrillers (slightly horror-ish, but light on blood and gore), Eullenia screens this Thursday (11/8), as part of this year’s Buffalo Dreams Fantastic.

They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead: Welles Making and Unmaking his Final Film

It is hard to call this a “making of” documentary, considering Orson Welles’ final film, The Other Side of the Wind, remained unfinished and unseen for over forty years. Blame the Islamist extremists in Iran. Welles received bridge financing from a film company owned by the Shah’s brother-in-law, so when the new regime came to power, they bottled up Welles’ unedited footage in a legal quagmire. They also launched a reign of terror against secular, tolerant modernity, but that is for another documentary. Morgan Neville and the surviving cast and crew chronicle the film’s making and unmaking in They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead (trailer here), which is now playing in New York and streaming on Netflix.

There is even disagreement among Welles’ close contemporaries whether he truly uttered the title phrase. Regardless, it does sum up his career rather aptly. Like Jake Hannaford, the central character of Wind, Welles had just returned to Hollywood after a long period of European scuffling when he commenced work on Wind. In many ways, it would satirize both Hollywood and European art cinema. Not coincidentally, Hannaford’s homecoming birthday party takes place in the fab desert pad next door to the house from Zabriskie Point. There are a number of intriguing little details like that in TLMWID that might counter-intuitively make this the film you should start with, before watching Wind, so you know what to keep an eye out for.

Rather awkwardly, Wind probably isn’t as interesting as the story behind it. As usual, Welles shot whenever he could, proceeding for months without nailing down his lead actor. Eventually, John Huston would play Hannaford, which was a truly brilliant bit of casting. In fact, some of the best parts of Dead address the friendship between the two larger than life movie legends. It rather boggles the mind, but both Rich Little and Peter Bogdanovich were cast as Hannford’s’ more successful protégé, with Bogdanovich replacing the impressionist when he was forced to leave to fulfill prior obligations.

Neville got on-camera just about everyone we would want to hear from, including Bogdanovoch, Little, Danny Huston (the accomplished actor-son of John), Cybil Shepard (who was involved with Bogdanovich at the time and appears briefly in Wind), Frank Marshall (the future super-producer, who worked on the film as a production aide), filmmaker friend Harry Jaglom, Beatrice Welles (his daughter), and actor-biographer Simon Callow. It would be nice to have had Oja Kodar on-camera too, but at least Neville has some audio reminiscences from her. However, Alan Cumming’s shticky introductions are completely unnecessary.

There is some fascinating cinema history in TLMWID, but it also sets the record straight on some points. Most crucially, it gives Gary Graver credit for his under-heralded work as Welles’ final cinematographer. In addition, Neville and company decisively dispel the myth Welles never really wanted to finish his pictures, but the notion he was often his own worst enemy remains in full force. It briskly but comprehensively chronicles an intriguing but frustrating episode in Welles’ intriguing but frustrating career. Highly recommended for Welles fans, They’ll Love Me When I’m Dead is now playing in New York, at the IFC Center and also streams on Netflix.

In Harm’s Way: Bille August’s Co-Pro

During WWII, strong ties were forged between America and the Chinese people, thanks to the Flying Tigers, the Yankee volunteer pilots serving with the Chinese Air Force. Jack Turner is not one of them, but he is still pretty close. The Army Air pilot will complete a spectacular bombing run over Tokyo, but he crashes over Zhejiang shortly thereafter. Fortunately, a beautiful war widow and her little daughter will provide Turner shelter at great risk to themselves in Bille August’s Chinese co-production, In Harm’s Way (a.k.a. The Chinese Widow, a.k.a. The Hidden Soldier, trailer here), which opens today in Los Angeles.

Life is a struggle for Ying, but she still dutifully supports her in-laws with the proceeds of her traditional silk-making. Unfortunately, her daughter Nunu still allows grief and anger to distract her from her school work. One day while collecting silk worms, they chance across the badly injured Turner. With the encouragement of the village headman, her husband’s boyhood friend Kai, Ying hides the pilot in her secret cellar. Not long after, the sadist Captain Shimamoto kills Kai to teach the village a lesson. It certainly clarifies the stakes for Ying—and even more so for the pouty Nunu.

Despite the language barrier, Ying and Turner quickly fall in love. He also starts to win over Nunu, which is no small feat. Fortunately, their rapport is fast and furious, because nasty old Shimamoto senses something suspicious about Ying.

August and screenwriter Greg Latter checked all the requisite boxes of a Chinese WWII movie. The Nationalists are cowardly bumblers, the Communist guerillas are the real patriots, and the Japanese are monsters from Hell. Granted, the sympathetic American is a bit of a new wrinkle, but he is really just a vehicle to establish Ying’s self-sacrificing heroism. Still, as Ying and Turner, Crystal Liu Yifei and Emile Hirsch have much stronger chemistry than the uniformly poor notices have indicated. However, the best thing going for the film is young Li Fangcong’s remarkable performance as Nunu.

The cast is not the problem here. It is Latter’s utterly predictable script, which follows a straight, orderly line, with absolutely no deviations, detours, reversals of fortune, or anything else that might build suspense. Frankly, August does next to nothing to wring tension out of Turner’s potential discovery. Even the climatic action sequence looks problematically small in scale.

Arguably, In Harm’s Way would be a pretty good TV movie, but it just doesn’t have theatrical chops. There are definitely propaganda elements, but some critics have been especially hard on it, ever since it awkwardly replaced Ann Hui’s universally hailed Our Time Will Come as the opening film of the Shanghai International Film Festival—a move widely considered to have been orchestrated by Beijing to favor August’s Party-line-towing film over Hui’s morally complex tale of intrigue involving the Hong Kong resistance.

That is not entirely fair to IHW, but Hui’s film is undeniably superior, according any rational standard. There are some nice moments here and there, but mostly IHW is just okay, which makes it a disappointment. Lukewarm and well-behaved, In Harm’s Way does not inspire much of a recommendation either way when it opens today (11/2) in LA, at the Laemmle Monica Film Center.

DFF ’18: Third Kind (short)

Greece is known for its ancient ruins, but they produce modern ones too. This ghostly abandoned airport is the perfect setting for some post-apocalyptic drama. However, it wasn’t so long ago it was repurposed as a refugee camp. Much of the detritus is still strewn about, adding to the wasteland-like atmosphere in Yorgos Zois’s thirty-minute short film, Third Kind (trailer here), which screens as part of the 2018 Denver Film Festival.

Three archaeologists have travelled across space and time to track the source of a mysterious transmission. It has been years since the Earth was inhabited, or so they assumed. However, there may still be a survivor left amongst the rubble. Surveying the ghostly site is a surreal process, but undeniably cinematic. Still, it never fully obscures the obvious and awkward question: what sort of clash of civilizations could bring about the almost complete extinction of life of Earth? A mere lack of charity certainly cannot account for the future state of affairs.

By the way, that transmission is a repeated five note musical pattern. The first four will sound gosh darn familiar—or they should. That title is part of an extended homage to Spielberg’s Close Encounters of the Third Kind, but the final note of the classic five-tone theme has been altered—perhaps for legal reasons. Nevertheless, whenever the 5-tone figure plays, it sounds distractingly “wrong,” like someone perversely keeps hitting the wrong key.

So yes, it sounds off-key, but Yannis Kanakis’s eerie cinematography is spectacular to behold. It really is all about the otherworldly vibe, because Zois & co-screenwriter Konstantina Kotzamani’s narrative does not amount to much. Not essentially viewing by any stretch, Third Kind is still sort of worth seeing just for the gawking experience when it screens tomorrow (11/3), Sunday (11/4) and the following Sunday (11/11), as part of the Shorts: Narrative 1 program at this year’s Denver Film Festival.

Ossang’s 9 Fingers

Brace yourself for some film noir that takes a detour into Samuel Butler terrain. Instead of Erehwon, a motley band of rogues sinks into the morass that is “Nowhereland.” Whatever and wherever that is, it sure isn’t utopia. The film is also far from perfect, but admirers of F.J. Ossang, the French poet and experimental filmmaker-provocateur will eat it up with a big spoon and ask for more. For us mere mortals, Ossang’s throwback film noir imagery provides the thin edge of the wedge that lets us get some kind of handle on 9 Fingers (trailer here), which opens today in New York, at Anthology Film Archives (also available on MUBI for a limited time only).

Fleeing an i.d. check at a lonely train station, Magloire stumbles across a dying man, who gives him a wad of bills, most likely illicitly acquired. That brings him into the crosshairs of the gang that did in the unnamed man, but instead of doing the same to Magloire, they recruit him into their ranks—after duly taking the cash. Unfortunately, the first heist they pull with Magloire goes down badly. This rather surprises the leader, because the intel supplied by the shadowy mastermind known as “The 9 Fingers” is usually infallible.

Forced to lay low, the gang books passage on a dodgy boat to South America. Unfortunately, when their ship hits the doldrums off the coast of Nowhereland, so does the film. Admittedly, Ossang’s narrative, if we can even use the term in this context, is baffling right from the start, but at least the first act zips along at a jaunty clip.

Regardless, Ossang is undeniably well versed in mystery, noir, caper, and seafaring adventure genres. Viewers can easily catch echoes of John Huston, Fritz Lang, and Jean-Pierre Melville films, as well as the novels of B. Traven, Eric Ambler, and Joseph Conrad. They are all there in the mix, but their influence eventually gets bogged down in all the talk about floating garbage.

It is a shame, because for a while, 9 Fingers is on pace to be one of the most entertaining films to ever get tagged with the “experimental” label. Paul Hamy is suitably cynical and hardboiled. Lisa Hartman also makes a highly credible femme fatale as Drella. However, the real stars are Simon Roca’s arresting black-and-white cinematography and the evocatively seedy urban locations. Serious genre fans will find it intriguing for a while, but diminishing marginal returns will kick in hard. Best saved for Ossang’s admirers, 9 Fingers opens today (11/2) at Anthology Film Archives, in conjunction with a retrospective of his film oeuvre.

Criminal Element: Homecoming

All the episodes debut tomorrow, but it is already renewed for a second season. This is how TV works these days, if we can still use that term. Regardless, Julia Roberts lends her still considerable star-power to the first season of Homecoming. The gist: it is remarkably stylish visually, especially considering it based on a podcast. Exclusive J.B. review now live on Criminal Element here.

Orson Welles’ The Other Side of the Wind

If his final film had been released in his lifetime, Orson Welles might also be known as the father of found footage, but should’ve-could’ve-would’ve was pretty much the story of his later career. Over forty years after Welles’ on-and-off-again, on-the-fly 1970-1976 shooting wrapped, his acidic Hollywood satire has finally been cut together and unveiled with the fanfare the old master was due in his lifetime. However, Welles fans should temper their expectations when The Other Side of the Wind (trailer here) finally arrives tomorrow, both in theaters and on Netflix.

Jake Hannaford is a crusty old filmmaker, who is considered a “living legend” due to his early work, but has just returned to Hollywood after a long, semi-self-imposed exile—or at least he was. This will be his final night on earth, but at least he will go out with a bang. All of Hollywood has flocked to his homecoming party, so they can gawk at his latest film: a self-indulgent attempt at sexually frank European art cinema—and a rather spot-on send-up of Antonioni. Out of eccentricity or indifference, Hannaford has allowed every journalist or amateur videographer with a handheld camera to document his snarky, drunken soiree.

Despite Welles’ protests otherwise, Hannaford certainly sounds like his alter-ego. The fact that he is played by the spectacularly craggy John Huston adds further layers of psycho-biographical significance. In fact, it is one of the more meta films of its era, with Peter Bogdanovich playing an analog of himself, Brooks Otterlake, Hannaford’s former protégé, whose current Hollywood success has eclipsed his former master. Hannaford has become unhealthily obsessed with the cast of his film-within-the-film, most notably his would-have-been discovery, John Dale, who bolted from the production before Hannaford could complete it for murky reasons. Pauline Kael-esque critic Juliette Rich, who hypothesizes Hannaford seduced Dale’s girlfriend as a surrogate for Dale himself. Dale’s leading lady, condescendingly referred to as “Red” (portrayed by Welles’ lover, Oja Kodar, naturally enough) is still present and accounted for, but she clearly is not happy to be there.

Editor Bob Murawski did a flat-out brilliant job shaping together all the footage, while doing his best to respect Welles’ original intentions. The result is a visually kinetic kaleidoscope of hedonism and bedlam. The often rapid-fire cuts are not classically Wellesian, per se, but we can still see his masterful eye composing each shot. It also features a wonderful score composed by the legendary-in-his-own-right Michel Legrand (seriously, his name also ought to be on the key art, because LeGrand scoring Welles again is an event). In all honesty, it is one of Legrand’s jazziest scores and one of his best, which is saying a lot (considering the themes he composed for F for Fake, Umbrellas of Cherbourg, and Thomas Crown Affair, to name just a few).

So why the warning to keep your enthusiasm in check? Unlike every other Welles film, Wind feels like a dated relic of its era, even though we are just seeing it now. Some of party dialogue has the sly acidic bite of the nattering gossipers in Citizen Kane or Magnificent Ambersons, but Otterlake’s pontifications sound like the shallow group-think of the time. Particularly cringe-worthy are his jibes at then Governor Reagan, who would go on to be the last president who unified the nation, in a positive way. There is also a phallic sight gag late in the picture that should have been considered beneath Welles’ dignity. More fundamentally, it is simply impossible to get around the fact that Welles & Kodar’s narrative is really just a sketch-like premise stretched to its absolute limits.

Wind is further notable as Welles’ most sexually explicit film, but the nude scenes in Hannaford’s film are actually work in their on-screen context. Frankly, there is an energy to these scenes that the rest of the proper film could have used. The dramatic, saturated colors also really pop off the screen, providing a vivid contrast with the black-and-white or dingy 16mm color of the party footage.

Those scenes also give us an idea of what might have been for Kodar, who was always (fairly or unfairly) dismissed as Welles’ lover, and Robert Random, who is best known for guest-starring on episodic TV (seven appearances on Gunsmoke, each in a different role). They are terrific together, generating some legit heat on screen. The mood is further heightened by Gary Graver’s striking color cinematography.

There is definitely stuff to see here, including Lilli Palmer, who is a delight playing the Marlene Dietrich-like Zarah Valeska. However, with a running time just over two hours, Wind is way too long and self-serious for what should have simply been a larky middle finger extended in Hollywood’s face. Still, the Legrand sounds great (there is also some Jaki Byard in there, along with some other jazz greats). It is too bad Welles’ unfinished The Deep will most likely always remain so, because it is more likely to be the lost masterpiece we crave from him. Recommended as a curiosity rather than a revelation, The Other Side of the Wind opens tomorrow (11/2) in New York, at the IFC Center and also starts streaming on Netflix.