This Week in Tickets: 1 January 2024 - 7 January 2024 (Happy New Year!)

I do like a nice clean break between years on a thing like this. Figuring in the leap years, I think the next should be 2029!

(At some point I'm going to have to replace my printer/scanner, because the A Town Called Panic stub isn't real, though I'd like to be able to copy them from my phone, print them, and tape them in.)

Starting the new year on a high note, and also making sure I got to see the big guy at actual size again, I hit Godzilla Minus One a second time, kind of surprised just how well it drew on a New Year's Day matinee. It also felt like there were a lot more folks of Japanese descent than I usually see for something otaku-adjacent, which is kind of interesting, since this is the first time I can recall something from Japan really getting a quick release the way Chinese, Indian, and some Korean movies do rather than having a distributor sit on it and calculate empty weeks and mid-week showcases. It certainly makes G-1 one of the year's most interesting box office stories.

(Of course, there was, also, one guy who was maybe hung over from New Year's Eve or something and was cheering like a sports fan at the start and finish and snoring during the middle.)

This interfered with my plan to be kind of cute with Letterboxd by starting the new year with A Fistful of Dollars after ending with For a Few Dollars More, but, oh well. Also, I thought I had accidentally moved backward with these over about a year but it turns out I watched the Kino Lorber 4K for The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly back in 2001. Yikes!

Tuesday, I headed down to the Seaport for the A Town Called Panic twin bill, which was a ton of fun, but, man, that place is weird right now. They're not sufficiently staffed or licensed or whatever for a full house, which means I'm always sitting further back than I want and the "sold-out" show has us all crammed into an area comprising a third of the theater. And, I suspect, there's a vicious circle where because this led to things selling out when the place first opened, people with the season pass plan are booking a lot of stuff they may or may not see early to avoid missing out, knowing they can cancel if they're not feeling it without penalty, but leading to a really-not-sold out show.

Wednesday was a night I couldn't get out of the apartment early enough for what I wanted to see, but somehow managed for 6pm shows the next couple of days: Thursday was a Scorsese double feature of GoodFellas and After Hours at the Brattle, filling in a blind spot and a half. I'm mildly amused that back when it came out, GoodFellas was considered a pretty expansive movie, but people don't notice 145 minutes that much these days. Friday was Noryang: Deadly Sea, the latest Korean blockbuster about Admiral Yi Sun-sin, with plenty of fine naval action.

Saturday was meant to be Anselm day, but my bus to Kendall Square just didn't come, so I put it off a day, catching it Sunday afternoon.

And that's the week! As usual, the plan is to update my Letterboxd account as I see more, but since I'm on a work trip through Thursday morning, who knows how well that will work out?


Gojira -1.0 (Godzilla Minus One)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 January 2024 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, laser DCP)

Godzilla Minus One is a downright terrific Godzilla movie - you can split hairs over it being a remake, a prequel, or something else to the point where "Godzilla movie" is the best description - which finds a new angle on what to do with the material and creates what may be the most intense film of the series on a human level, making each appearance of its title monster a powerful punch in the gut apart from its great kaiju action. It may only touch on the atomic fears of the original and Shin Gojira, but the shell shock angle works terrifically. It is, in fact, a really fantastic way to use a kaiju in a movie, having him represent the overwhelming, towering guilt Koichi Shikishima (a terrific Ryunosuke Kamiki) feels; even if it's never stated, one easily comprehends the idea that Godzilla is following Koichi around, punishing him for his survival, daring him to die, or at least that this is the way it feels to him.

Some folks would have made that literal, but writer/director/effects head Takashi Yamazaki seems to respect both Koichi and Godzilla enough to reduce the giant monster to serving narrative needs for one character whose demons are not fundamentally different than those of nearly everyone around him. Godzilla resonates best when he represents something humanity must grapple with, yes, but he also must be Godzilla, a challenge that lifts the story out of the conventional.

On top of that, the film is also a lovingly-made period piece that does impressive work in recalling the image of mid-century Japan without making it seem ostentatious in either its detail or squalor, even as it does good work blending in modern effects. There are moments as people go about their lives in the devastated and rebuilding Tokyo that the movie feels like it could have been made in the fifties, maybe sharing sets and props with something by Ozu shooting next door, capturing the cultural memory of this time and place if nothing else. The filmmakers show restraint throughout that they cash in when it's time for grand spectacle or an emotional wallop.

The closest thing I've got to a complaint is that this isn't exactly my favorite Godzilla design; he's all armor plating on top of a beefy torso but not much personality (there's often a moment in these movies when he'll pause and create tension as to where he goes next, hinting at some sort of malice or connection with the Japanese people, but he's too much a force of nature for that here, aside from how it would tie him too closely to Koichi when the point is that Koichi isn't responsible for Godzilla). The action built around him is fantastic, though, highlighting the scale but giving humanity some agency. It's fitted into the story insmart ways, and Yamazaki does an especially nice job of building to the finale in a way that not-quite-quietly says "let's go". The filmmakers are also extremely well aware of the response certain music cues will get and deploy them at the exact right time.

It's just downright terrific, worth multiple trips to the theater and hopefully a spiffy 4k disc in a few months.


Per un pugno di dollari (A Fistful of Dollars)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 January 2024 in Jay's Living Room (off the shelf, 4K Blu-ray)

Heh, I had forgotten this was Yojimbo/Red Harvest at first. That's kind of the movie's issue - one doesn't necessarily make direct comparisons, but Clint Eastwood doesn't quite bring anything to match the mischievous cunning of Toshiro Mifune to this role yet (to the extent that The Man with No Name is truly a single role). He's good, of course, and it may just be that the film around him is a little unbalanced, focusing more on one of the two bosses than the other and making the gangs so big that there's not a whole lot of individual animus as they get gunned down. It doesn't quite feel like "Joe" is playing two gangs against each other, so much as deciding he wants to free the pretty girl from the Rojos and finding the Baxters kind of useful in doing so.

Still, one can easily see how it propelled Eastwood to stardom and shifted the style of the genre. The idea of his character isn't exactly fully formed in this first appearance, but Eastwood and director Sergio Leone know they want him to be kind of amoral but also quietly charismatic, likely to do the right thing when there's a right thing to do and people who deserve better. One can also see Leone injecting Italian pulp and style into this naturally American genre- there's a lot of blood shared between spaghetti westerns and gialli - with an eye that turns the dirty border town into something grandiose and mythic, though not the myths America tells about itself.

Leone and Eastwood, of course, would refine all of this to an incredible extent over the next two years - an amazingly rapid evolution when you look at it that way - but there's just enough here of what is to come to make a western that still holds up pretty well sixty years (and even more evolution) later.


"La bûche de Noël" ("The Christmas Log" aka "A Town Called Panic: Christmas Panic")

* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 January 2024 in the Alamo Drafthouse Seaport #3 (special presentation, DCP)

As per usual, an enjoyably absurd vignette, even if it feels a little bit off from the last one of these I remember seeing: Horse seems unusually testy and the misbehavior of Cowboy & Indian a bit more malicious than usual, I think (it's been a while). It's still a fun, fast-moving cartoon that gets delightfully intricate during a daffy plan to heist a yule log and is just anarchic enough to avoid the obvious ironic ending.

One thing I did kind of like is just how self-explanatory and built-out the whole thing is. It has, as mentioned, been a while since I saw the feature (or even the latest special, "Summer Holidays"), and while some of the characters were old friends, some had been completely forgotten, but the filmmakers are absolutely able to acquaint (or reacquaint) a viewer with their world and all the folks in the orbit of Horse, Indian, and Cowboy, almost instantly so that one can roll along and let it get silly.


"La rentrée des classes" ("A Town Called Panic: Back to School Panic")

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 January 2024 in the Alamo Drafthouse Seaport #3 (special presentation, DCP)

"A Town Called Panic" is at its best when the creators max out the absurd impossibility of its slapstick, and this is some of their most genuinely peculiar work, climaxing in a surreal trip inside a classmate's brain to try and steal the answer to a test that packs enough weirdness and invention for a feature into, what, five minutes? It's even better because it follows up on some minimal bit perfectly precise animation as Pig studiously works a problem out.

Part of what's delightfully on display here is how they embrace the weird style they've established over the series's first 15 years and get weird or smash through it when it doesn't work. I don't think I'd noticed how the bases of the Cowboy and Indian figures kind of hang around near their feet when they sit or otherwise don't quite touch the ground before, for instance, and the school bus is very much retrofitted to work with the animation style. And while I suspect these have always had some CGI enhancement on top of compositing, it's generally seamless, and the growing/shrinking potions here really have to rely on that even more, even though it's just as invisible as ever.


GoodFellas

* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 January 2024 in the Brattle Theatre (Warner Brothers in the 1980s: Enter the Blockbuster, 35mm)

Man, but does mafia stuff just bounce right off me, in a way that yakuza movies and British gangsters and a lot of triad movies generally don't. I'm not sure why that is, beyond the yakuza and triads being intriguingly foreign while the mafia seems establishment in some ways. It's so eager to present itself as respectable that even when Martin Scorsese is tearing that down - and this movie is all about screaming that these guys are amoral jackasses - it's drenched in nostalgia.

I can appreciate the craft here, don't get me wrong, and I suspect that I'd see it in a bit of a new light if I made myself sit through The Godfather and its first sequel without a heck of a cold battering my brain, because it almost seems like a response to those films, a reminder that the ugliness of the mob wasn't buried particularly deep. There's a story of someone maybe (or maybe not) realizing that the life he dreamed about as a kid was ultimately hollow, eventually, but the material itself, the stuff that gets Ray Liotta's Henry Hill to realize that the organization he loves will never love him back in the same way? Not interesting.

The execution, however, is legitimately terrific - it's a gorgeous-looking movie with a number of performances that rightly became iconic, and Scorsese and Thelma Schoonmaker are probably the best ever at making shocking, game-changing acts of violence feel repugnant rather than thrilling. It's talky to the point of just telling you what is about at points, though, and its great moments only scan as "pretty good" when you've absorbed them through the test of pop culture already, which I haven't found the case with other classics. Joe Pesci's character can't quite remain as far above being lampooned by a cartoon pigeon in the way that Casablanca still completely delivers even if one absorbs thirty different homages before seeing it.

This does have one of the all-time great "man, the casting director has a good eye" line-ups, though - check out early roles from Debi Mazar, Kevin Corrigan, Michael Imperioli, Illeana Douglas, and Samuel L. Jackson! Well, maybe not early-early for Jackson, as Spike Lee was already using him and he had more than a handful of other credits, but he hadn't really come up with the Sam Jackson delivery yet, either.


After Hours

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 4 January 2024 in the Brattle Theatre (Warner Brothers in the 1980s: Enter the Blockbuster, 35mm)

I don't know that I was expecting a whole lot from After Hours, especially not as part of a double feature with the much more heralded GoodFellas, but I wound up loving it for what it is: A fantastically weird odyssey that kind of doesn't hold together, but is a mess in the way that works, like narrative rules don't matter after 1am either. Or, maybe, its cockeyed script reflects how the city kind of shrinks then - with only so many people up, coincidences happen and the eccentrics are a bigger part of the population.

Whatever the case, this is an impressively funny movie whose shifts straddle the line between the filmmakers warning the audience what they're in for and going off in completely unexpected directions. There's something about Griffin Dunne's lead that seems even more fitting years later, like he doesn't quite have what it takes to be a leading man even though he superficially has all the traits, and as such sort of wanders this place in between days, never able to bend it to his will or stake out a space the way that, say, Tom Hanks or Michael Keaton might have been able to. He's relatable, but we kind of don't want him to be.

The itinerant nature of the story means we wind up getting a lot less Rosanna Arquette as the girl he meets in a coffee shop and can't initially resist than one might hope, which is really a shame because she's got terrific screwball chops: More than anyone else here, she absolutely nails the overlap between conventionally charismatic and downright peculiar. There's a shot of her winking at Dunne that says she'll be more trouble than her weird roommate, but you're hooked anyway. Director Martin Scorsese and writer Joseph Minion set up what feels like it should be a great hangout flick/romantic comedy, but these two screw it up. There's just an inch too much distance between her seeming cool and him being square, and the city will eat you up.

I don't make lists, but I'd be tempted to put this in my top 5 Scorsese movies if I did (though there are plenty of large gaps in what I've seen). I genuinely love how all the dark, mean humor that gives his dramas a sting is out front and ready to play here, and kind of wish he'd do straight comedy more often.


Anselm

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 January 2024 in Landmark Kendall Square #3 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP)

I don't usually react to a film with envy; I know full well on what side of the creator/audience divide on which I sit and I know just enough about the sort of work that goes into them and how it's not my thing that I don't identify enough with that sort of emotion. And yet, I've spent enough vacations over the last few years toting 3D cameras around, trying to capture sculpture gardens, statues, and other solid artifacts in such a way that I can revisit them as something closer to objects rather than just images but seldom quite feeling like I've succeeded that from the first few moments of the film, I found myself wishing I could do that. I spent a lot of time reminding myself that director Wim Wenders, cinematographer Franz Lustig, and stereographer Sebastian Cramer were using an enormously sophisticated camera rig and actually had the ability to put it where they wanted.

So, yes, if you are considering attending this movie as a fan of stereo photography, do so; it's really fantastic work as Wenders finds ways to keep the composition interesting despite how this medium works best on the thing right in front of you, moves about without making the audience nauseous, and doesn't just capture the obvious relation of things in space, but does so while also allowing the audience to focus on the texture of works, maybe enhancing it a bit so that even subtle ones are noticeable.

Of course, it does not hurt that Wenders is capturing the art of Anselm Kiefer, a German artist who moved from painting into sculpture and installations in the 1980s. Kiefer has spent much of the past thirty-odd years working at scale, often wrestling with what it means to be a German artist when the culture's folkloric language was so thoroughly tainted by association with the Nazis, knowing that he will never be able to completely reclaim it because he will always have to confront that use. There is violence in many of his works, both from the twisted, peculiar imagery itself and as an acknowledgment that even works inspired by the natural world must be created in the sort of former factories and facilities used for industry, including weapons production.

Which is not to say that the film is dour. There is, often, a sense of play as he walks around his massive atelier outside Paris, a warehouse where massive canvases sti on dollies that are pushed around and allowed to drift to their eventual place. Kiefer uses a bicycle to traverse from one end to another, and creates pocket worlds that are sometimes dark, but always grand, and occasionally whimsical. The viewer may not realize that he or she has wanted to see how one creates art using a flamethrower before, but will likely be glad that they have; it is unique.

One thing Wenders and Kiefer do not do to any great extent is to make the audience feel they know or understand the artist. There are recreations of moments in his youth and childhood, but the young Kiefer is mostly shown creating his art; the child is shown absorbing art, working in a sketchbook, and seeming confused by a world that contains the potential for beauty alongside actual cruelty, but not things like hanging out with friends or the ordinary times with family. There are recordings of interviews where a younger Kiefer defends his more provocative creations in the way artists often do, with arch words that don't necessarily connect with people who haven't studied the discipline. What commentary comes from the present-day Kiefer refuses to reconsider his youth and perhaps suggests that he cannot. If one wants to understand how much of the artist is in the art, this is not the film to lay it bare. Fortunately, what Wenders has done is so meticulously abstracted that it feels like a bargain that has been struck between him, Kiefer, and the audience, trading the ability to examine the work and the process closely enough that one can perhaps infer something about the artist's mind without necessarily entering his personal existence as a man.

It's a very specific way to approach this sort of film, and one that perhaps wouldn't satisfy if the high-resolution 3D images did not feel like more than what this sort of film generally offers. It's a detailed, close-up look, but also reminds one that all art, from the sculpture to the film about the sculpture, is made with intent and direction, omitting as much as it includes.

Monster Fest 2016 04: The Hollow Point, My Father Die, Safe Neighborhood, etc.

And that is a wrap on my first trip to Monster Fest, and if it winds up being my only one, it will have much more to do with the time and place than anything about the festival itself - I had a great time, but given that Melbourne is crazy far away, the festival takes place on what’s Thanksgiving weekend in the United States, and I don’t want all of my vacation time being reserved for a rotating set of festivals versus seeing new places, it will probably be a few years before I go Down Under again, despite really just having the best time.

The absolute funniest thing about this trip? I was alerted to the festival’s existence by a letter from Kala Hier, who does publicity for a lot of genre films and festivals, figured it was a pretty great excuse for a vacation, and got down there only to discover that not only was Fantasia vet Kier-La Janisse the director and head programmer, but Nicole McControversy and Evrim Ersoy were also programming the festival and introducing films - the funny part being that they do the same for the Boston Underground Film Festival, even having their wedding on the Brattle stage before on film there. Both of them also found it pretty hilarious to travel all the way around the world only to run into people from home (well, former home, since they’ve relocated to London despite still coming back for BUFF), while also understanding that the whole deal where, at least at the Lido, settling into one’s seat before the show was supposed to start was just not how things are done in Australia, even if “arrive early” is always part of the instructions at every festival I’ve attended in North America.



As they were working, I generally only saw them introducing shows, but they did take a little bit of a break on Sunday afternoon to catch Mystery Radio Theatre doing a live performance of ”Maxie Diablo and the Funky Funky Sex Murders”. While I admit that I kind of go more for honest pastiche than this sort of spoof, it’s a good time, I also laughed quite a bit. They performed it in the Lido’s “Jazz Room”, a cozy little space used for small musical/spoken word performances, tucked away under the main screen (if I’ve got my geography right).



Hey, there’s Nicole, hosting the Q&A for Safe Neighborhood with producer Brett Thornquest and editor Julie-Anne DeRuvo! You wouldn’t necessarily know it to watch the film, but it was made in Australia, maybe with one or two exteriors in North America. Most of the cast was Australian as well, although even with most of them being fairly young, they managed American accents pretty well. It was funny; the guests talked about how Levi Miller was already doing enough in the way of starring roles that he was looking for something to serve as a change of pace.

(Somehow not mentioned: That he and Olivia DeJonge, who played the sitter his character has a crush on, played brother and sister in M. Night Shyamalan’s The Visit not long before making this movie. Weird!)

Thornquest did find the distribution situation kind of amusing - with this film set at Christmas and finished late enough that it was making the festival circuit toward the end of 2016, it would probably be late 2017 before it was hitting theaters, kind of a risky proposition for a film that is built around a bit of a twist; if it keeps playing festivals, I imagine any secrets might be well out there by the time it hits theaters. He also mentioned that, even before they started shooting, financiers and distributors were asking about sequel plans, which means I should probably groan about people asking that question at festival screenings much less. They are kicking around some ideas, although given that the cast is young and a sequel probably wouldn’t be greenlit until after this came out, they might have to be flexible.

Anyway, that let out and I decided to make that the end of my festival. There was one show left - the closing film was The Greasy Strangler followed by a “Greasy Gala”, and if I’d received a press pass, I probably would have felt obligated, but I never really got to the point of not being jet-lagged and I filed that movie as not-for-me when it was playing midnights at Fantasia. Instead, i stopped off at one of the surprising number of schnitzel places you can find around Melbourne, had some food, and then rested up to play tourist the next day.

And there was much playing tourist for the next week. I really can’t recommend Melbourne enough for folks who want a winter vacation, and Monster Fest for those who live in Australia and like horror & genre movies. I probably won’t be doing this specific trip again any time soon, but I certainly look forward to visiting Australia again!

The Hollow Point

* * (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2016 in Lido Cinemas #4 (Monster Fest 2016, DCP)

Because I work a full-time job in addition to writing movie reviews, covering a festival can mean the final reviews trickle out a month or two later, as reliant on notes taken during or right after the screening as first impressions, and does that ever reveal disposable genre movies like The Hollow Point for the minor works that they are. It just doesn’t make much of a long-term impression, although maybe that’s better than seeing the movie’s name and groaning.

It takes place in a border town that was a popular place to smuggle guns ten years ago; now the locals are smuggling bullets so that the narcos can keep using the guns. A drop gone wrong has a couple of transporters getting samples of their cargo, but it also puts Sheriff Leland (Ian McShane) out of commission. His replacement, Wallace (Patrick Wilson), is a younger, by-the-book type who grew up there and seems to have rubbed all his old neighbors the wrong way, though he’s still cordial with his ex Marla (Lynn Collins). The trail he follows will lead through a sleazy used car dealer (Jim Belushi) and an efficient killer who likes to disguise himself as a police officer (John Leguizamo), but can he follow that trail to its end without becoming the same sort of rule-breaking cop his predecessor was?

It’s not a perfect barometer, but you can tell what sort of a video-on-demand-destined movie you’re looking at by considering the cast. The ones with complete nobodies will likely have to be good in spite of the lack of resources, and maybe only one or two people on the set really have the talent to make it interesting (not always the case, but more often than not). The ones with someone who used to be a big star, they’re often kind of bizarre - that guy is going to run roughshod over an inexperienced director, or joined up because he saw something unusual/interesting enough to get attention and maybe climb back to theaters. There are the folks who are super-famous within a certain niche, dependable in terms of delivering something specific. And then there are the ones like this, chock full of people like Patrick Wilson, John Leguizamo, Lynn Collins, and Ian McShane - the people who seem capable enough, and have been in movies people like, but never broke through to the point where they’re the reason anyone but a select few eccentric fans buys a ticket. They star in movies like The Hollow Point, professionals putting in a solid shoot’s work, making the movie watchable in that the folks gathered around the TV aren’t going to mock it but not getting a chance to elevate the script into something more interesting with their performance.

Full review on EFC.

”Dummy”

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2016 in Lido Cinemas #4 (Monster Fest 2016, digital)

What director Riyana Kasmawan and writer Hannah Passmore are trying to get across with “Dummy” isn’t exactly complicated, and the way it does so will likely be fairly familiar for those who watch short films on a regular basis, but they do a pretty fair job of it anyway. You can predict the beats of this story of a kid who goes out and “befriends” a discarded mannequin without a whole lot of trouble, but the craft is quite nice.

The simplicity is perhaps the film’s greatest asset. It introduces a silent kid (Kieran Cochrane) left to his own devices when the brother mean to look after him (William Freeman) instead heads into the bedroom with his girlfriend, and then doesn’t bother with a whole lot of extra detail. He could be mute, he could just be introverted, but it doesn’t really matter; it makes him easy to ignore. What’s important is that what affection anybody in the film is shown is on the rough side, and that tendency is passed down as he plays with the mannequin. It’s not exactly chilling psychopathy - there’s probably a reading where his taking frustration out on an inanimate object is better than on people like others do - but the cycle is important: He decides to treat this thing as a person, and then he decides not to, and that’s the decision that matters.

Kasmawan puts it together nicely; the area around the brothers’ house is run-down enough that one can feel a bit of isolation and not be surprised stuff is just being tossed outside nearby, but not so much as to seem pitiful, and the play-acting is kind of cute and sad but not transcending. The arc of the story pushes forward steadily, hitting all the stops without short-changing or dragging. It doesn’t sound like much, but fifteen minutes doesn’t leave a lot of room for error, and this one manages to avoid stepping wrong.

My Father Die

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2016 in Lido Cinemas #4 (Monster Fest 2016, DCP)

The title of My Father Die may not be great in terms of English grammar, but in terms of describing the raw rage that drives the characters in this movie, it seems perfectly reasonable: The building blocks of what someone feels without all the formal niceties, ready for action (although I wonder if it’s close to how one might express an idea in American Sign Language). This movie gets overheated at times, but is committed enough to that temperature that it works out pretty well.

It’s pretty basic - when Asher Rawlings was a kid (Gabe White), he idolized his big brother Chester (Chester Rushing) despite being fond of the same girl, though both feared their father Ivan, and for good reason - the prologue ends with him beating Asher so violently as to cause permanent hearing loss, and as the film proper opens, it’s just Asher (Joe Anderson) and his mother (Frances Reagan James) living in a run-down shack in the rural South, and she isn’t of much use. When Sheriff BIllings (William Mark McCullough) comes by to say that Ivan (Gary Stretch) has been released from jail, Asher doesn’t think twice about what comes next: He’s going to get Ivan before he gets them, although he’ll make enough of a mess of the attempt that he’ll wind up pursued by a state detective (John Schneider) and wind up hiding out with Nana (Candace Smith), that girl he and Chester always had the crush on.

Writer/director Sean Brosnan does not spend much, if any, time worrying about the rightness of Asher’s goals; Ivan is a monster from the word go and there’s never much doubt that no good will come of waiting for him to do Asher’s family some harm before they fight back. This is not a great attitude to have in real life, but in this sort of movie, the lack of time wasted before getting to the spot where we were always going to wind up is kind of refreshing. The important thing is that Brosnan doesn’t let Asher feel entirely good about doing what he can to win a rigged game; though there’s never much doubt about what he needs to do from the start, he constantly seems to be asking himself if this is a step too far, especially when Nana and her son Chess (Jonathan Billions) are involved, or when the fact that he doesn’t exactly have the skills to execute his violent instincts rears its ugly head.

Full review on EFC.

”Do You See What I See?”

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2016 in Lido Cinemas #4 (Monster Fest 2016, digital)

Given that it’s mostly playing at genre festivals, it’s not too much of a spoiler to say that Justin McConnell’s & Serena Whitney’s short film “Do You See What I See?” takes a turn by the time its fifteen minutes play out, and to be completely honest, it doesn’t completely stick the landing. Even if that’s a sticking point for some viewers, they’ll probably be inclined to be generous, and not just because this one is set at the Christmas season. It’s good enough at being what it initially seems to be and clever enough in what it becomes that the two not quite fitting isn’t a huge deal.

What it appears to be, at first, is a snarky comedy with Caleigh Le Grand as Sloan, a wiseass at a twee Christmas party organized by her sister Jessica (Jorja Cadence) and her put-upon husband Jimmy (Adam Buller), who meets the one guy who isn’t a parody of married suburbanites (Emmanuel Whitney-Alexander), only to find out it’s a set-up before… Well, it played before a Christmas-themed slasher, you go ahead and guess. Still, it works; Whitney & McConnell give the characters some pretty funny lines which the cast, especially Le Grand and Whitney-Alexander, execute with cheery sarcasm. And even when they’re not quipping, they manage to capture how, while it’s clear that this group occasionally exasperates each other, they’re fond of one another. It’s not one of those movies where the only hint that the characters are friends/family is in the exposition.

McConnell and Whitney let the horror material enter the picture relatively slowly rather than just flipping a switch, which works out fairly well, and do allow things to get enjoyably messy along the way. This does mean that they don’t get a whole lot of time to play with the horror premise; even if it’s not quite a movie-ending twist, it still seems like a bit of a waste that they don’t get to do more. Indeed, walking out of the theater, I found myself wishing that this and the feature after it had their lengths switched; this seemed like a fun idea you could play with or dig into without it becoming a grind.

Safe Neighborhood

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2016 in Lido Cinemas #4 (Monster Fest 2016, DCP)

Talking about something being fun when it comes to horror movies probably strikes non-fans as bizarre even at first glance, with trying to do so in specific terms raising the ante to alarming, and trying to do so without spoiling the surprises marking the speaker as completely insane. So, pardon me if this review of Safe Neighborhood makes me sound nuts, because my feeling conflicted on it being fun or not extends right down to the premise at its very core.

It takes place shortly before Christmas, with Deandra (Virginia Madsen) and Robert Miller (Patrick Warburton) heading out for a friend’s Christmas party, leaving son Luke (Levi Miller) with Ashley (Olivia DeJonge). Given that Luke is 12, you’d think he’d bristle at this arrangement, but Ashley is super-cute and watches horror movies with him most nights, so he’s got a heck of a crush. Tonight, he tells his friend Garrett (Ed Oxenbould), he aims to do something about it, but that’s before they start seeing signs that there’s someone trying to break into the house.

With the burglars spending much of the movie just out of sight and only Ashley’s boyfriend Jeremy (Dacre Montgomery) having much of an unmasked role beyond the people have been mentioned, this a movie where a strong cast is a must, and the mostly-young group tends to deliver. Olivia DeJonge captures that Ashley is pretty bright and self-aware while still coming off as fairly inexperienced; for instance, the scene where Ashley tells Luke that, yeah, she’s still with Jeremy despite his flaws plays as her obviously being more mature than Luke but still figuring that sort of thing out himself, not a wise or condescending adult. Levi Miller, meanwhile, plays Luke as having way too much confidence, clearly clever enough to outwit a set of home invaders but obviously messed up about what lines people will cross and how folks think generally. The secondary folks are fun too; Darce Montgomery and Ed Oxenbould play off DeJonge and Miller naturally, gaining both laughs and making enough of an impression that the audience will feel some loss if they’re knocked off on the way. Patrick Warburton and Virginia Madsen make little more than cameos as the parents, but their scenes sing.

Full review on EFC.

This That Week In Tickets: 24 November 2014 - 30 November 2014

After Christmas, just getting to writing up the week of Thanksgiving. I think catching up will pick up speed from here, though.

Things started off heavy, with John Stewart's Rosewater, the sort of film whose intentions are the best and whose every moment is sincere but the final effect isn't quite what you'd hope for.

I think it was a crappy week, weather-wise - or more, it was expected to be one - because the time on the ticket for Women Who Flirt indicates I was working from home and thus able to get to an early show, because suddenly Chinese movies sell out and I wanted to get my write-up on the new Pang Ho-cheung movie in early. Fortunately, it was a fun one, a romantic comedy that occasionally strays toward the genre's worst instincts but winds up clever and offbeat enough to work.

Thursday was Thanksgiving, which meant a trip up to Maine and shuttling between a couple of places for dinner - starting at Gramma & Grampas, because not only was the power out at my mother's house, but a nearby transformer was still burning (Yarmouth, Maine got hit a bit harder than Cambridge, Massachusetts). After dinner there, we headed to my brother Dan's place, and I wound up hanging around to play with my nieces and even staying over. The girls wanted me to watch Elf, and as a semi-professional movie-watcher who had never seen it, I could not say no.

I got back, lazed around for a while, trying to drill down through unread graphic novels and such, and then headed over to the Harvard Film Archive for Lola on Saturday, not quite falling in love with Jacques Demy's first feature, but finding that I liked his work quite a bit.

On Sunday, I went for an early double feature: The 10am screening of Penguins of Madagascar was a fairly entertaining movie, but dead - not only was I the only person in the theater, they didn't even bother opening up the downstairs concession stand for it. Shame, it was fun, and comedies and kids' movies are usually better with a bit of a crowd. After that, it was down the C line for Foxcatcher at the Coolidge. Definitely a weird one, with Steve Carell working so hard to avoid his usual persona that he becomes almost alien. In a way, I think that's the point - the super-rich really aren't like you and me - and I hope that didn't make it too weird for people to get into, as it's really a good little movie.

Elf

* * * (out of four)
Seen 27 November 2014 in Dan's Living Room (hanging around, DVD)

Elf is apparently considered, by many, to be a holiday classic already - folks in the UK freaked when the station that usually airs the movie over the holidays didn't have it on the schedule - although in some ways that seems a little generous. Then again, I occasionally see the Elf on the Shelf referred to as a holiday tradition (mostly in its own advertising, admittedly), so why not? With as hectic as the holiday season can get and how heavy-handed holiday stories can be, this movie's gentle goofiness is kind of nice.

It works, I think, a little better than some of Will Ferrell's other movies where he's playing this sort of off-center character, in part because he actually has a place to fit in, rather than just being some nonsensical weirdo. He's broad and absurd and silly, but he comes from somewhere good, and that makes him much easier to swallow, especially as that silly world of his has a lot of charm in its Christmas-y details, most hitting just the right note with audiences of all ages without becoming cloyingly nostalgic.

I do have to admit, though, that I'd probably like it a little more if some of its jokes and supporting characters were a bit bigger. Sure, I remember being kind of excited about Zooey Deschanel when the movie came out, but this was right about when she went from an intriguing actress to a mannered persona, and there's just very little to her character aside looking nice in a costume to make her an interesting female lead. James Caan, Ed Asner, and Bob Newhart all feel like they should have great moments that they really never get. Daniel Tay - as Buddy's half-brother - actually proves to be Ferrell's best foil, with Peter Dinklage the one who gets to be explosively funny.

But, good cheer counts for a lot in a Christmas movie, and this turns out to be where Jon Favreau first demonstrates and ability to really merge the fantastical and mundane better than most, and that's an impressive discovery on its own.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 20 December - 24 December 2013

Going to do a short 5-day version, as I suspect that there are many more movies opening on Christmas than 27 December

• Some of what's opening has already started showing elsewhere in the country but is just hitting Boston now. Chief among that set is American Hustle, the new one from David O. Russell that reunites him with the stars of his last movie (Bradley Cooper & Jennifer Lawrence) but sticks them in an ensemble with Christian Bale, Amy Adams, and Jeremy Renner in a story about con men, feds, mafiosi, and a politician in 1970s New Jersey. It's at Somerville, Kendall Square, Boston Common, Fenway, and the SuperLux.
  
  The other major opening is Walking with Dinosaurs: The 3D Movie, which appears to take the great visual effects of the documentary-style series and basically remake The Land Before Time. As much as I'm in favor of big-screen 3D dinosaurs, this looks pretty bad. It's at Apple, Boston Common, and probably Fenway as well (they've been showing the preview and a bumper incessantly for the past couple of months).
  
  Fenway and the SuperLux also get the expanding Saving Mr. Banks; it's already been at Boston Common and Kendall Square for a week. And while the Belmont Studio has had it on their website, the instead pick up Philomena.
• The other big expansion is Inside Llewyn Davis, the new and excellent film from the Coen Brothers with Oscar Isaac as a folk musician in early-1960s New York for whom everything goes wrong, although that is in large part due to his own actions. It (mostly) gets the big screen at The Coolidge, as well as playing Kendall Square and Boston Common.
  
  The Coolidge also picks up The Punk Singer for nightly 9:50pm shows in the Goldscreen after a very successful run at the Brattle. The midnight movie this weekend is the seasonally-appropriate The Nightmare Before Christmas, with the seasonally-appropriate Tim Burton/Harry Selick collaboration playing on 35mm. If you're looking for a somewhat gentler bit of Christmas fare, The Muppet Christmas Carol will play Saturday at 10:30am.
• It's also Christmas at The Brattle Theatre, which will have the annual screenings of It's a Wonderful Life during the day and early evening from Friday to Monday. The later showtime (9:45pm Friday/Monday, 9:30pm Saturday/Sunday) are for White Reindeer, an offbeat selection from this year's Boston Underground Film Festival about a woman who loves Christmas, only to lose her husband and befriend his mistress during this yule season. Both are pretty good. No movies will be playing Tuesday, but the box office will be open for gift card sales.
• iMovieCafe opens the latest entry in one of India's biggest action franchises, Dhoom 3. This one apparently involves taking a corrupt circus down from the inside, and stars Aamir Khan, Katrina Kaif, Abhishek Bachchan, Uday Chopra, and Jackie Shroff. That's in Hindi with English subtitles; they've also go Biriyani if you speak Tamil
• The Harvard Film Archive finishes the October-to-December Calendar with the rest ofThe Bodies and Souls of Robert Rossen: The Brave Bulls (Friday 7pm, 16mm); The Strange Love of Martha Ivers (Friday 9:15pm, 35mm); Alexander the Great (Sunday 7pm, 35mm); and They Came to Cordura (Monday 7pm, 35mm). They also pull out their 35mm print of The Wicker Man, which served as the template for the current restoration and Final Cut, at 9pm on Saturday. And they also celebrate Christmas in their own way, with "A Kuchar Christmas", featuring four short films by George Kuchar, at 7pm Saturday (all digital), and a free screening at 3pm Sunday of ninety minutes of surprise holiday material from the Archive.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has yet more Films of François Truffaut: Bed and Board (Friday), Day for Night (Friday), The Story of Adele H. (Friday), Small Change (Saturday), The Man Who Loved Women (Saturday), and The Green Room (Saturday & Sunday). Frederick Wiseman's At Berkeley will still devour an entire Sunday afternoon.
• The ICA has a special early screening of Mandela: Long Walk to Freedom, starring Idris Elba and Naomie Harris as Nelson & Winnie Mandela on Friday night. It's pricey ($65+), but that ticket includes a pre-screening reception (and post-filmQ&A) with producer Anant Singh, anti-Apartheid activist Ahmed Kathrada, and actor Riaad Moosa (who plays Kathrada in the film).

My plans... There's a couple of things I'm still tempted to see here (Zulu and The Immigrant, although that would involve not having a repeat of tonight, where by the time I've gone through the million or so movie listings in Paris (seriously, there are theaters everywhere and they show some impressively random things!), I've missed the showtime. Once I'm back in Boston, I'm thinking The Hobbit and maybe American Hustle. Then again, I have done one item's worth of Christmas shopping for one niece, so I may have to spend my time on that!

Fantasia in December: Sint (aka Saint aka Saint Nick)

Every year, I mean to write up reviews of Fantasia screeners I missed; every year, I fall short. There's also a tradition of "Fantasia in December/January - a great way to make the long wait between them seem shorter!" This year, I swear it's going to happen, not just because there have been a couple of cases where I've found good hooks (Ocean Heaven paired semi-logically with 1911; Sint is a good anti-Christmas movie), but because several of them were movies that I genuinely wanted to see but couldn't make fit, as opposed to the stuff that was kind of interesting but easily sacrificed.

Plus, my DVR is unusually empty right now. So that means Fantasia screeners, the Oscilloscope and Film Movement subscriptions, and everything I've purchased in the past few years may get some attention. Stay tuned!

Sint (aka Saint aka Saint Nick)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 December 2011 in Jay's Living Room (Fantasia Screeners)

Believe it or not, two movies came out in Europe last year where the real Santa Claus was a murderous supernatural monster. Finland's Rare Exports zipped through the festival circuit and appeared in the U.S. at the same time it was released in its native land; the Netherlands' Sint took a more conventional path, waiting to be picked up for distribution and then spending a couple months on demand before being released on video as "Saint Nick". It's not bad at all for a holiday slasher for those who could use a break from non-stop good cheer this Christmas.

In the Netherlands, the traditional day of gift-giving is December 5th, on the eve of the feast of Saint Niklas. However, as we see in the prologue, the story of Sinterklass has a bloodier origin than is generally known, and as a result, every time there is a full moon on that date, the vicious Niklas and his "Black Peters" return to wreak havok on Amsterdam. In 2010, high school students Frank (Egbert Jan Weeber), Sophie (Escha Tanihatu), Lisa (Caro Lenssen), Hanco (Joey van der Velden), and Sander (Jim Deddes) are planning on going about their business without paying much mind to that urban legend, but Goert (Bert Luppes), a detective who saw first-hand what Niklas is capable of on his last visit in 1968, is preparing for war.

Though it goes off in a couple other directions at times, Sint is at its heart a teen slasher movie, and rest assured, Amsterdam-South's high school will be down a few students by the time class is back in session. It's almost amiable as such things go, with the teenagers being the expected horndogs screwing around behind each others' backs, but not really being malicious or spiteful about it. They are, for the most part, likable enough but not anybody the audience is going to get so attached to that audiences find their being hacked to pieces tragedies rather than a way to give them the gore they paid for.

Full review at EFC.