VIFF ’15: Kaili Blues

Chen Sheng is a much better uncle to his beloved nephew than his half-brother Crazy Face is a father to young Weiwei. Chen is also a medical doctor and a published poet, yet he is the one with a criminal record. Life is complicated for Chen, but he will have the opportunity reflect on his choices in proper Proustian fashion during the course of Bi Gan’s Kaili Blues (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Vancouver International Film Festival.

Chen bought into a medical practice established by the older Guang Lian in southeastern Kaili City. Except for Crazy Face, it is mostly quiet there, but that suits him fine. He tries to supply Weiwei with the things his father cannot or will not provide, so it greatly concerns him to hear Crazy Face may have sold the boy. Chen sets out after Weiwei, but a detour through provincial Dangmai holds unexpected significance. Time seems to warp for the medical poet, as he encounters a teenager who seems to be the Weiwei of the future and a hairdresser who is the spitting image of his late wife, Zhang Xi.

Blues is not exactly a plot driven film—and what narrative there is unfolds rather elliptically. However, as a mood piece it is pretty potent stuff. It is also visually quite striking, especially the Rope-like centerpiece sequence, in which the camera follows Chen and Yangyang, the older Weiwei’s sort of girlfriend as they walk throughout nearly every inch of the city and traverse back and forth across the river in a single, unbroken forty minute take. It is a technically accomplished bit of filmmaking, but it really works because Dangmai and the surrounding lush, verdant mountains are so wildly cinematic.

Yes, it looks great, but Chen Yongzhong’s scrupulously restrained performance is surprisingly powerful, in a hushed kind of way. He completely convinces us this is a man with an unresolved past. Though she only appears briefly, Liu Linyan is exquisitely arresting and vulnerable as the woman resembling Zhang Xi. Guo Yue is also terrific as Yangyang, subtly conveying her dissatisfaction and uncertainty for the future.

In most respects, Blues is a decidedly nonpolitical film, but occasional references to the disappearing Miao culture (that of the ethnic minority to which Bi belongs) peek through here and there. This is absolutely not a film for those who hold conventional tastes. Frankly, Bi does not want their patronage, so he is not about to compromise for their sake. The results can be glacial at times, but Wang Tianxing’s cinematography is lovely to look at and there is a real emotional center to it all. Recommended for admirers of slow cinema, Kaili Blues screens Sunday (9/27) and Wednesday (9/30), as part of this year’s VIFF.

VEFFNY ’15: Alone (Solo)

Tomas’ blind son Lucas has what they used to call the shine, so he ought to pay more attention to the lad. Unfortunately, he is not home enough to hear his spooky premonitions. Instead, he is too busy plotting a dodgy scheme that will give him enough money to abscond from his family with his wife’s troubled younger sister. However, you do not need second sight to predict bad things for the half-baked plan he hatches in José Ramon Novoa’s Alone (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Tomas is a junior military officer assigned to the docks. As a result, he knows full well his Colonel is up to his neck in drug trafficking. He is less than thrilled when the Colonel’s people browbeat him into storing a big shipment on his docks, but refusal would hurt his chance for promotion. However, all that illicit merchandise gives him ideas when his sister-in-law Glenda blows back into town. There is a good reason why his wife Teresa is less than thrilled by her return. Clearly, she and Tomas were once carrying on quite the torrid affair.

Instead of just picking up where they left off, Tomas would like to start a new life with Glenda. To kick it off in style, Tomas plans to steal the Colonel’s shipment and make his own deal with Yusef, the distributor. Conveniently, Tomas is uniquely well positioned to assemble all the necessary paperwork to facilitate the shipping and handling of a big barrel full of drugs. Yet, he seems to lack the instinct necessary to really pull off a score like this.

Alone might sound like your garden variety angsty crime drama, but its third act twist is extraordinarily twisted. There is also a long, tripped out hallucinatory centerpiece sequence that has to be seen to be believed. This is not the film you think you are settling in for, not by a long shot. Still, it pointedly illustrates just how severe karma can be to those who plan to abandon their spouses and children. We’re talking major blowback here.

Laureano Olivares is appropriately beefy and weirdly naïve as Tomas. He is human and fallible enough to maintain our interest, but also sufficiently self-centered and impulsive to prevent his woes from causing viewers any serious concern. On the other hand, it is hard to get Samantha Dagnino’s Glenda as a fatal femme fatale, especially given her self-destructive behavior. However, as Lucas, Wilson A. Peña Nelo exhibits a haunting presence that deserved more screen time.

At times, Alone is betrayed by its budget constraints, but when Ramon Novoa drops his big climatic shoe, it leaves a mark. It is the sort of film that leaves the audience muttering well after the screening. Indeed, it is completely its own film. Worth seeing for its grubby audacity, Alone screens this Saturday night (9/26) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

VEFFNY ’15: Seal of Confession

Corrupt politicians and petroleum interests have conspired to kill a remote community of indigenous Venezuelans. It sure is food for thought the next time Joe Kennedy offers you some free heating oil. Regardless, a renegade cop and a priest taking confession will learn the truth about the nefarious business, but their responses will be drastically different in Henry Rivero’s Seal of Confession (trailer here), which was scheduled to screen as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York, but now appears to have been dropped.

Be that as it may, Humberto Restrepo has more than enough anger management issues to get him suspended. If they also knew he had regular visions of his dead copper father that would probably spell the end of his career. Technically, his career on the force is already kaput, but that is because he accepted an off-the-books, deep cover assignment infiltrating a group of paramilitary vigilantes, who also do the bidding of the crooked Sen. Ruiz.

However, for the real heavy lifting, Ruiz sends in Enrique, the hitman’s hitman. On a lark, the contract killer wanders into the confessional of Ruiz’s brother, Father Juan. He has plenty to confess, but his confession is probably not sincere. Despite the title, he will not leave Father Juan to wrestle with his vows, like Montgomery Clift in I Confess. If anyone is taking down the Senator, it will be Restrepo, or possibly the guilt-wracked, emotionally imploding politician himself.

Let’s be frank, Seal is just okay at best. Rivero introduces scores of extraneous characters, whom he awkwardly marches in and out of the narrative. Nor is it ever clear how “real” we should consider the scenes with Restrepo and his father’s ghost. However, Luigi Sciamanna is legitimately terrific as Sen. Ruiz and that sort of remorseful, angst-ridden villain is a relatively original character type.

Jorge Cao also plays Father Juan with refreshing dignity and looks like a convincing Ruiz sibling. Marlon Moreno’s cold-blooded vibe works well enough for the ruthless Enrique, but poor Juan Pablo Raba seems to be hiding in Restrepo’s rum bottles. He is way too sullen and reserved for a hardboiled leading role.

So yes, Seal is a real hodge-podge of a film. Rivero largely loses control of the proceedings, but at least he maintains a consistently dark and cynical tone. Sciamanna and Cao also give us something to watch, even when everything around them hardly makes any sense. It’s a head-shaker at times, which maybe explains why it disappeared from the line-up of the this year's Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Pay the Ghost: Nic Cage Trick-or-Treats

Who would have known a Pagan Irish ghost could carry such a grudge? Annie Sawquin was done wrong during the days of Old New York, so her vengeful spirit is not about to let Lower Manhattan off the hook centuries later. Frankly, she has a right to feel put-out. Unfortunately, every year on Halloween, the specter takes out her frustrations on three innocent children. Mike Lawford’s son Charlie was taken last year, but he hasn’t given up hope of finding him. At least as a tenured professor he will have plenty of time to look in Uli Edel’s Pay the Ghost (trailer here), which opens this Friday.

In his quest for said tenure, Lawford somewhat neglected his wife Kristen and son, so when the good news comes on October 31st, the newly secured faculty member takes Charlie out to celebrate at the annual Halloween carnival. It is rather conveniently located, since like most struggling academics, the Lawfords own a brownstone in Greenwich Village. Unbeknownst to Lawford, Charlie has been acting strange for the last few days, because he has been targeted by uncanny forces.

One minute Charlie is there, the next he’s gone. It is hard to explain that to his wife, who openly blames Lawford for their son’s disappearance. Yet, as they approach the one year anniversary, both parents have strange supernatural experiences that suggest Charlie is reaching out for their help. Soon, she even starts to forgive Lawford, in light of all the macabre bedlam they encounter. Enlisting the help of Hannah, Lawford’s colleague and mentor, they trace back a series of historical and folkloric clues to Sawquin, a Celtic Pagan, who was scapegoated for a plague sweeping through early Colonial New York. Lawford just might be able to rescue his son, but he has a limited window. Once Halloween is over, the die is cast and last year’s victims will be consigned to the other side forever.

Believe it or not, even though Ghost represents a collaboration between Nic Cage and the director of the infamous Madonna vehicle Body of Evidence, it really isn’t that bad. Apparently, Edel discovered the magic word that convinced Cage to turn down the mania. Maybe it was “IRS.” Regardless, he indulges in minimal nostril-flaring throughout what is arguably his most restrained performance in years.

Sarah Wayne Callies from the Walking Dead is passable enough as Kristin, but it is not what you would call a showcase role for her. As Det. Reynolds, Lyriq Bent does not have much to either, except defend the honor of New York civil servants, but he wears the part well after playing the cop in all those Saw movies. However, Veronica Ferres (known for films like Saviors in the Night and Adam Resurrected, who must have been confused to find herself in an upstart genre movie like this) adds some much appreciated class and seasoning.

Edel maintains an atmosphere of foreboding and nicely capitalizes on the Lower Manhattan-looking locales (courtesy of Toronto). Screenwriter Dan Kay’s adaptation of Tim Lebbon’s novella also accentuates the intriguing backstory and old world details. It all hangs together quite cohesively until quite late in the third act, which is downright impressive by horror movie industry standards. Recommended for horror fans looking for something with a Halloween theme, Pay the Ghost releases on iTunes and opens in select markets this Friday (9/25).

VEFFNY ’15: Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell

Captain Gaspar Mendoza was on the winning side of the revolution. He saw plenty of war, but his conscience does not trouble him, at least not very much. However, he seems highly dependent on a talismanic charm. It does not seem to work so well judging from his daughter’s ill health and the severe draught plaguing the land. Yet, that is nothing compared to the distress headed his way in Julián Balam’s Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

The Captain’s daughter María Eugenia has not had a sound night’s sleep in months. Fearing for her sanity, her mother insists on her long-deferred baptism, to which Mendoza reluctantly agrees. Rather ominously, the ceremony is interrupted by the discovery of a young thief. He is a surly looking waif, but María Eugenia takes a shine to him anyway. Mendoza’s old lieutenant wants to deal with him in the age old manner, but the Captain humors his daughter. Supposedly, the boy will be put to work, but he acts like he has the run of the place.

He will indeed be a destabilizing influence on the estate, particularly with María Eugenia. She starts acting out and asking awkward questions about the past, including the exploits of the Keyser Söze figure, whose grave mysteriously appeared in the parish cemetery—or so the legend goes.

If you are not crazy about kids you will actively dislike “El Niño,” played with a defiant lack of subtlety by the young thesp. He is just a little Hellion, even if you can guess his grisly backstory. No question about it, Mendoza’s right-hand man had the right idea. Frankly, it is hard to accept María Eugenia’s affection for him, even if we make allowances for supernatural forces working upon her.

On the other hand, Alberto Alifa’s Mendoza is a grandly tragic figure. He projects the right military bearing, even when his world is collapsing around him. Balam and the design team also crank up the gothic atmosphere, centering the drama with a very dark, humid sense of place. Even before the kid starts making trouble, we get seriously bad vibes, as if the sterile soil and María Eugenia’s feverish dreams are a sign of Biblical judgement.

Cinematographer Tony Valera’s work is suitably creepy and evocative. It is a well-constructed period drama, María Fernada Martinez’s script holds few surprises. Still, for Nineteenth Century supernatural morality play shot on a shoestring budget, it looks surprisingly credible. Curious genre fans will find Alifa’s work and the general eeriness are worth checking out when Gaspar Mendoza’s Hell screens this Friday (9/25) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Campus Code: Getting Expelled from Reality

If you thought campus speech codes were restrictive, try living by the mysterious rules and regulations governing this liberal arts college. It is never named, but it might as be Matrix U. Campus security is unusually fit and they respond to violations with suspicious swiftness in Cathy Scorsese & Kenneth M. Waddell’s Campus Code (trailer here), which releases today on VOD from MarVista Entertainment.

Yes, Cathy Scorsese is the daughter of Martin, who pops up in a small role as the campus doctor, along Ray Liotta who appears as the responsible bartender. This is not Goodfellas 2 though. In fact, Campus Code (or Campus Life, as it was once known) was briefly rather notorious for the bizarre litigation it spawned. Still, Campus is strange enough to be considered on its own weird merits.

Regardless, Scorsese’s doctor does not inspire much confidence. Fortunately, Ari seems to be okay without his services. In the first twenty minutes, he will fall from a thirteen story building and have a large pane of glass impaled in his head, without suffering any adverse effects. Of course, it still rather alarms Becca, the Good Samaritan, who drags Ari down to the infirmary for Scorsese’s close-up. He sort of returns the favor by saving her from the creepy Elliot.

Ari already had a bone to pick with the preppy perv, for bootlegging the original t-shirts designed by his partner Arun. Everyone digs Arun’s art, but nobody more so than the desperately smitten Izzy. Arun is also into Izzy, but he has a secret in his closet preventing him from fully committing. She too has a deep dark secret, which the goth rabble rousing Griefers are holding over her. They are demanding her support for some sort of self-governing petition that never makes much sense, even when the big reveals start coming fast and furious. Into the mix comes Greta, a cool transfer student, who sets out to falsely befriend Izzy, in order to put the moves on Arun.

For some reason, these six students are somehow suddenly exempt from the laws of reality, while the rest of the student body appears blissfully unaware of all the disturbing madness exploding around them. There will be sufficient answers to explain who and what everyone really is. Some of it is even rather clever. The problem is Waddell and Michael Simon’s screenplay never establishes a baseline for reality, before upending it. Nor do they flesh out any characters before throwing them into the Matrix-esque maelstrom. Granted, they certainly do not waste any time on dry exposition, but it is hard to bring out the respective personas amid all the reality-problematizing noise.

Still, Hannah Hodson and Jesse McCartney are undeniably charismatic as Becca and Ari. They also benefit from their characters’ tougher, hipper attitudes. In contrast, Alice Kremelberg and Ritesh Rajan sort of blend into the background as the more passive Izzy and Arun. However, this is not a problem for Conor Leslie’s Greta, who turns out to be an engagingly forceful pseudo-femme fatale.

Code more-or-less makes sense when it is all said and done, but there are bushels of loose ends lying about. You have to wonder if considerable explanatory matter was cut for budgetary reasons. Yet, the legitimately twentysomething-looking cast is energetic to mostly sell the madness in the moment. It is all sort of grubbily entertaining for those who dig head tripping sf concept films. Recommended accordingly for the indulgent genre fan, Campus Code releases today (9/22) on VOD platforms like VUDU and iTunes, from MarVista Entertainment.

VEFFNY ’15: Km 72

The rumored Verastegui briefcase probably doesn’t contain Marsellus Wallace’s soul, because the assorted cops and robbers looking for it have no use for such spiritual things. The old dodgy millionaire certainly entrusted it to the right man: his loyal bodyguard Dimas Luzardo. Unfortunately, nobody in the Verastegui household gets out alive, as we soon know from the flashback structure of Samuel Henríquez’s Km 72 (trailer here), which screens as part of the upcoming Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Luzardo was once a cop and military before that, but driving a cab really sharpened his survival skills. His efficiency handling one aborted hold-up duly impressed his fare, Diego Verastegui, who hired him on the spot to be his bodyguard. Frankly, Luzardo did everything for Verastegui, but he was well compensated and grew close to his employer. Verastegui became a surrogate father to Luzardo, taking the place of the man who was gunned down on the highway years ago. Likewise, Luzardo is more of a son to Verastegui than his own offspring, the wastrel hipster Carlos.

Therefore, Luzardo is rather disappointed when he arrives late one evening to find Verastegui dead, with his son and two strangers muddling through a Mexican standoff of sorts. Luzardo will commence a series of harsh Rashomon-style interrogations that will end badly for all.

There are a whole lot of familiar noir elements in Km 72, but Henríquez executes them with style. There is also a bit of freshness to Luzardo’s relationship with Verastegui, which Frank Spano and Gustavo Rodríguez develop quite nicely. Spano also has the appropriate steeliness for Luzardo’s getting-down-to-business scenes. He certainly looks like one bad cat. George Akram’s Carlos Verastegui is also so obnoxious, nobody will possible object when Luzardo goes medieval on him. However, we never get an adequate sense whether the girl he picked up or the supposed magician who tagged along receive what they deserve. Still, her name, Anna Karina, is a nice hat-tip to Godard’s muse.

If you don’t mind noirs that are fatalistic and nihilistic, than Km 72 is rather a lot of fun. Frankly, Henríquez overcomplicates matters with the cops’ under-cooked conflicts in the framing device, but he pulls off some sly revelations in the third act. The Verastegui villa is also an effective location for what is essentially a five-character, one-set thriller. Gritty yet sentimental in a strange way, Km 72 is well worth seeing for noir fans when it screens this Thursday (9/24) at the Village East, as part of the Venezuelan Film Festival in New York.

Animation Show of Shows, 2015

One thing animation always does better than live action is showing the world from a radically different perspective. Some of the films selected for Ron Diamond’s annual curated animation showcase take viewers into space and eons into the future. Others give us fresh terrestrial vantage points. Although necessarily uneven, the highs of this year’s program are particularly lofty because it includes one of the few short films that has racked up more reviews and accolades than most features, Don Hertzfeldt’s thought-provoking World of Tomorrow. Space and time travelers lead the way in the 17^th Annual Animation Show of Shows, which screens this Thursday in Los Angeles.

Wisely, the really big show starts with one of the best selections, but rather than an exercise in future speculation, Janette Goodey & John Lewis’s The Story of Percival Pits (trailer here) is a wonderfully old fashioned fable. Employing unusually elegant stop-motion animation, it tells the tall tale of a boy who decides to live his life entirely on stilts. As he matures into a man, he recommits himself to the stilt life, building them ever higher to the point he can no longer partake of human society. It is sort of a sad story, but also somewhat Promethean, narrated with appropriate sensitivity by Mark Hadlow.

In comparison, Tant de Forets, Geoffrey Godet & Burcu Sankur’s rendering of Jacques Prévert’s deforestation verse feels like mere filler. Likewise, Conor Whelan’s Snowfall is also decidedly small in scope, introspectively examining a gay man’s emotional response when he is “rejected” by a straight man with whom he thought he was clicking. That would be fine subject, indeed one that is rarely addressed, but the computer animated characters are not very expressive.

However, it is followed by Lynn Tomlinson’s Ballad of Holland Island House, one the most aesthetically adventurous films in the Show of Shows. Using oil-based clay, it follows the rising waters encroaching on an abandoned Chesapeake island house, while accompanied by a haunting sea chanty. Stylistically, Amanda Palmer & Avi Ofer’s Behind the Trees is also somewhat abstract, but it is basically just a short punchline of a film constructed around the slightly nutty things Palmer’s husband says when he is half-asleep that so charm her.

With Konstantin Bronzit’s We Can’t Live Without Cosmos (trailer here), we finally reach what could be considered the centerpiece of the Show of Shows. It is an increasingly surreal ode to friendship and meditation on loss, focusing on two cosmonauts training for the next big launch. Our POV characters are the class of their class, but it is a one-man rocket. That leaves the second place finisher to watch in horror as the alternate, when tragedy strikes the mission. Cosmos has a retro-Soviet Star City look, yet some of his imagery is still surprisingly haunting. Ultimately, the mysterious trumps all the cold antiseptic hardware. Believe it or not, it would fit well thematically programmed with Kubrick’s 2001: a Space Odyssey.

Although not as high concept, Isabel Favez’s Messages Dans L’Air proves old animation staples like cats looking to scarf down an unsuspecting fishbowl inhabitant still work when executed with wit and style. It is refreshingly old school, even if the pastels are modern. It is also quite funny.

Iranian sibling filmmakers Babak & Behnoud Nekooei seem to invite allegorical interpretation for Stripy (trailer here), which celebrates the nonconformist impulses of a worker drone tasked with painted straight barcode lines in a box factory. Even though they not so surprisingly avoid any mention of politics in their biographical vignette, any form of dissent in Iranian cinema is a worthy development. It is also visually striking and upbeat, like an unambiguously optimistic Brazil, accompanied by Brahms’ Hungarian Dance No. 5.

Unfortunately, Ascension just doesn’t work, but Melissa Johnson & Robertino Zambrano’s Love in the Time of March Madness, an autobiographical account of life as a very tall, former basketball playing woman has a lot of heart. Shrewdly, Hertzfeldt’s World of Tomorrow concludes the Show of Shows, because it is a tough act to follow, earning mention alongside the likes of H.G. Wells and Olaf Stapledon. Check out a full review here.

There are more than enough substantial and satisfying films to carry this year’s Show of Shows, especially if you have not yet seen World of Tomorrow (trailer here) at Sundance or via vimeo VOD. We Can’t Live Without Cosmos is a worthy companion film in terms of ambition and intelligence. The Story of Percival Pots and Stripy also have some heft to them and they look terrific. Animation fans really need to catch up with all four, so the 17^th Annual Animated Show of Shows is convenient opportunity to do so. It screens this Thursday (9/24) at the Arclight in Los Angeles and October 5^th at the Spectrum 8 in Albany, with more cities announced here.

Asia Argento’s Misunderstood

This horror show of family is brought to you by the daughter of a legend of horror cinema. Asia Argento’s father Dario is probably the best known master of the Giallo genre. Young Aria (Asia Argento’s legally registered name at the time of her birth) is the daughter of a romantic leading man actor and a musician, but it is hard not to draw parallels. Both even have famous composer grandfathers. However, one can only hope Aria’s life is entirely fictional, because it is the sort of chaotic mess that could generate a lifetime’s worth of baggage. Growing up is darned near impossible for the protagonist Argento’s Misunderstood (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Aria is the one common child shared her recently divorced parents, but she has a step-sister with each of the exes. Her relationships with all four are rather complicated, because it is clear she is the favorite of neither parent. Aria primarily lives with her mother and the rather dreary Donatina, until the temperamental Swiss pianist loses patience with her daughter and packs her off unannounced to her father. According to the regular pattern, the shallow, self-absorbed actor will let her stay with him and the noxiously manipulative Lucrezia for a few days, before sending her back.

For days at a time, Aria will ping pong back and forth. Some nights she will even sleep on the street. However, these might be the happiest interludes in the film, because she falls in with a free-spirited group of Bohemians colonizing the local park. She probably should have stayed with them, but like everyone else in the film, Aria is keenly aware of social standing. Her parents might be a train wreck, but they give her serious cred at school. Yet, it is never enough to turn the head of the thuggish kid she crushes on.

If Argento had cranked up the family’s horribleness just a fraction further, Misunderstood could have veered into campy horror. Instead, she keeps the tone grounded and the lunacy relatively restrained. As a result, Aria’s life is just plain emotionally harrowing. She is the ultimate poor little rich kid, whose dysfunctional parents are total monsters precisely because they are so human. They really could exist.

Charlotte Gainsbourg and Italian television star Gabriel Garko are so pitch-perfect as the narcissistic parents, it is truly frightening. Yet, the true revelation is Giulia Salerno as Aria. She covers an unusually wide range as the smart but impetuous nine year-old, dealing with just about every form of family angst under the sun. Yet, she always keeps it grounded and real, even when everyone else around her is going bat-scat crazy. She is remarkable, as is Alice Pea as Angelica, her inevitably estranged best friend forever.

Misunderstood is an absolutely exhausting film, but it is not without dark humor. However, most of the laughs come from a recognition of how Argento keeps relentlessly one-upping the outrageous behavior, without ever taking things over the top. It might just feature the best performance from a young screen thesp since Josie Xu’s star-making turn in Starry, Starry Night. Recommended for those who appreciate extreme family dramas, Misunderstood opens this Friday (9/25) in New York, at the IFC Center.

TIFF ’15: Jack

Jack Unterweger was the Roman Polanski of Austrian letters. He had been convicted of the sadistic murder of a young woman, but the smart set, including Günther Grass and Marxist "feminist" Elfriede Jelinek, thought his poetry was too accomplished for Unterweger to remain behind bars. About a dozen subsequently dead prostitutes would have preferred they not advocated on his behalf. Unterweger’s brutal and notorious life gets a glitzy screen treatment in Elisabeth Scharang’s Jack (trailer here), which screens again this morning at the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Unterweger’s predatory savageness is not exactly seen in the opening sequences of Jack, but there are no mistaking the grisly consequences. However, Scharang will keep that Unterweger bottled up for most of the second act. Since Unterweger wrote some lovely poetry and a confessional autobiography, Schäfer’s death was therefore okay with Jelinek et al, who are saved the indignity of appearing in Jack.

After serving his minimum sentence, the world is laid at Unterweger’s feet. He has a fat literary contract waiting for him and a luxury flat paid for by his soon to be mistress, Susanne Sönnmann, a well-heeled and very married architect. Hipster editor Marlies Haum will pave his way into fashionable society, provided he revisit the world of pimps and prostitutes he knew so well, as a correspondent for her magazine. Everyone seems to be obsessed with Unterweger, even though the new book is not selling nearly as well as the prison memoir. However, when his toxic mother reappears, it is a bad sign. Sometime thereafter, the Vienna police start to suspect him for the murder of a string of prostitutes. They can even match dead bodies to his international travels.

While Unterweger’s partisans still question his guilt with respect to the prostitute spree killings (his nine convictions not withstanding), Scharang hardly seems interested in the matter. Instead, her film is sort of the narrative equivalent of Bruce Weber’s Chet Baker documentary Let’s Get Lost. Both present a nonjudgmental portrait of artists with deep-seated hostility towards women, preferring to focus on their scarred surface beauty. At times, Jack looks like the sort of layout Weber, the fashion photographer might have shot.

Yet, Johannes Krisch plays Unterweger with such a piercing psychopath’s stare, you have to wonder how everyone around him manages to not get it. Krisch’s Unterweger is a microwave of rage, primed to explode. If his icy demeanor and casual cruelty are not clues enough, his old school pimp-hand wardrobe ought to send some kind of signal.

In contrast, Corinna Harfouch (who could pass for Dame Helen Mirren’s younger sister) seems too smart and sophisticated to fall for Unterweger or to have anything to do with his world of celebrities and low lives. Still, she invests Sönnmann with an earthy sensuality that really sets the tone for the film.

If nothing else, Scharang’s Jack certainly looks right. Cinematographer Jörg Widmer makes everything hazy and dreamlike, while production designer Isidor Wimmer perfectly replicates the 1990s Euro club milieu. Nevertheless, Scharang seems intent on embracing an amoral, hedonistic vision until hedging at the last moment, leaving us to wonder just what was the whole idea of all that? Fascinating to observe, in a clinical way, but rather distasteful to digest, Jack is probably too arty for true crime audiences and too lurid for art house patrons. It is a real quandary, so use your own judgement if you are still in Toronto, when it screens again this morning (9/20), as part of TIFF.

Movement + Location: Lo-Fi Time Travel

Where would you rather live, a far future apocalyptic dystopia or Brooklyn today? A time traveler chose the latter, but she is having understandably mixed feelings about it. Yet, just as she starts to restart a life in our presence, her future past complicates matters in Alexis Boling’s Movement + Location (trailer here), which is now playing in New York.

Kim Getty is reluctant to make attachments, because she understands how awkwardly she fits in this era. Once she traveled back in time, there was no going back. Time travel technology only goes one way. Typically, people travel back by themselves, but Getty thought she had a way she and her husband could back the jump together. Somehow they were separated, but on the first day of each month she visits the arrival point, hoping he will finally appear.

Getty’s only real contact is with her coworker Marcel, with whom she does field work for a homeless outreach service. During their rounds, she notices a homeless fifteen year-old girl has the same markings of a future time traveler. Through a lot of fast talking she manages to get Rachel back to her place, but she found herself agreeing to a date with Rob, the earnest beat cop in the process. Amber, her BKLN party girl roommate is rather surprised to learn Getty has a “sister,” but Getty is just as surprised to find she might be falling for Rob. Unfortunately, Rachel’s teenaged naivety threatens to call attention to the deliberately low profile Getty, in precisely the wrong ways.

With its Brooklyn setting, you could almost think of M+L as mumblecore science fiction, but it is much more substantial than that. However, it is definitely a quiet, character-driven piece. There are no scenes of naked Terminators arriving through a portal of lightning bolts. Time travel just somehow happens off camera and we just need to accept it. Instead, screenwriter (and lead) Bodine Boling focuses on the psychological repercussions of such an extreme, irreversible situation.

Boling duly impresses as the brittle and reserved Getty. She also develops some refreshingly sweet romantic chemistry with Brendan Griffin’s Officer Goodguy. In fact, it is Griffin who really grounds the film and gives it heart. Likewise, the commanding screen presence of theoretical physicist Haile Owusu brings to the table as Marcel contributes further depth and integrity to the unusual character study.

There are times when you might forget M+L is a speculative fiction story. Still jazz musician Dan Tepfer’s evocative minimalist score gives it a vaguely disconcerting, science fiction vibe, while subtly underscoring the intimate dramatic action. Like so many genre films, the Bolings sort of lose control of the conclusion, but at least ninety-five percent of the film is remarkably assured, which is more than good enough for a high passing grade. Recommended for those receptive to a mature, emotionally realistic science fiction chamber drama, Movement + Location is currently playing in New York at the Cinema Village.

TIFF ’15: Stranger (Zhat)

During the Captive Nations era, Kazakhstan was the whipping post of the Soviet Union. The Republic was a dumping many nationalities forcibly exiled after WWII (de facto ethnic cleansing), suffered widespread famine as a result of agricultural collectivization, and endured Party campaigns against regional cultural diversity. The reclusive Ilyas is case in point, even though the rugged mountain man is almost completely oblivious of the macro forces conspiring against him. He is simply incapable of conforming to meet the demands of socialism in Yermek Tursunov’s Stranger (a.k.a. Zhat, trailer here), Kazakhstan’s official foreign language Academy Award submission, which screens at this year’s Toronto International Film Festival.

Ilyas was in awe of his father, Yedige. The experienced hunter was also his only family in the world, so when Yedige was inexplicably picked up in the dead of night during Stalin’s purges, it understandably devastates young Ilyas. However, instead of relying on other’s charity, Ilyas disappears into the mountains, living on game and the proceeds of his pelts. Sadly, he leaves behind the great love of his life, Kamshut, who will be forced to marry his true-believing contemporary.

In time, Ilyas develops quite the reputation. Naturally, he is invited to join the fight against Stalin’s former allies, the German National Socialists, but the Great Patriotic War means nothing to him. He simply has no reference points for it. Unfortunately, this will cause resentment as Stalin’s bungling prolongs the war and the village’s horrible suffering. When Ilyas finally starts to lose a step, there are those who will take advantage.

In a way, Ilyas is an archetypal holy fool, but in terms of temperament, he is much more closely akin to the classic western mountain man. Tragically, he is also a man very much out of step with the ideological madness of his time. He is like a Dostoyevsky hero transplanted in a John Ford film. Clearly, Tursunov understands both disparate traditions and reconciles them remarkably well.

Ilyas is not exactly chatty, but Erzhan Nurymbet’s powerful presence does not need much dialogue. He expresses his mournful regret and guilelessness with forceful directness. He is a symbol, but he is also a flesh-and-blood character. His desolate fate is not just an allegory to unpack. It has deep emotional resonance.

Tursunov paints on a big canvas, but he still shows a delicate touch with the intimate scenes Ilyas steals with his beloved Kamshut. Frankly, there is a little Doctor Zhivago reflected in their star-crossed love and the tension between tradition and nature on one hand and Communist materialism on the other is very much in keeping with the themes of Wolf Totem. Stranger also has its share of wolves as well.

Cinematographer Murat Aliyev captures the grandeur and unforgiving harshness of the steppe, contrasting the spectacular vistas with the grubby, shabby atmosphere of the village. It is a haunting film that spells out the particulars of Soviet oppression in no uncertain terms, while giving the commissars and apparatchiks precious little face-time. Very highly recommended (particularly for Academy voters), Stranger screens again today (9/18) and tomorrow (9/19) as part of this year’s TIFF.

Black Mass: Depp as Bulger

The one man James “Whitey” Bulger truly regrets not killing is radio host Howie Carr. Of course, it was not for a lack of trying. Yet, there is no mention of Carr in Hollywood’s first take on the Bulger case. In many ways, it is a kitchen sink movie, but its inclusions and exclusions are each significant. However, there is no denying the gangster’s fierceness in Scott Cooper’s Black Mass (trailer here), which opens today nationwide.

Bulger hated to be called Whitey, preferring to be called Jimmy by friends and low life associates. Whitey was the leader of the Winter Hill Gang, his brother William was the Democrat president of the Massachusetts State Senate, and John Connolly was the hotshot FBI agent returning to the South Boston neighborhood of his youth. Whitey had once interceded when a group of bullies were battering Connolly and he had idolized the unstable Bulger ever since. It seems that he still does.

According to Mark Mallouk and Jez Butterworth’s adaptation of Dick Lahr & Gerard O’Neill’s book, Connolly hatched the idea of an FBI alliance with Bulger out of misplaced hero-worship. Whether that is psychologically accurate or not, the upshot remains the same. Connolly used FBI resources to protect Bulger and facilitate his brutal expansion in exchange for information on the Italian mafia. Just how much information Bulger provided is the subject of great contention, but Black Mass portrays his reluctant scoop as the turning point in the mafia investigation.

Essentially, Black Mass jogs through the sad criminal epic, hitting the major bases and giving viewers of grab bag smattering of perspectives on Whitey. There is the Southie folk hero who helps old Mrs. Cody with her groceries. There is the psychopathic Whitey, who would take you out and shoot you for saying the wrong thing. There is also a smidge of the co-conspiring Brothers Bulger, whom Carr castigated for robbing people blind—one using the force of the Winter Hill Gang, the other using the force of the government.

The problem is Cooper and company clearly bought into Whitey’s self-invented mythology to some extent, in order to portray him as a Cagney-esque figure. Yet, Whitey is the man who forced Stephen Rakes to sign over his liquor store, simply because he was stronger and he wanted it. That’s not Robin Hood. That’s the Sheriff of Nottingham. Whitey terrified South Boston in that manner, but it is completely absent from the film.

On the plus side, the Johnny Depp we have been missing for years finally decided to show up. He captures Whitey’s erratic intensity, venomous rage, and wiry power. Although small in stature, he is a physically intimidating presence. One look at him says bad news. That was how Whitey kept the town under his heel for so long.

Joel Edgerton is suitably awestruck and ultimately quite pitiable as the Connolly. However, while FBI special agent Robert Fitzpatrick was the hero of Joe Berlinger’s documentary WHITEY: the United States of America v. James J. Bulger, he is relegated to the background of Mass and played by the inconsequential Adam Scott, who looks far too young to be the agent that busted James Earl Ray (disclosure: my house published Fitzpatrick’s book, but we have never met).

Similarly, Benedict Cumberbatch is obviously proud of his Boston accent, but he does not radiate adequate villainy as William Bulger. Still, Jesse Plemons and Rory Cochrane are totally credible as Whitey’s trusted inner circle, but their most substantial scenes come in the first twenty minutes during the interrogation framing device.

Depp should be in contention for his work as Whitey, because it really is that good. Unfortunately, it comes in a rather shallow and inconsistent film. Far from being the final word on Bulger, Black Mass is a disappointment that only serves as an effective star vehicle for Depp when it opens today (9/18) at the AMC Empire in New York.

East Side Sushi: Raw Fish and Hot Peppers

It’s tough working a fruit cart in Oakland. Juana would know. She is about to be held-up and roughed-up by the thugs targeting cart workers. Frankly, it is hard to make a go of anything in the economically distressed city, but its sushi restaurants seem to be uncharacteristically healthy. Juana will still have to create her own opportunities to become a sushi chef in Anthony Lucero’s East Side Sushi (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in Los Angeles.

Even before the robbery, Juana wanted a better way of life. She thinks she might have found it in one of the Japanese restaurants owned by Mr. Yoshida. You could say he is reasonably progressive in that all kitchen employees receive health benefits, but he has very definite ideas about who can prepare sushi up front. They have to be male and Asian, preferably Japanese, or at least trained in Japan. She is neither, but as she learns from Aki, the talented but timid sushi chef, she starts to harbor ambitions. She also makes her new found passion for sushi relatively palatable for her daughter and father by incorporating poblanos and jalapenos. Maybe she’s onto something there.

East Side is a hard film to take critical stock of, because it takes absolutely no risks, but there is no denying its earnestness and the charisma of its principles. If enough people see it, East Side could be a word of mouth smash, precisely because its predictable arc is like comfort food. Still, there are moments that stay with you. Lead Diana Elizabeth Torres truly brings tears to viewers’ eyes when she desperately declares “I deserve an opportunity.” You can just hear centuries of the American dream welling up under her.

Likewise, Yutaka Takeuchi is terrifically understated as Aki. Roji Oyama also brings unexpected nuance to Mr. Yoshida. However, old Pops is an annoying combination of bluster and soft cultural prejudice. In general, the restaurant ensemble is much better than the home ensemble, but Torres is terrific working with both.

Maybe the big sushi roll-off does not completely follow the standard issue template, but it does not deviate too far. Yet, there is no denying the film takes you to a satisfying place. All kinds of nice, East Side Sushi is recommended for people who do not go to the movies very often and want to see something a lot like the last thing they really enjoyed when it opens tomorrow (9/18) in Los Angeles at the NoHo 7.

TIFF ’15: Magallanes

If Judd Hirsch’s Alex Rieger had been a member of a military death squad, he would be the spitting image of Harvey Magallanes. Rumpled and sad-eyed, Magallanes is haunted by ghosts from his past. When one of them unknowingly steps into his cab, he hatches a scheme to rectify an old wrong. From that point on, nothing goes right in Salvador del Solar’s Magallanes (trailer here), which screens during the 2015 Toronto International Film Festival.

Despite his remorse, everything Magallanes does reminds him of his tour in Ayacucho. He shares a cab with his old gung-ho comrade Milton and serves as the volunteer driver of their former Colonel, whose memory has been lost to the ravages of senility—heavy-handed metaphor alert. Then one day, Celina hails his cab. While still a pre-teen, the Colonel abducted her during a raid held her as his personal concubine for months. Clearly, she made quite an impression on Magallanes, but she does not recognize the now bearded and graying former commando.

Discovering her desperate need for money, Magallanes hatches a dubious scheme to blackmail the Colonel’s prominent son with an incriminating photo of his father. Of course, the entitled Augusto is not about to take a shakedown lying down. Yet, it is Magallanes, his father’s trusted driver, whom he entrusts to coordinate the entrapping pay-off with the police.

Magallanes has the makings of a crackerjack noir, but del Solar is too preoccupied with old score-settling to maintain the tension of the first extended cat-and-mouse sequence. There are just too many scenes of Magallanes stewing like Raskolnikov in his garret. The film’s version of the truth is also highly selective. Even though the Peruvian Truth and Reconciliation Commission was clearly biased against Alberto Fujimori (or “Chinochet” as his critics racistly referred to him), it admitted far more atrocities were committed by the Maoist Shining Path and MRTA terrorists. Needless to say, you wouldn’t know that from del Solar’s screenplay.

Still, Damian Alcazar broods like a champion as the titular cabbie and Magaly Solier has a truly haunting screen presence. The decision to not subtitle Celina’s big climatic speech in her indigenous Quechua is also oddly effective. There are inspired bits distributed here and there throughout Magallanes, but the whole is just too clunky and blinkered in its perspective. Frankly, del Solar was better represented last year at TIFF with his work as the lead actor in Javier Fuentes-León’s The Vanished Elephant. A disappointment overall, Magallanes screens again today (9/17) and tomorrow (9/18) at this year’s TIFF.

Some Kind of Hate: Cutters Unite

Horror movies were way ahead of the mainstream media when it came to addressing the issue of bullying. Perhaps only overbearing mothers created more serial killers than bullies. Ever hear of a chick named Carrie? She and Moira would be kindred spirits. Spirit really is the right term for the latter. She was bullied to death, but now she is back to take care of business in Adam Egypt Mortimer’s Some Kind of Hate (trailer here), which opens tomorrow in New York.

One day, the high school bullies pushed Lincoln Taggert too far—and now he has to serve time in Mind's Eye Academy, a Kumbaya reform camp. Naturally, the hippy dippy administrators do not realize the exact same bullying is happening right under their noses. When his new tormentors try to pick up where the high school bullies left off, Taggert’s rage summons the spirit of Moira.

She too was unjustly remanded to the camp and mercilessly targeted by the sadistic popular clique. One day their harassment turned deadly, but they closed ranks and covered it up. Conveniently, it seems like the worst offenders are still around as counselors. Moira can’t wait to reconnect. She was once a cutter and now she can do unto other by doing unto herself. It all rather alarms Taggert, but Kaitlin the disgraced cheerleader will help facilitate her killing spree out of a sense of guilt from her own fatal bullying. They also happen to be fellow cutters.

Some Kind of Hate, echoing the old John Hughes title, pulls off some tricky balancing acts. It reflects an up-to-the-minute sensibility regarding bullying without feeling overly didactic or After School Special­-ish. The characters seem quite contemporary, but the look and vibe evokes early Wes Craven. Moira’s killing technique is also pretty original and deeply unsettling in a way genre fans will appreciate.

However, Ronen Rubinstein just does not seem to fit the part of Taggert. It is not that he is bad in the part, per se. In fact, he actually shows some skills. He just does not look like a prime bullying target. Every time someone decides to mess with him, you have to wonder why they picked the dude who looks like Danny Zuko. On the other hand, Disney-starlet Grace Phipps brings the right Kevin Williamson attitude as Kaitlin. It is also sort ironic to see Twin Falls Idaho and Big Sur director Michael Polish appear as one of the administrators just as his Evangelical-themed film 90 Minutes in Heaven releases. He’s had an interesting career.

Hardcore horror fans will be happy to know SKOH was edited Josh Ethier (Digging Up the Marrow, We Are Still Here). It is cut together well and cinematographer Benji Bakshi makes it all look quite eerie, in a sweaty, humid kind of way. By slasher standards, it is quite well made, but it might be too dark in terms of mood and morale for casual genre viewers. Recommended for those like their horror straight, with no chaser, Some Kind of Hate opens tomorrow (9/18) in New York, at the Village East.

Johnnie To’s Office

It is the corporate headquarters of Jones & Sunn, a large Mainland financial services conglomerate, but it looks like it exists in the world of Chaplin’s Modern Times. Never has the white collar workplace been so surreal, yet so uncomfortably credible in a Bloomberg bullpen kind of way. The impending IPO represents a heck of a payday for everyone, if by everyone you mean the charismatic chairman and his not so secret lover, the CEO, but Lehman Brothers complicates everything in Johnnie To’s musical adaptation of Sylvia Chang’s zeitgeisty play, Office (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York, after premiering at this year’s TIFF.

Yes, Johnnie To has made a movie musical—and why not? It is one more cinematic peak he summited. The music is not bad, but the design is simply extraordinary. Note there is no article before this Office. It is a strictly serious, high stakes environment. Ambitious junior managers like Sophie understand they have to move up or out, but there is not a lot of room above her. She has the ambiguous “support” of VP David Wang, who in turn is the “favorite” of CEO Winnie Chang. She is a somewhat scandalous figure for openly carrying on with the chairman, Ho Chung-ping while his wife remains in a persistent coma.

Into this thorny nest of office politics come two fresh-faced management trainees. Li Xiang is a guileless go-getter, who somewhat charms Chang in spite of herself. Yet, the mysterious Kat probably has the inside track being the chairman’s daughter, working under an assumed name to avoid improper appearances. Frankly though, nepotism will be the least of everyone’s worries.

At the risk of excessive repetition, it should be emphasized just how incredible designer William Chang’s sets look. They brilliantly blend the austerity of postmodernism with the expressionism of Fritz Lang’s Metropolis. Sylvia’s Chang’s narrative is unusually complex, but it is nice to see a film refrain from dumbing down the content. Of course, some themes are universal, like the corporate equivalent of the aging diva and naïve ingénue struggling to hold onto their piece of the pie. However, her source play resonated with Chinese audiences newly coming to terms with the salaryman blues in ways that will feel familiar to American viewers. Welcome to the party, its spectacular, isn’t it?

In all honesty, the tunes are just okay, but Eason Chan demonstrates major vocal chops as David Wang. On the other hand, Tang Wei looks like she just wants to get through her numbers as quickly as possible, but in all other respects, her work as Sophie is sensitively rendered and deeply affecting. Still, Sylvia Chang clearly saved the prime cuts for herself, digging into Winnie Chang’s Joan Crawfordness with relish we can all share. She also develops some charmingly undefinable chemistry with Wang Ziyi’s Li Xiang. It is also cool to watch Chow Yun-fat strut his stuff as the chairman of the board, because that is basically what he is to Hong Kong cinema.

When Johnnie To does a musical, you have to see it. It sounds fine, but Tang, Sylvia Chang, and William Chang’s eye-popping corporate HQ give the audience plenty to watch. Recommended for To faithful ready for his next departure and fans of the all-star cast, Office opens this Friday (9/18) in New York, at the AMC Empire.