Biden tells us Zelenskyy refused to believe him when he warned the Ukrainian
President of Putin’s full-scale invasion, but that seems unlikely. After all,
the Ukrainian military volunteers interviewed for this documentary back in 2014
and 2015 all predicted it, sooner rather than later. Some of them have very
personal experiences with Russia’s attempts to undermine their nation, as they
explain in Lesya Kalynska & Ruslan Batytskyi’s documentary, A Rising Fury,
which screens as an “At Home” selection of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Pavlo Pavliv and Svitlana Karabut are trying to
maintain a relationship, but the war in the Donbass region makes it difficult.
His activism started while maintaining the protective barricades at Maidan, but
his military training began earlier, when an older man named Igor, call-sign: “Berkut
(Hawk),” took him under his wing and recruited him for his Airsoft team.
Eventually, Pavliv and Karabut deduce Igor is
actually an undercover Russian operative deliberately targeting marginalized
young Ukrainian men, to turn them against their country. It is chilling example
of organized subversion that ought to make all viewers take note, especially
considering how successful Igor was.
In fact, it is probably the most newsworthy element
of the film, because even though Kalynska & Batytskyi’s coverage of Maidan
and Donbass includes some dramatic footage, it is not radically unlike other
Ukrainian documentaries. However, when taken together with its insights into
Russia’s long-game psy-ops, as represented by Igor, it is quite valuable
indeed.
A Chinese inventor’s new AI implant is a lot like socialism and every
other utopian scheme. The pitch might sound appealing, but as soon as you
experience it first-hand, you realize it is a nightmare. Two lovers are manipulated
into taking the nano-operating system that detects lies, but the reality of its
usage is predictably more likely to split them apart rather than bond them
together in Neysan Sobhani’s Guidance, which releases today on VOD.
Ten
years before the start of the film, there was a catastrophic war that left Han
Maio deeply scarred emotionally. Before the war, she was ambiguously involved
with her childhood sweetheart, Su Jie, the heir to a big tech empire. Now, she
is in a relationship with Mai Zi Xuan, whom she suspects has been unfaithful.
He also has reason to suspect her.
Rather
fatefully, she happened to visit Su Jie the very day Luddite terrorists
launched an attack on his company. Consequently, she spent six hours alone with
him in a safe room. Of course, Mai understands that gave them more than enough
time to revisit old times. As a parting gift, Su Jie gave her two pre-release
doses of NIS, for her and Mai, so they can get a jump on the Brave New World
before everyone else. They literally get red-pilled together, during a romantic
getaway that gets much less romantic once the new computer voices in their
heads call them out each time they bend the truth and point out signs of
deception in their partner.
As
a Chinese language film, Guidance is particularly interesting (and
timely), given it presents a cautionary tale of artificial intelligence
over-reach, at a time when AI surveillance software is identifying Uyghurs to
be rounded-up and incarcerated. Arguably, what the CCP is doing now in Xinjiang
and Tibet is even more dystopian than anything portrayed in the film.
Nevertheless,
Sobhani and co-screenwriters Anders R. Fransson and Daniel Wang vividly
illustrate the perils of the utopian temptation and its unintended
consequences. This is largely character and idea-driven sf, but Sobhani still
offers up an intriguing looking future world.
Asako Adachi is a mother worthy of Greek tragedy. When her daughter is murdered,
she offers a grim choice to the girl’s four friends who saw, but could not
identify her killer. Either spend their lives hunting for the murderer, or
eventually accept a karmic retribution that she approves of. That is pretty heavy
for elementary school students, so it is hardly shocking they all turn out to
be emotionally damaged fifteen years later in Japanese auteur Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s
five-episode Penance, which premieres today on OVID.tv.
For
some reason, the killer deliberately chose Emili from her group of friends,
when he approached them on a pretext. They all had a perfect view of him, yet they
all insist they cannot remember his face. Fifteen years later, their bill of
penance starts to come due, but it is not necessarily Adachi who will collect.
Somehow fate, karma, circumstances, and their own bad choices and character
flaws will precipitate crises for all four survivors. Although they each have
very different personalities and perspectives on that fateful day, they all
contact Adachi as they find themselves facing personal disaster.
In
some ways, shy Sae Kikuchi never fully matured, so she married a profoundly
flawed control-freak husband. Maki Shinohara became a strict martinet high
school teacher, who feels compelled to enforce rules without exception. Akiko
Takano is a borderline hikikomori with family issues that are about to get much
worse. Likewise, Yuka Ogawa has an extreme case of sibling rivalry, as well as a
weird cop fetish, born out of that horrific experience.
What
really makes Penance so intriguing is Kyoko Koizumi’s haunting
performance as Adachi. Instead of a ruthless Medea-like vengeful mother, she is
not without sympathy for the four young women. In fact, she even offers them
help, at times. Yet, her eyes are always obsessively on the prize of just
payback. As a result, Koizumi’s work as Adachi is cool and detached, but
weirdly easy to identify with and root for.
Yu
Aoi, Eiko Koike, Sakura Ando and Chizuru Ikewaki all create radically different
personas as the four grown women, but they are all fully developed, with no
shortage of flaws and weaknesses. Together, they demonstrate the perverse and
lingering effects of trauma. Shinohara’s story is possibly the richest, because
it clearly offers extensive commentaries on the compulsive face-saving and CYA-ing
of the Japanese educational system, which in turn is a proxy for society at
large. Takano’s is probably the weakest, because it is pretty easy to predict
where it goes.
Everybody digs the Phantom of the Opera, right? Especially Italian and Chinese genre filmmakers. I dive into the Giallo and Chinese adaptations of and riffs on the Phantom at Nightfire here.
If
you were around in the early 1980s, you might remember how John McEnroe
and Tatum O’Neal were like J-Lo and A-Rod, but with exponentially more
paparazzi interest. Their marriage didn’t last, but he always maintained a
relationship with tennis. The notoriously outspoken athlete is profiled in
Barney Douglas’s documentary McEnroe, which screens during the 2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
Yep,
McEnroe used to argue calls on the court from time to time. He addresses his
famous outbursts quite frankly in the doc. He is not proud of them, but he explains
the issues he was experiencing at the time. He also rarely let them influence
the next point.
Watching
McEnroe reminds us just how long he has been in the public eye. Children
of the 1980s who only vaguely remember the media circus surrounding his
marriage to O’Neal will find Douglas’s coverage eye-opening. Fortunately, he
also handles the tennis stuff well too. Even if you followed his career at the
time, or if you’ve seen Janus Metz’s thoroughly entertaining Borg vs.McEnroe, you will probably get caught up in the drama of McEnroe’s Wimbledon
battles with Bjorn Borg.
In
a bit of a score, McEnroe’s great rival-turned-friend appears on camera to
discuss their comradeship, despite largely retiring from the tennis world and
public life. O’Neal is absent, but the rest of his family discusses McEnroe,
with pretty much the same candor he brings to the film. (We even see his
current wife, Patty Smythe performing on American Bandstand, which is
another blast from the 1980’s past.)
Nobody could match the moves of Fayard and Harold Nicholas. This short documentary
[inadvertently] proves it. Although their prime Hollywood musical numbers were
often cut out to appease the segregationist South, they eventually received
Kennedy Center Honors and a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. They appeared
in the clip montage movies That’s Entertainment and That’s Dancing,
but strangely, neither selected their most iconic performance. Contemporary
dancers look back in awe at their leaping steps in Michael Shevloff & Paul
Crowder’s Nicholas Brothers: Stormy Weather, which screens during the
2022 Tribeca Film Festival.
Stormy
Weather was
a star vehicle for Lena Horne, so there would be no call for cutting out the
Nicholas Brothers’ big number. Fittingly, they uncorked one of their greatest
filmed performances, culminating with the brother leaping over each other,
landing into splits, as they worked their way down a grand, Busby Berkeley-ish
staircase. Backed by the Cab Calloway Orchestra, they nailed it in one take,
with no rehearsals.
Dancers
like Savion Glover give unnecessary explanations as to why their performance is
so impressive. Frankly, you can totally get it just from watching them.
However, the short film builds up to the contemporary dancers, Les Twins,
choreographing and performing their own tribute to the Nicholas Brothers’ Stormy
Weather performance—which will absolutely not be a recreation, an important
distinction.
Roy Hargrove was considered one of the “Young Lions” because he was anointed
by Wynton Marsalis, but he was one of the first big jazz headliners to
collaborate with hip hopers, at a time when Marsalis was especially critical of
their aesthetic. Hargrove always stayed true to his own musical conceptions,
like all true jazz artists, but he died too soon, again like far too many jazz
greats. Eliane Henri followed the musician during his final international tour,
documenting what would be his last days in Hargrove, which screens as
part of Tribeca at Home.
Clearly,
we see Hargrove is a bit tired from the road during the opening scene.
Eventually, we also learn his health was also ailing. The musician had been on
dialysis for years. His doctors wanted him to get a kidney transplant, but he
was reluctant, for financial and professional reasons, to take the time off. These
scenes in which Hargrove talks about his health problems are eerily powerful,
like the posthumous anti-smoking PSA Yul Brynner recorded when he was dying of
cancer.
Of
course, Hargrove’s music is also virtuosic, especially the beautiful way he
could caress a ballad. However, none of Hargrove’s originals can be heard
throughout the documentary, because his manager, Larry Clothier (who remains in
charge of his music company), would not approve their release. That leads to
one of the great issues with Henri’s doc.
Henri
makes it very clear she and Clothier often clashed during the making of the
film. The way she put together the film, it certainly looks like Hargrove sided
with her in most matters. Arguably, this reflects the concerns that preoccupied
the musician in his final days, but it ends up injecting her into the film. It
is a more than a minor subplot—it is a major part of the doc.
Is
this really the best way to introduce Hargrove to viewers who might be checking
out Hargrove because of the involvement of his friends Questlove and Erykah
Badu? Admittedly, this is a tricky terrain to navigate, but perhaps removing
all traces of his manager might have been a better option.
After years of futility, Brian has finally invented something that works: an
eco-friendly robot. It runs on cabbages (everyone knows electricity mostly
comes from coal, right?). Somehow, he really cracked the artificial
intelligence, because it largely taught itself to talk by reading the
dictionary. The rest of the maturation process will take more time in Jim
Archer’s Brian and Charles, which opens Friday in New York.
When
we first meet Brian, he is an affable fellow, but he tries too hard to be
chipper, to cover for his loneliness. We see several of his precious DIY
inventions, none of which has any prayer of working. His eccentric-looking robot,
Charles Petrescu, appears to be more of the same, but somehow, after a little
rattling about, he comes alive, like Frosty after the first snow.
Of
course, Brian is delighted to finally have company. However, he tries his best
to keep Petrescu out of sight, because he justifiably fears the Welsh village’s
bullying family of thugs will target his creation. Eventually, the equally shy
Hazel meets Petrescu, who duly impresses her. That in turn builds Brian’s
confidence, to the point he can actually pursue a relationship with her.
However, Petrescu’s restlessness soon leads to rebelliousness.
Initially,
Brian and Charles feels almost toxically cute and quirky, but it
develops some substance and soul during its second half. Petrescu does a lot of
goofy robot-shtick, but Brian’s growth is the arc that really lands. This is a
story of empowerment, as well as the obvious surrogate parenting analog.
Never stand in the way of a man in a gas mask, who is on a mission. In this
case, the nature of his mission is somewhat open to interpretation, but his
sense of purpose is admirable, as is true of his creator. After thirty years of
intermittent production, special effects wizard (celebrated for his work on Star
Wars, Jurassic Park, and Starship Troopers) Phil Tippett’s truly
long-awaited stop-motion animated feature Mad God premieres tomorrow on
Shudder.
The
“Assassin” travels via a diving bell down to a weird shadowy world that is
beyond dystopian. His assignment is to leave a briefcase bomb within this enemy
netherworld—and then just wait to die. Plenty have failed before him and he
will probably fail too, judging from the pile of briefcases. Unfortunately, an
ugly fate awaits the Assassin, if and when he is captured by the “Surgeon”
(a.k.a. the “Torturer”).
Visually,
Mad God is an amazing film. The design of the Assassin sort of recalls some
of the militaristic animated sequences in The Wall, yet Tippett’s
attention to hair and fiber is also somewhat akin to the style of This Magnificent Cake. Nevertheless, storytelling remains an aspect of filmmaking—and in
this respect Mad God is a little weak. Things like causal effects, motivations,
characterization, and inter-character relationships are only vaguely implied at
best. Clearly, Mad God is intended first-and-foremost to be a spectacle,
which indeed it is.
The
whole point of Mad God is to tour Tippett’s macabre world, much like
Piotr Kamler’s largely narrative-free Chronopolis. Indeed, it truly
looks amazing. Tippett also instills a sense of forward moment thet brings to
mind Frank Vestiel’s underappreciated Eden Log, which also shared a
similarly Boschian aesthetic.
Hotel Portofino looks lovely, but it is hindered by shallow characterization. Exclusive Epoch Times review up here.
Even though it scattered New Orleans musicians, Katrina never the silenced
the music. Jazz Fest continued on-schedule and the Frenchmen and Bourbon Street
clubs were undamaged and reopened for business. However, Covid closed
everything and canceled all the gigs, including Jazz Fest. At least documentary
filmmakers appreciated what we were missing, because there has been a recent boomlet
of NOLA music docs released in theaters or screening at festivals. This one is
a welcomed addition. Ben Chace profiles four stylistically different—but not
too disparate—veteran New Orleans musicians in Music Pictures: New Orleans,
which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Part
one focuses on Irma Thomas, “The Soul Queen,” a highly fitting and logical
place to start. Unlike Martin Shore’s Take Me to the River New Orleans, which
felt compelled to team Thomas up with a younger artist, Ledisi, Chace finds her
sufficiently interesting on her own, because she is. However, he also gives a
bit of time to her sidemen, particularly drummer Johnny Vidacovich, whom Thomas
is happy to share the spotlight with. Hearing them put together a smoldering and
swinging “My Love Is” is a treat.
Likewise, hearing Thomas casually land an a cappella “Our Day Will Come” and
then carefully caress it while recording a lush studio arrangement will give
you good chills. Honestly, watching Music Pictures will make NOLA music
fans realize she is even cooler than they understood.
Benny
Jones Sr. is now the leader of the Treme Brass Band (who were regularly seen in
HBO’s Treme), but he was also a founder of The Dirty Dozen Brass Band,
who really deserve a documentary of their own, for re-popularizing a funkifying
the NOLA brass band tradition. NOLA brass bands have an infectious rhythmic
drive and as a bass and snare drummer, Jones is one of the best putting the
beat on the street. Of course, the entire band makes their groove swing, but
vocalist/alto-player John “Prince” Gilbert gets the time to tell some of the
band’s reminiscences, like when they opened for the Grateful Dead, in Oakland,
on New Year’s Eve.
Little
Freddie King probably lived the blues as much as anyone, if not more so. Yet,
he survived to find fame in Europe and play regular gigs in New Orleans. He probably
has the film’s most colorful anecdotes, but the important thing is he can still
play—and he is a heck of a snappy dresser. It is definitely King’s segment, but
his drummer-manager “Wacko” Wade Wright gets credit for handling all the
business, as well as a lot of King’s personal, medical logistics.
Appropriately,
Music Pictures concludes with New Orleans’ first family of modern jazz,
the Marsalises, whom Shore dubiously ignored. It was a wise choice, considering
Ellis Marsalis, the NOLA jazz patriarch, passed away due to Covid complications
in 2020. Chace focuses on Marsalis’s first and only album length collaboration
with his son Jason (brother of Wynton and Branford) on vibes (whereas on their
previous recordings together, Jason had played drums).
You Know how Tolstoy wrote unhappy families are always unhappy in their own
unique ways? Well, the Jacobs’ dysfunction is in a league of its own—of
fantastical dimensions. The Jacobs all develop a “gift” that always manifests
itself in a different way. Those powers can be dangerous, but the family would
also be in great peril if they were ever discovered, as they very well might be
in Patrick Lowell, Estelle Bouchard, and Charles-Olivier Michaud’s ten-part
French-Canadian series Premonitions, which premieres tomorrow on MHz.
Clara
Jacob is the matriarch of the Jacob family, but she is definitely a cool
grandmother. She even wears a snappy fedora to prove it. Her power is the
ability to see into the future of anyone she is not related to by blood. That
comes in handy for her chosen line of work: professional gambler. She tends to
know when hold them and when to fold them.
She
has few qualms about wielding her powers, but her son Arnaud considers his “gift”
an intrusive violation. He can read people’s minds and even get in there to
erase memories. Having sworn off using them, he has been plagued by severe
migraines. His sister Lilli on the other hand, constantly employs her powers to
bewitch potential lovers. That seems like a bad idea, but viewers will halfway
sympathize when they see the burn scars on her back.
As
a teen, Lilli was thrown into a bonfire by a shadowy member of a witch-hunting
cult dedicated to killing so-called “aberrations” like the Jacobs.
Unfortunately, one of the last survviors of the brethren will try to use her
latest “lover” to get to the Jacobs. Arnaud tried to wipe Pascal Derapse’s
memories of Lilli, but being out of practice, he might have erased too much and
maybe even left a mental connection to himself behind.
Premonitions
is
an unusual and addictive take on the themes of superhero franchises like The
X-Men and Heroes. Although we root for the Jacobs, the plain truth is
Derapse is a victim of the family several times over. First Lilli’s enchantment
drives him into a state of psychotic jealousy and then Arnaud really does a
number on his head. Yet, when the vicious brotherhood enters the picture, Premonitions
even takes on some elements of the horror genre (much more so than Firestarter).
Regardless,
Pascale Bussieres is a terrific lead as the steely Clara. She also has some
keenly compelling and deeply conflicted chemistry with her ex, Jules Samson,
who remains a close friend of Arnaud’s. Nicely played by Benoit Gouin, Samson provides
sympathetic human perspective on the chaos that unfolds.
Marc
Messier is creepy as heck as William Putnam, the aberration-hunter, while Eric
Bruneau is spectacularly unhinged as the brain-scrambled Derapse. Likewise,
Mikhail Ahooja is impressively squirrely playing Arnaud, especially when under
the influence of Derapse.
We need to get horror film directors some sort of group subscription to
Discovery+, because they need to start developing healthier relationships with
food. You would think there would be plenty of healthy eating in this film, because
Simi’s Aunt Claudia is a nutritionist, but the ominous countdown to Easter dinner
clearly implies something awful will be happening in screenwriter-director Peter
Hengl’s Family Dinner, which screens during this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.
Tired
of getting bullied over her weight, Simi invited herself to Aunt Claudia’s rural
Austrian farm over Easter break, in hopes she could get some personal
weight-loss mentoring. The thing is, Claudia (an aunt by a marriage-now-divorced)
is not as welcoming as Simi hoped—but her new husband Stefan is weirdly
hospitable. Her cousin Filipp is probably downright hostile, but he isn’t
getting along so well with his mother and Stefan either.
Despite
some initial misgivings, Aunt Claudia agrees to help Simi, but her rigorous
program borders on the draconian. It seems physically unhealthy and the mind
games grow increasingly sinister. On the other hand, Stefan finds Simi more
useful than Filipp during a hunting trip, so she has that positive
reinforcement going for her.
There
is a lot of slow-boiling in Family Dinner, but it is pretty clear what
is it all heading towards. Not to be spoilery, but if you really think about the
title, it is a dead giveaway. Unfortunately, Hengl expects the climax will be
so shocking, it will make up for the slowness of the build and the lack of
significant plot points.
Early 1991 was an opportune time to be a film student in the Baltics, because
history was exploding daily. It was also a dangerous time for the same reason.
Jazis generally supports Latvian independence from their Soviet occupiers, but
he has yet to mature to the point he can fully appreciate the gravity of the
moment in Viesturs Kairiss’s January, which screens during this year’s
Tribeca Film Festival.
Jazis
wants to be the next Tarkovsky, which would ordinarily alarm most parents, but
his anti-Communist mother is fine with it, along as he gets a draft deferral
from his film school. The last thing she wants is to have her son in the Soviet
army, potentially in harm’s way, while putting down democratic opposition
movements. His father also basically agrees, even though he is a Party member. Unfortunately,
Jazis’s drive and talent level will complicate matters.
For
a while, his affair with Anna, a pretty fellow film student awakens some
passion in him. However, when she falls under the influence of a famous
filmmaker, Jazis spirals into depression and apathy. Yet, maybe the Soviet
military’s attempts to stifle Baltic activism for independence might awaken him
from his lethargy.
Kairiss
skillfully uses a textured lo-fi style (including Super8), integrated with genuine
historical archival footage, to recreate the tenor of the early 1990s in the
Baltics quite vividly and evocatively. You really get a sense of the tension
and potential violence that was literally hinging in the air. In one telling
moments, Jazis asks an elderly woman if she was scared to deliver the food she
baked for demonstrators. “No, I’ve been waiting 50 years for this,” she tells
him.
January
is
highly effective time capsule and mood piece, but Jazis is so moody and sulky,
we hardly get a sense of any character there within him. Arguably, many of the
minor figures, like Jazis’s parents, resonate more than he and his film school-mates.
In our world, there is already plenty of pressure on geeky middle school
kids trying to ask someone out. In this alternate 1990s, Wyrm Whitner could be
held back if he doesn’t get to first base fast. His electronic monitoring
collar will know whether he lands that first kiss or not. Of course, his weird
family drama is hardly helpful in screenwriter-director Christopher Winterbauer’s
eccentric coming-of-age fantasy, Wyrm, which releases today on VOD and in
theaters.
Whitner’s
brother Dylan was the jock-hero of his high school, but he wasn’t such a great
brother, or even much of a person. Nevertheless, Wyrm doggedly records audio
tributes for Dylan’s one-year memorial, perhaps as an excuse for the embarrassing
collar obviously still affixed around his neck. Unfortunately, his older sister
Myrcella is not helping, even though she hangs out with Izzy, the new girl
across the street. Instead, she is more interested in earning “credit” with the
Norwegian exchange student and writing poison pen letters to their classmates.
Poor
Wyrm is pretty much on his own, because neither of his parents are much of a
presence in their lives anymore. Instead, their slacker Uncle Chet and his
immigrant girlfriend Flor handle most of the parental duties. Maybe they aren’t
perfect, but at least they are trying.
Wyrm
works
surprisingly well because Winterbauer maintains the logic of the “No Child Left
Alone” system, while not boring us with the deep dive details. Admittedly, the
obsession with preteens’ sexual development feels a little creepy, but the Last-American-Virgin-style
drama is weirdly compelling. Perhaps inadvertently, it also maybe argues how
mandates can be counter-productive. (It is also worth noting the actual “No
Child Left Behind” program was not designed to put pressure on kids. It was
intended to measure the effectiveness of their teachers, who started stressing
their kids out to perform well, just to cover their butts, so riffing on its
name in this context really isn’t fair.)
At this point, we really shouldn’t accept newspaper reports as reliable
primary sources. The Washington Post’s embarrassing controversies
regarding stealth edits and misleading corrections are nothing new. Their
imploding newsroom could totally relate to the poisoned-pen scribes at Le
Corsaire-Satan. They traffic in gossip and sell their reviewers’ critical
judgement to the highest bidder. The editor, Etienne Lousteau definitely shapes
its stories to fit his preconceived “narratives,” until someone pays him to
slant them differently. That is just fine with Lucien de Rubempre, until he
finally believes he can attain the noble stature he believes is his birthright in
Xavier Giannoli’s Balzac’s adaptation, Lost Illusions, which opens
tomorrow in New York.
When
people want to annoy de Rumpre, they call him Chardon, because that is
technically his name and the name of his absent father, who ruined his
blue-blooded mother. Like it or not, he is a commoner, so he should not be seen
in compromising situations with Louise de Bargeton, the artistic patron for his
poetry. Nevertheless, she brings him to Paris, risking a scandal that her older
admirer, the Baron du Chatelet manages to suppress, at de Rumpre’s expense.
He
was supposed to slink home to the provinces in disgrace. Instead, de Rumpre
starts writing for Lousteau’s rabble-rousing anti-monarchist newspaper, quickly
adapting to its advertorial ways. Yet, the corrupted poet cannot resist the
temptation of vague promises to restore his family’s lost title.
While much of what transpires is tragic, the caustic characters and their unrestrained
cynicism makes the film play more like a razor-sharp satire. Obviously, the
portrayal of the media as deliberate misinformation peddlers could not be timelier.
Given it was culled from Balzac’s The Human Comedy novel-cycle, Lost
Illusions also clearly establishes the long-standing tradition mercenary
journalistic ethics.
Tony Hillerman was a decorated WWII vet who largely popularized Southwest westerns. Nice to see a well-produced new take on his hardnosed Lt. Joe Leaphorn. EPOCH TIMES review of DARK WINDS now up here.
Apparently, this small island community has brought New England-style weirdness to a
Florida key. It would seem even cults built around Lovecraftian horror find the
Florida economy more inviting. Marie Aldrich’s movie star mother made it clear
she never wanted to return, not even to be buried. That is why the daughter was
so shocked when her mother’s will stipulated she be laid to rest in the island’s
cemetery. It also makes her especially annoyed when she is summoned to the
tourist trap island, by the news her mother’s grave was desecrated. Of course,
someone or something wants to lure her there in Mickey Keating’s Offseason,
which premieres Friday on Shudder.
When
Aldrich arrives with George Darrow, her close-to-being ex, the groundskeeper is
nowhere to be found. The locals are not exactly friendly either. Darrow is
understandably eager to leave the island before the drawbridge closes (or
rather opens) for the duration of the offseason. However, a strange force keeps
steering them into dead-ends.
Keating
is very definitely an up-and-down filmmaker, but Offseason might his
most successful film yet, in terms of crafting mood and atmosphere, even more
so than Psychopaths and Darling. It is also probably his most
polished film, so far.
There
is definitely a lot of Shadow Over Innsmouth vibes going on. The
flashbacks are mostly padding, but the film definitely mines the tight little
island setting for maximum impact. Production designer Sabrena Allen-Biron
notably contributes some memorably eerie analog sets and trappings that really
give the film a distinctive look and texture.
The doughy, pasty-white ninjas of Indiana are about to wage an all-out war.
Who will lose? Eventually everyone, but good taste and dignity will be the
first casualties. Rex isn’t much of a ninja, but he will have to cowboy up if
he wants to save the girl and stop the evil puppy-eating cannibal ninja cult in
writer-director-everything-else Ryan Harrison’s Ninja Badass, which
opens Friday in Los Angeles.
Rex
is a screw-up, who is completely oblivious to his ineptitude. Nevertheless,
when Big Twitty, the leader of the local chapter of the Ninja VIP Super Club,
kidnaps the attractive woman from the pet store (along with their stock of
puppies), Rex decides to “rescue” her back. Fortunately, Haskell, a relatively
law-abiding ninja, agrees to tutor him, for revenge, after Big Twitty tears his
arm off.
Of
course, neither Rex or Haskell can walk and chew gum at the same time. However,
Big Twitty’s estranged daughter Jojo is a match for her father. She has no
illusions regarding Rex’s idiocy and incompetence, but she still reluctantly
teams up with him.
Basically,
Ninja Badass was made for people who find Troma movies too sophisticated
and pretentious. It is chocked full of crude gore and deliberately cheesy
superimposed special effects—including puppies going into the blender.
Seriously, it makes The Greasy Strangler look like a drily witty Noel
Coward comedy.
There
is little point in submitting Ninja Badass to an in-depth critical
analysis. It is meant to be ridiculous and shocking, which it is. However, a
film like this running over one hundred minutes is just excessive. Honestly,
after one hour, we totally get the joke and then some.
This Korean cop thriller is based on a Japanese novel and tries for some serious old
school Infernal Affairs-style Hong Kong vibes. For third-generation
cop, Choi Min-jae, the line between right and wrong is straight as an arrow and
clearly demarcated. For his new boss, Park Kang-joon, that line is wavy and
fuzzy, but fortunately he always has an innate sense of where it is. Choi is
not so sure, which makes his new assignment rather tricky in Lee Kyoo-man’s The
Policeman’s Lineage, which releases today digitally.
Choi
just blew a prosecution on the stand, because he would not lie or dissemble
regarding the rough treatment of the accused. He would not appear to be a good
candidate for Kang’s team on paper, but Internal Affairs transfers him, to serve
as their undercover source anyway. They know Kang will take Choi, because he
has a connection to the naïve cop’s father.
It
turns out the death of Choi’s father remains surrounded in rumors and innuendos.
Both Kang and AI will try to play him, by promising to reveal all. However, as Choi
fils pursues his investigation of Kang, he finds plenty of controversy and
departmental politics, but not the smoking guns he expected.
Lineage
does
not quite rank with the best of Korean thrillers, but for the most part, it is respectably
hardboiled and entertainingly cynical. Bae Young-ik’s adaptation of Joh Sasaki’s
novel tries a little too hard to over-complicate the narrative and all the
behind-the-scenes secret cabal maneuvering sometimes feels a little too pat and
forced.
What happens when the human world encounters that of mystical Diwata folk
spirits? Human authorities naturally try to regulate them and their magic out
of existence. Yet, for one mortal, Diwata magic might hold the only hope for
treating his mysterious ailment in After Lambana, written by Eliza
Victoria and illustrated by Mervin Malonzo, which goes on-sale today.
Conrad
Mendoza de Luna does not know it yet, but there is a significant connection
between him and Ignacio. He just knows him as a grateful IT client, who might
have sources who might provide underground medication for the so-called “Rose”
disease, wherein physical flowers start laying roots, until they bloom through
the skin. It is not always fatal, but de Luna’s is located right over his
heart.
Magic
diseases seem to demand magic cures, but any form of spellcasting is now
illegal now that the gateway to the Diwata realm of Lambana has been forcibly
closed. Those who were in the mortal world at the time must now live in
permanent exile. De Luna will meet several, while following Ignacio through the
back alleys and midnight markets of Metro Manila.
After
Lambana starts
in a noir vibe, but it slowly unfolds into folk-inspired fantasy. Victoria’s
intriguing world-building never feels like mere exposition, because it is so
richly archetypal, and yet grounded in the various traditions found throughout
the Philippines. She convincingly depicts the culture clash between the
materialist mortal world and the magical Diwata realm. It is exactly the sort
of vision of an intersection of the human and the fantastical that the film Bright
should have realized better (but didn’t).
Rondo Hatton honorably served his country in WWI, but his name became
synonymous with villains and monsters. Due to his acromegaly, his was often
cast as hulking brutes, including “The Creeper,” in a few late classic
Universal Monster movies. The pathos of Hatton’s life fascinated several young
fannish future filmmakers, including Robert A. Burns, who is best known as the
art director of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Hills
Have Eyes. Joe O’Connell tells both their stories in the dramatic-hybrid
documentary Rondo and Bob, which releases tomorrow on VOD.
Although
Hatton’s acromegaly started manifesting after he was admitted to a field
hospital, it was unrelated to the mustard gas attack he had been caught in. Eventually,
his first wife left him, but he went back to his work as a Tampa reporter. He
met his second wife while on assignment at a local society function. She would
have been the obvious choice to be a movie star, but the studio saw Hatton as a
possible replacement for Boris Karloff.
In
addition to being one of the foremost authorities on Hatton, Burns was also the
guy who put all the creepy stuff in Chainsaw Massacre, like the bone
furniture and the chicken in the birdcage. Unlike Hatton, he was apparently somewhat
standoffish around people. One family member diagnosed on the spectrum
speculates Burns might have been too. Regardless, O’Connell’s subjects contrast
greatly, with one looking menacing, but being a wonderful person inside, while
the other looked like anyone else, but was hard to get to know.
As
a result, the Hatton segments are dramatically more compelling. Yet, probably
more time is devoted to Burns, because there is more available material (including
his unreleased proto-found footage microbudget horror film, Scream Test).
Unfortunately, that makes the film feel somewhat unbalanced. We want to spend
more time with Hatton and his second wife, Mabel Housh, because O’Connell and
his cast humanize them so compellingly.
You would think film and television writers would often "rip-from-the-headlines" reference some of
the biggest stories of late 1980s and early 1990s, like say the First Gulf War,
the Fall of the Berlin Wall, and the dissolution of the Soviet Bloc. Yet, you
will find precious few dramas addressing the Tiananmen Square Massacre, despite
audiences’ familiarity of the iconic images of Tank Man and the Goddess of
Democracy statue. It is slim pickings, but the Canadian X-Files knock-off
PSI Factor joined MacGyver and Touched by an Angel, by
producing the Tiananmen-themed episode “Old Wounds” (S3E13), which currently
streams on multiple sites.
Honestly,
this show wasn’t very good, but the premise of “Old Wounds” is somewhat
interesting. Matt Prager’s paranormal investigative team has been summoned to look
into an incident at a tech firm with shady government connections. Adia Carling
was testing an immersive VR game when she suffered real world injuries during
the in-game battle. Weirder still, wounds spontaneously healed.
The
team quickly sleuths out Carling is not from Hong Kong. She is, in fact, an illegal
alien living under an assumed name, who was imprisoned and tortured in China
for her role in the Democracy protests. Somehow, the VR game reopened the old wounds
she suffered while in custody, including the horrific burning of her
left arm. She has the psychic powers to physically heal them, but the team’s
good Dr. Anton Hendricks must hypnotize her, to help her heal her emotional
wounds.
Ideally,
one would prefer to see a serious subject like the Tiananmen Square Massacre
addressed in a more reflective, less exploitative manner, but there are not a lot
of examples out there. Anyone who knows of a Tiananmen Square-themed TV episode,
beyond this MacGyver, or Angel, please shoot me an email. Writers
Jim Purdy & Paula J. Smith treatment of the Massacre and the subsequent
brutal crackdown are not exactly inspired, but director Luc Chalifour manages
to convey the cruelty of CCP torture techniques, while adhering to commercial
broadcast standards.
As a result of the CCP’s draconian “National Security” Law, Hong Kong
residents can no longer safely watch this Frontline documentary,
commemorate the events it chronicles, or search on-line for the image it focuses
on. We must remember for them. In fact, the image of the lone man standing in
front of a column of tanks has become an iconic image of courageous defiance in
the face of overwhelming state oppression. Writer-producer-director Antony
Thomas investigates who he was and how the crackdown on the 1989 democracy protests
drove him to do what he did in Frontline: The Tank Man, which is
available on-line.
Unlike
other vital Tiananmen Massacre documentaries (like Tiananmen: The People vs.The Party and Moving the Mountain), Tank Man largely focuses
on events outside the Square, but that rather makes sense, considering the Tank
Man was blocking tanks on the Boulevard leading out of the Square. In fact, one
of the eye-opening aspects of Thomas’s report is the carnage that resulted when
the PLA strafed apartment buildings around Muxidi Bridge with combat-grade ammunition.
Consequently,
Thomas’s talking heads suggest the majority of killings happened at barricades
set up by average working-class citizens to protect the students in the Square.
Yet, the most senseless murders were those of groups of parents mowed down by
the PLA, who had come to the Square desperate to find their children.
Thomas
and company fully explain the circumstances surrounding the historic film of
Tank Man and how determined the state security apparatus was to prevent it
airing in the international media. They also establish how thoroughly blocked
all images of the protests are on the Chinese internet—as well as the
culpability of Western tech firms like Microsoft, Cisco, and Yahoo in aiding
and abetting the CCP’s censorship.
Thomas
also spends a good deal of time examining the vast economic disparities between
the urban super-rich and the rural underclass. They make valid points regarding
the inequality of China’s economic growth, which has been used to justify the
Party’s ironclad grip on power post-Massacre, but it sort of distracts from sheer
courage and abject horror of the events of 1989.
Do not call Kazem by his name. He prefers the honorific “Atabai” (sort of
like “esquire,” but with more clout) bestowed upon him by his provincial Northwestern
ethnic Azerbaijani hometown. The village holds a lot of painful history for him,
especially the arranged marriage of Kazem’s younger sister, which ended badly—for
her and everyone related to her. Years have passed, but the entire family still
carries guilt from her suicide, but nobody more so than their Atabai. After an
extended absence he returns to reluctantly face his tragic past in Niki Karimi’s
Atabai, opening today in New York.
Kazem
has mixed feelings about being home, but he is happy to see his nephew Aydin.
He has real affection for the dopey teen, but we soon figure out the
well-respected Atabai is also controlling his life, as a way to get back at his
sister’s husband. Frankly, Kazem’s relationship with his own aging father is
nearly as fraught with complications and baggage.
The
returning prodigal once loved and lost during his college years—and still
carries the emotional scars. The last thing he wants from his homecoming would
be a wife, despite some rather mercenary interest. Yet, a woman with her own
tragic reasons to avoid intimacy stirs some long dormant feelings in him.
Atabai
is
a messy but heartfelt film about the long-term effects of grief and trauma. It
is easy to identify with Kazem’s family, even though the particulars of their
circumstances are very much Iranian—starting with the arranged marriage of his
sister, at the distressingly youthful age of fifteen. Arguably, Kazem also gets
away with physically lashing out in rage more than he would in Western
countries. Being an Atabai has its advantages, but everyone understands where
that anger and pain is coming from.
Faster-than-light travel doesn’t change people. It just alters the way they experience of time.
That makes it quite tragic for those who don’t want to go, like the poor
shipman involuntarily pressed into service in L. Ron Hubbard’s To the Stars (from
when he was still readable and not yet messianic). Hundreds of years will pass on
that poor soul’s home before he can return, but for Jack Lambert, only twenty
years have passed on Earth since his teenaged girlfriend left for the space
colonies. Now, she is back and she hasn’t aged a day in Erwann Marshall’s The
Time Capsule, which releases tomorrow on-demand.
Lambert
just suffered through the embarrassing implosion of his senate campaign, so he
and his wife Maggie have come to his dad’s old lake house to regroup. They also
need to sell the place, to help pay down his campaign debts. His old pal
Patrice will help with the handywork. The place holds a lot of memories for
Lambert, so he assumes he is seeing things when he spies his old flame Elise,
who doesn’t look a day older than he remembers her.
It
turns out, after ten years of suspended animation space flight, the colony was still
behind schedule, so they immediately sent Elise and her father back to Earth,
on another 10-year flight. Elise remembers seeing teenaged Lambert in what only
feels like a few weeks prior, but now he is a very married, disappointing politician.
Of course, he never got over her. In fact, it was his controlling father who
arranged for their place in the colony. The adult version of Lambert knows he
cannot just pick-up with Elise (even though the film repeatedly tells us she is
eighteen, so nobody freaks out)—but there is still that old chemistry between
them.
Marshall
and co-screenwriter Chad Fifer cleverly use Relativity as their Macguffin and
skillfully skirt the potential pitfalls (there are no inappropriate moments to
gross-out the overly sensitive). It is actually a really smart way build a
character-driven story atop a science fiction premise. They also shrewdly keep Lambert’s
platform sufficiently vague, so as not to needless alienate viewers.
Today, you can find the name “Genghis Khan” everywhere throughout modern
Mongolia. He sits magnificently astride the monumental equestrian statue
erected in 2008, which has quickly become one of the nation’s top-drawing (and
literally biggest) tourist attractions. Yet, during its years as satellite-state
of the Soviet Union, Genghis Khan was demonized in propaganda and banished from
public discourse. A lot of good change came quickly to Mongolia, but the nation
is still struggling to process subsequent social upheavals. Director-cinematographer-co-producer
Robert H. Lieberman chronicles Mongolia’s glorious history and examines its future
challenges in Echoes of Empire: Beyond Genghis Khan, which opens in
select theaters this Friday.
Ironically,
everything bad you might think about Genghis Khan (a.k.a. Temujin) is largely
the result of Communist disinformation. Yes, he was a conqueror of kingdoms,
whose empire spanned three times the territory Alexander the Great controlled
at his peak. However, as he incorporated new people into his empire, he extended
to them rights they never had. Arguably, Genghis Khan “invented” the right of
religious liberty, as we know it today. He also forbade the kidnapping of women
and established an early form of diplomatic immunity.
Yet, the Communist regime jealousy suppressed celebration of the Mongolian
national hero. (For comparable hypotheticals of a nation erasing its cultural-historical
legacy, imagine the United Kingdom trying to cancel King Arthur, or America
forbidding mention of George Washington, neither of which quite captures the
scope of the Communist Party’s negation of Genghis Khan.)
One
historical episode explained in the film that has particular resonance for our
world today came relatively early in Genghis Khan’s career of conquest, when
the Uyghur people sent an emissary, inviting his invasion of their lands, in
order to liberate them from their oppressors. It came as a surprise to the Mongol
leader, but he obliged.
The
film also archly observes how many commissars from the early Communist era met
suspiciously premature demises—and openly invites the audience to make the
obvious conclusions. Even more fundamentally, when watching Lieberman’s film, viewers
will be immediately struck but the sensitive geographic position Mongolia
occupies, as a functioning democracy nestled between China and Russia.
It
is pretty clear Mongolia is a country Americans should be thinking about much
more than we are. Although Mongolians have pretty forcefully repudiated the
Twentieth Century Communist era (the 130-foot Genghis Khan memorial says so,
loud and clear), they still have to maintain cordial relations with Russia.
They also have considerable cultural ties, having adopted Russian tastes in
opera and ballet, to a surprising extent, as Lieberman and company vividly
illustrate.
Furthermore,
Americans can well relate to Mongolia’s current struggles with increased
urbanization and a widening gap between the city life of Ulaanbaatar (UB) and
the traditional way of life on the steppe. Lieberman takes viewers into the
gers (or yurts) of traditional herders, which look warm and cozy on the steppe.
However, he also illustrates the downsides to coal-heated ger-living in the urban
tent-cities of nomads who have been recently force to relocate to UB.
Yes, all parents are embarrassing, but Nikuko is in a league of her own. Yet,
her daughter Kikuko never judges her too harshly, because she understands her
better than even her mother realizes. Life dealt Nikuko a lot of
disappointments, but at least she has her daughter in Ayumu Watanabe’s Fortune
Favors Lady Nikuko, from Studio 4ºC and GKIDS, which screens nationwide
tonight (and opens Friday in select theaters).
Big-hearted
and big-boned Nikuko has a long history of getting involved with the wrong men,
who inevitably took advantage of her. The last was arguably the best of the bad
lot, so Kikuko sort of understood when her mother dragged her to his sleeping
fishing village-hometown, afraid he had fled there to take his own life. They
never found him, but they decided to stay and make a home there.
Nikuko
works for the gruff but protective Sassan at his seafood grill and they rent
his ramshackle houseboat. Boys are not really a factor yet in tomboyish Kikuko’s
life, but she is reasonably friendly with her fellow girls at school. In fact, she
is courted by two basketball-playing cliques, because of her height, but she is
uncomfortable committing to either side. However, her anxiety is probably
really coming from a fear Nikuko will uproot them again.
Despite
being a slice-of-life story (think of as a Japanese Beaches, but with
less weepy melodrama), Lady Nikuko features some wonderfully vivid
animation. The coastal village and surrounding environment sparkle on-screen
quite invitingly. (It is easy to believe this came from the same animation house
that brought us Tekkonkinkreet.) Ironically, there is a far more visual
dazzle in this film than Watanabe’s more fantastical Children of the Sea.
David Cronenberg is catching the Greek Weird Wave, filming his latest in the
ancient but economically depressed nation. Aesthetically, they are perfect for
each other. Body horror meets subversive, extreme anti-social behavior. Yet, according
to Cronenberg’s vision of the future, both the body and society are evolving,
but to what is yet to be determined in Cronenberg’s Crimes of the Future,
not the one from 1970, the entirely new and unrelated one that opens this Friday
in New York.
It
is not exactly clear how far into the future this film takes us, or where, but
the environment is vaguely Mediterranean, for obvious reasons. Cronenberg doesn’t
exactly pander to viewers during the prologue, in which a mother smothers to
death her son, for eating the plastic waste basket.
Those
are definitely Weird Wave vibes. Saul Tenser delivers the body horror, but he
calls it art. For years, his body has spontaneously generated new mutant organs,
which his partner Caprice surgically removes during their performance art
programs. Each organ is considered a work of art that the newly formed National
Organ Registry duly records. Not surprisingly, the Registry’s two employees,
Whippet and Timlin, are among Tenser’s biggest fans.
Lang
Dotrice also closely follows Tenser’s work. In fact, he offers Tenser a concept
for his next show: autopsying Dotrice’s son, Brecken, who was killed at the
start of the film. Dotrice leads a mysterious cult that has genetically modified
themselves, so they can only consume plastic waste. Brecken was the first of
their progeny to naturally develop their ability to digest plastic, but he
apparently creeped out his unevolved-human mother.
Cronenberg
definitely brings the gross and the weird, but the story and characters are a
bit sketchy. This is an idea film and a mood piece rather than an exercise in
story-telling to hold viewers rapt. However, the mood is pretty darned moody. Even
though this is the future, everything looks dark, decaying, and fetid, like it
could be part of a shared world with Naked Lunch, while the strange
surgical and therapeutic devices look like they were inspired by the designs of
H.R. Giger.
Viggo
Mortensen and Lea Seydoux are perfectly cast and do indeed create an intriguing
relationship dynamic as Tenser and Caprice. Cronenberg raises some challenging
questions about the roles they both play in creating art, particularly with
regards to the nature of authorship and intentionality.
Unfortunately,
characters like the two mechanics from a shadowy Vogt-like multinational
company, who are constantly servicing Tenser’s feeding chair and pain-relieving
beds could have stumbled out of dozens of uninspired dystopian films. (Frankly,
the sort of bring to mind the Super Mario Brothers movie, which is not a
good thing.) Beyond Tenser and Caprice, the most interesting character might be
Det. Cope of the new vice squad, who is trying to anticipate future crimes
against the body. Welket Bungue portrays his hardboiledness with subtlety not found
anywhere else in the film.
