Jordan Peele’s Us

It always comes back to the 1980s, especially when the subject is horror movies. In this case, we start our yarn in 1986, but the influence of the Eighties will still be clearly evident when the tale picks up sometime roughly now. It starts by name-checking C.H.U.D., the original there-are-bad-things-below-our-streets-and-it’s-the-government’s-fault B-movie and ultimately shows up Hands Across America as the cultish, attention-seeking behavior it so obviously was. The doppelgangers will stock their entitled analogs in Jordan Peele’s Us, which releases today on DVD.

When she was a child, Adelaide Wilson gave her parents a bit of a scare when she wandered off along the Santa Cruz boardwalk, getting lost in a hall of mirrors. She returned ostensibly safe and sound, but to this day, she remains haunted by an encounter with her doppelganger. In the present day, Adelaide and Gabe Wilson are like the horror movie Huxtables. He proudly wears his Howard University sweatshirt, but his primary concern is keeping up with their well-heeled frienemies, the Tyler family. Then one fateful night, the Wilsons see four shadowy figures who look a lot like them standing ominously in their driveway, as you probably know from the trailer.

It is not a casual social call. The game is on, but it would be spoilery to reveal the revelations that will come out as the stressful night continues. Us lends itself to a fair number of class-conscious interpretations, but it represents a vast improvement over Peele’s wildly over-hyped Get Out, starting with the happy fact that it truly is a horror movie rather than a gimmicky thriller with an assortment of genre trappings.

In fact, the film is pretty intense. To Peele’s credit, he proves he can throw down the fear old school 80’s style. He also hints at the chaotic global picture in intriguing ways, without detracting from the micro-tension of the Wilsons’ ordeal (not unlike later installments of Romero’s Living Dead franchise). One cool thing about Us is the proliferation of internet debates regarding what really happened and the symbolic meaning of it all, whereas even for admirers of Get Out, it was all cut-and-dried up there on the screen.

When not working on Marvel/Star Wars/Disney properties, Lupita Nyong’o could become a new Jamie Lee Curtis based on her work in Us and the sweet zombie comedy Little Monsters.  As Adelaide Wilson, she has to imply some strange and complicated emotional responses we shouldn’t really get into, but she pulls it off quite assuredly. It is the sort of performance many viewers will want to re-watch with the benefit of hindsight.

Winston Duke nicely counterbalances Nyong’o as the more passive, easy-going Gabe. Shahadi Wright Joseph and Evan Alex are both terrific as pre-teen daughter Zora Wilson and her younger brother Jason, as well as their doppelgangers. However, Elisabeth Moss shamelessly steals her scenes as catty Kitty Tyler.

Us has no post-credit stinger, so it saves us that annoyance. Peele packs in a lot of weirdness, but it all has a role to play, so do not forget about the opening images. Most importantly, Us represents a major departure from Get Out, because it is actually scary. Recommended for horror fans, Us releases today on DVD and BluRay.

The Quiet One: Bill Wyman, Formerly of the Rolling Stones

Bill Wyman is a rock star—and he has the top 40 hit to prove it. I was called “(Si Si) Je Suis un Rock Star.” It charted in the UK, Australia, and NZ, but it never really caught on here. However, you might have heard of the band Wyman was in. They are called the Rolling Stones. They had a raft of hits and they are even credited with ending “The Sixties,” with their disastrous Altamont concert. Wyman retired from the Stones just as the band started slipping into self-parody, but he remains the foremost archivist of the band’s history. Wyman and his assembled scrapbooks, ephemerals, and memorabilia provide a treasure trove for filmmaker Oliver Murray to mine in The Quiet One, which releases this Friday in New York.

Arguably, Charlie Watts could just as easily be called “the Quiet One,” but he was always a jazz drummer at heart, so he made plenty of noise behind his kit. Wyman was not a blues fanboy like the rest of the band, but he was knocked out by the sound of the electric bass in early rock & roll. He heard the Stones were looking for a bassist and one thing led to another. Eventually, he was part of one of the biggest, most enduringly popular bands in rock & roll history, yet he still carried the insecurities and resentments instilled in him by his casually contemptuous parents.

Wyman’s parents will sound borderline abusive to most viewers, because they probably were, but they perfectly reflected the value system of the British Labour Party and its adherents, which insists on loyalty to the “working class” and scorn aspirations of upward mobility. Fortunately, Wyman spent considerable time with his more supportive grandmother, whom he even lived with for several years. In a tellingly moment, Wyman readily admits on camera his decision to change his surname from Perks to Wyman was indeed a partial rebuke of his parents.

For the most part, Murray chronicles the history of the Stones (especially the Brian Jones era) from Wyman’s perspective, because it is the most significant association of his professional/artistic career and it is what audiences will be most interested in. He also devotes some time to Wyman’s assorted marriages, his solo career, and his more relaxed work leading Bill Wyman’s Rhythm Kings, whose ranks include Procol Harum’s Gary Brooker, and British jazz musician Martin Taylor and Georgie Fame. However, Giallo fans will be disappointed Murray does not delve into the soundtrack work Wyman did for Dario Argento’s Opera and Phenomena.

Murray is clearly sympathetic to Wyman, but the musician-subject readily admits to numerous mistakes in his personal life and revisits difficult memories from his childhood, so the resulting film really cannot be dismissed as a puff piece. It is good to see Wyman get his turn in the spotlight, but Watts is even more overdue (for now, he’ll just have to make do with the pots of money he earns from the Stones’ tours and catalog sales). Recommended as an entertaining and reasonably in-depth portrait of a rock & roll survivor, The Quiet One opens this Friday (6/21) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Das Boot: The Series

It was a case of what went around, came around. German U-boats were notoriously feared by the Allies during World War II, but the mortality rate for U-boat crews was also perilously high. Anyone who saw Wolfgang Peterson’s Das Boot (still the record-holder for German language films when it comes to Oscar nominations and American box office) has a visceral understanding of the watery deaths resulting from submarine warfare. That might seem like an impossible film to sequelize, but German TV went back to Lothar-Gunther Buchheim’s original source novel and his follow-up, Die Festung as the basis for the eight-part sequel series treatment, directed by Andreas Prochaska. It is a new crew, but war is still an ugly, dehumanizing business in Das Boot, which starts streaming tomorrow on Hulu.

This is U-162. U-96 went to its submerged grave in the movie and U-113 joins it in Davy Jones locker during the prologue, just in case we forgot the dangers U-boat crews risked. Just as in the film, the crew of U-162 are far removed from the genocidal crimes of the National Socialist war machine, but they are definitely not heroes. In fact, their cruise will be marred by incidents of hazing, dereliction of duty, accidental maiming, accusations of cowardice, and outright insurrection.

The problem starts at the top of U-162’s command. Despite his inexperience, Klaus Hoffman will be captaining the U-boot, presumably because he is the son of a legendary naval officer. His veteran 1^st Watch Officer Karl Tennstedt was already resentful to be passed over for promotion again, but Hoffman’s alleged timidity pushes him to undercut the captain among the crew. Their differing approaches will come to a head when the U-boat is assigned a secret mission, of questionable strategic value.

Meanwhile, Simone Strasser, an Alsace-German working as a civilian interpreter in the German navy’s La Rochelle base finds herself up to her neck in intrigue. Initially, she considers herself a loyal German, but her faith will be shaken after her brother Frank is summoned to serve aboard U-162 at the last minute. She subsequently learns he had agreed to trade sensitive U-boat schematics to the resistance, in exchange for forged papers for himself and the secret Jewish wife his sister never knew he had. However, things really get awkward when SS Kriminalrat Hagen Forster takes a personal and professional interest in her, while she develops a romantic attraction to British resistance firebrand, Carla Monroe.

Unlike the film, Das Boot the series spends a lot of time above water, but the submarine storyline remains dramatically superior. The rivalry between Hoffman and Tennstedt resonates on a primal level, with Rick Okon and August Wittgenstein generating considerable sparks as the antagonistic officers. Plus, things really get tense when a surprise guest, played with cool, clammy menace by Stefan Konarske, makes a surprise guest appearance on U-162 (it’s complicated).

In contrast, the energy level noticeably flags when the series cuts back to the lust and espionage in La Rochelle. Vicky Krieps’ deer-in-the-headlights portrayal of Strasser simply is not sufficiently engaging to carry her story arc. Lizzy Caplan is more interesting as the reckless and cynical Monroe, but they are never credible as a couple. However, James D’Arcy nearly saves the land-based storyline as the dashing British operative Philip Sinclair, but he arrives way too late in the series.

Das Boot the series has its merits and weaknesses, but it ends with a massively intriguing cliff-hanger that will have viewers coming back for the already announced second season, even if they have mixed feelings about the first eight episodes (as they could very well). It is not perfect, but the unnervingly claustrophobic battle scenes and the work of Konarske, Okon, and D’Arcy are definitely worth seeing. Recommended (when its underwater), for fans of military dramas, Das Boot the series premieres tomorrow (6/17) on Hulu.

DWF ’19: The Teacher (short)

This teacher will totally school you. She changed professions relatively recently, but her previous skill set is as sharp as it ever was. Three of her former colleagues will learn that the hard way in Jeremy Weiss’s wildly entertaining short film, The Teacher, which screens during this year’s Dances With Films, in Hollywood, USA.

Just like Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner, the Teacher’s old boss, “The Contractor,” is not inclined to accept her resignation gracefully. Instead of whisking her off to an Adriatic seaside Potemkin Village, the Contractor has two of his best assassins to ambush her on the streets of Qindao. One is a German hulk and the other is refined Japanese ronin. Both men are extremely lethal, but they have still probably met their match. After all, the film is titled The Teacher, not The German or The Swordsman. Regardless, it is relentless fun watching her fend them off.

Even though there are three credited screenwriters, David Carter, Chris J. Ford, and Keith Kuramoto, the narrative is not all that complicated. Of course, the whole point of the film is the adrenaline-charged, pedal-to-the-metal fight scenes, so it is really just as well they refrain from giving us any derivative plot complications that might distract us from the real business at hand. Weiss and stunt coordinator Jaden He (the Swordsman) stage a number of really cool martial arts face-offs.

In a mere fifteen minutes, Sarah Chang (who also did stunt work on Bleeding Steel and Wolf Warrior 2) conclusively proves she has the chops and the presence to be a major international action star. She comes across as rather sweet and vulnerable, but then she counter-attacks like nobody’s business. Plus, Jaden He and Kevin Lee make worthy adversaries, who make the ebb and flow of their fight scenes look convincing.

For a short film, The Teacher is unusually cinematic, especially the use of the aerial cityscape cinematography that evokes fond memories of old school movies, like The Man from Hong Kong. There is a great deal of new talent worth watching in this short, starting with Chang and most definitely including her on-screen rivals. Highly recommended for action fans, The Teacher screens tomorrow (6/16), as part of Competition Shorts 4, at Dances With Films 22.

DWF ’19: Driven

Can you imagine anything more terrifying than getting picked up by a ride-share driver who happens to be an aspiring open-mic-night comedian? Roger the demon-hunter will also have to contend with dark supernatural forces, but his driver’s jokes will be far scarier. Yet, somehow, he and the recently-dumped-and-still-bitter-about-it Emerson Graham will work together to save mankind, sort of, in Glenn Payne’s Driven, which screens during this year’s Dances With Films, in Hollywood, USA.

Graham and her roommate have plumbing issues, so she would like to catch a lot of trips this fateful night, as a driver for the Ferry ride service. Despite his rudeness, Roger would seem like a promising fare. He will be making multiple stops, having her wait while he takes care of his mysterious business. It turns out he is out to kill demons and lift an infernal curse that has plagued his family for years. Graham briefly assumes he is a dangerous psycho, until she sees enough scary demonic shenanigans to convince her otherwise.

Even though Graham is the would-be comic, Roger scores most of the laughs. Frankly, Driven is not exactly a horror-comedy that will have you rolling in the aisles. Yet, weirdly enough, the straight demon-hunting storyline is sufficiently interesting to keep viewers invested. Arguably, the film would have been more effective if Casey Dillard had cranked down Graham’s insecurity-based humor a notch or two, both as screenwriter and co-lead. However, she falls into a nice bickering-and-bantering rhythm with Richard Speight Jr., as Roger. They each play off the other quite well.

At the helm, Payne navigates the horror-comedy line with respectable dexterity. He capitalizes on the claustrophobic setting—mostly Graham’s car—building tension organically. He and Dillard also give viewers a vivid sense of the town, which we come to understand is surprisingly violent, given its modest size. You could almost think of Driven as Locke with demons and bathroom jokes, but that would be overstating matters.

Driven is a small film that doesn’t always land its bits, but it is still a pleasantly enjoyable viewing experience. There is just a scrappy underdog spirit to the proceedings, which is appealing. Plus, it deserves credit for being a horror-comedy that takes the horror side of the equation relatively seriously. Recommended for fans of lighter midnight movies, Driven screens tomorrow night (6/15), as part of Dances With Films.

Head Count: High Fives

The number five generally has positive symbolic significance—five elements, five senses, five fingers and toes, but there is that pentagram to consider. A shape-shifting demon-spirit who derives its power from manifestations of fives follows in that tradition. It turns out Party of Five could have been a real horror show. A group of hard-partying college kids learn there isn’t always safety in numbers in Elle Callahan’s Head Count, which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Evan is not exactly thrilled to be spending his spring break with his New Agey tree-hugger brother Peyton, so he jumps at the opportunity to bail for a night of drinking and smoking with the attractive Zoe and her obnoxious friends. She actually seems nice, as well as attractive, whereas the others are basically stock characters. In fact, Evan is not really sure who they all are, which makes it easy for him to be fooled when the shape-shifting “Hisji” starts impersonating them.

Technically, it is sort of Evan’s fault. He invokes the supernatural entity when he recited an incantation from spooky story website as part of their campfire festivities. Suddenly, weirdness starts happening. Evan picks up on it first, whereas most of Zoe’s friends are too drunk, stoned, or willfully oblivious to register all the redecorating the Hisji does while they are passed.

This is a rare case where Head Count’s lo-fi look and texture really works in its favor. The film just has an eerie vibe baked into it. Callahan also pulls off several seriously freaky scenes, mostly through the use of clever editing rather than special effects. As a result, she makes a number of tried and true horror conventions feel new and fresh again.

Ashley Morghan is more seductive and vulnerable as Zoe than a horror movie character like her has any right to expect. She also drums up a fair amount of chemistry with Isaac Jay’s Evan. Bevin Bru has her moments as Camille, Zoe’s drinks-like-she-has-a-hollow-leg best pal, but the rest of the revelers largely blend together (possibly by design). Regardless, Callahan’s mastery of atmosphere is impressive. Viewers are enveloped in a sense of messed-up foreboding, right from the start.

Head Count is not as original as David Robert Mitchell’s It Follows, but the two films share similar sensibilities, which is saying a lot. In some ways, Callahan’s film is a textbook horror movie, especially considering what happens to those who over-indulge in booze, pot, and randy behavior. However, Callahan and screenwriter Michael Nader finds ways to put clever twists on the genre elements that distinguish the film from the horror field. Special thanks are also due to the editor, Nick Garnham Wright, for cutting it all together in such a crafty manner. Highly recommended for horror fans, Head Count opens tomorrow (6/14) in LA, at the Arena Cinemas.

Daughter of the Wolf: Gina Carano Faces Wolves and Richard Dreyfuss

Wolves hunt in packs. MMA stars battle mano a mano or in cages, whereas cranky old people fight with everybody. All three will go at each other in David Hackl’s wilderness-revenge genre-outing, Daughter of the Wolf, which opens this Friday in Brooklyn.

Sometime back in the day, Clair Hamilton’s father did wrong by the psychotic backwoods clan patriarch known simply as “Father,” so his family of dubiously adopted rejects has kidnapped her boring pre-teen son Charlie, demanding her secret cash inheritance as ransom. Of course, Father has no intention of returning the surly boy. However, a Special Forces veteran like Hamilton will not be a pushover. With the reluctant help of one of Father’s “sons,” Hamilton will track the vengeful old codger and her son, while hungry, baying wolves circle both parties.

Admittedly, Hackl is no Caroll Ballard (and this film is no Never Cry Wolf), but Into the Grizzly Maze was a seriously entertaining B-movie, so it is rather disappointing Daughter does not have similar energy and attitude. Even with a credible action lead like Gina Carano, the film mostly plods along lifelessly. The tiresome semi-estranged mother-son relationship certainly does not help. There are also plenty of questionable motivations and decision-making that undermine audience’s willingness to suspend disbelief.

Carano has chops and decent screen presence, but Daughter is definitely a step backwards for her. As Father, Richard Dreyfuss (the Oscar-winning star of Goodbye Girl and Jaws) chews more scenery than Pac-Man, but the tone of his performance is more strident than entertaining. Beyond the two marquee antagonists, it is rather difficult to tell unshaven, greasy-haired thugs apart from each other.

Frankly, most viewers will root for the wolves. They are probably the most sympathetic characters. Hackl and the animal-wrangling team stage some reasonably impressive wolf-pack attacks, but that is about all the film has going for it.

Even though Carano is the lead and on-screen most of the time, Daughter makes poor use of her martial arts skills, which is really its biggest scene. As a result, it is far likelier to frustrate her fans, rather than satisfying them. Mostly disappointing, Daughter of the Wolf opens Friday (6/14) in Brooklyn, at the Kent Theatre.

Captive State: Revolt Against the “Legislators”

It is sort of like V for a new generation. We will meet (briefly) the alien “Visitors,” now called “Legislators,” who will be taking care of things on Earth for us now and the humans who chose to collaborate to maintain their own sliver of power. Our world is in thrall to an alien occupation, but the opening exposition rather hilariously tells us the gap between rich and poor is now wider than ever. Surely, mansplaining is also on the rise. Fortunately, there is still the remnant of a resistance that favors freedom over safety in Rupert Wyatt’s Captive State, which releases today on DVD.

Alas, the governments of Earth were forced to surrender unconditionally. There was a rag-tag resistance, but they were essentially wiped out in Chicagoland, during an infamous battle. Now everyone pretends having the “Legislators” in charge is all for the best, especially the mayor and the police chief. The city is even gearing up for a big peace rally in Soldier Field.

However, senior Chicago cop William Mulligan is not so sure the resistance has really scattered to the wind. He suspects there is an underground network communicating through the old-fashioned newspaper classified ads. His hunches also lead him to keep tabs on Gabriel Drummond, the son of his late partner and the brother of fallen resistance leader Rafe Drummond. His intuition is pretty sharp, because it turns out Rafe is still alive and planning a significant attack on the Legislators’ peace rally.

Frankly, Wyatt and co-screenwriter Erica Beeney offer up a pretty worthy message regarding the dangers of opting for security over freedom. It would be nice if they still mean that when it comes to cradle-to-grave socialism too. Heck, maybe they do, considering the evil aliens are called “Legislators.” Regardless, the tension between these two human values is very real and believable throughout the film. The problem is the big twist at the end is glaringly obvious, thanks to a conspicuous classical reference that makes little sense when it is first dropped.

Regardless, John Goodman is terrific as the dogged Mulligan, especially in light of where the film takes him. Ashton Sanders is rather blandly angry as the angsty Gabriel Drummond, but Jonathan Majors seethes with righteous rebellious intensity as the older Drummond brother. Veteran character actors James Ransone, Alan Ruck, Kevin O’Connor, and Ben Daniels all add color and grit as members of the resistance, while Kevin Dunn does his sleazy thing as the police commissioner.

There are relatively few scenes of the aliens—and when they do appear, their powers and properties are not clearly defined. However, Wyatt and the special effects team create some string images of the aliens’ enormous space crafts and the extent to which they have altered the skyline of Chicago. Without question, Captive State is far more impressive visually than it is as a work of storytelling. It is strange it didn’t make more noise in theaters (maybe because it really doesn’t land as a Trump allegory), but sf fans will find it is worth checking out when Captive State goes on-sale today (6/11) on DVD.

Exhibition on Screen: Degas—Passion for Perfection

He was a little bit older and a whole lot crankier, but Degas is mostly still considered an Impressionist. Like Duke Ellington and “jazz,” Degas helped shape our conception of Impressionism, but he hated the term. Viewers get a good eyeful of Degas’s art and a full biographical account in David Bickerstaff’s Degas: Passion for Perfection, which screens Wednesday at Symphony Space, as part of the Exhibition on Screen series.

Born Hilaire-Germain-Edgar De Gas, the classically-trained artist opted for the simpler, less haughty-sounding Edgar Degas. Originally, he intended to be a painter of historical scenes, but we now know him for his paintings of dancers, theater patrons, horse-racers, and the people you might find in a brothel milieu. If Game of Thrones had been around in the 1870s, he would have been the right artist to provide illustrations.

Bickerstaff’s film is not merely a high-class screen-saver. We see plenty of Degas’s art, as well as a fair measure from his contemporaries (especially Mary Cassatt), but Bickerstaff and his experts fully chronicle the artist’s life, identify his artistic inspirations, and trace his influence on other artists. They duly examine his anti-Dreyfusard anti-Semitism, without getting hopelessly sidetracked. To their credit, everyone involved with the film can see the artistic forest for the trees.

Indeed, watching Passion will give viewers a robust nutshell understanding of Degas’s significance as an artist and keen sense of the times he lived in. It is a solid documentary in all respects, unless you happen to be an ardent admirer of Toulouse-Lautrec, who is on the receiving end of less unflattering comparisons. Most of us should be able to take that in stride.

On the other hand, Passion will motivate many viewers to visit the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, whose extraordinary collection of Degas’s work is featured throughout the film. Recommended for students and patrons of the arts, Degas: Passion for Perfection screens Wednesday afternoon (6/12) at Symphony Space.

Annecy ’19: Modest Heroes

You do not have to save the world to be an anime hero. It certainly doesn’t hurt, but Japanese animation is arguably more interested in the lives of average teens and adolescents (and even adults) than the Disney/Pixar/Dreamworks factories. You can see that clearly in two of the constituent shorts that make up the anthology film, Modest Heroes, which screens tomorrow at the 2019 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, ahead of its American BluRay release.

Stick with Modest, because it starts with the weakest film of the three, relatively speaking. It also happens to the only one without subtitles, by deliberate choice. Fortunately, viewers really do not need a word-for-word translation of the minimal dialogue in Hiromasa Yonebayashi’s “Kanini & Kanino.” In some ways, this story of two young water sprites struggling to find their injured father is the most Ghibli-esque of the three short films, which is a heavy statement, but it is also the most like other films we have seen before. Regardless, there is no denying the fine quality of the elegant animation.

In contrast, Yoshiyuki Momose’s “Samurai Egg” (a.k.a. “Life Ain’t Gonna Lose”) features a sketch-like illustrative style that nicely suits the tale of a young boy dealing with a life-threatening egg allergy. It is a simple tale, but the relationship between Shun and his mother is deeply moving, in a realistically human kind of way.

The best of the three is Akihiko Yamashita’s visually striking “Invisible.” This nameless drone has long been an invisible man in the Ralph Ellison sense, but he seems to have evolved into an invisible man in the H.G. Wells way, through a Kafkaesque process. He is invisible to our eyes too, which leads to some highly cinematic sequences involving his transparent body animating his salaryman suit. It is quite a sophisticated film, both thematically and stylistically, in which the fantastical and the metaphorical become indistinguishable.

It made sense for Studio Ponoc to collect these three short films together, because there is definitely an international market for anime of this caliber. Still, the comparatively brief fifty-three-minute running time makes it a bit of a programming challenge. Regardless, fans will appreciate its artistry, especially that of “Invisible.” Highly recommended for connoisseurs of international animation, Modest Heroes screens tomorrow (6/10) at Annecy and releases on BluRay in the U.S. on 6/18.

CUFF ’19: Last Night I Saw You Smiling

It is a shame when anything that predates the Khmer Rouge is lost, even when it is an ugly Brutalist architectural behemoth. Such was the case with the so-called “White Building” in Phnom Penh. Kavich Neang documents the chaotic relocation process for three families (including his own) in Last Night I Saw You Smiling, which screens tomorrow during the 2019 Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Originally known as the Municipal Apartments, the White Building was constructed in 1963 to be affordable, working-class housing. When the Khmer Rouge took power and emptied the cities, the forced evacuation of the White Building became a microcosmic symbol of the national madness. After the fall of the regime, the building maintained its cultural importance as the residence for many local artists and government officials, despite the poor level of upkeep.

With the help of the new property owners, the White Building was finally condemned. Many of the neighbors Neang captures on-screen openly compare their second exodus to the horrifying events of 1975, even though this time they are getting financial compensation. Perhaps not so surprisingly, many of the residents are openly skeptical regarding whether the government and developer will come through with the promised funds—probably with good reason.

Frankly, Last Night is more of an anthropological record than a documentary that is appropriate for general consumers. Although Neang incorporates several intimate musical performances, he does not concretely establish any of the residents’ personalities or their relationships to one another. The one refreshing exception is his charming aunt, who could have been a star vocalist, were it not for her shyness.

Ironically, viewers will get a vivid, tactile sense of what the building was like during its final days—and it looks alarmingly unsafe, as if a strong breeze could have toppled the crumbling walls. It is regretful to witness this community being dissolved, much like the hutongs in Beijing, but nobody watching the film will be able to dismiss the safety concerns. Recommended only for admirers of uncompromising observational documentarians like Wang Bing and J.P.Sniadecki, Last Night I Saw You Smiling screens tomorrow (6/9) during this year’s Chicago Underground Film Festival.

Funan: GKIDS’ Next Masterwork of International Animation

Parenting is so bourgeoisie. Under the Khmer Rouge, there was no need for such old-fashioned capitalist conventions. They took care of child-rearing, splitting up families for years. It was cradle-to-grave socialism, with an emphasis on the grave. Chou and Khuon will try to survive the camps and endure years of separation from their young son Sovanh in Cambodian-French filmmaker Denis Do’s remarkable animated feature Funan, which opens today in New York.

Chou and Khuon never really saw the rise of Angkor coming, but there is very little they could have done to prepare. Like everyone else, they suddenly found themselves on a forced march from Phnom Penh to the countryside. In the chaos, they lose sight of Sovanh, but that hardly matters to the Khmer Rouge guards, because they would have been split up soon enough anyway. However, Chou finds absolutely no solace in that fact. She bitterly resents Khuon’s acquiescence, insisting he should have deserted their cadre to find their son. Their relationship will fray, but they still must stick together to have any hope of survival.

Funan is visually stunning and emotionally devastating. Do uses the lush, verdant Cambodian landscapes as an ironic (and enormously cinematic) counterpoint to the cruelty and madness that surrounds his characters. Family members die with grim regularity, but it just rips your heart out each time it happens. Technically, Do keeps most of the violence off-screen, but certainly not the suffering and tragedy.

The artistry of Do and his team of animators is so clearly evident, nobody could seriously deny it. Instead, some critics uncomfortable with Funan’s forthrightness have tagged it “cliched,” but the truth is quite the contrary. Chou and Khuon do not suffer nobly and stoically. They hurt each other and act badly, but still remain bound by love. Really, this is an unusually honest and complex portrayal of human emotions under extreme and prolonged stress.

In all honesty, if GKIDS does not finally win an Oscar with Funan than the Academy should just level with everyone and change their name to “The Official Disney/Pixar Awards.” It is an important and, in some ways, timely film (considering the recent vogue for socialism among millennials and presidential candidates), but it is even more fundamentally a work of great artistic merit and humanism.

(As an aside, Do previously made The Ribbon, an achingly beautiful and tragic four-minute short film set amid Mao’s Great Leap Forward. Hopefully, GKIDS can pair them together at some screenings, as they have sometimes done with their shorter features, because both films truly deserve to be seen.)

Regardless, this is genuinely vibrant animation, in service of a deeply haunting film. Very highly recommended, Funan opens today (6/7) in New York, at the IFC Center.

Abduction: Scott Adkins & Andy On Fight Aliens

If you thought Communist monuments were creepy before, wait till you visit this “victory” park in Vietnam. It is not just militaristic propaganda, it serves as a portal for a sinister race of interdimensional aliens. They have kidnapped Scott Adkins’ daughter and Andy On’s wife. Not surprisingly, the action stars damn-well want their loved ones back in Ernie Barbarash’s Abduction, which opens today in Los Angeles.

When we meet Quinn, he is literally in a world of hurt. While he is fighting off drones controlled by a race of cloak-wearing alien overlords, while his daughter Lucy is trapped in a cage, wearing a lethal choker around her neck. Defenestrated by the aliens’ telekinetic powers, Quinn suddenly finds himself surfacing in the Vietnamese Victory fountain. After a few run ins with cops and doctors, Quinn discovers thirty-two years passed on Earth while he was struggling in the extra-dimensional realm.

Dr. Anna is probably the most compassionate physician on staff at the Vietnamese Belleview, but she still assumes Quinn is delusional, for obvious reasons. Then she has a chance encounter with Connor Wu. The expat American freelance hitman is slightly disappointed in the crime syndicate he was working for, because they kidnapped his wife Maya to sell to the aliens, because of some rare genetic code in her DNA. Obviously, Dr. Anna figures these two need to get together—and action fans will not disagree.

Granted, the quality of Abduction’s visual effects is unfortunate, but Tim Man’s fight choreography is as serious as a two-by-four to the side of your head. Barbarash expertly showcases the action chops of his two stars, Adkins and On, playing Quinn and Wu, respectively. Adkins also stretches a bit, going for some fish-out-of-water comedy in the first half, with mixed results. However, On really brings the seething heat as the guilt-ridden and deeply ticked-off Wu, like an alien-fighting John Wick, without the dog.

Truong Ngoc Anh (a.k.a. TNA) also has some interesting moments, especially during the wild third act, but this is definitely a manly beat-down kind of film. Believe it or not, screenwriter Mike MacLean’s Strieber-esque alien abduction material has a few interesting twists (but the SFX work admittedly does not do them any favors). Regardless, the reason to see the film is the martial arts spectacle put on by the stars and the first-class stunt team. You know its legit when both Adkins and the legendary Roger Corman are on-board as executive producers. Recommended as a surprisingly dark but highly enjoyable B-movie, Abduction opens today (6/7) at the Laemmle Playhouse 7.

Boar: The Year of the Pig on Shudder

It’s the Year of the Pig again, but horror movie producers are weirdly tardy on capitalizing. What, do they want us to watch Pig Hunt all year? At least Shudder finally stepped up to the plate. Logically, they acquired a new-ish killer pig movie from Australia, the country that proudly brought us Razorback. The pork will do all the feeding when Chris Sun’s Boar premieres today on Shudder.

There is a killer boar out there preying on travelers who stray too far into the Australian Outback. What’s not to get? In this case, some significant Australian genre specialists will pop up to serve as snacks. There is no missing huge Nathan Jones, who played the freakish Leatherface-esque slasher killer in Sun’s Charlie’s Farm, but this time around, he gets to be the hero: meathead farmer Bernie. He will be hosting his city slicker sister Debbie, her second husband Bruce, daughter Ellie and boring son Bart, as well as Ellie’s jerky boyfriend, who is keen to join the family. He will take the fam to see some of Oz’s wonderful natural sights, but at Debbie’s insistence, he only brings one gun. In retrospect, that was a mistake.

John Jarratt, best known as the vicious Mick Taylor in the Wolf Creek franchise, gets to play a decent feller this time around as old blokey Ken, who is simultaneously rattling around the big pig’s feeding grounds with his old crony Blue. Horror veteran Bill Moseley also effectively plays against type as the immensely likable Bruce. For his part, Jones shows he could have a credible future as muscle-laden genre protagonists. Chris Haywood, who appeared in the old school 80s Razorback, memorably drops in to portray the silly old codger who saw the big boar, but his warnings went in vain, due to his being a drunken bumkin. However, Melissa Tkautz steals multiple scenes as Ken’s sarcastic pub-keeper daughter.

Boar is far from a perfect film, but the pig attacks are surprisingly fast and brutal. Honestly, the bloodthirsty beast looks and sounds deadly in the extreme. You have to give Sun and the effects team credit, because the boar feeding sequences are shockingly intense. Unfortunately, the characterization is a little thin and much of the dialogue is flatter and more wooden than plywood panels. Of course, this is a horror movie about rampaging swine, so that is almost to be expected.

So, lets all eat a big plate of ham and bacon today, for the sake of public safety. Pig Hunt remains the gold standard of monster pig movies, but at least Boar is far superior to the manipulative and disingenuous Okja. It is straight-up exploitation throwback, but that is really the whole charm of it all. Recommended for retro animal horror fans, Boar starts streaming today (6/6) on Shudder.

Nureyev, The Documentary

Yuri Gagarin’s manned space flight was a massive PR victory for the Soviets, but they lost nearly all their newly acquired prestige two months later when Rudolf Nureyev defected in the Paris airport. Gagarin only went into space once, but most of Nureyev’s best performances were ahead of him. Jacqui Morris & David Morris chronicle the iconic dancer’s full life and career in Nureyev, which opens this Friday in New York.

Tellingly, Nureyev describes himself as more Tatar than Russian in some of the extensive archival interviews Morris & Morris smoothly incorporate into the film. Of course, he was first and foremost a dancer. For most dance patrons, the real news of their documentary is all the previously unseen footage of Nureyev they discovered, included his performances of Martha Graham and Paul Taylor choreography, as well as hazy footage of the young, unknown Nureyev in Russia. Plus, the film features snippets of original dance that thematically accompanies the ghostly reminiscences of his friends and colleagues.

Morris & Morris do a decent job covering Nureyev’s defection, but it is not the centerpiece of the film, as it is for Ralph Fiennes truly excellent The White Crow. Arguably, for them, Nureyev’s close were-they-lovers-or-not artistic collaboration with British prima ballerina Margot Fonteyn is the central defining aspect of his life. In the process, they cover a fair amount of her life, which is fascinating.

Nureyev the doc also does a nice job explaining the ballet’s significant but somewhat ambiguous relationship with the Soviet regime, including its notorious broadcasts of Swan Lake during episodes of internal strife. Perhaps even more revealing are the details of the French Communist Party’s coordinated campaign to heckle and intimidate Nureyev during his first post-defection performance.However, the film’s third act anti-Reagan biases get rather tiresome (no, Reagan did not miraculously cure AIDS, but nobody has ever cured a virus, to this day.) Still, there are striking time capsule moments, as when Nureyev, at the absolute peak of his powers, takes a two-minute standing ovation on the Dick Cavett Show (anyone under thirty will probably have to Google him).

Of course, the dance is the thing. Morris & Morris vividly illustrate Nureyev’s legendary talents. It is more than just a mere greatest hits package. In terms of cinema, The White Crow is the better film, but Nureyev is still an impressive dance showcase. Recommended for ballet enthusiasts, Nureyev opens tomorrow (6/7) in New York, at Film Forum.

The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil—They Do Not Walk into a Bar Together

There are two basic strategies serial killers can opt for to select their prey: obsessive observation and stalking or pure randomness. The latter has the advantage of following no discernible patterns for the police to trace. The downside is a potential target like Jang Dong-su. The beefy gangster is really hard to kill and he has an army of foot soldiers to search for his mystery assailant. Frankly, the killer would probably be better off if the ethically ambiguous national copper Jung Tae-seok finds him first in Lee Won-tae’s deliciously twisted The Gangster, the Cop, the Devil, which opens this Friday in New York.

Jang is played by the mighty Don Lee (Ma Dong-seok), so nobody in their right mind would mess with him. Of course, that is precisely the case with the psychotic “K.” He thinks he has the drop on Jang with his usual minor fender-bender M.O., but it takes more than a few stabs to kill the Paul Bunyon-esque crime lord.

Initially, Jang’s gang assumes the attack was the work of a rival faction, but he calls off the war when he comes to. Not surprisingly, he is inclined to solve the matter personally rather than cooperate with Jung’s investigation. However, they forge a tentative alliance to coordinate intel and resources to track down the killer. They start betraying and double-crossing each other almost immediately, but they still keep returning to their basic agreement, for the sake of preventing further murders and scoring some stone-cold payback, so, yeah.

South Korea has always demonstrated a clear comparative advantage when it comes to producing serial killer thrillers, but GCD takes the genre to new sinister heights. Lee Won-tae came up with the mother of all high concepts and his execution barrels forward with the energy of a runaway freight train. Plus, it is just jolly good fun to watch Don Lee and Kim Moo-yul scheme, fight, and bicker together as Jang and Jung, respectively. Lee could very well be the only man in the world who could credibly play Jang, who we can easily believe would survive multiple stab wounds to the torso. Train to Busan already made him a star, but GCD should definitely be a next-level-up movie for him.

Yet, maybe the biggest surprise is how well Kim hangs with him. He is spectacularly sleazy and nakedly self-serving, but we also believe he genuinely wants to stop the murders. As K, Kim Sung-kyu is undeniably creepy and coldly clammy, but he is somewhat overshadowed by the larger-than-life flamboyance of Lee and Kim Moo-yul.

GCD is so wickedly clever, the American remake rights have already been snapped up. Unfortunately, it was Sylvester Stallone who nabbed the hot property, which doesn’t inspire much confidence anymore. On the plus side, Don Lee is already attached to reprise his portrayal of Jang, which is cause for cautious optimism. Regardless, there can be little doubt the original will be the better film—and it is the one opening this week. Very highly recommended, The Gangster, The Cop, the Devil opens this Friday (6/7) in New York, at the AMC Empire.

First to the Moon: The Apollo 8 Documentary

In cinematic terms, you can think of it as a prequel to either First Man or Apollo 13. There is about to be wall-to-wall programming commemorating the 50^th anniversary of the Apollo 11 mission to the Moon on PBS and the Smithsonian Channel (but somehow the History Channel never heard of it), but in a clever shift of focus, this film chronicles the previous Apollo mission that arguably did the most to make the Moon Landing possible. Veteran astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and William Anders explain how it happened, step-by-step in Paul J. Hildebrandt’s documentary First to the Moon, which releases today on DVD.

Lovell and Anders attended the Naval Academy, whereas Borman was a West Point graduate, so there was definitely a little rivalry there. Nevertheless, they managed to work quite well together during the course of Apollo 8. Their mission is somewhat overshadowed in many Americans’ minds by the successful Moon Landing, but the feat of completely orbiting the Moon was immensely significant at the time. In fact, Apollo 8 was moved up to beat a comparable Russian mission.

The Apollo 8 astronauts were the first to blast off atop the new Saturn 5 rockets and they were the first to lay unaided eyes on the Moon’s surface. They also brought back the iconic Earthrise photograph that was the subject of Emmanuel Vaughan-Lee’s terrific short doc. Best of all, they did it all before the Soviets could.

Borman, Lovell, and Anders all discuss Apollo 8 and their careers with NASA and the military at great length on-camera. As it happens, the first half-hour or so is devoted to their exploits as test pilots and Naval aviators. That might be too much of a good thing for some viewers, but it definitely establishes their personalities and their “right stuff” background.

Of course, most space program junkies would want more material rather than less, so the relatively long two-hour and one-minute running time will be A-OK with them. In fact, Hildebrandt manages to shoe horn an awful lot of interesting stuff into the film. It is all fascinating, except maybe for some of Anders’ New Age ruminations. (There are times when he sounds like he is reading the lyrics of Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind.”)

Hildebrandt clearly knows his stuff, having previously helmed the important Fight for Space, which provides a timely warning of the potential costs for allowing our contemporary space program to atrophy into essential nothing. Sadly, Apollo 8 just seems so long ago, in so many ways. That is why well-produced documentaries about the golden age of space exploration are always worth your time and attention. Just like Todd Douglas Miller’s Apollo 11, Mission Control: The Unsung Heroes of Apollo, and Last Man on the Moon, First to the Moon helps stir the remnants of our national idealism and our shared spirit of adventure. Highly recommended, First to the Moon releases today on VOD.

Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto

Viktor Tsoi was the Clifford Brown of Soviet rock & roll. He was immensely talented and generally well-liked, but died far too young in an auto accident. Although he was not really a dissident rocker, like the legendary Plastic People of the Universe, he never received much support from the official cultural apparatus. Tsoi’s live-fast-die-young rock & roll story is impressionistically chronicled in Kirill Serebrennikov’s Leto, which opens this Friday in New York, less than two months after the director was released from house arrest, for the crime of being an artist in Putin’s Russia (technically, the charge was embezzlement, but nobody really believed it).

By the 1980s, the Communist Party realized they could no longer prohibit rock music outright, but they still deeply distrusted everything about it, particularly the musicians that played it. The Leningrad Rock Club was one of the few officially sanctioned performances spaces, but audiences were expected to sedately sit on their hands, like they were attending a government hearing. Mayk “Mike” Naumenko was one of the few established rockers, who had credibility with both the fans and the apparatchiks. He could usually get a new act stage time there, as long as they said the right things. Viktor Tsoi has trouble doing that.

Tsoi is Naumenko’s great, yet-to-be-discovered protégé, but their relationship gets rather more complicated when his wife Natasha (a.k.a. Natalia, the mother of his young child) starts developing feelings for Tsoi. There is a certain degree of openness to their marriage, but her feelings run deeper than mere physical attraction. Likewise, Tsoi feels genuine gratitude and esteem for his mentor, which makes it awkward for everyone. Plus, just being a rock musician in Soviet Russian is difficult in its own right.

Watching Leto (meaning “Summer,” for reasons that are not immediately obvious) in conjunction with Rocket Man, the latest big studio rock bio-pic is an interesting compare and contrast exercise. Sadly, Tsoi’s career would be drastically shorter. While Elton John might have experienced social resistance to his lifestyle choices, Tsoi’s very means of expression were effectively curtailed and he often risked explicit censorship.

Both films also incorporate flights of fanciful fantasy, but they are rather brief exaggerations of the subject’s emotional states in Rocket Man, whereas Leto features long, wildly surreal interludes that even include stylized animated passages. Sometimes, these fantastical visions seem to herald great victories in Tsoi’s career, until Serebrennikov pans to a bystander holding a sign that says: “this never happened.”

Some have compared Serebennikov’s use of black-and-white cinematographer with occasional splashes of dramatic color to Schindler’s List, but films like Absolute Beginners, Purple Rain, and even The Wall are more influential touchstones. Of course, there is a lot of rock music and rock references throughout the film, from the likes of Lou Reed, David Bowie, and somewhat surprisingly T.Rex.

Teo Yoo does a terrific job humanizing Tsoi and he bears a strong likeness to the rock icon (whose father was ethnic Korean). Roma Zver (Bilyk) also nicely sidesteps all those over-shadowed-mentor clichés as the not-as-aloof-as-he-pretends Mike Naumenko. However, Irina Starshenbaum really anchors the film emotionally as the conflicted Natasha.

Early in the film, we see Natasha and her friends sneaking into the Stalingrad Rock Club through and open bathroom window and hiding in stalls to evade the old fuddy-duddy security guard. It is scenes like this that express the spirit of rock & roll better than just about any film since A Hard Day’s Night (Rocket Man is nice too, especially depicting the relationship between Elton John and Bernie Taupin, but it won’t surprise you like Leto). Very highly recommended, Leto opens this Friday (6/7) in New York, and June 21^st in LA, at the Laemmle Ahrya Fine Arts.

Forbidden City: Story of Yanxi Palace

It was the most Googled television show in China—and then it was yanked from iQiyi, the Chinese premium streaming service, because the official state media decided historical dramas were no longer politically acceptable. They phrased it somewhat differently, but that was the bottom line. Frankly, their reasoning seems awfully torturous, because the first two episodes do absolutely nothing to glamorize courtly life. At least viewers will get another chance to see one of the most popular shows in the world, albeit outside of China, when episodes one and two of Story of Yanxi Palace screen today at the Freer Gallery, in conjunction with the exhibition, Empresses of the Forbidden City 1644-1912.

Yanxi Palace is a lot like an 18^th Century Chinese Upstairs Downstairs. Rivalries are fierce amongst the palace servants, but those of the consorts “upstairs” are even bitterer and potentially more dangerous. In fact, the matron of the embroidery maids ruefully notes many of the royal concubines have less freedom and dignity than the young women she oversees.

Wei Yingluo is one of them, but she is more than she appears. She has risked everything to infiltrate the palace to investigate the murder of her sister. She does not understand the ways of the palace yet, but her inherent honesty and resentment of injustice almost spurs her to intercede in a power struggle waged by Royal Consort Gao Ningxin against one of the Empress’s loyal allies. Wei’s righteous vibes also rub many of her embroidery colleagues the wrong way, but they have no idea what they are getting into when they try to bully her. The battle lines are clearly drawn and presumably they will also start to cross class boundaries in later episodes.

Frankly, Wei is an extraordinarily modern heroine, so the official criticism of the show will strike open-minded viewers as the hollow doubletalk that it so obviously is. Wu Jinyan is terrific as the driven, not-the-least-bit submissive, vengeance-seeking antiheroine. She clearly establishes Wei’s persona, with only a mere two episodes. It is easy to see why fans were so hooked on her exploits.

Likewise, Tan Zhuo makes a terrific Joan Collins-esque villainess as the scheming Gao. However, both the virtuous Empress and her arrogant, pig-headed excuse for an Emperor are a rather dull duo so far. At this point, we will not even meet Wei’s prime suspect and potential love interest, who may very well turn out to be one and the same.

The appeal of Yanxi Palace needs little explanation. There is all kinds of scheming and betrayal going on, against a lushly-produced period backdrop. It ought to be more widely available here in America and in China, where it is beloved. Highly recommended for fans of juicy costume dramas, the first two episodes of Story of Yanxi Palace screen this afternoon (6/1) at the Freer.