Jay's Movie Blog

Today's my last day in Montreal - I leave on the 8am bus tomorrow - and it has been a blast. My only regret is that between trying to get two or three reviews up a day and doing some work for the day job, I wound up not getting to go out and about nearly as much as I would have liked. I'm not sure what the "right" way to do a festival is - I kind of feel obligated to see as many movies as I can and spread the word on them if they're going to give me a media pass, but I have spent way too much time in this apartment typing on a computer.

Ah, well. I've got the place rented through next month, so I'll probably take an unclaimed weekend and just see the city with no obligations at some point.

Today's plan: The Moss, Going by the Book, Dance of the Dead, and probably Tokyo Gore Police, though I might decide I want to end the fest on Dance of the Dead and make sure I get enough sleep to wake up early tomorrow. If you're in town, Alone and La Tueur are good today and The Midnight Meat Train is good tomorrow.

1968 Tunnel Rats

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

So, has this whole "Uwe Boll is quite possibly the worst filmmaker ever!" been an elaborate hoax? I haven't seen any of his videogame-derived movies, which are apparenty unbearably awful, but Tunnel Rats is a pretty solid piece of work. It has a little trouble getting started - the scenes in the camp where we try to get to know a dozen or so characters in very little time wiht not-always-fitting music aren't great - but once it gets down into the tunnels, it's a pretty tense bit of work.

Of course, it seems to still be a bit of a work in progress, as there was just a black placeholder screen for the end credits, so perhaps there's time for him to screw it up yet.

Chaiya (Muay Thai Chaiya)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

I'm not generally a fan of boxing films; even so-called classics of the genre leave me cold. Because, let's face it - boxing is about violence and fighting as an end unto itself, and while it's one thing to engage in it for physical fitness or self defense, it's hardly surprising when boxers wind up entangled in crime and thuggery. At that point, it's a question of how compelling the filmmakers make the details and how much style they bring to the story. While Chaiya doesn't stand out too much on the first front, it is exceptional on the second.

We start with three friends in rural Thailand, training under the tutelage of a master at his camp. Samor (Sonthaya Chitmanee), our narrator, suffers from an early leg injury, and misses his chance to perform in the ring himself, and so winds up supporting the other two. Pao (Thawatchai Phanpakdee), is the son of coach Thew (Samart Payakarun) and brother of a champion, and is considered to have the most potential, although he is somewhat timid, being in their shadow. Piak (Akara Amarttayakul), is more aggressive, both as a fighter and in life, as he woos pretty nurse Sriprai (Phreeta Kongpetch) before Pao can make his move. After a time, the four make their way to Bangkok so that Pao and Piak can try to break in as professional boxers. Though Piak has more early success, a false accusation soon has him reduced to underground cage matches - and soon doing "favors" for the man who runs them.

The movie takes place over the course of years during the late 1970s and early 1980s, and as a result feels a bit like a mauy thai version of Boogie Nights. The cinematography takes on a retro feel as well, with lots of grain and the occasional split screen during montage sequences to have Pao's and Piak's paths run literally in parallel. Director Kongkiat Khomsiri and his editors do a very nice job with those sequences, which are both filled with muay thai action and pretty good storytelling. Having this sort of narrative sweep does mean that he has to fit a lot of information into the film's two hours, and that's often accomplished by literally stopping the film and giving the audience names and vital statistics on new figures entering the friends' world.

Full review at EFC.

Geunom Moksori (Voice of a Murderer)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

That title threatens to give the game away, but then again, the outcome won't exactly be in doubt for the film's target audience - the 1991 kidnapping of Lee Hyong-ho is one of Korea's most famous true-crime stories. That's worth remembering when one sits down to watch this movie: For us, this looks like a thriller, but it is perhaps best appreciated as a character study of two parents trapped in their worst nightmare. There's a great scene that sums up the entire movie, as the parents rush to a cable car that slowly makes its way to the top of a tower, watching the kidnapper take their car and ransom while they helplessly wait to reach the top and hope they will find their son there.

Seen that way, it's a pretty strong movie; Sol Kyung-gu's breakdown in the final scene is a thing of terrible beauty.

Faet (Alone)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

When I saw the original Thai version of Shutter at Fantasia a few years back, I told friends that the only way it seemed Thai horror could get less subtle would be to have the ushers actually throwing cats at the audience. That turns out to be an unfair stereotype, but the makers of that movie are back and looking to get the audience to jump again. They manage it, too, throwing in a story that's actually fairly clever besides.

When we first meet elegant Pim (Masha Wattanapanich) and scruffy Wee (Vittaya Wasukraipaisan), they are living in Soeul, South Korea, and seem happy enough - they have friends, a dog, and live comfortably. Bad news comes from their native Thailand when they find out that Pim's mother (Ratchanoo Bunchootwong) has just had a stroke. They fly back to be at her side, but returning home dredges up a lot of bad memories for Pim. She was born a conjoined twin, and her sister Ploy did not survive the separation that she insisted upon. Now, Ploy appears to be appearing in every mirror and any other place she can. Wee and his psychiatrist friend Donai try to convince Pim that it's all in her head... but is it?

Banjong Pisanthanakun and Parkpoom Wongpoom made a pretty decent horror movie in Shutter, and though the story here is different, they spend much of the movie keeping to the same template: Introduce the situation, punctuate the film with lots of flashes of a dead girl accompanied by loud crashes in the score, and flesh out the characters' backstory in flashback, including how the twins' first meetings with Wee when they were hospitalized teenagers (Wee for complications from diabetes) set in motion both Pim's desire to separate and Ploy's increasingly hostile nature. (The latter is nice; a haunting makes more sense if the ghost was ornery even before death) The first half of Alone is an unapologetic jump movie, but Pisanthanakun and Wongpoom are really, really good at making the audience jump.

Full review at EFC.

Pig Hunt

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 20 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Bloody Radical: Unconventional American Horror)

Perhaps the funniest moment during last night's screening of Pig Hunt was the director and executive producer trying to push it as an allegory for America today and the war in Iraq. Sure, they make good connections, and I don't doubt that was in their mind. Of course, with their next breath they try to claim they were being subtle about their politics, but I don't know if a hunting cabin full of newspaper clippings with "LIES!" scribbled on them qualifies as subtle.

In the end, it's a decent monster movie featuring a giant pig and all the bloody violence they could cram into it. Not bad at all, and it will do you all right if you're looking for some monster-fighting hillbilly action.

Labels: action, Canada, crime, drama, Fantasia, horror, Korea, martial-arts, Thailand, thriller, true-crime, USA, war

(1) comments

Sometimes, having a media pass works against you - if I had bought a ticket, I would have gotten into Repo! The Genetic Opera, but it was so sold out and popular with the media/VIPs that about half of us were left out. Not that I think it's unfair - I got the email about the press screening, which I passed on of my own free will in order to see An Empress and the Warriors and May 18, and it would be downright churlish to act like I haven't made out like a bandit seeing dozens of movies over the past few weeks and often being first in line to get seats. Besides, it gave me time to have a late dinner, and that was a pretty good steak and baked potato.

Also, it helps to speak French. I sat through the La Bête du Lac Q&A hoping in vain for someone to either ask a question in English of for my 15-years-dormant high school french to suddenly kick in, but to no avail.

Today's plan is to camp at the Hall theater, where the movies are somewhat spread out: Island of Lost Souls, Seven Days, 4bia, Sasori, and Midnight Meat Train (with Ryuhei Kitamura present). If you're here, I can recommend The Rebel highly, Le Grand Chef with reservations, and wish I could make Triangle work for me.

Kod (Handle Me With Care)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

When you're born with a third arm, losing your tailor is far more traumatic than losing your girlfriend.

At least, that's the impression one gets from Kwan Traithep (Kiatkamol Latha) at the start of Handle Me With Care. His high-school girlfriend Lin is getting married, and his current girl Ann has just broken up with him, but it's the sudden death of "Uncle" Tawee, the tailor who makes his special three-sleeved shirts, that apparently pushes him to take a Bangkok clinic up on their offer to amputate his extra left arm. Getting there from rural Lampang will be something of an adventure - his car is busted, so he winds up hitching a ride with his friend Lorlee, who is delivering a bus there. On the way, they meet up with Na (Supaksorn Chaimongkol), also on her way to Bangkok to find the husband who she hasn't seen for a year.

Take away the whole third arm thing, and what's left is still quite the entertaining road movie. Writer/director Kongdej Jaturanrasamee plagues Kwan, Na, and Lorlee with a series of disasters that are more challenging than dangerous, and shuffles Lorlee off the stage once he starts just being an interruption to the scenes with Kwan and Na (and it becomes clear that the bus would make things too easy). They meet up with some interesting people, but the emphasis never shifts too much from them getting to know each other.

They're a nice pair to meet for the audience as well. Both of them tend to draw looks for their appearance (many comments are made about the size of Na's breasts, although she seems more generally curvy than notably busty), leaving them more alienated as they feel nobody pays attention to them as whole people. Latha plays Kwan as having a chip on his shoulder for much of the movie, although he's charmingly awkward at other times. Chaimongkol tends to present Na as more extroverted and likely to joke around, but shifts gears to lonely and sad well enough to make it abundantly clear that being seen as sexy isn't necessarily all it's cracked up to be. The simple and heartfelt way she pays off a sort of annoying series of comments about having a great ringtone is kind of wonderful.

Full review at EFC.

Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I missed this one at IFFB, so I was glad to catch up with it here. It doesn't quite clock in at feature length at a mere 62 minutes, but does fill that time with an intriguing portrayal of two men trying to do something extraordinary amid their ordinary lives. Director Jay Delaney walks a nice tightrope here, looking at their claims in a way that's not quite skeptical but lets the evidence (or lack thereof) speak for itself, without being too harsh on his subjects.

La Bête du Lac

* * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival, Documentaries from the Edge)

I couldn't find myself nearly as intrigued by Nicolas Renaud's half of the Cryptozoology double bill, though. It drew plenty of local interest by taking part in a Quebec community near the Maine border, but despite being even shorter than Not Your Typical Bigfoot Movie, sometimes felt very stretched out. There are some nice bits of underwater photography, and a couple of interesting storytellers, but when you get right down to it, it's kind of repetitive: People say they've seen the lake's monster fish, but can't offer any evidence other than "if you've seen it, you know", even though, as one resident says, when one person says they've seen a monster, everybody starts looking for them.

Le Tueur (The Killer)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Le Tueur is the very image of what the phrase "French film" often brings to mind. It's alternatively talkative and quiet, casually sexual, and deals with matters of life and death with what seems like emotionless detachment. What makes it notable is that it manages to scratch beneath that surface without seeming arch or self-satisfied about it.

We start out with Leo Zimmerman (Gilbert Melki), a reasonably successful financier, doing some shopping with his beautiful daughter Alana. He seems nervous, as if he can sense the man following and filming him. That footage winds up in the hands of Dimitri Kopas (Gregoire Colin), an assassin who has been hired to kill Leo. When Kopas visits Leo in his office, he knows his number is up, so he confronts him and asks a favor - let him live until Saturday, so he can pull off one last big deal and make sure Alana is taken care of. He knows his wife Sylvia (Sophie Cattani) is having an affair with his partner Xavier Franzen (Xavier Beauvois), and the idea of Franzen raising his daughter makes him blind with rage. Kopas agrees - why not? - using the free time to strike something up with Stella (Melanie Laurent), a model he meets in the hotel lobby.

There have been hundreds of cinematic hitmen, so often played as cool to the point where it's become almost impossible to avoid self-parody. Gregoire Colin doesn't quite sidestep that, but he handles it. He's got the cool exterior (and interior, for that matter), but there's something awkward about his isolation from regular people. He trips over his own tongue when hitting on Sylvia, and seems to become keenly aware that he doesn't have much of an existence outside of his job. He is so conditioned to leave no trace of his presence that he sometimes seems likely to disappear entirely.

Full review at EFC.

Special Magnum (Strange Shadows in an Empty Room)

N/A (out of four)
Seen 18 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

Damn, I wish I hadn't nodded off during this one. Not just because it's apparently not available on DVD, and was only issued cut on VHS, but just because it is a really crazy action movie. The big car chase in the middle of the movie really needs to be seen to be believed (especially since it was apparently filmed without permits of any kind), and even on the 16mm print the Montreal locations looked gorgeous. I really hope this comes out on DVD or Blu-ray soon; I want to catch up.

Labels: action, Canada, comedy, crime, documentary, drama, Fantasia, fantasy, France, Italy, road, Thailand, USA

(1) comments

Spent the day working on SQL scripts for work, so I can afford to see movies. I'm very tempted just to say I'm using the extra vacation days, though - not only have the expected T-storms not appeared, but trying to work for any period of time here is an absolute back-killer.

Anyway, off to the movies. Today's plan is An Empress and the Warriors, May 18, The Rebel, and From Within. If you're in town, I really dug Akanbo Shojo.

Uri Dongne (Our Town)

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

The trailer and description for Our Town had me expecting something a little different - a little more cat and mouse, a little less "it's all connected". It's unfair to be disappointed by that (judge the movie one what it is, rather than what you expect it to be), but the idea of two serial killers becoming aware of each other and looking to take each other out is so good that I hope someone else picks up on it.

This mid-sized Korean town does have a serial killer - four dead girls in as many months, strung up and displayed in public places. Jae-shin (Lee Sun-kyun) is investigating, but the killer is much too careful and meticulous. Meanwhile, Jae-shin's longtime friend Gyeong-joo (Oh Man-suk) is writing a novel about a serial killer, which his editor dismisses as unrealistic despite it being based on true events. As a result, he's having a hard time paying the rent, which leads to a situation where he kills his landlady in a fit of rage. He hits on the idea of staging a scene to look like another killing in the series, putting the cops on the wrong track. Of course, there's an obvious flaw in his plan - when Hyoi (Ryou Duck-hwan) at the general store sees the news about a fifth body, he's more than a little curious about what's going on.

So, it's not exactly dueling serial killers, but there's still an interesting thriller to be had here. The potential trouble comes from writer Mo Hong-jin taking that situation and weighing it down with prior events. It makes a certain level of sense to have it be the chief investigator's best friend be the copycat killer; he's the one with reason to believe that he might get away with it. Then, okay, maybe Gyeong-joo walks into Hyoi's store while the news breaks. Soon, though, there comes a point where the mounting connections between the three leads becomes too much. Each of them is interesting in and of themselves, but at a certain point the cumulative effect becomes just too much.

Full review at EFC.

The End

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre J.A. de Seve (Fantasia Festival)

It is a bit worrisome when, prior to a festival screening, the director is offering what can seem like excuses or explanations - they had less money than the short film that precedes it, but it is long for a zero-budget indie, there's a big plot twist in the middle, etc., etc. If you believe in your movie, let it stand, I figure. I'm pretty sure I still would have enjoyed The End without my expectations being managed.

I admit, it may have helped a little. The opening is kind of clunky; we seem to hear about what high school teacher Joseph Rickman (Jeremy Thomas) did sixteen years ago in every other line of dialog before finally getting into details. Back then, as a teenager, he found a missing girl on sheer intuition, and he's starting to get weird hunches again, seeing a strange robed, limping man in a tragedy mask who may be responsible for a rash of recent kidnappings. Joseph's long-time friend, Det. Clara Wilkie (Ella May) worries about him, but is willing to take whatever help she can get with the case - even after Joseph recognizes and shares the unorthodox source of his intuition.

To let that cat out of the bag would be a shame, and I'm not going to do it, but it is one of the rare mid-thriller twists that makes the movie funnier rather than more grim. It's clever and relatively unexpected based upon what had come before, but does make the things that might have seemed irritating earlier on go down easier in retrospect. That doesn't mean the film completely transforms into a comedy; the characters still take the mystery story seriously, and what is funny to the audience is in fact disturbing to the people within the film.

Full review at EFC.

Stuck

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Stuck is based on a true story that made headlines a few years back, although much-beloved cult filmmaker Stuart Gordon has changed almost all the details to make a feature-length film out of it. That's fine, though; the real story was likely not nearly as much fun.

We're introduced to Brandi (Mena Suvari) and Tom (Stephen Rea). Tom is unemployed and his landlord intends to change the locks on his apartment as soon as he's out the door for a job interview, rendering him homeless; Brandi has just been informed she's up for a supervisor's position, but that might just be a ploy to get her to work a second Saturday in a row. While Brandi is unwinding at a club with friend Tanya (Rukiya Bernard) and (drug-dealing) boyfriend Rashid (Russell Hornsby), Tom is learning the ins and outs of homelessness. As Tom is making his way to a shelter, he's hit by Brandi's car. Rather than call the police, she drives back home - with Tom still lodged in her windshield.

To this point, the movie has followed the actual events reasonably closely, although with many of the details changed. Things start to diverge at this point, but the core of what Gordon found appealing in this story is crystal-clear throughout - and despite Gordon's history of gory horror flicks, it's not Tom's broken and bloodied body. Gordon and screenwriter John Strysik see a parable about the inability of people to look outside their own immediate interests - not just Brandi, but nearly every other person in the film. Just about the only exception to this is a homeless man who shares a drink with Tom and sets the new guy up with a shopping cart of his own. Tom is on the receiving end of the callousness most of the time, but even he will look at a waiting room full of people who likely also had appointments at specific times and ask why he can't have his interview right away.

Full review at EFC.

Red

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Ah, I should have written this one up instead of Stuck; there seems to be much more going on to talk about.

I liked it, in large part because it's got a cast absolutely packed with people I enjoy, and I like dogs. It's also the sort of story that could have easily become a violent revenge thriller (and it arguably does), but there's a lack of sadism too it - Brian Cox's character is determined to go about things the right way, and the filmmakers don't choose to use that as justification for throwing up a ton of hollow violence.

I'm kind of curious about the two directors working on it - I remember Lucky McKee talking about this project either at Fantasia or BUFF a couple years ago, and I'm left wondering how it wound up in Trygve Allister Diesen's hands - did McKee abandon it, run out of money, cause trouble, or what? There are scenes toward the end where it seems Diesen could only get a couple of the cast on set at a time, necessitating weird silhouette shots.

Oh, and I'm kind of amused by the small-town newspaper being the Portland Press-Herald, the actual name of the paper in Portland, ME. I don't think it was supposed to be set in Maine, but what are the odds of that sort of coincidence?

Labels: Canada, comedy, drama, Fantasia, fantasy, Korea, thriller, USA

(0) comments

I bumped into Kurt Halfyard from Twitch today, and I was impressed that he recognized me from last year because, despite his protestations that he's bad with names and faces, I'm worse. No way I would have picked him out if I'd been sitting behind him rather than vice versa. Our paths crossed for the afternoon shows at the Hall theater; we were both pretty darn pleased to see a new-ish film by Alex de la Iglesia and agreed that this guy doesn't get nearly the exposure he should. His films are a thorough joy to watch, but his earlier work especially seems to be pretty much unavailable in Region 1, while his completed English-language thriller doesn't even seem to be on a North American release schedule at all (and with the collapse of Tartan, Ferpect Crime seems to be on its way into limbo as well).

The double feature from the Spanish TV-movie series Films to Keep You Awake was the highlight of the day film-wise for me (I'd certainly buy a ticket for de la Iglesia's entry, at least), although being three rows from the front while Gordon Liu took questions and did a little impromptu martial arts demonstration was also a bunch of fun.

Today's plan: The Substitute, Punch Lady, either Negative Happy Chain Saw Edge or The Pye-Dog (the first starts about a minute before my previous film gets out, so I'll have to sprint once the credits start and see if it's still letting in), Let the Right One In, and then either Who's That Knocking at My Door? or What We Do Is Secret, depending on my mood.

If you're in town, I can recommend Genius Party and [REC].

Batman: Gotham Knight

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

The idea behind Gotham Knight certainly seems sound enough - have a nice lineup of Japanese animators and American writers (who have worked on well-liked runs of the comics and the much-loved animated TV series) team up for tales that link the two entries in the most recent cinematic series. They've even got Kevin Conroy of the animated series back doing his voice. With that line-up, this seems like it should be a slam-dunk.

And yet, though there is much to admire about Gotham Knight, it doesn't quite add up to what it should. Sure, the structure is nice, with episodes that combine to form a single narrative, and I think this is a nifty way to get Batman characters into the movie series that couldn't be used well in a feature (Killer Croc, Deadshot, Crispus Allen). For all the style, though, Gotham Knight still sometimes looks and sounds cheap, and the jumping between animation styles, effective within "Have I Got a Story For You", is disconcerting over the course of the movie: Alfred looks completely different in the two segments he appears in, and Bruce Wayne goes from very well-built to pretty-boy slender. That might have worked in a strict anthology, but the episodes are supposed to be connected here.

I'll probably write more about this one when I get home and the BD is waiting for me. This is a movie created for home video, and probably is best judged seen that way.

Rate it at eFilmCritic.

Películas para no dormir: La habitación del niño (Films to Keep You Awake: The Baby's Room)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Alex de la Iglesia is a reasonable omission from the Masters of Horror series; it skewed North American and this Spanish director has spread his work across multiple genres. Fortunately, a similar series in Spain did include him, and Films to Keep You Awake produced things closer to feature-length with (I'm told) better production values. de la Iglesia's entry, at least, is a winner.

After a prelude with kids playing hide and seek, we meet Juan (Javier Gutierrez) and Sonia (Leonor Watling), a young couple with a seven month-old baby and a much older house that they've just moved into. Juan's busybody sister Teresa (Eulalia Ramon) and her smug husband Marcos (Ramon Barea) stop by, incidentally dropping off some hand-me-downs. Most are useless, but they set up the baby monitor, only to hear strange sounds coming from it. They install a security system and upgrade to a new monitor that includes a camera, but that just shows Juan somebody in the baby's room. Sonia doesn't see it, and an increasingly paranoid Juan is referred to paranormal expert Domingo (Sancho Garcia) by his boss (Antonio Dechent).

While de la Iglesia has dabbled in many genres, he and writing partner Jorge Guerricaechevarria have always been most at home with black comedy, and some of the best moments in The Baby's Room are also among the funniest. Early on, they defuse any thoughts about what a cliché-ridden situation the young couple perhaps having their first marital problems might be, and nearly everybody has a great line or three. The scene where Juan first sees something on the baby monitor and goes to investigate is a small masterpiece of comic timing, one of those sequences where everyone in the audience laughs twice - once when they realize where the scene is going (and it doesn't hit them all at the same time), and once when it finally gets there.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Películas para no dormir: Para entrar a vivir (Films to Keep You Awake: To Let)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

To Let was shown at the Fantasia Festival as part of a double bill with another movie from the "Films to Keep You Awake" series, Alex de la Iglesia's The Baby's Room, and it shares a number of characteristics - a young couple starting a family, and a creepy new home. It puts a decidedly different spin on the material, though, playing up the bloody action as opposed to the black comedy.

This film's young couple are Mario (Adira Collado) and Clara (Marcarena Gomez). They're in a bit of a bind, since they've sold their old place before finding a new one, so even though Clara's not feeling well - morning sickness combined with the end of a 36-hour shift as a nurse - she agrees to see the apartment Mario has made an appointment to see, although she gets to play bad cop. They almost just turn right around upon finally finding it - it's in an ugly old building in a crummy-looking area with weird-looking mannequins strewn all over the place, but the realtor (Nuria Gonzalez) insists that the area is being redeveloped, with a school and a green zone and shops, and it's fully furnished and all the renovation is on them. Carla still doesn't like it, especially the way the woman is talking like they've already taken the place, but takes a moment to lie down when she's feeling dizzy. That's when Mario finds the pair of old sneakers he threw away last week, and she sees a photo of them already placed on the bedside table... Just where did Mario find the listing for this place, anyway?

Co-writer/director Jaume Balaguero was one of the directors of [REC], and like that sensation, To Let doesn't let up once the chaos begins in earnest. This is a pretty straightforward escape movie, with protagonists in a weakened state trying to outrun and outwit an adversary that knows the solidly-built territory much better than they do and has a few nasty tricks up its sleeve. Balaguero and his co-writer Alberto Marini do a nice job setting everything up, playing on what a weird and uncomfortable process looking for a new place to live is and finding a nifty way to sidestep the "how does this last more than five minutes if the heroine has a cell phone" question.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Pi li shi jie (Disciples of the 36th Chamber)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Don't get me wrong, I enjoy Shaw Brothers action films a lot, but they were definitely a factory. Take Disciples of the 36th Chamber, part of a series of Shaolin martial arts stories. I happened to see the first in the series, The 36th Chamber of Shaolin, as part of a Shaw Brothers retrospective at the Harvard Film Archive about a month ago. It was a ton of fun, but you can't help but notice this second sequel follows the same template - rebellious kid who looks way too old to still be in school gets into trouble, is sent to the Shaolin temple to learn discipline, excels in his classes, but rebels in order to fight the oppressive Manchus. This time around, Gordon Liu's San-te is the monk instructing the rebellious student, Hsiao Ho's Fong Sai-yuk.

So you get a lot of training exercises, and more comedy as Sai-yuk is kind of an obnoxious brat. The spiritual and political aspects of Shaolin kung fu are less prominent here, and the action, while well-choreographed, lacks a certain amount of tension because so much of it is just training exercises. Stylistically, Shaw Brothers movies are so similar that it's surprising this one comes from 1985; it could be from any time in the twenty years before. That's why it's almost surprising how good the big battle at the end is, as director Lau Kar Leung (aka Liu Chia-lang) throws everything but the kitchen sink into a wedding trap. One of the things the Shaw Brothers did better than anyone else is battles with scale; there are moments in the end where long shots of the big battle fill the screen, and there are dozens of people fighting.

The restoration work is very good, and having Gordon Liu on-hand to introduce the movie and take questions afterward was a major treat. Disciples probably won't wind up on my list of favorite martial arts movies, but if the Shaw Brothers studio was a factory, they did at least tend to crank out quality work.

Le Grand Chef

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival, From Manga to Screen)

At a festival like Fantasia, it's important to seek out movies like Le Grand Chef even if they don't turn out to be among the best in the festival - a steady diet of zombies, serial killers, ghosts and the like can leave a person feeling incredibly burned out by the time it's over. A mostly light-hearted movie about rival cooks can be just what one needs to cleanse the palate, if you'll excuse the metaphor.

Five years ago, Sung-chan (Kim Kang-woo) was poised to ascend to the top of the cooking world, but a terrible and nearly fatal blowfish incident led to Oh Bong-joo (Lim Won-hie) being selected as the head chef at Korea's most prestigious restaurant and culinary school instead. Now, Sung-chan is happily working as a farmer and greengrocer, looking after his increasingly senile grandfather, when an old friend shows up. The knife of the last Master Chef to Korea's last king has been found in Japan, and a nationwide contest has been announced to find which chef deserves to be its new owner. The man wants Sung-chan to enter, but he has no interest in doing so, even if he has left pretty VJ Kim Jin-su (Lee Ha-na) around to pester him until he does. He's resolute about not wanting to be in that sort of high-pressure environment again - at least, until Bong-joo shows up to offer him the position as the head of his kitchen if he stays out.

There's a lot to like about Le Grand Chef. Fans of the food movie will enjoy watching Sung-chan and Jin-su prepare a variety of Korean dishes far more appetizing than what they may remember from Oldboy. Director Jeon Yun-su keeps everything moving at a brisk pace, and he and screenwriter Shin Dong-ik embrace the episodic nature of the original comics (occasionally even using the sort of split screens Ang Lee used for Hulk) without making the resulting film seem choppy or overstuffed. There's a fun cast of characters, and even the ones that could have been one-note villains or clowns are something more interesting.

Full review at eFilmCritic.

Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 July 2008 at Concordia Theatre Hall (Fantasia Festival)

Jack Brooks, Monster Slayer has been getting a lot of love from genre fans, in part because it shows them a lot of love: It casts Robert Englund, it's fairly funny in the self-deprecating way that this group of fans accpets, and the cast and crew make a big point of how they did almost all the effects work with practical effects rather than CGI. It's the kind of movie that makes me idly wonder what the reception would be like if, prior to festival screenings like this, they told the audience that they were just making this sort of horror movie because it's cheap and has a built-in audience, and that they'd used computers to make something that looked just like puppets or men in suits. Just as an experiment.

It's fun, don't get me wrong, but I had the same sort of reaction to it I had to Behind the Mask a couple years ago: It's fun, and actually pretty well-made, but I didn't grow up on that sort of movie, and thus find myself loving it less than those who did.

Labels: action, animation, Canada, comedy, Fantasia, Hong Kong, horror, Korea, Spain, superhero, thriller, USA

(0) comments

Guy Maddin is not a weirdo.

If you've seen his movies, that might be a bit of a surprise, but it's true. I expected him to be something like David Lynch, or what I imagine David Lynch must be like. But, no, he's an affable, funny, self-deprecating guy who took a bunch of questions after My Winnipeg, with a ready smile and joke. The Chlotrudis folks were excited to meet him, and he seemed sincere about wanting to come back to Boston more often. I suspect he'll be next year's Chlotrudis Awards honoree.

My Winnipeg

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 28 April 2008 at Coolidge Corner Theatre #1 (Independent Film Festival of Boston)

Guy Maddin has long had a love-hate relationship with his home town of Winnipeg; most of his previous films have been set there and portrayed it as a place nearly as dreary as it is bizarre. My Winnipeg isn't very different from his purely fictional films in that respect. The affection comes across more clearly here than in those films, even as it is delivered with a kick.

Maddin describes My Winnipeg as "docu-fantasia", which is as good a term as any. He inserts himself into the film with a couple of peculiar devices - in one, he is on a train out of town hoping to escape before the hypnotic snow causes him to sleepwalk back home; in another, he is renting his childhood home and hiring actors to play his siblings so that he and his mother can re-enact crucial moments from his childhood in a scientific experiment to determine the cause of his neuroses (Darcy Fehr plays Maddin, noir actress Ann Savage plays his mother). He posits that not only do rail lines and rivers converge in in Winnipeg - "the forks", he repeats, like a dozy mantra - but so do the ley lines along which mystic energy flows. This is Maddin's world, after all, and therefore peculiar.

It's so peculiar that the audience has to wonder how far the tall tales Maddin tells have evolved from reality. Does Winnipeg really have an uncommonly high population of sleepwalkers, and if so, do the city laws requiring their accommodation actually exist? Was a team of horses flash-frozen in the river after a fire, their protruding heads forming a grotesque yet arousing backdrop for the locals' evening promenades? Did "What If?" Day, with its simulated Nazi invasion, actually panic the city? One could look such things up, but does it really matter? These legends may say more about the city and Maddin's relation with it than mere facts might, and the stories themselves are uniformly hilarious. There's a great collection of anecdotes here, and they absolutely make Winnipeg a memorable city.

Other sections of the movie focus on how the city has changed over the years, and there's something kind of universal about those segments. He talks about how the diminishing importance of river and rail transport have reduced Winnipeg's importance as a shipping hub. There's a section on the city's uniquely constructed public swimming pool. Local department stores close and are replaced with chains. But for all that, the real passion comes out when it comes time to discuss how the city's hockey fans have been treated. We hear how the Winnipeg Arena was a major part of Maddin's youth, and there's a certain satisfaction when the 2006 implosion only destroys the additions to the original structure. There's no such love for the MTS Centre that replaced it, which isn't even large enough to host an NHL team should the Jets be replaced.

Anger fairly drips from Maddin's voice when he talks about the Jets leaving the city, a change from the whimsical or resigned tones he uses through much of the rest of the feature. It's a bit odd to hear Maddin's voice so directly; for as much as many of his films contain autobiographical material, he would distance himself by having an actor portray him, placing the stories in a fantastic context, and a visual style that suggests the first third of the twentieth century. That's all still there; My Winnipeg's black and white photography mostly looks like a long-lost movie, frequently grainy but sometimes sharp. The action itself is often silent, with just Jason Staczek's music and Madidn's narration, with the exception being the recreated scenes from Maddin's youth, where we get to enjoy femme fatale Ann Savage's first major role in fifty years.

To a certain extent, this verbiage is kind of unnecessary; this film is mainly going to appeal to those with an interest in Winnipeg and Guy Maddin's fans. If you're in the first group, remember that the title does promise that it's Maddin's Winnipeg and expect strangeness (although this may be Maddin's most mainstream film). For those in the second, well, enjoy. This is Maddin at his funniest and most playful.

Also on EFC.

Labels: Canada, comedy, documentary, IFFB, independent, Independent Film Festival of Boston, indiefilmcafe, silent

(0) comments

One of the characters in this movie is named "Theo Huxtable". Let me just point out, as I must, that someone having the same name as an 80s sitcom character is not funny.

Who Is KK Downey?

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

I wonder how many times a secret identity has ever worked in actual practice. Not living a double life, where you're just trying to keep two groups separate, but a bona fide secret identity where you're trying to someone you know from realizing that these two people they know in different contexts are actually the same person for an extended period of time.

Who Is KK Downey? is basically a secret identity movie. Young would-be author Theo Huxtable (Matt Silver) has written a book called Truck Stop Hustler that is about as far from his real suburban middle-class life as could be. His best friend Terry (Darren Curtis) is starting to realize that he's never going to be a rock star and can't stomach the thought of an ordinary life working in his father's helicopter factory. When a publisher rejects Theo's book, saying that in modern publishing, you're selling the author's persona as a package with the book and tubby whitebread Theo doesn't fit with his lurid narrative, they concoct a scheme - they would claim Truck Stop Hustler was a memoir, with Terry posing as its protagonist. With the package in place, the book is a smash hit, with only local critic Connor (Pat Kiely) hating the book - and to add insult to injury, "Downey" is soon stealing away Connor's girlfriend Sue (Kristin Adams)... who just happens to be Terry's ex.

The movie's big lie, of course, is that Connor, Sue, and everyone else that Theo and Terry know that isn't in on the gag don't immediately twig to the fact that KK looks and sounds a whole lot like Terry with a blond wig and a generic southern accent (and that Terry never seems to be around his old friends). We buy it, to a certain extent, because pretty much everybody in this movie's world is a cartoon character to a certain extent. Connor is the most ridiculous, the type of alternate weekly critic who doesn't actually like anything, and is so effete that one wonders why, in this sort of stereotype-derived world, he's dating a woman other than to make Terry miserable. Theo's ridiculous hair is always worth a giggle.

This isn't quite a one-joke movie, but its bread and butter is mocking the art world, especially the cottage industry that exists between the artist and the audience. Yes, there are jokes at the expense of artists (Sue's art is adding eyes to everyday objects, Theo initially acts as though adding more and stranger sexual escapades to K.K.'s history adds to the work's sophistication) and fans (people do seem to eat that book up), but mostly it's the idea of art as a business, and in particular its gatekeepers, that come in for mockery. Aside from Conner's snobbery, there's the publisher willing to engage in fraud and the very idea that an artist should be marketed, rather than his work; Theo becomes a monster once his book becomes a business. It's fertile ground, and the filmmakers never let up on it, tough they're not harping. It's also not their only trick; the characters are generally funny and ridiculous people.

These goofy characters are the work of a comedy troupe - Curtis, Kiley, and Silver write as well as starring; Curtis and Kiley direct. With that kind of collaboration, there's a lot of potential for disaster; the cast could easily go improv-crazy with no-one to rein them in. The acting is pretty over-the-top - Terry, Theo, and Connor are all broad caricatures - but its seldom out-of-character nuttiness or so far out as to not be funny. Kristin Adams is nice enough as Sue, but she's The Girl, and in this sort of movie The Girl has to be the mature one who explains why the relationship didn't work and just isn't quite as wacky as the boys. Dan Haber shows up toward the end to add a little extra craziness but packs a lot of funny into a relatively short appearance.

Crazy is what is called for; this is one of those premises which the audience might reject if they were ever given time to stop and think about it, even though the story is inspired by an actual incident. This isn't an indie comedy that's going to be praised for its subtelty or realism, but it is pretty darn funny.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Brattle, Canada, comedy, independent, indiefilmcafe

(0) comments

No time for more, camping at the Brattle again today.

La Belle Bête (The Beautiful Beast)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 22 March 2008 at the Brattle Theater (BUFF X)

There are a number of ways for a family to be too close, and the cast of characters of La Belle Bête manages to hit just about every one of them. That makes for some good melodrama, and a movie that would be plenty creepy even without the horse-headed guy.

We meet this family some time after the father has died. Louise (Carole Laure) and her teenage children have retreated to their country estate. Louise dotes upon Patrice (Marc-André Grondin), a handsome young man who is the spitting image of his father, but speaks to daughter Isabelle-Marie (Caroline Dhaveras) with disdain. Still, she leaves Isabelle-Marie in charge when she is called away for a funeral, since Patrice is far too dim to take care of himself. That's when Isabelle-Marie's own hostilities get exposed, and then Louise returns with a new boyfriend. Patrice is jealous, especially since Isabelle-Marie also soon finds a boyfriend of her own. As much as their family relations had not been healthy before, they were in a sort of equilibrium, which has now been thrown out of whack.

Who is the beautiful beast of the title? Isabelle-Marie calls Patrice a dumb animal on more than one occasion, and it at times seems like an apt description. There's something a bit subhuman about him - a tutor throws up his hands at trying to teach him anything, and the scenes where Louise leaves the kids alone show him as easily led and quickly reduced to primal motives. Louise is the more conventional movie version of the concept, still retaining much of her beauty while emotionally abusing her daughter and seducing her son. And then there's Isabelle-Marie, whose attractiveness and capacity for cruelty come to the surface as the film goes on.

Caroline Dhavernas is fantastic, though she's certainly not alone in giving a fine performance. Still, Isabelle-Marie is the the character that doesn't have the straightforward hook. Initially, we might think that she'll be sympathetic or "normal", but she turns out to be, perhaps, the only member of the family that is consciously monstrous. Dhavernas is so good, though, that a part of the audience will understand and still be in her corner - as much as we're repelled by her viciousness, we might find ourselves trying to justify it. Maybe we don't love or even like her by the end, but we're fascinated by her.

That's not to discount the rest of the cast, since they are also well worth watching. Carole Laure makes Louise a woman wrapped up in her own beauty, reliant on men's attraction and potentially unable to cope when something starts to eat away at it. She's petite and often pitted against Isabelle-Marie, but as needy as Louise is, she clearly dominates the house; her tears seem to have a purpose. Marc-André Grondin makes Patrice both innocent and frightening; he is childlike and uncontrolled, like he would be feral save for his connection to his horse and his family.

Karim Hussain directed and shot the film, as well as working with original novelist Marie-Claire Blais on the screenplay. Blais wrote the novel nearly fifty years ago at the age of seventeen, and Hussain preserves that point of view, even as he does give moments to Louise and Patrice. He does a fine job of showing how Louise and her children live in their own world; their stone house and behavior are out of a period piece, but there are more modern things occasionally glimpsed as the characters begin to interact more with the outside world. I'm also very fond of how they played the ending; it's very ambiguous about what could happen next. Have we seen someone break free of a sick situation by horrible means, or are we seeing a cycle perpetuated?

The horse-headed guy? Actually makes a little sense when the characters see him, although he often appears to be mere strangeness for strangeness's sake. The movie could have done without it, frankly, but even with that it's still a fine story of a sick family.

Also at HBS.

Labels: Boston Underground Film Festival, Canada, drama, independent, indiefilmcafe

(1) comments

Saw this with the Chlotrudis folks on Tuesday, kind of cutting in line to do so. I lamely justified it to myself by saying I had arrived nearly as early for a different preview screening at Boston Common five days earlier, only to be told it was sold out (and that cost me $5 in bus and subway fare). It was in one of the former balcony theaters at Harvard Square and we wound up in the far back and right, which reminded me that AMC Harvard Square is one of those theaters where it's vitally important to make sure the film you want to see is on the main screen, because all the others are poorly laid out.

Other reviews aren't up at HBS/EFC yet, so I don't quite know how it's going to be received among that crowd. I'm sort of cringing in anticipation of the reviews I'm expecting to see in certain outlets; just looking at the comments on IMDB shows people calling the title character precocious and wise beyond her years. In fact, I think she's the exact opposite; the movie goes out of its way to present her as childlike throughout.

Still, good movie; well worth a recommendation.

Juno

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 November 2007 at AMC Harvard Square #3 (Preview)

There are moments in Juno, especially early on, when I worried about its title character being one of those teenagers. You know the type - the self-aware and self-referential ones who talk like thirty-year-old screenwriters who went to private schools and are nostalgic for the John Hughes movies of their youth rather than any actual memory of growing up in a small town.

Fortunately, the cast and crew generally manage to avoid those traps. Yes, writer Diablo Cody writes Juno as ostentatiously quirky at times - an early bit where she sets an easy chair up on her would-be-boyfriend's lawn seems like an awful lot of effort for little payoff. Fortunately, Juno is played by Ellen Page, who genuinely looks sixteen and grasps that Juno is far more child than adult. She's a clever and witty kid, but what she thinks is clever is often just in bad taste. Despite all the sarcasm and music snobbery, she's not mean; she's generally trying to do the right thing. She's also hilarious. Of all the things Page does, perhaps the most valuable is letting what are often precisely chosen words come spilling out of her mouth without making Juno seem particularly bright.

The bright girls, after all, generally don't wind up pregnant at the age of sixteen. There's no question that the father is Paulie Bleeker (Michael Cera), and initially there's no doubt that Juno's going to have an abortion. Something that the one teenage protester there says gets under her skin, though, so she tells her father (J.K. Simmons), stepmother (Allison Janney), and best friend (Olivia Thirlby), that she's going to carry it to term. She's even managed to find a couple to adopt the kid - sure, Vanessa Loring (Jennifer Garner) seems kind of uptight, but her husband Mark (Jason Bateman) seems cool.

Ellen Page is terrific, and she has to be - she's in every scene, with maybe one or two exceptions. She doesn't have to carry the whole thing herself, though - she gets a lot of help from the supporting cast. J.K. Simmons gives Mac MacGuff a dry delivery that's similar to Page's as Juno, though a little resigned and more mature; Allison Janney is humorously more frantic as Bren. Olivia Thirlby and Michael Cera are a ton of fun as Juno's friends. Cera does charmingly dorky better than any young actor out there, and he's as good as ever as Paulie; Thirlby's Leah is a bundle of enthusiastic eccentricity. Compared to them, Jennifer Garner and Jason Bateman look almost muted, though they wind up two of the more fleshed-out and interesting characters.

Just because how they relate to Juno provides much of the film's dramatic weight doesn't mean they're not funny, though. Juno doesn't have any characters who aren't, at one point or another, funny - even people at the school who just stand there, talking to someone else while Juno looks at them, tend to make for funny visuals. This seems like an obvious thing, but it's surprising how many comedies don't realize that every character has to pull his own weight in terms of making the audience laugh, or else they're just clutter. Juno the film is remarkably free of clutter, both as a comedy and as a story about Juno MacGuff: Everyone involved is funny, and there's very little in the story to distract us from Juno's tentative steps toward adulthood.

Both writer Diablo Cody and director Jason Reitman are still a little rough at times - their use of music is a bit heavy-handed, for instance, though not as much as the chair motif in Juno's narration. They do manage the potentially awkward turn the story makes down the home stretch without missing a beat, and Reitman has a knack for finding good images. He hasn't yet put all his tendency toward smugness behind him, but Juno suffers from that much less than Thank You For Smoking did.

And, to be fair, Juno might just be "pretty good" if it were a smoother, more polished work. It's a fine line between the title character being well-intentioned with a lot of growing up to do and her being stupid and unlikeable, even with Ellen Page's great performance It's the ability to stay on the charming side of that line that makes Juno one of the most enjoyable comedies of the year.

Also at HBS, when the embargo is lifted.

Labels: Canada, comedy, indiefilmcafe, preview, USA

(0) comments

I love the BFFF (not to be confused with the BFF). Sure, it causes a pronounced lack of sleep when it conflicts with a Red Sox playoff series - my plan tonight is to record ALCS Game 1 on the ReplayTV, start watching it when I get home at around 9:15 after watching The Devil Dared Me To (since I can push The District! to a Sox-free Sunday showing rather than sticking around for the 9:30 show) - but Ned likes a lot of the same sorts of movies as I do, and this year especially has a knack for booking stuff that I wanted to see at Fantasia but couldn't make. Trapped Ashes, The Devil Dared Me To, Murder Party, Zebraman, and Exiled all fit into that category this year (I did see The Signal there, but I certainly don't mind giving other folks the chance to see it).

I have to admit, I was kind of hoping we'd get some guests for Trapped Ashes; Joe Dante has been listed as part of the festival's steering committee in previous years and I figured that might translate to him coming to Boston to introduce this film. Didn't happen, and I suspect the turnout might have been better if the festival's opening film hadn't run Thursday at 10pm. I wonder if it was bumped to accommodate the screening of The Darjeeling Limited with Anderson & Schwartzmann at 7pm (sadly, 5pm was not early enough to leave Waltham to see this one).

So, first night a bit disappointing, but I'm looking forward to The Devil Dared Me To tonight. And Go Sox!

Trapped Ashes

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 October 2007 at the Brattle Theatre (Boston Fantastic Film Festival)

It's got to be somewhat disappointing to be in writer Dennis Bartok's position: You write an screenplay for an anthology film that's got four pretty decent ideas for horror stories in it. You land the likes of Ken Russell and Monte Hellman to direct segments, and Joe Dante to do the framing sequences. The unknown actors you cast really aren't bad. And yet, when it gets put together, it's not that good. And if Bartok isn't disappointed, the audience certainly is.

The set-up has an elderly tour guide (Henry Gibson) giving six people the VIP tour of "Ultra Studios", reluctantly showing them the house where the (fictional) classic horror film Hysteria was shot. They wind up trapped in the room where that movie's characters told each other horror stories, and suggests that maybe, if they tell their own scary stories, they'll be let out. It's as silly as it sounds and Dante takes a while setting it up, but the house is a fun set, albeit overdone (Dante is a bit prone to over-indulging in pastiche).

The first of the stories is "The Girl With the Golden Breasts", directed by Ken Russell. It's about Phoebe (Rachel Veltri), a would-be actress whose fortunes change after she gets the latest in breast implants - human tissue taken from organ donors. Except... those wouldn't have nipples that bite and suck blood, would they? As with most of Bartok's stories, it's not really a bad idea, and I kind of like Veltri in it. I think Russell errs in being a little too casual with the material; even if he didn't want to take the straight-out horror route of David Cronenberg's Rabid, this is material for dark, pitch-black comedy, but Russell and Bartok go for weak, name-dropping parody and "isn't this weird?" rather than actual scares or really clever satire.

Next up is Sean S. Cunningham (the original Friday the Thirteenth) with "Jibaku". Julia (Lara Harris), the wife of American architect Henry (Scott Lowell) at a convention in Japan, meets a handsome man (Yoshinori Hiruma) in front of a strange painting, only to later find him hanging outside a temple. He's still in her dreams, though, and when she disappears a few nights later, the head monk (Ryo Ishibashi) tells Henry that he must enter a scary cave and place a piece of paper with a spell written on it into her mouth to save her. Cunningham gets some nifty atmospherics with the changing painting, and the switch to animation for some shots inside the cave is actually pretty creepy, but there's something oddly inauthentic about his jaunt into J-horror, despite actually shooting some in Japan rather than British Columbia and the presence of genre favorite Ishibashi - everything feels too much like a soundstage, everybody who speaks English does so without an accent. There also doesn't seem to be much about Henry and Julia that's special, and they just go through the motions here; there's never a sense of urgency or importance to what they're doing.

"Stanley's Girlfriend" is the first thing Monte Hellman (best known for Two Lane Blacktop) has directed in over fifteen years. His protagonist Leo (John Saxon) has also not made a film in a long time, and tells us how, as a younger man (Tahmoh Penikett), he met a fellow filmmaker by the name of Stanley (Tygh Rynyan) with whom he became fast friends until he also met Nina (Amelia Cooke), who transfers her affections to him when Stanley leaves for New York and Europe to shoot a movie, never to return. Leo can't seem to get any work done, though, and he doesn't have much idea why until Stanley bequeaths him a package forty years later. The film is well shot, and the revelation of one of the character's identity is a bit of a kick, but honestly? Nothing happens. Film fans may find the details clever in the end, but Hellman and Bartok don't do much to make lethargy particularly frightening.

Oddly, it's rookie director John Gaeta (most of his credits are doing special effects) who delivers the best segment. "My Twin, The Worm" has Michele-Barbara Pelletier playing a dual role, as present-day narrator Nathalie and her mother Martine, who contracted a tapeworm at about the same time she became pregnant, and since the treatment for tapeworms would also cause a miscarriage, must put up with both growing within her, even as this odd prenatal situation is having a peculiar effect on Nathalie, which comes to light when we see her as a child who goes to live with her father and stepmother after her mother's nervous breakdown. Gaeta's got a head start, in that the premise of his story is kind of discomfiting even before anything overtly supernatural happens, and the setting (French immigrants with a California vineyard) is just off-kilter enough to seem out of time. Then he's got Matrya Fedor as young Nathalie, and in just a couple parts, she's demonstrated a knack for playing scary kids without making them seem unearthly or like little adults (all the scarier because it implies that that kind of amorality is part of every child's nature).

The movie's ready to send us out on a high note with that, but unfortunately it brings us back to Joe Dante's framing device, which not only wastes Henry Gibson and a blink-and-you'll-miss-him Dick Miller cameo (Robert Picardo, apparently, was unavailable), but doesn't deliver the inevitable twist on horror tales that leave their narrators alive as well as one might like. Like much of the movie, it's kind of limp, which is frustrating, because Dante should be able to do better.

That's what the whole movie is - segments that aren't quite as good as they could or should be individually, and while none of those segments would be crippling with better neighbors, together they add up to a big disappointment.

Also at eFilmCritic.

Labels: anthology, Boston Fantastic Film Festival, Boston Fantastic Film Festival 2007, Canada, horror, independent, Japan, USA

(0) comments

So... If most of the people coming to see movies at this festival are those with a personal interest in the subject matter, who makes up the audience for this?
The Union: The Business Behind Getting High

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 September 2007 at AMC Boston Common #17 (Boston Film Festival 2007)

At some point, Brett Harvey and Adam Scorgie should probably have changed the name of their documentary on the underground marijuana industry; the Union of the title isn't mentioned until at least halfway through. "The Union: The Business Behind Getting High" sounds like an exposé, but this documentary is more a piece of advocacy.

The film is arguing for the legalization of marijuana. It is, the film argues, at worst harmless, especially relative to alcohol and tobacco, and at best of great medicinal value. Hemp, a related species of plant also banned in the U.S., is fantastic for manufacturing paper and textiles. It's a useful plant for biodiesel manufacturing. And much like America's Prohibition on alcohol, prohibition of cannabis arguably creates the violent crime that it was allegedly meant to fight - that the only people it benefits are criminals and those who make money from law enforcement and incarceration.

The segment on "The Union" - a catch-all title for the string of people who make up the marijuana supply chain - is, to my mind, the most informative part of the movie. Harvey and Scorgie trace both the money and the actual product, from homeowner to contractor to fall guy to border jumper, showing how a product that is cultivated without a great deal of difficulty can be a seven billion dollar per year agricultural industry for British Columbia, driving a great deal of other business as well. The numbers are eyebrow-raising - one "grow op" (a private home where cannabis is cultivated out of sight) with just eight sun lamps can produce six crops a year, with each crop going for twenty thousand dollars. We also see the remains of a larger operation housed in twenty buried railroad cars that must have been worth millions, and that's before it has traveled south and east through the U.S., where it can wind up going for thousands of dollars per pound. If you respond to hard numbers as well as I do, it's a fascinating little economics lesson.

(It also gets a body thinking about how that unused basement is not helping with paying back the college loans, doesn't it?)

There aren't quite so many hard numbers in the rest of the movie, but there are a whole bunch of expert witnesses - the film's website lists over thirty interview subjects, of varying degrees of credibility. People with a law enforcement background like former Seattle chief of police Norm Stamper and former undercover agent Jack Cole give compelling testimony of how the only violent crime related to marijuana comes from how criminalization puts the distribution into the hands of criminals, but an actor like Joe Rogan, while an entertaining interview, doesn't really add much in the way of authority to the discussion. Some may fault the filmmakers for apparently not seeking out people to present an alternate view - the only bits supporting the War On Drugs are clips of Republic Presidents, and they're facile comments clearly meant to be mocked rather than actual arguments. The closest thing you'll see to a rebuttal is allowing the occasional interview subject to be so worked up as to undermine his or her credibility.

The style of the film is fairly fast-paced, with Adam Scorgie acting as a Michael Moore-style "host", though a much less obtrusive one. He and Harvey use a lot of stock material, and while their documentary and interview footage is fairly clear (although with as many interview subjects as they use, I might like it if subjects were constantly identified), but when they go to stock footage - including that old standby, silly-looking thirty-five year-old educational films - they get a little cut-happy. I do like the way they cite webpages in the end credits to make it easy for audience members who have had their curiosity piqued to refer directly to primary sources.

One subject the film is oddly silent is why marijuana sells beyond medicinal uses (although they'll use former "High Times" editors as interviewees). It's probably a deliberate choice, to prevent accusations of promoting that a certain lifestyle. Leaving the whole "getting high" aspect out means that the movie is obviously avoiding something, even if it isn't really the point of the production.

Is the argument convincing? Well, I'm pretty libertarian by nature anyway (I've also got no horse in this fight; I've never touched the stuff and don't intend to). Maybe it will nudge some people with no opinion a little nudge. Probably not enough to accomplish its goal any time soon. But getting people thinking about change isn't a bad thing.

Labels: Boston Film Festival, Canada, documentary, independent, indiefilmcafe

(0) comments

Updated Tuesday's post about Monday with a like to my EFC review of Once in a Summer.

Much rain to start yesterday before it cleared up and got humid. It was a horror-themed Friday the Thirteenth, with ghost stories from Thailand and China, gore flicks from Quebec and Ohio, and an offbeat musical comedy about circus performers who want to kill you and eat your liver from Korea.

Not much else to say, as I was in the theater all day, but walking home at 2.30am, I came upon a head-scratcher: Le Festival Juste pour Rire is set up along Rue Maisoneuve, and along with stages and concession areas there are what look like stationary parade floats of some of the great comedians: Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy, the Marx Brothers, Jacques Tati, Mister Bean, Mike Myers...

Wait a minute. Mister Bean, I'll give you, especially as his silent comedy is pretty universal, but Mike Myers? Seriously? I think Myers himself would ask that you show Peter Sellers some respect first, and Myers probably thinks he's done something funny in recent memory.

Anyway, back to seeing movies. I can recommend The Matrimony if you're at the festival today. My plan is the Death Note & Death Note: The Last Name double feature before heading across the street for Puritan, Isabella, and Midnight Ballad for Ghost Theater

The Unseeable (Pen Choo Kab Pee)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Wisit Sasanatieng isn't exactly a secret that die-hard film buffs are keeping to themselves; his films have just been hard to stumble upon in the west. Miramax, unable to figure out how to market a garish Thai Western, sat on distribution rights for his first, Tears of the Black Tiger, for years before Magnolia bought them out; his second, Citizen Dog, managed to be even more peculiar. The Unseeable, however, is pretty straightforward: A good old-fashioned story of a creepy house with a creepy mistress and creepy servants.

Nualjan (Siraphan Wattanajinda) comes to this place looking for her husband; he left several months ago to take care of something in Bangkok but has yet to return. The very pregnant Nualjan stops at the estate for the night, only to find the next morning that taxis won't sop at the place because of the various dark magics that seem to haunt the house. She winds up staying in the servants' quarters, and her talkative new roommate fills her head with stories of vampires and the twisted old woman who lives in the shed. Nualjan sees strange things herself - a little girl who seems to disappear when she rounds a corner, an ominous chest that housekeeper Somjit (Tassawan Seneewongse) screams at Nualjan for approaching, and all the rules Somjit lays down. There's no need for supernatural explanations to find Madame Ranjuan (Suporntip Chuangrangsri) off-putting; she's been a recluse since her own husband vanished, and her behavior around the baby after Nualjan give birth is rather odd.

As you can see, there's a bit of an "everything including the kitchen sink" feel to Kongkiat Khomsiri's story. Nualjan encounters nearly every type of supernatural entity known to film (with a couple of ice queens thrown in for good measure, receives cryptic warnings, and has disturbing flashbacks. Gratifyingly, it doesn't feel like overkill; Khomsiri and Sasanatieng prime and tease the audience by contrasting the unnerving things Nualjan sees with how laughable things sound when her excitable, superstitious roommate Choy describes them to her. It's clever reverse psychology; we go in expecting a ghost story, and we get things that look supernatural, but we're inclined to look for a rational explanation because they make the alternative sound like superstitious nonsense.

Full review at EFC.

The Matrimony (Xin Zhong you Gui)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in J.A. De Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

The Matrimony takes the gothic romance out of storage, puts a (relatively) modern coat of paint on it, and lets it loose. The result is surprisingly appealing: A ghost story that for the most part delivers everything this sort of film should be while at the same time feeling new and exciting as opposed to played-out. It falters a little toward the end, but the meat of the story is prime stuff.

Xu Manli (Fan Bingbing) is a stylish modern woman in 1930s Shanghai: She's got a Louise Brooks haircut, a job as a disk jockey playing jazz on a local radio station, and she knows her boyfriend, cinematographer Shen Junchu (Leon Lai) is about to propose to her. Just before he can, though, she's killed when a car plows into her on her bicycle, killing her instantly.

A year later, Junchu's mother has arranged a marriage to country girl Sansan (Rene Liu), but he shows her no affection, saying he will never think of her as more than a guest in his house - whose attic is filled with Manli's things. It's while investigating this that Sansan encounters Manli's ghost, who proposes a deal: Seeing Junchu sad hurts her too, and when Manli touches someone as a spirit it makes them ill. If Sansan allows Manli to possess her body on occasion, Manli will teach her how to make her husband happy. Sansan agrees - she really does love him - and at first it seems to work, but Sansan should have realized that deals with spirits always have a higher price than appears at first glance.

The basic story here wouldn't seem too far out of place if it were set in a stone mansion somewhere out in the foggy English countryside - big house, new young wife, jealous ghost, attic filled with old memories covered in sheets. Instead of being set in a remote place bound by restrictive traditions, though, it takes place in a bustling, prosperous city: The house is well-lit and full of modern amenities such as radios and even a film-editing station, Sansan is an active participant in her story rather than just a naif assaulted by the forces around her, Manli is an independent woman rather than someone who only exists as Junchu's one time lover. The costumes and production design are sumptuous: Shanghai looks like an exciting place that would naturally produce someone like Manli, the house is both intimidating and a place Sansan would want to become her home. The flashbacks of how Junchu and Sansan met are perfect, too, with a snow that is both a fitting backdrop to what Sansan considers a magical first meeting and a reminder of her humble origins. Rene Liu's performance in those scenes is especially important, since otherwise a modern audience could look at Sansan's arranged marriage as a job and think less of her; instead, we want Junchu to really love her, not just treat her better because she's nice and also thrust into an uncomfortable position.

Full review at EFC.

End of the Line

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Maurice Deveraux is a perennial favorite at this festival, a local filmmaker who has always had more ambition than his low-budget slasher flicks have let on. This movie could be his ticket to bigger things; it's another horror movie, sure, but it's a smart, well-made one.

Karen (Ilona Elkin) is a nurse in a Montreal psych ward who is feeling a little bit unsteady herself; a troubled patient (Christine Lan) who had visions of demons attacking has just killed herself by jumping onto the subway tracks. When she heads home for the evening, she encounters a couple of men on the subway platform: Patrick (Robin Wilcock), who comes on too strong, and Mike (Nicolas Wright) fakes being an old friend to keep him at bay. That's not the worst trouble they'll face; also on the train are a bunch of well-dressed, clean-scrubbed types who have just been to an evangelist's rally. Midway through the ride home, those God-fearing people will get a call on their pagers: The apocalypse is coming tonight, so save as many people as you can.

And by "save", Reverend Hope (David L. McCallum) means "stab them to death with your cross-shaped daggers before the demons I say are coming get to them".

Devereaux could have gone the route of having the folks with the knives be this oncoming wave of effectively brainwashed zealots, but he does something a little more interesting: He lets them have doubts, for various reasons. Some get squeamish about killing people. Some are sociopaths using this as an excuse to rape and kill. Teenage Sarah (Nina Fillis) makes out with her boyfriend John (Tim Rozon) and has big-time doubts about the whole program. One guy is only a member of the sect because his wife was. What doing this does, aside from provide some exposition to the band of survivors trying to make their way to the surface, is make the marauders a little scarier. In part, it's because it means these people have all chosen to do something horrific individually, which is a scarier prospect than one central puppet master. But in part, it's because the people who have decided to switch sides aren't sure, while the others remain resolute - maybe these guys really do know something.

Full review at EFC.

The Fox Family (Gumiho Gajok)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The Fox Family vexes me; I'm not sure who the audience for it is. On the one hand, it certainly feels like a kids' or family film with its songs and fanciful story about a family of foxes wishing to be human. But how many kids' movies would have a subplot about a serial killer? Maybe it's not really for kids... Or western kids and/or their parents are just wimps. Still, I'm not quite sure who out there is going to really love this movie.

A "kumiho" is a sort of fox spirit in Korean mythology, and is the name a group of them take when they assume human form. They're a family - father (Joo Hyeon), son (Ha Jeong-woo), older daughter (Park Si-yeon), younger daughter (Koo Joo-yeon) - and they've assumed human form, posing as a circus until a once-in-a-century eclipse when they can become human for real - if they each eat a human liver. Meanwhile, a grifter (Park Joon-gyoo) stumbles upon their camp looking for a spot to hide from some mobsters he owes money, and takes an interest in the older sister, and there's a serial killer preying on women with small dogs - the kind whose livers the younger sister finds particularly delicious - and a sad-sack detective (Yongnyeo Seon-woo) is on the case.

It's a bit tough to connect with the Kumihos in part because they really do feel non-human. The writing has them kind of oblivious to the everyday world, and their circus act scares children in a hilariously bloody way. There's a very peculiar amorality to them when they talk about their plans to kill people and eat their livers in order to become human; they just don't give any thought at all to how this is really would not be a particularly auspicious start to their lives as humans. I'm also a little unclear as to how long the family has been in human guise; sometimes, the subtitled dialog makes it sound like it's been for a long time, although they seem kind of ignorant of human society to have been around that long.

Full review at EFC.

The Rage

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 13 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

If you like horror movies, you've probably liked some of Robert Kurtzman's work. The "K" in KNB, he's created some of the bloody and otherwise great make-up effects for scores of movies over the past twenty years or so. As expected, he serves up a heaping helping of the nasty stuff as a writer/director. As might also be expected, when it comes to everything else, there's a good argument for sticking to what he knows.

So, you've got these two groups of people. One are a bunch of teenagers in a fan heading somewhere; the other is a mad scientist (Andrew Divoff) who is experimenting with a rapidly mutating virus that causes rage, enhanced strength, craving for human blood/flesh, etc., and his subjects. One of the subjects from group B gets loose but doesn't last long. The real trouble starts when the vultures go for his body, get infected, and... well, you know.

When Kurtzman has his make-up effects hat on, he is really good. The raving, flesh-eating infectees look good and nasty, with sores and pustules and cracks appearing in the skin, sunken eyeballs, and icky stuff coming out of the mouth. People get hit with all manner of blunt and sharp objects, or cut up for all sorts of nasty wounds and viscera being torn out. If all you're looking for is gross-out stuff, this is close to a five-star movie.

Full review at EFC.

Labels: Canada, China, Fantasia, fantasy, gore, horror, Korea, romance, Thailand, USA

(0) comments

Updated yesterday's post with a revew of Roommates (D-Day).

Yesterday wound up pretty nice outside, so I went up Mount Royal to try and burn off a heavy breakfast from Eggspectation. Nice, as always, then I came back down for four pretty good movies.

I also met Kurt Halfyard from Twitch and we compared notes. It was cool to talk to someone who writes for a site I read every day. I made the Boston film scene probably sound a bit cooler than it is (though it ain't bad), and I hope I didn't make too bad an impression on him by my obvious disdain for some of the Q&A sessions for Hair Extensions and Right at Your Door. I think Sion Sono and Chris Gorak each got asked the same questions several times, but I was also amused by how the need for a translator in Sono's case highlighted just how dumb some of the questions were - she would seem to struggle to find a way to interpret the question so that it didn't seem like a complete waste of time. Major props to Sono for answering "I don't care" to questions about American remakes of Japanese horror and the state of J-horror in general (the first after an extended exchange between Sono, the translator, and host Mitch Davis). I got the impression that he was a guy who just had an idea for a wacky horror movie, and the rest of the industry didn't matter to him.

To close the day, I probably slightly disappointed my father who asks if I'm taking advantage of Montreal's fine dining when I see him online in the mornings by grabbing a 12.30am supper from Burger King. One of the side-effects of having three screens this year is that there seem to be far fewer times without something I want to see playing and fewer gaps between films long enough for me to actually sit down in a restaurant. I'm actually looking forward to just being able to sit down and eat when I get home.

Today's plans: I recommend Right at Your Door to those who are up there; I'll probably be seeing Ghost in the Shell: Solid State Society, Km. 31, Big Bang Love: Juvenile A and The Tripper

Jade Warrior (Jadesoturi)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in the J.A. de Sève Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

Some of the hype around Jade Warrior is that it's the first martial arts film from Finland, which kind of misrepresents it - there's a few nice martial arts sequences, but what really makes it tick is everything around the martial arts. We get a story of the destructive things people do to themselves to try to make their love work, and a reminder that Finland's great, epic story, the Kalevala, seldom if ever left its lovers happy. The idea of connecting bits of the Kalevala to Chinese legends is also a pretty nifty idea. I have no idea how it works anthropologically, but if there's anything to it, that's fascinating.

To give the martial arts its due - the big fight scene involves sledgehammers. Don't see that very often.

Full review at EFC.

Minushi

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

As I said to Kurt while waiting in line for the next movie, Minushi is a nice start. I think Tyler Gibb has a way to go on writing dialogue, and the decision to release it online in bits as segments were finished gives the story a very episodic feel, but it also lets us see him developing as a filmmaker over the four years it took to finish the film.

Not bad for a guy working in Flash on his home PC. I think Gibb's still got a way to go before he's in the same category as Makoto Shinkai as far as being a one-man band, but he's on his way (and this film could also help him hook up with some good collaborators).

Full review at EFC.

Exte: Hair Extensions (Ekusute)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 10 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

I remember Ned Hinkle calling the likes of The Ring and The Grudge "hair horror" a few years ago. I'm not sure how mainstream the term ever got, but I do dig what Sion Sono has done with the subgenre here. It's the kind of parody that will likely make it hard to do play it straight for a while, because Sono hits the clichés in a way that is both merciless and also, perversely, more effective than a lot of straight horror movies done by less talented people.

I hope it gets a theatrical relase in the U.S. before DVD. It's the rare movie that works very well as both a horror movie and a comedy, both for people who like horror films and those who don't.

Full review at EFC.

Right at Your Door

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

No-one uses the word "terrorism" in Right at Your Door, but that's not because it's irrelevant to the movie. It's all about terror, and the fear that comes from not knowing what just happened, what's going to happen, and what to do next. What it isn't about is terrorists - there's plenty of action movies for that.

Brad (Rory Cochrane) and Lexi (Mary McCormack) have just moved into a new place in L.A., and this morning she's off to her job while he waits for the cable guy and makes some calls to try to help his music career. A fairly ordinary day, until a series of explosions rocks the city. Brad tries to get through to Lexi, but all the circuits are jammed, and police are setting up roadblocks. It gets worse: These were not just explosives, but some sort of chemical/biological/"dirty" bombs, and the authorities are advising citizens to seal themselves in their homes. Brad wants to wait for Lexi, but his neighbor's handyman Alvaro (Tony Perez) shows up needing shelter...

Early parts of the movie move in something close to real time, with what at least feels like unbroken shots of Brad and Alvaro trying to do whatever they can to deal with the situation actively. Whether it be Brad's early attempts to get into the city or the near-panicked attempts to get the house sealed off, there's not a lot of talking, and filmmaker Chris Gorak avoids anything that pulls us away from the immediacy of the situation. Some time must pass between Alvaro's arrival and when they start sealing the house, and by a similar token we don't see them sealing every single window, but it never feels like a montage or as if they've had time to stop and think.

Full review at EFC.

Labels: animation, Canada, Fantasia, Finland, horror, Japan, martial-arts, thriller

(1) comments