Saturday, March 07, 2020

Cinequest ’20: Survival Skills


The 1980s were a golden age for cop movies and TV shows. Dirty Harry Callahan, Axel Foley, Crocket & Tubbs, Hunter, and Sledgehammer were on the streets, protecting and serving the public, despite the hand-wringing of politicians and their bureaucratic superiors. Jim Williams joins the force as a fresh-faced idealist, but a nasty domestic violence case shakes his faith in the justice system. Rather awkwardly, it unfolds as part of a vintage 1980s VHS industrial training tape for new police recruits in screenwriter-director Quinn Armstrong’s meta-fourth-wall-breaking Survival Skills, which premiered at the 2020 Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival (still proceeding as planned, at least at the time this was written).

New recruits are supposed to learn along with Williams as the unnamed “Narrator” leads him through his first days on the force. His jaded partner Allison Lohmann is not thrilled to be saddled with such a naïve rookie, but even she dreads a call like the Jenning family’s domestic disturbance. Clearly, Mark Jenning has been beating his wife Leah and daughter Lauren for quite a while, but they dutifully cover for him when Williams and Lohmann arrive on the scene.

However, Williams is not ready to let it go. Despite attempts to narrate him into different scenes, he keeps working the case and reaching out to Jenning’s wife and daughter. It really annoys the Narrator, but it starts to impress the cynical Lohmann. Nevertheless, she still suspects it will all end in tears.

It is incredibly gutsy of Armstrong to use a quirky device in the tradition of larky self-referential films like Rubber, Stranger than Fiction, and Adaptation to address a topic as serious as domestic violence, but he pulls it off. In fact, he manages to depict the challenges to prosecuting domestic abuse in ways that surprisingly resonate and infuriate.

The earnestness of Vayu O’Donnell’s lead performance as Williams is a major reason why the film works as well as it does. He starts out almost impossibly chipper and gung-ho, which makes his steady disillusionment quite distressing to watch. Ericka Kreutz plays Lohmann with cutting sarcasm and grim fatalism. They are definitely not your garden variety good cop-bad cop, that’s for sure. Plus, Stacy Keach is perfectly cast as the blustering narrator.

Friday, March 06, 2020

Cinequest ’20: Homewrecker


Fortysomething Linda is the sort of person who can even make 1980’s nostalgia creepy. It is because she is completely unhinged, in jealous and possessive ways. She has decided to befriend Michelle, a not particularly social interior designer in her early thirties, even if it kills the younger woman. It does not pay to be nice in Zach Gayne’s Homewrecker, which screens during this year’s Cinequest Film & Creativity Festival.

Linda just happened to join Michelle’s workout class and coincidentally stopped by her favorite coffee shop, where she introduces herself. She is unusually forward and more than a little bit annoying, but Michelle does not want to seem rude, so she humors the woman. Reluctantly, she agrees to give Linda’s home a professional look-over, but that will be a mistake. Once she is inside, Linda will not let her go. At first, she uses techniques of guilt and manipulation to convince her to stay, but eventually she resorts to more violent methods.

Frankly, Linda is not so very different from Annie Wilkes in Misery, but Michelle is a much more resourceful captive. Ironically, the early scenes of social awkwardness are much more uncomfortable to watch than the subsequent brawls and beatdowns. Gayne unleashes some brutal mayhem, but it steeped in bracing dark humor, very much in the Tarantino tradition.

There is also some brilliant art design work from Andrew Barr & Tim Reid, who crafted the look of “Party Hunks,” a retro-80’s Sweet Valley High-esque VHS-boardgame Linda makes Michelle play. It is the sort of memorable in-film game that ranks with the ones seen in Beyond the Gates and Into the Dark: Uncanny Annie.

Run This Town: The Rob Ford Scandal


Rob Ford, the late former mayor of Toronto was like the Chris Farley of Canadian politics. He was big, rambunctious, often embarrassing, but broadly popular. In many respects, he could be seen as an early populist forerunner to Trump, BoJo, and Bolsonaro. Not surprisingly, the Canadian media hated him—and the feeling was mutual. An under-achieving millennial journalist pursues the crack-smoking scandal that eventually ended Ford’s mayoralty, while his conflicted special assistant scrambles to bury it in Ricky Tollman’s Run This Town, which opens today in New York.

Mopey Bram Shriver is constantly depressed by his overbearing parents’ lack of respect for his journalistic ambitions and his boss’s lack of confidence in his journalistic abilities. After a year at the paper, he still primarily writes listicals (ironically, that means he is probably the most widely read staffer). After a veteran journalist is laid-off, Shriver happens to field an anonymous call placed to her promising something big. After a few awkward meetings, Shriver discovers the Macguffin is a video of Ford smoking crack at a party.

Kamal Arafa’s primary responsibility is keeping the mayor out of trouble. It is a full-time job. Arafa can rarely control his boss, but he is largely successful neutralizing the media. He will have some help from the new press assistant Ashley Pollock, but her commitment to the administration plummets after a drunken sexual harassment incident. Although he is increasingly uncomfortable with Ford’s behavior, Arafa loyally pursues the crack video, which seems to be for sale to the highest bidder.

Tollman’s script does its best to try, convict, and permanently close the books on the now deceased Ford. Yet, despite the film’s obvious bias, it (perhaps inadvertently) humanizes the flamboyant mayor to a surprising extent. In between drunken outbursts, we can see why Toronto voters supported Ford and why Arafa agreed to work for him in the first place. He really was a man of the people, who followed-up on citizen feedback and complaints personally. Yes, he drank like a fish, smoked crack at least once, and often conducted himself in a ragingly inappropriate manner, but he was still probably fitter for office than our current president or the presumptive Democratic front-runner.

That said, it is painfully clear dramatizing Ford’s loutishness is the whole point of this film. Mild spoilers below the fold.

Thursday, March 05, 2020

Go Back to China (But Not Now)


Actually, this wouldn’t be such a great week for Sasha Li’s titular travel plans. However, her father’s toy factory would probably be reopened in accordance with Xi “Winnie the Flu” Jinping’s orders—public safety be damned, for the sake of his economic goals. It is during a much less contagious time, not so long ago in Shenzhen that Li reluctantly journeys to the Chinese home she hardly knows in Emily Ting’s Go Back to China, which opens tomorrow in New York.

The entitled Li has been blowing through her trust fund while waiting to magically land her perfect job in the fashion industry, despite her lack of work experience, until her wealthy father Teddy abruptly cuts her off. She has lived in America since her parents’ divorce, but now he wants her to come work in his tacky toy family and become part of his Chinese family. That involves getting to know her half-sisters: Carol who came before her and young Dior, who was the product of his third failed marriage (along with her brother, Christian).

Actually, Li rather likes getting to know her step-siblings better. She also gets used to doing the work thing. She even makes the best of provincial Shenzhen. It is her father’s arrogance and refusal to accept parental responsibility that keep fueling her resentment. However, she is not alone on that score.

Surprisingly, Ting presents a rather likable story of culture clash and family dysfunction that never peddles cheap “China is awesome” propaganda. She clearly critiques China’s vast economic disparities and the ostentatious consumption of its oligarchic class. In fact, it even shows signs the mighty Chinese economy is slowing down, pre-Coronavirus era.

Bacurau: Não indicado pelo Brasil


If only this film were as good as Angelica Sakurada’s translation. Once again, she has volunteered a Portuguese translation of my Bacurau review as a service to expats and Brazilian readers (original here).

O nordeste brasileiro é uma região sofrida, com uma história de insurreição armada. Se um grupo de elite de caçadores do estilo “Zaroff, O Caçador de Vidas” (Most Dangerous Game) estiver vasculhando o território, eles provavelmente passariam direto por essa região equatorial selvagem. Claro, que o conceito integral de pessoas caçando pessoas já é um clichê barato que vem sendo reciclado constantemente, embora o filme O Alvo (Hard Target) já tenha estabelecido o padrão do conceito no início dos anos 90. Deste vez, os co-diretores-roteiristas Kleber Mendonça Filho e Juliano Dornelles tentam reinventar o artifício para retratar ângulos políticos e ideológicos em Bacurau, que estreia nesta sexta-feira em Nova Iorque.

Theresa regressou à Bacurau para o enterro de sua avó, mas decide ficar mais alguns dias para se reconectar com uma antiga paixão, Pacote, uma ex-atirador conhecido, com toda uma fama no YouTube contando as mortes atribuídas a ele. Sinceramente, não é ele que os gringos invasores deveriam temer no local.

Liderado por um misterioso alemão conhecido como Michael, os caçadores gringos (e seus dois cúmplices de São Paulo) conseguiram bloquear todo o sinal GPS e remover a cidadezinha do mapa do Google. A ideia é lentamente ir eliminando os locais um a um. Entretanto, como bons descendentes de rebeldes da tradição de Lampião, os residentes de Bacurau tem habilidades de sobrevivência no seu DNA.


Bacurau
é um pecado da junção do cinema arte e filme de exploração que falha em satisfazer ambos públicos. O filme demora para engrenar, mas pelo menos as belas cenas do enterro ajudam a apresentar a comunidade local e seu lugar no ecossistema brasileiro. Entretanto, quando os gringos aparecem, o filme se reduz a um aspirante a suspense-retrô sórdido, mas os forasteiros são tão dramaticamente ultrapassado, que não existe nenhum suspense sobre os acontecimentos. Ao invés disso, o público vai ficar olhando o celular, esperando pelo final inevitável para finalmente concluir.

Wednesday, March 04, 2020

Into the Dark: Crawlers


Forget about killer leprechauns. Body-snatcher aliens are the real St. Patrick’s Day horror. Cleverly, they will invade a college town on the night of St. Patrick’s. It is because of the drinking and the poor judgement, unreliable witnesses, and highly vulnerable victims that results. However, the townie drug dealer is an alien conspiracy buff, so she is surprisingly prepared. She will explain to her online followers how it all went down in Brandon Zuck’s Crawlers, the latest installment in the Blumhouse-produced Into the Dark, which premieres this Friday on Hulu.

Misty thought Chloe was her BFF, but they have been on the outs, ever since the latter failed to offer adequate support after the former was roofied in a frat house. Instead of being there, Chloe has flitted off to a new bestie, the snarky New Yorker (is there any other kind?), Yuejin. However, Misty still charges after her shallow pal when she drunkenly leaves with another predatory brother from the fateful fraternity. Fortunately, Shauna, Chloe’s drug dealer reluctantly agrees to accompany Misty. However, inside the house they find evidence of sinister alien skullduggery instead of Chloe.

Eventually, Misty and Aaron, a bro who was apparently doppelgangered by the aliens, will come to believe Shauna is right about the body-doubling invaders. Being believed is important in this film, whether it be Misty’s presumed assault or Shauna’s mother, who witnessed an earlier alien landing on an earlier St. Patrick’s night, decades ago.

Wow, Blumhouse really has it info fraternities, judging from this film and last year’s Black Christmas remake. At least Crawlers still manages to be fun. Basically, it is nostalgic, like-you-know trip down dead teenager memory lane. It is easy to think of it as an updated riff on Fred Dekker’s Night of the Creeps, but it isn’t as wildly madcap as that would sound. Instead, it fits somewhere in between the Syfy original movie Killer High and last year’s back-to-school edition of Into the Dark, School Spirit (which was directed by Mike Gan, who co-scripted Crawlers).

The Dark Red: Psychic or Psycho


It’s generally a bad thing when a patient hears voices. It’s even worse when they are real. The slightly agitated Sybil Warren will try convince her highly skeptical shrink such is true for her. To be fair, she is entitled to be in-treatment given the trauma she has suffered, but it is a matter of legal commitment in Warren’s case. Dr. Deluce is in for some tense sessions during Dan Bush’s The Dark Red, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Warren’s adopted mother recently died, her husband disappeared, and her baby was taken from her (by a secret society, she claims). That is a lot for one person to bear, but she is not a normal person. According to Warren, she has special psychic powers related to her rare blood type. Calling it “Type X” would probably be too on the nose, but that is the general idea. She can often hear people’s thoughts, but instead of a blessing, it has led to life-long issues of mental stability. Frankly, it is reasonable for Dr. Deluce to assume she is delusional. Given her twitchiness, viewers might start to suspect the same, but since this is a horror movie, we can guess there is more than a kernel of truth to what she says.

In terms of genre elements, Dark Red is very much X-Men mixed with Scanners, but the narrative takes a turn that is very much like Get Out without the racial dynamics. There is definitely a fair amount of horrifying mayhem, yet it is a surprisingly quiet film. Even though there are a number of familiar motifs, Bush and co-screenwriter (and co-star) Conal Byrne recombine them in intriguing ways.

Tuesday, March 03, 2020

Lançamento no Brasil: A Hora da Sua Morte [Countdown]


I’m thrilled the wonderful Angelica Sakurada volunteered to translate my review of Countdown (original here), as a public service, while it is in Brazilian theaters. Brazilian horror fans, we have you covered:

Sim, o aplicativo amaldiçoado é o trabalho de forças demoníacas, mas ainda assim não é tão maléfico quanto a empresa Huawei. O aplicativo prevê a hora da morte de quem baixa o aplicativo, mas qualquer tentativa de alterar as profecias torna o aplicativo extremamente raivoso. Aqueles com um pressentimento e que tentam trapacear o destino estão sujeitos a um tormento perturbador no filme A Hora da Sua Morte [Countdown] de Justin Dec, que lançou na semana passada no Brasil (lançado recentemente em DVD aqui nos Estados Unidos).

A vítima inicial reluta em baixar o aplicativo após sucumbir a pressão dos amigos bêbados. Isso nunca é uma boa ideia em filmes de terror. Embora ela recuse a oferta do seu namorado bêbado de uma carona pra casa, ela mesmo assim morre em um acidente esquisito. Esse fato acaba fazendo ele acreditar na sina, porque ele realmente socou o carro na árvore. A enfermeira Quinn Harris tenta conversar com ele racionalmente, mas ele inevitavelmente morre no exato segundo também. Isso acaba a perturbando, porque ela também tem o aplicativo do inferno nesse momento, e que mostra que ela tem somente alguns dias de vida.

Claro que todo mundo está baixando o aplicativo de contagem regressiva, então ela acaba encontrando logo uma pessoa também com pouco tempo para se juntar. Ela e Matt Monroe procuram a salvação em lojas de celulares e na igreja católica. Neste caso, a igreja é de melhor ajuda, mas somente após eles conhecerem um padre fã de cultura pop que aprendeu sozinho tradições demoníacas.

De fato, quando o padre John finalmente aparece é que o filme começa a ficar interessante. Questionável, a primeira parte deriva da franquia Premonição (Final Destination). Entretanto, o a abordagem maluca de P.J. Byrne do personagem do bom padre e suas técnicas intrigantes de exorcismo que elevam o nível do filme e tocam em temas profundos estilo Blatty do bom versus mal.

Diao Yinan’s Wild Goose Lake


Zhou Zenong is in trouble. The mainland cops are after him and there is nothing too ruthless or too unscrupulous they won’t do to capture (or better yet kill) the small-time gangster. Remember, they are the ones who taught police brutality to their Hong Kong colleagues. Nevertheless, Zhou realizes it is entirely his own fault, because he very definitely killed a cop in Diao Yinan’s ultra-noir Wild Goose Lake, which opens this Friday in New York.

Zhou is the kind of world-weary hoodlum who prefers to keep things low key. Unfortunately, the local Jiang Hu (underworld) boss forces Zhou’s motorcycle-stealing ring to compete for their choice turf against a group of young punky upstarts. Unfortunately, the larceny “Olympics” turn violent to such an extent, Zhou kills a cop by mistake.

At this point, the die is cast. Zhou knows only too well no fugitive can elude capture in the People’s Republic for long. At least he will try to engineer a more favorable endgame. His original idea is to have his semi-estranged wife Yang Shujun turn him in so she can claim the reward money. Sadly, that scheme becomes untenable due to the police surveillance and harassment focused on Yang.

Liu Aiai is plan B. She is a so-called “bathing beauty” who works for Zhou’s pimp friend Hua Hua around the rather hedonistic Wild Goose Lake. Liu is supposed to drop a dime on Zhou and then turn the reward money over to Yang after taking her cut. Of course, Zhou is not sure he can trust Liu or Hua Hua, or any of his old associates—with good reason. Plus, the rival gang is still out to get him. It all contributes to the sort of long night of the soul Diao specializes in.

Wild Goose is not as twisty or suspenseful as Diao’s contemporary classic, Black Coal Thin Ice, but it is still superior film noir. While his plot is more straightforward and almost pre-determined right from the start (indeed, that is sort of the whole point), he and cinematographer Dong Jingsun craft a look and mood worthy of vintage Edward Hopper paintings and Ida Lupino films.

Diao also reunites with the co-leads of Black Coal, but Liao Fan takes a more secondary role as the relentless, Javert-like Captain Liu, but he is quite convincing as the cynical, maybe even soulless copper. Gwei Lun Mei is absolutely arresting and heartbreaking as Liu Aiai, the exploited “bathing beauty.” Frankly, it is sometimes difficult to watch what her character must so realistically endure, but that is why it is such a brave performance.

Extra Ordinary: Ghost-Talking in Ireland


Rose Dooley has the Irish equivalent of the Shine. Her father Vincent called it “The Talents” on his low-budget 1980s In Search of-style television show, until she accidently killed him with her powers. She now works as a driving instructor, constantly turning away ghost-hunting customers. However, a desperate father with a bewitched teenaged daughter will convince Dooley to return to her paranormal calling in Mike Ahern & Enda Loughman’s gentle (but still kind of sinister) supernatural comedy, Extra Ordinary, which opens this Friday in New York.

Despite the encouragement of her single but mega-pregnant sister Sailor, Dooley is rather sad and lonely. When the eligible looking widower Martin Martin books a driving lesson, she is immediately interested. Yet, when he admits it was all just a ruse to get her to talk to the ghost of his henpecking late wife, she still initially refuses. However, when Martin’s daughter Sarah mysteriously falls into a supernatural coma, Dooley comes around.

The culprit is Christian Winter, a notorious one-hit-wonder, who intends to sacrifice a virgin to Satan, in exchange for a comeback. Sarah Martin would be the virgin. Dooley manages to cast a holding spell to keep her from floating away, but she and Martinx2 must hustle to complete some crazy supernatural business to break the spell. You should really just see it for yourself.

In terms of tone, Extra Ordinary is not so different from audience-pleasing Irish comedies like Waking Ned Devine¸ but it also cheerfully sprays around a fair amount of goo and a little bit of gore. Somehow, Ahern & Loughman make it work. Without a doubt, a lot of the credit goes to the rapport of their co-leads Maeve Higgins and Barry Ward. They play off each other well and their halting, goofball romantic chemistry is sweetly appealing.

Yet, perhaps the best parts are the perfectly recreated VHS playback scenes from her father’s old television show, featuring the pitch-perfect scenery-chewing Risteard Cooper as the turtleneck wearing Dooley. The humor of these sequences is totally nutty, but they still manage to establish the supernatural rules that the film plays by.

Monday, March 02, 2020

Bacurau, Not Submitted by Brazil


The Northeast of Brazil is hardscrabble country, with a history of armed insurrection. If a wealthy group of “Most Dangerous Game” style hunters were scouting territory, they would probably skip this unruly equatorial region. Of course, the entire notion of people hunting people is a shopworn cliché that keeps getting recycled over and over, even though John Woo’s Hard Target set the standard in the early 1990s. This time, co-director-screenwriters Kleber Mendonca Filho & Juliano Dornelles try to repurpose the gimmick to score political and ideological points in Bacurau, which opens this Friday in New York.

Theresa has returned to Bacurau for her grandmother’s funeral, but decides to stays a few days to reconnect with an old flame, Pacote (“the Package”), a former reputed hired gun, with a whole YouTube highlight reel of hits attributed to him. Frankly, he isn’t even the local the invading gringos should be worried about.

Led by the mysterious German known as Michael, the gringo hunters (and their Sao Paulo accomplices) have successful blocked all GPS and removed the town from Google maps. The idea is to slowly pick off the locals one by one. However, as the descendants of rebels in the Zapatista tradition, the residents of Bacurau have survival skills in their DNA.

Bacurau is an unholy merger of art cinema and exploitation movies that fails to satisfy either audience. The film is slow to get started, but at least the leisurely funeral scenes help establish the local characters. However, once the gringos show up, the film down-shifts into a wannabe sleazy retro-thriller, but the outsiders are so dramatically outclassed, there is never any suspense regarding the outcome. Instead, viewers will just be watching their cellphones, waiting for the obvious inevitable conclusion to finally wrap itself up.

Saturday, February 29, 2020

NYICFF ’20: Magic Boy


Some fantasy tropes are pretty consistent across cultures. For instance, magic really isn’t something you can pick up in your forties through some continuing education classes. You really need to learn it young, but from a gray-haired oldster. That is exactly what Sasuke sets out to do after he barely survives an encounter with a shape-shifting demon queen in Akira Daikuhara & Taiji Yabushita’s Magic Boy, which screens during the 2020 New York International Children’s Film Festival.

The Toei-produced Magic Boy holds the distinction of being the first anime feature ever theatrically distributed in America, by MGM no less. That was back in 1961, two years after its Japanese release. There is definitely a pronounced Disney influence, but it gets refracted through the anime prism in an appealingly eccentric way.

As the film opens, Sasuke is more Nature Boy than Magic Boy, living in secluded harmony with his beautiful older sister Oyu and a menagerie of woodland animals, including bears, deer, and monkeys (where is this forest, anyway?). However, tragedy strikes when one of them (ever so coincidentally the mother of a young fawn) is eaten by a salamander monster that morphs into the evil, long-haired Yakusha.

Realizing how badly he matched up against the demon, Sasuke sets out to learn magic from a reclusive hermit, which is a perfectly reasonable strategy in a fantasy film. That rather inconveniently means Sasuke will leave Oyu alone and vulnerable to the attacks of the bandits aligned with the evil witch for several years. Fortunately, she catches the protective (and perhaps romantically interested) eye of righteous samurai clan-general Sanada Yakimura (he was a real cat) during one of his scouting missions.

Friday, February 28, 2020

The Notorious Guns Akimbo


Formalist critics would argue the tempest in a teapot this film stirred up in rather neurotic circles should be irrelevant to our consideration of the work itself. To some extent, they are always correct, because the most elemental critical question for any film is whether it is worth watching. However, the small, self-important echo chamber known as “Film Twitter” is unhealthily obsessed with this film. The irony is rich: it is a film about an online troll who is forced to compete in a dark web death tournament, directed by Jason Lei Howden, who started trolling the Film Twitter trolls who cyber-shamed another film critic into reportedly attempting suicide, reducing her life to one racially insensitive joke. The whole business is pretty ugly, but now the original trolls are claiming victim status for themselves. The consequences for trolling are much more severe for the hero of Howden’s Guns Akimbo, which is still opening today in New York, so let's try to address it in a calm, business-like manner.

Miles Lee Harris is a meek coder, who only feels in control of his life when he trolling, but he prides himself in only using his power for good. The dark web death-match site Skizm is just the sort of exploitative outfit that deserves his caustic dressings-down. Unfortunately, they have considerable technical resources and absolutely no sense of humor. Before he knows what hit him, Harris has been tracked and abducted, so their tech support could graft big honking guns on his hands. Much to his shock, Harris must fight to the death on Skizm, facing the ragingly psychotic Nix.

At first, Akimbo seems like another clone of the gaming-gone-deadly sub-sub-sub-genre represented by the so-so likes of Level Up and Beta Test, but the film really perks up when Harris starts to man-up, roughly halfway through. Frankly, the last twenty or thirty minutes are massively violent, but also a whole lot of fun.

Thursday, February 27, 2020

Blumhouse’s The Invisible Man


This invisible man is serious about invisibility, so he doesn’t mess around with hats, goggles, and bandages. That is rather unfortunate for the woman he stalks so stealthily. Fans will miss the iconic imagery of the 1930s Universal monster franchise, but they should still appreciate the tension of Blumhouse’s modernized take on The Invisible Man, directed by Leigh Whannel, which opens tomorrow nationwide.

After careful planning, Cecilia Kass finally manages to escape from her cruel and controlling lover, the fabulously wealthy Adrian Griffin. He made his fortune through his breakthroughs in optics, so you know what that means. Shortly thereafter, Griffin suspiciously commits suicide. At least it is suspicious to Kass and us. Sure enough, an invisible entity is soon tormenting her. He is especially vicious, devising ways to isolate Kass from her support system, including her platonic cop friend James Lanier and his daughter Sydney, with whom she has been crashing.

Forget all the hype about Invisible Man being a #metoo movie. That’s just lazy marketing hype. Yes, Kass definitely must overcome Griffin’s abusive and manipulative behavior, but this is really an old fashioned “woman in jeopardy” thriller (this a term we really use in publishing), raised to the power of one hundred. Despite the affection we all have for the disembodied raincoat gags of the 1933 films, the invisibility special effects this time around are quite impressive—and Griffin’s attacks are notably violent. Indeed, Whannel and the tech team fully live up to the frightening implications of an invisible monster.

Whannel’s nearly-in-name-only adaptation of Wells’ Invisible Man also shifts the focus from the unseen mad man, to his victim (or would be victim), Kass. Fortunately, Elisabeth Moss is up to the challenge of carrying the picture and playing complicated attack scenes by herself. Moss is terrific portraying her fear, alienation, vulnerability, and resiliency, which is a lot of emotional terrain to cover. Even though it comes in a pure genre film, this might be Moss’s best performance to date.

To Hong Kong with Love: Ten Years


In Hong Kong, the future may already be here, five years ahead of schedule. Tragically, it is a future of eroding freedoms and intrusive police state tactics envisioned by the filmmakers speculating on what HK life might be like in a decade’s time. Their 2015 anthology film won best film at the Hong Kong Film Awards, despite the condemnation of the Mainland state media. The eerie prescience of Ten Years is undeniable when it screens as part of the Metrograph’s film series, To Hong Kong with Love.

Kwok Zune’s “Extras” is certainly stylish and maybe not as paranoid as it might have seemed five years ago, but the ironic kicker remains obvious right from the start. Two low level triads have been recruited to stage a phony assassination attempt to drum up public support for a draconian “public security” proposal. From the vantage point of 2020, the parallels with the extradition bill are almost spooky. Mike Mak’s stark black-and-white cinematography well serves the darkly cynical morality tale, but it does not land with the same emotional force as some of the later stories.

By far, the weakest constituent film is Wong Fei-pang’s “Season of the End,” in which a duo of cultural anthropologists collect specimens from razed working class neighborhoods in a rather absurdist, Beckett-ish fashion. It is far too reserved and mannered to make any appreciable impact with general audiences.

Fortunately, Jevons Au’s “Ðialect” represents a dramatic improvement. Screenwriters Chung Chui-yi, Ho Fung-lun, and Lulu Yang tell the deceptively simple but heartfelt story of a Cantonese-speaking cab-driver facing the potential loss of his livelihood, because of legal mandates requiring Mandarin fluency. Leung Kin-ping’s terrific performance as the driver is subtle and dignified, but still quite poignant. It is a quiet human story, but it also has direct relevancy for Hong Kong’s Localist movement.

“Dialect” alone would be enough to justify recommending Ten Years, but the courageousness of director-screenwriter Chow Kwuh-wai’s “Self-Immolator” demands to be seen to be believed (and marveled at). Unfolding in pseudo-documentary-style, the POV camera crew tries to undercover the identity of a protestor who indeed self-immolated, apparently in response to the death in prison of hunger-striking independence activist Au-yeung Kin-fung.

Chow explicitly refers to the notorious Falun Gong self-immolations as most likely propaganda operations faked by the CCP and its secret police, while consciously echoing Jan Palach’s self-immolation in Communist Czechoslovakia. It is an amazingly bold work of cinema, but it is also an enormously gripping and suspenseful short film.

Wednesday, February 26, 2020

Disappearance at Clifton Hill (Co-Starring Cronenberg)


The Clifton Hill promenade is sort of like Branson, but with waterfalls and conspiracy theories. Tourists regularly flock to the family friendly attractions on the Canadian side of Niagara Falls, but the atmosphere there is really weird during low season. Of course, that is the perfect backdrop for the crime and corruption that unfolds in Albert Shin’s Disappearance at Clifton Hill, which opens this Friday in New York.

When Abby was a young girl, she witnessed a kidnapping while on a family camping trip. During the intervening years, she developed a reputation for telling stories, so her long-suffering sister Laure just assumes there is nothing to it. Nevertheless, when Abby returns to Niagara after her latest crash-and-burn, she resolves to finally solve the mystery. Her dubious investigation soon encompasses the wealthy but suspicious Lake family, who own a good deal of the tacky businesses on Clifton Hill, and the Moulins, a married duo of magicians clearly styled after Siegfried & Roy.

Abby is definitely an unreliable protagonist, but there is still something rotten in Niagara. After all, it’s Clifton Hill, Jake. Frankly, the secrets and conspiracies will not be particularly shocking to genre fans, even though Shin does his best to over-complicate them. However, he does a crackerjack job of establishing the tense mood and getting mileage out of the local idiosyncrasies.

In fact, one of the best things going for Disappearance is the character of Walter Bell, a scuba-diving local historian, who records his “Over the Falls” conspiracy theory podcasts from the town’s UFO diner. He is a memorable eccentric, especially since he is played (with understated elan) by legendary cult film director, David Cronenberg.

Blood on Her Name


Leigh Tiller has made some terrible decisions in her life, but let’s blame her problematic father for them. That’s what she does. It was certainly ill-advised to marry a crook and maintain his chop shop business while he is in the big house, but killing one of his violent associates will really be a doozy. Naturally, the cover-up makes everything worse in Matthew Pope’s Blood on Her Name, which opens this Friday in Los Angeles.

Even with the off-the-books work, Tiller is struggling to make ends meet. Partly it is due to the restitution payments her sullen son Ryan still owes after blinding a would-be bully in a violent altercation. With a son on probation and a husband in the pen, Tiller panics after killing the latter’s former partner. It was an instinctive decision that she did not think out. Clearly, the cuts and bruises on her face suggest something happened. There is also a body to dispose of, but Tiller rather rashly returns him to his swampy home, so at least his wife and son will have some closure. Empathy—it might just be the end of her.

Of course, one darned thing happens after another for Tiller. Soon she is lying to everyone. She might even have to turn to her father Richard, but since he is the corrupt local sheriff, he could probably fix her problems.

Sometimes it is entertaining to watch hapless characters dig themselves deeper and deeper holes and sometimes it is painful to watch, because there is something about them that strikes a chord with us. In this case, it is just excruciating to see Tiller make every wrong decision possible. Granted, it is hard to prepare yourself mentally for this kind of situation, but Tiller is just hopeless.

Yet, maybe the most tiresome aspect of Name is constant flashbacks to the time Tiller witnessed her father do something truly awful during her childhood. We’ve seen this sort of motif before, but it is way overdone this time around.

Tuesday, February 25, 2020

To Hong Kong with Love: Umbrella Diaries—The First Umbrella


The people of Hong Kong have spoken, over and over and over. They voted overwhelmingly for universal suffrage in the city-wide privately-sponsored 2014 referendum. Then they came out in record numbers for the Umbrella protests of 2014 and the Five-Demands-Not-One-Less demonstrations of 2019, finally codifying their commitment to democracy with the historic landslide election of reformer candidates in the December district council elections. Of course, Beijing and its puppet executive Carrie Lam did not want to hear them. Yet, there was a time in 2014 when activists genuinely hoped the Communist government would abide by the principles of “One China, Two Systems.” James Leong documents those hopefully early days of the movement in Umbrella Diaries: The First Umbrella, which screens as part of the Metrograph’s ongoing film series, To Hong Kong with Love.

Occupy Central with Love and Peace, the democracy advocacy organization founded by academics Benny Tai and Dr. Chan Kin-man only wanted to “occupy” Central as a last resort. They conceived of the 2014 referendum as a means of expressing Hong Kong’s democratic ideals and aspirations. Unfortunately, Beijing arrogantly insisted on pre-selecting the candidates, which they described their brand of democracy, in aptly Orwellian terms. The leadership of Occupy Central was profoundly disappointed, but the students of Hong Kong just weren’t having it. They jumped out ahead of Occupy, launching massive demonstrations, forcing Chan and Tai to scramble to catch up.

The violence unleashed by the Hong Kong Police Force in 2019 was so brutal, it makes the tear-gassing and thuggery recorded in First Umbrella look comparatively mild. Nonetheless, it is clear from the anguished responses of parents and students looking on from behind police cordons, Hong Kong’s innocence died during 2014. The HKPF murdered it.

Leong mainly sticks to a strictly observational approach, but he captures key players at pivotal moments. Tai, Chan, Joshua Wong, Oscar Lai, and Agnes Chow all appear at length. The film also turns out to be admirably fair and balanced, given the equal time it allows pro-Beijing activist Robert Chow, who subsequently became notorious for his “snitch line” to inform on student activists and their schools. He is slick, but his smooth talk is undermined by his followers’ crude attempts to harass and intimidate young pro-democracy students. Indeed, this might be the most important part of the film, because it foreshadows the rampages committed by pro-Beijing “white shirts” in 2019.

NYICFF ’20: Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale

Totalitarian regimes cannot afford to let children grow up to be free-thinkers, so they try to beat them into obedience while they are still children. That means schools are more often a place of indoctrination than education. Young Fritzi becomes the focus of her teacher’s wrath through no fault of her own. However, history is on her side in Matthias Bruhn & Ralf Kukula’s animated feature, Fritzi: A Revolutionary Tale, which screens during the 2020 New York International Film Festival.

Fritzi and her best friend Sophie are so close, they are almost like sisters. That is nearly as true for their mothers, so Fritzi and her family agree without hesitation to look after Sophie’s dog Sputnik while she and her mom vacation in Hungary. They had heard reports that the Hungarian border was becoming rather porous during the summer of 1989, but they never gave it much thought until Sophie fails to return for the start of class.

Their venomous teacher, Ms. Liesegang openly condemns Sophie for abandoning the socialist state in class, but Fritzi naively defends her friend. That immediately puts her on the outs with Liesegang and the school’s Young Pioneer enforcers. Soon, only Bela, the hipster son of democracy activist parents will talk to her. Fritzi still does not fully understand the hypocrisy and oppression of the East German system, but she will learn the hard way when she innocently attempts to find her way to the Federal Republic, to reunite Sophie and Sputnik.

This is 1989, so there is a happy ending waiting for Fritzi, but getting there will not be easy. Along the way, she gets swept up in the Monday Demonstrations at St. Nicholas, first as an inadvertent bystander, but eventually as an active participant. Of course, we know where it is all headed, but Beate Volcker’s adaptation of Hannah Schott & Peter Palatsik children’s novel vividly captures the hope, fear, and uncertainty of the era. They also manage to shoehorn a girl-and-her-dog story into the grand historical events of 1989 quite nicely.

Monday, February 24, 2020

Corneliu Porumboiu’s The Whistlers


They are like the code-talkers of criminal capers. A corrupt Romanian police inspector has been sent to the Canary Islands to learn the ancient aboriginal whistling language known as El Silbo. The crooks he is in metaphorical bed with suspect his police and prosecutor colleagues will assume it is only the sound of birds chirping. He will pick up the El Silbo language quickly, but extracting himself from his extra-legal dilemma will be considerably trickier in Corneliu Porumboiu’s archly clever thriller, The Whistlers, which opens this Friday in New York.

When Gilda the femme fatale makes contact with Cristi, the bent copper, she catches on quicker than the audience does that he is under surveillance. She comes up with an appropriately femme fatalle-ish justification for her presence in his apartment, but she assures him the sex means nothing. Nevertheless, when they meet again on La Gomera in the Canaries, he cannot help feeling something for her.

She is part of the gang that has been bribing Cristi. Despite his inside information, the head of the Romanian operation has been arrested, so they have devised a plot to break him out of custody. That could leave Cristi a tad bit exposed, but the syndicate is not too worried about him. Cristi is also rather concerned about the abuse Gilda must take from a local La Gomera gangster. He would like to find a way to save her from the gang, even though he is still not sure he can trust her.

The Whistlers is indeed a clever little noir, with all kinds of surprises in store for viewers, making it a radical change of pace from Porumboi’s previous cerebral features, like The Treasure and Police, Adjective. The tone of Whistlers is considerably cooler than the average cross-and-double-cross criminal melodrama—like glacially cool—but it still delivers the genre goods.

Vlad Ivanov, who memorably played the semantically intimidating copper in Police, Adjective is perfectly cast as the drily cynical Cristi. He just looks like a crooked cop, but he also convincingly conveys a sense of Cristi’s increasingly conflicted motivations. Likewise, Catrinel Marlon keeps viewers happily guessing regarding Gilda’s intentions with Cristi. Yet, maybe the best noir work comes from Rodica Lazar, chewing the scenery with gleeful abandon as Magda, the prosecutor who is probably more corrupt than anyone, in her own mercenary way.