Friday, October 28, 2016

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 28 October 2016 - 3 November 2016

Hey, it's Halloween on Monday, which means the studios are not doing much because they assume people are out partying and the cool theaters are doing cool stuff to lead up to it. Some of them are getting kind of frisky pre-election, too.

  • The Brattle Theatre has to finish up the IFFBoston Fall Focus first, screening Jeff Nichols' Loving (and is it just me or is it weird that all the advertising for that acts like he didn't also have Midnight Special this year?). After that, though, Halloween weekend is in effect with a 35mm print of The Addams Family Saturday afternoon, with the evening given to Pet Semetary in a double feature with a making-of documentary. Sunday, the Andrew Alden Ensemble presents a live score for Nosferatu (the 7pm screening sold out, so they added one at 4:30pm), with other horror classics planned for the night itself on Monday: A free "Elements of Cinema" screening of Bride of Frankenstein, and a new restoration of Halloween with a message from John Carpenter at 8:30pm. They will be closed Tuesday and Wednesday, but have the first of two November "Bad Hombres & Nasty Women" double featuers with 35mm prints of A Fistful of Dollars and Perdita Durango on Thursday.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre starts of with somewhat more normal business, picking up Kelly Reichardt's Certain Women on one of the larger screens while Coming Through the Rye's extremely limited release is mostly one 6:30pm show daily in the GoldScreen. The "mostly", though, has a big exception on Sunday afternoon when it will be in the largest room and both director Steven Sadwith and co-star Chris Cooper will be on hand to introduce and answer questions after their movie about two teenagers on a quest to meet J.D. Salinger.

    After that, though, it's all about the "Flick'r Treats" Halloween fare. Friday's midnight movie is a 35mm print of David Cronenberg's The Fly, while Saturday morning's Kids' Show is the pretty terrific ParaNorman, with costumes encouraged. Costumes are problably OK for the annual midnight marathon, which starts at 11:59pm Saturday with a double feature of Scream & Scream 2, and then continues for another eight hours of 35mm horror movies, the identities of which are closely-guarded secrets. On Monday night, they combine Big Screen Classics and Science on Screen Frankenstein-style with a double feature of Psycho (35mm) and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, with forensic psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Gutheil lecturing on the crimes of Ed Gein, who inspired both films. On Thursday, they too get electoral with Michael Moore in TrumpLand, with Moore Skyping in after the film for a Q&A.
  • The Somerville Theatre's big Halloween bash is Saturday night, when a 9pm screening of Army of Darkness on 35mm will be preceded by "Boomstick!", a "gorelesque" of Evil Dead-inspired sexy dancing. they look toward the election starting Tuesday with a special screening of independent documentary Traficant (about the bombastic Ohio Congressman), and then may be trying to send a message by playing The Intruder, Roger Corman's film featuring William Shatner as a front man come to a small town to stir up racial discord. More cheerily, Arlo Guthrie performs in the main theater on Thursday.

    They also pick up The Beatles: Eight Days a Week, which vacates The Capitol to make room for The Arlington International Film Festival, back in its namesake town after a year in Cambridge and cramming a lot of movies in from Friday to Sunday (seriously, there's about ten minutes between screenings).
  • The Regent Theatre actually has Nosferatu a day before the Brattle, though with a different accompanist, the very-busy Jeff Rapsis (I'm guessing Halloween is one of the busiest seasons for silent-film musicians). They'll also have a local premiere of short cartoon "Lazy Huri" on Sunday afternoon, a slightly-late-for-Halloween presentation of Edgar Allen Poe: Buried Alive (a local production for PBS's American Masters series) on Tuesday, and motorcycle stunt film Moto 8 on Wednesday.
  • The Handmaiden makes a quick turnaround after playing the Fall Focus, opening at Kendall Square and Boston Common on Thursday. It's the latest from Park Chan-wook, who reimagines British novel Fingersmith as taking place in 1930s Korea, with the title character both the secret lover of the Japanese lady of the house and part of a plan to rob her of her inheritance. Park almost never disappoints. They also get a one-week booking of Being 17, a new French film about high school boys who hate each other but wind up living together and finding a strange attraction.
  • At the multiplexes, you're basically looking at Tom Hanks in Inferno, the third movie he and Ron Howard have made from Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels, and it looks just as stupid and ridiculous as the first (the trailer is just full of ridiculous logical leaps that don't make him look smart as they're intended to do,just like he's part of a bad script). But, hey, it's what's playing, and it shows at the Somerville, Embassy, Studio Belmont, Jordan's (Imax), Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus & MX4D), and the SuperLux.
  • Heck, there's little enough that Fenway is getting back into the Bollywood game, showing Ae Dil Hai Mushkil, as does Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond. This big Diwali romance stars Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma as two young lovers who fall in love in New York, with Aishwarya Rai Bachchan and Fawad Khan also fitting in there somewhere. Diwali means a lot of movies opening there, including both Tamil and Telugu versions of Kaashmora, a fantasy about a black magic specialist fighting an ancient warlord. There's also Tamil thriller Kodi and Bollywood action/adventure Shivaay, with Ajay Devgn both directing and starring. Malayalam adventure film Pulimurugan plays Sunday; sadly, the theater's site only has the Hindi-language films shown as subtitled.

    The continued strong showing of Operation Mekong on its second pass at Boston Common has me scratching my head a bit, but I really don't know what motivates some of these things. They also pick up Mr. Donkey a week after its Chinese opening; this wacky comedy apparently involves a village registering a donkey as a teacher at the school so that they can use government funds to rent it to haul water, which gets sketchy when someone from Beijing comes to inspect it. The last of the foreign-language films opening at the mainstream multipexes is Vai que Dá Certo 2 at Revere; it comes from Brazil and appears to reunite a crew of screw-ups in another big heist.
  • The Harvard Film Archive jumps between ongoing series this weekend, with a different on each day. They get back to their Jean-Marie Straub and Danièle Huillet retrospective on Friday with a set of shorter works - Communists at 7pm is just barely feature length at 70 minutes, so they pair it with "The Aquarium and the Nation" (both on DCP), while the two 35mm prints at 9pm ("Black Sin" and "Itinerary of Jean Bricard") are both about 40 minutes. Saturday continues Say It Loud: A Black Cinema Revolution with 35mm prints of Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song at 7pm and Penitentiary at 9pm, both landmarks in African-American film. Sunday goes to Martin Khutsiev, with Spring on Zarechnaya Street on 35mm at 7pm and It Was the Month of May on DCP at 7pm. Then, on Monday, "Pam Grier, Superstar" continues with her and Richard Pryor in Greased Lightning.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts concludes the Boston Palestine Film Festival with Speed Sisters on Friday, a short program and Open Bethlehem (including a Q&A with director Leila Sansour) on Saturday, with more shorts and a "Sci-Fi Trilogy" of short films by Sansour's sister Larissa on Sunday. The November schedule starts on Thursday with Tunisian drama As I Open My Eyes and award-winning documentary Do Not Resist, the latter co-presented by the Docyard and Roxbury International Film Festival with director Craig Atkinson on-hand.
  • Emerson's Bright Lights shows at the Paramount Theater this week are both documentaries with the directors present. Tuesday's is Trapped, with director Dawn Porter discussing her film on the "TRAP" laws which attempt to make abortion so difficult as to be effectively banned, while Thursday's is Best and Most Beautiful Things, a film about a blind, neuroatypical young woman in Maine co-presented with the UMass Boston Film Series that not only includes director Garrett Zevgetis, but subjects Michelle and Julie Smith.


Well, I want to watch the World Series, but The Handmaiden at least is a must, it's probably about time I actually see Halloween (for someone who writes about a lot of horror films, my classic-slasher knowledge is abysmal), and there's a fair amount of catch-up, too.

Sunday, October 23, 2016

Shin Godzilla

Finally!!

I've got a number of theories as to why screenings were so sparse that it took until my third try, on a day of extra screenings added after the original eight-day run, to actually get a ticket to this. The cynical/sarcastic one is that, because they normally distribute anime that has become increasingly insular in recent years, FUNimation Films had no idea what to do with something that actually had broad appeal among the general public, although it's just as possible that they did recognize the appeal, but the release pattern that got Shin Godzilla in theaters across the country (booking it as a Fathom-style or four-walled "special presentation" rather than a regular release) meant that it was severely underbooked in places like Boston and other larger cities. I also vaguely wonder if Warner Brothers/Legendary having the American rights to make and distribute their own Godzilla movies might have put an upper limit on what FUNimation could do before running into the much bigger company's territory. It was a frustrating situation for me - I tried to go to Fenway Wednesday the 11th and Sunday the 16th, only to get shut out, and would have tried Fenway on Tuesday the 18th, except I was sent to Texas for company meetings. Seeing that extra shows got added for the 22nd (and, apparently, through the 27th in some territories) got me excited, but I made damn sure to buy my own ticket at the Kendall as soon as they showed up rather than waiting to see if Fenway would get shows and didn't tweet about it until I had my own.

Totally worth it, though, and surprisingly so, considering that I have not exactly been a fan of the "Rebuild of Evangelion" movies that writer/director Hideaki Anno has been doing for most of the past decade, although I did like what I saw of the guy in The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness. He makes a surprisingly great movie, though maybe it's not for everyone. It's genuinely exciting to have a Godzilla movie with enough going on that it's worth arguing over, though - it's fascinating to me probably only recognizing about half of what's going on there; it must seem especially rich to the local Japanese audience.

And while the big final action sequence isn't perfect, I kind of love where it ends up - the final shots of Godzilla are great visuals but they set up a situation that not only provides the next filmmakers to take the series on both a great place to start their story but a "five minutes to midnight" atmosphere that will almost certainly be something they can use to reflect the times. And, despite all that, the film does not feel incomplete or excessively open-ended - it's a perfect, fitting finale.

I don't know how many folks reading this will still have a chance to see it in theaters, but if you can, do catch it on the big screen. It's a genuinely great giant monster movie, showing just what the genre can do in thoughtful hands.

Shin Gojira (Shin Godzilla, aka Godzilla Resurgence)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 October 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (special presentation, DCP)

It was a little bit surprising when venerable Japanese film studio Toho announced plans to make a new Godzilla movie soon after the 2014 American version; while not perfect, it was fairly well-received and expected to spawn its own sequels. What's even more surprising is that the one they wound up making feels daring and modern in unexpected ways - a thoughtful and satirical thriller that is still able to embrace that it's the latest in a series of movies built on guys in rubber suits stomping a scale model of Tokyo.

It starts out suggesting a shift in format to a found-footage or documentary-style flick, as a Coast Guard ship finds a seemingly abandoned pleasure boat in Tokyo Bay. That's soon followed by plumes of boiling water, and while high-ranking members of Japan's government ponder what sort of reassuring explanation to give the public, Deputy Secretary of Disaster Management Rando Yaguchi (Hiroki Hasegawa) picks up on chatter that it might be some sort of gigantic life form. Absurd, they say, at least until footage of a massive tail appears during the press conference. While the more senior politicians debate procedure, Yaguchi is put in charge of the research team with Hiromi Ogashira (Mikako Ichikawa) from the Nature Conservation Bureau as his science expert. The trail leads to an expatriate scientist, with American diplomatic envoy Kayoko Ann Patterson (Satomi Ishihara) offering to fill the Japanese staff in, although neither she personally nor the government she represents does anything for free.

One of the common complaints about the recent American Godzilla was that it worked too hard to hide the giant monsters, although that is something people say about nearly every kaiju movie worth a damn with the possible exception of Pacific Rim. Those expecting Shin Godzilla (aka "Godzilla Resurgence") to be a rebuke to that are in for a surprise and potential disappointment - it is almost wall-to-wall meetings and debates among elected officials and bureaucrats, often cutting back to the Prime Minister's Residence even while massive property damage and loss of life is happening in another part of Tokyo, generally the opposite of what one wants during a monster rampage.

And yet, by focusing on this part of the story, writer and primary director Hideaki Anno does something intriguing and unexpected: Even as he gives obvious examples of how bureaucracy can often be hidebound and seemingly counter-productive, getting plenty of jokes at the government's expense, it's also clear that he's fascinated by the process. While fast talk in a Japanese movie is often one person raising his voice to bury another under a barrage of words, it's back-and-forth here, like something Aaron Sorkin would write. Politicians worrying about how their actions will be perceived, rather than being played as cowards, are in over their heads and often paralyzed with fear at not knowing what the correct course of action is, especially since their government is explicitly structured in such a way as to make the use of force difficult, while Anno's script is uncommonly realistic about the logistics of evacuating a city the size of Tokyo. Indeed, it doesn't take much scratching beneath the surface to see in this movie as an examination of what Japan is at this point in history and what it must concern itself with. It is very clearly post-Fukushima in its attitudes toward atomic energy - while most previous versions of Godzilla posit the creature as being awakened or mutated by radiation, Anno's is a living nuclear reactor leaving a trail of contamination in its wake. The focus on details highlights just how tied Japan is to the United States, even though it is very clear that America may see Japan's well-being as an afterthought - more broadly, much of the film's homestretch is built around very real fears of being surrounded by massive, aggressive powers, waiting for the other shoe to drop, knowing that their allies may walk away (Donald Trump's comments during the 2016 American presidential campaign only serving to make this fear more timely). Finally, by making Shin Godzilla the first complete Japanese reboot (while most other sequels would change the mythology to a certain extent, the 1954 original was always in-continuity), it highlights how the flip side to Japan's preparedness in the face of disasters can be rigidity, and that unforeseen challenges may require new, less hierarchical and more improvisational approaches.

That set-up leads to a sprawling cast - there are something like a dozen familiar character actors among the senior ministers and Self-Defense Force officers alone - but also one that's dynamic enough to make the long stretches between giant monster attacks entertaining. Hiroki Hasegawa does an impressive job of implying that other characters' comments about Yaguchi's ambition have something to them even while always his actions are about the common good. Of the team that forms around him, Mikako Ichikawa is perhaps the most memorable as Ogashira; she really nails the nervousness of a relatively low-ranking employee called on to brief the Prime Minister in a crisis even though some of that timidity disappears as she dives into the work. Not timid at all is Satomi Ishihara as the brash Japanese-American envoy whose apparent shallowness barely covers a sharp mind that feels no need to hide her own ambition; as in co-director Shinji Higuchi's Attack on Titan films, she steals nearly every scene she's in, even if she's the roughest with English-language dialogue among the cast despite her character being a native speaker.

But enough about the human cast - most seeing the movie are doing so for Godzilla, after all! That's a bit tricky, at times; tasked with both bringing the Japanese series into the 21st century and doing something a bit more traditional in style than the American film, he settles on evolution and mutation as a mechanism to serve both masters, and it's surprisingly effective - the first appearance is gloriously rubbery and tactile, just this side of silly as it plows through streets, pushing cars away and wrecking buildings. It takes a while to morph into something like the traditional Godzilla, albeit darker in tone and more imposing, almost invisible eyes robbing it of a bit of the humanity traditionally ascribed to it, a design change that heightens the danger when it becomes especially clear that it's not only smashing uninhabited buildings. Higuchi heads up the special effects team, and he's just as aware of the tightrope he must cross, and he winds up delivering a combination of man-in-suit miniature work and digital artistry that manages to capture the strengths of both, blurring the line between them and making Godzilla's rampaging just the right blend of gleeful and scary fun. The filmmakers' take on its atomic breath is especially nifty, and while one might complain a bit about the third and final major action sequence not being quite as exciting as the previous two, it's still got moments of gleeful abandon, such as bullet trains used as actual bullets, and there's a genuine delight as composer Shiro Sagisu "evolves" the music into Akira Ifukube's classic Godzilla theme as the monster becomes more recognizable.

The quick-cutting, information-heavy style Anno uses here may not be for everyone - if you don't speak Japanese, it often leads to competing subtitles on the screen - especially those who just want monster fights and not examinations of leadership and difficult decisions. Fortunately, the action this has is good enough to make this the best Godzilla movie since Giant Monsters All-Out Attack, even as it's possibly the smartest since the original. And even if that's still not enough, Anno gives it an iconic and satisfying finale that nevertheless is also a heck of a place for the next guy to start, and I kind of can't wait to see where Toho decides to go from here.

(Dead link to) Full review on EFC.

Friday, October 21, 2016

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 21 October 2016 - 27 October 2016

I promise not to beat "IFFBoston 2016½" jokes into the ground over the next week, but, honestly, it's hard, because the city's best festival's second annual preview of what's great this fall is going to have me living at the theater, more than likely.

  • That would be The Brattle Theatre, who actually open the weekend with the last film I saw at this summer's Fantasia Festival, On the Silver Globe. I'll be honest - I napped a lot, because a long, surreal Polish science fiction film which has to elide over any spot where you might expect special effects sequences is a tough sit at 10pm on day 21 of the festival. It is, however, remarkable enough that I will be giving it another shot this weekend. Incompletely-shot in the 1970s, reconstructed a decade later, and recently restored, you haven't seen much like it. That's Friday and Saturday, with Sunday's matinees given over to anime feature Kizumonogatari Part 2: Nekketsu, a weird-looking vampire thing that is popular enough that the 2pm show sold out, though there are still tickets at 4pm.

    That evening, the IFFBoston Fall Focus begins with Moonlight, the too-long-awaited second feature from filmmaker Barry Jenkins, who made the terrific Medicine for Melancholy and has, by all accounts, made something far more ambitious here. Admission for that one is free (with pass, first-come-first-serve), and composer Nick Britell will be on hand. There's a DocYard screening on Monday, with director Anna Roussillon introducing I Am the People, which shows the recent Egyptian revolution from a rural point of view. The Fall Focus resumes on Tuesday with Chan Wook-park's newest, erotic thriller The Handmaiden, and then continues on Wednesday I Am Not Your Negro, a reimagining of James Baldwin's final unfinished book. On Thursday, they make up for lost time with Hriokazu Kore-eda's After the Storm at 7pm and The Autopsy of Jane Doe, the first English-language film from Trollhunter director André Øvredal, at 9:30pm. The final screening will be on Friday the 28th, with Jeff Nichols's much-anticipated Loving.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens two other anticipated films this weekend: Aquarius, Brazil's Oscar submission which features Sonia Braga as a retiree who is the last inhabitant of an apartment building scheduled for demolition, and her stubborn insistence on remaining there gives her the chance to reflect on her life. It also opens at the Kendall, and Braga will be making appearances at both places - Saturday night in Cambridge, Sunday afternoon in Brookline.

    They also open American Pastoral, Ewan McGregor's directorial debut, in which he stars as a man who was a big deal in high school but finds his world turned upside down in the 1960s when his daughter disappears after getting involved with radicals. It also plays at Kendall Square, West Newton, and Boston Common.

    They go off-site for part of their Halloween programming, with an 8pm "Cabin of Horror" double feature at the Rocky Woods Reservation, with Sam Raimi's original The Evil Dead and Drew Goddard's fantastic deconstruction of those movies, Cabin in the Woods. There is more conventional Halloween programming back at the theater, with the original Poltergeist playing on 35mm at midnight on both Friday and Saturday Sunday, and one last screening of the restored The Pit at midnight Saturday. Monday's Cinema Jukebox is a 35mm print of Scott Pilgrim Versus the World, the annual screening of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein (with Johnny Lee Miller as the Doctor and Benedict Cumberbatch as the Creature; it also screens at Revere that night). There's also a Thursday night screening of the Lon Chaney The Phantom of the Opera with music by the Berklee Silent Film Orchestra.
  • In addition to Sonia Braga, Kendall Square will also welcome actress Rebecca Hall, who plays the title role in Christine, a drama about awoman trying to make it as a television reporter when it was very much a man's world in the 1970s. She'll be taking questions from Boston Globe journalist Mark Shanahan on Saturday evening.

    It is, really, a very lady-centric week, as on top of that and Aquarius, there are two others. Certain Women is the latest by Kelly Reichardt, with Michelle Williams, Kristen Stewart, and Laura Dern each taking the lead in one of three intersecting stories. They also get the exceptionally strong animated film Miss Hokusai, which tells the story of the daughter of legendary Japanese artist Hokusai, a talent in her own right often tasked with supporting her father. The afternoon shows feature an English-language dub, while the evening screenings are subtitled.

    And, if you (like me) missed Shin Godzilla because nearly all of its Boston shows sold out well in advance, there will be final screenings on Saturday - noon at the Kendall, 3:45pm at Fenway. I've got my tickets, finally!
  • The biggest opening at the multiplexes is Jack Reacher: Never Go Back, which brings back Tom Cruise as the one man army of the title, this time looking to clear the name of a former sister-in-arms, although this time with Edward Zwick rather than Chritopher McQuarrie adapting a novel by Lee Turner. Still, it will be all over the place on most of the biggest screens, playing the Capitol, Jordan's Furniture (in Imax), Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere, and the SuperLux. More comedic action is on tap in Keeping Up with the Joneses, with Zach Galifianakis and Isla Fisher (an all-time schlub-and-hottie pairing) as a couple who get pulled into the adventures of the spies next door played by Jon Hamm and Isla Fisher. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    Two Halloween-oriented movies pop up in theaters as well: Somehow, the Ouija movie from a couple years ago gets a follow-up, but Ouija: Origins of Evil has an entirely new cast and crew, and writer-director Mike Flanagan has a strong track record. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, Revere, and the Superlux. Again, those looking more for comedy may want to go for Boo! A Madea Halloween, the latest from Tyler Perry featuring his alter ego being herself on the holiday. That one's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    Revere also has I'm Not Ashamed, a film about the first victim in the Columbine focusing on how she was a devout Christian. They will also be running The Shining on Sunday and Wednesday. Boston Common also brings back Operation Mekong for those looking for some impressive action.
  • The Boston Asian American Film Festival will be at the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount from Friday to Sunday, with all three days featuring shorts programs and a number of features - Front Cover, Right-Footed, Comfort, Bad Rap, Breathin': The Eddie Zheng Story, and The Tiger Hunter
  • The Somerville Theatre continues their fall repertory programming with a Gene Kelly 35mm double feature on Friday, screening An American in Paris & Summer Stock. On Saturday they once again screen Chatty Catties, alocally-shot indie comedy with hearing-impaired actors giving voice to cats in a world where they can talk. Sunday's double feature focuses on Virginia Mayo, with White Heat & The Secret Life of Walter Mitty on 35mm. They then hand things off to their sister cinema in Arlington, The Capitol, who will have Jeff Rapsis on hand to accompany Tod Browning's The Unholy Three.
  • The Harvard Film Archive will be having free screenings of Tsukiji Wonderland on Friday and Saturday afternoon with director Naotaro Endo and others who worked on the film in attendance; it's a fond look at Tokyo's Tsukiji 80-year-old fish market on the eve of its relocation.

    They also kick off Say It Loud: A Black Cinema Revolution on Friday night, with Shaft and Super Fly, both preceded by a 16mm short. They also continue their Martin Khutsiev series, with I Am Twenty (a version of Ilyich's Gate cut by 17 minutes down to three hours) on Saturday and Epilogue on Monday. In between, Sunday featuers the work of a much earlier Soviet filmmaker, Boris Barnet - silent comedy The House on Trubnaya Square with accompaniment by Donald Sosin at 5pm and early talkie Outskirts at 7pm. All features but Tsukiji Wonderland are 35mm.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts continues the Boston Palestine Film Festival with two screenings of The Idol (Friday & Saturday), as well as short docs "Pop Palestine" (including Q&A) & "Epicly Palestine'd: The Birth of Skateboarding in the West Bank" on Saturday and Yallah! Underground on Sunday. The festival will also have a live storytelling program at the Oberon on Sunday; co-present Tuesday's free Bright Lights program at the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater being The Occupation of the American Mind, with directors Loretta Alper and Jeremy Earp appearing with their documentary on how Israel works hard to be looked at favorably in the U.S..
  • , and screen Oriented (in collaboration with the Boston LGBT Film Festival) at the Somerville on Thursday. Also on Thursday, the museum will be joining with the DocYard and UMass Boston Film Series to present Joe Berlinger with his classic documentary Brother's Keeper.

  • Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond keeps M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (subtitled), opening Telugu action flick Ism and finding spots for adventure film Pulimurugan and comedy Central Jail (both Malayalam) over the weekend.
  • The Regent Theatre will pair two films on Thursday - Children of the Streets at 7pm (with an associated book release party and Boston2Philly at 9pm, with writer/director/star Ralph Celestin on hand with other members of the cast for a Q&A.


My plans include Godzilla, a bunch of the Fall Focus, and, sure, I'll probably give Ouija and Jack Reacher looks. Probably get to Silver Globe as well.

Thursday, October 20, 2016

Queen of Katwe

Another week spent in Frisco, another week of there really just being nothing else to do after work than hit the theater at a nearby mall. Honestly, I have no idea what my co-workers do; there is an awful lot of nothing here. Anyway, unlike last time, when there was a movie or two that didn't make it to Boston, the pickings here are pretty much in line with what is playing back home.

Which is fine; the move and a bunch of special movie events have me behind on the mainstream stuff. Stuff like Queen of Katwe, which deserves a fair bit more recognition than it got, if only because it's a relatively rare release from Disney that is not some branding juggernaut but the company making a quality movie that can be shown to young people without trying to sell them more than a chess set or the original book.

Given that it's a big Disney movie, I'm very impressed that, aside from Lupita Nyong'o and David Oyelowo, it seems to have an almost entirely Ugandan and South African cast. Part of that is because I suspect that is easy to fall into the trap of thinking that "Wakaliwood" is the entirety of what Uganda makes for movies, especially since they just got a signal boost from one of their flicks playing Fantastic Fest, but there's apparently enough talent there to fill this cast out well, and in part because it is often easy to lump all of Africa together, and while one movie likely won't have me recognizing the difference between Ugandan and Nigerian accents, it's a start on seeing the world a little more clearly and specifically. It's also worth mentioning that the one white character of any note, a Canadian girl who is the first opponent to really challenge Phiona, does not actually have any lines. It would be tempting, I think, to try and put someone in the movie that could be shown in the trailer, but beyond that probably not being true to life, it keeps this movie as something about pushing one's self up as opposed to being picked from bad circumstances by an outsider.

Anyway, I liked it, and it's worth sticking through the credits - aside from an unusually delightful montage of where everyone is now (beyond standing next to the actor portraying them), there's a fun ending-credit music video akin to those in Indian movies. I don't know how much Indian style Mira Nair brought to this one - a lot of the colorful visuals and non-Western music choices likely came straight from the African seeing, even if they often felt like Bollywood - but that bit definitely is Indian, and kind of delightful.

Queen of Katwe

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 October 2016 in AMC Stonebriar #3 (first-run, DCP)

I suspect that even writers and directors who most want to be known for their complex, non-mainstream works would secretly like to have something like Queen of Katwe on their IMDB page, because it does feel good to make others feel good and to hear that you've given someone hope, even if this sort of victorious-underdog story isn't your usual thing. There are probably hundreds of scripts along those lines floating around Hollywood at any given time, but not many attract the likes of Mira Nair and this film's talented cast and become something quite so terrific.

In 2007, Phiona Mutesi (Madina Nalwanga) is eleven years old, one of four children of widow Nakku Harriet (Lupita Nyong'o) living in the Ugandan slums of Katwe, striving to make ends meet by selling vegetables in the street. Elsewhere in the town, Robert Katende (David Oyelowo) is unable to secure an engineering job and so starts to work part-time coaching kids at soccer for a local miniature - and for the kids who don't play soccer, he starts a chess club. Phiona and her brother Mugabi Brian (Martin Kabanza) initially are drawn in by the porridge Robert serves - and are shunned for being dirty and smelly even by local standards - but Phiona soon starts beating everyone with sophisticated techniques. When Robert learns that she's illiterate and this couldn't have been reading his books, he realizes that he has a prodigy on his hands, and helping her reach her potential will be a much larger task.

Nair and screenwriter William Wheeler (adapting a magazine article and book by Tim Crothers) lay what a young audience can get out of this movie out very clearly during the lessons: A small pawn that makes its way through the gauntlet to the other end of the board, despite having little power, can become a queen, and more generally, success comes in large part by anticipation and planning. That's not the entirety of the story, but even if it were, the filmmakers make it go down easy by making sure that the kids are in large part teaching each other with enthusiasm rather than receiving lectures, the whole premise being to actively respect the kids' intelligence. That extends to not giving a complete primer on the game beyond the bits that will be important symbolically, and trusting that the viewer can process the often rapid-fire exchanges of pieces for their meaning, rather than stopping to explain.

Full review on EFC.

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Boston TerrorThon 2016.02: Found Footage 3D

So, full disclosure - Scott Weinberg, one of the co-producers of this film who also has a small part playing himself, is probably a big part of why folks are reading this blog: He encouraged me when I was mainly posting movie reviews to the Home Theater Forum, was one of the Senior Editors at eFilmCritic/Hollywood Bitch-Slap when they started letting me contribute, and has been pretty cool on the occasions I've actually met him in person. So I've actually been kind of nervous ever since he started talking the film up after coming on board a few years ago, because my attempt to write at least a couple paragraphs about every single thing I see means that, if it turned out to be Not Very Good, I'd probably say so. I hate writing bad reviews for small independent films anyway, mostly trying to focus on what does work and how the folks involved can improve next time around, but not liking this one would suck.

Fortunately, that wasn't the case; it's a fun movie, surprisingly likable via its relatively understated character work and with a few very good scares. As a person who actually does like 3D (though not enough to shell out the cash to do a serious 3D upgrade for the TV yet), I liked the way they used it,exaggerated, but it a way that emphasized how the characters were kind of amateurs.

Kind of frustrated with the actual screening, though - it was originally scheduled for the first day of the "TerrorThon" (which is something between a rep program and a festival, seemingly a joint production between the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival and the Somerville Theatre). I actually worked from home on Thursday so that I could walk to the Somerville Theatre for the 5pm screening of Bad Blood: The Movie... I get there and it's off, as is the 9:45pm screening of this. The 7pm show, The Master Cleanse, is something I've already seen. Well, okay, I've got laundry to do, and Found Footage 3D will be shown the next night.

I get there at 7pm, figuring I'll do a triple feature of Egomaniac, Attack of the Lederhosenzombies, and FF3D (which has been given a tough 10:45pm slot). Egomaniac is off, replaced with The Master Cleanse, which I'd recommend to most, but having already seen it, I'm not sure about dropping $15 to see it again. So, back to the apartment, and at that point I decide, you know what, I won't bother with Attack of the Lederhosenzombies, because why should I believe that this will go off fine and not just have technical problems rear their ugly head at the last moment? That's what happens when a festival/event doesn't have their stuff together - they don't just lose money from the actual shows missed, but the ones people don't bother with because of lack of faith.

Found Footage 3D

* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 October 2016 in Somerville Theatre #5 (Boston TerrorThon, RealD 3D DCP)

Half the joke with Found Footage 3D is that if one half of the title doesn't represent what you think is wrong with horror movies today, the other probably does, and combining them should make a film that pleases nobody. Of course, doing so indicates a self-aware spoof, which is kind of another thing horror doesn't need more of, and while this may all seem to indicate that pulling it all together is a bad, inherently doomed idea, it's also opportunity for a clever filmmaker to pull what works from all of this together into a fun project that pulls what works from each of those elements.

It presents itself as the behind-the-scenes material shot during the making of Spectre of Death, conceived as a found-footage horror movie written by and starring Derek (Carter Roy) and Amy (Alena von Stroheim) as a couple whose marriage was already on the brink of collapse before they went on vacation in a creepy old cabin that the locals tell them to avoid... And whose marriage collapsed in between raising the crowdfunding money and going to shoot in a creepy old cabin that the locals tell them to avoid. But the show must go on, so to the woods they go, along with Andrew (Tom Saporito), the director that Derek sprang the 3D cameras on at the last minute; Carl the sound guy (Scott Allen Perry); Lily (Jessica Perrin), the cute production assistant without any experience Derek found at a party; and Mark (Chris O'Brien), Derek's brother who is shooting a making-of thing and is quite happy to see Amy again.

Though the description is full of red flags that this movie may be too much about itself and similar movies that don't necessarily bear that much examination, one of the first things that grabs the audience is how quickly it sketches out characters who are worth the audience's interest. They're a simple group, to be sure, but they're quickly established as more than just their jobs and obvious functions in the story. Some of it is paying against type, making Andrew kind of ineffectual as the director when that guy would normally be trying to dominate every scene. Sometimes it's how, even though Mark is holding the camera, you can tell that both he and Amy perk up a bit when she sees him. And if Lily is the cute young thing that Derek is trying to rub in Amy's face, that's never the first thing she is to the audience. It's an unusually well-balanced ensemble without a weak link in the cast.

Full review on EFC.

Saturday, October 15, 2016

The Fantasia Daily 2016.11 (24 July 2016): Holy Flame of the Martial World, Fragments of Asia, Lazy Hazy Crazy, and If Cats Disappeared from the World

Thought I'd just given up, didn't you? That would be the sensible thing, but I've got notes, I want other film festivals I apply to for credentials to take me seriously, and, honestly, I don't want to feel like I was a freeloader for the second half of the fest.

This was a pretty enjoyable Sunday, though - it started off with the always enjoyable 35mm Shaw Brothers classic, with the obligatory crazy trailer. Relatively few of those this year, at least for me, as two of the Hong Kong movies screened had already played Boston and that's where they show up.

I would hang around De Seve for the rest of the afternoon for what would prove to be an all-Asian day, continuing with the "Fragments of Asia" shorts program. Before that started, the programmers excitedly announced a special addition to the program, as Takashi Miike had given them a copy of his animated short to show during his visit. They even got to name it, in French at least, because it hadn't shown outside of Japan.



Next up, King-wei Chu introducing Lazy Hazy Crazy writer/director Jody Luk Yee-sum, a Hong Kong filmmaker who worked on the scripts for several of Pang Ho-cheung's movies and talked about how he'd been very encouraging about her making one of her own, almost frighteningly so, as she didn't initially think she was ready when she got the chance, although confidence built as she went along.

The film was introduced as being somewhat autobiographical, which raised some eyebrows when she came out for Q&A afterward, saying that it being based on her life as a bit exaggerated, though she certainly knew a lot of people involved in "compensated dating" and the like. She also talked about how she and the three young co-stars wound up bunking together for some time before the movie actually started, in order to get familiar and comfortable with each other.

After that, across the street for If Cats Disappeared from the World, a pretty charming little movie that the audience really seemed to be into. Then, I had a choice between Superpowerless and In Search of the Ultra-Sex, and opted for "none of the above" - it would be nearly an hour until the first started (with another show the next day) and the second was a thing made from cutting other movies together, and that's not really my thing. So did I go back to the apartment, get some sleep, and be ready to go early? No! I headed down to the Forum to see For a Few Bullets, because clearly what you need at the midway point of Fantasia is a way to cram more Chinese movies in.

Wu lin sheng huo jin (Holy Flame of the Martial World)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016, 35mm)

The Shaw Brothers kung fu movies of the 1980s got pretty strange - between the competition from Golden Harvest with their new young stars like Jackie Chan on one side and the western sci-fi/fantasy movies like Star Wars being imported to Hong Kong on the other, the venerable studio had to make some pretty crazy things to stand out. Holy Flame of the Martial World is not the most insane thing to come out in Shawscope during that time, it's unusual in that it plays as a pretty good movie when a lot were gluing fight scenes and special effects together and hoping that something entertaining came about.

Some eighteen years ago, a pair of married warriors (Wong Man-yee & Siao Yuk) were on the run, attempting to make sure that their martial-arts manual didn't fall into the wrong hands. Though defeated at the hands of a cabal led by Chief Tsing Yin of the O-Mei Clan (Leanne Lau Suet-wah) and Chief Ku Pan-kuai (Jason Pai Piao), their master Yama Elder (Phillip Kwok Chung-fung) beat them back and took the couple's son to raise on his own, challenging the others to a battle in twenty years time. What the elder did not realize was that the couple had twins, and Tsing Yin would find the daughter. Two decades later, Yin Tien-chu (Max Mok Siu-chung) has grown to be a master of "Devil Swordplay" and Tan Feng (Yeung Jing-jing) is a loyal part of the O-Mei clan, but with the time for the challenge Yama issued coming near, all are trying to find the magical swords hidden by Tien-chu's and Feng's parents while Tsing and Ku consolidate their power.

The quest for a secret manual or weapon is well-enough worn plot for a martial-arts movie that this doesn't sound particularly strange, but it's the crazy but weirdly consistent details that make the actual film a lot of fun: Yama's "ghostly cry", where he laughs his opponents away, is incredibly over-the-top but tremendously entertaining, but for all the silliness of this and some of the other techniques, writer/director Tony Liu Chun-ku and action directors Phillip Kwok Chung-fung and Yuen Tak are very good at staging their wire-heavy action so that the viewer laughs at the staging but enjoys the execution. It's silly, sure, but it's generally slapstick that makes the characters look formidable, rather than inept.

Full review on EFC.

"Korogashiya no Pun" ("Keep on Rolling!")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, HD)

Takashi Miike always finds some way to surprise at Fantasia. Sometimes it's turning out a great family film, sometimes it's doing something as conventional as Shield of Straw. This time, it's not just adding a cartoon to the Asian Shorts block at the last minute, but having it be the most upbeat, charming thing on the list.

It's a cute little stop-motion short about a dung beetle who really likes rolling stuff around well beyond being a dung beetle and that sort of being their thing, leading to a lot of slapstick as he attacks other round things, meeting his match in a giant (by his scale) hamster. It leaves him to "pooped" to pay baseball with his other insect friends. I've got no idea whether this short is connected to something else (the Fantasia website says it's a tribute to Puchi Puchi Anime, but it must be some sort of side characters if so), but it's a fun group of creatures doing amusing things, with Miike and his collaborators sticking just enough jokes into five minutes to let it be cute rather than frantic and get genuine laughs from each one.

"Report About Death"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

This short film looks like the sort of thing that your better-informed friend might share on social media to explain a difficult concept or advocate a position on same, and I mean that as a compliment: If that's what filmmaker Kim Jin-a was going for, she hits the target squarely, perfectly capturing the infographic-like visual style and quick but not rushed pacing, making sure that there's a poppy moving picture with every fact delivered with great assurance.

The gag, then, is that she's talking about the most universal subject of all, albeit in a way that we almost never do - matter-of-factly, whether discussing the biological and chemical processes involved or the various belief systems and rituals that have sprung up around it, and we are not used to that. Cho Hyun-ji's voiceover is instructive and never sarcastic but not cold or condescending, and while Kim's visuals can easily swing to morbid or darkly comic, they are generally entertaining without making her film a gross-out piece or a satirical attack.

You'll learn something, you'll smile, you'll generally enjoy yourself. It may be the weirdest praise I'll ever give a short, but if I ever find out that I've got something terminal, this will probably be one of two things I'm certain to post on Facebook in the lead-up (along with a request that anybody with the intent of saying "I'll pray for you" donate a dollar to cancer research and do a hundred times as much good). It's not the sort of thing we should need an animated short for, even if we kind of do.

"I Can See You"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

A spiffy little animation from Gu Jie that starts building tension almost immediately as a skilled archer practices seemingly much longer than anyone else... or is he?

Gu does some nifty things here, finding ways to create a jittery live-action feel that lets the camera take a quick peek over the shoulder while also using the abstraction of animation to make the world shift under his feet. There's a nervous energy to the film that the music and sound design adds to, along with the very simple design that initially hints at there being nowhere to hide until a little bit of shifting perspective suggests that there is, in fact, a bit more. The red streaks that show up later are striking.

There's some great silent storytelling, too - without any dialogue, Gu gets across that the archer is exceptional enough that perhaps nobody could be targeting him but himself; it's all body language, glimpses of something seeming strange, and hints that nevertheless get this very specific idea across. That's in addition to just making the action fast-paced and tense, a nifty bit of work.

"Retriever"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

Though I've watched a bunch of movies from South Korea over the years, there are a bunch of details about everyday life that I'll miss because they're either very specific or something kind of unpleasant that doesn't fit into entertainment, even if your entertainment is cynical crime dramas. "Retriever" has a couple of those, and while I'd seen how the homeless seem semi-officially allowed to shelter in Seoul's subway stations at night in Seoul Station a couple days earlier, I'd never heard of the Cho son jok, ethnic Koreans from China treated with suspicion and derision when they come to the ROK to find work.

That's where this short gets its protagonist, beaten up because other homeless people see him as lower-class and this a fair target, eventually hatching a scheme to find a dog at a rescue shelter and sell it to a disreputable butcher under the table. Of course, nor only is nine-year-old former guide dog Bori not really the sort that makes a good stew, but he just may unlock some sort of attachment in the hardened, desperate man.

Filmmaker Kim Joo-hwan has seemingly looked under a rock to find this story, choosing as his protagonist someone many in his audience might try Doubly hard to ignore, and neither the director nor star Moon Sun-yong does much to hint that there's any particular nobility hidden there. Through much of the movie, they do an impressive job of giving some low-level stimulation to the audience's instincts to look away and feel ashamed by it, showing injustice but making its victims unheroic, making sure his accent is thick and odd enough that even those of us who don't know Korean might get the idea that he sounds kind of illiterate. In some ways, it's easier to connect with the dog, a working animal kicked to the curb when no longer needed, racking up medical bills that can't be paid at the vet. Kim plays with the idea of them being outcasts in a thoroughly unsentimental manner, and in doing so earns every scrap of empathy that they eventually receive.

"Mu-jeo-gaeng" ("Throttled")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

Mermaid horror stories are a venerable genre, although in recent years they have become just ubiquitous enough that the surprise of something often considered cute and/or sexy being used for something potentially gruesome is gone (although that may be a fairly recent thing anyway). It's easy to see why, though - it's not hard to scrape the cheerful exterior away and see stories about men keeping and abusing a beautiful topless woman, not embarrassingly disfigured bit unable to do anything on her own while trapped in his bathtub or elsewhere with dry land on all sides.

"Throttled" is certainly along those lines, although it doesn't do much with how these fantasies often stay in a seemingly benign place with the man thinking he's being a good guy by rescuing the mermaid. Kim Je-hyeon's animated short makes her Intriguingly alien from the start, with obvious gills and the lower half of an octopus rather than a fish or dolphin, but it doesn't mess around with the fisherman who finds her, either; his curiosity is predatory, and the frequent stillness to the animation is pointedly unnerving, emphasizing people regarding each other rather than acting or connecting.

Things get ugly later on, of course, and Kim makes the sort jump into full horror enthusiastically, mixing the animation style up a little bit to show that the very environment is going to turn. The latter minutes aren't gleefully nasty, but they certainly don't hold back. This basic story has been told before, quite a bit, but Kim's commitment to the dark elements makes his fairly memorable.

"Keep Going"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

There's a line in the credits of "Keep Going" indicating that Kim Geon has done more with the post-apocalyptic setting and characters, although I have not yet followed up on that (see: the Facebook page). I probably should; for a student film, it's impressively stylish and, while open-ended, it tells its own tale without getting caught up in something bigger.

It is the tale of Yeon-hee and Margo, 40km from a border they need to cross in a land that has been devastated by the Robot Wars, a bad situation to be in because the pair are tethered to one another, Margo's power core keeping Yeon-hee's heart beating, and nobody else is terribly fond of robots. It's a simple way to get things moving, and Kim makes good use of it both in moments of contemplation, when the girl probably not old enough to remember what sort of cataclysm made people hate robots (they are, after all, so useful!), and in action. Staging a simple fight scene is not an option, as any distance the protagonists get from each other is dangerous even if not limited. Throw in how Chou Bae-young and her co-stars seem to know what they're doing, and things are in good shape.

It's also a good-looking movie; though ruined-future movie are popular among those with low budgets because locations aren't that hard to find and you don't need to build a lot (physically or virtually), Kim does better than most at making the most of what's available and making Margo and the other robots look good, crafted with an eye for aesthetics but also worn down. The picture looks dirty, but never careless; it's definitely the sort of short film that could bear expansion to feature length even while being satisfying as-is.

"Mitsuami no kamisama" ("Pigtails")

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016: Fragments of Asia, DCP)

The centerpiece of the "Fragments of Asia" piece in part by dint of being the longest, it would also have been the one that had the highest profile if not for the last-minute addition of something by Miike, as director Yoshimi Itazu has some pretty high-profile credits as one of the main animators of Miss Hokusai and The Wind Rises, and with Production I.G. behind it, "Pigtails" certainly has a head start on being sharp and polished. It's not necessarily a huge surprise that Itazu seems to have picked up some other skills as well.

He is, for instance, very good at not so much misdirecting the audience on where the story is going but in allowing it to get there by an unusual route. It starts off looking kind of traditional - the pretty young woman who nevertheless lives alone and isolated, the shy boy who delivers her mail but is too shy to speak - even if it is told from the point of view of various inanimate objects around her tiny house. There's a charm to those characters, seeing life through the lenses of what a hatrack experiences but devoted to the pigtailed girl of the title, and a sweetness to the girl and her only contact with the world, even after the camera pulls back a little more and things are revealed to be less idyllic.

Sadly, the original manga that this is adapting does not appear to be available in English, because it's a pretty great story, and Itazu, screenwriter Miho Maruo, and the cast & crew do a fantastic job of creating a yin-yang of sweet fantasy that has a seed of horror inside and vice versa over the course of the film. It's also very impressive how what seems like a clever but minor moment in the opening minutes of the film, and does it in a way that is not just crass irony or obvious restatement of a theme but an intriguing comment on how sometimes, rather than necessarily becoming desensitized to something terrible, we in the audience can be okay with it from the start, simply dependent upon our definition of personhood.

Tung baan tung hok (Lazy Hazy Crazy)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the J.A. de Seve Cinema (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

Jody Luk Yee-sum has co-written some bawdy comedies in Hong Kong, so it's not surprising that one of the most memorable bits in Lazy Hazy Crazy is the one that comes off as a crude joke. It's not exactly representative, though, as the film as a whole turns out to be one of those coming-of-age films that seems kind of alarming to an older/male/foreign audience member like myself, even if the characters do seem more or less able to deal with what's thrown at them with fairly good humor.

It follows three teenage classmates, each neglected or unsupervised to a certain extent: Tall, confident Chloe (Koyi Mak Chi-yee) not so obviously, perhaps, especially in comparison to Alice (Fish Liew), whose parents have divorced and decamped for Bangkok and Ngai, leaving her working as a "hostess" at a karaoke bar and doing enough "compensated dating" that she's known around school by a fairly vulgar nickname. She may still be higher on the social totem pole than Tracy (Ashina Kwok Yik-sam), a bespectacled Filipina whom everyone expects will become a maid like her strict grandmother and most other immigrants from the Philippines. They're the sort of trio that has just enough in common to get lumped together, but that doesn't mean their friendship is easy or natural.

It is, in fact, often highlighted by cruelty; Chloe especially can be the sort that builds herself up by pushing those around her down at times, whether by reminding Tracy of her low position in the pecking order or treating the escort work Alice does to survive as something of a fun adventure. There are times when the operative message seems to be that kids need friends, so they must initially take what they can get even if it means that those friends actually thinking well of one another has to come later.

Full review on EFC.

Sekai kara neko ga kietanara (If Cats Disappeared from the World)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 24 July 2016 in the SGWU Alumni Auditorium (Fantasia 2016, HDs)

There probably is not quite the same philosophical divide between West and East - or more specifically, America and Japan - as there has been at other times in history, but the different priorities at the hearts of the cultures are a large part of what makes it so interesting for me as an outsider. It is, whether deliberately or not, an inversion of an American classic, although one need not get particularly analytical to enjoy it - it is a sweet movie that finds ways to charm despite its sad premise.

It opens by introducing us to a young man (Takeru Satoh), about thirty and delivering the mail for a living. While out on his route, he has a seizure, and the doctor gives him some bad news: He has a brain tumor, inoperable, and he doesn't have much time. But maybe he has more than he thinks - as he despaired of what to do next, a doppelganger appears and tells him that he can have another day, but something else musty new removed from the world to compensate each day. Telephones, for a start. But here's the rub: He met his first girlfriend (Aoi Miyazaki) because she called a wrong number, and everything else this devil takes to extend his life is going to take a chunk of his past.

The movie is, in this way, the flip side of It's a Wonderful Life, with the protagonist's continued presence in the world coming at a price, not just to himself, but to the whole world. The contrast in how the American film values a specific individual over the crowd is perhaps most visible in who makes the offer to change the world and keep them around - a man who claims to be a celestial being but needs the help of the self-doubting man and his exceptional goodness, versus his own mirror image, selfishly telling him to do whatever it takes to hang on. It's not a perfect comparison, but given how central movies are to the relationships between the younger characters - Fritz Lang's Metropolis and Wong Kar-wai's Happy Together (apparently called "Buenos Aires" in Japan) play important parts - it's hard to believe the filmmakers and original novelist Genki Kawamura didn't make the connection at some point.

Full review on EFC.

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 14 October 2016 - 20 October 2016

Man, what do people without great repatory theaters in their towns do doing October. Nothing spooky or scary from the majors, but, fortunately, other places in Boston have us covered.

  • The Somerville Theatre does the most, continuing their Halloween Terror Thon through Sunday, mixing up new and old: Friday starts off with what may be the year's best horror movie, The Wailing, before grabbing Egomaniac, Attack of the Lederhosenzombies, and Found Footage 3D from the festival circuit and showing an archival 35mm print of The Rocky Horror Picture Show at midnight with the Teseracte Players (Full Body Cast does their thing at Boston Common on Saturday). Sunday kicks off with a 70mm print of Ghostbusters before serving up the legit creepy The Eyes of My Mother, a short package curated by Izzy Lee that includes local filmmakers, Blood Hunters, and Clowntown. Sunday is 35mm classics, with a double feature of House of Usher and Tales of Terror in the afternoon and Jeff Rapsis accompanying The Unknown in the evening. Their sister cinema in Arlington, The Capitol, finishes "Before Vampires Sucked" on Throwback Thursday with Interview with the Vampire And, while not Halloween-related, the Somerville has a 35mm Muhammad Ali double feature that night, with When We Were Kings and The Greatest.
  • The Somerville is also one of the local theaters loading up on Ben Affleck in The Accountant, in which he plays a mob number-cruncher who is anti-social in a way that crosses from not interacting much to apparently throwing down quite well. It's also at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.

    There's also stand-up film Kevin Hart: What Now?, which I'm guessing probably has a lot more of Hart telling jokes than the crazy action/adventure antics which make up a bunch of the trailer (which is okay, because Hart is good at both). It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere. The other wide opening is Max Steel, with Mattel trying to get in on some of that Transformers money despite not really having a boy toy that translates into an adventure movie nearly as well. It's also at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    There's also an unusual number of one-off shows. Shin Godzilla continues through Tuesday, with showings Saturday (Kendall/Fenway/Revere), Sunday (Kendall), Monday (Kendall), and Tuesday (Fenway/Revere), though bunches are sold out. There are 40th Anniversary screenings of Taxi Driver on Sunday and Wednesday at Boston Common, Fenway, and Revere, Young Frankenstein on Tuesday at Fenway and Revere, and Rob Zombie's 31 at Fenway (Thursday) and Revere (Sunday and Thursday).
  • Kendall Square also picks up A Man Called Ove for a week. It's a Swedish film starring Rolf Lassgaard as a grumpy old man who hates everyone and everything, especially the loud new neighbors who have just moved in. Naturally, they'll be the ones who just may be able to bring him out of his shell.
  • The Brattle Theatre will welcome director David Schisgall for the 7pm screenings of Theo Who Lived on Friday and Saturday (it also plays Sunday). HIs film is a documentary about Theo Padnos, an American journalist who went to report on Syria in 2012 but was soon kidnapped by al Qaedaand was held prisoner for nearly two years.

    Another director, Bonni Cohen, will visit on Monday for a DocYard presentation of Audrie & Daisy, which tells the story of two teenagers who are assaulted after getting drunk at a party, awaking to a world where people they thought were their friends are passing around pictures and video of what happened. Tuesday is Trash Night, Wednesday is a private event, and then on Thursday they have the opening night of the Boston Asian American Film Festival; director Pamela Tom will be there to introduce her documentary Tyrus, a look at the life of 105-year-old visual artist Tyrus Wong, who in addition to being a fine artist was also a crucial contributor to many films, including Bambi.
  • The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Honey in its second week of release. They also double up on midnights, with Canuxploitation horror flick The Pit playing both Saturday and Sunday in new restoration. Downstairs in the main theater, they go with 35mm lychanthropes, with An American Werewolf in London playing Friday night and Oliver Reed in the less-screened Curse of the Werewolf on Saturday. There's a Talk Cinema screening Sunday morning, and then on Monday night they do a Science On Screen presentation of Chinatown, with Dr. Betsy Reilley discussing how to manage water as a resfource. Wednesday, director Stu Maddux will screen his documentary Reel in the Closet, and then on Thursday there's a Rewind! screening of Beetlejuice on 35mm, with a costume contest and an after-party across the street at Osaka.
  • After a week off, The Harvard Film Archive returns to their retrospective of Danièle Huillet and Jean-Marie Straub on Friday with Chronicle of Anna Magdelena at 7pm and a pair of 35mm shorts, "Cézanne. Conversation with Joachim Gasquet" and "A Visit to the Louvre" at 9pm. The Marlen Khutsiev retrospective continues on Saturday with the massive Infinitas and Sunday afternoon with The Two Fedors, all on 35mm. The "Behind Potemkin" series of Soviet Silents continues that evening with Bertrand & Susan Laurence accompanying Bed and Sofa (35mm). On Monday, they welcome Brigid McCaffrey, screening three of her recent short films.
  • The Museum of Fine Arts starts the Boston Palestine Film Festival with a weekend featuring director Mai Masri, with her first narrative film (and Jordan's Oscar submission) 3000 Nights playing Friday (a sold out gala) and two documentary programs on Saturday. There's also Kamal Aljafari presenting Recollection Sunday afternoon and The Curve on Thursday, with the festival having a pair of free shows at the Brookline Public Library on Tuesday.

    In addition, part of their monthly overnight on Friday/Saturday is a screening of the Verhoeven/Schwarzeneggar Total Recall, part of a Philip K. Dick series. They also team with the Japan Society for a Wednesday-evening screening of Paper Lanterns with director Barry Frechette, telling the tale of a Hiroshima survivor who worked for decades to learn and reveal the identities of twelve American POWs who also perished when the bomb was dropped.
  • Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond has a special Halloween presentation on Friday night, as the Maine-made horror anthology series Damnationland collects some of the "Prime Cuts" from seven years of short films (the latest set will run in two weeks). They also add Kannada comedy Neer Dose to a rotating selection of Indian films including Hindi biography M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story (subtitled), Telugu romance Premam, and Malayalam thriller Oppam.
  • Bright Lights welcomes Emerson alumnus Matthew Hashiguchi to the Paramount Theatre's Bright Screening Room on Tuesday forGood Luck Soup, his documentary on reconnecting with his Japanese heritage, starring his grandmother. On Tuesday, they've got the pretty terrific The Witch, with discussion to follow. As always, both are free and open to the public.
  • The Regent Theatre has 3 Weeks in Yerevan on Sunday afternoon, with filmmakers (and co-stars) Vahe Berberian and Vahik Pirhamzei on-hand to present their comedy about a pair of Armenian-American filmmakers who wind up in over their head when they try to shoot a movie in their homeland. There's also a free screening of Age of Champions, a look at the Senior Olympics, on Tuesday afternoon, hosted by the Arlington Council on Aging.


I figure on spending a fair chunk of time at the Terror-Thon, presuming there are no further problems with the schedule (two of Thursday's three films were canceled or rescheduled) and also catching Shin Godzilla before having to fly to Texas for work and basically hoping there's something worth seeing at the semi-close multiplex rather than attending well-intentioned efforts to try and do team-building by stealing even more of my day to be in a loud room with drinking co-workers.

Monday, October 10, 2016

Mission Milano

I was really looking forward to this one; one of the fun things about how Chinese and Korean movies are playing the multiplexes is that often previews for movies show up a week or two ahead of time, so that even if you see as many movies as someone like me, there is no chance to go through a "cool, whatever, sick of it" progression. Nope, you just see the goofy trailer with Andy Lau in a slapstick comedy, get a little worried when it doesn't come out on the date in the preview, but excited about the next week.

And then it's not very good. That's doubly a bummer because I didn't get to it on time on Saturday, so I went to The Girl on the Train, and that suuuuuucked.

Still, I'll absolutely be down for it if The Invincible 12 plays American theaters. There is a crazy cast on his official 100th film.

Wang pai dou wang pai (Mission Milano)

* * (out of four)
Seen 8 October 2016 in AMC Boston Common #5 (first-run, DCP)

Wong Jing has made a truly staggering number of movies, pumping them out at such a rate that I can't tell whether the fact that the three I've seen most recently are disappointing is indicative of a trend or just bad luck. That number, unfortunately, includes Mission Milano, a spy spoof that never manages to show the sort of energy that an anything-goes script and a likable cast needs.

Swiss scientist Dr. Petersen (Xu Yazhou) has developed "The Seed of God", which can grow into any plant with just the smallest bit of soil and water, potentially ending famine forever. Interpol dispatches Agent 119, Hung Sampan (Andy Lau Tak-wah), to monitor the demonstration at Haotian Technology, a firm run by Louis Luo (Huang Xiaoming), the descendant of a family of robin-hood thieves that went straight in the last generation. Petersen is kidnapped by Crescent, a Japanese criminal organization headed by Snow (Xu Dongdong), with the intent to sell his invention to K-Max, another group that sees great potential to use it for the cultivation of cocaine. Interpol recruits Luo, his sister Ka-yan (Nana Ou-yang), and his friend Amon (Wong Cho-lam) to help in the case, and, intriguingly, when they run afoul of K-Max's Iron Hawk (Wu Yie), Cresent agent Phoenix (Michelle Hu Ran) secretly saves Louis's life.

Wong gives a hint of the best possible version of this movie in the opening, where Sampan survives an assassination attempt in Paris, and the backdrop is so obviously fake that the other ridiculous bits in it seem only natural, but the thing is, it's not all absurd - it makes a bathtub a fun part of a zippy action sequence that is both exciting and funny. Wong and action director Dion Lam Dik-on handle fight scenes well most of the time, even if Lau clearly doesn't seem to be able to match his younger co-stars. Wong's fondness for CGI-enhanced slapstick combines with a clear fondness for the more over-the-top James Bond adventures to give the audience sonic weapons, moments of genuine amazement when watching the Seed do its thing, and other amusingly goofy bits. It's a strong first twenty minutes or half hour.

Full review on EFC.

Saturday, October 08, 2016

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

Tim Burton has had "Visionary Director" placed in front of his name so often that you'd be forgiven for thinking it's a title or rank, like "Doctor" or "General", rather than a description of how he was once perceived. Still is, by some, but it's tough to be a visionary for long. Your vision gets realized, or the world moves on, and it's really tough to have a second vision.

And, I wonder, sometimes, if the world just expects guys like Burton to burn out, developing an ego that makes him impossible to work with, or having an unforgivable flop without having a next thing which may do well - and generally does, in Burton's case - already under way. It's curious and laudable that a guy as apparently eccentric as him never really had the disaster which made him a cautionary tale (but the sort we love, who made a few great movies and then something so spectacularly disastrous that it's interesting) or forced him to refocus and become something new as he aged. Instead, while he may not really have something that he really wants to say any more, he's got skills. He can make something look nice, especially in a certain sort of aesthetic, and for all that guys like me write that he's coasting, giving Johnny Depp new stupid haircuts because he knows that some in the audience will eat it up, it's tough to argue with what he puts on screen not being well-presented. He does what he's good at very well

As a guy who has worked the same job for twelve years, I appreciate that, even if I do wonder if he's one of the directors who need a strong producer looking over his shoulder, saying the script isn't ready or pointing out things he's too close to. I always thought Denise Di Novi was that person for him, but they actually only worked on a few movies together (although Edward Scissorhands and Ed Wood are generally considered his high point). Maybe someone like that could have helped him squeeze the potential out of Miss Peregrine, because with a legitimately great finale following a bunch of time where you can see potential being unfulfilled, it feels like he dove into the parts that interested him and got relatively lazy with the rest, even if there's no way for outsiders to know how it really went down.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children

* * (out of four)
Seen 4 October 2016 in AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP)

There was a joke about Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children being "Tim Burton's X-Men" when the trailers started to appear, and while it was mostly about the veteran director's signature style, it's worth asking why Twentieth Century Fox, which by dint of a contract that Marvel Comics undoubtedly regrets has the rights to make movies with the real thing more or less in perpetuity, would bother with this mostly-bland adaptation of a young-adult novel. Burton (with an assist from Samuel L. Jackson) is able to jazz it up at the climax, but it's kind of dull otherwise.

The first child we met isn't particularly peculiar; Jake Portman (Asa Butterfield) is a thoroughly ordinary teenager in present-day Tampa, ignored by girls and harassed by his classmates He's closer to his grandfather Abe (Terence Stamp) than his father, and comes running when the nonagenarian calls, in a fit of seeming dementia, saying that the monsters from the bedtime stories he used to tell Jake are attacking. Finding the man with his eyes gouged out suggests something horrible happened, and the quest to find out what leads Jake and father Franklin (Chris O'Dowd) to the village in Wales where Abe stayed as a Polish refugee before joining the British Army in World War II. Despite Abe still getting letters from headmistress Miss Peregrine, the orphanage was destroyed during the war. Well, sort of; Jake soon finds that Peregrine, (Eva Green) Abe's old friends Emma (Ella Purnell), Enoch (Finlay MacMillan), Olive (Lauren McCrostie), and several younger children are alive and well, having been in a time loop that repeated the day before the Manor was bombed ever since, and which also keeps them hidden from Barron (Jackson), an evil Peculiar whose immortality experiments have left him and his cohorts as monsters that only Jake can see.

It's a Tim Burton fantasy, so plenty of weirdness is to be expected, but it seems incredibly telling that all the weirdness is on the surface, with almost no indication that any sort of thought has been given to what is underneath the Burton-branded design. I'm curious how much more explicit the book is about Abe being a European Jew who fled and then fought the Nazis; a film pitched to an audience old enough to enjoy some gross-out moments wouldn't seem to need to pussyfoot around the way this one does despite having a villain who is literally rounding up members of a persecuted minority for extermination and experimentation. The filmmakers really don't seem to be into metaphor at all, with the Peculiars' super-powers often seeming to be assigned randomly, especially when folks have more than one, rather than being a way to amplify who they are as characters.

Full review on EFC.

Friday, October 07, 2016

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 October 2016 - 13 October 2016

Seems like kind of a weird release week, with massive overlap between the multiplexes and boutique places, while the places celebrating Halloween really get cracking with that.

  • After bursting onto the scene as one of the year's most eagerly awaited movies before the rape trialin writer/director/star Nate Parker's past was rediscovered, who knows how to react to The Birth of a Nation? You'll be able to see the film about Nat Parker and his slave rebellion all over the place, including The Coolidge Corner Theatre, the Capitol, Kendall Square, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    Also opening fairly wide is another film about true life battles: Denial stars Rachel Weisz as historian Deborah Lipstadt who, because of England's screwy libel laws, must prove the Holocaust happened after calling out a famed denier. With an impressive as heck cast including Timothy Spall and Tom Wilkinson, it's playing at the Coolidge, West Newton, the Kendall, and Boston Common.

    The Coolidge also continues their Halloween "Flick'r Treats" midnights, with Friday night's late show being the original version of The Amityville Horror on 16mm and Saturday's screening of The Exorcist introduced by two founders of the Talking Board Historical Society. Monday night's Big Screen Classic is The Machurian Candidate, and there's an Open Screen on Tuesday.
  • There's also a pretty gigantic opening for something that didn't really look like a blockbuster, as The Girl on the Train plays at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, the Studio in Belmont, West Newton, the Lexington Venue, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux. It stars Emily Blunt as a woman who, watching the houses she passes every day while commuting to work, believes she witnesses a crime, but is quite possibly not considered a reliable witness herself.

    Also playing the multiplexes is Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life, which looks to be a mash-up of several books in a series, meaning that the hero has things coming at him from all sides. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.

    It's also a week for oddball releases for genre/cult audiences. The latest DC Comics animated film, Batman: Return of the Caped Crusaders, is a throwback to the 1966 TV series, complete with Adam West, Burt Ward, and Julie Newmar doing voice work; it plays Boston Common, Fenway, and Revere on Monday the 10th only. Tuesday the 11th marks the return of the classic Toho Godzilla series after more than a decade with the start of an eight-day run of Shin Godzilla, although it won't necessarily play every day at all theaters playing it - which are Fenway (Tuesday-Thursday), Kendall Square (Tuesday), and Revere (Tuesday-Thursday).
  • Kendall Square also picks up American Honey, the first American movie by director Andrea Arnold, which follows a young woman played by Sasha Lane who runs away from home, falls in with a group of folks in similar situations selling thing door to door, and otherwise gets into trouble. It's also at Boston Common. The one-week booking is Girl Asleep, an import from Australia about a teenage girl who, when pushed out of her comfort zone, finds herself spending time in a bizarre fantasy world.
  • Boston Common's Chinese movie selection retains I Belong to You and one 3D matinee per day of L.O.R.D.: Legend of Ravaging Dynasties. The new selection is Mission Milano, featuring Andy Lau and Huang Xiaoming as veteran and rookie spies dispatched to Milan to prevent the theft of a super-charged fertilizer compound by a drug cartel. Looks zany.

    Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond keeps sports biography M.S. Dhoni: The Untold Story and thriller Pink around, with Mirzya the other new (likely subtitled) Bollywood film, a love story which plays out in both real and fantasy worlds. There's also the subtitled Tamil romantic comedy Remo, and scattered screenings of Telugu romance Premam, Telugu horror Abhinetri, Malayalam thriller Oppam, and Tamil actioner Rekka.
  • The Brattle Theatre has a new restoration of Blood Simple from Friday to Sunday. It's the first film by the Coen Brothers, already displaying their trademark style and introducing several of their collaborators.

    The rest of the week is special one-off screenings: The DocYard welcomes director Penny Lane to show her animated documentary Nuts! (and several short films), telling the odd tale of a man who built a business empire during the Depression on the backof goat testicles. Though closed Tuesday, they have director Jac Pettibone Riccobono visit on Wednesday to screen his film The Seventh Fire, a film with tremendous access to get an in-close look at gangs on the Ojibwe Indian reservation. Then, on Thursday, there are two shows of Ruin and Rose, a ski movie that, instead of just showing great winter sports action, integrates it into a story of a post-apocalyptic future.
  • The Harvard Film Archive was going to be all about visitors this weekend, although it didn't quite work out that way. Still, they do welcome Pam Grier to start, hosting Foxy Brown on Friday and Jackie Brown on Saturday, both on 35mm. Marlen Khutsiev, unfortunately, won't be able to visit as planned, but the Archive will still be kicking off a retrospective of his films, starting with 35mm screenings of Ilych's Gate on Sunday and July Rain on Monday. There's also a special Thursday program, Thomas Beard introducing 16mm rarities "You Only Lie Once: Production Takes from a Film in the Making" and "Correction Please, or How We Got into Pictures".
  • The Museum of Fine Arts has three films playing on and off - French drama My King (Friday/Sunday/Wednesday), documentary Vita Activa: The Spirit of Hannah Arendt (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday), and shorts program "A Shaded View of Fashion on Film" (Saturday)
  • The Somerville Theatre not only picks up The Dressmaker, but they continue with interesting repatory shows, including a program of Looney Tunes on Friday and a double feature of The Muppets Take Manhattan & The Dream Team on Saturday. Those are in 35mm, which is not the case with Chatty Catties, an unusual indie which posits a world where cats and humans can communicate,making the unusual choice of casting hearing-impaired actors as the voice sof the cats.

    They also kick off the Halloween Terror Thon on Thursday; rather than a long sit, it's a four-day mini-festival, with opening night featuring were-amphibian flick Bad Blood: The Movie, the fairly entertaining The Master Cleanse, and Found Footage 3D. Their sister cinema in Arlington, The Capitol, continues "Before Vampires Sucked" on Thursday with The Lost Boys.
  • The free Bright Lights screenings at Emerson's Paramount Theatre are documentaries of folks famous and infamous. Editor (and alumnus) JD Marlow will be around to discuss Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You on Tuesday night, while Emerson faculty will lead a discussion after Wiener on Thursday
  • The Regent Theatre will show The Seeds: Pushin' Too Hard on Saturday, with director Neil Norman discussing his documentary of the long-forgotten proto-punk band afterward, with the evening kicked off by a selection of songs by tribute band "The Seedlings".


Not sure what I'll be able to see and when; I may have baseball tickets interrupting things. I am going to try and hit Mission Milano, the Terror-Thon, Shin Godzilla, and both some of the newer ones and things I've missed.

Thursday, October 06, 2016

Soul Mate

I was going to skip this one, to be quite honest; I've seen enough Asian imports that look back a decade or two to show how some attractive people got to where they are today - often left kind of nebulous - that I figured there wouldn't be much point to seeing one more. Funny thing, though - the distributor, Cheng Cheng, kept retweeting good reviews, and while that's what distributors are supposed to do on social media, it was a bit more than I was used to seeing for this sort of movie, and a couple of the folks I followed were enthusiastic about it as well. So, though I was going to use Tuesday night to catch up on two 3D movies on discount day, I gave this one a shot, even though I barely got there from work on time.

And, yeah, I loved it in the way you really only love something that turns out to be more clever than you expected, almost like there's a rush of blood to the head because an unexpected part of the brain has been stimulated. Soul Mate may not actually be a terrific movie, but it's a very good one, and in a way that is not often expected out of this sort of very mainstream film.

It's good enough, in fact, that I'm kind of bummed that "should I go see it?" reviews are kind of the default, because I strongly suspect that when two people have seen the movie talk about it, they don't speak in vague generalities, because it's what the film does specifically that makes it great. But, on the other hand, very few people reading English-language reviews will have seen it. I'm really hoping that this actually gets a reasonably visible DVD/BD release in America, or at least some prominent streaming, because if I were still in Chlotrudis, it would probably be my Buried Treasure nomination.

It is still playing in Boston for one more day, although it gives up its prime-time screening for previews on Thursday night. If you can, get to it, and then maybe chat in the comments a bit.

Qi Yue Yu An Sheng (Soul Mate)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 4 October 2016 in AMC Boston Common #9 (first-run, DCP)

Describe the plot of Soulmate and it sounds like every third Chinese movie that has made its way across the Pacific over the last few years, a nostalgia-laden series of coming-of-age flashbacks that take an ironic route to a parallel narrative of the same characters as adults. This particular take on it doesn't exactly reinvent the concept, in that there aren't many pieces to it that haven't been used in similar films already, but it fits those pieces together exceptionally well, to the point where something that one might expect to be rote manages constant surprises.

It starts in the late 1990s, when 13-year-olds "July" Lin Qiuye and Li Ansen become fast, inseparable friends, with Ansen a frequent guest of July's welcoming family. They remain best friends as teenagers, although July (Sandra Ma Si-chun) is accepted into the area's top high school while the more rebellious Ansen (Zhou Dongyu) goes to a vocational institute. July soon falls for a boy, Su Jia-ming (Toby Lee Ching-ban); Ansen's immediate reaction is to see this person potentially coming between them as a threat, but when she goes to warn him not to hurt July, there's a palpable chemistry between the two - something that will make good fodder for the serial novel based on the girls' lives being released online in the present day.

That novel will run about seven or eight chapters, and the first big surprise is that the expected blow-up happens at the end of chapter two, during a farewell made on a train platform as Ansen goes to join her musician boyfriend in Beijing. It's a bit that everyone who has ever gone to a movie has seen, to the point where Ansen warns July not to run after the train, a comment that serves as something of a gauntlet that the writers throw down to director Derek Tsang Kwok-Cheung and the cast. They earn the shots of July running after the train, though, and the scene climaxes on shots of the pair that emphasize the best and worst of each of them, how their friendship may be ripe for abuse, and may make the ways they hurt each other that much worse, but also suggests something that it may not be possible to sever.

Full review on EFC.