I actually finished the review for Welcome to New York on the flight from Boston to Houston, so I think it's fair to say that I did, in fact, finish all my Fantasia business before Fantastic Fest, even if I am actually posting from the ground in Austin. Woo-hoo!
Anyway, enjoy The Maze Runner, which I caught as a preview about a week and a half ago; it opens tonight/tomorrow, and it's not bad, just kind of overdoing it on the holding back. You'll certainly see many action movies that aren't put together as well as it is during any given season, and it's got a capable enough cast. Here's hoping there's more to the sequel, if such a thing gets made.
Anyway, not much time to get bagged and lined up for Fantastic Fest day one, where I'll be seeing Hardkor Disco, As Seen By Others, and Cub.
And to close up the old business, here are the last seven Fantasia reviews: Hunter X Hunter: The Last Mission, Real, Ejecta, The Desert, Monsterz, Metalhead, and Welcome to New York. As much as I'm looking forward to the next week, I also can't wait to get back to Montreal.
The Maze Runner
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 8 September 2014 in Regal Fenway #13 (preview, RPX DCP)
There have been action movie more aggressively stripped of the basic building blocks of story - like character background and motivation - than The Maze Runner, but the better ones are either trying to make some point about basic human nature or engage in some criticism of their genre. Here, it's the generic anonymity of a video game, with player proxies, tasks to accomplish, and the promise of information as a reward. That's all good for as far as it goes; it just doesn't go very far.
Player approximately-38 (Dylan O'Brien) enters "The Glade" the way all of them have, through a cargo elevator that also supplies whatever the couple dozen or so amnesiac boys in this walked valley can't grow or glean themselves, although it's clear that there's something a bit different about him, since if the others have flashes of the outside world in their dreams, they don't seem to mention it. High walls surround The Glade on all sides, with doors that lead into a massive labyrinth, closing at night when the sound of "Grievers" frighten the Gladers (nobody who has stayed in the maze overnight has survived their sting). Things have apparently changed with the arrival of Thomas - names come back in a day or two - as one of the "maze runners" looking for a way out is stung during the daytime, soon followed by an ahead-of-schedule new arrival. This one's a girl (Kaya Scodelario), clutching a note saying she's the last.
A half-dozen our so other boys have roles of some import, and while only a couple get to really show much in the way of individuality - most notably Chuck (Blake Cooper), the youngest, and change-fearing fighter Gally (Will Poulter) - they are, by and large, a group that the audience will generally find amiable enough, although the range of personalities is both kind of narrow and low-key, even with the backstory that implies a Lord of the Flies period that nobody wants to return to in the past. The cast isn't really bland; they're just handed characters who have no history by definition and given a story where, at least in this adaptation of the novel, only ever pivots on the characters' emotional reactions as a distraction.
Full review at EFC
Gekijouban HUNTERxHUNTER: The Last Mission (Hunter X Hunter: The Last Mission )
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: AXIS, HD)
As near as I can tell, there were fifty weekly TV episodes between the two Hunter X Hunter films released in Japan last year, so it's not exactly surprising that The Last Mission does not exactly pick up right where Phantom Rouge left off - and despite this film's title, the weekly anime and manga adventure has rolled on through 2014, meaning another film is not unlikely. And they may as well keep on going; the fans are still there and this is a good time even for those going in relatively cold.
Pre-teen Hunters Gon and Kilua haven't changed that much since the events of Phantom Rouge, although Kurapika is now working as a princess's bodyguard and is apparently on speaking terms with a villain he wanted dead before. Today, Gon & Kilua are attending the Battle Olympiad at Heaven's Arena to support their friend Zushi as are many other members of the Hunter Association as well as various dignitaries. Which means that bit from the beginning of the movie when Isaac Netero, now president of the Association but one of its fiercest warriors decades ago, didn't quite kill rebel hunter Jed before he could cast a "Demonic Grudge" spell, is obviously foreshadowing a pretty massive hostage situation.
As before, there is a fair amount of Hunter X Hunter mythology referenced by characters who don't exactly get a proper introduction, so non-fans may be a bit lost at times. On the other hand, enough of it is in the form of secrets being revealed that it's not hard to catch up with the important stuff, and the script by Nobuaki Kishima makes things a bit easier by sticking close to familiar genre material: This is basically Die Hard, when you get right down to it, albeit with super-powered 12-year-olds in a kilometer-high building. That the resurrected Jed is threatening to reveal the Hunter Association's dark secrets works on its own as a macguffin without the actual nature of those secrets being terribly important, and that his powers come from "on" rather than "nen" isn't that big a deal, either. While some events are probably a big deal for fans, the action and emotion is big and over the top enough to be a blast for the rest of us.
Full review on EFC
Riaru: Kanzen naru kubinagaryû no hi (Real)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
Kiyoshi Kurosawa has gotten even more interesting in the past few years, after stepping away from horror to do 2008's drama Tokyo Sonata, then immersing himself in teaching before doing a television series, a short feature that's probably as much record promo as stand-alone project, and this bit of science fiction. The interesting thing here is that this is still very much the work of a guy who knows how to scare you, making a pretty straight line between slick futurism and a contemporary world becoming more and more strange.
The science fictional elements are an old standby, an apparatus that one person can use to enter the dreams of another, in this case husband Koichi Fujita (Takeru Sato) trying to reach his wife Atsumi Kazu (Haruka Ayase), who has been comatose since a suicide attempt one year ago. He finds her constantly revising the horror manga she's drawing, saying she could finish and leave the apartment if he could just find a picture of a plesiosaur she drew in fourth grade. He searches for it outside her dream environment, first finding an unpublished comic and then following that to Hikone island where she grew up (and he spent that fourth-grade year), where a buried memory awaits.
The material itself isn't necessarily the most creative - technology to get inside the heads of coma patients is a classic bit of sci-fi - but Kurosawa and his co-writers (and original novelist Rokuro Inui) come up with neat details, such as "philosophical zombies" and jumbled-up dreams. His particular genre-film background comes in especially handy here, as it's no particular surprise when the subconscious mind of someone who writes and illustrates horror stories for a living contains zombies of a non-philosophical bent and other monsters, but beyond that, Kurosawa has always been one whose movies played on the idea of a world where things suddenly don't make sense, perfect for this sort of movie. He's also accomplished enough to pull off an impressively constructed "how'd they do that" scene where Koichi and Atsumi walk into fog in one location and out in another despite it being a single tracking shot.
Full review on EFC
Ejecta
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 August 2014 in Salle D.B. Clarke (Fantasia Festival: Action!, DCP)
In the Q&A after the movie, the filmmakers described how Ejecta sort of came together as a sort of chimera, with its two distinct tracks being shot well apart and stitched together like a Frankenstein's monster. It's not necessarily a bad idea - I don't really think I'd like to see either stretched to a full ninety minutes, even if each has something worth watching - but it doesn't quite come together as a greater whole.
Though cut together, with both built around talking to the same man, the two parts have distinct styles. One is found-footage, shoot by paranormal documentarian Joe Sullivan (Adam Seybold), who has come to a remote farm to interview William Cassidy (Julian Richings), who claims to have been abducted by aliens, and certainly seems erratic enough to support his claims that they did something to his head. That's certainly bolstered, for the audience at least, by the other scenes, where Cassidy is being held in a black site and interrogated by Dr. Tobin (Lisa Houle), who is also directing a team of government agents very interested in the aliens' latest visitation.
Both tracks are ways that filmmakers with a certain set of resources - not a lot of money but a capable cast - might go about making a sci-fi thriller, letting the actors build characters around necessary exposition and saving one's metaphorical and literal bullets for a big payoff. The trouble is, this tends to lead to unreliable narrators teasing the audience with hints rather than telling the bigger story, and while the whole team - writer Tony Burgess and directors/editors Chad Archibald & Matt Wiele - do yeoman's work keeping up the feel of forward motion while keeping actual resolution just out of reach, but there's just not a whole lot to it.
Full review on EFC
El Desierto (The Desert)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2014 in Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival: Camera Lucida, DCP)
There's a lot to like about Christoph Behl's post-apocalyptic love triangle, and the fact that it can be described as such without coming across as an annoying genre mismatch is just the start. It's a neat little entry into the canon of small stories that take place during the end of the world, albeit one that sacrifices most of the immediate physical damage to do it.
As far as they can tell - and in any real sense that matters - Axel (Lautaro Delgado) and Jonathan (William Prociuk) may be the last two men on Earth, with Ana (Victoria Almeida) the last woman. They've converted a house into a fortress and come up with rules to ensure their survival as well as (hopefully) their sanity, but it's no surprise that they're starting to reach their breaking point. Maybe it could have gone on indefinitely when it was just Axel and Jonathan, but adding Ana makes it a situation that is never going to go smoothly, even if things didn't wind up with Ana and Jonathan together and Axel burning with desire.
The cast is terrific in a situation where one not playing up to the standards set by the other two could have sunk the whole enterprise, or at least reduced it to something much less interesting. Behl makes the somewhat interesting choice of not having Axel's obsession bleed into envy, which makes the scenes with just Delgado and Prociuk a little more interesting. There's a sense of them being perfectly complimentary, with Axel's intensity a bit unnerving but Prociuk getting a certain amount of the same effect by portraying Jonathan as kind of laid-back - not the kind that gets people killed through inattention, but right on the border of detachment, a distinction that is not easy to see immediately.
Full review on EFC
Monsterz
* * (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
2011's Haunters was an excellent Korean movie that established a simple premise - two people with opposite superpowers (mind control and rapid healing) on a collision course - and delivered with entertaining action pieces, a likable cast of characters, and style to complement its straight-ahead drive. I figured it for a US remake, but Japan got there first, and sort of screwed it up.
The initial set-up is, in fact, almost exactly the same: Ten or fifteen years ago, an abusive father tried to kill his son but succeeded only in unleashing his powers to control anyone he sees, with the enraged boy forcing his father to snap his own neck. The boy is grown now, limping through the world on a prosthetic leg, making people give him whatever he needs and occasionally adding control just because he can. Elsewhere in the city, mild-mannered Shuichi Tanaka (Takayuki Yamada) works for a moving company with friends Jun (Taiga) and Akira (Motoki Ochiai), at least until he is hit by a car and recovers impossibly quickly. He eventually winds up taking a job in the driver's guitar shop and getting close to his daughter Kanae (Satomi Ishihara). When the "monster" (Tatsuya Fujiwara) robs the shop, it turns out that Shuichi is not vulnerable to his powers, and that just cannot be allowed!
This version, adapted by Yusuke Watanabe and directed by Hideo Nakata, has some nice details (although giving a kid with immense psychic powers a copy of the Akira manga to read and latch onto may have been a bad idea), but it also does some completely unnecessary things. Much like the recent Ju-on reboot, the cast skews younger than that of the original, and while there's a certain logic to it, there's also a certain bit of weight lost. It's a weird bit of narrow-casting to appeal to a core audience which is also reflected in how Kyu-nam's Ghanian and Turkish friends are now otaku or gay, with no mention of Kanae having a western mother. The unusual diversity of Haunters's cast played into a theme, which is why seeing it reduced is somewhat disappointing.
Full review on EFC
Málmhaus (Metalhead)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2014 in Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
Metalhead doesn't exactly sneak up on an audience - it's clear from the start that writer/director Ragnar Bragason has some pretty good ideas for his story about grief and mourning, especially when he trains his camera on the parents of the title character. And yet, is still never quite what the viewer might expect, especially if he or she comes in expecting a simple story of a young woman out of sync with her small town (although that's in there and also done well).
Nine years ago (in 1983), Icelandic farmers Karl (Ingvar Eggert Sigurðsson) and Droplaug (Halldóra Geirharðsdóttir) sent their daughter Hera to fetch her older brother Baldur for dinner, only to witness him slipping and falling into a still-running thresher. Hera responded by taking possession of Baldur's heavy-metal record collection and immersing herself in that. Now a young woman, Hera (Thorbjörg Helga Dyrfjörd) wait for the bus out of town every morning but never actually gets on - which is more than can be said for her still shell-shocked parents - and her devotion to this music along with her generally hostile demeanor has the conservative farming community alarmed, though the new priest (Thröstur Leó Gunnarsson) may be more understanding than she expects.
After the horrific opening, there's not always that much for Hera to actually do, but Bragason keeps her just busy enough for things to crank along. In this town of Hof, she's the squarest of pegs in the roundest of holes, but by this point all the big clashes seem to be over, and the focus is on how static a situation is: Hera is pointedly not leaving, and is continuing to orbit her lifelong friend Knutur (Hannes Óli Ágústsson) if only because they're seemingly the only young people around. Her drunken acting out is entirely predictable by this point, while Karl and Droplaug are in a similar state of paralysis. It's such an utterly effective look at what it's like to be unable to move past grief or to be stuck in a town that seemingly has nothing for you but your family that one might not notice just how close things have come to a breaking point.
Full review on EFC
Welcome to New York
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 5 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: Closing Night, HD)
That Welcome to New York is a long, rambling movie is not in and of itself a bad thing. There are times early on where it's a definite plus as the audience is kind of assaulted with the excesses of M. Devereaux (Gerard Depardieu), and compacting either that our what comes later might change the impact. Ultimately, I wonder what it's about. Who is never in doubt: The movie is based closely enough on the Dominique Strauss-Khan case closely enough to have three screens worth of disclaimers at the front, but pointedly fictionalized in a way that causes it to lose a bit of weight.
Devereaux, an official at the World Bank and potentially the next President of France, has tremendous appetites, especial of the sexual variety, and no compunctions about indulging them at any time, whether it be with the attractive and accommodating women he has hired for his office in Washington or the escorts he and his traveling companion hire on a trip to New York. The next morning, a hotel maid walks in on him as he's coming out of the shower...
... and cut to Devereaux checking out, creeping his daughter's Canadian boyfriend out with his enthusiastic sex talk that includes speculation about the young couple's activities, and making his way to the plane while the NYPD takes the maid's statement and discovers just how little time they have to arrest him before he flees the country. When they do, word reaches Devereaux's wife Simone (Jacqueline Bisset) in the middle of a charity dinner, forcing the publishing heiress to come to America and see to his defense, try to salvage her ambitions for him, and see if her husband realizes just what sort of damage he's done.
Full review on EFC
Thursday, September 18, 2014
Wednesday, September 17, 2014
A Master Builder
I'm just going to put this up quick, because it closes in Boston tomorrow (Thursday 18 September 2014) and it's worth a look if you didn't realize it was playing. I didn't even know it was a thing until I saw a trailer about a week ago and thought "Wallace Shawn and John Demme? Hmmm..."
One interesting bit I came across while poking at IMDB as reference was Shawn saying he doesn't have a sense of humor but just does what directors tell him to how they tell him to, trusting that they know why him doing it would draw a laugh. I am not sure whether that is some next-level joke-telling on his part. It's possible, since I can't think of any times when he's really the best part of a movie that is otherwise not funny, but it doesn't seem likely . Adds a little something to a bit early in this one, though, when he's playing Solness as dead serious and snaps at another character for not getting a joke which certainly didn't seem much like a joke.
A Master Builder
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 September 2014 in Landmark Kenmore Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
Like a lot of people, I tend to have this vague knowledge that Wallace Shawn is more than the guy with the funny voice and the odd face, that he's a playwright and an actor who has been a central part of some of the artiest of art-house films. A Master Builder offers up a glimpse of the more somber, serious-minded Shawn, and it's an eye-opening reminder of what he can do that even his less completely comedic roles don't always hint at. In fact, it's almost strange when something like his frequent screen persona emerges.
Shawn plays Halvard Solness, the architect of the title, who is a petty tyrant even as he receives visitors on his sickbed. First is Knut Brovik (Andre Gregory), father to Solness's apprentice Ragnar (Jeff Biehl) - himself engaged to the firm's secretary/bookkeeper Kaia Fosli (Emily Cass McDonnell) - begging his former student to allow Ragnar to take the lead on an upcoming project, so that he can see something his son built before he dies. Then comes Dr. Herdal (Larry Pine), who is not just the family physician but probably the only friend Halvard's wife Aline (Julie Hagerty) has. And, finally, there is Hilde Wangel (Lisa Joyce), a 22-year-old traveler who claims Solness made certain promises to her ten years ago, an encounter he finds it distressingly difficult to remember.
A Master Builder comes from Henrik Ibsen's play, which translated for Andre Gregory's stage adaptation before writing the screenplay, and there's no mistaking its stage roots. It breaks down into several long conversations, sometimes with participants dropping in and out, but generally finding a resting position in the one-on-one. Between Shawn and Ibsen, the dialog never sounds entirely natural - it's the sort of [screen] play that exists in large part to put meaty chunks of words in actors' mouths - but does a fair job of making scenes between two people feel conversational as opposed to being just ways for them to extract information from each other for the audience's benefit. The play does occasionally err in the other direction, in that folks not enraptured with the performances may occasionally grumble about how these folks are taking far too much care not to mention important things until the moment of maximum dramatic impact.
Full review at EFC
One interesting bit I came across while poking at IMDB as reference was Shawn saying he doesn't have a sense of humor but just does what directors tell him to how they tell him to, trusting that they know why him doing it would draw a laugh. I am not sure whether that is some next-level joke-telling on his part. It's possible, since I can't think of any times when he's really the best part of a movie that is otherwise not funny, but it doesn't seem likely . Adds a little something to a bit early in this one, though, when he's playing Solness as dead serious and snaps at another character for not getting a joke which certainly didn't seem much like a joke.
A Master Builder
* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 September 2014 in Landmark Kenmore Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
Like a lot of people, I tend to have this vague knowledge that Wallace Shawn is more than the guy with the funny voice and the odd face, that he's a playwright and an actor who has been a central part of some of the artiest of art-house films. A Master Builder offers up a glimpse of the more somber, serious-minded Shawn, and it's an eye-opening reminder of what he can do that even his less completely comedic roles don't always hint at. In fact, it's almost strange when something like his frequent screen persona emerges.
Shawn plays Halvard Solness, the architect of the title, who is a petty tyrant even as he receives visitors on his sickbed. First is Knut Brovik (Andre Gregory), father to Solness's apprentice Ragnar (Jeff Biehl) - himself engaged to the firm's secretary/bookkeeper Kaia Fosli (Emily Cass McDonnell) - begging his former student to allow Ragnar to take the lead on an upcoming project, so that he can see something his son built before he dies. Then comes Dr. Herdal (Larry Pine), who is not just the family physician but probably the only friend Halvard's wife Aline (Julie Hagerty) has. And, finally, there is Hilde Wangel (Lisa Joyce), a 22-year-old traveler who claims Solness made certain promises to her ten years ago, an encounter he finds it distressingly difficult to remember.
A Master Builder comes from Henrik Ibsen's play, which translated for Andre Gregory's stage adaptation before writing the screenplay, and there's no mistaking its stage roots. It breaks down into several long conversations, sometimes with participants dropping in and out, but generally finding a resting position in the one-on-one. Between Shawn and Ibsen, the dialog never sounds entirely natural - it's the sort of [screen] play that exists in large part to put meaty chunks of words in actors' mouths - but does a fair job of making scenes between two people feel conversational as opposed to being just ways for them to extract information from each other for the audience's benefit. The play does occasionally err in the other direction, in that folks not enraptured with the performances may occasionally grumble about how these folks are taking far too much care not to mention important things until the moment of maximum dramatic impact.
Full review at EFC
Tuesday, September 16, 2014
Finding Fanny & But Always
Two days, two day-and-date releases of Asian movies at Fenway, both of which offered the opportunity grumble a bit about how the quality of everyone's English!
In all seriousness, Finding Fanny was kind of weird on that count. If you've ever watched an Indian movie, you'll notice that there are a lot of English phrases dropped right in the middle of Hindi dialogue, but generally still subtitled because it can be hard for one's brain to shift from reading to listening at just the right time. Fanny is subtitled, so it took ten minutes or so for me to realize that the whole thing was actually in English, period, with almost no Hindi dialogue but just a few words dropped in mid-sentence. The subtitles were helpful with the accents, much like Americans sometimes need it with Scots and working-class Englishmen, although I wonder if I'd have been able to understand better if they weren't there as a crutch.
In But Always, well, it's more of the usual - English that probably sounds pretty good to the Mandarin-speakers who make up the film's main audience but off to us Americans, including the supposedly native-speakers they meet in New York. Someday I want to find a polite way to ask someone how it happens - do Chinese studios just grab any western-looking people they can get off the street and offer them $20 for a day's work even if they're not actors or is this conscious direction, getting people who speak English perfectly well to use rhythms and emphasis that correspond to Mandarin much more than the language they're speaking so that the audience will pick up the right emotional cues?
Both of these movies turned out pretty rough in their own ways: As much as Finding Fanny made me laugh big at times, it had some bits in between that you have to grind through. And But Always... look, I'm probably the least gung-ho person I know when the subject of 9/11 comes up, but I felt like it was used pretty cheaply here, a specter raised in the very first scene that doesn't actually mean anything in the story aside from a potential extra tragedy/obstacle thrown into these two people's love story when the movie catches up, then a footnote implying that the world outside China is scary and dangerous and folks should stay home.
Ah, well. At least China Lion no longer seems to be strictly tied to AMC in America any more, and given how the folks booking movies for Fenway seem fairly willing to serve expatriate audiences with the Indian things, maybe they'll be more reliable in picking these movies up than Boston Common was (and if they could get Iceman next week and keep it around long enough for me to get back from Austin, that would be great too).
Finding Fanny
* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2014 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, DCP)
After a year or so of going to the Indian movies at the local multiplex, one gets a certain idea of what to expect, generally a musical masala picture that's odd by conventional Hollywood standards. Sometimes, though, you get something like Finding Fanny, which is an entirely different sort of weird: A quirky indie-style comedy that's okay when cute but better when the claws come out.
It starts in Pocolim, Goa - the sort of village you won't find on a map and where life passes at the same speed you're moving, to quote narrator Angelina (Deepika Padukone). Ferdinand Pinto (Naseeruddin Shah) is the postmaster there, so it's odd that he has a letter in which he proposed to one Stefanie "Fanny" Fernandes returned forty-six years after it was sent. Angie sees that the only thing to do is to bring Ferdie to Fanny, but actually doing it will also involve Savio de Gama (Arjun Kapoor), just back from six years in Mumbai for his father's funeral, Don Pedro Cleto Colaco (Pankaj Kapur), a world-renowned artist who has recently taken up residence in the town, and Rosalie Eucharistica (Dimple Kapadia), Angie's busybody mother-in-law whom Don Pedro wished to be his voluptuous muse. It should just be a simple morning drive, but it's not surprising that things don't go according to plan for this group.
The initial burst of narration and character introductions may have viewers bracing themselves for an onslaught of too-cute small-town eccentricity, and it's not exactly unwarranted. The movie is filled with oddballs who seem to mostly spend their time being odd rather than accomplishing anything, with Angie fitting into the pixie slot while Savio comes off a bit of a curmudgeon. It's not unpleasant, most of the time, and in fact has some nice little moments as the cast plays off of each other. Director Homi Adajania and co-writer Kersi Khambatta just seem to make the common assumption that weird automatically implies funny or delightful.
Full review at EFC
Yi Sheng Yi Shi (But Always)
* * (out of four)
Seen 15 September 2014 in Regal Fenway #12 (first-run, DCP)
Is it cynical of me to start counting shots between a "New York 2001" caption and the first glimpse of the World Trade Center, or of writer/director Snow Zou for putting the audience in that position? That's not the worst thing about But Always, though; which takes an inoffensive but enjoyable romance and finds ways to make it uncomfortable when a little bit of thought is applied.
After that opening, the film jumps back to 1976 Beijing, when a doctor goes off on a dangerous mission to help earthquake victims, but gives her 4-year-old daughter Anran the dream of following in her footsteps. Five years later, her father sends Anran to a school in a different neighborhood where she meets poor orphan Zhao Yongyuan, although his uncle Ji (Lam Suet) takes him out of town when his grandmother dies. Come 1993, Yongyuan (Nicholas Tse) returns to Beijing, where Anran (Gao Yuanyuan) is finishing college with an eye toward medical school in America. Their paths cross, and they fall in love, but it won't be that easy.
The thing is, it could be that easy. The story pivots on Yongyuan deciding to break things off for Arjan's own good, which is kind of insulting even in the best of uses, but Zou never seems to see it that way, and the New York set latter segments of the movie not only fail to acknowledge this, but actually push Anran's and Yongyuan's reunion to a kind of creepy place. It's that area where men are applying pressure disguised as grand gestures and what choices the woman makes are either born out of guilt or what men will either give permission or deny opportunity to do. It looks romantic because nobody seems to have consciously bad intentions and scenes call back to earlier moments that were the real deal, but there's something not right underneath.
Full review at EFC
In all seriousness, Finding Fanny was kind of weird on that count. If you've ever watched an Indian movie, you'll notice that there are a lot of English phrases dropped right in the middle of Hindi dialogue, but generally still subtitled because it can be hard for one's brain to shift from reading to listening at just the right time. Fanny is subtitled, so it took ten minutes or so for me to realize that the whole thing was actually in English, period, with almost no Hindi dialogue but just a few words dropped in mid-sentence. The subtitles were helpful with the accents, much like Americans sometimes need it with Scots and working-class Englishmen, although I wonder if I'd have been able to understand better if they weren't there as a crutch.
In But Always, well, it's more of the usual - English that probably sounds pretty good to the Mandarin-speakers who make up the film's main audience but off to us Americans, including the supposedly native-speakers they meet in New York. Someday I want to find a polite way to ask someone how it happens - do Chinese studios just grab any western-looking people they can get off the street and offer them $20 for a day's work even if they're not actors or is this conscious direction, getting people who speak English perfectly well to use rhythms and emphasis that correspond to Mandarin much more than the language they're speaking so that the audience will pick up the right emotional cues?
Both of these movies turned out pretty rough in their own ways: As much as Finding Fanny made me laugh big at times, it had some bits in between that you have to grind through. And But Always... look, I'm probably the least gung-ho person I know when the subject of 9/11 comes up, but I felt like it was used pretty cheaply here, a specter raised in the very first scene that doesn't actually mean anything in the story aside from a potential extra tragedy/obstacle thrown into these two people's love story when the movie catches up, then a footnote implying that the world outside China is scary and dangerous and folks should stay home.
Ah, well. At least China Lion no longer seems to be strictly tied to AMC in America any more, and given how the folks booking movies for Fenway seem fairly willing to serve expatriate audiences with the Indian things, maybe they'll be more reliable in picking these movies up than Boston Common was (and if they could get Iceman next week and keep it around long enough for me to get back from Austin, that would be great too).
Finding Fanny
* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 September 2014 in Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, DCP)
After a year or so of going to the Indian movies at the local multiplex, one gets a certain idea of what to expect, generally a musical masala picture that's odd by conventional Hollywood standards. Sometimes, though, you get something like Finding Fanny, which is an entirely different sort of weird: A quirky indie-style comedy that's okay when cute but better when the claws come out.
It starts in Pocolim, Goa - the sort of village you won't find on a map and where life passes at the same speed you're moving, to quote narrator Angelina (Deepika Padukone). Ferdinand Pinto (Naseeruddin Shah) is the postmaster there, so it's odd that he has a letter in which he proposed to one Stefanie "Fanny" Fernandes returned forty-six years after it was sent. Angie sees that the only thing to do is to bring Ferdie to Fanny, but actually doing it will also involve Savio de Gama (Arjun Kapoor), just back from six years in Mumbai for his father's funeral, Don Pedro Cleto Colaco (Pankaj Kapur), a world-renowned artist who has recently taken up residence in the town, and Rosalie Eucharistica (Dimple Kapadia), Angie's busybody mother-in-law whom Don Pedro wished to be his voluptuous muse. It should just be a simple morning drive, but it's not surprising that things don't go according to plan for this group.
The initial burst of narration and character introductions may have viewers bracing themselves for an onslaught of too-cute small-town eccentricity, and it's not exactly unwarranted. The movie is filled with oddballs who seem to mostly spend their time being odd rather than accomplishing anything, with Angie fitting into the pixie slot while Savio comes off a bit of a curmudgeon. It's not unpleasant, most of the time, and in fact has some nice little moments as the cast plays off of each other. Director Homi Adajania and co-writer Kersi Khambatta just seem to make the common assumption that weird automatically implies funny or delightful.
Full review at EFC
Yi Sheng Yi Shi (But Always)
* * (out of four)
Seen 15 September 2014 in Regal Fenway #12 (first-run, DCP)
Is it cynical of me to start counting shots between a "New York 2001" caption and the first glimpse of the World Trade Center, or of writer/director Snow Zou for putting the audience in that position? That's not the worst thing about But Always, though; which takes an inoffensive but enjoyable romance and finds ways to make it uncomfortable when a little bit of thought is applied.
After that opening, the film jumps back to 1976 Beijing, when a doctor goes off on a dangerous mission to help earthquake victims, but gives her 4-year-old daughter Anran the dream of following in her footsteps. Five years later, her father sends Anran to a school in a different neighborhood where she meets poor orphan Zhao Yongyuan, although his uncle Ji (Lam Suet) takes him out of town when his grandmother dies. Come 1993, Yongyuan (Nicholas Tse) returns to Beijing, where Anran (Gao Yuanyuan) is finishing college with an eye toward medical school in America. Their paths cross, and they fall in love, but it won't be that easy.
The thing is, it could be that easy. The story pivots on Yongyuan deciding to break things off for Arjan's own good, which is kind of insulting even in the best of uses, but Zou never seems to see it that way, and the New York set latter segments of the movie not only fail to acknowledge this, but actually push Anran's and Yongyuan's reunion to a kind of creepy place. It's that area where men are applying pressure disguised as grand gestures and what choices the woman makes are either born out of guilt or what men will either give permission or deny opportunity to do. It looks romantic because nobody seems to have consciously bad intentions and scenes call back to earlier moments that were the real deal, but there's something not right underneath.
Full review at EFC
Sunday, September 14, 2014
The Pirates and yet more Fantasia Catch-up.
Between Roaring Currents a few weeks ago, The Pirates yesterday, and Haemoo, another sea-faring Korean adventure, on my hypothetical list for Fantastic Fest in a few days, I'm starting to wonder if some Korean studio built a big shooting pool like James Cameron did for Titanic and is going to get some use out of it no matter what. Not that I'm complaining, I love these things, and if South Korea wants to keep making them for me, they can go right ahead.
It was one of the more sparse crowds I've seen for a Korean movie in Revere lately, especially after the multi-week runs Roaring Currents and Kundo got, although I did have to get up pretty early to get there, leaving Central Square by quarter of eleven for a 12:15pm movie; I suspect the local college students who might be inclined to make the trip out to Revere may have gone for the show might have been waiting for the next show.
It does make me a little sad that this didn't play Fantasia, although there's no knowing if it would have made the cut. As much as I'm glad I get to see some of these movies either at the same time they play in their native land or just weeks later, them being pre-sold and moved to screens fast enough to do so means they are skipping the festival part of their run, which means that instead of seeing them with a big crowd of excited people in Montreal, there's three of us in a rather empty room in Revere. It's selfish to think like this - when Well Go manages to get this on screens, it gets more people in seats than one or two screenings at festivals that the folks in the right place at the right time do, and I don't want to deny folks a chance to see it because I am often one of those folks in the right place and right time, even if the individual experience is better at the festival. No real solution to it other than to enjoy both when you get the chance.
Speaking of Fantasia, here's another five reviews completed over the past week: WolfCop, Hunter X Hunter: Phantom Rouge, Black Butler, Time Lapse, and 3D Naked Ambition. Seven to go. It's going to be close, as far as getting one festival done before the next is concerned.
Haejuk: Badaro Gan Sanjuk (The Pirates)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 September 2014 in Showcase Cinemas de Lux Revere #2 (first-run, DCP)
That they can be given names as generic as "Pirates of the Caribbean" or, in this case, just "The Pirates", without fear of confusion means just one thing: There are not enough pirate movies being made these days. This one is occasionally on the silly side, but it's packed full of quality swashbuckling, and not nearly enough trips to the theater deliver that.
It starts in 1388, introducing us to Jang Sa-jung (Kim Nam-gil), who decides he would rather be a bandit than a rebel soldier as his leader Yi Song-gye seems to have more concern for himself than the people, though he must fight his way through captain Mo Hong-gab (Kim Tae-woo) to desert. At sea, Yeo-wol (Son Ye-jin) may be the only woman in a pirate crew, but she's first mate and clearly the most capable, even if she's not nearly so cold-blooded as captain Soma (Lee Kyoung-young). Three years later, Yi has become king, but a royal seal from the Ming Emperor meant to legitimize his rule is lost at sea, swallowed by a whale. Yeo-wol has no taste for hunting such a creature, but she is backed into it, and soon finds Jang to be competing with her.
As inciting incidents go, anything that includes the phrase "swallowed by a whale" is pretty unlikely, but the neat thing about such improbability is that it gives writer Cheon Seong-il and director Lee Suk-hoon the opportunity to play things both straight and comedically without a lot of the tonal whiplash that can come when movies try to do both. The filmmakers are certainly able to present the villains as real threats, but there are extended periods of outright slapstick comedy - watch mountain bandits who don't know what a whale is get in a boat to catch one! - and the two are able to intersect without one undercutting the other much better than is often the case.
Full review at EFC
WolfCop
* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
Contrary to any expectations one might have from buying a ticket based upon the name alone, this movie is not "RoboCop, but he's a werewolf". So, get over that and hope that someone else takes that particular idea and runs with it. There, now you can appreciate WolfCop as an enjoyable bit of supernatural action-comedy - I don't think it's actually trying hard enough to scare anybody to call it horror.
In this one, a crappy cop by the name of Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) in a small Canadian town is investigating a report out in the woods when... Well, he's not quite sure, but he wakes up with a pentagram carved on his chest and more trouble getting a close shave than usual, but one gets the impression that strange stuff has happened to him while drinking before. This actually inspires him to do a little investigation, though, even if he does spend more time talking to conspiracy theorist/taxidermist Willie (Jonathan Cherry) and busty bartender Jessica (Sarah Lind) than his by-the-book partner Tina (Amy Matysio). It soon becomes clear what's going on, and the only question is whether the full moon will leave Lou as more wolf... or cop!
Director Lowell Dean and co-writer Bannister Bergen are playing this with their tongue firmly in their cheek, clear from the first time you see an advertisement for an establishment called "Liquor Donuts", and they don't ever do much to mitigate this. There are plentiful jokes about stuff small towns where there isn't much to do other than drink and hunt (the Drink & Shoot is, in fact, the place's signature event), although it doesn't spend all of its time mocking the locals. Most of the jokes land well, and when they don't, the next one is not far off. There's a winning self-awareness of the story's absurdity and the production's limited budget that stops just short of breaking the fourth wall. Heck, the main character is actually named "Lou Garou", and is played by an appropriately hairy guy.
Full review on EFC
Gekijouban HUNTERxHUNTER Hiiro no Genei (Hunter X Hunter: Phantom Rouge)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: AXIS, HD)
Every time a film that is spun out of a long-running manga or anime series lands on the festival schedule (or, less frequently, plays locally), I get the idea of grabbing one of the Wednesday regulars at the comic shop and asking what I need to know, though I never do. As a result, I've really got no idea how Phantom Rouge plays to longtime fans of Hunter X Hunter, although I'd guess they will go for it, as might the rest of us if we catch up.
The two Hunters who take the lead in this adventure are Gon and Kilua, twelve-year-old boys who nevertheless are exceptionally well-trained martial artists who can enhance their abilities by tapping into a force called "nen". While the Hunter Academy is training them to be adventurers and peacekeepers in a world of strange powers and mysteries, their newest mission is personal: Their friend and fellow Hunter Kurapika has had his eyes stolen by an evil magician, although he still receives enough imagery through them to direct Gon and Kilua to look for a manor with a certain view. Gon winds up enlisting the help of street puppeteer Retsu, although Kilua is wary, not so much because he doesn't like girls, but because he was born into a family of assassins and struggles with the entire idea of friends, including Gon.
Well, that certainly describes an animated movie based upon a manga I have never read that was as a result kind of difficult to wrap my head around. Kudos to those involved for keeping it from becoming incomprehensible, though - along with the trés kawaii bit that opened the movie to introduce Gon, Kilua, and Hunter Academy to newbies like me, the filmmakers do a fair job of explaining as they go. A benefit, perhaps, of having preteen heroes still learning about the frantic world around them. It can still be somewhat overwhelming, especially since the exposition is not spread around evenly: There's full background on Kurapika despite him spending much of the movie sidelined, just enough on Kilua to feel like half the story, while main character Gon is left fairly simple. Still, the last-act pile-up of characters is shockingly manageable, even if all the talk of "nen" does sort of become gobbledegook to an outsider such as me.
Full review on EFC
Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: Action!, DCP)
One of the women in front of me was throwing her hands up roughly every ten minutes or so during this movie, and I wondered off the top of my head whether she was just having a general "what the hell is this thing?" reaction to a movie that always has some other crazy thing to offer its audience or a more specific "what the hell have they done to my favorite manga because it's not supposed to be like this?" one. I gather the film takes some pretty extreme liberties with the source material, and maybe if I'd read more than a few chapters in Yen Press's brief attempt at a weekly Japanese-style manga anthology, I'd be upset too. But I haven't, and I'm not, because this thing is just gloriously daffy.
It features 17-year-old heroine Shiori Genpo (Ayame Gouriki), who cross-dresses as her illegitimate brother Kiyoharu so that she can inherit the family fortune and title in an alternate 2020 where there is still a powerful aristocracy - some members of whom, like Shiori, serve as secret agents for the Western Queen. Her butler Sebastian (Hiro Mizushima) is a demon who protects her and serves as a partner so that he may someday consume the soul she sold to him as a child in order to escape and bring the men who kidnapped her and killed her parents to justice (the world believes Shiori to be dead). Almost immediately after breaking up a human-trafficking ring, "Kiyoharu" is assigned a new mission: Discover who is behind the spontaneous mummifications happening throughout the city. Aunt Hanae (Yuka) may be able to get her "nephew" entree to the club that seems to be the epicenter, and Shiori's investigations not only discover links between new drug "necrosis" and arms dealer Youzo Shinozaki (Ichirota Miyagawa), but that someone else involved, Shinpei Kuzo (Masato Ibu), may also have been part of Shiori's kidnapping ten years ago.
Some fantasy adventures are content to insert one new thing into the familiar, but between original manga-ka Yana Toboso and screenwriter Tsutomu Kuroiwa, Black Butler throws one thing after another onto the pile, and why not? Once you've got the demon in there and made the decision to change the setting from Victorian England to an alternate reality (which made it much less weird to shoot with a Japanese cast), there's not much end to what you can do. What's most surprising about going this direction, though, is that both the writers and directors Kentaro Otani & Keiichi Sato opt not to take the frequent winking "isn't this all so wacky?" attitude most pulp mash-ups go for; this is a surprisingly intense action movie for being so downright weird, though it stops well short of making the whole thing a joyless trudge through ever-darker territory.
Full review on EFC
Time Lapse
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival: Paradigm Shifters, DCP)
Time Lapse is a standout even for one of the best sci-fi years I can remember Fantasia having, and while those are rankings that may not mean much to non-attendees, it is meant as high praise. There's always room for an enjoyably devilish effect-before-cause story that, as many of the best do, fits together like an exceptionally well-constructed puzzle.
This one starts with Finn (Matt O'Leary), a struggling artist keeping a roof over his head by serving as the housing department's superintendent. He shares this apartment with girlfriend Callie (Danielle Panabaker) and best friend Jasper (George Finn), and lives across the way from a scientist whose mail is starting to pile up ominously. When they go to check, Mr. Bezzeredes is missing, but the front room of his apartment is filled with a massive camera pointed at their place. The lines of Polaroids covering the wall are creepy, but the kicker is when they discover that these photographs are taken automatically once a day - and show the view of their apartment from twenty-four hours in the future.
This isn't, strictly speaking, a time-travel movie, but it's in the same family. The tension in these stories comes not just from the forces within the story itself but in how different aspects appeal to the head (the puzzle that involves present and future events being locked into place) and heart (the idea that one's efforts matter and can make things better), working at cross purposes. Director Bradley King and his co-writer B.P. Cooper do an exceptionally good job of maintaining this conflict, because it's not just about leaving them both as possibilities until the end; we've got to feel that Finn and company can act even as we assemble puzzle pieces assuming that they can't. King & Cooper do an excellent job of making sure that the intellectual half of it is well-constructed - I didn't quite figure out the missing piece exactly, but did wind up appreciating that bits were hidden in plain sight without becoming predictable.
Full review on EFC
Naked Ambition
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Xpand 3D)
I wonder how many of the critics who regularly make sure to include something along the lines of "don't pay the extra for 3D, there's nothing that merits it" for seemingly every movie released in the format will pause when considering Anri Okita's L-cups in 3D Naked Ambition. After all, even someone who usually likes the format such as myself can find this to be a bit of a long hour-forty-five with glasses on despite the movie being quite funny, although it's hard to overlook things that make an impression.
Before those particular breasts are thrust into the audience, we're introduced to Wyman Chan (Chapman To), a writer of erotic fiction for a Hong Kong periodical, although his editor Larry (Tyson Chak) has to let him go. Commiserating with adult-video store owner Simon (Derek Tsang), they come up with a new idea - a tour of Tokyo where fellow AV fans can contribute ideas and watch a for-collectors-only movie be filmed. With the help of liaison Shodaiko Hatoyama (Josie Ho), things are going well until the actor storms off, at which point Wyman is drafted to fill in and... Well, things go off-script. This makes him a laughingstock back home, but he is tremendously popular with Japanese women, so he starts a new career as "Mario Ozawa".
That screen name is a reference to a well-known actress in this genre, although not so well that I would have heard of her, not being the sort of aficionado that Wyman and his friends are. I suspect that there are a lot of gags in the movie that play to a knowledgeable audience, whether that involves familiarity with Asian porn or the sort of extremely local jokes Hong Kong filmmakers throw into Category III movies like this which they know stand no chance of getting past Mainland China's censorship board. I suspect most people who would be up for this will at least recognize the basis of the most frequently recurring gag - turning the tables on well-known AV scenarios to have "Mario" playing the victim of sexually aggressive women - just through osmosis. There's a surprising amount of teeth to it, actually, both for pointing out how repetitive the scenarios are and how ugly these fantasies are, even if there is something absurd about Wyman being overpowered.
Full review on EFC
It was one of the more sparse crowds I've seen for a Korean movie in Revere lately, especially after the multi-week runs Roaring Currents and Kundo got, although I did have to get up pretty early to get there, leaving Central Square by quarter of eleven for a 12:15pm movie; I suspect the local college students who might be inclined to make the trip out to Revere may have gone for the show might have been waiting for the next show.
It does make me a little sad that this didn't play Fantasia, although there's no knowing if it would have made the cut. As much as I'm glad I get to see some of these movies either at the same time they play in their native land or just weeks later, them being pre-sold and moved to screens fast enough to do so means they are skipping the festival part of their run, which means that instead of seeing them with a big crowd of excited people in Montreal, there's three of us in a rather empty room in Revere. It's selfish to think like this - when Well Go manages to get this on screens, it gets more people in seats than one or two screenings at festivals that the folks in the right place at the right time do, and I don't want to deny folks a chance to see it because I am often one of those folks in the right place and right time, even if the individual experience is better at the festival. No real solution to it other than to enjoy both when you get the chance.
Speaking of Fantasia, here's another five reviews completed over the past week: WolfCop, Hunter X Hunter: Phantom Rouge, Black Butler, Time Lapse, and 3D Naked Ambition. Seven to go. It's going to be close, as far as getting one festival done before the next is concerned.
Haejuk: Badaro Gan Sanjuk (The Pirates)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 13 September 2014 in Showcase Cinemas de Lux Revere #2 (first-run, DCP)
That they can be given names as generic as "Pirates of the Caribbean" or, in this case, just "The Pirates", without fear of confusion means just one thing: There are not enough pirate movies being made these days. This one is occasionally on the silly side, but it's packed full of quality swashbuckling, and not nearly enough trips to the theater deliver that.
It starts in 1388, introducing us to Jang Sa-jung (Kim Nam-gil), who decides he would rather be a bandit than a rebel soldier as his leader Yi Song-gye seems to have more concern for himself than the people, though he must fight his way through captain Mo Hong-gab (Kim Tae-woo) to desert. At sea, Yeo-wol (Son Ye-jin) may be the only woman in a pirate crew, but she's first mate and clearly the most capable, even if she's not nearly so cold-blooded as captain Soma (Lee Kyoung-young). Three years later, Yi has become king, but a royal seal from the Ming Emperor meant to legitimize his rule is lost at sea, swallowed by a whale. Yeo-wol has no taste for hunting such a creature, but she is backed into it, and soon finds Jang to be competing with her.
As inciting incidents go, anything that includes the phrase "swallowed by a whale" is pretty unlikely, but the neat thing about such improbability is that it gives writer Cheon Seong-il and director Lee Suk-hoon the opportunity to play things both straight and comedically without a lot of the tonal whiplash that can come when movies try to do both. The filmmakers are certainly able to present the villains as real threats, but there are extended periods of outright slapstick comedy - watch mountain bandits who don't know what a whale is get in a boat to catch one! - and the two are able to intersect without one undercutting the other much better than is often the case.
Full review at EFC
WolfCop
* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
Contrary to any expectations one might have from buying a ticket based upon the name alone, this movie is not "RoboCop, but he's a werewolf". So, get over that and hope that someone else takes that particular idea and runs with it. There, now you can appreciate WolfCop as an enjoyable bit of supernatural action-comedy - I don't think it's actually trying hard enough to scare anybody to call it horror.
In this one, a crappy cop by the name of Lou Garou (Leo Fafard) in a small Canadian town is investigating a report out in the woods when... Well, he's not quite sure, but he wakes up with a pentagram carved on his chest and more trouble getting a close shave than usual, but one gets the impression that strange stuff has happened to him while drinking before. This actually inspires him to do a little investigation, though, even if he does spend more time talking to conspiracy theorist/taxidermist Willie (Jonathan Cherry) and busty bartender Jessica (Sarah Lind) than his by-the-book partner Tina (Amy Matysio). It soon becomes clear what's going on, and the only question is whether the full moon will leave Lou as more wolf... or cop!
Director Lowell Dean and co-writer Bannister Bergen are playing this with their tongue firmly in their cheek, clear from the first time you see an advertisement for an establishment called "Liquor Donuts", and they don't ever do much to mitigate this. There are plentiful jokes about stuff small towns where there isn't much to do other than drink and hunt (the Drink & Shoot is, in fact, the place's signature event), although it doesn't spend all of its time mocking the locals. Most of the jokes land well, and when they don't, the next one is not far off. There's a winning self-awareness of the story's absurdity and the production's limited budget that stops just short of breaking the fourth wall. Heck, the main character is actually named "Lou Garou", and is played by an appropriately hairy guy.
Full review on EFC
Gekijouban HUNTERxHUNTER Hiiro no Genei (Hunter X Hunter: Phantom Rouge)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: AXIS, HD)
Every time a film that is spun out of a long-running manga or anime series lands on the festival schedule (or, less frequently, plays locally), I get the idea of grabbing one of the Wednesday regulars at the comic shop and asking what I need to know, though I never do. As a result, I've really got no idea how Phantom Rouge plays to longtime fans of Hunter X Hunter, although I'd guess they will go for it, as might the rest of us if we catch up.
The two Hunters who take the lead in this adventure are Gon and Kilua, twelve-year-old boys who nevertheless are exceptionally well-trained martial artists who can enhance their abilities by tapping into a force called "nen". While the Hunter Academy is training them to be adventurers and peacekeepers in a world of strange powers and mysteries, their newest mission is personal: Their friend and fellow Hunter Kurapika has had his eyes stolen by an evil magician, although he still receives enough imagery through them to direct Gon and Kilua to look for a manor with a certain view. Gon winds up enlisting the help of street puppeteer Retsu, although Kilua is wary, not so much because he doesn't like girls, but because he was born into a family of assassins and struggles with the entire idea of friends, including Gon.
Well, that certainly describes an animated movie based upon a manga I have never read that was as a result kind of difficult to wrap my head around. Kudos to those involved for keeping it from becoming incomprehensible, though - along with the trés kawaii bit that opened the movie to introduce Gon, Kilua, and Hunter Academy to newbies like me, the filmmakers do a fair job of explaining as they go. A benefit, perhaps, of having preteen heroes still learning about the frantic world around them. It can still be somewhat overwhelming, especially since the exposition is not spread around evenly: There's full background on Kurapika despite him spending much of the movie sidelined, just enough on Kilua to feel like half the story, while main character Gon is left fairly simple. Still, the last-act pile-up of characters is shockingly manageable, even if all the talk of "nen" does sort of become gobbledegook to an outsider such as me.
Full review on EFC
Kuroshitsuji (Black Butler)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival: Action!, DCP)
One of the women in front of me was throwing her hands up roughly every ten minutes or so during this movie, and I wondered off the top of my head whether she was just having a general "what the hell is this thing?" reaction to a movie that always has some other crazy thing to offer its audience or a more specific "what the hell have they done to my favorite manga because it's not supposed to be like this?" one. I gather the film takes some pretty extreme liberties with the source material, and maybe if I'd read more than a few chapters in Yen Press's brief attempt at a weekly Japanese-style manga anthology, I'd be upset too. But I haven't, and I'm not, because this thing is just gloriously daffy.
It features 17-year-old heroine Shiori Genpo (Ayame Gouriki), who cross-dresses as her illegitimate brother Kiyoharu so that she can inherit the family fortune and title in an alternate 2020 where there is still a powerful aristocracy - some members of whom, like Shiori, serve as secret agents for the Western Queen. Her butler Sebastian (Hiro Mizushima) is a demon who protects her and serves as a partner so that he may someday consume the soul she sold to him as a child in order to escape and bring the men who kidnapped her and killed her parents to justice (the world believes Shiori to be dead). Almost immediately after breaking up a human-trafficking ring, "Kiyoharu" is assigned a new mission: Discover who is behind the spontaneous mummifications happening throughout the city. Aunt Hanae (Yuka) may be able to get her "nephew" entree to the club that seems to be the epicenter, and Shiori's investigations not only discover links between new drug "necrosis" and arms dealer Youzo Shinozaki (Ichirota Miyagawa), but that someone else involved, Shinpei Kuzo (Masato Ibu), may also have been part of Shiori's kidnapping ten years ago.
Some fantasy adventures are content to insert one new thing into the familiar, but between original manga-ka Yana Toboso and screenwriter Tsutomu Kuroiwa, Black Butler throws one thing after another onto the pile, and why not? Once you've got the demon in there and made the decision to change the setting from Victorian England to an alternate reality (which made it much less weird to shoot with a Japanese cast), there's not much end to what you can do. What's most surprising about going this direction, though, is that both the writers and directors Kentaro Otani & Keiichi Sato opt not to take the frequent winking "isn't this all so wacky?" attitude most pulp mash-ups go for; this is a surprisingly intense action movie for being so downright weird, though it stops well short of making the whole thing a joyless trudge through ever-darker territory.
Full review on EFC
Time Lapse
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival: Paradigm Shifters, DCP)
Time Lapse is a standout even for one of the best sci-fi years I can remember Fantasia having, and while those are rankings that may not mean much to non-attendees, it is meant as high praise. There's always room for an enjoyably devilish effect-before-cause story that, as many of the best do, fits together like an exceptionally well-constructed puzzle.
This one starts with Finn (Matt O'Leary), a struggling artist keeping a roof over his head by serving as the housing department's superintendent. He shares this apartment with girlfriend Callie (Danielle Panabaker) and best friend Jasper (George Finn), and lives across the way from a scientist whose mail is starting to pile up ominously. When they go to check, Mr. Bezzeredes is missing, but the front room of his apartment is filled with a massive camera pointed at their place. The lines of Polaroids covering the wall are creepy, but the kicker is when they discover that these photographs are taken automatically once a day - and show the view of their apartment from twenty-four hours in the future.
This isn't, strictly speaking, a time-travel movie, but it's in the same family. The tension in these stories comes not just from the forces within the story itself but in how different aspects appeal to the head (the puzzle that involves present and future events being locked into place) and heart (the idea that one's efforts matter and can make things better), working at cross purposes. Director Bradley King and his co-writer B.P. Cooper do an exceptionally good job of maintaining this conflict, because it's not just about leaving them both as possibilities until the end; we've got to feel that Finn and company can act even as we assemble puzzle pieces assuming that they can't. King & Cooper do an excellent job of making sure that the intellectual half of it is well-constructed - I didn't quite figure out the missing piece exactly, but did wind up appreciating that bits were hidden in plain sight without becoming predictable.
Full review on EFC
Naked Ambition
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, Xpand 3D)
I wonder how many of the critics who regularly make sure to include something along the lines of "don't pay the extra for 3D, there's nothing that merits it" for seemingly every movie released in the format will pause when considering Anri Okita's L-cups in 3D Naked Ambition. After all, even someone who usually likes the format such as myself can find this to be a bit of a long hour-forty-five with glasses on despite the movie being quite funny, although it's hard to overlook things that make an impression.
Before those particular breasts are thrust into the audience, we're introduced to Wyman Chan (Chapman To), a writer of erotic fiction for a Hong Kong periodical, although his editor Larry (Tyson Chak) has to let him go. Commiserating with adult-video store owner Simon (Derek Tsang), they come up with a new idea - a tour of Tokyo where fellow AV fans can contribute ideas and watch a for-collectors-only movie be filmed. With the help of liaison Shodaiko Hatoyama (Josie Ho), things are going well until the actor storms off, at which point Wyman is drafted to fill in and... Well, things go off-script. This makes him a laughingstock back home, but he is tremendously popular with Japanese women, so he starts a new career as "Mario Ozawa".
That screen name is a reference to a well-known actress in this genre, although not so well that I would have heard of her, not being the sort of aficionado that Wyman and his friends are. I suspect that there are a lot of gags in the movie that play to a knowledgeable audience, whether that involves familiarity with Asian porn or the sort of extremely local jokes Hong Kong filmmakers throw into Category III movies like this which they know stand no chance of getting past Mainland China's censorship board. I suspect most people who would be up for this will at least recognize the basis of the most frequently recurring gag - turning the tables on well-known AV scenarios to have "Mario" playing the victim of sexually aggressive women - just through osmosis. There's a surprising amount of teeth to it, actually, both for pointing out how repetitive the scenarios are and how ugly these fantasies are, even if there is something absurd about Wyman being overpowered.
Full review on EFC
Thursday, September 11, 2014
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 September - 18 September 2014
Hey, Boston, I'm grateful for everything you're trying to sneak in before I leave town for a week, but I really can't do it all this weekend. There are some harsh decisions to be made, even if you ignore the bigger releases.
My plans? At least Come Drink with Me in Chinatown, The Pirates, But Always, The Kid Brother, and The Drop, hopefully managing A Master Builder, because that preview looked fantastic. On Thursday, I'll be leaving for Austin for my first trip to Fantastic Fest.
Of course, the jury duty I've got Monday could really screw that up.
- For instance, one of my favorite events on the Boston moviegoing calendar is Films at the Gate, when the Asian Community Development Corporation takes over Chinatown Park on the Rose Kennedy Greenway and shows Chinese movies outside, weather permitting. So grab some take-out from local merchants, make a donation to the youth programs, and arrive at 6:30pm for lion dancing and martial arts demonstrations before the 7:30pm movies, Friday to Sunday. This year, the movies are Jackie Chan's Fearless Hyena on Friday, Herman Yau's The Woman Knight of Mirror Lake (a biography of poet Qiu Jin starring Crystal Huang and Anthony Wong) on Saturday, and King Hu's Come Drink with Me on Sunday, the latter featuring Cheng Pei Pei and action directed by Sammo Hung.
- Roughly at the same time, The Somerville Theatre is showing this year's Spike & Mike's Festival of Animation, with the Classic show at 8pm Friday & Saturday and the Sick & Twisted program at 10pm on the same days. Both are on the big screen, as is Sunday's "Silents, Please!" presentation, this one featuring Harold Lloyd in The Kid Brother, along with short "The Eastern Westerner", in 35mm with Jeff Rapsis on the organ. The Kid Brother isn't quite as well known as some of Lloyd's other features, but it's one of his best. Saturday night also has the monthly All Things Horror presentation, Karen Lam's Evangeline, in the screening room along with two short films.
- Also opening at the Somerville (and other places) is The Drop, featuring Tom Hardy and the late James Gandolfini as operators of a Brooklyn "drop bar" (a spot where mob money is held) who gets robbed of its take. It's from a Dennis Lehane short story - he also wrote the screenplay - and has Noomi Rapace and Matthias Schoenaerts as part of a nice cast. It's at Somerville, Kendall Square, Embassy, Fenway (including RPX), Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.
Also opening in wide release are two others: Dolphin Tale 2, apparently the rare case of a true story with an actual sequel, with a group that includes Ashley Judd, Morgan Freeman, Harry Connick Jr., and Kris Kristofferson rescuing another dolphin. It's at the Capitol, Apple, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere. There's also No Good Deed, with Idris Elba as an escaped prisoner holding a mother (Taraji P. Henson) and her kids hostage. It's at Apple, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
As has become a strangely regular occurrence, there's a Korean film opening in Revere, in this case The Pirates, which features Kim Nam-gil and Son Ye-jin as rival outlaws of the high seas seeking a lost treasure. In a bit of a swerve, Chinese romance But Always opens at Fenway, a bit further from Chinatown than China Lion films used to play, but maybe more will be picked up now. Boston Common, on the other hand, opens up Atlas Shrugged Part III: Who is John Galt?, and good lord, they've recast the entire thing again.
Boston Common also has Good Will Hunting on Sunday and Wednesday for $6. The places with Imax-branded screens (Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Jordan's) will be putting Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on those screens for a week, with Boston Common having Transformers 4 for the 9:45pm shows instead. The Capitol and West Newton Cinema pick up The One I Love - Kendall Square has two films on top of The Drop, both adapted from plays. The Man on Her mind stars Amy McAllister and Samuel James as two people who, after a blind date several months back, started fantasizing relationships with idealized versions of each other. The one-week booking, meanwhile, is for A Master Builder, which stars Wallace Shawn as the title character in his own new translation of Ibsen's play about a domineering architect, with Jonathan Demme directing.
There's also a one-night "Globe on Screen" presentation of Twelfth Night on Tuesday, and since it's the "original practices" version with Mark Rylance and Stephen Fry that I saw on-stage in London in December 2012, I can heartily recommend it. They also start the Midnight Madness program up again, with Dazed and Confused playing Friday and Saturday nights, with State Park restaurant hosting a pre-screening party before Friday's show. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre opts for Spice World as their Friday/Saturday midnight this week. Sunday features the return of the monthly Goethe-Institut German film, with this month's selection the black comedy Age of Cannibals. They also pick up The Trip to Italy, including an "Off The Couch" screening on Tuesday, where special guest psychiatrists will likely discuss Coogan & Brydon's co-ependent relationship.
- Both Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe and Fenway keep Mary Kom around and also open Finding Fanny, a Hindi comedy about five neighbors who go looking for the postman's lost love, but get lost and likely find some romance themselves. It's oddly short for Bollywood - 102 minutes - but does feature Deepika Padukone. Apple also picks up Telugu-language action/adventure film, Power.
- The Brattle plays host to the Boston Comedy Arts Festival Friday and Saturday, with the only movie screening being Road to Ninja - Naruto the Movie. Sunday and Monday, they have a restoration of Los Angeles Plays Itself (not sure how it's restored, being ten years old and made of film clips, but it's probably more a case of being out of rights hell and cleaned up a bit), with companion films that reflect the city - a double feature of Sunset Boulevard & Chinatown (and a 35mm late show of Repo Man) on Sunday, and Rebel Without a Cause on Monday.
There are more one-off events through the week - a preview screening of Pride on Tuesday, the Andrew Alden Ensemble performing live accompaniment to The General on Wednesday, and a 35mm double-feature of giallo classics The Bird with the Crystal Plumage & What Have You Done to Solange on Thursday, likely to whet the audience's appetite for The Strange Color of Your Body's Tears the next weekend. - More Marco Bellocchio at the Harvard Film Archive: The Nanny (Friday 7pm), Sorelle Mai (Friday 9:15pm), The Void (Saturday 7pm), Slap the Monster on Page One (Saturday 9:30pm), The Prince of Homburg (Sunday 5pm), The Wedding Director (Sunday 7pm), and vincere (Monday 7pm). All are 35mm.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues their Documentary Spotlight, with both The Kill Team and Expedition to the End of the World playing Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and Wednesday, with Expedition also playing Thursday. Wednesday also brings a return of French Favorites, with Philippe Garrel's Jealousy playing Wednesday and Thursday and Chris Marker's Level Five on Thursday.
- ArtsEmerson has a premiere on Friday night, What a World, a documentary on local world musician collective DÜNYA.; there will be discussion befoe and after The free Bright Lights presentations are The Act of Killing (with post-screening discussion) on Tuesday and Balagan presentation Outré Montreal on Thursday.
- the Regent Theatre has two film presentations - Jumanji on Sunday night as an Alzheimer's fundraiser and Faith Connections as part of the Gathr Alive Mind series.
My plans? At least Come Drink with Me in Chinatown, The Pirates, But Always, The Kid Brother, and The Drop, hopefully managing A Master Builder, because that preview looked fantastic. On Thursday, I'll be leaving for Austin for my first trip to Fantastic Fest.
Of course, the jury duty I've got Monday could really screw that up.
Monday, September 08, 2014
This Week In Tickets: 1 September 2014 - 7 September 2014
Why, yes, that ticket was in my pants when I did the laundry.
Weirdly busy week at work, with a burst of stuff that needs to get done at the end of the day, pushing my exit from work late enough that I couldn't catch what I was planning on. Kind of frustrating, but it's what gets me paid, and I got out early enough to see Cantinflas on Thursday. Interesting timing, the same time of year as Instructions not Included last year. Same kind of accessible bilingual release, and entertaining enough.
Friday night was baseball night, and I'd like to dress it up as a microcosm of the Red Sox season, except that they won, eveni f it did take a disaster inning on the part of Blue Jays reliever Casey Janssen. It is still rather satisfying to witness a walk-off win when everybody else has bailed, though.
After that, I spent much of the weekend sitting on the deck, working on getting Fantasia reviews done while listening either to baseball or the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. For evening shows, I caught Mary Kom on Saturday and Innocence on Sunday, finding both flawed, but still fairly interesting.
Weirdly busy week at work, with a burst of stuff that needs to get done at the end of the day, pushing my exit from work late enough that I couldn't catch what I was planning on. Kind of frustrating, but it's what gets me paid, and I got out early enough to see Cantinflas on Thursday. Interesting timing, the same time of year as Instructions not Included last year. Same kind of accessible bilingual release, and entertaining enough.
Friday night was baseball night, and I'd like to dress it up as a microcosm of the Red Sox season, except that they won, eveni f it did take a disaster inning on the part of Blue Jays reliever Casey Janssen. It is still rather satisfying to witness a walk-off win when everybody else has bailed, though.
After that, I spent much of the weekend sitting on the deck, working on getting Fantasia reviews done while listening either to baseball or the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. For evening shows, I caught Mary Kom on Saturday and Innocence on Sunday, finding both flawed, but still fairly interesting.
Innocence (and more Fantasia catch-up)
I was fairly undecided about which of the two low-profile movies opening this weekend to check out Sunday night until clicking a few extra links in Innocence reminded me of where I'd heard the director's name before: Hillary Brougher directed The Sticky Fingers of Time, which I think may have been the first movie I saw at the Coolidge Corner Theatre when I moved to Boston fifteen years ago. I may have been the only one in the theater catching a 9:30pm show on its last day in town, because that thing was pretty far out there on the indie scale, a time-traveling romance between two women with no special effects aside from someone having a tail in one scene. That thing was weird to 25-year-old me, although who knows how I'd react to it if I took the DVD off the shelf and have it a spin tomorrow.
As mentioned in the review, that was her first movie, and Innocenceis her third, fifteen years later, with both seeming to have a hard time getting finished and/or picked up for distribution. That's the kind of thing that really terrifies me about the very idea of being a filmmaker - what happens between those dry spells? For all I know, Ms. Brougher had kept plenty busy, working in theater or commercial work and maybe getting attached to projects that never get made our doing rewrite work that gets hidden by the WGA arbitration process, but I don't know if I'd have the temperament for that sort of uncertainty.
The other thing that caught my eye was that it seems to be cut from the same basic cloth as Another Me a couple weeks ago, with both being horror movies (or at least "dark fantasies") based on young-adult novels adapted by women with backgrounds that are pretty solidly in the independent film world. I suspect that there was a bit of a land-rush when Twilight hit, with producers buying up properties and then looking for people who could work cheap, and that two adapted by women got released in close proximity makes me see patterns when there aren't any. Two movies isn't quite a trend anyway, especially since at least one seems to have sat on the shelf for a while, but I kind of hope it is; I remember seeing Jennifer's Body a few years back and feeling kind of ashamed that scary movies by, for, and about women were rare enough for that one to feel like a real anomaly, a response to all the genre movies asked at young men that mostly used young women as ornamentation. Innocence and Another Me aren't perfect - I think I can safely say that even acknowledging that they are very much not made with me in mind - but they're mainstream, even if they're not getting wide releases. They're movies being made for an audience that some still deny exists, by folks who understand that audience much better than the likes of me or all the middle-aged make filmmakers who look like me.
That's pretty awesome, and not just because I know quite a few women who like this stuff and want the chance to make it, but still sometimes feel the need to use pen names that imply being male, or because it seems to be providing overlooked filmmakers a way to the mainstream. The multiplex is starting to look a bit more interesting, even if these movies are still only getting semi-limited releases.
Anyway, even though this isn't a Fantasia film, it could have been, so let's run through the latest batch of reviews I've done for that festival: Creep, The Search for Weng Weng, Ju-on: The Beginning of the End, Four Corners, Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder, Steel Cold Winter, Miss Granny, and Bros Before Hos. Twelve to go.
Innocence
* * * (out of four)
Seen 7 September 2014 in AMC Boston Common #18 (first-run, DCP)
The concept that Innocence plays with is an old one, but that's the way it is with a lot of movies: Whether you're talking about vampires, possession, or any of the other great horror concepts, they can be re-used because there's plenty of room to continue examining them; they're descended from something primal. Such is the case here; the filmmakers are doing a slick update of a horror story that doesn't get as much play as it used to.
Four months ago, the mother of Beckett Warner (Sophie Curtis) died from a freak aneurysm; now she and father Miles (Linus Roache) are moving into New York City, where Miles's publisher Natalie (Stephanie March) has secured Beckett a spot in a prestigious girls' school. There, she makes the acquaintance of students Sunday Wilson (Chloe Levine), Jen Dunham (Sarah Sutherland), and Chloe Murray (Annie Q.), as well as principal Moira Neal (Liya Kebede), nurse Pamela Hamilton (Kelly Reilly), and therapist Vera Kent (Sarita Choudhury), and it's not long before she gets the inkling that there is something very peculiar going on.
Innocence is freely adapted from Jane Mendelsohn's novel by director Hilary Brougher and co-writer Tristine Skyler, an interesting filmmaker though not a prolific one - this is her third film, with her first, The Sticky Fingers of Time, released in 1999. All have been built around women's perspectives, with this one featuring just one or two make characters of any consequence compared to almost a dozen girls and women. Brougher signals where the story is going to go fairly early on in an English Literature lecture, and but soon starts twisting the idea of a young woman's value being tired to her "purity" around. It's not the most revolutionary or subversive take on the concept, but it's played out with a broad enough cast of characters that nobody is forced into being an archetype and there's even room for some black humor in a spot or two.
Full review at EFC
Creep
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 28 July 2014 in Salle D.B. Clakre (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
My only issues with Creep have nothing whatsoever to do with the movie itself. First, there's the generic title - it's only been ten years since the movie by that name with Franka Potente - and word that two sequels are already planned. I don't know how that works. But look at the movie itself, and it's a work of minimalist near-perfection, tremendously funny and with just enough edge to be a legitimate thriller.
It starts with Aaron (Patrick Brice) telling his camera that he's been hired for a bit of video work, and while it's kind of weird, a job's a job. This one involves following Josef (Mark Duplass) for a day, as he is dying of a brain tumor and wants to leave a testimonial for his unborn son. And while Josef seems very friendly, he's also, to put it mildly, eccentric.
It is a dead-simple premise; Patrick Brice and Mark Duplass have come up with a good reason for a found-footage style movie to be generating said footage and execute it almost by themselves, improvising much of the dialog from their story with Brice directing and shooting from the camera used in-story. They pile every joke that they can on and sell the heck out of each, whether they are shaggy-dog stories, one-liners, or putting a scene together visually in a way that's both funny and disturbing. Creep is a tremendously funny movie, and even when it starts getting into more unsettling territory, the jokes are perfectly executed. It's "wait, what?" humor executed more or less perfectly.
Full review on EFC
The Search for Weng Weng
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2014 in Salle J.A. de Sève (Fantasia Festival: Documentaries from the Edge, DCP)
Going in, I half-thought that I had seen The Search for Weng Weng before, what with IMDB showing a date of 2007 on it and there being at least some time spent on the 2'9" Filipino action hero in Machete Maidens Unleashed, another Aussie doc about the Philippine movie industry. If there was a 2007 version, though, director Andrew Leavold has added a great deal to it to make something quite memorable in its latest incarnation.
When Leovold started the film, the video store operator - 20 years running Trash Video in Brisbane - didn't realize that there was more to Weng Weng's ouevre than For Your Height Only. But, when he comes to the Philippines with a rough cut of the film and a request for any information that those in attendence have, he soon finds himself not only finding more movies Weng Weng starred in, but meeting a lot of colorful characters along the way, from former movie stars back in working class circumstances to the Marcos family.
It's not without bumps, as Leavold, something of an underground filmmaker, is filming his own quest and finds himself going around in circles a bit, often returning to the same point, letting information that will be contradicted stand, and ultimately allowing a lot of the uncertainty of making the film overshadow what he's learning during the making of it. It perhaps reflects the way he learned things, but it doesn't really feel like he's avoiding the straight line for a purpose as opposed to being new at this. Not that I'd want much of this material removed - even if a lot of the the people seem to have the same things to say, they're all worth meeting and giving enough face time that a viewer doesn't ask who that guy is when a group is shown together. Similarly, a side trip to see Imelda Marcos goes on a bit long and doesn't come across as quite so surreal as his narration builds it up to be, but it is still kind of eye-popping; there is probably another great documentary to be made about the apparent affection many Filipinos seem to still have for their long-time first lady even though westerners probably assumed that she and her husband were strung up after Ferdinand Marcos was deposed.
Full review on EFC
Ju-on: Owari no hajimari (Ju-on: The Beginning of the End)
* * (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, HD)
I suspect that the Ju-on franchise must take the ignominious prize for being restarted the most often in the last amount of time - since the original Japanese TV-movie in 2000 (for the sake of simplicity, let's ignore the prototypes made as part of an anthology series), there have been Japanese theatrical features, American features, and now this Japanese theatrical reboot. Oh, and there are rumors of an American reboot. It's understandable - the hook to these ghost stories is still good even if there's a bizarre resistance to expanding the eminently expandable mythos - but it's produced a version 4.0 that brings nothing but a new, inevitably younger, cast.
For those that missed it the first three times around, a Ju-on is like a sort of living grudge, an imprint of pure anger manifesting as the victims at the scene of a murder that affects those who visit, driving them to their own madness and crimes. As before, it is the Saeki family - father Takeo (Yauhito Hida), mother Kayako (Misaki Saisho), and eight-year-old soon Toshio (Kai Kobayashi) - at the center, with others serving as points of entry: Yui Ikuno (Nozomi Sasaki) is the new teacher for Toshio's third-grade class, as the previous one mysteriously disappeared (hmmm); she's got a screenwriter boyfriend, Naoto (Sho Aoyogi). There's also tall-but-timid teenager Nanami (Reina Triendl), pushed by her new friends Yayoi (Yuina Kuroshima), Rina (Miho Kanazawa), and Aoi (Haori Takahashi) to explore a very familiar house that Ali's realtor sister is having trouble selling because of its history.
I may have missed something in the untranslated credits, but I believe that this is the first entry in the franchise made without even the token involvement of creator Takashi Shimizu (after directing six of the things and consulting on 2009's direct-to-video entries, he may have had enough), and his participation does seem to be missed. New director Masayuki Ochiai and co-writer Takashige Ichise retain almost all of the movies' trademarks, from breaking the movie into intersecting chapters that don't always fit together in the expected ways to the creaking sound by which the ghosts announce their presence, but as with the ”White Ghost " and "Black Ghost" entries, the results don't quite measure up - the new Toshio doesn't perfectly appear in the shadows, for instance, and the line between precisely creating a foreboding atmosphere and just showing something weird can be awfully thin. There are hints that they might try something new, style-wise, when the movie opens with a first-person sequence, but that soon falls by the wayside.
Full review on EFC
Four Corners
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 30 July 2014 in Salle D.B. Clarke (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
I must admit to not having a particular affinity for movies about gangs, and I kind of worry that being drawn to this one because it is set in South Africa rather than an American city doesn't speak well of me - I'm too willing to dismiss these stories as alien rather than close-to-home. Still, the environment that director Ian Gabriel and company visit in Four Corners is a large part of its appeal, showing gangs functioning like secret societies inside prison and a run-down but still somewhat sustaining part of Cape Town, and it serves as background for a fine bit of drama.
The opening titles inform those of us who were not aware that South Africa's "numbers gangs", specifically the 28s and 26s, have been fighting for over a hundred years, and right now, the 26s control the neighborhood where 13-year-old Ricardo Galam (Jezzriel Skei) lives, mostly trying to keep his head down and avoid recruitment. A couple of not-quite-newcomers are going to shake things up, though: Farakhan (Brendon Daniels), a general in the 28s once known as "Lee Marvin" and just released from prison, intends to leave the life and move back into his old house despite the 26 now living there; Leila Domingo (Lindiwe Matshikiza), a doctor sent to live in England as a teen has come to bury her father and is not sure about Manzy (Jerry Mofokeng), a homeless man her father took in. Meanwhile, police Captain Tito Hanekom (Abduragman Adams) does what he can to keep the peace and solve a series of murders that have the gangs on edge.
According to the publicity materials, director Ian Gabriel and his crew shot their movie primarily in authentic locations, the sort of places that even cops and reporters tend to stay out of for their own safety, also shooting in the local Sabela dialect. How much it represents the actual experience of being there, I can't say, but it feels genuine in ways that aren't always the case: Rather than just the dark interiors of some run-down buildings, this movie spends a lot of time outside, in a neighborhood that is at least crowded if not quite bustling; there are almost always plenty of people in the background, going about their lives, even though the gang presence can be overwhelming. Much of the cast, from background players to people as prominent as Manzy, are former gang members sporting real ink, slotted into roles that for them like gloves.
Full review on EFC
Doktor Proktors prompepulver (Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in the rented apartment (Fantasia Festival, DVD-on-laptop)
All things considered, Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder has got to be one of the least likely kids' film imaginable, and I can't help but imagine a scenario where I'm recommending it to friends and family members with young children and digging myself a bigger hole with everything I say about it. After all, it comes from the director of the earnest but kind of harsh (and crude) Fatso and is based on a series of books by Jo Nesbø, the writer of some blackly funny, but very adult, crime stories. It's also delightfully silly and high-spirited; the kids will love it.
After all, they'll probably empathize with Lise (Emilly Glaister), an ordinary girl in a quaint Oslo neighborhood whose next-door neighbor and best friend has just moved away and whose parents barely notice she's around. One neighbor moving out means another moving in, though, and in this case that's Nilly (Eilif Hellum Noraker), a tiny boy with messy hair who is as excitable and curious as Lise is shy, which leads them to investigate a cloud of smoke coming from the home of reclusive inventor Doctor Proctor (Kristopher Joner). He's down in the dumps, too, afraid he will never invent something useful, especially since his latest powder yields nothing but loud, odorless flatulence. The kids, naturally, think this is fantastic, especially once they discover that with enough, you can launch yourself in the air. At that point, it grabs the attention of the neighborhood's other inventor, the jealous Herr Thrane (Alte Antonsen)
How powerful is Doctor Proctor's Fart Powder? They eventually contact NASA. It's a thoroughly goofy and juvenile sort of set-up, but it's kind of a delight. There's something great about a kids' movie that acknowledges that farts are funny, and rides that without ever making it actually gross. As much as director Arild Fröhlich and screenwriter Johan Bogaeus milk the material, it's almost always done without being rude, which fits well with the colorful neighborhood that feels like a kid's playland - Proctor's house and lab has a slide, Thrane's has a secret underground lab, and everybody wears perfect colorful costumes. Even the bullies (Thrane's kids, of course) are sort of perfect movie bullies, pushing other kids around at their mean father's behest and kind of sad when it means they get left out of stuff. There's danger in the form of a great big snake living in the sewers - animated with the sort of style that will never have it confused for the real thing - and some slimy situations, but it's almost all in fun.
Full review on EFC
Sonyeo (Steel Cold Winter)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in the rented apartment (Fantasia Festival: The Best Years of Our Lives?, DVD-on-laptop)
Apparently the literal translation of this movie's Korean title ("Sonyeo") is simplly "Girl". Fair enough, and evocative in its own way; maybe in some ways a little better than the English-language title it's been given for the festival circuit. I like the chill of the latter, though; it helps show that this is a fairly specific mystery rather than "just" a nifty tale of a dangerous and exciting first love.
After all, the girl is the first thing that Suh Yoon-su (Kim Shi-hoo) sees of the rural village that his parents are delivering him to after a traumatic incident that makes them figure time away from Seoul would do their teenage son good; she's skating on a frozen river in her school uniform. Yoon-su proves quite popular in the tiny farming village's school, although the girl he saw, Hye-won (Kim Yoon-hye) is decidedly not - there are ugly rumors about her and her father (Jung In-gi) that have both of them shunned. Yoon-su can't resist, though, and soon finds himself in a mess that a guy who still has psychosomatic pain in his ears from his friend's suicide back home may not be set to deal with.
Not a bad little take on the "new kid comes to school, finds himself attracted to the outsider" drama canon. One thing I like that director Choi Jin-seong and writer Choi Yoon-jin did is that it's very much winter in this village; oftentimes filmmakers will set a movie like this during the school year but have the weather be temperate. The chill helps here, not just because the image of Hye-won skating are the sort of thing that one can easily see taking root in Yoon-su's head, or because the cold can serve as a genuine danger for a family as poor as Hye-won and her father, but in general attitude. I don't know if Korean has the same way of describing people as "chilly" but people do insulate themselves and do more desperate things then; it also clears out the area so that things are even more lonely for a city kid like Yoon-su.
Full review on EFC
Susanghan geunyeo (Miss Granny)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
Sitting down for Miss Granny, I had a horrible fear - what if this was 200 Pounds Beauty again? The template, right down to the newly-cute protagonist becoming a singer, was sort of the same, and it certainly had the chance to play into cruel stereotypes even if it wasn't quite so wrong-headed as building a better life through plastic surgery. The idea further solidified as Shim Eun-kyung proceeded to be just terrific in a potentially disastrous role. Fortunately, this Cinderella story manages to be funny without much in the way of guilt attached.
When it starts, Oh Mal-soon (Na Moon-hee) is the very picture of an ajumma, a stereotypical granny with a sharp tongue, a tight purse, hair permed like broccoli, and a lot more fondness for her son Hyun-chul (Sung Dong-il), a professor of elder studies, than his wife Ae-ja (Hwang Jung-min). She works in a seniors' cafe with lifelong friend Mr. Park (Park In-hwan), oblivious to how he thinks about her. When Ae-ja falls ill in part due to the stress Mal-soon puts on her, there's talk of finding a home for her, which is when she finds the "Forever Young" photography studio, whose proprietor promises to take fifty years off her - and does, giving her the face and body she had before her son was born. Unable to go home, "Oh Doo-ri" (Shim Eun-kyung) rents a room at Mr. Park's house, and when grandson Ji-ha (Jin Young) loses his band's lead singer, she winds up joining, which eventually grabs the attention of Seung-woo (Lee Jin-wook), the producer of a popular televised music series.
The movie tends to back off from the really questionable issues and goes for the big joke most of the time, even as it has fun with Ji-ha's unknowing infatuation. Part of it is how, like the character itself, the movie is tart but not really mean: Director Hwang Dong-hyuk and the team of writers get that Oh looking like a sort of hipster pixie in her 1960s-inspired outfits is funny and a bit ironic but not really a target to be made sport of, so the audience can laugh at the idea when it hits them without it being beaten into the ground (or maybe this is an American pop culture thing that I'm projecting onto a Korean film). The last act softens up a bit to play with the idea of assimilation as well as just oddity, and does it well enough that I might have enjoyed a more thoughtful comedy which played on the idea of new and old identities in addition to gags about an old lady in a young body, especially since the measures that the script takes to avoid it are kind of drastic.
Full review on EFC
Bros Before Hos
* * * (out of four)
Seen 1 August 2014 in Théâtre Hall (Fantasia Festival, DCP)
I wasn't really looking forward to this one, having kind of hated the first New Kids movie enough to skip the second, but it was the only English-friendly thing playing and I wanted to see what came after, so I stuck around. I'm glad I did; it's a fun romantic comedy even if its sweetness can sometimes be buried deep underneath quite the crude exterior.
The "bros" of the title are Max (Tim Haars) and Jules (Daniel Arends), who made a promise as kids to never commit to any woman. They're still getting more action than one might expect of a video store clerk and a supermarket manager, and it would seem like things would keep going on that way until Anna (Sylvia Hoeks) appears. Max feels an immediate connection, but Jules gets there first, and rather than a simple one-night stand, he keeps going out with her, leaving Tom with dueling feelings of envy and portrayal.
As immature as that description makes the brothers sound, it doesn't really scratch the surface - there's also their friend Rene (Henry Van Loon), joining in with the man-child banter, the sex-obsessed autistic guy at the mental health institution where Anna works, and general vulgarity that is mostly delivered with the sort of wide smile that (mostly) lets the audience buy into it coming from a place of immaturity rather than true disdain or malice. I think it might have been better with about 80% less guys calling each other "niggah", "bitch", and "faggot"; though filmmakers Steffen Haars & Flip van der Kuil are likely going for a gag of how it makes them looking stupid, they play it exuberantly enough that it's easy to miss the irony. On balance, the Farrelly Brothers-and-then-some enthusiasm generally wins out, even if you might want the characters to be called out as the movie starts needing charm toward the end.
Full review on EFC
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