Obligatory photo, but it's kind of funny how being on a screen rather than paper transforms the photo. Also, if you look at the top, you can see where it says "The Priests 2" even though that phrase is absent in all the advertising. Like with Veteran 2: I, The Executioner a couple months ago, Well Go clearly feels they're better off not letting on that this is a sequel, presumably because the audience for Korean cinema has grown but isn't reaching back terribly far to catch up. This refers back to its predecessor on occasion, but is digestible enough on its own.
I'm not sure how big a holiday Lunar New Year is in South Korea; certainly AMC decided it's not a particularly big deal in Boston. We don't have a Koreatown like we do a Chinatown, and time was i'd have to go to Revere to see a Korean movie, but on the other hand the closest Newbury Comics to this theater has a big K-Pop section, so maybe the audience is growing more than the one show a day this is getting. At least it's at a decent time as opposed to 3pm.
I do kind of wonder if I would have seen this movie - and even tried to track down the one to which it is a sequel! - if it weren't Korean. I'm not really that big a fan of religious horror, and generally skip Western movies about exorcisms, but I apparently can't let this go by.
(Amusingly, "I'm not really a big fan of religious horror" is something I said to my nieces at Christmas, and for all that seeing them grow up reminds me I'm old, it is also very fun to be able to talk about horror movies with your nieces!)
Geomeun sunyeodeul (The Priests 2: Dark Nuns)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 February 2025 in AMC Cuaseway #4 (first-run, laser DCP)
buy the first film on DVD at Amazon
A question I often have when watching Korean exorcism movies involving the Catholic church is "why are you doing this when you could be making Exhuma?", although it obviously got easier to articulate when that film came out. The irony in this question, of course, is that the Catholic material probably carries the same thrill of discovery in Korea that shamanism has here in the U.S. The opening credits have definitions of relatively basic information (for Westerners), after all. Still, I can't help but feel that this movie seems most alive when it's closer to its local roots than its Roman ones.
The film opens with Kang Sung-ae, aka Sister Junia (Song Hye-kyo) arriving at the site of an exorcism with a huge jerry-can of holy water and more confidence than the priests involved, and soon setting sights on a new target: Choi Hee-joon (Moon Woo-jin), a pre-teen boy under observation at the Catholic hospital who is clearly possessed to Junia, but attending physician Father Paolo (Lee Jin-wook) may be a priest but doesn't really believe in demonic possession, with protegé Su-young, aka Sister Michela (Jeon Yeo-bin) echoing his point of view. Junia knows that Michela is maybe not so skeptical as she appears, and soon has her assisting in her attempt to free the boy from what may be one of the "12 Manifestations".
I'm not a particular fan of this particular slice of the horror genre, in part because I am not religious . It's not so much that I don't believe demons are real, but because I don't find anything resonant in a story where a demon is just a demon, and that's what Dark Nuns winds up being: Once Hee-joon's mother exits the story, he's not connected to anything bigger, and it makes the story kind of procedural, but the procedures seem arbitrary. The demon possessing Hee-joon doesn't feel like it's connected to any sort of real-world horror, and the film is only occasionally interested in what fighting it means to the SIsters, which could be a pretty good story, with plenty of material about how the Church is not built to let these highly-capable women have the authority they'd give less-able men.
Indeed, when the film is at its best, it's because Song Hye-kyo and Jeon Yeo-bin have enjoyable chemistry on-screen. Song's Junia is impatient, smoking too much and dumping gallons of holy water when most priests will flick a few drops, not looking to waste her numbered days; Jeon's Michela has a sweet tooth and is clearly the result of being close to the supernatural but wanting to help in grounded ways. Even if nuns weren't called "sisters", there's an enjoyable big-sis/little-sis vibe to them. Male priests drift in and out of the story making minor impressions, but I could watch a whole movie full of scenes where Michela has bought an extra soda for Junia who only drinks it because it's a non-smoking area. Props to Moon Woo-jin as the possessed kid, though - he goes hard when the time comes.
That's mostly the back half of the movie, which feels like director Kwon Hyeok-jae and writer Kim Woo-jin took a bunch of scenes from other horror movies and glued them together whether or not they really made sense together. They commit to the bit enough to make the finale propulsive, but the action itself is more about evoking a familiar feeling rather than connecting things. Why is the final exorcism in this industrial plant? No really compelling reason. Michela's flashbacks and the time she sees a ghost? Not useful. All those rats? Not a big deal. Wait, is it important to get Hee-joon to a church or just to ring the bell? Kwon executes each bit well enough and isn't bad at connecting them, but what's it add up to?
Of course, it probably also doesn't help that the script has to contort itself so badly to get the situation it wants that Junia and Mikela often seem as frustrated with the writers as the bureaucracy they've created. What do you mean, the heroes of 2015's The Priests are out of the country and, no, we can't say what they're doing or bring them or any dedicated exorcists from the Vatican even though it's a Duke of Hell and not just some minor demon possessing Hee-Joon! Oh, and all the Korean shamans are busy today because there's an election (which itself might be a fun bit but is just here so Michela can snort "really?"). When a movie requires the writers to avoid so much, maybe they shouldn't be writing that particular movie. Also, I don't know if this is just awkward subtitling, but there's a weird fixation on Junia's uterus that only Song Hye-kyo seems to recognize as creepy and insulting; her facial expressions are the only acknowledgment of this being uncomfortable.
Mostly, though, it's blandly familiar without a real story hook. It feels like the studio decided it wanted a sequel or spin-off of The Priests, and someone came up with the nuns as an interesting angle, but nobody came up with something to put underneath the well-executed surface in order to make it hit home.
Saturday, February 08, 2025
Friday, February 07, 2025
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 February 2025 - 13 February 2024
Happy "Between Lunar New Year and Valentine's" Week. Which is kind of a thing, I guess.
- The two "Valentine's Day" movies are genre pictures rather than romantic comedies. Heart Eyes is a slasher with a killer who targets couples. It plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South bay, Assembly Row, and Arsenal Yards (including CWX).
Less closely-tied to the holiday is Love Hurts, with Ke Huy Quan channeling Jackie Chan as a former killer trying to live a quiet life but pulled back into the fight against his gangster brother (Daniel Wu) by an old friend (Ariana DeBose). It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Kendall Square, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards (including CWX).
Becoming Led Zeppelin, a documentary featuring a bunch of rare footage, gets an Imax-exclusive run at Jordan's Furniture, South Bay, and Assembly Row. Assembly Row also has Parasite in Imax (which is kind of amusing, because Bong Joon-ho's latest was supposedly moved from last week to get a chance to play the giant screens).
Black History Month films at Boston Common and South Bay this week are The Fire Inside and The Forge.
There are Early Access screenings of Paddington in Peru at Boston Common and Assembly Row on Saturday, and of The Monkey at Boston Common, South Bay, and Assembly Row, all on the Dolby Cinema screens, on Wednesday. Oscar nominated animated feature Memoir of a Snail plays Boston Common and Assembly Row on Tuesday. Theaters are running Harry Potter movies again, with Philosopher's Stone playing Thursday at Boston Common, Causeway Street (including RealD 3D), South Bay (including RealD 3D), Assembly Row (including RealD 3D), and Arsenal Yards. Interestingly, the new 3D conversion appears to be reverting to the original British name while the flat presentation is still Sorcerer's Stone. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens No Other Land, a documentary made by a group of Palestinian and Israeli filmmakers that depicts the destruction of villages in the West Bank over the past five years. Friday night's 7pm show is a Panorama with Boston Palestine Film Festival Programming Director Michael Maria.
Midnight martial arts movies this weekend are Brandon Lee in Rapid Fire on Friday and Black Belt Jones on Saturday, both in 35mm. Sunday's Goethe-Institut film is From Hilde, with Love, while the afternoon's Black History Month "Icons" show is In the Heat of the Night, with Odie Henderson leading a pre-show seminar. There's Open Screen on Tuesday, An Affair to Remember to celebrate Cary Grant on Wednesday, with a 35mm Big Screen Classic show of Notting Hill on Thursday and a Cult Classic show of Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar later that evening. - Bring Them Down opens at Landmark Kendall Square, Boston Common, the Seaport; it's a sort of modern Irish Western, with Barry Keoghan and Christopher Abbot as members of rival families whose conflict suddenly escalates, with Colm Meaney in the supporting cast.
Tuesday's Best Picture Retro Replay at Kendall Square is A Beautiful Mind. On Wednesday, they have the newest "Silents Synced" presentation, with Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. synced to REM's "New Adventures in Hi-Fi' and "Monster". Emilia Pérez returns on Wednesday and Thursday. - Does South Korea celebrate Lunar New Year? I've seen places include Dark Nuns as part of their LNY slates; it's a sequel to The Priests, with a pair of nuns taking on the job of exorcising a possibly-possessed boy. It's at Causeway Street, and appears to stand alone (which is good because the first is not streaming anywhere and only available on DVD). K-pop concert film IU Concert: The Winning playing Boston Common and Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Sunday.
It's a busy week for Indian films: Hindi romantic comedy Loveyapa opens at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, with Khushi Kapoor & Junaid Khan as young lovers who exchange cell phones for the day. Hindi-language action comedy Badass Ravikumar, with Himesh Reshammiya's character spinning off from The Xpose, plays Boston Common. Hindi-language crime thriller Santosh, with Shahana Goswami taking over for her late husband as a small town cop, plays Boston Common (with at least some shows listed as Q&A events). Tamil thriller VidaaMuyarchi, which looks like a remake of Frantic but they're apparently in negotiation with a different studio; it's at Fresh Pond, Causeway Street. Telugu-language drama Thandel plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and follows a group of fishermen who drifted into Pakistani waters. Malayalam-language comedy Narayaneente Moonnaanmakkal plays Fresh Pond, with brothers trying to come together to give their dying mother a pleasant send-off. All We Imagine as Light continues at Fresh Pond, the Coolidge.
Also playing Apple Fresh Pond for early matinees is Kidnapping Inc., a Haitian comic thriller about an abduction that goes incredibly awry. It's as low-budget and rough as you'd expect from a Haitian indie, but it's vital as a result.
There's an AXCN presentation of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row on Sunday (subbed). Attack on Titan: The Last Attack, a theatrical release of the anime series's finale, plays Causeway Street, Assembly Row Monday to Wednesday (also Thursday at Causeway).
Among Chinese movies, Detective Chinatown 1900, already at Causeway Street and the Seaport, expands to Boston Common, Assembly Row. Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force continues at Boston Common, Causeway Street. - The Brattle Theatre has a 35mm print of John Carpenter's The Vampire Lovers as the Friday Film Matinee. After that, it's time for more "Dread of Winter", with a double feature of Outrage & Repulsion (35mm) Friday & Saturday, Insomnia (35mm) & The Vanishing Saturday evening, a 35mm print of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me as their annual "Superb Owl" counter-programming, Enemy & The Double on Monday, The Killing of a Sacred Deer on Tuesday, and Under the Skin & High Life on Wednesday.
Tuesday's "100 years of Queer German Cinema" film is Mädchen in Uniform, and Thursday lets one get an early start on Valentine's Day, with Casablanca and The Princess Bride, both on 35mm. - The Seaport Alamo finishes Lord of the Rings extended editions with The Return of the King playing Friday to Sunday. Other rep includes About Time on Saturday & Tuesday; Scott Pilgrim movie parties Sunday & Tuesday; "World of Animation" presentations of Anomalisa on Monday & Wednesday and Memoir of a Snail with pre-recorded Q&A on Tuesday; Bridesmaids on Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday; a preview of The Monkey with livestreamed Q&A on Monday; and The Golden Child on Wednesday.
- The Harvard Film Archive bookends the week with "Fables of the Reconstruction", which puts a spotlight on director Nelson Carlo de los santos Arias, with Santa Teresa and Other Stories preceded by "Lullabies" Friday evening, You Look like a Carriage That Not Even the Oxen Can Stop later that night, and a free screening of Pepe with the director in person on Thursday. For the next two evenings, they welcome Rosine Mbakam in person for Mambar Pierette on Saturday and Delphine's Prayers onSunday. Sunday afternoon offers Georges Méliès program of grand fantasies - "Voyages through Earth, Sea, and Space" with accompaniment by Martin Marks. Finally, Delphine Seyrig stars in The Garden That Tilts on 35mm film Monday evening.
- The Museum of Science has a special preview of "Space: The New Frontier" on the Omnimax screen on Tuesday night, featuring Dr. Ariel Ekblaw, one of the scientists featured in the film, with both a presentation an a Q&A afterward.
- Movies at MIT has a special screening of Prisoner No. 626710 Is Present early Friday evening and then Inglorious Basterds on Friday and Saturday night. As always, if you're not an MIT student or faculty member, try to give them a heads-up
- The Capitol Theatre seems to be bringing some recent acclaimed films back, with Sing Sing, The Room Next Door, and Nickel Boys returning to the screen.
The Somerville Theatre has live shows in the big room Friday/Saturday/Monday, but also opens I'm Still Here. They also have a Clint Eastwood double bill of A Fistful of Dollars (4K) & Unforgiven (35mm) on Sunday. They also host the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival starting Wednesday, with a shorts package, Clone Cops, and Small Town Universe that day and The Road to Nowhere, a panel discussion on alien-hunting, and Parallel Consequences on Thursday. The festival continues through the following weekend, climaxing on the 24-hour Marathon. - The Regent Theatre has a weekend run of Liza: A Truly Terrific Absolutely True Story from Friday to Sunday, with filmmaker Bruce David Klein on-hand Friday evening.
- Thriller 6 in the Morning is the Closing Night film of the Festival of Films From Iran at The Museum of Fine Arts on Friday night.
- ArtsEmerson begins their "Shared Stories" season with Look Into My Eyes on Friday evening, and The Truer History of the Chan Family (preceded by short "Ten Time Better") on Sunday afternoon, both co-presented by The Boston Asian American Film Festival.
- The Embassy picks up The Brutalist, with the Saturday evening show including discussion with two professors, Dr. Muna Güvenç and Dr. Eugene Sheppard, from nearby Brandeis University. They also have a free kids' show of Ratatouille as part of their one-year anniversary screening on Sunday and Cinema Paradiso as the free "Community Classic" Monday morning/afternoon.
- The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Monday plus Wednesday & Thursday with The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown (Friday/Saturday/Thursday), and I'm Still Here. They also have the "Silents Synced" Sherlock Jr. Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Thursday.
The West Newton Cinema opens I'm Still Here, keeping Dog Man, Nickel Boys, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Brutalist; Flow, A Complete Unknown, and Babygirl. There's a "Behind the Screen" show of All We Imagine as Light on Sunday (although the movie seems to have closed there otherwise), plus a special presentation of Girl Talk on Wednesday.
Cinema Salem has I'm Still Here, Flow, Memoir of a Snail, The Girl with the Needle, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, and The Brutalist from Friday to Monday. The Philadelphia Story plays Wednesday, as does the Weirdo Wednesday mystery show (and given that the Luna seems to have nothing on the schedule, I wonder if that's the same series with a new home).
If you can make it out to Danvers, Renner, a sci-fi thriller with Frankie Muniz as someone who programs his AI with the personality of his overbearing bother, plays the Liberty Tree Mall.
Sunday, February 02, 2025
Lunar New Year 2025.02: Creation of the Gods Part II: Demon Force
Been a while since I saw a Chinese movie near this sign, which I still don't quite understand. You would think the Chinese movies would play better in the theater right next to Chinatown, but perhaps the one at North Station is more accessible to students or something? Are Chinese students particular about reclining seats or something? I dunno.
I watched the first to catch up the night before, and found I didn't like it much more than the first time, but it was kind of good to be reminded of the basics before going into the next one. There's going to be a bit more of that going on over the course of the next month - I don't recall much about Ne Zha - but not as much as I'd thought, because apparently The Priests isn't streaming anywhere to prep for Dark Nuns and Operation Hadal does not actually seem to be a sequel to Operation Red Sea, despite how the trailer plays that up. Big "Happy Lunar New Year - Have Some Sequels!" situation this year.
One more thing: These aren't the only movies that literally have a message come up saying to stay through the credits for three extra scenes, but there's something specific about how Wuershan does it that I go back and forth between liking and disliking. Some movies in planned trilogies will say "stick around for a preview of the sequel", and Marvel tends to put in teases that are kind of inconsequential, but Creation of the Gods puts in things that are pretty consequential and which in some cases undoes what happened in the climax. It's as good a place to put these events as anything - they're not really part of either story - but on some level isn't how even serialized movies are expected to work.
I will say, at least, that I kind of felt sorry for the poor folks watching the extended edition of the second Lord of the Rings movie over at the Seaport at roughly the same time - sure, they're good films, but the fantasy adventure isn't as batty as it is here!
Feng Shen 2 (Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force)
* * *¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2025 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
I zonked out watching Part I to refresh my memory the night before this sequel opened - it's kind of beautifully mounted but nothing special until the finale - but Demon Force is a big improvement, with all the big fantasy stuff from that finale on display right from the start, exciting action that feels like more than CGI armies rubbing at each other, and some romance and sexiness from someone other than the villains. It's a genuine upgrade beyond being past setting things up.
For those that don't recall, the world is beset by a Great Curse that can only be dispelled using the Fengshan Bang, a scroll that absorbs the chi of the dead which can only be opened by the King of All Realms, but the current Shang king, Yin Shou (Fei Xiang aka Kris Philips), is a monster who heard "more death means more power" and obliged, and though defeated in the previous movie's climax, he has been revived by his lover, a fox demon who has taken the body of Su Daji (Na Ran aka Narana Erdyneeva). Speaking of revivals, immortals Nezha (Wu Yafan) and Yang Jian (Sha Chi) have brought the king's beheaded son Yin Jiao (Luke Chen Murchi) to Kunlun Mountain to be resurrected, while formerly loyal hostage Ji Fa (Yosh Yu Shi) has fled to his home city of Xiqi. Yin Shou wishes to dispatch Commander Wen Zhong (Wu Hsing-Kuo), just returned from a ten year campaign near the North Sea, to destroy Ji Fa and Xiqi, the old man wishes to retire, but General Deng Chanyu (Nashi) is eager to step up, and she leads a force of 800 men, and the four giant Mo brothers.
There is immediate "just kiss already" energy between Ji Fa and Deng Chanyu, and it's a sign that writer/director Wuershan is looking to have more fun this time around; the melodrama that drew snickers in the first has given way to actual jokes without sacrificing the implied cosmic scope of the danger or the more grounded stakes of the siege, and there's room for joy rather than just decadence. Maybe, having examined the formal framework the last time around, there's a little more room to have the characters act human within it.
That's especially the case with Yosh Yu and Nashi, who have solid enough chemistry that they don't have to be making eyes at each other to the audience to pull for them, but very enjoyable as leaders trying to outwit each other. It lets Kris Philips and Na Ran step back a bit, and Huang Bo also gets to be a bit funnier even as he takes a more active role as Xiqi's strategist. Wu Hisng-Kuo is formidable as Wen. Even when Chen Muchi returns, the cast never feels nearly as same-y as it could in the first - or, at least, they're able to have a little fun with the endless succession of characters, like when a character's name appears on-screen three seconds before he is killed.
And, also, there are big fantasy battles, with giants and gargoyles, and a pursuit involving horses that plays like a classic cliffside car chase. There's also a scene where the fancy armor that had been so important for the previous movie and a half becomes more trouble than it's worth, which is a delight. The grand finale has a besieged city having to figure out how to defend itself against flying saucers, and it's an absolute gas. The visual effects are maybe not quite Hollywood quality, but if they're short of photorealism, it's in a way that recalls the artwork for these mythic and fantastic stories that the filmmakers are likely referencing.
A third film in the series is promised, and I must admit, I found myself a lot more excited about the prospect than I had been 24 hours before. It's a big, entertaining adventure that audiences can jump into without having seen the first, and hope that they hold to a two-year schedule and the next comes out in 2027.
I watched the first to catch up the night before, and found I didn't like it much more than the first time, but it was kind of good to be reminded of the basics before going into the next one. There's going to be a bit more of that going on over the course of the next month - I don't recall much about Ne Zha - but not as much as I'd thought, because apparently The Priests isn't streaming anywhere to prep for Dark Nuns and Operation Hadal does not actually seem to be a sequel to Operation Red Sea, despite how the trailer plays that up. Big "Happy Lunar New Year - Have Some Sequels!" situation this year.
One more thing: These aren't the only movies that literally have a message come up saying to stay through the credits for three extra scenes, but there's something specific about how Wuershan does it that I go back and forth between liking and disliking. Some movies in planned trilogies will say "stick around for a preview of the sequel", and Marvel tends to put in teases that are kind of inconsequential, but Creation of the Gods puts in things that are pretty consequential and which in some cases undoes what happened in the climax. It's as good a place to put these events as anything - they're not really part of either story - but on some level isn't how even serialized movies are expected to work.
I will say, at least, that I kind of felt sorry for the poor folks watching the extended edition of the second Lord of the Rings movie over at the Seaport at roughly the same time - sure, they're good films, but the fantasy adventure isn't as batty as it is here!
Feng Shen 2 (Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force)
* * *¼ (out of four)
Seen 31 January 2025 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
I zonked out watching Part I to refresh my memory the night before this sequel opened - it's kind of beautifully mounted but nothing special until the finale - but Demon Force is a big improvement, with all the big fantasy stuff from that finale on display right from the start, exciting action that feels like more than CGI armies rubbing at each other, and some romance and sexiness from someone other than the villains. It's a genuine upgrade beyond being past setting things up.
For those that don't recall, the world is beset by a Great Curse that can only be dispelled using the Fengshan Bang, a scroll that absorbs the chi of the dead which can only be opened by the King of All Realms, but the current Shang king, Yin Shou (Fei Xiang aka Kris Philips), is a monster who heard "more death means more power" and obliged, and though defeated in the previous movie's climax, he has been revived by his lover, a fox demon who has taken the body of Su Daji (Na Ran aka Narana Erdyneeva). Speaking of revivals, immortals Nezha (Wu Yafan) and Yang Jian (Sha Chi) have brought the king's beheaded son Yin Jiao (Luke Chen Murchi) to Kunlun Mountain to be resurrected, while formerly loyal hostage Ji Fa (Yosh Yu Shi) has fled to his home city of Xiqi. Yin Shou wishes to dispatch Commander Wen Zhong (Wu Hsing-Kuo), just returned from a ten year campaign near the North Sea, to destroy Ji Fa and Xiqi, the old man wishes to retire, but General Deng Chanyu (Nashi) is eager to step up, and she leads a force of 800 men, and the four giant Mo brothers.
There is immediate "just kiss already" energy between Ji Fa and Deng Chanyu, and it's a sign that writer/director Wuershan is looking to have more fun this time around; the melodrama that drew snickers in the first has given way to actual jokes without sacrificing the implied cosmic scope of the danger or the more grounded stakes of the siege, and there's room for joy rather than just decadence. Maybe, having examined the formal framework the last time around, there's a little more room to have the characters act human within it.
That's especially the case with Yosh Yu and Nashi, who have solid enough chemistry that they don't have to be making eyes at each other to the audience to pull for them, but very enjoyable as leaders trying to outwit each other. It lets Kris Philips and Na Ran step back a bit, and Huang Bo also gets to be a bit funnier even as he takes a more active role as Xiqi's strategist. Wu Hisng-Kuo is formidable as Wen. Even when Chen Muchi returns, the cast never feels nearly as same-y as it could in the first - or, at least, they're able to have a little fun with the endless succession of characters, like when a character's name appears on-screen three seconds before he is killed.
And, also, there are big fantasy battles, with giants and gargoyles, and a pursuit involving horses that plays like a classic cliffside car chase. There's also a scene where the fancy armor that had been so important for the previous movie and a half becomes more trouble than it's worth, which is a delight. The grand finale has a besieged city having to figure out how to defend itself against flying saucers, and it's an absolute gas. The visual effects are maybe not quite Hollywood quality, but if they're short of photorealism, it's in a way that recalls the artwork for these mythic and fantastic stories that the filmmakers are likely referencing.
A third film in the series is promised, and I must admit, I found myself a lot more excited about the prospect than I had been 24 hours before. It's a big, entertaining adventure that audiences can jump into without having seen the first, and hope that they hold to a two-year schedule and the next comes out in 2027.
Friday, January 31, 2025
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 January 2025 - 6 February 2024
February, huh? Seems fast.
- Dog Man, an animated adaptation of America's most popular comic book series (each graphic novel sells something like ten times its weight in Batman), opens at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common (including Dolby Digital), Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema), Arsenal Yards (including CWX), and Chestnut Hill. It's the first DreamWorks animated feature in what seems like decades not to be in 3D, which is a real shame; they're good at it.
Benefiting from a much more informative second trailer is Companion, in which a man buys a hyper-realistic companion android, abuses it, and then jailbreaks it enough to give it free will (seems like a mistake). It comes from the makers of Barbarian and plays the Capitol, Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture, Boston Common (including Dolby Digital), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Imax Xenon & Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax Laser & Dolby Cinema), and Arsenal Yards (including CWX).
Valiant One, a thriller with Chase Stokes and Lana Condor as American soldiers who wind up on the wrong side of the DMZ in North Korea, opens at Boston Common and South Bay. Love Me, with Kristen Steward and Steven Yeun as the voices and eventual on-screen avatars of two computers that connect in a post-human world, also opens at Boston Common and South Bay.
Boston Common rotates a number of nominated/noteworthy films, including Luther: Never Too Much, Piece by Piece, The Last Showgirl, mostly as matinees; the first two play South Bay daily. Boston Common has a remastered Hellraiser on Wednesday & Thursday. South Bay has an Early Access show of Becoming Led Zeppelin on the Imax screen on Wednesday, before the regular early shows the next night and weekend opening. - Multiple Oscar-nominee I'm Still Here, starring Fernanda Torres as a woman who perseveres for decades in the wake of her husband being disappeared by the Brazilian military dictatorship in the 1970s, opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, Boston Common. The Seaport.
The end of the month means the end of the French cult midnights at the Coolidge with Irreversible: Straight Cut, with Gaspar Noé re-editing his most (in)famous film to be in chronological order. Saturday night, they start a February of (mostly) 35mm martial arts mayhem with John Woo directing Jean-Claude Van Damme in Hard Target. Indie horror Round the Decoy plays both nights, with director Adam Newman in person. Sunday morning offers a kids' show of Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle, with the Black History Month "Icons" program starting that afternoon with Dorothy Dandridge and Harry Belafonte in Carmen Jones. Monday offers a 35mm screening of Barry Lyndon with Emerson's Barry Marshall leading a seminar beforehand; Tuesday both a preview screening of Armand with director Halfdan Ullmann Tøndel on-hand for a Q&A and the start of a Cary Grant series with a digital restoration of His Girl Friday, while Thursday's Icons show is a 35mm print of Super Fly. Also note that as of Monday, The Brutalist is moving upstairs and showing digitally rather than on 70mm film. - The Landmark Kendall Square opens Rose, a French movie about a woman who reinvents herself after being widowed at 78. It originally opened in France back in '21, an almost inconceivable time getting her in today's terms (although that's just how it used to work, kids). There's also a first-look show on Monday and a Retro Replay show of The Lost Weekend on Tuesday.
- The next Lunar New Year movie to hit American screens is Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force, which plays Boston Common, Causeway Street, Assembly Row. The second in Wuershan's planned trilogy looks to be as gorgeous as the first but with all the giants, monsters, and magical weaponry that it only teased in its finale and credits up front at the start. Continuing from Wednesday are Detective Chinatown 1900, at Causeway Street and the Seaport, and Hit N Fun at Causeway Street.
Apple Fresh Pond opens Hindi-language action film Deva, and Ponman, a Malayalam-language crime comedy about a gold dealer who supplies ornaments for a wedding only to find the groom attempt to rob him, on Friday. Malayalam-language drama Am Ah plays Saturday night, and You, Me & Her, an American indie comedy with an Indian-American lead, plays Sunday. Tamil thriller VidaaMuyarchi, with a husband searching for his missing wife, opens Wednesday, with Telugu-language drama Thandel opening Thursday. All We Imagine as Light and Sky Force (also at Boston Common) are hed over.
There's an AXCN presentation of Cowboy Bebop: The Movie at Boston Common, South Bay, Assembly Row on Wednesday (subbed) and Thursday (dubbed).
Two K-pop concert films this week: (G)I-Dle World Tour: i-Dol at Boston Common on Saturday and IU Concert: The Winning playing Boston Common, Assembly Row (Imax Laser) on Wednesday. - The Brattle Theatre has a 35mm print of John Carpenter's The Thing as the Friday Film Matinee, about a week ahead of the series it likely belongs in. They also have a pair of special engagements starting on Friday: A new 4K restoration of The Wages of Fear, the original film about a team of truckers white-knuckling tankers full of nitroglycerin across dangerous terrain, plays through Monday; Timestalker, a dark comedy in which writer/director Alice Lowe plays a soul who may never find her love returned, no matter how many times she dies for a man, plays (mostly) late shows through Tuesday.
Tuesday also features the first in a weekly series of "100 years of Queer German Cinema", silent featurette Different From the Others. Then on Wednesday, they start the annual "Dread of Winter" series with a 35mm print of Ang Lee's The Ice Storm, continuing on Thursday with a twin-bill of Kiyoshi Kurosawa's Cure & Bong Joon-ho's Memories of Murder. - The Seaport Alamo continues Lord of the Rings extended editions with The Two Towers playing daily through Wednesday. Other rep includes sing-along movie parties for Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping on Friday & Tuesday; Groundhog Day (once) on Sunday, Seven on Sunday/Tuesday/Wednesday; and Coming to America on Thursday.
- The Harvard Film Archive has three distinct eras of Francophone film this weekend: The Rosine Mbakam series continues with Chez jolie coiffure & "You Will Be My Ally" at 7pm Friday, Prism at 9:30pm Friday, and The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman & "Doors of the Past" on Sunday. There are two Georges Méliès programs - "The Optical Tricks of a Cinemagician" with accompaniment by Martin Marks on Saturday evening and "Only in Dreams: The Evils that Lurk" with Robert Humphreville on piano Sunday afternoon. The Delphine Seyrig series also continues with Daughters of Darkness on Saturday night. On Monday, they start a program of Korean Documentary cinema with Bu Chan Yong introducing Kim Dong-won's "Sanggyedong Olympic" and Jeong Yeo-reum's "Graeae: A Stationed Idea"
- The Museum of Science has free screenings of Black Panther on the Omnimax screen for Black History Month on Saturday evening.
- Movies at MIT returns for the spring semester with a sci-fi mini-marathon on Saturday, featuring Spaceballs, Galaxy Quest, and the Star Wars Holiday Specia.
- The Capitol Theatre has a special "craft corner" screening of 13 Going on 30 on Sunday evening, with the lights up so that you can knit, sew, and the like while watching the movie.
The Somerville Theatre moves The Brutalist from the big 70mm screen on Sunday so that they can have a little more freedom for rep, starting with a Black History Month "Silents Please" screening of The Flying Ace with music by Jeff Rapsis Sunday afternoon, Jennifer's Body that night, Once Upon a Time in… Hollywood on 70mm film Monday & Tuesday, and a quick Italian thriller series of The Facts of Murder on Wednesday and a double feature of Blood and Black Lace & The Bird with the Crystal Plumage on Thursday. - The Regent Theatre has an encore screening of The Last Seat in the House on Sunday afternoon, focused on sound engineer Bill Hanley, and a Midweek Music Movie of The Fuzztones vs The World on Thursday.
- The Museum of Fine Arts has more of the Festival of Films From Iran with Universal Language Friday night, My Stolen Planet Saturday afternoon, and Dead End on Sunday, with star Mary Apick among others on-hand for a post-film Q&A.
- The Embassy has The Colors Within and A Complete Unknown Friday to Sunday, and free "Community Classics" screenings of Seven Samurai on Monday morning and afternoon.
- The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Monday plus Wednesday & Thursday with Flow, The Brutalist, and A Complete Unknown. They also have a free Sunday-morning show of A Hard Day's Night.
The West Newton Cinema opens Dog Man, picks up Nickel Boys and The Seed of the Sacred Fig, keeping All We Imagine as Light, The Brutalist; Flow, A Complete Unknown, and Babygirl. There are special sing-along shows of Wicked on Saturday and an "IRL Film Club" show of The Thinking Game on Sunday. Aso on Sunday, filmmaker John Sayles will be on hand to read from his latest novel To Save the Man and introduce a screening of Lone Star afterward. Finally, on Thursday, there's a Ty Burr movie club show of David Lynch's Mulholland Dr.
The Luna Theater has Babygirl on Friday, Saturday, and Thursday; Anora on Saturday; and Queer on Saturday.
Cinema Salem has Flow, Memoir of a Snail, The Girl with the Needle, The Seed of the Sacred Fig, The Last Showgirl, The Brutalist, and Nosferatu from Friday to Monday. Friday's "Night Light" show is Blow-Up, and Wednesday has both a Weirdo Wednesday mystery show and The Snows of Kilimanjaro.
Thursday, January 30, 2025
Lunar New Year 2025.01: Detective Chinatown 1900 & Hit N Fun
Happy Lunar New Year to all who celebrate, even if it's just heading to the movie theater to check out the big holiday blockbusters.
Although one is, frankly, busting more blocks than the other; when I purchased my tickets a few days ago, both were in Causeway #6, one of their large rooms. But while Detective Chinatown 1900 was ready to fill up for its 6:30pm showtime, it was basically just me and one other person for Hit N Fun at 9:30pm, so they moved that to a smaller room (#10) and put another show of DC1900 on. The funny thing is how they handled assigned seating: The app still had me in seat C11, although I'm pretty sure that this would have placed me in the handicapped seating, while the ticket I printed out had me in I20, or as far back and to the left, viewed from the back of the theater, as you can get. Which, considering how I tend to be front and center, and slightly to the right if I can't be on the centerline (left ear better than the right, so that kind of balances things), is not a great guess. Fortunately, I could check Fandango and see that the front was wide open and just grab my usual seat B10.
Anyway, it's a busy year for Lunar New Year movies, the busiest in some time: DC1900, Hit N Fun, and Creation of the Gods II this week, Ne Zha 2 on the 14th, Tsui Hark's Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants on the 21st (hopefully in 3D), and Dante Lam's Operation Hadal on the 28th. Hopefully it's a good one as well; both of these are decent but with room to be a bit better.
Tang Ren Jie Tan an 1900 (Detective Chinatown 1900)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #6 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
Does the propaganda get laid on fairly thick toward the end of Detective Chinatown 1900? Yeah, absolutely, but it's not like the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't a real thing, and it's not like there aren't parts of the movie which are uncomfortably topical today. I'll give it to them, even if it might be a somewhat bitter pill for the potential Western audience pulled in by the promise of a fresh start and some familiar faces.
As it opens, there is upheaval on both sides of the Pacific, as the Western powers are looting Beijing and Empress Dowager Cixi (Xi Meijuan) dispatches investigator Fei Yanggu (Yue Yunpeng) to San Francisco to track down rebel Cheng Shialang (Ke Bai aka White-K). He is supposed to be met by some noted detectives and translator Fu Qin (Liu Haoran), but Fu is left on his own and taken in by the head of the Hip Sing Tong, "Louis" Bai Xuanling (Chow Yun-Fat), who is due to address the city council on a plan to greatly expand the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act which would have the city reclaim the land under Chinatown. It's being supported by ambitious politician Grant Jones (John Cusack), but everything is thrown into chaos when Grant's daughter Alice (Anastasia Shestakova) is found dead, stomach gutted in a manner reminiscent of Jack the Ripper, with witnesses placing Bai's son Zhenbang (Steven Zhang Xincheng) at the scene of the crime. Also found dead is Navajo chief Six-Hands, who often came to Chinatown to trade furs; and his son "Ghost" Gui (Wang Baoqiang), a Chinese orphan adopted after his parents died building the railroad, must team with Fu Qin to solve the mystery.
There's more going on - an Irish labor gang, a stage magician, more bodies eventually to come, all running at a breakneck pace that's nevertheless impressively coherent given that the credits show both series mastermind and Dai Mo as directors and a whole slew of people contributing to the screenpay. I would not be shocked if the studio were throwing everything they could at the movie to meet a Lunar New Year release date - Chen's previous film, Decoded, came out just six months ago and you wonder if he just asked Cusack to hang around because he had another movie that could use an American shooting the next day - and it's kind of shaggy in that way, as well as in all the other ways Chinese movies with American parts often are: Lots of guys who are clearly Twenty-First Century Russians and who clearly don't speak English as well as Chow Yun-Fat.
Mostly, though, it fits nicely into the series, delivering very broad comedy which often gives way to a surprisingly good murder mystery, maybe the series's best since its first entry. There'a a lot of activity going on, but it's seldom wasted or purely red herrings, and the characters dive in rather than wink at the audience. As usual, you can tell Chen Sicheng loves this stuff; the film comes alive when it's time to reveal all, and if he's hidden a conversation or two, it's not like it's material you can't figure out. There's a very nifty chase in the middle which is full of slapstick, western, and wuxia bits, and a somewhat sillier (but still fun) set piece ahead of it. Mixing things up and throwing other genre elements in at times seems to have revitalized the returning cast and crew.
If the chemistry between Liu Haoran and Wang Baoqing isn't quite what it was in the first film, their parts are a little more balanced than they were in the last couple movies, where the growing confidence of Liu Haoran's Qin pushed Wang's Tang back into a more purely comic relief role. Here they both get to play fishes out of water and bounce off each other in entertaining fashion, and they've got a nice brace of folks supporting them, with Yue Yunpeng and Wei Xiang particularly good at playing their parts as both comic and potentially more than they appear. As in Decoded, John Cusack is kind of an odd presence in the film, in that his comfort in English can make him seem like he's underplaying relative to the other "Americans", but he grounds the climax surprisingly well.
And most importantly, there's Chow Yun-Fat in his first role in five years (One More Chance was delayed by Covid), and he's been missed. He goes from comedic mugging to fearsome authority as this film goes on, and his ability to switch between Mandarin and English lets him pull that off in all of his scenes - if he's dubbed, one wonders why nobody else is dubbed that well. He's giving a speech at the climax and seems earnestly at a loose end at the finale, the film's secret weapon except he's no secret.
(On the other hand, one cannot help but notice that nearly none of the women in the film get to actively do anything, and a lot of Navajo are played by Chinese actors for a movie that leans pretty hard on how racist Americans can be at points.)
Chow's maybe not quite enough to elevate this film where it gets rough, and you'll never really miss the rough spots, but DC1990 does just enough of the things I particularly like about the series fairly well, so that I wound up enjoying it quite a bit.
Lam Si Kyut Dau (Hit N Fun)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Hit N Fun looks like it's going to be a broad, silly New Year's comedy as it introduces its characters and sets up their situations, but winds up going in another directions, like these goofballs haven't quite been made goofy enough and the filmmakers have grown too fond of them to really have fun at their expense. That's far from crippling, but it does mean that there comes a point where the movie is more pleasant than hilarious. Which is still a net positive, and I've got to admit, I don't really know where the zany version of this story would go.
It opens in a dingy muay thai gym in Macau; Bruce Chung Li (Louis Koo Tin-Lok) was once a legend with an unbeatable left fist but he and student Stallone Ko (Tony Wu Tsz-Tung), who has lost 37 straight matches, have been catering to senior citizens and children ever since word got out that he lost a fight to disciple Arnold Chan (German Cheung Man-Kit). Across the estuary in Hong Kong, advertising executive Elsa Lam (Louise Wong Tan-Ni) is bouncing between multiple appointments, including a voice over for "Meno-Peace" where the actress, Bruce's wife Carrie Mok (Gigi Leung Wing-Kei), has not been told what the material is and still isn't ready to be associated with that sort of work at 48; her agent Bridget (Yeung Sze-Man) is Elsa's aunt. That's when Elsa discovers that her boyfriend Daniel (Peter Chan Charm-Man), has another girlfriend, Surewin Suen (Chrissie Chau Sau-Na) - Macau's women's champion, Bruce's former student, and the face of Arnold's gym. Humiliated when their conference goes viral, Elsa shows up at Bruce's gym and offers 200,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $25,000 US) to teach her to fight.
Are there a bunch of nutty coincidences in that rundown? Yes! But that's kind of what makes it work, early on, where a sudden turn around the corner brings them back into familiar territory but from a cock-eyed view, and we get to wonder how the intense Elsa is going to play off the laid-back Stallone, or note that the bad blood that apparently festers between Bruce and Arnold doesn't keep Carrie and Surewin from being friends. There's comedy to be mined from Carrie's vanity or how this insecure artist has drawn the attention of two highly driven women. It should be an invitation to entertaining chaos, but never quite is. The initial friction between Carrie and Elsa vanishes so quickly that it's genuinely weird for the former to be describing the latter as a bitch by a half hour into the movie, for instance, and nothing really develops with Arnold being money-hungry.
At times, it's almost like the characters get too well-rounded. Gigi Leung, for instance, is given what should be a one-joke caricature and somehow makes this kind of shallow and vain woman who hasn't come to terms with her aging very funny and sympathetic without being maudlin, and there's an enjoyably understated opposites-attract thing going with Louis Koo's curmudgeonly Bruce; Koo's "uhh" when Carrie suggests Bruce train her for an action movie suggests he's known this would be a bad idea for twenty years. Louise Wong snaps out orders that make Elsa seem like she's abrasive and a lot but also not unsympathetic, and German Cheung briefly works as an entertainingly exaggerated take on everything one hates about the gym. At some point, though, they all seem to become too aware of their precarity and how the modern world can make comic characters tragic in a second, and there's not much of a back-up plan. There's really no reason for Elsa and Surewin to fight, let alone Bruce and Arnold; instead of the story leading everybody to weird places, it's easy to see them deciding to be mature about everything.
That said, when they are going for the big joke, it tends to land pretty well; Gigi Leung and Louise Wong are especially funny, as is Wong Wan-Ching as the daughter of Bruce & Carrie who is easily as smart as the two put together. Nobody really has a joke die on them so much as the jokes get smaller. It being Hong Kong, even a comedy knows what to do with a fight, from the slapstick chaos of Elsa's first confrontation with Surewin to a finale that is kind of unblinking in how, on a certain level, these two really want to beat the hell out of each other but are also very grateful for rules that tell them that this is enough. That one is intercut with the duel between Bruce and Arnold that is shot in a completely different way; they are expert fighters but their battle seems abstracted more than violent.
It's an enjoyable enough movie to see on a holiday, I suppose, although more a bonus-lazy-afternoon holiday than a big one where you're making a lot of noise. It's not quite tradition, but it's fairly nice.
Although one is, frankly, busting more blocks than the other; when I purchased my tickets a few days ago, both were in Causeway #6, one of their large rooms. But while Detective Chinatown 1900 was ready to fill up for its 6:30pm showtime, it was basically just me and one other person for Hit N Fun at 9:30pm, so they moved that to a smaller room (#10) and put another show of DC1900 on. The funny thing is how they handled assigned seating: The app still had me in seat C11, although I'm pretty sure that this would have placed me in the handicapped seating, while the ticket I printed out had me in I20, or as far back and to the left, viewed from the back of the theater, as you can get. Which, considering how I tend to be front and center, and slightly to the right if I can't be on the centerline (left ear better than the right, so that kind of balances things), is not a great guess. Fortunately, I could check Fandango and see that the front was wide open and just grab my usual seat B10.
Anyway, it's a busy year for Lunar New Year movies, the busiest in some time: DC1900, Hit N Fun, and Creation of the Gods II this week, Ne Zha 2 on the 14th, Tsui Hark's Legends of the Condor Heroes: The Gallants on the 21st (hopefully in 3D), and Dante Lam's Operation Hadal on the 28th. Hopefully it's a good one as well; both of these are decent but with room to be a bit better.
Tang Ren Jie Tan an 1900 (Detective Chinatown 1900)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #6 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
Does the propaganda get laid on fairly thick toward the end of Detective Chinatown 1900? Yeah, absolutely, but it's not like the Chinese Exclusion Act wasn't a real thing, and it's not like there aren't parts of the movie which are uncomfortably topical today. I'll give it to them, even if it might be a somewhat bitter pill for the potential Western audience pulled in by the promise of a fresh start and some familiar faces.
As it opens, there is upheaval on both sides of the Pacific, as the Western powers are looting Beijing and Empress Dowager Cixi (Xi Meijuan) dispatches investigator Fei Yanggu (Yue Yunpeng) to San Francisco to track down rebel Cheng Shialang (Ke Bai aka White-K). He is supposed to be met by some noted detectives and translator Fu Qin (Liu Haoran), but Fu is left on his own and taken in by the head of the Hip Sing Tong, "Louis" Bai Xuanling (Chow Yun-Fat), who is due to address the city council on a plan to greatly expand the enforcement of the Chinese Exclusion Act which would have the city reclaim the land under Chinatown. It's being supported by ambitious politician Grant Jones (John Cusack), but everything is thrown into chaos when Grant's daughter Alice (Anastasia Shestakova) is found dead, stomach gutted in a manner reminiscent of Jack the Ripper, with witnesses placing Bai's son Zhenbang (Steven Zhang Xincheng) at the scene of the crime. Also found dead is Navajo chief Six-Hands, who often came to Chinatown to trade furs; and his son "Ghost" Gui (Wang Baoqiang), a Chinese orphan adopted after his parents died building the railroad, must team with Fu Qin to solve the mystery.
There's more going on - an Irish labor gang, a stage magician, more bodies eventually to come, all running at a breakneck pace that's nevertheless impressively coherent given that the credits show both series mastermind and Dai Mo as directors and a whole slew of people contributing to the screenpay. I would not be shocked if the studio were throwing everything they could at the movie to meet a Lunar New Year release date - Chen's previous film, Decoded, came out just six months ago and you wonder if he just asked Cusack to hang around because he had another movie that could use an American shooting the next day - and it's kind of shaggy in that way, as well as in all the other ways Chinese movies with American parts often are: Lots of guys who are clearly Twenty-First Century Russians and who clearly don't speak English as well as Chow Yun-Fat.
Mostly, though, it fits nicely into the series, delivering very broad comedy which often gives way to a surprisingly good murder mystery, maybe the series's best since its first entry. There'a a lot of activity going on, but it's seldom wasted or purely red herrings, and the characters dive in rather than wink at the audience. As usual, you can tell Chen Sicheng loves this stuff; the film comes alive when it's time to reveal all, and if he's hidden a conversation or two, it's not like it's material you can't figure out. There's a very nifty chase in the middle which is full of slapstick, western, and wuxia bits, and a somewhat sillier (but still fun) set piece ahead of it. Mixing things up and throwing other genre elements in at times seems to have revitalized the returning cast and crew.
If the chemistry between Liu Haoran and Wang Baoqing isn't quite what it was in the first film, their parts are a little more balanced than they were in the last couple movies, where the growing confidence of Liu Haoran's Qin pushed Wang's Tang back into a more purely comic relief role. Here they both get to play fishes out of water and bounce off each other in entertaining fashion, and they've got a nice brace of folks supporting them, with Yue Yunpeng and Wei Xiang particularly good at playing their parts as both comic and potentially more than they appear. As in Decoded, John Cusack is kind of an odd presence in the film, in that his comfort in English can make him seem like he's underplaying relative to the other "Americans", but he grounds the climax surprisingly well.
And most importantly, there's Chow Yun-Fat in his first role in five years (One More Chance was delayed by Covid), and he's been missed. He goes from comedic mugging to fearsome authority as this film goes on, and his ability to switch between Mandarin and English lets him pull that off in all of his scenes - if he's dubbed, one wonders why nobody else is dubbed that well. He's giving a speech at the climax and seems earnestly at a loose end at the finale, the film's secret weapon except he's no secret.
(On the other hand, one cannot help but notice that nearly none of the women in the film get to actively do anything, and a lot of Navajo are played by Chinese actors for a movie that leans pretty hard on how racist Americans can be at points.)
Chow's maybe not quite enough to elevate this film where it gets rough, and you'll never really miss the rough spots, but DC1990 does just enough of the things I particularly like about the series fairly well, so that I wound up enjoying it quite a bit.
Lam Si Kyut Dau (Hit N Fun)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #10 (first-run, laser DCP)
Hit N Fun looks like it's going to be a broad, silly New Year's comedy as it introduces its characters and sets up their situations, but winds up going in another directions, like these goofballs haven't quite been made goofy enough and the filmmakers have grown too fond of them to really have fun at their expense. That's far from crippling, but it does mean that there comes a point where the movie is more pleasant than hilarious. Which is still a net positive, and I've got to admit, I don't really know where the zany version of this story would go.
It opens in a dingy muay thai gym in Macau; Bruce Chung Li (Louis Koo Tin-Lok) was once a legend with an unbeatable left fist but he and student Stallone Ko (Tony Wu Tsz-Tung), who has lost 37 straight matches, have been catering to senior citizens and children ever since word got out that he lost a fight to disciple Arnold Chan (German Cheung Man-Kit). Across the estuary in Hong Kong, advertising executive Elsa Lam (Louise Wong Tan-Ni) is bouncing between multiple appointments, including a voice over for "Meno-Peace" where the actress, Bruce's wife Carrie Mok (Gigi Leung Wing-Kei), has not been told what the material is and still isn't ready to be associated with that sort of work at 48; her agent Bridget (Yeung Sze-Man) is Elsa's aunt. That's when Elsa discovers that her boyfriend Daniel (Peter Chan Charm-Man), has another girlfriend, Surewin Suen (Chrissie Chau Sau-Na) - Macau's women's champion, Bruce's former student, and the face of Arnold's gym. Humiliated when their conference goes viral, Elsa shows up at Bruce's gym and offers 200,000 Hong Kong dollars (about $25,000 US) to teach her to fight.
Are there a bunch of nutty coincidences in that rundown? Yes! But that's kind of what makes it work, early on, where a sudden turn around the corner brings them back into familiar territory but from a cock-eyed view, and we get to wonder how the intense Elsa is going to play off the laid-back Stallone, or note that the bad blood that apparently festers between Bruce and Arnold doesn't keep Carrie and Surewin from being friends. There's comedy to be mined from Carrie's vanity or how this insecure artist has drawn the attention of two highly driven women. It should be an invitation to entertaining chaos, but never quite is. The initial friction between Carrie and Elsa vanishes so quickly that it's genuinely weird for the former to be describing the latter as a bitch by a half hour into the movie, for instance, and nothing really develops with Arnold being money-hungry.
At times, it's almost like the characters get too well-rounded. Gigi Leung, for instance, is given what should be a one-joke caricature and somehow makes this kind of shallow and vain woman who hasn't come to terms with her aging very funny and sympathetic without being maudlin, and there's an enjoyably understated opposites-attract thing going with Louis Koo's curmudgeonly Bruce; Koo's "uhh" when Carrie suggests Bruce train her for an action movie suggests he's known this would be a bad idea for twenty years. Louise Wong snaps out orders that make Elsa seem like she's abrasive and a lot but also not unsympathetic, and German Cheung briefly works as an entertainingly exaggerated take on everything one hates about the gym. At some point, though, they all seem to become too aware of their precarity and how the modern world can make comic characters tragic in a second, and there's not much of a back-up plan. There's really no reason for Elsa and Surewin to fight, let alone Bruce and Arnold; instead of the story leading everybody to weird places, it's easy to see them deciding to be mature about everything.
That said, when they are going for the big joke, it tends to land pretty well; Gigi Leung and Louise Wong are especially funny, as is Wong Wan-Ching as the daughter of Bruce & Carrie who is easily as smart as the two put together. Nobody really has a joke die on them so much as the jokes get smaller. It being Hong Kong, even a comedy knows what to do with a fight, from the slapstick chaos of Elsa's first confrontation with Surewin to a finale that is kind of unblinking in how, on a certain level, these two really want to beat the hell out of each other but are also very grateful for rules that tell them that this is enough. That one is intercut with the duel between Bruce and Arnold that is shot in a completely different way; they are expert fighters but their battle seems abstracted more than violent.
It's an enjoyable enough movie to see on a holiday, I suppose, although more a bonus-lazy-afternoon holiday than a big one where you're making a lot of noise. It's not quite tradition, but it's fairly nice.
Friday, January 24, 2025
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 24 January 2025 - 30 January 2024
Happy Oscar-Noms-Finally-Announced Day and Lunar New Year for those who celebrate either!
- The first of two films directed by Steven Soderbergh from David Koepp scripts in less than two months is Presence, a haunted-house drama featuring Lucy Liu. It's at The Somerville Theatre, Boston Common (including Dolby Cinema), Causeway Street, Kendall Square, the Seaport, South Bay (including Dolby Cinema), and Assembly Row (including Dolby Cinema).
Flight Risk, a thriller starring Michelle Dockery as a Marshal transporting a witness (Topher Grace) in a small plane only to find their pilot is an impostor, has been amusingly coy about the director being Mel Gibson, but even funnier is centering the advertising around Mark Wahlberg delivering the line "y'all need a pilot?" when he's the towniest townie you can imagine. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Arsenal Yards (CWX), and Chestnut Hill.
Drama Brave the Dark has Damian Harris directing brother Jared as a teacher who takes a wayward student into his home. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Causeway Street, and South Bay.
The trailer for Inheritance has sure played a lot for something that's getting one show late Friday at Boston Common (and the site is giving me trouble trying to reserve a seat); it stars Bridgerton's Phoebe Dynevor as a woman who finds herself in over her head when she joins her father's family business of international espionage.
Among expansions: The Brutalist, already at the Somerville, the Coolidge, Boston Common,the Seaport, Kendall Square, Assembly Row (including Imax Laser), expands to South Bay, Lexington, West Newton, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), and CinemaSalem; Hard Truths expands to the Seaport (already at Boston Common); September 5 to Arsenal Yards (already at Kendall Square, Chestnut Hill, and Boston Common) Films returning include Conclave to Boston Common (Friday), Dune Part Two to Boston Common (Saturday/Sunday), A Real Pain to Boston Common (Wednesday); and The Substance to the Seaport (already back at Kendall Square and Boston Common). Drama Between Borders plays Boston Common on Sunday, and Arsenal Yards from Sunday to Tuesday. There's an AMC "Scream Unseen" horror movie preview at Boston Common, Causeway Street, South Bay, and Assembly Row on Monday (Heart Eyes, maybe?). Dig! XX, an updated version of 2004's Dig! with 40 minutes of new footage and new perspectives, plays Boston Common and Assembly Row on Thursday. - No nominations for All We Imagine as Light, though the film about three co-workers and roommates in Mumbai won the Grand Prize at Cannes. It plays at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Fresh Pond, and West Newton.
The French Cult midnight at the Coolidge on Friday is well-timed, showing The Substancewriter/director Coralie Fargeat's debut feature Revenge; Saturday's Giallo January midnight is Opera. March of the Penguins plays as a kids' show on Saturday morning, and then on Sunday, a double feature of Denis Villeneuve's Dune bumps The Brutalist off the main screen for the day, with Part Two screening on 70mm film. Monday' Big Screen Classic is Roberto Rossellini's Journey to Italy; Tuesday has a 35mm "Projections" screening of Snowpiercer, with the series wrapping on Thursday with a 35mm print of Stargate. - In addition to All We Imagine as Light, a few other Indian films open in more conventional manner, with two (other) new releases at Apple Fresh Pond: Sky Force (also at Boston Common) is a big Hindi-language blockbuster with Akshay Kumar and Veer Pahariya in a thriller built around a 1965 confrontation between India and Pakistan; Dominic and the Ladies' Purse as a Malayalam-language comic mystery with Mammootty as a former cop turned private eye who finds himself down a rabbit hole on a trivial-seeming case; and plays Friday to Sunday.
Held over are Telugu-language Sankranthiki Vasthunam (also at Boston Common), and Hindi-language biography Emergency.
Anime The Colors Within (which I swore had already plated the USA) opens at Boston Common, the Embassy with subtitled and dubbed shows, following a teenage girl who can read auras but joins a band rather than fortune-telling.
Mainland Chinese thriller Octopus with Broken Arms continues at Causeway Street through Tuesday, with Lunar New Year movies hitting Wednesday: Detective Chinatown 1900 is a spin-off/reimagining/prequel to the popular series taking place 120 years earlier, with Liu Haoran as what I presume is an ancestor of the series protagonist investigating the murder of a white woman in San Francisco's Chinatown and Wang Baoqing as his Native American sidekick (potential oof!), with "guest stars" Tony Jaa, John Cusack, and Chow Yun-Fat. That one plays Causeway Street and the Seaport; Hit N Fun, which looks like a traditional star-studded Hong Kong New Year's Comedy, features Louis Koo, Philip Ng, Chrissie Chau, and Gigi Leung and is directed by Albert Mak Kai-Kwong (last year's Rob N Roll. That one plays Causeway Street. Creation of the Gods II: Demon Force opens at Boston Common on Thursday.
(Also, if you can make it out to the Liberty Tree Mall in Danvers, last year's Boonie Bears movie, Time Twist, is playing dubbed into English, although the new one stays in China)
K-Pop concert film (G)I-dle World Tour (iDol) plays Boston Common on Wednesday. - The Brattle Theatre has a 35mm print of Pale Rider as the Friday Film Matinee, then more (Some of) The Best of 2024: Challengers & Anora on Friday & Saturday (the latter on 35mm film); Flow for Saturday & Sunday matinees; The Substance & A Different Man on Sunday; Do Not Expect Too Much from the End of the World and Problemista separately on Monday; Evil Does Not Exist on Tuesday; Humanist Vampire Seeks Consenting Suicidal Person & I Saw the TV Glow on Wednesday; and an encore of Soundtrack to a Coup d'Etat on Thursday with a 35mm print of Longlegs playing separately.
They also team with RPM Fest for 10 Films by Saul Levine on Sunday afternoon, with "Avant-Garde Cinema Icon" Levine there for a chat after the screening. - The Seaport Alamo holds over Grand Theft Hamlet for shows on Friday, Sunday, and Wednesday. They also start weekly shows of the Lord of the Rings extended editions, with The Fellowship of the Ring playing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday. Other rep includes To Kill a Mockingbird (Saturday/Sunday), Macgruber (Saturday), a Labyrinth movie party sing-along Monday. They are closed on Tuesday (does it take shuttering the entire building to install a milkshake mixer that works?), and have an advance screening of Companion on Wednesday.
- The Harvard Film Archive continues "The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig" with Maso and Miso Go Boating (Friday), Muriel, of the Time of Return (Friday), Be Pretty and Shut Up (Saturday), Baxter, Vera Baxter (Saturday), The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (Sunday)., and Last Year at Marienbad (35mm Sunday). On Monday, they have the first of five features from 2025's McMillan-Stewart Fellow, Rosine Mbakam, 2016's The Two Faces of a Bamiléké Woman, with short "Doors of the Past" playing before.
- The Capitol Theatre has a screening of Clay Zombies 3D on Saturday night, with live music by Your Friends in Hell beforehand and a Q&A with director Jake Jolley afterward. Monday is their monthly Disasterpiece Theater show/tape trading night.
- Belmont World Film has one more day for their Family Film Festival at the Regent in Arlington on Sunday for Curious Tobi and the Treasure Hunt to the Flying Rivers and Block 5.
- The Landmark Kendall Square Tuesday Best Picture Retro Replay this week is Driving Miss Daisy.
- The Regent Theatre has two mid-week music movies this week! On Wednesday, Born Innocent… The Redd Kross Story, with Red Sox organist Josh Kantor playing Redd Kross songs before the film and hosting a panel with Dan Epstein, author of a book on the band (available to purchase) afterwards. Then on Thursday, they show 1-800-ON-HER-OWN, a look at the life and career of Ani DiFranco.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues their Festival of Films From Iran with My Favorite Cake Friday night (sold out) and The Stranger and the Fog Saturday afternoon.
- The Embassy has The Colors Within and A Complete Unknown Friday to Sunday, and though it's not listed on the website yet, free "Community Classics" screenings of An American in Paris on Monday morning and afternoon.
- The Lexington Venue is open Friday to Monday plus Wednesday with Flow, The Brutalist, and A Completed Unknown. They also have matinee screenings of documentary Bob Mackie: Naked Illusion on Saturday & Sunday.
The West Newton Cinema opens All We Imagine as Light, and picks up The Brutalist; held over are The Room Next Door, The Last Showgirl, Flow, A Complete Unknown, and Babygirl.
The Luna Theater has Babygirl on Friday, Saturday, and Thursday; Anora on Saturday; Queer on Saturday; Moonrise Kingdom on Sunday, and a Weirdo Wednesday show.
Cinema Salem has Wolf Man, The Last Showgirl, The Brutalist, and Nosferatu from Friday to Monday, and a Whodunit watch party on Sunday, Beat the Devil on Wednesday, and Lost Highway on Thursday.
Thursday, January 23, 2025
This Week in Tickets: 13 January 2025 - 19 January 2025 (Double Features at Home, Single Elsewhere)
I swear, places are conspiring to start at awkward times these days.
It feels like I've spent the past month or so planning to see all the movies at theaters two at a time, but theaters have just gotten better at making that difficult. As I've said before, I get it - lots of people don't hit the concession stand twice during a double feature - but I feel like I've had better multiplex-fu than this in the past, or done better cross-town pairings. Of course, it being cold out makes one a bit more reluctant to hang around outside much between shows.
So Tuesday I stayed in and watched the second disc in Arrow's Chang Cheh box - The Five Venoms & Crippled Avengers - that I'd started was back on the 2nd, since there was travel and stuff in between. They're both kind of classics, but for different reasons, with one sort of edging away from the Shaw Brothers formula and the other stretching it into weird new places.
Then on Wednesday night I headed down the Green Line for Better Man, since it seems to have kind of bombed in the USA (I don't regularly read box office stories, but I read "thing I've been seeing trailers for more or less constantly having showtimes cut like crazy in its second week" pretty well) and I was curious. It's fine, although I don't know that it's as much of a new twist on the music bio as it wanted to be.
Thursday night, back in the living room again, this time for another Film Rolls pairing - Yuen Wo-Ping directing Jackie Chan in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow & Drunken Master - which probably shouldn't have been on the shelf, since I'd already seen both films on the disc, albeit 12 years ago in different circumstances. Still, it's a thing that can be fun about the Film Rolls projects, in that I wouldn't necessarily have thought to juxtapose them with Tuesday's movies, but there's parallels in how the Hong Kong film business worked in 1978, with Chang Chen and the old guard at Shaw Brothers and these up-and-comers trying different things.
Friday night, I had plans for a nifty double feature - Last Year at Marienbad at the Harvard Film Archive and then down the Red Line to another French film at the Seaport Alamo - and figured 45 minutes or so between would be tight, but doable. Then, as the film was introduced, the programmer mentioned a special treat: "Souvenirs d’une année à Marienbad", a sort of video diary of the production, which she described as a featurette, would play afterward. "Featurette" rather than "short " meant I wasn't getting out in time unless they brought the lights up and gave folks a chance to flee in between, and while some folks sitting on the edges did that, my fondness for sitting in the center of a row and not wanting to stumble over people in the dark meant I was stuck.
Saturday was for staying in and hitting the comics shop and other errands, and then I did a relative rarity by coming home and not using some randomizer to pick a movie but just grabbing the 4K disc of Hellboy: The Crooked Man that Amazon had recently delivered. From the UK, as it seems to have topped out at Blu-ray here. Crazy that Amazon sometimes offers "free international delivery", although I kind of wonder if there's just a number of things they know Americans will order that they keep in stock on this side of the ocean.
Then, on Sunday, I finally got down to the Seaport for Night Call, which turned out to be a pretty great Franco-Belgian thriller. I might have been two of the five people who bought tickets for it all weekend - does reserving a seat with your season pass count as buying a ticket? - because it only had these two shows, and I don't know if Alamo promoted it at all. I've been to a number of screenings like that at that location, and I wonder if it's the Seaport or Boston in general that doesn't support them. I think it's the location, because the three-hour Count of Monte Cristo hung around for a couple weeks and played in Arlington, so it's not like we won't go for French-language action, but the Seaport seems to favor brand-names as opposed to attracting adventurous moviegoers. Which is kind of a bummer, at least for me.
As always, follow my Letterboxd account for first drafts written on the subway, if that sort of thing appeals to you!
Better Man
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
The unavoidable question about Better Man is whether its central irony is deliberate, accidental, or inevitable: For the whole film, you can see the filmmakers desperately trying to find a new way to tell its story of a self-doubting, substance-abusing musician who somehow pulls himself out of the spiral, but it starts and ends with Sinatra and hits all the inevitable stops along the way. We've seen this all before, and Robbie Williams is just the latest iteration, but his generation wants and needs for it to be their story, specifically, as well, and they've marinated in enough irony and spoofs that they maybe can't just settle for telling the story straight.
(And by "his", I mean mine, although as an American who isn't a big music guy, Take That and Williams were more things I was aware of than listened to - when someone mentioned the album title "The Ego Has Landed", I remembered hearing the name, but that was it.)
So Williams is portrayed on screen by a CGI chimpanzee, voiced by Williams but with one Jonno Davies apparently doing the on-set motion capture, and nobody really comments upon it but the idea behind it is alluded to toward the end. We meet his parents - mother Janet (Kate Mulvany) is practical, while father Peter (Steve Pemberton) left to pursue his own showbiz dreams when Robert was young, and his grandmother (Alison Steadman) dotes upon him - his best mate Nate (Frazer Hadfield), and Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), who is putting together a boy band and sees something in this 15-year-old's cockiness. Later he meets Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), a singer in girl group All Saints who is perhaps a bit too much like him to be a really good couple.
The details are fun for a while. Williams is an entertainingly snarky narrator with an arch recognition about what a jackass he was but not a huge reservoir of guilt, and his voiceover has some of the film's best jokes and begins to feel hollow at just the right time. I have no idea how exaggerated the Take That stuff is, but it's often hilariously homoerotic, cynical, and happy to wink at its own absurdity. The conceit of Williams appearing on screen as a chimpanzee is fun and works to symbolize a range of linked ideas. That the rendering isn't always perfect kind of works; it doesn't hurt to be reminded of the artifice in the world of pop music. There are striking scenes.
But, man, we've seen musicians do cocaine and be bastards to their loved ones before, and no amount of having a chimpanzee doing it makes all that feel less than rote. Once the movie gets into its second half, it runs hard into how familiar all this is and how life doesn't always fit a film's narrative structure, and by the end a lot of Williams's narration and the things meant to be emotional climax depict him learning lessons the film isn't trying to teach us - why are we getting a tearful reunion with his father, for instance, beyond some sort of feeling that such things are generally good, rather than it being something Williams needed to do?
The film is what it's got to be for Williams to be alive and able to narrate his life story with some detachment, and the filmmakers never find a way to make it more than that, no matter how much visual invention or smart-aleck narration they throw in.
L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2025 at the Harvard Film Archive (The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig, 35mm)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon
I think it's the first time I've made it through without conking out, and it was kind of a weird experience, as I was agitated about something later in the evening, and then missed that thing because the Archive followed this movie up with a video production diary that kind of says too much by saying that there's not much to say.
Which is a bummer, because while Last Year can often be over-mannered, especially toward the start, it feels like it evolves into a fascinating ghost story where the fun is noting that ghost stories can have it both ways - is Delphine Seyrig's character a ghost, detached from her own life but kept from moving on by Giorgio Albertazzi's obsession? Or is it the other way around, with the latter desperate to be remembered but destined to become a half-recalled part of this fancy hotel's lore? Or did they both meet a tragic end, with the irony being that they're frozen as they were, never truly together?
None of these theories really line up with what we see, but that's because the aim here is mood above all, with Sacha Vierny's black-and-white cinematography giving the hotel a stark look without flattening the ornateness of the building and its grounds. Even if you don't look at it as a ghost story, perhaps instead taking it at face value as a man trying to woo a woman who claims she doesn't remember their previous meeting, the story is an intriguing puzzle. Seyrig's beauty may be telling the truth; or she may believe she is telling the truth because she repressed the previous years events. Or she may be lying, because the polite lie is the only weapon a woman has in this regimented castle of privilege, with a whole army of people dedicated to enforcing its norms.
It's gorgeous, and the main trio do a nice job of giving their characters personality even if they are deliberately lacking in history. There's no way of knowing whether the cast has created backstory for their characters, or if those stories would agree, but they feel like they have many possible stories that the environment won't allow to be told, rather than like the filmmakers are carefully choosing what they show to preserve their ambiguity.
I admittedly don't generally like this sort of carefully-constructed ambiguity, truth be told, but I suspect Last Year at Marienbad is the exception that tests the rule, constructed so well that it makes one give other movies like it a chance.
"Souvenirs d’une année à Marienbad"
* * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2025 at the Harvard Film Archive (The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig, DCP)
Buy the 4K disc at Amazon
Maybe an interesting special feature to put on a Last Year at Marienbad, though it is worth noting that the one on Kino's Blu-ray is "Memories" rather than "Souvenirs", though it may be the same thing, and there's another listing on IMDB for "My Year at Marienbad with Volker Schlöndorff" which may be this, that, or some third thing. It wouldn't surprise me, because "Souvenirs" is sort of a pure expression of an idea - the 8mm home movies that several people on set shot, notably actress Françoise Spira, presented in their entirety, with second assistant director Volker Schlöndorff's commentary, He doesn't mention it until halfway in, suggesting that this might be more interesting edited or intercut with the feature, and often falls silent.
I imagine watching this footage in a room with Schlöndorff might be interesting, especially if one can ask questions or go off on tangents, but without prompting we're just getting comments about how cold it was, how grateful Schlöndorff was for the opportunity director Alain Resnais gave him, and how wonderful and lovely star Delphine Syrig was in a way that occasionally nudges into creepiness. Sometimes there's an interesting look at how some problems were solved or shots were created (plywood painted to look like gravel laid on a gravel path, staging to elevate actors so that the decorations near the high ceilings would be in a widescreen shot), but the reel ends before he can talk in any detail.
I might, admittedly, have enjoyed "Souvenirs" more at another time or context, but aside from really wanting it to be less than 45 minutes (which feels like a lot of raw footage), it's also demystifying in a deflating way, spending a lot of time talking about how the performers were giving performances without character or backstory, and while that may be technically true given the careful obedience to a script that eschewed them, that's not exactly the experience of watching it - Resnais, Albertazzi, and Seyrig created such things whether they intended to or not, and talk of a deliberate emptiness is the last thing I wanted to hear before having a chance to sit down, roll over what I had found there and what it meant to me. And maybe there's never a good time to hear that, but right after seeing it for the first time, at least fully, is maybe the worst.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 January 2024 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K British import Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the British 4K disc at Amazon
There's a sort of gambler's logic to the 2019 Hellboy movie that I understood: Mike Mignola weighed a third collaboration with Guillermo del Toro that probably would have been a modest success but also been a finale against a relaunch that could have spawned a BPRD Cinematic Universe, and where he would have had more creative control. He bet wrong, but I get it. This one, I just wonder if the production company decided they had paid too much for the rights to not use them again, but knew they'd have to go very cheap to make a profit likely.
It opens in 1959, with Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and BPRD agents Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) and Dennis Gates (Jonathan Yunger) on a train running through Appalachia, transporting a mystical spider creature. It escapes, with Hellboy and Song jumping from the train to follow it, but sidetracked by strange local goings-on, with local veteran Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) returning home to reunite with first love Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), whose neighbors call her a witch - though she's not the witch who gave Tom a look at the dark side (Leah McNamara) and sent him fleeing to the army.
The result brings to mind what I thought of Madame Web a year ago: This movie feels like something that would have been adequate as a made-for-TV or direct-to-video production a generation ago, but instead came out in 2024 with the intention of being booked in theaters. There were moments when I convinced myself that this was kind of the filmmakers' intent - a sort of pastiche of the movie that would have been made of Hellboy during the comic's early years, without a filmmaker as ambitious as del Toro taking interest - and I kind of dig the idea, if not so much the execution. There's charm to the lack of fussiness to the Hellboy makeup and costume, for instance, but not to the bland "the field is different from the library, isn't it?" dialogue. Director Brian Taylor and his co-writers pace it like an 80s/90s B-movie, a combination of padding and frenzy that's a good mix even if neither is as good as it can be. It's full of actors doing decent work with what they're given, but what they're given is sketchy as heck, thin characters we're expected to find innately interesting for being adjacent to the supernatural and the world we know from better Hellboy comics & films.
It's kind of interesting that this is touted as the adaptation most closely supervised by Mignola (he, frequent comic collaborator Christopher Golden, and director Brian Taylor write the screenplay), but like the previous Hellboy films, it takes on the style of its director, jittery and prone to digression but actually kind of plain in terms of lighting and atmosphere once the camera stops moving. It's also notable that, like David Harbour before him, Jack Kesy isn't quite imitating what Ron Perlman did in the first couple of films but close enough to it that deviations seem odd or wrong. Maybe there's just one way to play the character that's true to the comics.
There are some good bits to The Crooked Man, enough that I wonder what Taylor could do if Millennium wasn't trying to gross $101 on a $100 budget; his scrappy messiness seems to fit this world better than Neil Marshall's slick sadism. But, ultimately, it's hard to watch without thinking of the original work and better adaptations, and how it's come to this, than the actual folk horror tale on screen.
La nuit se traîne (Night Call)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 January 2024 in Alamo Seaport #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available), or pre-order the DVD at Amazon
This is a pro-frantic-race-through-European-city-thrillers blog, and Night Call is particularly good as those go, a tight little setup that lays out everything it needs early, does not stretch to make absolutely every single little detail critical, and tightens its screws with firm assurance. Just 90 minutes with no wasted time.
It starts with locksmith Mady Bala (Jonathan Feltre) breaking into a posh apartment before retreating to his van to study to return to college while waiting for the next call. It comes from Claire (Natacha Krief), who is just cute enough to make him waver on the rules of always getting the payment and looking at a photo ID first; he waits in the apartment while she runs downstairs to hit the ATM, only to have her call to say she's not returning, and to run. He's too late, though, and soon finds himself face-to-face with gangster Yannick (Romain Duris), who needs the money that Claire snuck out of that apartment under Mady's nose by morning, and sends Remy (Thomas Mustn) and Theo (Jonas Bloquet) to help him find this mystery girl
Writer/director Michel Blanchart does a lot well in his first feature, and I especially like how he finds a nice tug-of-war between pragmatism and amorality; part of the reason the film works is that the audience can see itself in Mady's shoes even when they think they'd make noble choices, and Jonathan Feltre is good at making Mady feel clever enough to improvise but not really villain-brained, so we're cutting him slack rather than critiquing his performance. The rest of the pieces moving around the board are good, too, feeling like guys whose believable choices got them there but not so gray that the audience gets detached.
The presentation is nifty as well. The mood is set with serial shots of Brussels at night that show reddish bands of activity threading a dark, sleeping city, with each little piece built to work as its own storytelling setting, the camera moving through in ways that feel unconstrained but highlighting how boxed in Mady is. The climactic chase maybe feels a little game-ish in the long shots but also has a sense of how rash and dangerous it is in a city like this.
Good stuff.
It feels like I've spent the past month or so planning to see all the movies at theaters two at a time, but theaters have just gotten better at making that difficult. As I've said before, I get it - lots of people don't hit the concession stand twice during a double feature - but I feel like I've had better multiplex-fu than this in the past, or done better cross-town pairings. Of course, it being cold out makes one a bit more reluctant to hang around outside much between shows.
So Tuesday I stayed in and watched the second disc in Arrow's Chang Cheh box - The Five Venoms & Crippled Avengers - that I'd started was back on the 2nd, since there was travel and stuff in between. They're both kind of classics, but for different reasons, with one sort of edging away from the Shaw Brothers formula and the other stretching it into weird new places.
Then on Wednesday night I headed down the Green Line for Better Man, since it seems to have kind of bombed in the USA (I don't regularly read box office stories, but I read "thing I've been seeing trailers for more or less constantly having showtimes cut like crazy in its second week" pretty well) and I was curious. It's fine, although I don't know that it's as much of a new twist on the music bio as it wanted to be.
Thursday night, back in the living room again, this time for another Film Rolls pairing - Yuen Wo-Ping directing Jackie Chan in Snake in the Eagle's Shadow & Drunken Master - which probably shouldn't have been on the shelf, since I'd already seen both films on the disc, albeit 12 years ago in different circumstances. Still, it's a thing that can be fun about the Film Rolls projects, in that I wouldn't necessarily have thought to juxtapose them with Tuesday's movies, but there's parallels in how the Hong Kong film business worked in 1978, with Chang Chen and the old guard at Shaw Brothers and these up-and-comers trying different things.
Friday night, I had plans for a nifty double feature - Last Year at Marienbad at the Harvard Film Archive and then down the Red Line to another French film at the Seaport Alamo - and figured 45 minutes or so between would be tight, but doable. Then, as the film was introduced, the programmer mentioned a special treat: "Souvenirs d’une année à Marienbad", a sort of video diary of the production, which she described as a featurette, would play afterward. "Featurette" rather than "short " meant I wasn't getting out in time unless they brought the lights up and gave folks a chance to flee in between, and while some folks sitting on the edges did that, my fondness for sitting in the center of a row and not wanting to stumble over people in the dark meant I was stuck.
Saturday was for staying in and hitting the comics shop and other errands, and then I did a relative rarity by coming home and not using some randomizer to pick a movie but just grabbing the 4K disc of Hellboy: The Crooked Man that Amazon had recently delivered. From the UK, as it seems to have topped out at Blu-ray here. Crazy that Amazon sometimes offers "free international delivery", although I kind of wonder if there's just a number of things they know Americans will order that they keep in stock on this side of the ocean.
Then, on Sunday, I finally got down to the Seaport for Night Call, which turned out to be a pretty great Franco-Belgian thriller. I might have been two of the five people who bought tickets for it all weekend - does reserving a seat with your season pass count as buying a ticket? - because it only had these two shows, and I don't know if Alamo promoted it at all. I've been to a number of screenings like that at that location, and I wonder if it's the Seaport or Boston in general that doesn't support them. I think it's the location, because the three-hour Count of Monte Cristo hung around for a couple weeks and played in Arlington, so it's not like we won't go for French-language action, but the Seaport seems to favor brand-names as opposed to attracting adventurous moviegoers. Which is kind of a bummer, at least for me.
As always, follow my Letterboxd account for first drafts written on the subway, if that sort of thing appeals to you!
Better Man
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 January 2025 in AMC Causeway Street #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available)
The unavoidable question about Better Man is whether its central irony is deliberate, accidental, or inevitable: For the whole film, you can see the filmmakers desperately trying to find a new way to tell its story of a self-doubting, substance-abusing musician who somehow pulls himself out of the spiral, but it starts and ends with Sinatra and hits all the inevitable stops along the way. We've seen this all before, and Robbie Williams is just the latest iteration, but his generation wants and needs for it to be their story, specifically, as well, and they've marinated in enough irony and spoofs that they maybe can't just settle for telling the story straight.
(And by "his", I mean mine, although as an American who isn't a big music guy, Take That and Williams were more things I was aware of than listened to - when someone mentioned the album title "The Ego Has Landed", I remembered hearing the name, but that was it.)
So Williams is portrayed on screen by a CGI chimpanzee, voiced by Williams but with one Jonno Davies apparently doing the on-set motion capture, and nobody really comments upon it but the idea behind it is alluded to toward the end. We meet his parents - mother Janet (Kate Mulvany) is practical, while father Peter (Steve Pemberton) left to pursue his own showbiz dreams when Robert was young, and his grandmother (Alison Steadman) dotes upon him - his best mate Nate (Frazer Hadfield), and Nigel Martin Smith (Damon Herriman), who is putting together a boy band and sees something in this 15-year-old's cockiness. Later he meets Nicole Appleton (Raechelle Banno), a singer in girl group All Saints who is perhaps a bit too much like him to be a really good couple.
The details are fun for a while. Williams is an entertainingly snarky narrator with an arch recognition about what a jackass he was but not a huge reservoir of guilt, and his voiceover has some of the film's best jokes and begins to feel hollow at just the right time. I have no idea how exaggerated the Take That stuff is, but it's often hilariously homoerotic, cynical, and happy to wink at its own absurdity. The conceit of Williams appearing on screen as a chimpanzee is fun and works to symbolize a range of linked ideas. That the rendering isn't always perfect kind of works; it doesn't hurt to be reminded of the artifice in the world of pop music. There are striking scenes.
But, man, we've seen musicians do cocaine and be bastards to their loved ones before, and no amount of having a chimpanzee doing it makes all that feel less than rote. Once the movie gets into its second half, it runs hard into how familiar all this is and how life doesn't always fit a film's narrative structure, and by the end a lot of Williams's narration and the things meant to be emotional climax depict him learning lessons the film isn't trying to teach us - why are we getting a tearful reunion with his father, for instance, beyond some sort of feeling that such things are generally good, rather than it being something Williams needed to do?
The film is what it's got to be for Williams to be alive and able to narrate his life story with some detachment, and the filmmakers never find a way to make it more than that, no matter how much visual invention or smart-aleck narration they throw in.
L'année dernière à Marienbad (Last Year at Marienbad)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2025 at the Harvard Film Archive (The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig, 35mm)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the disc at Amazon
I think it's the first time I've made it through without conking out, and it was kind of a weird experience, as I was agitated about something later in the evening, and then missed that thing because the Archive followed this movie up with a video production diary that kind of says too much by saying that there's not much to say.
Which is a bummer, because while Last Year can often be over-mannered, especially toward the start, it feels like it evolves into a fascinating ghost story where the fun is noting that ghost stories can have it both ways - is Delphine Seyrig's character a ghost, detached from her own life but kept from moving on by Giorgio Albertazzi's obsession? Or is it the other way around, with the latter desperate to be remembered but destined to become a half-recalled part of this fancy hotel's lore? Or did they both meet a tragic end, with the irony being that they're frozen as they were, never truly together?
None of these theories really line up with what we see, but that's because the aim here is mood above all, with Sacha Vierny's black-and-white cinematography giving the hotel a stark look without flattening the ornateness of the building and its grounds. Even if you don't look at it as a ghost story, perhaps instead taking it at face value as a man trying to woo a woman who claims she doesn't remember their previous meeting, the story is an intriguing puzzle. Seyrig's beauty may be telling the truth; or she may believe she is telling the truth because she repressed the previous years events. Or she may be lying, because the polite lie is the only weapon a woman has in this regimented castle of privilege, with a whole army of people dedicated to enforcing its norms.
It's gorgeous, and the main trio do a nice job of giving their characters personality even if they are deliberately lacking in history. There's no way of knowing whether the cast has created backstory for their characters, or if those stories would agree, but they feel like they have many possible stories that the environment won't allow to be told, rather than like the filmmakers are carefully choosing what they show to preserve their ambiguity.
I admittedly don't generally like this sort of carefully-constructed ambiguity, truth be told, but I suspect Last Year at Marienbad is the exception that tests the rule, constructed so well that it makes one give other movies like it a chance.
"Souvenirs d’une année à Marienbad"
* * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2025 at the Harvard Film Archive (The Reincarnations of Delphine Seyrig, DCP)
Buy the 4K disc at Amazon
Maybe an interesting special feature to put on a Last Year at Marienbad, though it is worth noting that the one on Kino's Blu-ray is "Memories" rather than "Souvenirs", though it may be the same thing, and there's another listing on IMDB for "My Year at Marienbad with Volker Schlöndorff" which may be this, that, or some third thing. It wouldn't surprise me, because "Souvenirs" is sort of a pure expression of an idea - the 8mm home movies that several people on set shot, notably actress Françoise Spira, presented in their entirety, with second assistant director Volker Schlöndorff's commentary, He doesn't mention it until halfway in, suggesting that this might be more interesting edited or intercut with the feature, and often falls silent.
I imagine watching this footage in a room with Schlöndorff might be interesting, especially if one can ask questions or go off on tangents, but without prompting we're just getting comments about how cold it was, how grateful Schlöndorff was for the opportunity director Alain Resnais gave him, and how wonderful and lovely star Delphine Syrig was in a way that occasionally nudges into creepiness. Sometimes there's an interesting look at how some problems were solved or shots were created (plywood painted to look like gravel laid on a gravel path, staging to elevate actors so that the decorations near the high ceilings would be in a widescreen shot), but the reel ends before he can talk in any detail.
I might, admittedly, have enjoyed "Souvenirs" more at another time or context, but aside from really wanting it to be less than 45 minutes (which feels like a lot of raw footage), it's also demystifying in a deflating way, spending a lot of time talking about how the performers were giving performances without character or backstory, and while that may be technically true given the careful obedience to a script that eschewed them, that's not exactly the experience of watching it - Resnais, Albertazzi, and Seyrig created such things whether they intended to or not, and talk of a deliberate emptiness is the last thing I wanted to hear before having a chance to sit down, roll over what I had found there and what it meant to me. And maybe there's never a good time to hear that, but right after seeing it for the first time, at least fully, is maybe the worst.
Hellboy: The Crooked Man
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 18 January 2024 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K British import Blu-ray)
Where to stream it (Prime link), or buy the British 4K disc at Amazon
There's a sort of gambler's logic to the 2019 Hellboy movie that I understood: Mike Mignola weighed a third collaboration with Guillermo del Toro that probably would have been a modest success but also been a finale against a relaunch that could have spawned a BPRD Cinematic Universe, and where he would have had more creative control. He bet wrong, but I get it. This one, I just wonder if the production company decided they had paid too much for the rights to not use them again, but knew they'd have to go very cheap to make a profit likely.
It opens in 1959, with Hellboy (Jack Kesy) and BPRD agents Bobbie Jo Song (Adeline Rudolph) and Dennis Gates (Jonathan Yunger) on a train running through Appalachia, transporting a mystical spider creature. It escapes, with Hellboy and Song jumping from the train to follow it, but sidetracked by strange local goings-on, with local veteran Tom Ferrell (Jefferson White) returning home to reunite with first love Cora Fisher (Hannah Margetson), whose neighbors call her a witch - though she's not the witch who gave Tom a look at the dark side (Leah McNamara) and sent him fleeing to the army.
The result brings to mind what I thought of Madame Web a year ago: This movie feels like something that would have been adequate as a made-for-TV or direct-to-video production a generation ago, but instead came out in 2024 with the intention of being booked in theaters. There were moments when I convinced myself that this was kind of the filmmakers' intent - a sort of pastiche of the movie that would have been made of Hellboy during the comic's early years, without a filmmaker as ambitious as del Toro taking interest - and I kind of dig the idea, if not so much the execution. There's charm to the lack of fussiness to the Hellboy makeup and costume, for instance, but not to the bland "the field is different from the library, isn't it?" dialogue. Director Brian Taylor and his co-writers pace it like an 80s/90s B-movie, a combination of padding and frenzy that's a good mix even if neither is as good as it can be. It's full of actors doing decent work with what they're given, but what they're given is sketchy as heck, thin characters we're expected to find innately interesting for being adjacent to the supernatural and the world we know from better Hellboy comics & films.
It's kind of interesting that this is touted as the adaptation most closely supervised by Mignola (he, frequent comic collaborator Christopher Golden, and director Brian Taylor write the screenplay), but like the previous Hellboy films, it takes on the style of its director, jittery and prone to digression but actually kind of plain in terms of lighting and atmosphere once the camera stops moving. It's also notable that, like David Harbour before him, Jack Kesy isn't quite imitating what Ron Perlman did in the first couple of films but close enough to it that deviations seem odd or wrong. Maybe there's just one way to play the character that's true to the comics.
There are some good bits to The Crooked Man, enough that I wonder what Taylor could do if Millennium wasn't trying to gross $101 on a $100 budget; his scrappy messiness seems to fit this world better than Neil Marshall's slick sadism. But, ultimately, it's hard to watch without thinking of the original work and better adaptations, and how it's come to this, than the actual folk horror tale on screen.
La nuit se traîne (Night Call)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 19 January 2024 in Alamo Seaport #3 (first-run, laser DCP)
Where to stream it (when available), or pre-order the DVD at Amazon
This is a pro-frantic-race-through-European-city-thrillers blog, and Night Call is particularly good as those go, a tight little setup that lays out everything it needs early, does not stretch to make absolutely every single little detail critical, and tightens its screws with firm assurance. Just 90 minutes with no wasted time.
It starts with locksmith Mady Bala (Jonathan Feltre) breaking into a posh apartment before retreating to his van to study to return to college while waiting for the next call. It comes from Claire (Natacha Krief), who is just cute enough to make him waver on the rules of always getting the payment and looking at a photo ID first; he waits in the apartment while she runs downstairs to hit the ATM, only to have her call to say she's not returning, and to run. He's too late, though, and soon finds himself face-to-face with gangster Yannick (Romain Duris), who needs the money that Claire snuck out of that apartment under Mady's nose by morning, and sends Remy (Thomas Mustn) and Theo (Jonas Bloquet) to help him find this mystery girl
Writer/director Michel Blanchart does a lot well in his first feature, and I especially like how he finds a nice tug-of-war between pragmatism and amorality; part of the reason the film works is that the audience can see itself in Mady's shoes even when they think they'd make noble choices, and Jonathan Feltre is good at making Mady feel clever enough to improvise but not really villain-brained, so we're cutting him slack rather than critiquing his performance. The rest of the pieces moving around the board are good, too, feeling like guys whose believable choices got them there but not so gray that the audience gets detached.
The presentation is nifty as well. The mood is set with serial shots of Brussels at night that show reddish bands of activity threading a dark, sleeping city, with each little piece built to work as its own storytelling setting, the camera moving through in ways that feel unconstrained but highlighting how boxed in Mady is. The climactic chase maybe feels a little game-ish in the long shots but also has a sense of how rash and dangerous it is in a city like this.
Good stuff.
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