This Week In Tickets: 11 January 2016 - 17 January 2016

Spent the early part of last week on a business trip, and, man, it was like the only part of Texas that doesn't have an Alamo Drafthouse.

Then again, there's a whole lot of nothing in at least the part of Frisco, Texas where I was staying and meeting. I mean, big empty space across the highway from the hotel, nothing but parking lots, malls, and office parks all around, the only sign of any local color an oversized training facility for the Cowboys.

Then again, it was in the mid-50s there. That was nice for the few minutes I was outside of the office.

Got back on the horse Thursday night, though, catching the first third of the Arabian Nights Trilogy, which I wound up doing on an every-other-night schedule, seeing part two on Saturday and the conclusion on Monday. I liked the middle portion most, and the finale is kind of weird, but that's not technically part of this week, is it?

Friday night, I was trying for a double feature, but cut things a bit too tight. Still, the intended first half, Band of Robbers, is a lot of fun, a modern-day riff on Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn that is both more clever and more willing to do its own thing to be entertaining than expected.

Saturday morning was given to the Chlotrudis nomination meeting, which went fairly quick although I did get frustrated at the points when people seemed to be trying to force the sort of results they want rather than letting them happen, and I'll never really get the part at the end where you can nominate things you haven't seen for the signature "Buried Treasure" award.

It meant seeing two movies I wanted instead of three on Saturday, limiting them to the ones which were time-sensitive, starting off with a 35mm print of Mad Max: Fury Road, because when Fury Road is playing on the big screen, you go. Then, a little later, you catch the second part of Arabian Nights.

It would have been easier if I could just hang out in Harvard Square all day, but I had some babysitting of a SQL query to do for work, which kept me fairly tied to the apartment all day, although it was finished in time to get to Boston Common for Detective Chinatown, the latest Chinese import, which proved surprisingly entertaining, although that was partially because the trailer was kind of incomprehensible if you don't speak Mandarin.

Next week: Looks like more Arabian Nights and plenty more Chinese film.

Mad Max: Fury Road

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 16 January 2016 in the Brattle Theatre (Some of the Best of 2015, 35mm)

This movie was not shot on film, but let's face it, film always looks better, even in such a case, and even when the print is kind of beat up, likely from being one of just a few struck for the theatrical release that's been used quite a bit, and thus has more than a few scratches on it.

It's still a pretty fantastic movie, although not necessarily one that acquires more depth upon multiple viewings, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The feminist themes are pretty obvious from the first viewing, and Miller doesn't bury what he's doing there. Fortunately, the action holds up, which is no minor thing; you see something multiple times, you're not discovering something new, so it's got to be damn good to continue to impress.

And it does. There's not a moment of action that doesn't still impress, it's so perfectly designed, and the pacing and build-up is just right. Perhaps the best sign of its greatness is the giddy feeling I get when the war rig barrels past Immortan Joe and his party on the way back, because that's' the moment when, even the first time through, it's clear that all the chasing that has been going on thus far is just the lead-up to this one, which is going to continue right up until the end, and it's going to be even more fantastic than what we've already seen, and the film doesn't disappoint.

I wouldn't mind at all if this became another movie like Raiders of the Lost Ark, where I obviously have a copy but where it plays often enough on the big screen that I seldom if ever need to use it.

What I thought back in October.

The Arabian Nights Trilogy

I heard some pretty enthusiastic things about this series from various folks, and the premise - a combination of fantasy and realism used to examine Portugal during the recent economic crisis - sounded interesting enough to give it a shout at someplace as accessible add the Harvard Film Archive. I was a bit surprised that there wasn't a marathon session, although maybe the HFA has had rough luck with super-long presentations - they scheduled a fair number of them over the past year, and we're approaching the point on the calendar where you really don't want to worry about something that is hard to reschedule.

The way I saw it - one movie every other day - worked out pretty well, although it was pretty clear that I want on the same schedule as others - there was a good crowd for Volume 1 on Thursday night, but I suspected I was going to see Volumes 2 & 3 alone on Saturday and Sunday until some other folks showed up at the last minute. I'm guessing most moviegoers probably went for a more concentrated 1-on-Thursday + 2-on-Friday or Friday/Saturday/Sunday-at-7pm schedule.

Then again, the audience didn't seem terribly into it when the fire alarm went off about three-quarters the way through the first and we we hanging around outside the Carpenter Center in the freezing cold; I was next to a few folks who sounded like they weren't into it, and nobody was really seeming that thrilled about going back in. But, you know, it was freezing cold, so maybe that was all that was draining enthusiasm.

It's playing again this weekend, and I certainly recommend it for those who like international, unusual art films. Bummer that they don't ever do much with the mermaid born out of the exploding whale, though.

As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 1, O Inquieto (Arabian Nights: Volume 1 - The Restless One)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 14 January 2016 in the Harvard Film Archive (Arabian Nights, DCP)

The best way to review Miguel Gomes's three-part Arabian Nights anthology is probably all at once, rather than writing about the first film before watching the second. I am currently trying that anyway, not knowing if characters will recur or if anything beyond the broad and explicitly stated themes will connect what is, at least in my city, being presented as three separate features, very much a part of the potential audience trying the first before deciding whether or not to shell out for the other two. I'll be doing so; the first installment may not yet strike me as brilliant, but it is earnest and consistently interesting.

This one breaks down into four segments of roughly a half-hour each, with the first a sort of author's introduction as Gomes sets the scene - not of a long-ago time in Baghdad, but of Portugal in 2013 and 2014, where an already crippling recession and the insisted-upon austerity measures are bleeding working people dry. In Viana do Castelo, the shipyard that has long been the city's industrial heart is closing and an invasive species of wasps is destroying the local honeybee population, with one enterprising man working with the fire department to destroy the wasps' nests. Gomes appears both before the camera and as narrator, despondently trying to make connections, whether between these two local events or between his desires to tell fantastic stories and also represent the unhappy reality of his country. Unable to do so, he flees, setting himself up as his anthology's Scheherazade when the crew tracks him down. It's a quiet, sly way to establish his solidly real-world concerns while setting up a satiric but whimsical tone, though done aptly enough not to overpower the simple documentary pleasures of the opening: A slow pan across the docks as various unseen narrators describe how they started there and how the way of life disappeared. That discussion overlaps with the one about wasp eradication like radio stations on competing frequencies, eventually giving way to Gomes's discussion of austerity. It's informative, but casual, and against imagery that goes from beautiful to absurd.

After a brief stop to consider just how one storyteller was able to tell so many tales in the original Arabian Nights (it involved judiciously-placed cliffhangers and a large writers' room), we are treated to the "Tale of the Men with Hard-ons", and is not nearly as delightfully tacky as the title makes it sound. Picking up the theme of enforced austerity, it involves a number of bankers meeting with government officials and other locals, being offered a miracle impotence cure by a local wizard, and balking at the price he demands when their erections just won't quit. There are some funny bits during the opening scenes of negotiation - a businessman sighing over how his confrontations with his union counterpart no longer feature the same passion and violence, translation not just between Portuguese and English, but rude and obsequious, that sort of thing. But the broad jokes that you'd expect from the priapism never quite materialize; Gomes and his co-writers never even seem to milk discomfort out of the only woman at the negotiating table. Perhaps the point is that these men talk about their massive endowments despite not having the comedic bulges to match their boasting, but that seems like rather more subtle a joke than the situation merits.

Full review on EFC.

As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 2, O Desolado (Arabian Nights: Volume 2 - The Desolate One)

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 January 2016 in the Harvard Film Archive (Arabian Nights, DCP)

Volume 1 of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights trilogy impressed me, although not quite enough to justify the scale of the thing on its own. This second volume, released a month after the first in their native Portugal but generally playing other territories in much closer succession, plays at just enough of a higher level to give a viewer an even stronger idea of why the whole thing is being sold as an event.

Unlike the first, this second entry (The Desolate One) doesn't start with a story that eases the audience into the concept, instead simply stating that these stories are based upon the format of 1001 Arabian Nights but inspired by stories from the recent period of austerity in Portugal as it establishes the environment for "The Chronicle of the Escape of Simão 'Without Bowels'", the first of the film's three segments. Simão's colorful nickname springs from his being the type of man who can eat a great deal without gaining much weight. He's on the run, dodging drones and meeting with friends, loved ones, and supporters, although it's not until later on that the audience learns exactly why the police are after him. In the meantime, it's enough to process how Simão (Chico Chapas) makes his way through the backwoods and scrub of Portugal, less driven by the desire to escape to Spain than that to stay free. Chico Chapas is excellent as Simão, having the sort of lean and weathered face that reinforces the narration while also poking a bit of fun at how outlaws get mythologized, communicating the man's weariness and nervous state without often speaking. The cinematography by Sayombhu Mukdeeprom carries a lot of weight as well, highlighting just how alone Simão is, making the forces pursuing him feel like intruders, occasionally framing him against the remnants of previous inhabitation. Gomes plays with audience perception as well, offering up one sequence that is almost certainly fantasy to make the audience both question others and wonder about a broader mindset.

The middle entry, "The Tale of the Judge's Tears", is likely the film's most eccentric and perhaps delightful. It opens with a beautiful young woman (Joana de Verona) losing her virginity and then calling her mother to discuss it. The mother (Luisa Cruz) turns out to be the judge of the title, whose case - heard in an outdoor amphitheater - seems to be open and shut, but the mother and son who sold their landlord's furniture claim extenuating circumstances, the plaintiff has a story of his own, and soon a network of fraud is revealed that seems to involve the entire courtroom. This is where the episode gets delightfully absurd but also perfectly deadpan, as each new fact that the judge learns is more peculiar, down to outright fantastical. Luisa Cruz is terrific as the judge, generally striking a great balance between treating the insanity around her as believable and treating it as ridiculous. Gomes and his co-writers keep her from being entirely rational with an important bit at the beginning which comes full-circle at the end, making a point without resorting to lecturing.

Full review on EFC.

As Mil e Uma Noites: Volume 3, O Encantado (Arabian Nights: Volume 3 - The Enchanted One)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 18 January 2016 in the Harvard Film Archive (Arabian Nights, DCP)

Miguel Gomes seemingly sets out to end his Arabian Tales trilogy with a whimper, as there are long, long stretches of this movie where nothing really happens and the narrative captions emphasize that the story is not moving forward at all. That the movie never actually bored me out of my mind suggests that his talents as a filmmaker outstrip his talents as a troll, and there's something kind of impressive about that.

This time around, the film has the appearance of an actual adaptation of 1001 Arabian Nights despite the captions' insistence that it simply borrows the structure, opening with a middle-eastern girl dancing and a wealthy older man mistaking her for someone else. He is the father of Scheherazade (Crista Alfaiate), who on the 515th day of her marriage to the vizier is growing weary of trying to push her decapitation (and his moving on to the rest of Bagdad's women in the original marry/screw/kill scenario). She spends the day out in the countryside, meeting the people and her father, and tapping a genie of the wind, before returning to her duty. It's a sweet story with the lovely Crista Alfaiate giving a nice performance as this woman for whom beauty a and charm are matters of duty, though she seems more resigned than bitter. Gomes does interesting things with his storytelling, such as superimposing the end of one scene over the beginning of another, notably allowing the dancer to become a ghost haunting Scheherazade's father. The setting eventually becomes less Bagdad in ancient times and more present day Portugal, and Gomes has fun with the juxtapositions. Given that he placed himself in the position of Scheherazade in the first film, one can't help but wonder what his thinking was with this segment - he spends a lot of time ruminating on how storytellers may create adventures in works they do not always experience directly, but he also presents a relatively tranquil image of the world outside, perhaps implying that the government's austerity and lack of concerns for the country's people cannot diminish the simple pleasures that people might take from each other and the beauty around them.

Eventually, though, she must return to the vizier, where she begins the tale of "The Inebriating Chorus of the Chaffinches". It looks at a small community near the Lisbon airport where focus have been trapped and trained to remember various calls ever since soldiers learned this abroad during World War I. Gomes introduces the audience to this practice and many of the neighborhood's enthusiasts, often having information about them and their birds pop up as captions. What he does not do, however, is build much of a story; it's like an observational documentary sort that stretches out for at least half of the film's 125-minute running time. T the narrative captions mention Scheherazade stopping at dawn and restarting at nightfall often enough that this goes on for weeks, enough to make one wonder how she has not been beheaded yet, as this is what the vizier does when a woman does not hold his ingest.

Full review on EFC.

Detective Chinatown

My original plan for this movie was to see it as a cross-town double feature with Band of Robbers on Friday, which would have been kind of fitting, as both are buddy capers that work out a lot better than I might have expected. In the case of the former, it was a matter of guys I don't know messing with beloved characters, while this movie had a trailer that made it look a lot more frantic and ridiculous than it actually was.

Don't get me wrong, it's plenty frantic and ridiculous, but it was also one of those China Lion trailers that shows just how much they are indifferent to any audience other than the expatriates and immigrants, as it was filed with untranslated text and freeze-frames on actors and their names, which is clearly not going to mean a whole lot to those of us who aren't terribly familiar with these people because we don't have entertainment blogs and magazines and stuff reminding us of who's dating who or ads with them on a regular basis. I know Wang Baoqiang's name, but I'm not going to recognize it in Chinese characters or seeing him in-character, and I'm a bit of an anomaly if these previews are showing in front of anything other than other Chinese movies.

But, of course, it was too popular for me to get tickets when arriving there after taking the train from Alewife, especially since its length (135 minutes is kind of long for this sort of mystery/comedy) meant it was starting at kind of weird times. Saturday was right out because there was other stuff playing at fairly fixed times that I wanted to see, so that left Sunday evening - when it was still busy enough to push me to the second row, which is really too close for some scenes.

I'm wondering just how crazy this weekend is going to be for Chinese films - will Monster Hunt get big crowds because it was a giant hit in China or nothing because that was five months ago and the pirates are usually much faster than that (and how do 3D and English-language versions that are supposedly in play change the math)? Will Mike Tyson and local guy Donnie Yen bring more folks to Ip Man 3 despite it playing a month ago in Hong Kong, or is there a real preference for Mandarin-language movies (other recent Hong Kong/Cantonese flicks have been much quieter locally than their Mainland counterparts)? How does Wanda owning AMC fit in, in terms of working to drive folks to their movies at their theaters rather than others?

Not that those things really matter; the bottom line is that this particular movie is fairly enjoyable, and worth recommending if you like the genre, though I don't know if it will stick around this weekend's influx of big Chinese movies.

Tang ren jie tan an (aka Detective Chinatown)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 17 January 2016 in AMC Boston Common #18 (first-run, DCP)

Detective Chinatown inevitably runs head-on into the biggest problem screwball mysteries face - it is extremely difficult to take both your slapstick comedy and murder investigation seriously in the same story - but manages to be impressively entertaining on the way. It's got some issues, but it's a good buddy comedy whose maker seems to like the mystery elements more than most.

It starts by introducing the audience to Qin Feng (Liu Haoran), a young man whose application to the police academy in Shanghai is denied when he appears to choke during his final interview. The grandmother who raised him suggests a week in Bangkok, where he can observe his third cousin twice removed Tang Ren (Wang Baoqiang), supposedly a top detective in the city's Chinatown, but actually a low-rent P.I./con artist more interested in playing Mahjongg and peeping on his pretty landlord Xiang (Tong Liya) than solving cases. He may not have much choice but to get to the bottom of a mystery when he's implicated in both the theft of 100kg of gold and the murder of one of the crew members involved, with two police detectives ("Michael" Chen He & Xiao Yang) vying to catch Yang first and secure a promotion.

Wang Baoqiang became one of China's biggest stars on the strength of characters much like Tang Ren, although that sort of frantic dim-bulb character can become irritating when promoted to a lead role. That makes seeing this one up as a buddy comedy a good idea, as Liu Haoran's depressive, stammering, upright Qin Feng is an obvious counter to Wang's frantic Tang. Liu gives Wang room to mug and be wacky until it's time to do the Sherlock Holmes stuff, rolling his eyes on the audiences behalf. They arguably split "protagonist" and "star" duties, giving the movie a nice sort of back-and-forth energy so that writer/director Chen Sicheng can give a good chunk of time to both the comedy and mystery parts of the film without anything feeling shortchanged or the whole thing being stretched.

Full review on EFC.

Band of Robbers

Hey, it looks like Apple Cinemas picked a good one this time around, both in terms of quality and getting an audience out. They've occasionally been willing to book small movies that are also playing on demand (or be booked for them - I'm never sure whether these are mostly vanity bookings so that the distributor can say it played X amount of screens in certain cities), and usually they're not very good and/or I'm the only one who has purchased a ticket. Honestly, when I saw a good crowd, I just assumed that there was a filmmaker present and I hadn't heard because I never hear about these things when they happen at Fresh Pond. Nope, just a good crowd.

I mention in the review, but it's kind of surprising that we haven't seen more public domain characters like this modernized in the wake of Sherlock Holmes's success. Of course, I gather that this is half of Universal's plan with their rebooted "Monsters Universe", with the Dracula and Frankenstein characters likely serving as cornerstones. I suspect Huckleberry Finn would make people a lot more nervous, though - it is, after all, about something important, and for many kids the first time they encounter the idea that a book can be controversial.

Of course, Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn are also Exhibit A in how lackluster new material does not, in fact, ruin great originals. I suspect that very few people recall that Tom Sawyer, Detective and Tom Sawyer Abroad exist, and fewer still hold their status as Mark Twain's lesser works against either the classic children's story or the great American novel disguised as a children's story that they follow. Even if most people have less fondness for Band of Robbers than I do,it's not going to do any harm to the reputation of the characters.

Band of Robbers

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 January 2016 in Apple Cinemas Cambridge #7 (first-run, digital)

Truth be told, I'm kind of surprised we haven't seen more things like Band of Robbers since various Sherlock Holmes projects showed that audiences would go for beloved nineteenth-century characters reinvented for the modern age, if only because producers would find public domain properties very affordable. Sure, you run the risk of being accused of desecrating something beloved, but this take on some of Mark Twain's most popular characters turned out a lot better than one might have expected.

It presents Tom Sawyer (Adam Nee) and Huckleberry Finn (Kyle Gallner) as contemporary adults in their twenties. Huck is a small-time crook just released from prison; Tom a beat cop whose head is nevertheless full of schemes that he tries to sell Huck and his friends Joe Harper (Matthew Gary Gubler), Ben Rogers (Hannibal Buress), and Tommy Barnes (Johnny Pemberton). The latest involves the long-sought Murrell's Treasure, which has supposedly been found by Injun Joe (Stephen Lang) and stashed in a local pawn shop. To be frank, though, Tom's plan is terrible, and that is before Lieutenant Polly (Lee Garlington) sticks Tom with new partner Becky Thatcher (Melissa Benoist) or Jorge Jiminez (Daniel Edward Mora), the gardener at the halfway house where Huck is staying, gets dragged in.

In addition to playing Tom, Adam Nee wrote, directed, and edited the film along with his brother Aaron, and they're probably wise to keep closer to the structure and tone of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer than the potentially heavier material in Huckleberry Finn, although some of that sneaks through in ways one might not expect. It makes for a fun, lightweight caper movie, although the fact that the plans and goals are straight out of children's adventures of an earlier era gives the film a paradoxical maturity. Tom's a little more arrested, Huck's a little more mature, and when it turns out that there is something to Tom's plans, the world seems a little more exciting for it and dangerous because of how monsters like Injun Joe don't necessarily play nice.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 15 January 2016 - 21 January 2016

Why aren't the Oscar nominations announced on Tuesday, so that theaters can easily book nominees that weekend? I mean, I figure that's what the whole thing is for.

• Along with the nominees, there's a fair amount of stuff that doesn't look so hot. Take 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi, which is Michael Bay taking on a story that's not controversial at all in this election year. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
  
  There's also Norm of the North, an animated flick about a polar bear who heads south to New York to protest arctic development (but, you know, condos, rather than something like global warming. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere. And, in the biggest release of the week, there's Ride Along 2, reuniting Kevin Hart and Ice Cube as a rookie and new cop who are now brothers-in-law. That's at Apple Fresh Pond, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
  
  Meanwhile, The Capitol picks up Joy and Brooklyn, while Carol returns to a full schedule at Boston Common and Spotlight gets more shows as well. Meanwhile, Fenway and Revere will have screenings of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid on Sunday and Wednesday.
• In addition to bringing back the pretty-great and deservedly-nominated Room, Kendall Square also opens Mustang, the foreign-language film nominee from Turkey which depicts five sisters who are considered a little too free-spirited for their family's taste, leading their parents to clamp down hard.
• Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond is carrying the same group of Indian movies, but they've also got one of the odder American releases this week, Band of Outlaws, which reimagines Tom Sawyer (Adam Nee) and Huckleberry Finn (Kyle Gallner) as contemporary adults, but still searching for lost treasure. Just a couple shows per day, but a fun supporting cast (Melissa Benoist as Becky Thatcher, Stephen Lang has Injun Jow, Beth Grant as the Widow Douglas).
  
  Over at Boston Common, the week's Chinese opening is Detective Chinatown, with Wang Baoqiang as a reject accompanying his master detective cousin on a frantic case to Bangkok. A fair-sized hit when it came out in China on New Year's Eve, I think.
• The Harvard Film Archive gives a large chunk of their schedule to Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights Trilogy this week: Volume 1 - The Restless One plays 9:30pm Friday, 4:30pm Sunday, and 7pm Thursday; Volume 2 - The Desolate One plays 7pm Friday and 9:30pm Saturday; and Volume 3 - The Enchanted One shows 7pm Saturday and 7pm Monday. They also start a (mostly) Sunday series of "Americans Abroad" this week with Terminal Station, Vittorio De Sica's 1954 neo-realist drama about a woman breaking up with her lover in the train station.
• The Brattle Theatre is presenting (Some of) The Best of 2015 this week, kicking off with a double feature of Mad Max: Fury Road (in 35mm!) and The Assassin on Friday & Saturday, single features of Tangerine and Roar on Sunday, a twin-bill of Girlhood and The Diary of a Teenage Girl on Monday, the pairing of The Pearl Button and The Look of Silence on Wednesday, and another double feature of Theeb and Jauja on Thursday. It will continue through next week, but first thre's that hole on Tuesday, being filled by Trash Night, which in this case is Star Knight, featuring Klaus Kinski and Harvey Keitel.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre picks up Carol just in time for its Oscar nominations, which pushes The Hateful Eight into digital presentations upstairs, leaving the Somerville Theatre as the only place still showing it in 70mm around here. The midnight Tarantino screenings continue, though, this time with Django Unchained in 35mm at 11:30pm on Friday and Saturday.
  
  They'll also have a selection of short films from the 2015 Children's Film Festival Seattle on Saturday morning. They also begin their series of Coolidge Award tributes to Jane Fonda on Wednesday with a 35mm print of Barbarella, and let's face it, it will be all downhill from there.
• The Belmont World Film Family Film Festival happens this long weekend, with Friday and Saturday's programs at The Regent Theatre and Sunday's and Monday's at back at the Belmont Studio Cinema (which,you may recall, was closed during last year's festival). Some nifty-looking stuff in there.
  
  The Regent also has two documentaries later in the week - documentary The Last Monarch: The Rise and Fall of the Shah Dynasty (about the 240-year rule of the Nepali royal family) on Sunday evening and Run Free: The True Story of Caballo Blanco, which tells the story of "ultra-running" legend Micah True.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has their last weekend of Words in Motion: Graham Greene as Screenwriter, with final screenings of The Third Man (DCP, Friday), Our Man in Havana (DCP, Friday/Saturday), and The Comedians (digital, Sunday). They continue documetaryTroublemakers: The Story of Land Art on Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday, and also begin the Boston Festival of Films from Iran on Thursday the 21st with The President, with a former dictator fleeing with his grandson afer being overthrown.
• This week's shorts at The Institute of Contemporary Art come courtesy of the Sundance Film Festival, showing award-winners and other notables from the 2015 edition. The program starts on Thursday the 21st and runs through next weekend.

My plans include the rest of Arabian Nights, Band of Robbers, Carol, The Revenant, Detective Chinatown and maybe one or two others. Don't know if I can make Barbarella,

This Week In Tickets: 3 January 2016 - 10 January 2016

Slow start to the year, for reasons good and indifferent. Mostly good, though.

On the one hand, I actually got a fair amount of unpacking done in the apartment after only climbing over stuff.for five or six months (depending on how you want to count time in Montreal). It kind of left me in the mood to see something but not with stuff I wanted to see but naff not yet lined up, so it was a choice between second viewings of Star Wars and The Hateful Eight. The Force Awakens won out, and continued to please me.

Work kept me later than I'd have liked the next couple of days (and Carol was what got pre-empted by the local theater showing Sherlock: The Abominable Bride), but I was able to get to the Brattle for one of their modern noir double features, Against All Odds and D.O.A. '88, which wound up being a really fun night, even if it did make me decide that I will have to catch the Super Mario Brothers movie at some point.

The next night I went downtown for The Himalayas, a not-bad-but-not great Korean import making it to American screens just a few weeks after opening back in its native land. Not quite as packed as Chinese films have been by a long shot, but it wasn't too long ago when they were the things getting rate and erratic releases and correspondingly tiny audiences.

Then on Saturday, I headed up to Make to help surprise my brother for his 40th birthday, which was a lot of fun - his longtime friends got their old band (mostly) back together, there was bowling with both out-of-shape adults and adorable little children, and I got to see folks I don't see often enough (hi, Justin & Jerry!). I was back in Boston Sunday afternoon, but it was raining hard enough for me not to venture back out, especially with the Red Line replaced by shuttles between Kendall and Park.

I did work my way all the way through my True Detective season 2 Blu-rays over the course of the week, though. I can see why a lot of folks were disappointed compared to the first season - that one caught lightning in a bottle with perfect casting, genuine creepiness, and a strong single directorial hand to go along with the writer, while season 2 was just a pretty good crime story. That's not nothing, though, and I think it's a shame that Vince Vaughn giving his best performance in years is likely to get overlooked. I think it veered off course a bit in the end with what felt like an almost obligatory pairing of the lead actor and actress, and the squandering of some fairly interesting supporting characters. Still, good crime series that can't measure up to something fairly impossible to repeat.

Next up: Relatively little, since I'm on a business trip to Texas and there is nothing within walking distance to my hotel.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 3 January 2016 in AMC Boston Common #2 (first-run, 3D Imax)

I probably could have guessed my reaction to seeing The Force Awakens a second time in theaters in relatively short order without difficulty: Still darn entertaining, but not eliciting tingles the way it did the first time around. I wonder whether it will be similar next year, when we get a new Star Wars movie without much wait between it and the previous one. I'm not sure how taking Star Wars for granted sits with me.

Fortunately, it's not a movie that crumbles upon a second viewing. Indeed, it's kind of fun to watch Harrison Ford as he starts to hear Rey's life story; I don't particularly want to be one of the fans that boosts a work by replying on a highly interpolated filing-in of the blanks, but I do think that a lot of the gripes about how certain characters act fall away if you read Han as recognizing Rey's tale as the flip side of something he knows but wanting to make sure before getting her hopes up - it explains an abrupt cut after he is asked who she is, Leia seeming so close at first sight, and a number of other things. It still means J.J. Abrams hid certain scenes for no better reason than to preserve a mystery for later, which is a legitimate knock on the film itself, but it becomes a needless omission rather than characters being portrayed improperly.

But, as I said, I don't want to cling too hard to this idea and potentially wind up disappointed if Rian Johnson goes a different way. That'd be stupid.

Beyond that, though - still a lot of fun. I love the new characters, the action is a lot of fun, and it's still some of the best 3D work I've seen. I may catch this another time or two whole it's on the big screen, and I almost never do that sort of first-run repeat viewing.

Full review (from two weeks ago) on EFC.

Noir 2.0: Against All Odds & D.O.A. '88

There's a good chance that this winds up the only night of the Brattle's third series celebrating noir's seventy-fifth anniversary (this one focusing on the 1980s/1990s revival of the genre) that I get to as I'm spending a lot of this week out of town, partly for fun reasons (my brother's 40th birthday party which saw him playing with his old high-school band again) and partly for work obligations (meeting in Texas where almost everybody is traveling from the east coast). That's a real shame, because not only was this a fun night, but the rest of the schedule includes both favorites and things I've been meaning to see for some time, most presented on 35mm. Ah, well.

This was a fun night, though - even if I didn't love Against All Odds all the way through, it's a really fun thing to see for the first time with expectations so different: The Phil Collins song always suggested a completely different genre of movie, even if the featured songs in the noirs of the forties and fifties weren't exactly moody but the equivalent of pop hits. I know intellectually that Jeff Bridges (and his brother Beau, for that matter) were considered heartthrobs back in the 1980s, but Bridges's iconic role in The Big Lebowski sort of reset his image. James Woods was always James Woods, though.

Funny thing about D.O.A. - I think it's the first movie I ever had spoiled. I remember reading a review of it during its original release that revealed the killer's motive, though not the identity. It is, admittedly, kind of weird that this detail has managed to persist in my head for twenty-five years. Still, even knowing that, it was surprisingly fun. The Brattle mentioning that the creators of Max Headroom being the folks who made it certainly piqued my interest. Now, seeing how short their career together was, I am terribly curious to see Super Mario Brothers, which seems to have kept them from dong much more for a decade, when they resurfaced as solo acts.

Both of them were remakes of things I'd seen a while ago but apparently never wrote up. The first is pretty clearly a step down, and the second a step up.

Against All Odds

* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 January 2016 in the Brattle Theatre (75 Years of Noir, 35mm)

Show of hands: How many people under the age of, say, forty-five know that there was a movie called "Against All Odds" in the mid-1980s in large part because of the ubiquitous Phil Collins power ballad and this assumed it was more about a relationship triumphing over an adverse environment than a thriller? It's okay, my hand is up too. There are good reasons for that - first, the suspense takes a fair amount of time to surface; second, the song is a heck of a lot catchier than the movie.

The film centers on Terry Brogan (Jeff Bridges), a receiver for the L.A. Outlaws coming off shoulder surgery cut from the team without pay because football contacts are notoriously one-sided. Having saved very little of what he's earned and had his lawyer (Saul Rubinek) move up in the world enough to be representing the team's owner (Jane Greer) in her real estate dealings, he winds up taking a job from Jake Wise (James Woods), a nightclub owner and bookie of his acquaintance: Find Jessie Wyler (Rachel Ward), the girlfriend who stabbed Jake and made off to Mexico with fifty thousand dollars of his money, and also happens to be the son of the team's owner. Of course, when he does, it's not exactly surprising that he likes her a heck of a lot more than them.

This film is described as being based upon noir classic Out of the Past, although screenwriter Eric Hughes and director Taylor Hackford have updated and altered the story enough to make this film is own thing. In some cases, they might have been better off paying it back down to something simpler; the plot is a mess of sports betting, real estate development, and force jealousy that seldom seems to move in the same direction or give Terry and Jessie a strong antagonist to fight against. Its also noteworthy that the film opens with Terry asking around as to whether the people in this Mexican town have seen Jessie, because that's what the movie's hook is, and then it takes an awful long time to circle back there.

Full review on EFC.

D.O.A. '88

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 7 January 2016 in the Brattle Theatre (75 Years of Noir, 35mm)

D.O.A. is the sort of movie that actually should be remade once a generation or so, because it's one of the best hooks in the history of crime fiction - man dong from a slow-acting poison has hours to find his killer. You can tell a lot of stories with that but they're always going to be variations on D.O.A.. This one is actually pretty great, both retro and ahead of its time in style, embracing its pulp nature in delightful fashion.

Our victim/sleuth is Dexter Cornell (Dennis Quaid), a tenured English professor who was once a Great Young Author but hasn't written anything in ten years. His students include Sydney Fuller (Meg Ryan), a cheerful freshman fan; Nicholas Lang (Robert Knepper), at the school on a scholarship provided by the widow (Charlotte Rampling) of the man his father killed in a robbery attempt who was also shot in the struggle; and Cookie Fitzwaring (Robin Johnson), the widow's daughter. He and wife Gail (Jane Kaczmarek) are divorcing, but amicably enough, and while one colleague (Jay Patterson) resents him, another (Daniel Stern) is grateful to his help on his first novel. He's a jerk, but seemingly not worth murdering.

Indeed, the very unreasonableness of it gives screenwriter Charles Edward Pogue a lot of room to play, and he gives Dex plenty of red herrings and odd detours along the way, but seldom in a manner that wastes time: The ultimate solution may not be directly connected to other parts of the story, but there's nothing that feels like it could be entirely lifted out without the story feeling lesser for it. Some of the twists the movie takes are pretty wild, from Dex actually gluing himself to Sydney because he's sure she has something to do with it to characters making abrupt, violent, and blackly comic exits. There's a moment or two to wink at the film's status as a remake and how originality is hard to come by, but not so much as to overwhelm the actual story.

Full review on EFC.

Himalaya

I kind of feel like I should have made "while the rest of the world was seeing Star Wars" a branded series of sorts, because it's worked out to about one movie a week since the release of The Force Awakens that either has done much better than the mega-blockbuster in its home territory (Bajirao Mastani, Himalaya) or made some hay before it got there this weekend (Mojin, Devil and Angel). It is, if nothing else, a worthwhile reminder that other parts of the world have some pretty strong film industries which are at least making the attempt to establish a toehold in America.

In this case, it seems like Korean films have a way to go before making the same sort of progress as Chinese and Indian, and I think that the previews running before it - for three Chinese films (Ip Man 3, Monster Hunt, and Chinatown Detective) kind of illustrate why that is - Chinese film is released here enough to be a regular fixture, but I don't know when the next Koreanfilm to arrive in America will be. Supposedly The Tiger with Choi Min-sik came out in some non-Boston cities this week, but other than that the schedule looks pretty clear. It seems to me like these things have to be a regular fixture to reach some sort of tipping point - the big crowds for Chinese movies seemed to come when they were arriving in fairly predictable fashion every few weeks, with trailers to make it clear that this one was arriving soon. That's not happening with Korean films yet, and I don't know if it will.

The other thing contributing to an opening night show with about a half-dozen folks in the audience (along with the 6:50pm start time, which seems a bit early) is that, as I mention in the review, American audiences got to see Everest just a few months ago, and though it came out in South Korea at about the same time, Himalaya has the advantage of being homegrown there to give it a leg up, and unless you find its particular story especially compelling, I don't know that it's going to top the sheer "holy crap, just look at that" appeal that something Universal clearly made with Imax screens in mind. I don't even know what sort of footprint Imax has in Korea, although I did wonder on occasion while watching this whether it was shown in large-screen or 3D formats.

Still, here's to more Korean stuff reaching America. Some of the big names may have a hard time getting the day-and-date releases because it will seem worthwhile to try and get someone like Sony Classics or The Weinstein Company to push them beyond hardcore audiences, but there's enough good stuff being produced there that it would be cool to see it show up more often.

Himalaya (aka The Himalayas)

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 8 January 2016 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)

The biggest problem with Himalaya (titled "The Himalayas" for its North American release) is that it comes right on the heels of Everest. The latter is not a particularly great movie but had the resources of a major Hollywood studio behind it to create something that is at least visually astounding. This South Korean production gets maybe seventy-five percent of the way there on what is likely a fraction of the budget, but doesn't quite manage the emotional wallop that could allow it to surpass the American mega-production.

Its veteran mountaineer is Um Hong-gil (Hwang Jung-min), a well-respected expert already in 1992 when he mounts a rescue of two young countrymen - Park Moo-taek (Jung Woo) and Park Jung-bok (Kim In-kwon) - when their expedition's captain is killed in an avalanche. The first thing he tells Moo-taek when he wakes up from a coma two days later is to never climb again, and he recognizes the two when they try to join his expedition to Kangchenjunga in 1999. His wife (Yoo-sun) takes a shine to them, and soon Moo-taek is one of Hong-gil's most trusted partners. An injury forces him to retire from climbing in 2004 - at least until the expedition Moo-taek leads to Everest takes a bad turn.

Director Lee Suk-hoon is no stranger to grand adventure - his previous movie, The Pirates, was a fun swashbuckler that also got an American theatrical release and didn't look out of place next to other late-summer fare - and he and his team do fairly well when going for spectacle. The opening first-person sequence is exciting and the film is peppered with scenes depicting the awesome but frightening majesty of the Himalayas, impressively constructed from location shooting in Nepal, safer studio work, and pretty decent visual effects. There's an impressive urgency to how quickly folks work when a minor avalanche buries one alpinist, and a good balance of danger and grandeur.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 8 January 2016 - 14 January 2016

It's early January, which means that some of the stuff that was playing limited release in December opens wider, their awards nominations secured. And other stuff.

• The big release is The Revenant, a grimy tale of survival in the old West featuring Leonardo DiCaprio, Will Poulter, Tom Hardy, and Domnhall Gleeson, written and directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. It looks pretty stunning along with being both grand in scale and tightly focused. It's at Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Landmark, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.
  
  And, of course, there's the other thing you get in early January - horror movies of dubious merit that fill in the cracks of spent Christmas releases, avoiding VOD mainly through timing and a recognizable cast member or two. In this case, that's The Forest, with Natalie Dormer as an American looking for her sister in Japan's famous "suicide forest". I'm guessing there have been a ton of Japanese thrillers using Aokigahara as a backdrop, but of course they're not in English and maybe not PG-13. Anyway, this one is at Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.
• Kendall Square, on the other hand, picks up Anomalisa, Charlie Kaufman's latest, which is a stop-motion feature with David Thewlis giving voice to a motivational speaker and Jennifer Jason Leight to the girl he meets at an engagement who might just be what his life is missing. I saw it at the IFFBoston Fall Focus and liked it a lot, and a lot of folks downright love it. There's a special presentation tonight (7 January) with Kaufman, co-director Duke Johnson, and producer Rosa Tran; the Landmark site has it sold out but IFFBoston members may be able to get in if they RSVP.
• This week's Bollywood opening at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond is Wazir, which from the trailer I saw is some sort of thriller where Farhan Akhtar plays and anti-terrorism agent who meets up with a wheelchair-bound chessmaster (Amitabh Bachchan), apparently making use of the latter's tactical genius when they lose someone they love and seek justice/revenge. There's also romance Nenu Sailaja if you speak Telugu, and an Indian film called "Charlie" (unknown language) on Saturday afternoon and Kannada film Killing Veerappan on Sunday. Telugu action movie Nannakku Prematho opens on Tuesday, and Tamil films Rajini Murugan, Gethu, and Kathakali play Wednesday (Rajini Murugan also has a show on Thursday). The website says nothing about subtitles or the lack thereof for those.
  
  If Korean films are more your speed, Boston Common has Himalaya (aka "The Himalayas") just three weeks after it opened in its native land, starring Hwang Jeong-min (last seen in Veteran) as an experienced mountineer who scales Everest with the intention of retrieving his protege's body. As you might expect, it doesn't go well. This is a massive hit in South Korea, outgrossing Star Wars, and director Lee Seok-hoon made the entertaining The Pirates, which also got a quick US release.
• The Brattle Theatre spends the next week on the next leg of 75 Years of Film Noir - Sex & Death & Venetian Blinds: Neo-Noir of the 1980s and 1990s with some great-looking stuff: A double feature of Thief and Blade Runner (The Final Cut) on Friday; another with The Grifters (35mm) and Blood Simple Saturday; 35mm pairings of The Last Seduction & Black Widow Sunday and Hard Eight & The Underneath Monday; a single show of The Hot Spot on Tuesday; a twin bill of The Usual Suspects & Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead Wednesday; and it wraps up with Devil in a Blue Dress on Thursday. I'm curious what comes next on the spring calendar.
• The Regent Theatre has a rare week-long run of a film, showing Janis: Little Girl Blue with evenings showings Friday to Wednesday and matinees Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday; it's a documentary on rock legend Janis Joplin told in large part through her letters. Friday's show will have barbecue appetizers and live music and Q&A from Kate Russo, who has performed with Joplin's original band.
  
  Thursday night's show is also musical: Elvis Costello: Detour Live at the Liverpool Philharmonic, which is apparently staged with a bit more of a framework than the typical concert film.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre keeps the regular line-up in place for one more week, but sprinkles a few more special presentations in. The midnight show on Saturday and Sunday is a bit of a detour from the Quentin Tarantino series they're doing in conjunction with The Hateful Eight, although not entirely: The Thing also has Kurt Russell in a snowy wasteland with people who may not be what they appear, and was a big influence on Eight. There's also a special presentation of The Namesake on Monday in conjunction with the cast and crew of the Huntington Theatre's production of Disgraced on Monday.
• The Museum of Fine Arts continues Words in Motion: Graham Greene as Screenwriter with more screenings of Brighton Rock (35mm, Friday) and The Third Man (DCP, Friday/Saturday/Sunday), as well as The Comedians (digital, Saturday/Wednesday), and Our Man in Havana (DCP, Thursday). They also begin a mini-run of Troublemakers: The Story of Land Art, a documentary about artists in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to create work on a truly grand scale, using entire landscapes, with screenings on Wednesday and Thursday.
• The Institute of Contemporary Art has a couple more screenings of thier program of shorts from The Ottawa International Animation Festival on Friday evening and Sunday afternoon.
• The Harvard Film Archive has their Members' Weekend this Friday through Monday, and if you're a member, you probably already got an email saying which rare prints were coming out of the vault for that. On Thursday, they start their run of Miguel Gomes's Arabian Nights Trilogy with Volume 1: The Restless One. These are three interconnected movies that have been receiving a great deal of praise at film festivals.

It's a pretty good week and I'm sad that I've got to go on a business trip for a good chunk of it (the sort where you barely see that you're in Texas between meetings and such). Still, I'll be trying to catch Himalaya, The Revenant, and what noir I can, hopefully starting Arabian Nights on Thursday as well.

This Week In Tickets: 27 December 2015 - 2 January 2016

It's the between-holiday break, where you can slow things down a bit, get a little work done, otherwise have a fairly pleasant time.

Stubless: The Sherlock special on New Yer's Day.

Sunday, as you can see, didn't take me far, but it was what you can call a pretty good day at the movies: Start off with the highly entertaining The Big Short, take a break to go home and check your email, then head back in for a gorgeous 70mm presentation of The Hateful Eight, roadshow edition.

I'd heard to perhaps give Dave a couple of days to work out any issues with the print, which worked out fine with my Christmas travel plans anyway, although I bet it was pretty darn spiffy on opening night anyway. Folks, you owe yourselves a chance to see the movie like this if it's playing near you (here in the Boston area, we are fortunate to have multiple options). I've heard people say the digital screenings look great, and I don't doubt it; they are being made from a 65mm source and that extra quality to start with can't hurt, but on large-format film, the colors (including blacks) are amazing, there is no pixilation even at a scale the brain only notices unconsciously, and a level of fine detail everywhere, with apparently very little compromise. The credits mention a digital intermediate, and I wonder what resolution that was at; it's got to be higher than the 2K or 4K that I suspect is typical given the typical source material and exhibition format.

People I like a lot have praised the DCPs their theaters showed, and without disrespecting them, I think we have in many cases lost track of how good film looks. Even here, where we get a lot of repertory material in 35mm, it's separate enough from the new releases that I often don't compare the two mentally, so when we do get an actual physical print, it's kind of astonishing: Just look at how amazing even Black Mass, where the Somerville Theatre got one of about ten 35mm prints in the country, looks relative to the things showing next door. It's a thing I think we lose track of because we often don't have a lot of context in short-term memory, or because those arguing for film often focus on its artisanal qualities and comfortable imperfections compared to digital's reliable predictability without giving proper credit to how well-treated film lacks the compromise we take for granted with digital projection. We've reluctantly accepted "pretty good" so that studios and exhibitors can save money, especially where they were already cutting corners enough that steadiness was an improvement.

Anyway, here's hoping that the places which embraced showing this on film do very well by it. There have been stories about theater managers apologizing for the overture/intermission and feeling relief when they screwed tons up enough to have to go to a DCP backup, which I guess helps differentiate between the people managing theaters because they like movies and those doing so because they're good at selling candy; hopefully the former can go to studios with numbers in hand saying their audiences like film and giving them an actual print will pay off for everybody.

That said: I suspect that digital distribution has really helped with day-and-date releases. Maybe you get something like Bjirao Mastani, which I saw Tuesday night and was kind of on the fence about (looks great, kind of about rotten people), as Indian movies have been playing under the radar for decades, but who knows?

Then, on New Year's Eve, after getting shut out of the 4:30pm show at the Brattle, I headed downtown, walked around the waterfront looking for ice sculptures. Just found the one at the Aquarium, which was actually kind of hard to see, being right next to the grey & silver Imax theater. But, that killed some time before the start of Devil and Angel, which is silly but occasionally effective.

Fortunately, there was still time to get back to the Brattle for Casablanca, and for all the love of film I had up there... We had some issues; one projector broke down during the last reel, meaning the sound cut out completely for some of the classic lines and the audience got restless - insert standard rant about how yelling "sound!" or "focus!" is just about making oneself look concerned - but here's the thing: It got fixed. Sure, it was in part because the Brattle has dual projectors so they can do switchovers, but I'm betting that, by the Marx Brothers marathon the next day, they were able to get things going again, because you can fix mechanical things with a screwdriver. If the digital projector broke down, they'd have been screwed.

At any rate, a fantastic print which still wrapped up just in time to get everybody doing what they do for the new year. Which, in my case, would be lazing around for the rest of the week and actually getting a fair amount of my apartment put away. Anyone asking if it was painless enough that I could have done it back during the summer - shut up.

Still left me with time to catch the new Sherlock special, and man, has that gone downhill.

The Big Short

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 27 December 2015 in Somerville theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)

It would be interesting if The Big Short, as surpassing entertaining film about the folks who saw the economic crisis coming, winds up one of the main rivals to Spotlight as awards season goes on. While they're both thoroughly entertaining movies based upon recent events, the knock on Spotlight has been that it is pretty straightlaced - I've heard the photography called boring a lot - while The Big Short is a lot looser, with fourth-wall-breaking asides, colorful characters, and a slightly jittery personality. The author's hand is more visible.

It's fun, though, in part because director Adam McKay, known mostly for his comedies, has opted to make a funny movie that is not a comedy - indeed, there's a sense that if Mark Baum (Steve Carell) were not real, McKay would have to invent someone like him just to serve as a way to vent the anger that may not be excessive in terms of being justified but but which does overwhelm the message. Carell gives what is the film's most memorable performance, funny and getting the point about just how wrong, dangerous, and quite possibly illegal the banks' activities are across while giving the rest of the cast the chance to play things out. They're a pretty entertaining group on the whole - Christian Bale as the eccentric investor who combines instinct and willingness to crunch data, Ryan Gosling as the broker who sees opportunity in others' complacency, John Magaro & Finn Wittrock as young contrarian investors (with Brad Pitt as their mentor) - and McKay's use of fourth-wall-breaking guest starts to explain the tricky concepts frees the main cast up to give performances that seldom need to get derailed for exposition.

Perhaps the most clever part of the movie is how it gets kind of suspenseful toward the end as their predictions that the sub-prime mortgages that the house of cards is built upon start to collapse. Most people buying a ticket for this movie know how is going to end, so the question becomes less if the collapse can be avoided than if the guys who have figured out a way to bet against it will be paid, and that's not necessarily a question of right or wrong, but of whether or not these guys have been clever enough. Just by getting excited about this, the audience becomes a bit complicit - yes, we're rooting for them in large part because the cast has charmed us, but we're also demonstrating the same amorality they are, treating the system as a game or a puzzle rather than something with real consequences. There are moments when we're reminded of right and wrong, but McKay seems to deliberately undercut them, both because there's no happy ending on those grounds and because we probably don't deserve to be let off the hook that way.

Because of this, it's maybe not so viscerally satisfying as the more understated Spotlight is, which is an intriguing paradox to consider when the time comes to hand out awards. A little reflection reveals it to be an especially intriguing combination of entertaining and complex, which is a very pleasant surprise.

The Hateful Eight

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 December 2015 in Somerville Theatre #1 (first-run, 70mm)

I've been listening to the soundtrack album to this one a fair amount over the past couple of days, as I knew would happen from the first time I heard the overture while the curtains were still down. It's one with plentiful dialogue excerpts, an issue when you're using it as background music and suddenly have to worry if your neighbors are going to take all the uses of a certain word beginning with the letter N out of context, but also because it means I've heard a certain speech delivered by Tim Roth a lot and been removed that, for as much as it lays out a great deal of what filmmaker Quentin Tarantino wants to talk about, there's reason to question why this character oops to make it other than pure showmanship.

Given that this is a Tarantino movie, that's probably a completely fitting reason. This is, perhaps, his most heartfelt movie; he wants us to look at the way racism works as the very presence of Samuel L. Jackson's bounty hunter Marquis Warren is an easy way for other characters to show their worst sides, with uncomfortable truths coming to the fore even in regards to those treating him with apparent respect. He's clearly worried about a justice system that displays many of the same flaws apparent in the film's setting (Wyoming about ten years after the Civil War). But, for all that he spends the first half of the film letting this play out with barbed words, the intermission and what comes after can't help but remind us that taking movies apart, seeing how they work, and putting them back together may always be at the top of his list of interests. Right away, he's getting cute with how stuff happened during the fifteen minutes we were emptying or bladders and telling our sodas, and almost impishly telling the story by focusing the camera. Then it becomes a peculiar combination of Agatha Christie mystery and bloody violence, barreling the story forward, but still giving the cast room to show how all the stuff they were working out in the beginning is motivating things, even as Tarantino jumps back in time and remind the audience that, oh yeah, that guy was in the opening credits.

It's also a terrific cast - with any luck, this could be the role that wins Samuel L. Jackson an Oscar, because he's absolutely terrific, the smartest guy in the room and in most cases and always the most interesting, fully aware how careful one needs to be as a black man in this day and age but always wanting to show off, and often able to make it work. Then there's Kurt Russell, demonstrating that the Western is perhaps his natural environment as a blustery bounty hunter, Jennifer Jason Lee often seeming to fade into the background only to come roaring forward as the most vicious member of the group and perhaps the most dangerous despite spending most of the movie in handcuffs. And I'd call Walton Goggins's performance star-making, but after the full run of Justified, I have a little trouble accepting that he's not a huge deal to the public at large already. His character is certainly the one worth talking about after the end, just in terms of what he became.

There's plenty of mention up top about how gorgeous the 70mm print looked, but it's worth mentioning that it wouldn't be quite so amazing without fantastic cinematography by Robert Richardson: For all that this movie is mostly stuck inside the a single building, which instinctively seems like a waste of the big camera, it's still stunning, perfectly composed and because of the clarity of the picture, it's almost like a 3D movie where the screen defines the front pane of a box. The soundtrack by legendary composer Ennio Morricone is fantastic as expected, and both the chewy dialogue and creatively nasty bloodshed are a ton of fun. It's one of Tarantino's smartest and best movies, and absolutely worth catching in all the millimeters at least a couple of times.

Casablanca

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 31 December 2015 in the Brattle Theatre (New Year's Eve, 35mm)

The most recent instance of me writing about Casablanca on this is about ten years ago, which seems too long, but considering that it mostly pops up at the Brattle for Valentine's Day, when I'm at the sci-fi festival and the Brattle is filled up because it's an Event. I'm reasonably sure it hasn't actually been ten years, because it shouldn't.

Because this thing is, still, basically perfect. The only real argument against it is that the "letters of transit" are a basically ridiculous plot device (and, okay, Ilsa referring to Dooley Wilson as "the boy at the piano"), but otherwise, it's a perfectly delightful couple hours, romantic while being too sappy. It's funny, zips forward with little pause between classic moments that never seems like it's just moments put together. It really should be seen on a regular basis.

Full review (from 2006) on EFC.

Sherlock: "The Abominable Bride"

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 1 January 2016 in Jay's Living Room (off the DVR, HD)

I kind of wish I had the strength to give up on Sherlock after this, because it's just kind of frustrating to see what started out as an exciting look at how Sherlock Holmes and John Watson transfer into modern times has seemed to lose track of what actually made it appealing. Indeed, this seems to take the problems of the third series - the inclination to spend the whole time talking about the relationship between Holmes & Watson rather than letting it reveal itself through how the pair solve crimes. This takes it a step further, getting into self-examination of this particular version. and being way too cutesy about how the techniques used to make the characters modern translates to the nineteenth century.

But, dang, how do you drop Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, with scripts by Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat that have as much energy as anything on television, and the re-translation back to the 1890s is beautiful and has what could be a pretty darn good mystery if things didn't completely unravel because the people making it didn't think the mystery portion that serves as this sort of story's backbone. There's certainly some excitement as it goes on.

It still feels like a great opportunity wasted, though, and I groaned once Moriarty showed up. The character's a crutch in most takes on the series, but he's grown completely out of hand her, and what was an exciting take on the character in 2010 is now the villain who just won't go away, no matter how dead he may be.

Devil and Angel

Not quite my last movie of 2015, although nearly so - I decided to do this when shut out of the 4:30pm Casablanca at the Brattle. Risky move, as the 6:15pm start time would rule out the 7pm show of the other film, but I was able to get back to Harvard Square and get into the 9:30 without trouble (although there were some issues during the movie).

This was, basically, the only new release this weekend, as most of the theaters went with letting folks get to the stuff they hadn't had time for around Christmas or adding The Hateful Eight now that the Weinsteins were giving DCP projection the go-ahead. Heck, it was kind of a holdover itself, having apparently come out in China last week but being held back so that China Lion wasn't trying to get two films on-screen during a really busy week.

The audience seemed to really like it, at least, and I strongly suspect that it suffers more from me not speaking Mandarin than other comedies I've seen, because there was a lot in there that was obviously wordplay that the subtitlers couldn't make into English without breaking the pace or reconfiguring a lot of dialogue. Still, I laughed, even if it did kind of wear me out.

One thing I am curious about: Why the heck is a trailer for Lazer Team playing before every Chinese movie I see? Often times it would be the only western trailer I see with them (thought that's not the case with Devil and Angel), and it really sticks out like a sore thumb, even if in this case, it's a pretty fair match for the movie. I figure AMC just mixes all the non-"prestige" indies together, but it is really odd.

E gun tian shi (Devil and Angel)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 December 2015 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)

The very first scene of Devil and Angel makes it clear what sort of broad comedy it's going to be, and it's a pretty dumb one. And it's not a dumb comedy that is secretly kind of clever; it's a dumb comedy that makes dumb jokes for more than a little too long, with surprisingly few new and bizarre characters added to the mix as the old ones get played out. That said, it's a dumb comedy whose jokes often make me laugh, and that is worth something.

The main pairing of the film is Zha Xiaodao ("Betty" Sun Li), a well-educated but socially awkward young woman who has just been fired from her job as an accountant for exposing her boss's bad practices, and Mo Feili (Deng Chao), a debt collector with a bad attitude possibly related to his extreme insomnia. When Xiaodao goes to see guru Zhe Ergen (Liang Chao), she's told to spend some time with Feili, not knowing that Zhe actually runs the business Feili works for and mostly wants her to make sure the right amount is collected because Feili is bad at math. It turns out, of course, that their first collection is from a business owned by Xiaodao's old boss (Wang Yanhui), who sics middle-manager Ji (Luan Yuanhui) and angry Russian butcher Ivanov Lazluakadoli (Xu Kejia) on them. But are they as threatening as Feili's amorous landlord "Chris" Guo Sisi (Dai Lele)?

Yeah, probably, although with Sisi comes a part of what makes the film kind of fun: The weird underground space where she, Feili, and many others live, carved out of an abandoned industrial space and managing to look cool despite seeming to come from a post-apocalyptic film more than the usual look of modern China. It's not the only spot where the filmmakers choose nifty locations and fill them with people that match - a segment set in a wax-museum warehouse with a bunch of henchmen dressed up to look like exhibits makes little sense but is fun to watch - and, indeed, the film is fairly dynamic visually for something that started life as a play, whether from well-timed slapstick to detailed environments.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 December 2015 - 7 January 2016

New Year's Weekend is pretty much the most boring one of the year in terms of movie releases; there's a glut of stuff that came out on Christmas that people are still getting around to seeing, the limited releases are still waiting to see what gets awards traction, and no-one wants to mess with Star Wars this year

• Because it's such a quiet weekend, The Weinstein Company saw an opportunity to move the wide release of The Hateful Eight up (all the way to December 29th, it turns out), which seems like kind of a kick in the teeth to those places that made the effort to get 70mm with the idea that they would have it for a couple of weeks. Indeed, you should still see Quentin Tarantino's latest at the Somerville Theatre, the Coolidge, or even the "roadshow" screenings at Boston Common - it's longer, it's gorgeous, the intermission is part of the storytelling, there are programs handed out. But if you can't get there, (which I doubt), there are digital screenings at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row,Revere, and the SuperLux. Just know the filmmakers are very disappointed in you.
  
  Boston Common also adds Devil and Angel to their Chinese offerings of Mr. Six and Mojin - The Lost Legend. The new one is a road-trip comedy with a top student and a hooligan who try to work out their issues together. Boston Common and Revere will also being showing rebroadcasts of the New Year's Day Sherlock: The Abominable Bride special on Tuesday and Wednesday. Featuring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman
• With The Hateful Eight fully camped out on screen #1, The Coolidge Corner Theatre doesn't mess with the schedule too much, most notably starting a weekend midnight series of Tarantino movies and one notable influence on Saturday with a 35mm print of Reservoir Dogs.
• The Brattle Theatre continues their run of Rocco & His Brothers, aldthough it gets reduced schedules on many days before its final matinee Thursday. On New Year's Eve, for instance, much of the schedule goes to Casablanca, and you might want to hit that 35mm print because Warner is pulling it for a while, meaning the Brattle won't have their usual Valentine's Day shows. New Year's Day, meanwhile, is given over to the annual Marx Brothers Marathon, with The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and Duck Soup all playing on 35mm.
  
  Tuesday, IFFBoston presents a free preview of Mustang, featuring five sisters in Turkey whose parents attempt to clamp down on their independence. It's one of the most acclaimed films of the year.
  
  On Wednesday, they kick off the next leg of 75 Years of Film Noir - Sex & Death & Venetian Blinds: Neo-Noir of the 1980s and 1990s. The first couple nights look pretty great, with a double feature of Body Heat (35mm) & Body Double on Wednesday and a twin bill of Against All Odds (35mm) & the Dennis Quaid D.O.A. on Thursday. And there's another week coming after that.
• A new month (and year) means a new calendar at The Museum of Fine Arts, which kicks off with Words in Motion: Graham Greene as Screenwriter. It's a great start including Brighton Rock (35mm, Saturday/Wednesday), The Third Man (DCP, Saturday/Sunday/Thursday), and The Fallen Idol (35mm, Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday).
• The Institute of Contemporary Art has another group of short films this weekend, with a selections from The Ottawa International Animation Festival, one of the world's most prestigious. 3pm Saturday and Sunday, with another show next Friday evening.

Not a lot new, but I'll catch Devil and Angel, get to some of the stuff I didn't manage last week, and maybe try for Mustang, Brighton Rock, and some noir. Maybe even seconds of Star Wars and Hateful Eight.

Bajirao Mastani

Pleasant surprise: $4.75 Tuesday at Apple Fresh Pond also applies to some Indian movies; considering how pricey they're been at other times, I wasn't expecting that at all, and it probably played into me spending a bit more at the concession stand. Given that this is what cheap Tuesday is for, well-done!

Fun thing about that concession stand: While most places that have pizza at the concession stand have some personal-sized version of one of the frozen brands at the supermarket, Apple appeared to be selling slices from Ma Magoo's at the other end of the shopping plaza, at least from the box that was sitting on top of the warming cabinet. I cannot endorse this practice enough - aside from this being pretty good pizza, who doesn't like local businesses supporting each other like this?

It being cheap night meant the screening was packed, and it didn't particularly seem like Priyanka Chopra was drawing new American fans. Craziest thing - a group that came in after me basically sat around me, even passing popcorn and soda over my lap without even an "excuse me" or some other acknowledgment of my presence. Fortunately, it didn't happen mid-film, although the guy two seats down was checking his phone a lot, often enough in sync with the musical numbers that I wondered if he was downloading individual songs from the soundtrack. Some others (behind me) were taking shots of the screen as numbers started. I get that, but, hey, they've got the internet for that, folks.

(Probably wouldn't have happened if the movie was presented in 3D, which seems like a possibility; the action scenes seemed to imply it as did a few other shots.)

Anyway, not a great movie, although I'm mildly curious to see the other big Bollywood opener from the 18th, Dilwale, in part because I read an article about how the two were kind of reversed in how they opened in India versus other markets, making me wonder if maybe the other would appeal more to foreigners as well as emigrants as was implied.

Bajirao Mastani

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 December 2015 in Apple Cinemas Cambridge #3 (first-run, DCP)

I guess it's an improvement that somewhere during the second half of Bajirao Mastani I backed off thinking of it as being a historical romance where nearly everybody is a terrible person, instead considering it one where people are simply selfish, occasionally stumbling into righteousness by accident. It's at least impressively mounted, so even if the love story leaves a bit of a bitter taste in one's mouth, there's certainly enough spectacle to make up for some of that.

As the film starts, Bajirao Ballal (Ranveer Singh) is appointed the new Peshwa (prime minister) of the Marathi Empire based upon his prowess in battle, wit, and political acumen, though it is not an entirely popular choice. In the middle of a mission of conquest, a warrior demands to speak with him; it turns out to be Mastani (Deepika Padukone), the daughter of Raja Chhatrasaal (Benjamin Gilani), whose city is under attack. He diverts to fight that battle, and love soon grows between Bajirao and Mastani. He gives her his dagger, unaware that in her culture a girl is married by accepting such a gift. She, then, follows him to his new palace, Shanivaar Wada, where she is not exactly welcomed with open arms by Bajirao's mother Radhabai (Tanvi Azmi) - or his first wife Kashibai (Priyanka Chopra), and that's before they learn that Mastani's mother is Muslim.

I'm going to guess that if I were steeped more in Indian culture and traditions, the conflicts in this film would have a little more resonance for me, but with that not the case, it sure seems like the romance that the film wants us to root for is yet another preening jackass who wants to have a second lover without considering the effect it has on his existing family and a woman who is fairly ruthless about staking her own claim. The irony, then, is that even if one is inclined to disapprove of their rapidly-established but at least genuine love, the people opposing it are far more horrible. The only truly sympathetic character is Kashi, and her role in this story is frustratingly familiar - to be hurt, told that she is still important to Bajirao despite evidence to the contrary, and to try to make it work because, really, what other options does a woman in her position have?

Full review on EFC.