Independent Film Festival Boston 2018.05: Nothing Is Truer Than Truth, We The Animals, The Third Murder, and Beast

It would have been a pretty easy day to just plop down at one venue, arriving at the Brattle by 1pm and getting back on the Red Line at ten-thirty or so, but I'm not going to lie: I had no interest in seeing the third movie about the Grey Gardens sisters. Haven't seen that, haven't seen the one made from its deleted footage, not going to see this one built out of a documentary that never came together but inspired the later one. I will own that gap in my canonical film knowledge.

So what did I catch?



Well, Nothing Is Truer than Truth, which had a bunch of . Left to right, we have Shakespeare/Oxford Theory expert Alex McNeil, editor Zimo "Mike" Huang (I think I heard them call him Mike), post-production supervisor Brianna Costa (please correct; my notes stink), producer Vicki Oleskey, director Cheryl Eagan-Donovan, and Erin Trahan, leading the Q&A.

Not exactly the movie I was expecting; not knowing much about alternative-authorship theories where Shakespeare is concerned, I somehow read the synopsis and thought it would be something that was a little bit more background on the conventional than "Shakespeare wasn't Shakespeare". Overall, a pretty likable group, but like the science doc the previous day, it was a crowd of people who were already pretty familiar with the material, so it was a very friendly Q&A.

The rest of the day was stuff that had distribution and no guests, so it was show up, watch, move on. It was fun to connect with a bunch of folks I don't see very often at The Third Murder, although kind of ironic, given what I wound up writing about it - it's a decent movie that will get a bit of a release because Hirokazu Kore-eda has become a sort of a brand name in the art-house world, so it shows up here despite the Japanese movie industry's utter indifference in exporting anything. These friends are Kore-eda fans and have been for some time, so that's the film in the festival that they make for while sort of shrugging shoulders as I talk about how Yoshihiro Nakamura films only showing up at genre festivals if the folks attending are lucky.

Ah, well. Hopefully my choice to see Beast rather than Hot Summer Nights won't backfire on me, since the first had a quick release and the second may or may not come and go while I'm at Fantasia, especially since that's the one I really wanted to see more (although Jessie Buckley is pretty great in Beast).

Nothing Is Truer than Truth

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2018 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston, DCP)

Filmmaker Cheryl Eagan-Donovan presents an interesting argument for Edward de Vere as the true author of the plays and poetry of William Shakespeare in Nothing Is Truer than Truth, enough that the viewer cannot necessarily dismiss it completely out of hand. The trouble is, an interesting case is not enough, especially on this subject: When the simplest explanation is as plain as "the plays of William Shakespeare were written by William Shakespeare", the case against must be compelling or overwhelming, and that is not the case here.

De Vere is an intriguing subject even without that hypothesis. The 17th Earl of Oxford - that he was the true author of the works is thus called "The Oxfordian Theory" - he grew up an only child, was a popular courtier, and traveled extensively in Europe, spending a particular amount of time in Venice. He had a good literary reputation but a tumultuous personal life, even beyond being a gambler and a spendthrift who would fritter away his entire inheritance.

His European travels are the primary evidence offered as to his authorship; not only were many of Shakespeare's plays set in Venice and the other principalities through which de Vere traveled, but Eagan-Donovan notes that there was someone very much akin to Shylock of The Merchant of Venice in said city at the time, as well as spotting architectural details that would seem more likely to show up in the work of someone who had seen them first-hand than someone who had not. It's fun historical tourism and good background whether you're able to buy into the Oxfordian Theory or not. The interviews supporting it are decent, if rough - Mark Rylance kind of looks like the ambushed him on the way to pick up his paycheck at the theater, while Derek Jacobi is charming and, if not convincing, seemingly convinced. Many of the less-famous people are harder reads, not quite having the gravitas to elevate the material above being a fringe theory - especially toward the end, when they are parsing epitaphs on gravestones for clues as to who is really buried in which tomb, sounding like very erudite conspiracy nuts.

Full review on EFC

We the Animals

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2018 in Somerville Theatre #4 (Independent Film Festival Boston, DCP)

Though coming-of-age stories often seek to tap into some sort of universal sort of experience, the best ones are often the most specific, and We the Animals is very specific indeed. It's an intriguing, well-observed story of growing up different in just about every way, heightening how very alone a kid can find himself feeling.

It's easy for a Puerto Rican family to feel a little isolated in Utica, New York; their small house is on the outskirts, and as summer vacation is starting, they aren't mixing much with their non-Latino neighbors. Inside that little house, Manny (Isaiah Kristian), Joel (Josiah Gabriel), and Jonah (Evan Rosado) share a bed, though Joel will often retreat underneath when the other two are asleep, drawing constantly even though he doesn't have blank paper to work with. Joel's the baby, with his mother (Sheila Vand) telling him not to grow up. It's a common refrain, but Manny and Joel are becoming more like their father (Raúl Castillo) every day, and as Ma's "dentist emergency" after upsetting Paps on a family outing to a nearby swimming hole suggests, that's not always a positive.

The filmmakers spend just enough of the movie showing the brothers as a single unit to get the audience to think of them that way for a bit; Jonah may be the source of the narration and have his own hobby separate from the others, but the three always in such close proximity, often shirtless in the heat so that logos or designs don't become things a viewer can hook character on. This doesn't last all that long, but it does give one a sense of Jonah beginning to break away, and how attitudes can be passed on through osmosis: Jonah seldom articulates his differences, and Paps never instructs Manny and Joel. Director Jeremiah Zagar and co-writer Daniel Kitrosser this sort of machismo as an illness that seems to jump from father to son, with Jonah's mother trying to inculate him with the imperfect means at her disposal, hoping he's got a tolerance.

Full review on EFC

Sandome no satsujin (The Third Murder)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2018 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston, DCP)

It's kind of amusing that this sort of movie - a crime thriller that's more complicated than the plot of an hour-long TV show, but not necessarily by that much - is often treated as less impressive or difficult than the less plot-driven movies that filmmaker Hirokazu Kore-eda usually makes, because he stumbles here. This doesn't mean that the emperor has no clothes and genre work actually more difficult than closely-observed, subtle family drama, just that it's a different skill set, and a guy who is good at the sort of movies that regularly impress critics is not necessarily going to elevate other material when he gives it a try.

The case seems open and shut enough: Suspect Misumi (Koji Yakusho) has confessed to the murder and burning the body. The trouble is, the details of his story keep changing, and former judge Daisuke Settsu (Kotaro Yoshida), who had signed up to handle the plea agreement when it looked simple, wants his partner Shigemori (Masaharu Fukuyama) to take a closer look. As he does, Shigemori starts to realize that the crime has connections to a case his father (Isao Hashizume) tried as a judge in Hokkaido decades ago.

There are more details, of course, with the victim not being particularly much missed and something suspicious about his wife and daughter. It's not that intricate, though, especially to seasoned mystery fans. Kore-eda often seems to fall behind his relatively simple mystery plot, having Shigemori and his assistants spend time pondering and staring right past things the audience sees relatively clearly. The effect is oftne to draw out a story that is never that complicated so that it feels large enough to be presented with an ambiguity that isn't anything that his audience hasn't seen before.

Full review on EFC

Beast

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2018 in the Brattle Theatre (Independent Film Festival Boston, DCP)

Beast is the sort of movie that figures it can let a serial killer running loose in the community sort of simmer in the background, confident that the psychological drama it's got running up front is more interesting. That's true enough for a while, as the audience gets to know its young woman with an overbearing family and her own dark side, but eventually it's got to start pulling things together, and it's all too clear that neither the crime wave nor boyfriend Pascal is nearly as interesting as Moll is.

That would be Moll Henderson (Jessie Buckley), a nice-enough young woman who helps look after her ailing father between shifts as a tour-bus guide, but who nevertheless walks out of her own birthday party to go dancing. You can't really blame her; it is the sort of party that her domineering mother Hilary (Geraldine James) throws as a social event and that favored sister Polly (Shannon Tarbet) kind of hijacks with her own announcement anyway. Moll meets one guy in the club but likes him less by the time the sun comes up and he's starting to get insistent, but their paths fortunately cross with Pascal Renouf (Johnny Flynn), out poaching and not averse to using his rifle to scare a guy off. Pascal seems nice enough too, if a bit rougher on the edges, but the cop (Trystan Gravelle) investigating the rape and murder of a number of teenage girls has a thing for Moll, and maybe that's why he's looking at Pascal's criminal record and whereabouts the night of that party (when another girl disappeared) fairly closely.

One may initially read Moll as a teenager, and I wonder if that's deliberate on the part of writer/director Michael Pearce. That first impression of her as limited or immature may have holes punched in it early, but first impressions can be hard to shake, so that even later on, as the audience realizes that there is likely more to Moll than first let on, what she's actually capable of can still surprise a bit, even if Pearce has been giving the audience a window into her darker thoughts and the occasional sharp, defiant line. Moll matures by following through on impulsiveness.

Full review on EFC

This Week In Tickets: 13 December 2015 - 19 December 2015

End of the year, six days of vacation left, time to see movies, buy Christmas presents, and unpack the apartment!

Okay, one-and-a-half or of three isn't bad. At this rate I'll have things unpacked the day I move out (hopefully many years from now).

Given a week off like this, I'm always kind of tempted to see how many days in a row I can use MoviePass with its once per 24 hours rule (as opposed to the old one a day one) before rating by skipping a day or going to a non-participating theater. Nearly got four this week, but for a sellout.

Sunday actually was day two of a streak, and the movie of the night was the excellent Spotlight, which figures to be one of the year's big awards contenders with its quiet, terrific excellence. I'm a little unsure of how far it has expanded nationally - it's playing Boston like a wide-release, but we take our local interest seriously.

The last day of that streak was Monday with Chi-Raq, which is just about the damnedest thing I've seen on a multiplex screen for some time. It was distributed/produced by Amazon Studios, as was the movie I reset the streak with by going to a non-MP theater, the new adaptation of Macbeth. I'm not sure whether all of Amazon's films are going to have rhyming dialogue, but I hope they do. It's a bold move for an e-commerce company.

The next streak, then, would start Wednesday with The Secret in Their Eyes, which was on its last days and not really worthy of its nifty cast. It continued on Thursday with The Night Before, which was pretty close to being on its last legs as well, but gets far more out of its cast. Then on Friday, I caught the first of two Chinese movies this weekend, Surprise: Journey to the West, although the second (Mojin - The Lost Legend) was sold out on Saturday, so I turned back around and hit the sack.

Oh, and Friday afternoon - Star Wars: The Force Awakens! Like just about everybody, I was pretty excited, although I was a bit worried about the guy in the middle of Fenway's main room that was applauding everything in the preshow - was he going to be one of those jerks who had to make it about him? Fortunately, that didn't wind up being the case.

Surprising trailer group, too - no Captain America or Star Trek, although my eyes did perk right up on seeing the one for Kubo and the Two Strings, because new animation for Laika is always worth catching. And then the movie - well, it was pretty darn good, wasn't it?

Spotlight

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 13 December 2015 in Somerville Theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)

Spotlight is not the sort of movie that is generally described as relentless, but what makes it great is that its makers are, in fact, unceasing and focused on their goal of depicting how a group of Boston Globe reporters brought the way that pedophile priests were shuffled to different parishes to avoid scandal despite the structures which allowed it to stay relatively unnoticed for so long. It's two hours or so of people working a case that seldom involves actual danger but does require a great deal of thoroughness, questioning assumptions, and accepting ugly truths. There's not a scene in it that doesn't either move the story (in both applicable senses) forward or demonstrate what the team is up against.

It's an often-quiet efficiency, with director Tom McCarthy and his co-writer Josh Singer not only seldom having his characters raise their voices but avoiding tricky "gotcha" exchanges, and it's amazing how, despite that, the process being shown is still absorbing. Some credit for that probably goes to editor Tom McArdle as well, because the entire film is a series of very precise choices in how to show that a process is painstaking without making the depiction boring, repeating a point just enough for effect but not belaboring it, and always finding time for every member of an ensemble without making any even temporarily feel like dead weight.

As to the ensemble, you're generally doing pretty good when Mark Ruffalo feels like the potential weak link. He isn't (as there isn't one); he's just playing the guy whose passion seems to push him a bit toward eccentricity. He's one of a number of great character actors, with my personal favorite being Michael Keaton as the head of the Spotlight team; his exacting depiction of how Walter "Robby" Robinson goes from reluctant to committed to dedicated is perfect and enhanced rather than explained by something he says toward the end. There are so many other good folks there, though - John Slattery as the guy who is practical enough to allow the others some idealism, Liev Schreiber as the new editor who quietly gives them the push they need, and even an uncredited Richard Jenkins as an informative voice on the phone.

My only very minor beef - showing the giant AOL billboard by Globe headquarters got a big laugh, but it's not like print has pushed the net back at all, let alone enough for something akin to gloating. Heck, isn't the Globe kind of treading water in part because it has adapted to the internet better than many other papers? But, hey, if that's all you can complain about, the movie is doing pretty well.

Chi-Raq

* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 December 2015 at AMC Boston Common #3 (first-run, DCP)

Every once in a while, I'll be watching a movie, think something clever, and then have the clever sucked out when when that thing is just stated plainly. In this case, it's thinking that it would be neat to see Teyonah Parris in something where she gets to be full-on Pam Grier, only to have Samuel L. Jackson's chorus/narrator name-drop Coffy and Foxy Brown in describing her character a few minutes later. Still hope it happens, though; she would crush that.

She's pretty terrific here, especially given that this is as odd as anything Spike Lee has been doing in recent years, meaning her dialogue (like everybody's, mostly) is in rhyme because Lee is transposing a satirical play by ancient Greek dramatist Aristophanes to present-day Chicago, whose murder rate rivals the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She's charismatic as heck, though, as Lysistrata, a gang-banger's girl who, shaken by the sight of an eight-year-old girl gunned down in the street, teams with her boyfriend's rivals lady to start a movement to deny men sex until the fighting stops (with the delightfully tacky motto "no peace, no pussy!"). She occasionally wavers, but so does most everybody in the cast - including Wesley Snipes, John Cusack, Jennifer Hudson, and Nick Cannon - at some point, although it's less their failure than Lee being kind of all over the place with his ideas.

That's no bad thing; Lee may swerve from strange comedy to forthright preaching, but both work because they come from the heart, and if they are fantasies, they are so plaintively stated that you can't exactly consider him delusional for positing some near-fantastical situations. The film can also be too eccentric for its own good at times, leaving the viewer wondering if Lee is trying to entertain, educate, or show off, but when it's on, it's devastatingly funny and heartfelt.

Macbeth (2015)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 15 December 2015 at Landmark Kendall Square #7 (first-run, DCP)

Though I can't recite it from memory or anything, Macbeth is probably the bit of Shakespeare that has lodged itself in my head the most firmly ever since high school, and that's kind of an issue when watching director Justin Kurzel's new film version. The rhythms of it seem wrong, from the new prologue to the finale, and while I suspect that this might go down better going into the film with a little more idea of what to expect, that may defeat the point, if the idea is that a film about treachery and betrayal should not feel comfortable and familiar. The trouble is that the filmmakers often seem limited in the ways that they can shake things up, leaving the result kind of a mess.

There aren't necessarily a lot of rules in adapting Shakespeare, but "no adding lines" is something most seem to agree on, and there's logic to it - getting those fairly verbose plays down to two hours or so means cutting lines, and it's a bit of hubris to think that effectively exchanging his words for one's own will be an upgrade. But Kurzel and the screenwriters have things they want to add, which means that the new scenes are silent, in the case of the funeral for Macbeth's stillborn child that opens the film, or full of wordless yelling like the extended combat scenes a bit later. Understand, a lot of this stuff is gorgeous, with great dramatic visuals, but it often creates the feeling of an art-house project inspired by Macbeth that includes the most famous lines and speeches as much out of obligation as anything else.

As a result, Michael Fassbender's best moment in the title role comes not from delivering the dialogue, but when he gives the audience a look that suggests both madness and the fierceness as a warrior that originally gained him the king's notice, and maybe just a bit of the greed that being told he has a destiny has inspired in him. It's something that would have been nice to see more often on Marion Cotillard's Lady Macbeth, really, although it's amazing that her French accent makes her a bit easier to comprehend at times than the burrs coming out of everyone else. There are still some nifty performances, though, notably Paddy Considine as Banquo and David Thewlis as Malcolm, although Sean Harris's Macduff never seizes the screen the way he should.

In some ways, there's little worse than a disappointing film; given the cast and favorite material, I was expecting greatness from this one but instead got something that was too frequently boring. Fortunately, it's not like this being less than it could will stop people from staffing the Scottish Play again, and the next one could very well make better on the promises of its adaptation.

The Secret in Their Eyes (2015)

* * (out of four)
Seen 16 December 2015 in AMC Assembly Row #10 (first-run, DCP)

I don't think I caught the original film that this one was adapted from, but it's got to be a lot better than this. Otherwise, you'd probably just grab the idea that was worth preserving, rather than doing an actual adaptation that's close enough to acknowledge the original. Maybe that would have worked better, because even as someone who doesn't really believe that Hollywood isn't capable of the type of subtlety one finds in foreign films, this one needs an emotional touch that screenwriter/director Billy Ray just can't find.

Even without that, though, the biggest problem is that Ray spends two and a quarter hours having his characters seemingly accomplish nothing along two narrative tracks. We know that the past is mostly going to be a dead-end for FBI agent Ray (Chiwetel Ejiofor) searching for the man who murdered the daughter of his partner Jess (Julia Roberts) - heck, we know his attraction to new prosecutor Claire (Nicole Kidman) is going to come to nothing - but the lack of movement in the present is just as maddening. Is not even interesting things holding up progress, but a lot of arguments over jurisdiction and turf. There is a moral quandry that offers some interest, but not nearly enough.

Maybe a little less time spent spinning wheels would help the final scenes (which include a bit of redundancy themselves) do more to salvage the film, because watching them certainly shows the audience just why everything before could be worth it. It's an emotional revelation that should resonate for all the main characters who have been stagnant since the murder, but only goes so far. It does at least serve as a sort of punctuation for Jess, reminding us that Julia Roberts has been fantastic for the entire movie, including the moments when she seems to clash too much with the other characters' reserve. It feels too much like one could cut 90 minutes out of the two hours leading up to that point, but at least that leaves the audience feeling like at least a little bit of their ticket money was put to good use.

The Night Before

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 December 2015 in Somerville Theatre #4 (first-run, DCP)

Michael Shannon should try to get cast in more movies starting Joseph Gordon-Levitt. This and Premium Rush aren't exactly a large sample, but he gives borderline-bizarre performances in each that help rescue them from potential blandness. The world needs more great actors willing to embrace the weird like Shannon does.

Even without Shannon, The Night Before would not really be bland, although it would, perhaps, be even closer to being predictable in its mix of irreverence and sentimentality. That's what this group does - costars Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Seth Rogen also worked with director Jonathan Levine on 50/50, and while it's worth noting that this film could perhaps use having its underlying angst a little closer to the surface (the characters played by Gordon-Levitt, Rogen, and Anthony Mackie spend Christmas together because the first lost his parents on that holiday when they were just out of high school) rather than reducing their issues to fairly generic, easily-confronted situations, its genial nature works well. They've got jokes, most of those jokes are pretty funny, and there is something very refreshing in how most of them play out in the way they would among people who genuinely like each other rather than requiring some undercurrent of paranoia or disdain. It's not always the funniest or most original material that these guys have ever had, but it's seldom off-putting.

That's probably calculated to an extent; the filmmakers wanted a movie that was basically sweet but didn't totally neuter the characters. They had a little more room to work with, but manage just enough moments of genuine oddity to nudge it above expectations.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

* * * 1/2 (out of four)
Seen 18 December 2015 in Regal Fenway #13 (first-run, RealD 3D DCP/RPX)

To say that the first half of Star Wars: The Force Awakens is better than the second is not to say that the latter is exactly disappointing, but to recognize that reinvention is the exciting part of giving a long-running concept a new chapter, even if back-to-basics is part of the mission statement. When new caretaker J.J. Abrams is reconstructing Star Wars for its third generation of fans with full consideration that 2015 demands something a bit different from 1977 (or even 1999), there's an excitement that just can't be equaled by recreating the bits that worked in the previous films, although even that is done well enough that the film is still a blast all the way to the end.

It starts in semi-familiar territory, with hotshot Resistance pilot Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) recovering secret data - in this case, the location of vanished Jedi Knight Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) - which he must entrust to his droid BB-8 when his rendezvous on desert planet Jakku draws the attention of the First Order, the remnants of the Galactic Empire that still controls much of local space. During this attack, one Stormtrooper (John Boyega), despite practically being conditioned to be the Order's unthinking hand practically since birth, finds himself horrified by the atrocities General Hux (Domnhall Gleeson) and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), heir apparent to Darth Vader, eagerly commit. Fortunately, BB-8 soon crosses paths with Rey (Daisy Ridley), who has been scavenging the wreckage of crashed spaceships for her entire young life but is loath to sell a little droid with such a friendly disposition for scrap.

As the relative lack of familiar names in that description indicate, Abrams is opting to start fairly fresh even if certain elements recur, creating a version of Star Wars that belongs more to kids the age of my nine-year-old niece than those of us who have been rewarding these movies for nearly forty years. The "galaxy far, far away" they are introduced to is more intense in some ways than that of previous iterations - where our desert planets were corrupt backwaters, Rey's expeditions into the wreckage of a massive space battle imply that the previous generation's adventure had devastating effects and did not lead to the decisive victory of good over evil that was always implied, a point driven home by the film's first big battle scene, which dramatically introduces two important characters.

First up is that Stormtrooper, whom Abrams quickly singles out by having a comrade's blood smeared on his pristine white armor (recall that the original trilogy was fairly bloodless by design, with even severed limbs not bleeding much because lightsabers would instantly cauterize the wound). He may be intended to be a faceless member of a horde, but even before the helmet comes off, we're getting a sense of him, and once he gets a name ("Finn") instead of an alphanumeric designation, actor John Boyega is creating one of the best characters of the series. Finn suggests that being a decent human being is both a person's natural state and a powerful act of rebellion, and Boyega is a joy to watch as he and the film never lose sight of that. The personality that emerges is refreshingly free of the ignorance that usually defines this sort of character, but still lets Boyega create nifty moments of delight as Finn discovers actual friendship and anguish as he learns that having principles of his own means uncomfortable inner conflicts.

Full review at EFC.

Boston Sci-fi Film Festival Day 05: The Tragedy of MacBeth, Echo Drive

Not a lot of time to post this before heading off to the fest's main event (the Marathon), but then, not a whole lot of great things to say about "robot day" at the festival. There's interesting ambition on display in both of these movies, but they both fall short for one reason or another, whether it be a lack of resources or just not having the really solid game plan they need. Tragedy of MacBeth director Dan Gallagher was there, and even if I don't exactly love the movie he made, I am impressed with the ambition and good intentions there.

The Tragedy of MacBeth

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2014 in the Somerville Theartre micro-cinema (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, video)

When introducing and discussing the movie, director Dan Gallagher mentioned that he did this movie to serve as an educational aid, with subtitles "translating" the play into modern, unadorned English. Not a bad motivation, I guess, although I must admit that I would prefer "I did MacBeth with CGI robots because that would be awesome!" Granted, I say this as someone who never needed something external to make Shakespeare interesting, although I have loved when people played with the Bard's works. Focusing on how it's good for you seems like it would suck the actual joy out of plays meant, first and foremost, to be entertaining.

And while I think this version does that for a while, I think it's less as a result of misguided intentions than lacking resources. Gallagher is one of three people doing every voice in the cast of characters, although the real shame is that they often sound like they could be speech synthesizers, so metronomically are the lines delivered. I had a hard time keeping from nodding off midway through because that delivery combined with some pretty cheap-looking animation makes it hard to get attached to characters.

The sad part is, the last act or so gives an idea of just how much fun this could be, even if it does lean heavily on display screens, references to other material, and the like. When MacDuff comes after MacBeth with all his fury, and the exiled princes attack, you get a glimpse of the great space opera that it could have been, especially if I'd had the chance to use the world "laser-claymore" in the review.

Echo Drive

* * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2014 in the Somerville Theartre micro-cinema (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

The festival where I saw Echo Drive had a number of problems getting the sound right at the start of many presentations, so it's entirely possible that I missed some bit of exposition in those opening seconds that causes the movie to really come together and make perfect sense. I'm guessing not, though, which means that even for something that's as played out as misguided robot security, this doesn't really clear a low bar.

The extra security is added after the house day-trader Mike (Dane Bowman) and his family - wife Karen (Jordan Savage), daughter Jessica (Claire Gordon-Harper), and son Jake (Aaron Turgeon) - live in suffers a break-in. Since it's the model home for a new gated community being developed by a man with his fingers in a number of things, this Mr. Aldridge (Johnnie Lyne-Pirkis) beefs up security by adding a robotic security guard, "Dell" (Johnathan Hurley). But, as seems to be the case with most of those things, Dell's programming does not include respecting boundaries, and his directives do not always necessarily match up to the family's interests.

There's some brief talk about Dell being repurposed, which means that androids are apparently not an entirely new thing in Echo Drive's world, although he seems to be an unfinished enough product that giving him a gun that fires actual bullets seems highly irresponsible (you can tell he's an early model, because there are hydraulic noises dubbed onto the soundtrack when he moves and a filter applied to Johnathan Hurley's voices). It's a bit of logical inconsistency that hurts the movie in ways that are not necessarily obvious - does it really matter whether stuff happens because Dell isn't out of beta or because of a fluke with an established product? - but which robs the story of any chance of being about anything other than a "don't trust machines/rich people with their own agenda" idea that is worn straight through.

Full review at EFC

[Goliyon Ki Rasleela] Ram-Leela

Another day, another visit to a romance a bit outside my usual comfort zone. This time, it's a Hindi-language film that's probably one of the most straightforward Bollywood films I've ever gone to. Not that it's necessarily conventional by indian standards, but I typically see the stuff that overlaps genre film territory, so a few song-and-dance numbers will typically be replaced with action sequences. So, it's a bit more of a straight musical than usual, although there is still a fair amount of Bollywood anything-goes atmosphere to it.

One thing I'm starting to wonder as I see more Indian movies is whether they're suffering much for being shown without an intermission at most American theaters. The last few I've seen (Krrish 3, Chennai Express, this) have spots where the break is marked, but just plow through, and that's usually where the biggest shift in the movie's tone happens. Ram-Leela, in particular, seems to become a very different movie in the second half, and I'm starting to wonder if not treating these movies as a sort of mini-double-feature is doing them a bit of a disservice. Sometimes movies have intermissions just to give the audience a chance to stretch their legs or hit the restroom, but there's value in having a bit of a mental reset, too - thinking of that point of the movie not just as middle, but end and beginning as well.

I'm also finding myself fairly fond of this movies lead actress Deepika Padukone. As much as India will throw ridiculously pretty stars at one without much in the way of pause, Padukone seems to have built a more impish screen persona than others, like her characters enjoy stirring things up as opposed to being sort of blandly Strong And Independent. This is probably the best movie I've seen her in, and her Juliet-proxy is a favorite.

As I finished the review up, I recalled that the eFilmCritic/Hollywood Bitch-Slap message boards had an occasional poster whose entire deal seemed to be that he loved West Side Story, and I idly wondered what that guy would think of this movie. As much as I got a little flack for noting the Krrish movies' releases near Superman pictures and the way they borrowed from American superheroes, you've got to admit that redoing Romeo and Juliet as a musical that reflects a rivalry between two gangs is not exactly a new idea.


Oh, one further aside: Indian films are so eager enough to not cause offense that they'll go a little nutty with the disclaimers (including on-screen warnings at any sight of tobacco smoke), a few of which passed by fairly quickly here. One discussed the name change ("Ram-Leela" alone was considered potentially disrespectful in a number of ways, although I tend to think that any faith that is hurt by a little bit of wordplay can't be on the most solid of ground), while another mentioned that all animal action was done with care and that Those Scenes with the peacocks were done via CGI. Which made me terribly worried whenever a peacock was seen or even mentioned on-screen, though it seemed to be much ado about nothing - I think there was one scene with a dead peacock that could have been a prop rather than any kind of elaborate effects work.

Although I must say - I don't think anything they could have show happening to the peacocks would have freaked me out more than the fact that those birds apparently meow like cats. That's just freaking unnatural.


[Goliyon Ki Rasleela] Ram-Leela

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 November 2013 at Regal Fenway #3 (first-run, DCP)

The last time I wrote a review of an Indian movie, I got comments saying not to compare it to something else and to just enjoy it for what it is. That's actually good advice in general, although that's not going to happen here - the opening titles say flat out that Goliyong Ki Rasleela Ram-Leela is based on Romeo and Juliet. But while its origins may be familiar, the story does go off in some interesting directions and the style is certainly pure Bollywood.

The action is transplanted to Ranjaar, a town in present-day Gujarat. The Sanada and Rajadi families have been feuding for five hundred years, with guns worn openly and brawls breaking out on a daily basis. Ram (Ranveer Singh), one of the Rajadi chief's sons, has just returned after being sent away as a child and wants no part of it, preferring to quietly run his adult video store and make love as opposed to war as often as possible. He and his friends sneak into the Sanada household during their Holi celebration, and that's where he meets Leela (Deepika Padukone), the impetuous daughter of a fearsome matriarch (Supriya Pathak). Leela's mother has arranged a marriage to a London milquetoast, but that stands no chance against this whirlwind romance. On the other hand, Ram's and Leela's defiance is the sort of thing that can make an already ugly situation explode.

For as beautifully tragic as the end of Romeo and Juliet is, it's also a bit of a silly bit of plotting, with plot-device catalepsy and suicides as the result of farcical misunderstandings. One of the interesting things writer/director Sanjay Leela Bhansali does with Ram-Leela is to compact much of the original story's plot into the first half of the movie, with the final hour or so exploring whether the star-crossed lovers making their escape would have led to a happily ever after (obviously not, as there's almost half a movie to fill). It's an idea maybe better in concept than reality; for as frantically as the action escalates, Bhansali and co-writers Siddarth & Garima often find themselves tripping over not just how their story splits Ram and Leela apart without giving either a co-star as good as each other, but for how the title characters are emotional and impulsive, they aren't stupid, even when the story requires foolishness. On the other hand, it does put a bit of a charge into the final few scenes - even when it looks like they're barreling toward an inevitable end, that Bhansali and company had flipped things around earlier keeps what's coming up in the air.

Full review at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 1 July 2013 - 7 July 2013

This, folks, it what you call a pretty darn good week.



Stubless: Watching fireworks over the Charles and heading up to Maine for my twin nieces' second birthday party on Saturday.

The Red Sox have been weird but fun this summer - predicted to finish last in the AL Beast because they were terrible last year and the unexciting moves they made over the winter all said "decent placeholder until the guys on the farm are ready in two or three years", they've instead been in first place all season and don't look particularly likely to give it up. On top of that, defensive whiz who couldn't hit a lick Julio Iglesias has been really effective with the bat and John Lackey - who the fans had pretty good reason to hate - has been the best pitcher on the staff and one of the best in baseball, especially with Buchholz out. I was genuinely pleased that the ticket I purchased in December wound up being for a Lackey game, which I can't remember ever being the case. The Sox won, of course, because that's what they do in 2013.

On either side of that ticket are stops at Coolidge Corner - on Monday for Raiders of the Lost Ark, because when a 35mm print of that movie shows up at a local cinema, you go, and on Thursday for Much Ado About Nothing, because it seemed like a good idea to wait a couple of weeks and be sure it wasn't a theater filled with Joss Whedon superfans.

After that, my time pretty much belonged to Stomp Boston!: Giant Monster All-Out Attack at the Brattle, seeing King Kong & Monsters on Friday and the Ray Harryhausen double feature of 20 Million Miles to Earth & It Came From Beneath the Sea on Sunday. More got skipped - I was hanging out with family on Saturday and the Brattle's scheduled was thrown off by a print minxup (they received a German-language print of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, and by the time they got permission to run a DVD, I was doing something else). That gave me the chance to head up the Red Line to catch The Heat in Somerville.


Much Ado About Nothing

* * * (out of four)
Seen 4 July 2013 in Coolidge Corner Theatre #2 (first-run, 35mm)

I like most of what Joss Whedon does quite a bit - enough to qualify as a fan by most reasonable standards, although the standards can be so skewed in this guy's case that I practically look like a skeptic. He's a massively talented guy who, if he didn't already know it, often seems to have taken the press and (especially) internet declarations of his genius to heart, and that sort of thing can make vanity projects like this adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing insufferable.

And there are moments when this movie - filmed in a couple of weeks at Whedon's home with friends he's worked with before - are way too cutesy. A scene shot in what I presume to be his daughters' bedroom is distracting in how it calls attention to the shoestring the movie was shot on, for instance, causing the audience to giggle at the setting rather than pay attention to what's going on. Another scene, set in the pool, is goofy staging for the sake of goofy staging, asking the audience to notice how clever Whedon is rather than just being well-done.

Which is kind of a shame, because it threatens to overshadow the movie's greatest revelation: That Amy Acker is damn good and doesn't need the sort of exaggerated deliveries that Whedon had her affecting on Angel as a crutch. She plays Beatrice with the sort of genuinely good heart to temper a bitter, sarcastic streak - at least, until the end when we see what she really looks like angry. The rest of the cast is quite acceptable, but Acker's the one who makes the movie.

Admittedly, comparisons to the actors in other roles and other actors in the same roles hurt the movie a bit for me: I think Alexis Denisof has a weird voice here, and I don't think it's just because Whedon had him affect a British accent on Angel (on the other hand, seeing things finally work out for Wesley and Fred made me quite happy). And as nice as the cast here is, the cast of the Kenneth Branagh one was great. Reed Diamond struggles to match Denzel Washington, for instance, and while the idea of Nathan Fillion and company playing the constabulary as deadpan cops is clever, Michael Keaton's slovenly Dogberry works much better with the material.

Heck, I'd argue for Keanu Reeves's wooden-but-angry Don John over Sean Maher's version. Maybe that serves as proof that I can't look at this objectively - but then again, Whedon made a better Thor & Loki movie than Kenneth Branagh, so maybe we can call them even.

The Heat

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2013 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, DCP)

I was kind of surprised to see that The Heat was pretty darn close to a solid two hours, although not completely so; director Paul Feig and co-star Melissa McCarthy are in the Judd Apatow family of filmmakers/frequent collaborators, and "running a bit too long" seems to be in their DNA. This particular movie doesn't exactly wear one out as much as it makes odd choices - in particular, there's a "bonding over getting drunk and acting stupid" montage that doesn't quite fit and seems to come at the expense of Sandra Bullock's fed and McCarthy's Boston cop actually solving the case that brings them together.

Fortunately, Bullock and McCarthy are both quite impressive in their roles. McCarthy winds up with the meatier role, in part because her character is given an extended family to play off but also because she has a deadpan weariness to her that lets her drop sarcasm so well. Bullock's goody-goody is more isolated - well, aside from some entertaining banter with Marlon Wayans (in a surprisingly affable supporting turn) - and we're seldom given the opportunity to enjoy her being smart or right. Her prissiness and arrogance mostly plays against her strengths in the beginning, too.

It's a good thing that they're so much fun as actors - and that Feig can make the jokes work - because they've been dropped into a very generic buddy cop movie. And while to a certain extent that may be intentional - the hook of the movie is that it's a buddy cop movie with two women, and making it too specific, or something where it being these two characters was crucial, might have undercut how it's not supposed to be a big deal - it makes things a bit forgettable. The movie has done well enough to make a sequel likely, and I hope that if it happens, it's a more interesting story. Not necessarily one about these guys, but one with memorable villains and supporting characters and crimes.

The Tempest, and why it should have been marketed like Twilight

The thing on the right actually exists and has just reminded me that I need to get my Atari gear working again because Tempest 2000 was flat-out awesome.

Not a lot to say about this than I quite like it and wish I had been able to get to writing this earlier, maybe raising visibility a smidge before it opened in Boston on Friday, as I see it's already having its showtimes at Kendall Square hacked down to one show at 3:40pm tomorrow, probably down to nothing on Christmas. Which is a terrible shame, as it's always nice to see Shakespeare presented as fun and exciting, as opposed to something which you study in high school, groan about, and then ignore for the rest of your adult life.

Putting it that way, though, I kind of wonder if Miramax/Touchstone might have gotten a bigger audience if they'd marketed it toward that high school audience. Not just because, sadly, people forget Shakespeare after they graduate, but because (as I mention in the review below), the beating heart of The Tempest is a teen romance, played out breathlessly against a background of sorcerers and monsters. And the boy that Miranda falls head over heels for is actually kind of pretty, rather than being a dashing, rugged prince.

Sadly, my Photoshop-fu is weak, but if Lionsgate can come up with posters for Near Dark that make it look like Twilight, I wonder why it never occurred to Disney to do so for The Tempest. Sure, once the teens and tweens bought tickets, they'd be hit with Shakespearean dialogue and a whole heck of a lot more Helen Mirren than they were anticipating, but the former is not necessarily a bad thing - the florid prose may click with that audience better than most, and Helen Mirren is really fantastic as a character who is equal part villain and sacrificing mother. Besides, at that point, you've got their money, and they may just come out of it loving it, talking up Felicity Jones, Reeve Carney, and maybe Russell Brand's excellent comic relief.

Instead, the poster plays up the trippiness - which is very cool, don't get me wrong - and makes it look like an art film. It's not dishonest at all (well, except for the flames - I don't recall anything burning), but that's going to sell the movie to a limited audience: Those of us who already like Shakespeare, don't mind that Taymor has changed the sex of one of the main characters, and want to see what her crazy visual style brings to the movie. And while I'm happily a member of that group, it's pretty narrow.

Every time a Shakespeare film comes out, I feel the need to remind people that, remember, this was not highbrow entertainment in its day - it was for everyone. A whole thread of this movie is even broad slapstick. And I suspect that if Shakespeare were working now, he'd be doing a lot of very mainstream, fantastical, stuff - it's worth remembering that The Tempest, like the other Shakespeare plays that don't have direct antecedents, is full of magic and fantasy and required visual effects on stage and now on screen. Now is probably the best possible time to do a film of this particular play, because there's an audience for this kind of story. The funny thing is, as much as Taymor's made an arty, honestly kind of nutty, film, it's one that maybe could have been marketed to a wide audience if Disney had just recognized what that audience was.

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The Tempest

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 December 2010 at the Brattle Theatre (sneak preview)

As The Tempest opens in cinemas after a certain amount of delay (the Walt Disney Company spent much of the past year or so trying to figure out what to do with Miramax Pictures, holding it in limbo), director Julie Taymor is regularly in the news for another long-delayed project, the Broadway production Spider-Man: Turn Back the Dark. Both are fantasies of one sort or another, both can be considered somewhat unusual takes on the source material. And without having seen the stage musical, I can only speak for The Tempest, but it at least displays Taymor's penchant for ambitious, visually dazzling productions in full, mad force.

Off the shores of a strange island, a ship is pummelled by the sea. It carries the royal families of Venice and Naples, but their high rank will do them no good when they wash up on shore in three groups: Neapolitan Prince Ferdinand (Reeve Carney) washes ashore alone; his father, King Alonso (David Strathairn) arrives in the company of his adviser Gonzalo (Tom Conti), brother Sebastian (Alan Cumming), and the Duke of Venice, Antonio (Chris Cooper); elsewhere, Alonso's clown Trinculo (Russel Brand) and butler Stephano (Alfred Molina) encounter Caliban (Djimon Hounsou), a strange half-human hybrid who is tamed by wine. He is not the island's only inhabitant; there is Prospera (Helen Mirren), the sorceress and deposed Duchess of Venice, her fifteen-year-old daughter Miranda (Felicity Jones), and their magical, spritely familiar, Ariel (Ben Whishaw).

Those familiar with the play will immediately note the different spin that Taymor put on Shakespeare's original story, that of changing Duke Prospero, the sorcerer, into Duchess Prospera, the sorceress. It's done remarkably smoothly, in that the changed lines in an early scene where Prospera explains her origins do not sound markably different from the unaltered monologue which surrounds it. Later scenes where Prospera refers to her brother-in-law Antonio as simply "brother" do sound a bit odd to modern ears, although no more so than Shakespeare's language often does. Implementation aside, it does change the way we look at the character a bit - Taymor works in comments that accusations of witchcraft were more dangerous for women than men, for instance. The most important change, though, is in how it perhaps refocuses the relationship between Prospera and her daughter. After all, Prospera knows what it is to be a teenage girl in a way a Prospero does not.

Full review at EFC.

This Week In Tickets: 18 January 2010 to 24 January 2010

This weekend is as pure an example of laziness as you will find. No movies interested me enough to actually get out of the house, but while there, did I do any of the cleaning and stuff that needed to get done? No. Apparently, I need the imminent threat of visitors for that to happen.

I didn't stay in the house for the entirety of the weekend, though...



Stubless: Trucker (21 January 2010) and As You Like It (22 January 2010) on DVD.

... My friend Justin plays bass in Girls Guns And Glory, so I went to the Paradise to see them. Nice band; they're going to be at South by Southwest this March. I think they were booked just after I decided that I couldn't go to the film festival because of all the travel to various weddings I have planned this year (ironically, including his). But, anyone who is going there should check them out, especially if you like roots.

No other reviews this week. I was going to try and plow through some screeners, but even the ones that were likely NTSC wouldn't play on my HD-DVD or Blu-ray players, and the SlingCatcher which puts stuff from the computer out to the TV was balky. Actually, more likely the video drivers on the computer, but I wasn't feeling like screwing with them at the time. Hopefully, I'll get to some of them this week, although the Asylum Sherlock Holmes is on the docket as well.

As You Like It

Oh, my. This has been sitting on my coffee table for a bit more than two years, most likely. I have loved Branagh's other Shakespeare adaptations - one of my fondest memories of high school was going out to see Much Ado About Nothing with a bunch of friends who were taking the same Shakespeare class, I took the bus to Boston to see Hamlet while going to college in Worcester because the Landmark Theater brought in 70mm projection especially for it, and I remember dragging my brother Matt to Love's Labour's Lost because, darn it, he had to see how gorgeous it was, with Branagh making sure to do things like match the colors of the ladies' dresses and drinks. The soundtrack to that one was in heavy rotation for a while, too, goofy showtunes and all (though I absolutely loved how "You Can't Take That Away From Me" was used in it). I defend Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. If Dead Again were to come out on Blu-ray, I am pretty sure that I would not remember actually purchasing it, because it would be done entirely by my involuntary nervous system.

So, yes, I am a fan. Fan enough to pre-order As You Like It, and then keep it near the TV rather than the shelf of movies in the back room because watching it is a priority, but with the sort of addiction to buying movies much faster than I can actually watch them that keeps me from actually sticking it into a player for over two years. I'm a bit ashamed of that.

Now... Does anybody know where I can find the Japanese HD-DVD of The Magic Flute for a reasonable price? Because that looks like the only version available that I can watch without a region-free player, and the fact that something by Branagh (and Stephen Fry!) has not gotten American distribution in the three-plus years since it started trickling out in other markets is tremendously disappointing.

Next up, as I try to plow through my unwatched DVDs: The fifteen or so unwatched festival screeners I've amassed over the last couple of years. And that's just DVD; there's some VHS ones that I'd have to hook something up for.

As You Like It

* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 January 2010 in Jay's Living Room (upconverted DVD)

Thus far, the twenty-first century has not been kind to the films Kenneth Branagh directed. If you blinked, you missed his remake of Sleuth; if you're in North America, you haven't even had a chance to see his 2006 production of The Magic Flute (which, as far as I can tell, has yet to play theaters, television, or home video here). As You Like It fell somewhere between them, premiering on pay cable a month before being released on DVD. I suspect this explains why Marvel has tapped him for their Thor movie - he can use the boost in visibility as much as they can use somebody who can breathe life into things that the general public might assume to be stuffy and boring. Such as, say, Shakespeare, for the fifth time as director.

One of the ways he does this is by taking them out of their Elizabethan setting and placing them in new contexts to show the universality of the ideas behind them. With As You Like It, he moves the action to nineteenth-century Japan, where English traders had set up enclaves in port cities. As the film opens, a well-liked Duke (Brian Blessed) is removed from power by a group of ninjas and ronin in the service of his evil brother Frederick (also Blessed). The Duke and much of his court is sent into exile in the forest of Arden, but his daughter Rosalind (Bryce Dallas Howard) is kept as a companion to her cousin Celia (Romola Garai). This sort of jealousy among brothers appears to be common, as Frederick's ally Oliver De Boys (Adrian Lester) plots to kill his youngest brother Orlando (David Oyelowo). Orlando captures the affection of Rosalind, which enrages Frederick, who banishes her. Celia refuses to abandon her best friend, and they bring court jester Touchstone (Alfred Molina) along with them into exile.

There is more, of course - Shakespeare filled his plays with characters and subplots! So we have a pair of country lovers (Alex Wyndham and Jade Jefferies); the lusty Audrey (Janet McTeer), who hooks up with Touchstone; and the melancholy Jacques (Kevin Kline). Rosalind disguises herself as a boy, as a clown would be small discouragement to any bandits who might attack two women on their own, and teases the lovesick Orlando, who also finds himself in the woods. And if the material that Shakespeare came up with wasn't enough, Branagh fleshes the story out a bit with scenes of his own invention, depicting things which previously occurred off-stage. That's how you get ninjas in Shakespeare.

You can spot those scenes because they have no dialogue - adding one's own words to Shakespeare is just not done, after all. Though he doesn't do that, he is, as usual, well aware that he is adapting the Bard's work to film, rather than simply recording a play. Lines that simply describe what the audience can see are cut, scenes are re-arranged, action is shown rather than related, and the camera follows people around. Characters speak in verse, of course, but it comes across as conversational as well as larger-than-life. And while the story is far from completely modernized, the script manages to excise some of the aspects of the last act that are downright silly and weird without losing sight of the fact that the story is intended to be funny. The whole plot about Rosalind disguising herself as the boy "Ganymede" could fall into that category, but the film manages to acknowledge that without falling into self-parody.

That's in large part due to Romola Garai. Celia is the supporting female role, but this version of the story gives Garai a lot of chances to be more than just the friend Rosalind confesses her feelings to; she's given enough slapstick and double-takes to be near the top of the list of funny people in the cast. Alfred Molina isn't far behind; he delivers Touchstone's lines with the timing of a veteran stand-up, especially when he's allowed to just take control of a scene (or has McTeer's assistance in taking things over the top). Bryce Dallas Howard doesn't get quite so many jokes as them, but she shows a tremendous mischievous charm when in disguise as Ganymede that puts a smile on one's face even though she's not going for laughs as directly as the others.

The actors in more serious roles do well, too. Brian Blessed has shown up in a number of Branagh's films, and he's well-used here; his dual role gives him a chance to use that booming voice to both make the exiled Duke jolly and gregarious and cast Frederick as a frightening maniac. David Oyelowo brings plenty of sex appeal to the part of Orlando (he makes a sumo loincloth work for him early on), and manages to be head over heels for Rosalind without chipping away at his cool too much. And while I suspect that the part of Jacques has been pared down in the adaptation (though it's been some time since I've read the play or seen a different version), Kevin Kline makes up for any lost lines with his body language and general performance, and makes the famous "all the world's a stage" speech sing.

Does Branagh's grasp of what makes a good movie as opposed to a good play, visual flair, and quality multi-ethnic cast yield a version of As You Like It that could appeal to a general audience? Maybe. Truth be told, the cross-dressing plots in many of the comedies become harder sales with every year that passes from the time when only men and boys performed on stage, and the incredulous looks Garai as Celia gives Orlando, Rosalind, and the audience only gets us most of the way to really buying into it. And as nifty as the Japanese setting frequently looks, it often feels like a gimmick that won't bring in as many newcomers as it will alienate purists.

Their loss, if so. Branagh has filmed five of Shakespeare's plays, and all five times he has produced something that is no less an entertaining movie for being an adaptation of four hundred year-old works. As You Like It is no exception.

Also at EFC

Fantasia Day Three: Arch Angels, 200 Pounds Beauty, Dasepo Naughty Girls, The Banquet, The Rug Cop and zzzzzzzzzz..

Updated yesterday's post with Flight of the Living Dead.

Nothing but movies yesterday, and today looks similar. I kind of ran out of gas at around ten o'clock last night, so I dozed off a bit during The Rug Cop and a lot during Hell's Ground. It's a shame, because The Rug Cop was pretty funny. Hell's Ground I didn't quite enjoy so much; it seemed to go on forever even while I was drifting in and out of sleep, and it seemed like every time I woke up, the same kids were still in the car, one was still bleeding, and I had no idea what they were fighting. It probably didn't help that they showed a twenty minute montage of how goofy Pakistani exploitation has been in the past beforehand; I was not in a good spot for having my endurance tested.

If you're in Montreal today, I wouldn't talk you out of 200 Pounds Beauty or Dasepo Naughty Girls, though I might suggest that there's better ways to spend your time than Viva. My plan is Wolfhound, War of Flowers, Ten Nights of Dreams, The Show Must Go On and Spiral.

Arch Angels (Waru Mikearu)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Teen and tween girls in Japan get this, and in America they get Bratz. Something is just not fair.

All you pervs who reached this page by searching for "Japanese Catholic Schoolgirls" may leave now; this almost lighter-than air trifle isn't really for you. The young girls it's made for should get a kick out of it, though - it's a fun, upbeat little fantasy, equal parts Harry Potter, Sailor Moon, and Nancy Drew.

As with many such tales, it starts with a dead parent, in this case the mother of Fumio Shijo (Juri Ueno). This leads her to her wealthy brother Kazuomi (Yusuke Iseya), whom she didn't know existed before. "The Prince", as she calls him, enrolls her in St. Michael's Academy, a Catholic girls' school on a sort-of remote island (she takes the train over what appears to be a twenty-mile-long bridge every day). The formal students make her feel out of place, but she winds up finding a couple other girls who would rather sneak out to snack on chicken ramen than stay in the stuffy confines of the school all day: Class President Yuzuko Sarashina (Airi Taira) is faking the upper class thing herself, as her parents are new millionaires, while star athlete Kazune Saiki (Megumi Seki) associates it with her hunky tutor Shunsuke (Toshinobu Matsuo), who lets her eat it between bonks on the head while studying. They're hanging around together when a strange explosion gives them superpowers - which could come in useful, what with the recent series of teenaged asian girls from wealthy families being kidnapped.

The superpowers and the kidnappings are basically an excuse to give the movie a big action finale, while the rest is occupied with girl stuff - secret clubs, preparing for a big party/school festival, and Fumio fretting about how she really doesn't seem to fit into her brother's world. There is, of course, a potential suitor for Kazuomi with visions of sending Fumio off to Switzerland, but it's indicative of how good-natured Fumio and the film in general are that she rapidly embraces the idea, wanting to please this potential sister, feeling that she's screwed up her brother's life and that it is wrong for her to expect him to make changes to accommodate her.

Full review at EFC.
200 Pounds Beauty (Minyeo-neun Geoerowo)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

The thing about 200 Pounds Beauty is that there's no satisfying way to end it. The premise (fat girl becomes a beauty through extensive surgery) leads to the film either presenting radical, dangerous cosmetic surgery as a viable course of action, ending in tears, or trying to have things both ways. It's inevitable. So it's a real testament to Kim Ah-jung's performance that we spend the film hoping it will find some way to pull it off.

Ms. Kim plays Kan Han-na, an overweight, unattractive woman who nevertheless has a lovely voice. It serves her well both as a phone-sex operator and as the real singer behind pop tart Ammy (who's pretty and can dance, but can't carry a tune at all). Han-na has a crush on Ammy's manager Sang-jun (Ju Jin-mo), and he seems to like her... And then Han-na overhears them talking about her. Crushed, she goes to one of her phone-sex regulars, a plastic surgeon, and demands he change everything. He reluctantly agrees, and after a year of surgery and recovery, Han-na re-emerges at half her original weight, with a new face, new boobs, etc. Hearing that Ammy's second album has been delayed (while Sang-jun and Ammy tried to find Han-na), she auditions to be Ammy's replacement under another name. "Jenny" gets the gig, and the guy, but pretending to be someone else creates its own problems.

Kim Ah-jung is the reason to see this movie; she brings the same sort of innocent, kind of dorky charm to Han-na at both sizes, always at least a bit out of step with what people expect from someone who looks like she does. She always hits the right note to get the audience to believe in and like Han-na, whether it's squealing upon having her bandages cut off that she even cries pretty now, telling her doctor that the dangers of the surgery don't matter because she feels like she's already died, appearing genuinely tortured that she has to pretend not to know her senile father or risk exposing her deception, or imitating glamor poses as she walks. She's got great comic chops and a pretty darn good voice for the singing scenes; her face is expressive enough for silent comedy. She never loses sight of the fact that we're supposed to like Han-na, even when she's screwing up or not at her best.

Full review at EFC.

Dasepo Naughty Girls (Dasepo Sonyo)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Dasepo Naughty Girls is based on an internet comic strip, and it's got that kind of manic energy: It starts out with a whole bunch of quick, raunchy gags that aren't much more than crude but don't really need to be. By the end, though, it's started to pull its punches a little, and stitched together more story than it really needs.

"No Use High" is a multi-religious high school whose students probably have names, but we don't hear them much. Poverty Girl (Kim Ok-bin) carries her poverty around on her back, and her attempts to sell her virtue for money tend to go bizarrely awry. She's got a huge crush on Swiss exchange student Anthony (Park Jin-woo), who meanwhile has fallen hard for Two Eyes (Lee Eun-seong), the beautiful sister of outcast Cyclops (Lee Kyeon). Only issue: She's actually a boy. Meanwhile, Anthony's friends are launching an investigation into why Class Monitor Girl (Park Hye-won) and Student Vice President Girl (Nam Oh-jeong) are suddenly more interested in studying and getting into college than putting out after trips to the principal's office.

Dasepo has a lot of the same feel as American Pie in how it's superficially very crude while at the same time celebrating its characters' youthful innocence. Sure, the movie opens with a bit where a substitute announces that their English teacher won't be coming in because he's being treated for syphilis. Oh, and Class Monitor Girl, you should get checked to. Which leads to another student saying he has to leave class early to visit the doctor. And then another, and so on until poor Cyclops is sitting there all alone. As much as the movie makes jokes about casual promiscuity, it doesn't go in much for actual titillation: The scene where Poverty Girl becomes an internet sensation is almost ridiculous in its tameness - it feels like more than it is because it's one of the only times we see her not weighed down by her mother's financial problems and ill health.

Full review on EFC.

The Banquet (Ye Yan)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in Théatre Hall Condordia (Fantasia 2007)

Even in an age where period martial-arts epics have been made by the likes of Ang Lee, Kaige Chen, and Zhang Yimou, The Banquet stands out as high-gloss. Much of the behind-the-scenes crew worked on Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, and they've built the largest set ever used for a Chinese film. Executive producer Yuen Woo-ping handles fight choreography, and there are five featured soloists and singers on Tan Dun's score. Director Feng Xiaogang is going all out.

Such opulence demands a worthy story, and writers Qiu Gangjian and Sheng Heyu opt to transplant Hamlet to a particularly tubulent period of Chinese history. Although the basics remain the same - Emperor Li (You Ge) has seized his brother's throne and married his queen, Crown Prince Wu Luan (Daniel Wu) tries to expose his uncle's evil by gauging his reaction to a play that recreates the murder, Li sends Wu Luan into an exile from which he is not to return, and then final, bloody resolution at a banquet - several intriguing changes have been made. Gone are the ghost of the prince's father, his faithful friend Horatio, and the less faithful Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Where Queen Gertrude was a vaguely complicit figure in Shakespeare's plan, Zhang Ziyi's Empress Wan is at the center of everything, and having her be the prince's young stepmother makes for a big change in the relationship.

And it's a good one. Although it borders on sacrelige to suggest that Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular can be improved upon, there aren't many changes I'd want taken back. Wu Luan's fascination with actors and acrobats is now an integral part of his character - he has chosen to spend his time studying the arts, and it's made some think he is not cut out to be Emperor. Qing (Xun Zhou), the Ophelia character, is just as hopelessly linked to the prince, but it feels more like true love, at least from her end; she's strong and noble enough to do more than drown heartbroken offstage. Oddly, she's a stronger character in part because instead of feeling like she's there as an obligatory love interest until her death motivates Laertes, there's a little more depth to her relationship with Wu Luan because of Wan's presense.

Full review at EFC.

The Rug Cop (Zura Deka)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2007 in the D.B. Clarke Théatre (Fantasia 2007)

This would be a kick-ass pilot for a TV series, and nails the 70s/80s cop show clichés it spoofs with frequent hilarity. I may have to try and get a screener so I can see the whole thing and post a full review.