If you're reading this in the Boston area on Thursday afternoon (the 11th), this movie's got its last first-run screening at the Brattle at 7pm, and it would in no way be a bad way to spend an hour and a half this evening. Sorry it took so long, but I didn't see it until Sunday night, there was other stuff that took a while to get done, and so on. Hopefully it will be on VOD and disc soon, and I can see it coming back to the Brattle as part of a Recent Raves series.
And, yes, I will probably get it on disc when it's announced, if only for the poster/cover art. Unfortunately, my email is acting up so I can't tell when the first picture of Patrick Mate's poster appeared in it - this film has been bouncing around festivals for a couple of years, but it struck me as cute and charming from the first. It's mildly vexing that I can't find the poster for sale on Amazon, either to be the review's link to things nobody ever buys to help this blog pay for itself or to get one myself. Guess I'll have to settle for the disc when that comes out to have a copy.
Kind of wish I'd been able to get to the movies the Brattle had play as companions (tonight's is History of the World: Part I), since that's a really nifty thing to do when you've got documentaries on film and filmmakers playing.
Harold and Lillian: A Hollywood Romance
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 May 2017 at the Brattle Theatre (first-run, DCP)
Like the world in general, the world of film is built on people like Harold and Lillian Michelson, folks who are good something that contributes to the success of a larger undertaking, do it for a long time, and similarly put in the effort to have good lives when they get home from work. Even when their contributions are, in fact, important parts of highly-visible successes, telling their stories can be hard - it's technical on the one hand and expected on the other. Lucky for us, this couple made friends with good storytellers, who have brought their shared life story to the screen in a way that, aside from being charming, highlights their importance.
Both Harold Michelson and Lillian Farber grew up in the Miami area, with Harold meeting his kid sister's best friend after returning from World War II. It wasn't a match Harold's parents approved of, so they decamped to California, where Harold started out as a background artist who, when given a chance to work on storyboards, had an innate sense of what the camera would see. They had three children, and when they reached school age, Harold recommended that the head of MGM's research library take the restless Lillian on as an apprentice. It eventually became her library, moving with her from one studio and institution to another until she retired from DreamWorks in 2010.
Harold became a production designer during that time, a more high-profile way to put his artistic talents to use, but it's his time as a storyboard artist that forms the framework for director Daniel Raim's movie in more ways than one. Filmmakers from executive producer Danny DeVito to Francis Ford Coppola talk about how crucial his work was, pointing out that Harold had a knack for recognizing perspective and what specific cameras would pick up that made it much easier to visualize the final product, and then going further to point out that certain crucial bits of framing in The Graduate, including the famed under-the-leg shot, first appeared in his boards. This isn't used to diminish director Mike Nichols's work; ultimately going with that shot was his decision, as was doing the work on-set to make it effective on screen. Instead, it demonstrates that this process is a lot less top-down than many people imagine. It's something hinted early on when the on-screen definition of Lillian's work is "discovering facts to stimulate filmmakers' imaginations", showing how what makes a movie comes from a number of sources.
Full review on EFC.
Thursday, May 11, 2017
Tuesday, May 09, 2017
May Day Movies: This Is Not What I Expected & Battle of Memories
Around this time of year, a friend grumbles on Twitter about the rest of the world getting Marvel movies before the United States, and I don't know that I've actually proposed the idea that May Day being an important holiday in the rest of the world but probably a little less important than Free Comic Book Day here - and that's not a big deal, really.
But, apparently, May Day is a big movie weekend in China, enough so that the day-and-date releases in the U.S. had to be spread out - Love Off the Cuff and Battle of Memories that weekend, with This Is Not What I Expected and Shock Wave coming out the next week (although the latter didn't make it to Boston, which is a bummer). Helpful for me, that - I would have been even more overwhelmed IFFBoston weekend otherwise - but an interesting reminder that the schedule we always think of in U.S.-centric terms here can be really different elsewhere.
Anyway, of these two, I liked This a lot more than expected, but found myself kind of disappointed by Battle of Memories. Chinese sci-fi is a tricky thing; I'm enjoying the Three-Body Problem books, but they're it's worth noting that they are grand-scale things, not particularly reflecting the present much. There was something that caught my eye, though:
SPOILERS!
I've been racking my head for the past couple of days, trying to think if I've ever seen a gay character in a Chinese movie before; heck, it's rare to see gay people mentioned. So it raised my eyebrows a little bit in this one when I saw that Shanshan seemed to be awfully close with Huilan, and later seemed to get friendly with Daichen quickly. It was kind of a disappointing set-up when Huilan seemed to say Shanshan was disgusting, seeming to seal Shanshan's motivation as the murderer.
That didn't wind up being the case - the movie suddenly pivots to someone I didn't realize was even a possibility because I don't recall any scenes that hinted at him knowing Huilan before investigating her murder - and it's kind of a weird mixed bag. Sure, on the one hand, the only gay person in the film doesn't wind up being the murderer, but, then, the "disgusting" comment makes a little less sense, and it erases half the evidence that Shanshan might like women. Which is weird, because they off-handedly shoot her in the head rather than risk her having more chemistry with Daichen in the last scenes than Jiang does.
I guess this sort of queer-baiting might be seen as progress in Chinese cinema, considering that we're less than a year removed from them making Rupert Everett's iconic Gay Best Friend character straight for their remake of My Best Friend's Wedding. It's weird to watch, though, almost like the filmmakers wanted to go that direction with Shanshan but didn't find out that it wouldn't fly with the censor board until they were actually shooting. Or maybe this was a trial balloon to see what audiences and censors would or would not freak out about.
!SRELIOPS
Interesting, if nothing else. Anyway, here's hoping we do get Shock Wave this weekend, because who doesn't want to see Andy Lau defusing bombs in a Herman Yau film? Terrible people, that's who.
This Is Not What I Expected
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 May 2017 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, DCP)
I feel marginally less guilty than usual for eating some less-than-great mozzarella sticks during a movie about delicious and beautiful food than usual here, what with this being a somewhat faster-paced and less food-porn-y flick than something like Cook Up a Storm. Instead, it's a simple but no less enjoyable romantic comedy, with opposites attracting and trying to keep their identities secret, stretching things out a bit but mostly working out.
The Rosebud Hotel in Shanghai is not a particularly impressive one, but it is one of several in the city that has been targeted for purchase by the VN Group whose CEO, Lu Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), is making his customary visit to scope them out. It's not going so well - as he's leaving the previous hotel, he comes upon Gu Shengnan (Zhou Dongyu) vandalizing his car on behalf of a dumped friend (it turns out that there are a lot of black Audis in the garage) - and the notorious foodie is unimpressed by the six dishes room service sends up. Desperate to please, the hotel's general manager (Yo Yang) has a young but creative sous-chef prepare him a dish before he checks out at noon. Lu is impressed enough to stay and try more dishes, unaware that it's Shengnan - who has found a number of ways to inadvertently make his life difficult - that is cooking for him.
Like most romantic comedies, This Is Not What I Expected is built on the cast, with Takeshi Kaneshiro giving an especially hilarious performance as the wealthy food-lover. Most of his Chinese-language career has been somber dramas and historical epics, so it's a bit of a surprise to see him in a comedic role, but he brings a perfect combination of imperiousness and fussiness to Lu. Though it's something that should be seen in a lot of films of this genre, not many actors manage to plant a seed of being easily flustered within their pushiness, and it not only leads to getting a laugh where one might otherwise think "what a jerk!", but it lets a decent guy emerge later on when we need to buy that Lu and Shengnan might actually have something besides a mutual interest in good food.
Full review on EFC.
Battle of Memories
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2017 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
For all that box office reports will often lead off with how China has made a sci-fi movie that didn't do that well in America something of a hit, they don't export seem to export many. There are plenty of potential explanations for why China makes relatively fewer and they don't tend to cross the Pacific, and that's before you get to how, if Battle of Memories is typical, they're not great; the filmmakers had a neat hook to set up a futuristic murder mystery, but are often so set on twists, turns, and misdirection that a story that makes sense never emerges, and they can't dazzle their way past that..
The time is the near future; the place is "Nation T", the only place in Asia where "Masters of Memory" has a location. Famed writer Jiang Feng (Huang Bo) is there to have the detailed memories of his failed marriage removed - he won't completely forget wife Zhang Daichen (Xu Jinglei), but those experiences will be more like a book he read some time ago than his own memories. This seems to be what's happening with the couple whose confrontation ends in a murder-suicide, during which time the memory unit containing Jiang's memories is damaged. Once he gets back home, though, Daichen refuses to sign the divorce papers while he's in this condition, and while the memories can be restored for 72 hours, there are consequences to that, as the memories will either be present or gone for good. There's also a bigger problem - the memories re-implanted are not his own, but those of the murderer of battered wife Li Huilan (Wang Zhen'er). Of course, when he goes to the police, Detective Shen Hanqiang (Duan Yihong) and Lei Zi (Liang Jieli) aren't exactly sure what to do with a guy who claims to remember a murder he didn't commit, especially since his subjective memory offers few clues as to the real killer and some of what he says contradicts what medical examiner - and friend of the victim Chen Shanshan (Yang Zishan) - discovered in her autopsy.
When making Minority Report, Steven Spielberg hired Scott Frank - who writes great thrillers and crime but felt out of his element doing science fiction - and told him to come up with the best mystery he could, and he'd handle the futuristic material. If there was a similar dynamic between director "Leste" Chen Zhengdao and his co-writer Ryan Ren here, it's somewhat less successful. The murder of Li Huilan initially doesn't seem to offer the sort of complexities that require extraordinary measures to solve it, and when following them up does reveal a more complicated story, that doesn't necessarily make it more interesting, especially since the film opens with a scene that points so firmly in one unorthodox direction that the way Leste dances around it is frustrating. The direction things ultimately go seems random, especially compared to some of the other options presented earlier.
Full review on EFC.
But, apparently, May Day is a big movie weekend in China, enough so that the day-and-date releases in the U.S. had to be spread out - Love Off the Cuff and Battle of Memories that weekend, with This Is Not What I Expected and Shock Wave coming out the next week (although the latter didn't make it to Boston, which is a bummer). Helpful for me, that - I would have been even more overwhelmed IFFBoston weekend otherwise - but an interesting reminder that the schedule we always think of in U.S.-centric terms here can be really different elsewhere.
Anyway, of these two, I liked This a lot more than expected, but found myself kind of disappointed by Battle of Memories. Chinese sci-fi is a tricky thing; I'm enjoying the Three-Body Problem books, but they're it's worth noting that they are grand-scale things, not particularly reflecting the present much. There was something that caught my eye, though:
SPOILERS!
I've been racking my head for the past couple of days, trying to think if I've ever seen a gay character in a Chinese movie before; heck, it's rare to see gay people mentioned. So it raised my eyebrows a little bit in this one when I saw that Shanshan seemed to be awfully close with Huilan, and later seemed to get friendly with Daichen quickly. It was kind of a disappointing set-up when Huilan seemed to say Shanshan was disgusting, seeming to seal Shanshan's motivation as the murderer.
That didn't wind up being the case - the movie suddenly pivots to someone I didn't realize was even a possibility because I don't recall any scenes that hinted at him knowing Huilan before investigating her murder - and it's kind of a weird mixed bag. Sure, on the one hand, the only gay person in the film doesn't wind up being the murderer, but, then, the "disgusting" comment makes a little less sense, and it erases half the evidence that Shanshan might like women. Which is weird, because they off-handedly shoot her in the head rather than risk her having more chemistry with Daichen in the last scenes than Jiang does.
I guess this sort of queer-baiting might be seen as progress in Chinese cinema, considering that we're less than a year removed from them making Rupert Everett's iconic Gay Best Friend character straight for their remake of My Best Friend's Wedding. It's weird to watch, though, almost like the filmmakers wanted to go that direction with Shanshan but didn't find out that it wouldn't fly with the censor board until they were actually shooting. Or maybe this was a trial balloon to see what audiences and censors would or would not freak out about.
!SRELIOPS
Interesting, if nothing else. Anyway, here's hoping we do get Shock Wave this weekend, because who doesn't want to see Andy Lau defusing bombs in a Herman Yau film? Terrible people, that's who.
This Is Not What I Expected
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 May 2017 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, DCP)
I feel marginally less guilty than usual for eating some less-than-great mozzarella sticks during a movie about delicious and beautiful food than usual here, what with this being a somewhat faster-paced and less food-porn-y flick than something like Cook Up a Storm. Instead, it's a simple but no less enjoyable romantic comedy, with opposites attracting and trying to keep their identities secret, stretching things out a bit but mostly working out.
The Rosebud Hotel in Shanghai is not a particularly impressive one, but it is one of several in the city that has been targeted for purchase by the VN Group whose CEO, Lu Jin (Takeshi Kaneshiro), is making his customary visit to scope them out. It's not going so well - as he's leaving the previous hotel, he comes upon Gu Shengnan (Zhou Dongyu) vandalizing his car on behalf of a dumped friend (it turns out that there are a lot of black Audis in the garage) - and the notorious foodie is unimpressed by the six dishes room service sends up. Desperate to please, the hotel's general manager (Yo Yang) has a young but creative sous-chef prepare him a dish before he checks out at noon. Lu is impressed enough to stay and try more dishes, unaware that it's Shengnan - who has found a number of ways to inadvertently make his life difficult - that is cooking for him.
Like most romantic comedies, This Is Not What I Expected is built on the cast, with Takeshi Kaneshiro giving an especially hilarious performance as the wealthy food-lover. Most of his Chinese-language career has been somber dramas and historical epics, so it's a bit of a surprise to see him in a comedic role, but he brings a perfect combination of imperiousness and fussiness to Lu. Though it's something that should be seen in a lot of films of this genre, not many actors manage to plant a seed of being easily flustered within their pushiness, and it not only leads to getting a laugh where one might otherwise think "what a jerk!", but it lets a decent guy emerge later on when we need to buy that Lu and Shengnan might actually have something besides a mutual interest in good food.
Full review on EFC.
Battle of Memories
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 May 2017 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
For all that box office reports will often lead off with how China has made a sci-fi movie that didn't do that well in America something of a hit, they don't export seem to export many. There are plenty of potential explanations for why China makes relatively fewer and they don't tend to cross the Pacific, and that's before you get to how, if Battle of Memories is typical, they're not great; the filmmakers had a neat hook to set up a futuristic murder mystery, but are often so set on twists, turns, and misdirection that a story that makes sense never emerges, and they can't dazzle their way past that..
The time is the near future; the place is "Nation T", the only place in Asia where "Masters of Memory" has a location. Famed writer Jiang Feng (Huang Bo) is there to have the detailed memories of his failed marriage removed - he won't completely forget wife Zhang Daichen (Xu Jinglei), but those experiences will be more like a book he read some time ago than his own memories. This seems to be what's happening with the couple whose confrontation ends in a murder-suicide, during which time the memory unit containing Jiang's memories is damaged. Once he gets back home, though, Daichen refuses to sign the divorce papers while he's in this condition, and while the memories can be restored for 72 hours, there are consequences to that, as the memories will either be present or gone for good. There's also a bigger problem - the memories re-implanted are not his own, but those of the murderer of battered wife Li Huilan (Wang Zhen'er). Of course, when he goes to the police, Detective Shen Hanqiang (Duan Yihong) and Lei Zi (Liang Jieli) aren't exactly sure what to do with a guy who claims to remember a murder he didn't commit, especially since his subjective memory offers few clues as to the real killer and some of what he says contradicts what medical examiner - and friend of the victim Chen Shanshan (Yang Zishan) - discovered in her autopsy.
When making Minority Report, Steven Spielberg hired Scott Frank - who writes great thrillers and crime but felt out of his element doing science fiction - and told him to come up with the best mystery he could, and he'd handle the futuristic material. If there was a similar dynamic between director "Leste" Chen Zhengdao and his co-writer Ryan Ren here, it's somewhat less successful. The murder of Li Huilan initially doesn't seem to offer the sort of complexities that require extraordinary measures to solve it, and when following them up does reveal a more complicated story, that doesn't necessarily make it more interesting, especially since the film opens with a scene that points so firmly in one unorthodox direction that the way Leste dances around it is frustrating. The direction things ultimately go seems random, especially compared to some of the other options presented earlier.
Full review on EFC.
Friday, May 05, 2017
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 5 May 2017 - 11 May 2017
Is it churlish for me to be upset that we're not getting the new Andy Lau action movie this weekend even though the place that would play it is using three screens on Chinese movies? It is, isn't it? I'm selfish to want that when I've got stuff to catch up on and a great bit fun Marvel movie this weekend.
- That would be Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, the follow-up to 2014's very fun superhero space opera which adds Mantis and Ego, The Living Planet to the mix, and, guys, I think that James Gunn might just be open enough to the goofy that we'll see a CGI planet with Kurt Russell's face on it. This is a glorious time we live in, that something like that can not only get all the big, fancy 3D screens, but everything else basically runs from it. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond, the Studio in Belmont, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), and the SuperLux.
And, that's close to it. Fenway and Revere will have the (new?) director's cut of Saturday Night Fever on Sunday and Wednesday, while those theaters and Boston Common have added another screening of Boston: An American Running Story on Tuesday. - Over at Kendall Square, construction continues, as they try to add The Dinner while still running four screens, which means taking a showtime from everything else. It looks interesting, with Richard Gere, Rebecca Hall, Steve Coogan, and Laura Linney as two couples meeting to figure out how to deal with something their sons have done. It's also at the Capitol, West Newton, and Boston Common. That means it's on their sister cinema in Waltham, the Embassy, to open Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent, a documentary on a chef whose mercurial nature has found him more trouble than many people in a profession that attracts many. It's also at Boston Common.
- The Coolidge Corner Theatre teams up with WGBH Jazz 24/7 to book Chasing Trane: The John Coltrane Documentary, with musical-doc specialist John Scheinfeld tracking the life of the jazz legend. They also have another new release at midnight on Friday and Saturday, with pretty darn cool BUFF/MonsterFest selection A Dark Song telling the story of a woman who hires an occult expert to help contact her dead son.
The other big screen is also active at midnight those days, with this weekend featuring the work of Brian De Palma - a new digital restoration of Body Double on Friday, and a 35mm print of Dressed to Kill on Saturday.
Then, on Sunday morning, the Goethe-Institut film is The Bloom of Yesterday, whose premise sounds like a bad idea - a romantic comedy about the grandchildren of a Nazi war criminal and a Holocaust victim - but it's award winning and will feature a post-film discussion as part of Jewishfilm.20. They also have a guest on Monday night, as Balagan welcomes Shireen Seno to present a program of short films from the Philippine Islands. Wednesday's visitor is Robert Milazzo, who will host an "In:Pictures" program featuring conversation with Dr. Henry Louis Gates about films that shaped his thinking. Finally, Thursday morning is the start of a weekly "Family Bonds" class, with Kaj Wilson presenting Ozu's Late Spring along with a lecture and conversation. - Out in West Newton, they open In Search of Israeli Cuisine, a documentary on how Israel's broad immigration has resulted in some unique fusion dishes.
It's a feature that dovetails nicely with The National Center for Jewish Film's 20th Festival, which splits time between West Newton and the Museum of Fine Arts this week, with Body & Soul at the MFA on Friday (with filmmaker Q&A) and West Newton on Sunday, Past Life at the MFA Saturday and West Newton Tuesday, Aida's Secrets and Moon in the 12 House at West Newton Sunday, Ben-Gurion, Epilogue there Tuesday, Paradise at the MFA Wednesday with Q&A, and Fanny's Journey at the MFA with Q&A on Thursday. - The Brattle Theatre has two new releases this weekend, one of them a return, as Buster's Mal Heart was the secret screening at BUFF a month or so ago, which and it's at the very least interesting, with Rami Malek as a hotel concierge whose encounters with a paranoid man push him into becoming a mountain man. It plays late shows from Friday to Sunday.
The main program this week is Harold & Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story, a documentary about two people who have worked on iconic movies with very little credit - he as a storyboard artist, her as a researcher. In addition to having one of the greatest movie posters going, it's also an excuse for the Brattle to show some of the films they've worked on: The Birds on Saturday, The History of the World: Pt. I on Sunday and Thursday, a 35mm print of Star Trek: The Motion Picture on Monday, The Birds on Wednesday, and a double feature of Pretty Poison and Rosemary's Baby on Wednesday. - Boston Common keeps Love off the Cuff and Battle of Memories around, good news for those who couldn't make it out there because of IFFBoston, and add This Is Not What I Expected, a romantic comedy featuring Takeshi Kaneshiro and Zhou Dongyu as a methodical CEO and a free-wheeling chef who eventually come together over their love of food.
Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond sticks with BaahuBali 2 for their main Indian film, with one screen subtitled Hindi and the other alternating Tamil and Telugu (its native language). They also have Malayalam film The Great Father on Saturday. - The Museum of Fine Arts has its monthly "On the Fringe" presentation on Friday night, with a 35mm print of Repo Man. They also serve up cultish material with My Entire High School Sinking into the Sea, a fairly adult-skewing animated flick nevertheless distributed by Gkids. It plays Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday.
They've also got room for a couple matinees of Bulgarian drama Glory, about a railroad engineer who is pushed as a folk hero when he finds a bag of money in the course of doing his job. And, in between all that, there's a 35mm screening of Frederick Wiseman's Titicut Follies o Saturday afternoon. - The Harvard Film Archive has a selection of Želimir Žilnik short films on Friday, though the Serbian director will not be visiting until next weekend. That night also has another shorts program, with Hachimiri Madness! selections "Isolation of 1/880000" and "Tokyo Cabbageman K" playing at 9pm, while feature Hanasareru Gang plays Saturday at the same time. Saturday evening offers a shorts program, featuring 16mm prints of films by Robert Nelson. Then, on Sunday and Monday, they welcome João Pedro Rodrigues, who will be presenting his new feature The Ornithologist on Sunday, and then he is joined by partner João Rui Guerra da Mata for documentary short "Where Do You Stand Now, João Pedro Rodrigues?" on Monday, with the screening following a performance the the feature's composer, Séverine Ballon.
- The Somerville Theatre adds The Lost City of Z as it gets back to normal after the festival, but their big presentation is Cage Against the Machine, a burlesque show inspired by the films of Nicolas Cage, on Saturday night; it will be followed by a 35mm print of Face/Off. Another special screening with live entertainment happens on Thursday at their sister theater in Arlington, The Capitol, as Jeff Rapsis accompanies silent western The Winning of Barbara Worth, where Ronald Colman and Gary Cooper vie for the affections of Vilma Bankky.
- White Sun plays the Belmont World Film at the the Studio Cinema, featuring a story of brothers who were on the opposite sites of the Nepalsese Civil War; a lecture from Nepalese native Sarthak Giri, who witnessed both sides first-hand.
- CinemaSalem not only picks up Colossal this weekend, but they also seem to be the only place in the area showing Tomorrow ("Demain" in the original French), a documentary where actress Mélanie Laurent teams with Cyril Dion to showcase people working to fight climate change.
Monday, May 01, 2017
Sleight
This was Day Two of “cramming an extra movie that will likely be squeezed out of theaters by Guardians in around IFFBoston”, and it was going to be a bit more nuts, except that festival start times slipped a bit as they do, and a Skype Q&A was added to the last film of the day, which made getting back to Boston Common for The Mayor or Battle of Memories at 10:40pm (and then taking a cab back home at 1am) impossible. My employers probably thank the festival for this.
For all that it meant getting up early on a Sunday and making a day which already had a bunch of going back and forth between venues a little more T-intensive, though, I’m glad I caught it. It’s got a few real problems, for sure, but it does a few things very well. I kind of hope that someone at Marvel has jotted down some names while the credits ran on this one. It strikes me that they could do a lot worse than hire J.M. Dillard to direct Storm Reid as Riri Williams should they want to pick up Iron Man with reduced involvement by Robert Downey Jr. backup after Avengers 4, even if that may seem a little bit on the nose.
Oh, and speaking of studios with (what you’d think would be) very specific products, this one comes from WWE Studios and BH Tilt, and while I know Blumhouse is not necessarily all horror, I don’t think this has any wrestling connection at all (checks to see if the big henchman in this film is a “superstar” - do they still call everyone that? - and nope). I guess it’s an acquisition title for WWE, but that just makes the company’s tendency to produce/distribute entertaining genre films that aren’t exactly on-brand an even more enjoyable curiosity.
Probably worth noting for context: At IFFBoston the night before, I saw Dealt, which is about the world’s greatest card mechanic, who can do some pretty amazing things with a deck of cards, so maybe my standards for card tricks were kind of high.
Sleight
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)
As much as it's nice to see a movie that acknowledges that its impossible magic tricks are actually impossible, doing that muddies Sleight a bit,chipping away at the desperate underdog situation once its hero actually has to use his amazing-but-homebrew invention to get out of a bad situation in a climax. It's a good hook and nifty overall, but doesn’t entirely come together.
The street magician in this case is Bo (Jacob Latimore), a 19-year-old kid in Los Angeles who could have gone to college on an engineering scholarship, but passed it up in order to take care of his little sister Tina (Storm Reid) after their mother died. There are some perks - Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) dropped her phone number in his hat along with a couple of bucks, for instance - but most of his money comes dealing drugs for Angelo (Dulé Hill). Unfortunately, he does it a bit too well, so despite his efforts to avoid the violent side of the business, Angelo takes Bo along to confront Maurice (Mane Andrew), who has set up operations on Angelo’s turf. That starts a spiral that will be difficult to escape, even with the secret weapon Bo has in his arm.
Sleight tips off that it’s got a fantastic element or two early on, so what happens later on isn’t a complete right turn, but it’s the somewhat conventional foundation that makes it worthwhile. It’s anchored by Jacob Latimore’s performance as Bo, a sheepish genius who keeps winding up in situations where one would expect more outward confidence. There’s no smirk when Bo is performing street magic, and the sequence where he apparently holds a gun for the first time as Angelo’s crew goes to teach Maurice a lesson is a fantastic example of someone clearly not knowing what he’s doing or wanting any part of it without it ever becoming physical comedy. There’s a wonderful decency to him as well as an ability to make bad decisions utterly believable and forgivable, youth in over its head without making a big scene of it.
Full review on EFC.
For all that it meant getting up early on a Sunday and making a day which already had a bunch of going back and forth between venues a little more T-intensive, though, I’m glad I caught it. It’s got a few real problems, for sure, but it does a few things very well. I kind of hope that someone at Marvel has jotted down some names while the credits ran on this one. It strikes me that they could do a lot worse than hire J.M. Dillard to direct Storm Reid as Riri Williams should they want to pick up Iron Man with reduced involvement by Robert Downey Jr. backup after Avengers 4, even if that may seem a little bit on the nose.
Oh, and speaking of studios with (what you’d think would be) very specific products, this one comes from WWE Studios and BH Tilt, and while I know Blumhouse is not necessarily all horror, I don’t think this has any wrestling connection at all (checks to see if the big henchman in this film is a “superstar” - do they still call everyone that? - and nope). I guess it’s an acquisition title for WWE, but that just makes the company’s tendency to produce/distribute entertaining genre films that aren’t exactly on-brand an even more enjoyable curiosity.
Probably worth noting for context: At IFFBoston the night before, I saw Dealt, which is about the world’s greatest card mechanic, who can do some pretty amazing things with a deck of cards, so maybe my standards for card tricks were kind of high.
Sleight
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)
As much as it's nice to see a movie that acknowledges that its impossible magic tricks are actually impossible, doing that muddies Sleight a bit,chipping away at the desperate underdog situation once its hero actually has to use his amazing-but-homebrew invention to get out of a bad situation in a climax. It's a good hook and nifty overall, but doesn’t entirely come together.
The street magician in this case is Bo (Jacob Latimore), a 19-year-old kid in Los Angeles who could have gone to college on an engineering scholarship, but passed it up in order to take care of his little sister Tina (Storm Reid) after their mother died. There are some perks - Holly (Seychelle Gabriel) dropped her phone number in his hat along with a couple of bucks, for instance - but most of his money comes dealing drugs for Angelo (Dulé Hill). Unfortunately, he does it a bit too well, so despite his efforts to avoid the violent side of the business, Angelo takes Bo along to confront Maurice (Mane Andrew), who has set up operations on Angelo’s turf. That starts a spiral that will be difficult to escape, even with the secret weapon Bo has in his arm.
Sleight tips off that it’s got a fantastic element or two early on, so what happens later on isn’t a complete right turn, but it’s the somewhat conventional foundation that makes it worthwhile. It’s anchored by Jacob Latimore’s performance as Bo, a sheepish genius who keeps winding up in situations where one would expect more outward confidence. There’s no smirk when Bo is performing street magic, and the sequence where he apparently holds a gun for the first time as Angelo’s crew goes to teach Maurice a lesson is a fantastic example of someone clearly not knowing what he’s doing or wanting any part of it without it ever becoming physical comedy. There’s a wonderful decency to him as well as an ability to make bad decisions utterly believable and forgivable, youth in over its head without making a big scene of it.
Full review on EFC.
Saturday, April 29, 2017
Love Off the Cuff
As I mentioned in the other day’s “Next Week in Tickets” post, the weekend of Independent Film Festival Boston is the best time for me to try and see a number of Asian films that will likely be pushed off screens by a big Marvel movie next week, so I try and cram them in where possible. In this case, that means the 10:15am show on Saturday morning, but the new Pang Ho-cheung movie, and a sequel to two I liked at that, means you find a way.
I do have a few questions after watching it, though. Looking at my Love in the Buff review from 2012, I noted a ten-year age difference there, while they are described as 36 and 40 in this movie. It’s believable enough, in that Shawn Yue has filled out a bit in the last few years, but I wonder if this is a deliberate change or just a matter of different translations. I’m also kind of curious about how specific some of the pop-culture references are, especially when characters are name-dropping during a song at the end. How specifically Hong Kong is it?
Chun Kiu gau Chi Ming (Love Off the Cuff)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
Pang Ho-cheung’s Love Off the Cuff looks like a period horror movie as it opens (especially for those of us that can’t read the Chinese opening titles), and this bit goes on long enough that a viewer might start to wonder whether the theater had ingested the wrong DCP into their projection system. It says something that, despite having paid for a romantic comedy, I’d have happily watched this monster movie; no matter what he’s doing, Pang has a sense of fun even when he’s playing something straight. That’s what makes this one pretty good when it does finally deliver the expected; Pang and his cast can make this silly while still finding something real to consider in the characters’ relationship.
For those who came in late, Jimmy Cheung (Shawn Yue Man-lok) and Cherie Yu (Miriam Yeung Chin-wah) met eight years ago when their smoke breaks coincided and started going out even though she’s a few years older than him; they split but eventually reconnected when both were transferred from Hong Kong to Beijing. Together ever since, they’re now back home, and things have been going well, although they’ve maybe fallen into a rut, despite the public indecency charges they are hit with early on. For better or worse, a couple visitors could throw things upside down: Cherie’s father (Paul Chun Pui) has arrived with his fiance Apple (Wang Xiaochen), who may be younger than the daughter, while Jimmy’s “Godmother” Flora (Jiang Meng-jie) is also younger, with that being a joke nickname given to her while they were kids in Toronto, and she’s got a big favor to ask.
This is Pang’s third visit with the couple he, Shawn Yue, and Miriam Yeung first introduced in Love in a Puff, and it’s impressive just for being the third entry in a romantic comedy series that in many ways has the same basic conflict without wrecking what made it work in the first place. Part of this is that, for all that both threads tend to remind Cherie that older men tend to seek younger women rather than vice versa, there’s not a lot of overt talk of this - it ties in with a lot of Cherie’s other fears and Jimmy’s temptations, but it’s also something that, by dint of them getting this far, it’s mostly accepted.
Full review on EFC.
I do have a few questions after watching it, though. Looking at my Love in the Buff review from 2012, I noted a ten-year age difference there, while they are described as 36 and 40 in this movie. It’s believable enough, in that Shawn Yue has filled out a bit in the last few years, but I wonder if this is a deliberate change or just a matter of different translations. I’m also kind of curious about how specific some of the pop-culture references are, especially when characters are name-dropping during a song at the end. How specifically Hong Kong is it?
Chun Kiu gau Chi Ming (Love Off the Cuff)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
Pang Ho-cheung’s Love Off the Cuff looks like a period horror movie as it opens (especially for those of us that can’t read the Chinese opening titles), and this bit goes on long enough that a viewer might start to wonder whether the theater had ingested the wrong DCP into their projection system. It says something that, despite having paid for a romantic comedy, I’d have happily watched this monster movie; no matter what he’s doing, Pang has a sense of fun even when he’s playing something straight. That’s what makes this one pretty good when it does finally deliver the expected; Pang and his cast can make this silly while still finding something real to consider in the characters’ relationship.
For those who came in late, Jimmy Cheung (Shawn Yue Man-lok) and Cherie Yu (Miriam Yeung Chin-wah) met eight years ago when their smoke breaks coincided and started going out even though she’s a few years older than him; they split but eventually reconnected when both were transferred from Hong Kong to Beijing. Together ever since, they’re now back home, and things have been going well, although they’ve maybe fallen into a rut, despite the public indecency charges they are hit with early on. For better or worse, a couple visitors could throw things upside down: Cherie’s father (Paul Chun Pui) has arrived with his fiance Apple (Wang Xiaochen), who may be younger than the daughter, while Jimmy’s “Godmother” Flora (Jiang Meng-jie) is also younger, with that being a joke nickname given to her while they were kids in Toronto, and she’s got a big favor to ask.
This is Pang’s third visit with the couple he, Shawn Yue, and Miriam Yeung first introduced in Love in a Puff, and it’s impressive just for being the third entry in a romantic comedy series that in many ways has the same basic conflict without wrecking what made it work in the first place. Part of this is that, for all that both threads tend to remind Cherie that older men tend to seek younger women rather than vice versa, there’s not a lot of overt talk of this - it ties in with a lot of Cherie’s other fears and Jimmy’s temptations, but it’s also something that, by dint of them getting this far, it’s mostly accepted.
Full review on EFC.
Friday, April 28, 2017
BUFF 2017.04: Fraud, Neighborhood Food Drive, Most Beautiful Island, and The Void
It figures - the times when BUFF has two screens running, there are tricky choices, but when there’s just the one, it’s something I’ve seen elsewhere and don’t need to do again. On the other hand, that does leave one a nice window for the grocery shopping and other errands that I had no time for what with no just normal being at home after a week on vacation.
Most of what I missed out on by spending Saturday afternoon at the Harvard Film Archive was shorts of one sort or another. Someday, at some festival, I’ll actually make it to Keir-La Janisse’s Saturday Morning Cartoon show with the cereal bar, even though I doubt the cartoons I watched as a kid have aged well. I’m probably never going to prioritize something else over the “Sound & Vision” music video program. I was disappointed to skip out of the dark comedy block (called “Don’t Look Back into the Sun” this year), but it was up against what wound up being one of my two favorite films of the festival, so I wasn’t too disappointed.
And they were apparently lucky to get that favorite film. According to the introduction, after Most Beautiful Island was an upset winner of the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW (if you can call festival prize winners “upsets”), the producers apparently stopped booking it at other festivals, probably thinking this could net them a better distribution deal but a niche film showing at the festival might prevent regular theaters in the area from booking it. No idea if that’s how it works, but it seems like the only explanation for some of the odd behavior around booking this year.
Anyway, my first three shows of the day were at the Harvard Film Archive, and the middle one, Neighborhood Food Drive, had these folks in attendance:
I didn’t get the name of the host on the left, but that director Jerzy Rose and co-writer/producer Halle Butler on the right. They delivered a lively Q&A, the sort that often feels like it comes from people making a far less planned-out, specific movie than they have, either an indication that they’re exceptionally laid-back in some ways, or that a great deal is instinctive.
After that, I bailed on She’s Allergic to Cats, although looking at my Fantasia review from last year indicates that I liked it more at the time than I remembered. Still, with a festival scheduled as tight as this one - it’s not uncommon to leave the theater, go back around to the box office for the ticket to the next movie, and not really have time to get snacks before heading back to one’s seat, the ability to get something done and then actually sit down to eat was a big deal. And it gave me plenty of time to make it back for The Void.
For that, we were once again visited by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, with Chris Hallock leading the Q&A. It’s kind of funny that last time I saw them, they talked about not making your film both horror and comedy, because it was awfully difficult to get distributors to pick something like that up, and this time they had a few words about how it’s a little harder to make a straight horror movie when you don’t have jokes to lean on. Not much, but I did get the sense that this was something where they were a little more concerned about the reaction. So much of the Astron-6 stuff was movies for their own amusement, while this was something more for an audience that didn’t necessarily share their view of the genre.
It did have one of my favorite Q&A questions ever, though, when someone asked about references and they flatly said “we are not referencing any movie”. Fair for people to ask, but the answer underscored what I liked about The Void and the potential that’s always been in the filmmakers’ previous work in terms of creativity, and hopefully it doing well will inspire them to do more movies about more than their own influences.
”Troll: A Southern Tale”
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive(Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
I’m curious as to whether Marinah Janello started “Troll: A Southern Tale” with the intent of doing a short documentary about an internet troll only to find the interview wandering, or if that’s what she picked out of her interviews . The idea is most likely to take a guy who spends time causing grief on the internet and figure out what makes a guy who maintains 75 Facebook profiles for the purpose of making people think that they’ve kicked a bigger hornet’s nest than they have tick, but the film wanders enough that it’s not obvious what the starting point is.
Not that it necessarily matters; though “Troll” doesn’t necessarily pose and explore a question quite so explicitly as it could, it’s unusually good at presenting a concept in the nebulous form in which it exists in reality despite film generally being a specific medium. Her subject is a bearded guy in his twenties, a pleasant enough interview that he doesn’t come across as particularly hostile to either Janello or, through her, the viewer. He is, one thinks, the product of an environment that has let him down; he’s filmed in a number of buildings that have burned, collapsed, or otherwise decayed, and he talks enough about The South with a certainty born of both first-hand experience and detached consideration that one is inclined to connect dots, maybe figure out what can be done.
And yet, I can’t help but think that the dots don’t really connect, and that’s a part of what Janello is getting at. There’s not actually much passion coming from the subject, whether toward the people he trolls or when talking about his own music, which he describes as sucking but he’s made a lot, and that’s something, right? The portrait that emerges is a sort of nihilism, which is a reasonable-enough response to the situation at hand, but the presentation of it is a little less than it could be. Voids need to be brought into sharper relief than excesses, and Janello only hints at the emptiness here.
Fraud
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
I am reasonably certain that “Fraud” is not a documentary, despite several film festivals labeling it as such and the lack of credits identifying the cast and crew at the end; it simply commits to its found-footage conceit more completely than is typical. It’s convincing even for those who know otherwise, and that may be an issue for some; it’s convincingly amateurish enough to not be a smooth watch and for the “subjects’” bad acts to come off as repellent rather than generic. Get past that, though, and it’s on point.
It’s presented as a collection of home movies from a North Carolina family with two young kids, a young mother, and a father who likes to film them. He mostly seems to do it on Sundays when the tapes start in May of 2012 with a number of jittery segments that often focus on trips to the mall or other prosaic matters. It’s not long before the viewer starts to notice overdue bills piling up. By late July, mother Paige is learning about filing an insurance claim, and soon after that, you’ve really got to question the wisdom of the father filming this stuff as they give themselves reason to do so.
That, of course, is an obvious plot issue with a lot of found-footage films, and there’s a certain non-intuitive realism to the way that director Dean Fleischer-Camp doesn’t bother to explain it. Sure, folks might shoot themselves committing a crime - it’s probably the most exciting, thrilling thing they’ve ever done - but monologuing about why is a step too far. Besides, the compulsive way the father shoots, right down to the way shots will linger on his wife’s well-maintained body, can be all the explanation needed: Pulling out the camcorder is something he does on his day off, to the point where the rest of the family has likely learned to ignore it, and that’s before you even get to the question of whether they think they’re doing anything wrong.
Full review on EFC.
”Discontinuity”
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Lori Felker’s “Discontinuity” is the very epitome of an underground-festival comedy short - it’s got a sense of humor that zips past “offbeat” to “random”, characters who often act in ways that just don’t seem recognizable as the actions of human beings. It’s got an abrupt ending that may seem something of a relief after its frequently cringe-worthy moments.
And yet, it works, a whole heck of a lot better than many, probably because the very title suggests that Felker sees how there’s something potentially powerful in the randomness. It opens with Tabitha (Sam Howard) returning “home” after working and caring for her ailing father for the better part of two years, only to find that her boyfriend Stephen (Ben Johnson) has become quite peculiar in that time, accumulating cats, getting particular about what they watch on DVD, and being beyond awkward when talking about the funeral. The cats multiply, a kid appears, and things just don’t seem right moment-to-moment.
It’s weird, sure, but you get what it means, that Tabitha’s finding a situation that should be familiar, normal, and what she’s been wanting to get back to utterly alien. It’s just odd enough to not be entirely creepy, with things absurd enough that it gets a laugh. Sam Howard makes Tabitha thoroughly likable, with a nice balance of enthusiasm and stress at the situation; she plays into the metaphor enough that the audience can see her wonder if it’s just weird from her point of view and sympathize. Ben Johnson goes deadpan as Stephen, and it’s generally a good enough joke to mostly cancel out what a head-scratcher it is that Tabitha went for him in the first place. Which, in some ways, is the short in a nutshell: The weirdness and symbolism mostly works, even if the set-up is something you just have to run with.
Neighborhood Food Drive
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Neighborhood Food Drive spends a lot of time taking aim at fairly easy targets, but they’re deserving targets and director Jerzy Rose scores some direct hits. It makes for a comedy that is not quite so delightfully vicious as Roses’s previous film (Crimes Against Humanity), but which is certainly able to score some points with those who enjoy watching clueless people get themselves into trouble.
There are two pairs of such people here. Madeline Bruhnhauer (Lyra Hill) and Naomi Florida (Bruce Bundy) have recently opened a new restaurant, “Ciao”, in Chicago’s Humboldt Park area, and even if business were great, they’d still be getting reviews that point out that their fancified and expensive “comfort food” offerings don’t exactly match the character of the neighborhood. How to give back? A food drive! They bring on college undergraduate Bianca Pentecost (Ruby McCollister) as an unpaid intern to coordinate it, possibly unaware that she’s the girlfriend of their waiter Steven Hughes (Marcos Barnes), and that the pair is doing a weird sort of counseling thing with one of their professors (Ted Tremper).
A funny bit early on has somebody with experience in running food drives laying out exactly why this sort of event is a bad idea in practical terms, a fine deadpan gag in and of itself but one that becomes the setup for something surreal as this has the potential to haunt the characters. Presuming, of course, that they can feel haunted - the characters are almost all fairly self-centered and a little too self-aware, from the way Bianca and Steven are analyzing their relationship minutely when they should be winging it to how Maddie’s attempts to calm the high-strung Naomi are fairly practiced and clinical. Those two will even repeat the film’s title like a mantra at times, something that comes off as half what these guys would do and half Rose and co-writers Halle Butler & Mike Lopez being quite aware of their film’s artificiality.
Full review on EFC.
Most Beautiful Island
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
We are fortunate to have multiple great film festivals in the Boston area - in fact, this very review is part of a (failed) frantic attempt to talk up all the movies from the Underground before the Independent starts. With so many, and films generally making only one festival stop per city, where a given film ends up can sometimes be surprising. That is the case with Most Beautiful Island, which initially seems more art-house than midnight-movie, but that it navigates between those two very different styles is what makes it kind of brilliant.
It’s a day in the life of Luciana (Ana Asensio), who has made her way to New York from Spain after a tragedy that has made staying where she was too painful, but she’s starting to bottom out there: Well behind in rent on the dingy apartment she shares with a roommate who has taken to labeling everything in the refrigerator “not yours”, having to beg for a doctor to see her off the books, and taking odd jobs like handing out flyers in Times Square to even afford that much. After a morning of that, she and her friend Olga (Natasha Romanova) are relaxing when Olga gets a call and asks if Luciana can cover another job she has that night - $2,000 to help pretty up a cocktail party. Sure, it will be a tight squeeze getting the black dress and heels needed around her afternoon job as a babysitter, but that’s good money for a night’s work, even if it probably does involve a little more than what Olga is selling it as being.
It will eventually require a lot more, but before it gets there, writer/director/star Ana Asensio essays an illuminating narrative about being a (likely undocumented) immigrant in New York - the scraping, the conning, the casual and constant disrespect. There are three or four scenarios strung together that could each work as the basis of an individual short or even feature if Asensio stretched them out a little more or fleshed out the other people moving through Luciana’s day a little more, but there’s an interesting flow to the way she sets it up: Though there is a point or two when it seems like a certain amount of trouble could be avoided if Luciana just popped back into her apartment for a moment, Asensio instead silently emphasizes that there’s an unsteadiness to Luciana’s life, that she’s got to keep moving forward or be ready to survive with just what she has with her. It’s not constant immediate danger, but it’s not stability, either.
Full review on EFC.
”An Eldritch Place”
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Someone with a lot more free time and obsession to detail than me should make a list of every feature or short film over the last five or ten years where the credits are done using John Carpenter’s favorite typeface and see how many of them use similar music or how many truly creative ideas they have. “An Eldritch Place”, for instance, is a pretty basic riff on Lovecraft done in Carpenter style, right down to Sarah Boom’s synth-based soundtrack. Like many Carpenter-inspired movies, it announces what director Julien Jauniaux is a fan of as much as what he’s got to say. That’s not a criticism, so much as an observation.
It is, after all, a pretty good horror short. It offers up Abdel (Habib Ben Tanfous) who, trying to simply get by - in this case by taking a job guarding the workspace of Dr. Francis Wayland (Ludovic Philips) - finds himself thrown into a world of otherworldly danger and malevolence. Director Julien Jauniaux and Ben Tanfous do a fairly impressive job of making Abdel just the right sort of protagonist for this sort of thing, imperfect enough to get himself into trouble, but not really deserve what’s about to happen, without the film needing to stress his likability. There’s a rough, working-class feel to the situation that is upended that both contrasts with and flows into the strange realm of the elder gods that Abdel finds himself in. There’s a genuine feeling that, despite the fleeting glimpses we see and the vague nature of this sort of Lovercraftian threat beyond human comprehension, what Abdel encounters could legitimately end the world.
So, sure, in a lot of ways “An Eldritch Place” is a riff on the work of a couple of genre icons more than a new vision, but Carpenter and Lovecraft are pretty good guys for someone directing their first film to find inspiration; it will be interesting to see what evolves from this.
The Void
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski haven’t made a whole lot of movies as part of the Astron-6 collective, and I haven’t reviewed all of them, but it still feels like I’ve written something about how wasteful it is that they didn’t seem to trust their very real talent, using parody as a crutch. While The Void does not have an A-6 title card on it, it was done by many of the same people, but it’s a straight horror movie, and it’s a terrific one, distilling what made the 1980s horror they clearly love great and presenting it as something that doesn’t feel dated or silly at all.
It’s got a nifty little twist at the start, though, as it opens with a couple of folks fleeing a cabin in the woods and not looking back. Unfortunately, James (Evan Stern) isn’t in good shape when local cop Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) finds him by the side of the road. He brings the unconscious man to the nearby hospital, where his ex-wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) and her mentor Richard Powell (Kenneth Welsh) are the only doctors on duty, but there aren’t many patients, as much of the staff is packing up to close the place and consolidate with another hospital. Of course, people start getting homicidal, with the heavily-armed Vincent (Daniel Fathers) and his mute sidekick Simon (Mik Byskov) arriving just as the parking lot fills with a bunch of robed cultists, setting up a supernatural siege.
Those robes and hoods are a simple costume, but the perfection of their execution is impressive; the triangle where the face should be is the sort of material that should allow the man inside to see out, except that it’s inverted so that the point is between the eyes. It looks wrong, but doesn’t broadcast how impractical it is, and the simple shape can be reused in a lot of ways, tying a number of supernatural elements together without it seeming forced. Not everything in the movie is low-key and geometrical like that, but it’s a good start and a good link to the weirder, gorier stuff, with the blood and the tendrils and the other abominations before nature. That stuff is especially excellent, top-notch practical work, with the obsessive visual detail that this team is best known for (paired with a great sound mix and thoroughly-appropriate score) in full force.
Full review on EFC.
Most of what I missed out on by spending Saturday afternoon at the Harvard Film Archive was shorts of one sort or another. Someday, at some festival, I’ll actually make it to Keir-La Janisse’s Saturday Morning Cartoon show with the cereal bar, even though I doubt the cartoons I watched as a kid have aged well. I’m probably never going to prioritize something else over the “Sound & Vision” music video program. I was disappointed to skip out of the dark comedy block (called “Don’t Look Back into the Sun” this year), but it was up against what wound up being one of my two favorite films of the festival, so I wasn’t too disappointed.
And they were apparently lucky to get that favorite film. According to the introduction, after Most Beautiful Island was an upset winner of the Grand Jury Prize at SXSW (if you can call festival prize winners “upsets”), the producers apparently stopped booking it at other festivals, probably thinking this could net them a better distribution deal but a niche film showing at the festival might prevent regular theaters in the area from booking it. No idea if that’s how it works, but it seems like the only explanation for some of the odd behavior around booking this year.
Anyway, my first three shows of the day were at the Harvard Film Archive, and the middle one, Neighborhood Food Drive, had these folks in attendance:
I didn’t get the name of the host on the left, but that director Jerzy Rose and co-writer/producer Halle Butler on the right. They delivered a lively Q&A, the sort that often feels like it comes from people making a far less planned-out, specific movie than they have, either an indication that they’re exceptionally laid-back in some ways, or that a great deal is instinctive.
After that, I bailed on She’s Allergic to Cats, although looking at my Fantasia review from last year indicates that I liked it more at the time than I remembered. Still, with a festival scheduled as tight as this one - it’s not uncommon to leave the theater, go back around to the box office for the ticket to the next movie, and not really have time to get snacks before heading back to one’s seat, the ability to get something done and then actually sit down to eat was a big deal. And it gave me plenty of time to make it back for The Void.
For that, we were once again visited by Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski, with Chris Hallock leading the Q&A. It’s kind of funny that last time I saw them, they talked about not making your film both horror and comedy, because it was awfully difficult to get distributors to pick something like that up, and this time they had a few words about how it’s a little harder to make a straight horror movie when you don’t have jokes to lean on. Not much, but I did get the sense that this was something where they were a little more concerned about the reaction. So much of the Astron-6 stuff was movies for their own amusement, while this was something more for an audience that didn’t necessarily share their view of the genre.
It did have one of my favorite Q&A questions ever, though, when someone asked about references and they flatly said “we are not referencing any movie”. Fair for people to ask, but the answer underscored what I liked about The Void and the potential that’s always been in the filmmakers’ previous work in terms of creativity, and hopefully it doing well will inspire them to do more movies about more than their own influences.
”Troll: A Southern Tale”
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive(Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
I’m curious as to whether Marinah Janello started “Troll: A Southern Tale” with the intent of doing a short documentary about an internet troll only to find the interview wandering, or if that’s what she picked out of her interviews . The idea is most likely to take a guy who spends time causing grief on the internet and figure out what makes a guy who maintains 75 Facebook profiles for the purpose of making people think that they’ve kicked a bigger hornet’s nest than they have tick, but the film wanders enough that it’s not obvious what the starting point is.
Not that it necessarily matters; though “Troll” doesn’t necessarily pose and explore a question quite so explicitly as it could, it’s unusually good at presenting a concept in the nebulous form in which it exists in reality despite film generally being a specific medium. Her subject is a bearded guy in his twenties, a pleasant enough interview that he doesn’t come across as particularly hostile to either Janello or, through her, the viewer. He is, one thinks, the product of an environment that has let him down; he’s filmed in a number of buildings that have burned, collapsed, or otherwise decayed, and he talks enough about The South with a certainty born of both first-hand experience and detached consideration that one is inclined to connect dots, maybe figure out what can be done.
And yet, I can’t help but think that the dots don’t really connect, and that’s a part of what Janello is getting at. There’s not actually much passion coming from the subject, whether toward the people he trolls or when talking about his own music, which he describes as sucking but he’s made a lot, and that’s something, right? The portrait that emerges is a sort of nihilism, which is a reasonable-enough response to the situation at hand, but the presentation of it is a little less than it could be. Voids need to be brought into sharper relief than excesses, and Janello only hints at the emptiness here.
Fraud
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
I am reasonably certain that “Fraud” is not a documentary, despite several film festivals labeling it as such and the lack of credits identifying the cast and crew at the end; it simply commits to its found-footage conceit more completely than is typical. It’s convincing even for those who know otherwise, and that may be an issue for some; it’s convincingly amateurish enough to not be a smooth watch and for the “subjects’” bad acts to come off as repellent rather than generic. Get past that, though, and it’s on point.
It’s presented as a collection of home movies from a North Carolina family with two young kids, a young mother, and a father who likes to film them. He mostly seems to do it on Sundays when the tapes start in May of 2012 with a number of jittery segments that often focus on trips to the mall or other prosaic matters. It’s not long before the viewer starts to notice overdue bills piling up. By late July, mother Paige is learning about filing an insurance claim, and soon after that, you’ve really got to question the wisdom of the father filming this stuff as they give themselves reason to do so.
That, of course, is an obvious plot issue with a lot of found-footage films, and there’s a certain non-intuitive realism to the way that director Dean Fleischer-Camp doesn’t bother to explain it. Sure, folks might shoot themselves committing a crime - it’s probably the most exciting, thrilling thing they’ve ever done - but monologuing about why is a step too far. Besides, the compulsive way the father shoots, right down to the way shots will linger on his wife’s well-maintained body, can be all the explanation needed: Pulling out the camcorder is something he does on his day off, to the point where the rest of the family has likely learned to ignore it, and that’s before you even get to the question of whether they think they’re doing anything wrong.
Full review on EFC.
”Discontinuity”
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Lori Felker’s “Discontinuity” is the very epitome of an underground-festival comedy short - it’s got a sense of humor that zips past “offbeat” to “random”, characters who often act in ways that just don’t seem recognizable as the actions of human beings. It’s got an abrupt ending that may seem something of a relief after its frequently cringe-worthy moments.
And yet, it works, a whole heck of a lot better than many, probably because the very title suggests that Felker sees how there’s something potentially powerful in the randomness. It opens with Tabitha (Sam Howard) returning “home” after working and caring for her ailing father for the better part of two years, only to find that her boyfriend Stephen (Ben Johnson) has become quite peculiar in that time, accumulating cats, getting particular about what they watch on DVD, and being beyond awkward when talking about the funeral. The cats multiply, a kid appears, and things just don’t seem right moment-to-moment.
It’s weird, sure, but you get what it means, that Tabitha’s finding a situation that should be familiar, normal, and what she’s been wanting to get back to utterly alien. It’s just odd enough to not be entirely creepy, with things absurd enough that it gets a laugh. Sam Howard makes Tabitha thoroughly likable, with a nice balance of enthusiasm and stress at the situation; she plays into the metaphor enough that the audience can see her wonder if it’s just weird from her point of view and sympathize. Ben Johnson goes deadpan as Stephen, and it’s generally a good enough joke to mostly cancel out what a head-scratcher it is that Tabitha went for him in the first place. Which, in some ways, is the short in a nutshell: The weirdness and symbolism mostly works, even if the set-up is something you just have to run with.
Neighborhood Food Drive
* * * (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Neighborhood Food Drive spends a lot of time taking aim at fairly easy targets, but they’re deserving targets and director Jerzy Rose scores some direct hits. It makes for a comedy that is not quite so delightfully vicious as Roses’s previous film (Crimes Against Humanity), but which is certainly able to score some points with those who enjoy watching clueless people get themselves into trouble.
There are two pairs of such people here. Madeline Bruhnhauer (Lyra Hill) and Naomi Florida (Bruce Bundy) have recently opened a new restaurant, “Ciao”, in Chicago’s Humboldt Park area, and even if business were great, they’d still be getting reviews that point out that their fancified and expensive “comfort food” offerings don’t exactly match the character of the neighborhood. How to give back? A food drive! They bring on college undergraduate Bianca Pentecost (Ruby McCollister) as an unpaid intern to coordinate it, possibly unaware that she’s the girlfriend of their waiter Steven Hughes (Marcos Barnes), and that the pair is doing a weird sort of counseling thing with one of their professors (Ted Tremper).
A funny bit early on has somebody with experience in running food drives laying out exactly why this sort of event is a bad idea in practical terms, a fine deadpan gag in and of itself but one that becomes the setup for something surreal as this has the potential to haunt the characters. Presuming, of course, that they can feel haunted - the characters are almost all fairly self-centered and a little too self-aware, from the way Bianca and Steven are analyzing their relationship minutely when they should be winging it to how Maddie’s attempts to calm the high-strung Naomi are fairly practiced and clinical. Those two will even repeat the film’s title like a mantra at times, something that comes off as half what these guys would do and half Rose and co-writers Halle Butler & Mike Lopez being quite aware of their film’s artificiality.
Full review on EFC.
Most Beautiful Island
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Harvard Film Archive (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
We are fortunate to have multiple great film festivals in the Boston area - in fact, this very review is part of a (failed) frantic attempt to talk up all the movies from the Underground before the Independent starts. With so many, and films generally making only one festival stop per city, where a given film ends up can sometimes be surprising. That is the case with Most Beautiful Island, which initially seems more art-house than midnight-movie, but that it navigates between those two very different styles is what makes it kind of brilliant.
It’s a day in the life of Luciana (Ana Asensio), who has made her way to New York from Spain after a tragedy that has made staying where she was too painful, but she’s starting to bottom out there: Well behind in rent on the dingy apartment she shares with a roommate who has taken to labeling everything in the refrigerator “not yours”, having to beg for a doctor to see her off the books, and taking odd jobs like handing out flyers in Times Square to even afford that much. After a morning of that, she and her friend Olga (Natasha Romanova) are relaxing when Olga gets a call and asks if Luciana can cover another job she has that night - $2,000 to help pretty up a cocktail party. Sure, it will be a tight squeeze getting the black dress and heels needed around her afternoon job as a babysitter, but that’s good money for a night’s work, even if it probably does involve a little more than what Olga is selling it as being.
It will eventually require a lot more, but before it gets there, writer/director/star Ana Asensio essays an illuminating narrative about being a (likely undocumented) immigrant in New York - the scraping, the conning, the casual and constant disrespect. There are three or four scenarios strung together that could each work as the basis of an individual short or even feature if Asensio stretched them out a little more or fleshed out the other people moving through Luciana’s day a little more, but there’s an interesting flow to the way she sets it up: Though there is a point or two when it seems like a certain amount of trouble could be avoided if Luciana just popped back into her apartment for a moment, Asensio instead silently emphasizes that there’s an unsteadiness to Luciana’s life, that she’s got to keep moving forward or be ready to survive with just what she has with her. It’s not constant immediate danger, but it’s not stability, either.
Full review on EFC.
”An Eldritch Place”
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Someone with a lot more free time and obsession to detail than me should make a list of every feature or short film over the last five or ten years where the credits are done using John Carpenter’s favorite typeface and see how many of them use similar music or how many truly creative ideas they have. “An Eldritch Place”, for instance, is a pretty basic riff on Lovecraft done in Carpenter style, right down to Sarah Boom’s synth-based soundtrack. Like many Carpenter-inspired movies, it announces what director Julien Jauniaux is a fan of as much as what he’s got to say. That’s not a criticism, so much as an observation.
It is, after all, a pretty good horror short. It offers up Abdel (Habib Ben Tanfous) who, trying to simply get by - in this case by taking a job guarding the workspace of Dr. Francis Wayland (Ludovic Philips) - finds himself thrown into a world of otherworldly danger and malevolence. Director Julien Jauniaux and Ben Tanfous do a fairly impressive job of making Abdel just the right sort of protagonist for this sort of thing, imperfect enough to get himself into trouble, but not really deserve what’s about to happen, without the film needing to stress his likability. There’s a rough, working-class feel to the situation that is upended that both contrasts with and flows into the strange realm of the elder gods that Abdel finds himself in. There’s a genuine feeling that, despite the fleeting glimpses we see and the vague nature of this sort of Lovercraftian threat beyond human comprehension, what Abdel encounters could legitimately end the world.
So, sure, in a lot of ways “An Eldritch Place” is a riff on the work of a couple of genre icons more than a new vision, but Carpenter and Lovecraft are pretty good guys for someone directing their first film to find inspiration; it will be interesting to see what evolves from this.
The Void
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 25 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
Jeremy Gillespie and Steven Kostanski haven’t made a whole lot of movies as part of the Astron-6 collective, and I haven’t reviewed all of them, but it still feels like I’ve written something about how wasteful it is that they didn’t seem to trust their very real talent, using parody as a crutch. While The Void does not have an A-6 title card on it, it was done by many of the same people, but it’s a straight horror movie, and it’s a terrific one, distilling what made the 1980s horror they clearly love great and presenting it as something that doesn’t feel dated or silly at all.
It’s got a nifty little twist at the start, though, as it opens with a couple of folks fleeing a cabin in the woods and not looking back. Unfortunately, James (Evan Stern) isn’t in good shape when local cop Daniel Carter (Aaron Poole) finds him by the side of the road. He brings the unconscious man to the nearby hospital, where his ex-wife Allison (Kathleen Munroe) and her mentor Richard Powell (Kenneth Welsh) are the only doctors on duty, but there aren’t many patients, as much of the staff is packing up to close the place and consolidate with another hospital. Of course, people start getting homicidal, with the heavily-armed Vincent (Daniel Fathers) and his mute sidekick Simon (Mik Byskov) arriving just as the parking lot fills with a bunch of robed cultists, setting up a supernatural siege.
Those robes and hoods are a simple costume, but the perfection of their execution is impressive; the triangle where the face should be is the sort of material that should allow the man inside to see out, except that it’s inverted so that the point is between the eyes. It looks wrong, but doesn’t broadcast how impractical it is, and the simple shape can be reused in a lot of ways, tying a number of supernatural elements together without it seeming forced. Not everything in the movie is low-key and geometrical like that, but it’s a good start and a good link to the weirder, gorier stuff, with the blood and the tendrils and the other abominations before nature. That stuff is especially excellent, top-notch practical work, with the obsessive visual detail that this team is best known for (paired with a great sound mix and thoroughly-appropriate score) in full force.
Full review on EFC.
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 28 April 2017 - 4 May 2017
Man, the major studios just don’t want to compete with IFFBoston at all, leaving foreign imports and smaller distributors to pick up the slack. Or, perhaps, nobody wants to be caught between The Fate of the Furious and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2. One or the other.
I’ll be living at IFFBoston for most of the week, with tentative plans of Whose Streets? and Tormenting the Hen on Friday; Edgar Allen Poe, City of Ghosts, Dealt, and Lemon on Saturday; Street Fighting Men, Abacus, Shorts H, and either Dean or The Little Hours on Sunday; Menashe and The Force on Monday; Trip to Spain and Landline on Tuesday; and Band Aid on Wednesday. It may just be possible to also fit the Chinese and Korean movies in if I don’t care too much about sleep and if the Thursday shows aren’t bumped for Guardians, but I wouldn’t exactly count on that.
- Still, if you’re in Boston, Independent Film Festival Boston 15 is the big event, playing on all five screens atThe Somerville Theatre as well as the Brattle through Monday, and then moving over to the Coolidge for the Tuesday and Wednesday. Big attractions include Sam Elliott in The Hero, Joe Berlinger’s Intent to Destroy, Errol Morris’s The B-Side, nifty casts in Lemon, Lost in Paris, and Little Hours, plus the new Steve Coogan/Rob Brydon Trip to Spain, among others.
It looks like the Somerville takes a breather afterward, before re-opening next Friday, although The Brattle Theatre has a couple of special shows after the festival. On Tuesday, they play Michael Mann’s Heat at 8:30pm, and have a special skype call with Mann afterward. Then, on Thursday May the 4th (“...be with you”), they begin a new tradition of trolling Star Wars fans annually, this year with a double feature of Star Trek: The Motion Picture on 35mm and Mel Brooks’s Spaceballs. The former also functions as a sneak preview of the series of companion films they’ll be playing with Harold & Lillian: A Hollywood Love Story next week. - The only bummer about this is that it’s going to make it hard for me to get to a nice slate of Asian movies this week. My most anticipated is Love Off the Cuff, Pang Ho-cheung’s third film pairing Miriam Yeung and Shawn Yue as an unlikely set of lovers, this time feeling a seven year itch. That’s from Hong Kong, while Battle of Memories comes from mainland China and features Huang Bo and Xu Jinglei in a sci-fi story about an author invading the memories of a serial killer. South Korea, meanwhile, offers up The Mayor, starring Choi Min-sik as a two-term mayor of Seoul trying for an unprecedented third term that could set him up as the front-runner in the next Presidential election. All three are playing at Boston Common.
Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond, meanwhile, has BaahuBali 2, a gigantic fantasy sequel on four screens: Two in Telugu, one in Tamil, and one in Hindi, with the latter marked as having English subtitles. It’s also playing at Showcase Cinemas Revere in subtitled Telugu. Apple also has Voice of the Stone on half a screen, that one being a supernatural thriller featuring Emilia Clarke as the new nurse in a haunted castle. - It’s actually not completely dead at the multiplexes, with The Circle starring Tom Hanks as the head of a tech company invading all the privacy, with Emma Watson and John Boyega as the young employees who suspect something is up. Heck of a cast below the line, with Karen Gillan, Bill Paxton, and more. It’s at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, Revere, and the SuperLux. How to Be a Latin Lover also features a star-studded cast, with Eugenio Derbez as an aging lothario who moves in with his sister (Salma Hayek). Also features Kristen Bell, Raquel Welch, Rob Lowe, and anyone else director Ken Marino could rope in. It’s at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
There’s also a smaller opening for Sleight, with a street magician trying to outsmart the gangsters who kidnapped his little sister. It’s at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere. Fenway seems to be the only place showing Grey Lady, a locally-shot thriller with Eric Dane as a Boston cop investigating the murder of his partner on Nantucket. There’s also a one-night-only show for I Am Heath Ledger, a documentary on the late actor, at Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre, Kendall Square, West Newton, and Boston Common pick up Norman: The Moderate Rise and Tragic Fall of a New York Fixer, which stars Richard Gere as a man in finance who manages to get the ear of the new Israeli Prime Minister. With Kendall Square still undergoing renovations, it’s actually got the same screen count as the Coolidge right now.
This weekend’s Coolidge midnights pay tribute to Kathryn Bigelow, with Near Dark playing Friday and Point Break on Saturday, both on 35mm. There’s a Talk Cinema screening of Moscow Never Sleeps Sunday morning, and a Sound-of-Silents screening of The Freshman on Monday - The Harvard Film Archive is only programming two days this week, with nothing open to the public on Friday and Saturday. Istrument by Jem Cohen and “post-hardcore” band Fugazi plays Sunday afternoon, while the “Želimir Žilnik and the Black Wave” series starts that evening with Žilnik’s Brooklyn - Gusinje. Monday brings a visit from John Gianvito, who will present his documentary Profit motive and the whispering wind.
- Just one Frederick Wiseman film at The Museum of Fine Arts this week, but it’s one of his big ones, with Belfast, Maine running upwards of four hours on Friday. Their only other film program this week is the first night of Jewishfilm 20 on Thursday, with Ben-Gurion, Epilogue playing with post-film Q&A with director Yariv Mozer.
- Belmont World Film visits Iran this Monday without leavig the the Studio Cinema with Daughter, Reza Mirkarimi’s film about a girl who sneaks out to attend a party in Tehran, but has her father come looking when she’s not back the next day.
I’ll be living at IFFBoston for most of the week, with tentative plans of Whose Streets? and Tormenting the Hen on Friday; Edgar Allen Poe, City of Ghosts, Dealt, and Lemon on Saturday; Street Fighting Men, Abacus, Shorts H, and either Dean or The Little Hours on Sunday; Menashe and The Force on Monday; Trip to Spain and Landline on Tuesday; and Band Aid on Wednesday. It may just be possible to also fit the Chinese and Korean movies in if I don’t care too much about sleep and if the Thursday shows aren’t bumped for Guardians, but I wouldn’t exactly count on that.
Thursday, April 20, 2017
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 21 April 2017 - 27 April 2017
Like quality independent films? Of course you do! So be glad that Boston’s biggest film festival starts this week, because we’re down a few screens elsewhere.
I’d kind of like to catch some of the bad-looking stuff opening this weekend, but there’s stuff like Get Out, Personal Shopper, and Your Name that needs seeing before IFFBoston (and baseball on Tuesday).
- That festival is Independent Film Festival Boston, in its fifteenth year and kicking off on Wednesday the 26th at the Somerville Theatre and then picking up the Brattle on Thursday. Opening night is Stumped, a documentary about a filmmaker who turns to comedy to cope with becoming a quadrilateral amputee after an accident. Thursday’s offerings include a documentary showcase at UMass Boston, Rat Film at the Brattle, and showcase presentation Columbus (along with four shorts programs) at the Somerville.
Because they’re going to be using all five screens for the festival come Thursday, most of what’s at The Somerville Theatre is probably on its way out. In the meantime, they pick up The Zookeeper’s Wife from the Capitol and have special 10pm screenings of The Void on Friday and Saturday, so all those who had trouble seeing the BUFF favorite at midnight at the Coolidge the last couple weekends can catch it there. - The multiplexes basically know that The Fate of the Furious is going to keep rolling this week, so they open a few lower-profile things. The most fun is likely Free Fire, Ben Wheatley’s new one which starts with an arms deal in 1970s Boston, only things go sideways about twenty minutes in and the ensuing firefight lasts the entire remaining hour of the film. Fun cast of Brie Larson, Armie Hammer, Cillian Murphy, Sharlto Copley, and more. It’s at the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
After that, it’s a varied group. The Promise is a romance featuring Oscar Isaac, Charlotte Le Bon, and Christian Bale against the background of the Armenian Genocide of 1915. It’s at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, Revere, and the SuperLux. A tackier love story plays out in Unforgettable, in which Katherine Heigl plays the deranged ex and Rosario Dawson the sane new wife of Geoff Stults. Interesting to note that Denise Di Novi, Tim Burton’s longtime producer, is making her directorial debut. That one’s at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, Revere, and the SuperLux.
With Earth Day on Friday, Disney releases their annual nature documentary, with Born in China focusing on pandas, monkeys, and other animals in the Chinese plains and mountains. It plays the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere. Those who like their documentaries more fictional have Phoenix Forgotten, the second film in as many years building a bit of found-footage horror out of the peculiar “Phoenix Lights” phenomenon of twenty years ago. Find that at Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, and Revere.
Or, if you’re looking for a classic, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere have a TCM presentation of The Graduate on Sunday and Wednesday. Fenway and Revere have TED presentations on Monday and Tuesday, and Fenway screens Alien on their RPX screen for “Alien Day” on Wednesday (the planet in the film is “LV-426”). - The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of several places opening The Lost City of Z - it also plays Kendall Square, the Embassy, and Boston Common - and it looks like a nifty one. Charlie Hunman plays an explorer who, in the early years of the Twentieth Century, found evidence of a lost advanced civilization in the Amazon, and spent the rest of his life trying to prove its existence. It’s a passion project for director James Gray, whose last film was the impressive The Immigrant. They also pick up Colossal, as does Fenway,to add to its runs at Somerville, Boston Common, Kendall, and the Embassy.
At midnight, it’s David Fincher weekend, with Seven on Friday and The Game on Saturday, both on 35mm. Between those, on Saturday morning, they celebrate Earth Day by showing the new documentary from Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzard, Seasons, which depicts the animals living in Europe at the end of the last ice age. The week’s other Science on Screen program is on Monday, with Harvard professor Dr. Evelynn Hammonds introducing Hidden Figures. Then, on Tuesday, Berklee professor Sheldon Mirowitz leads a master class in composing a silent film score that serves as a preview of an upcoming show of The Freshman.
It’s worth noting that Kendall Square is down to four screens from the usual nine this week (in addition to Z, they keep A Quiet Passion, Colossal, and Your Name), likely renovating to put in those bigger seats with recliners and such that have been hanging around the lobby for the past few months. Expect a bit of grumpiness about how those aren’t always good things from me soon. - The Harvard Film Archive has two Jem Cohen shows this weekend, with Chain on Friday a rejiggering of an exhibition and Benjamin Smoke on Sunday a 16mm music documentary. The “Hachimiri Madness!” series begins on friday with early short works by Shinya Tsukamoto (”The Adventure of Denchu-Kozo”) and Sion Sono (”I Am Sion Sono!”). Filmmaker Mike Henderson visits to introduce a selection of his films on 16mm Saturday, and one by collaborator Robert Nelson on Sunday evening. There’s also a “Houghton at 75” presentation on Monday, with assistant curator Heather Cole introducing a screening of Jane Campion’s John Keats biography Bright Star, as the archive contains many manuscripts and letters from Keats.
- More Frederick Wiseman at The Museum of Fine Arts this week: Aspen (Friday/Sunday), Zoo (Friday/Wednesday), Public Housing (Saturday), La Comédie-Française (Sunday), and Ballet, all listed as 16mm prints.
- The Brattle Theatre is being used by the Women in Comedy Festival through Sunday. Then, on Monday, the DocYard and Crows & Sparrows present Behemoth, with Zhao Liang skyping in after his film about Chinese mining operations. Tuesday is Trash Night, and then on Wednesday they pay tribute to the late Debbie Reynolds and Carrie fisher with a double feature of Singin’ in the Rain (on 35mm) and Postcards From the Edge, and then IFFBoston on Thursday.
- ”Amazon Adventure” opens in IMAX 3D at the New England Aquarium on Monday; it continues to play The Museum of Science in OMNIMAX.
- Telugu film Mister and join Tamil film Kaatru Veliyidal at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond has Kannada-language drama Shuddhi for the weekend, joining scattered shows of Tamil dramas Pa Paandi and Take Off. BaahuBali 2 opens Thursday, with both Telugu and Tamil screenings.
- ArtsEmerson’s Paramount Theatre brings back a recent Bright Lights selection on Saturday as part of its “Reel Life Experience” series as Moonlight plays with reception, performances, and a panel discussion. Bright Lights itself would be done for the spring, but Trumbo was snowed out back in March, so it has been rescheduled for Tuesday in the Paramount’s Bright Screening Room, with Emerson faculty member Tom Kingdon doing a Q&A after the free screening.
- This week’s Belmont World Film presentation at the Studio Cinema comes from Australia, with direcotr Ivan Sen skypin in after the Monday night screening of western noir Goldstone.
- The Regent Theatre is mostly booked by a stage show through June, but there are some film programs this week: The Silence of the Priest, or Alter Ego, telling the story of the supposed savior of Armenian music, plays Sunday afternoon, while The Jazz Loft.has its premiere in the small underground space on Monday.
I’d kind of like to catch some of the bad-looking stuff opening this weekend, but there’s stuff like Get Out, Personal Shopper, and Your Name that needs seeing before IFFBoston (and baseball on Tuesday).
Wednesday, April 19, 2017
Moments in UK history: Tommy’s Honour & Their Finest
Oddly enough, I think Boston-area folks would have to go out to West Newton to see these as a double feature; though both slipped into theaters last weekend, they went to separate spots and bypassed Kendall Square, which is the first place you’d expect to find them. A pair of sedate, generally-cheerful British period pieces makes for a reasonable bit of counter-programming for The Fate of the Furious, but I don’t know how many people would even know about them; I don’t recall seeing any posters or trailers. I suppose Tommy’s Honour should consider itself lucky to be playing theaters at all; I can’t remember the last time I saw the Roadside Attractions logo before a movie without being followed by one for Amazon Studios.
Fortunately, it looks as if Their Finest is getting another week at the Coolidge, though likely in one of the smaller rooms, while I wouldn’t bet on Tommy’s Honour sticking around. I don’t know if it will wind up on any sort of favorites list were I the type to make those lists at the end of the year, but I’m kind of surprised it’s not getting a bigger push - STX/EuropaCorp have given bigger pushes to much less impressive pictures, and I’ve got to think you could cut a pretty good trailer for it. Heck, just the poster with a clapper reading “Dunkirk Movie” seems like something you could play with a bit more this year.
Tommy’s Honour
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #19 (first-run, DCP)
Normally, the movies that make me wish I’d brought someone else with me for a different perspective are aimed at kids, but things like Tommy’s Honour have a similar effect. It’s an amiable enough sporting biography, sure enough, but what the filmmakers tackle is specific enough that, while it won’t leave us non-golfers confused or out of the loop, it may perhaps have more interest to my golfing friends than it does to me, and if they’d find its details more intriguing.
While golf has been played in Scotland for centuries, it in many ways attained its modern form and had its popularity explode in the 1860s, when Tom Morris (Peter Mullan) was the groundskeeper and chief caddy at Saint Andrew, a maker of clubs and balls, and until recently one of the best players in both the Open (the world’s first) and matches organized on behalf of the club’s patrons. His son and namesake Tommy (Jack Lowden), on the other hand, is a prodigy, as good as his father ever was at the age of 15. The son is also canny enough to see that the wealthy gentlemen at the club are exploiting them, and willing to press that point. His rebellious nature also ruffles feathers at home, as Meg Drinnen (Ophelia Lovibond), the serving-girl he falls for, is six years his senior and considered scandalous for other reasons.
How tightly the actual action of playing a sport is integrated into a film like this is always a judgment call for the makers, especially when, as is the case here, there’s a not-inconsequential gap between the modern game and the way it would be played by these characters. Here, it's certainly fun to watch the game scenes from a time when golf was not quite refined into its current form; there’s a roughness to the grounds, equipment, and tactics that don’t match today’s fields where the grass is a perfect sea of green with every blade the exact same height. The differences from the modern game make it a bit harder to recognize young Tommy Morris's brilliance, perhaps, but the improvised game played, and the sometimes even rowdy crowds, can be a real kick to watch. It doesn’t hurt that director Jason Connery and writers Kevin Cook (who also wrote the book the film was based upon) & Pamela Martin are mostly casual with how they depict how the Morrises evolve the game, and the moments that do feel like origin detours at least have amusing stories to go with them.
Full review on EFC.
Their Finest
* * * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 April 2017 in Coolidge Corner Cinema #1 (first-run, DCP)
What a surprisingly delightful film. Their Finest is, to start with, about what you'd expect, a likable tale of Brits Doing Their Bit during WWII, cheekily aiming for the same sort of impossible mix of optimism and realism that the characters within are aiming for in order to keep spirits up. That would be quite enough, because it really is quite good on that count, but it’s got a level of self-awareness and ability to quietly be the sort of thing it venerates that makes it resonate all the more.
As the story starts, it’s 1940 and Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) is about to have a job interview. She thinks it’s for another secretarial position, but it turns out that someone at the Ministry of Information saw a comic strip for which she had stepped in to do the dialog because so many of the male copywriters were called up to serve; they want her to help punch of the women’s lines in widely-mocked propaganda shorts. This leads to work on a feature, which she’ll help Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and Raymond Parfitt (Paul Ritter) write, though the true story of heroism it’s based upon may be exaggerated. Making a movie isn’t easy in the best of times, of course, and with a war on, there are contradictory demands coming in even without considering reluctant co-star Ambrose HIlliard (Bill Nighy) or Cartin’s husband Ellis (Jack Huston), a disabled artist and air-raid warden who feels threatened by her earning the rent money.
The films of the late 1930s and early 1940s had some rough edges, certainly, and can be an acquired taste three generations later, but there’s an earnestness to them that merits notice, and Their Finest is a loving tribute to British films of the period in all their methodical, mannered glory. Director Lone Scherfig and her cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov shoot the film in modern, realistic style, with widescreen compositions and charcoal grays that reflect Ellis’s paintings, but when we finally get to see the film-within-a-film (and even as Catrin imagines what it will be like), it recreates the films of the period perfectly: Square, with somewhat primitive effects work, fairly stationary camerawork, and jolting patches of color. The thing is, it’s done without the twee superiority of a Wes Anderson or any grinning irony, earning the live audiences show, even though (and in some ways because) they’ve been allowed behind the curtain.
Full review on EFC.
Fortunately, it looks as if Their Finest is getting another week at the Coolidge, though likely in one of the smaller rooms, while I wouldn’t bet on Tommy’s Honour sticking around. I don’t know if it will wind up on any sort of favorites list were I the type to make those lists at the end of the year, but I’m kind of surprised it’s not getting a bigger push - STX/EuropaCorp have given bigger pushes to much less impressive pictures, and I’ve got to think you could cut a pretty good trailer for it. Heck, just the poster with a clapper reading “Dunkirk Movie” seems like something you could play with a bit more this year.
Tommy’s Honour
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 April 2017 in AMC Boston Common #19 (first-run, DCP)
Normally, the movies that make me wish I’d brought someone else with me for a different perspective are aimed at kids, but things like Tommy’s Honour have a similar effect. It’s an amiable enough sporting biography, sure enough, but what the filmmakers tackle is specific enough that, while it won’t leave us non-golfers confused or out of the loop, it may perhaps have more interest to my golfing friends than it does to me, and if they’d find its details more intriguing.
While golf has been played in Scotland for centuries, it in many ways attained its modern form and had its popularity explode in the 1860s, when Tom Morris (Peter Mullan) was the groundskeeper and chief caddy at Saint Andrew, a maker of clubs and balls, and until recently one of the best players in both the Open (the world’s first) and matches organized on behalf of the club’s patrons. His son and namesake Tommy (Jack Lowden), on the other hand, is a prodigy, as good as his father ever was at the age of 15. The son is also canny enough to see that the wealthy gentlemen at the club are exploiting them, and willing to press that point. His rebellious nature also ruffles feathers at home, as Meg Drinnen (Ophelia Lovibond), the serving-girl he falls for, is six years his senior and considered scandalous for other reasons.
How tightly the actual action of playing a sport is integrated into a film like this is always a judgment call for the makers, especially when, as is the case here, there’s a not-inconsequential gap between the modern game and the way it would be played by these characters. Here, it's certainly fun to watch the game scenes from a time when golf was not quite refined into its current form; there’s a roughness to the grounds, equipment, and tactics that don’t match today’s fields where the grass is a perfect sea of green with every blade the exact same height. The differences from the modern game make it a bit harder to recognize young Tommy Morris's brilliance, perhaps, but the improvised game played, and the sometimes even rowdy crowds, can be a real kick to watch. It doesn’t hurt that director Jason Connery and writers Kevin Cook (who also wrote the book the film was based upon) & Pamela Martin are mostly casual with how they depict how the Morrises evolve the game, and the moments that do feel like origin detours at least have amusing stories to go with them.
Full review on EFC.
Their Finest
* * * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 17 April 2017 in Coolidge Corner Cinema #1 (first-run, DCP)
What a surprisingly delightful film. Their Finest is, to start with, about what you'd expect, a likable tale of Brits Doing Their Bit during WWII, cheekily aiming for the same sort of impossible mix of optimism and realism that the characters within are aiming for in order to keep spirits up. That would be quite enough, because it really is quite good on that count, but it’s got a level of self-awareness and ability to quietly be the sort of thing it venerates that makes it resonate all the more.
As the story starts, it’s 1940 and Catrin Cole (Gemma Arterton) is about to have a job interview. She thinks it’s for another secretarial position, but it turns out that someone at the Ministry of Information saw a comic strip for which she had stepped in to do the dialog because so many of the male copywriters were called up to serve; they want her to help punch of the women’s lines in widely-mocked propaganda shorts. This leads to work on a feature, which she’ll help Tom Buckley (Sam Claflin) and Raymond Parfitt (Paul Ritter) write, though the true story of heroism it’s based upon may be exaggerated. Making a movie isn’t easy in the best of times, of course, and with a war on, there are contradictory demands coming in even without considering reluctant co-star Ambrose HIlliard (Bill Nighy) or Cartin’s husband Ellis (Jack Huston), a disabled artist and air-raid warden who feels threatened by her earning the rent money.
The films of the late 1930s and early 1940s had some rough edges, certainly, and can be an acquired taste three generations later, but there’s an earnestness to them that merits notice, and Their Finest is a loving tribute to British films of the period in all their methodical, mannered glory. Director Lone Scherfig and her cinematographer Sebastian Blenkov shoot the film in modern, realistic style, with widescreen compositions and charcoal grays that reflect Ellis’s paintings, but when we finally get to see the film-within-a-film (and even as Catrin imagines what it will be like), it recreates the films of the period perfectly: Square, with somewhat primitive effects work, fairly stationary camerawork, and jolting patches of color. The thing is, it’s done without the twee superiority of a Wes Anderson or any grinning irony, earning the live audiences show, even though (and in some ways because) they’ve been allowed behind the curtain.
Full review on EFC.
Friday, April 14, 2017
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 14 April 2017 - 20 April 2017
So, did you all see Your Name this week? It’s still playing this week, so you can see it again. After all, folks are mostly running scared of F8, and Boston Common has switched up times to make it easier.
I’m catching Colossal, The Fate of the Furious, Their Finest, Your Name, Get Out, Trainspotting 2, Personal Shopper, and maybe Tommy’s Honour. Plus a ballgame or two. I know, some of those names have shown up before, but I mean it!
- After all, The Fate of the Furious is the only really big opening this week, with the eighth entry in a series that started out as a pretty low-key thing and has grown into a star-studded, over-the-top super-franchise full of impossible automotive action and ludicrous ensemble casts; everyone from Vin Diesel to Helen Mirren is in it. It’s at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Jordan’s Furniture (Imax), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including MX4D/XPlus), and the SuperLux.
Some places have more screens to fill, though, and have some unheralded but possibly interesting releases. Tommy’s Honour, for instance, stars Peter Mullan and Jack Lowden as the father and son who codified the modern rules of golf in the 19th Century, with Sam Neill and Ophelia Lovibond in the supporting cast, and Jason Connery in the director’s chair; didn’t realize Sean’s kid had moved behind the camera. It’s at West Newton and Boston Common. There’s also Spark: A Space Tail, an animated Canadian-Korean co-production about teenagers in space that looks kind of Monkey King-inspired from the stills I’ve seen (in that the main character is a monkey-boy with a golden staff). It’s at Boston Common and Revere.
The Somerville Theatre picks up Personal Shopper, but because they need an auditorium for live events, it starts there on Sunday, and won’t play Wednesday. The multiplexes have some special-event programming, with the season premiere of Doctor Who (along with the first episode of spin-off Class) playing Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere on Monday and Wednesday, while the same spots offer Boston: An American Running Story on Wednesday, two days after the marathon it documents. - Another sort of “big release” would be Colossal, which comes from director Nacho Vigalondo of Timecrimes fame and stars Anne Hathaway as a woman who, post-breakup, appears to be manifesting a giant monster on the other side of the road. It’s at the Somerville, Kendall Square, the Embassy, and Boston Common.
Kendall Square also opens A Quiet Passion, the new film from Terence Davies which features Emma Bell and Cynthia Nickinson as Emily Dickinson at various stages of her life. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre is the main spot for Their Finest, the new film from Lone Scherfig, which stars Gemma Arteton as a screenwriter in 1940 looking to make a movie (with an actor played by Bill Nighy) that will lift the UK’s spirits and perhaps inspire America to join the war. It’s also at West Newton.
The Void comes back for a second weekend of midnight shows on Friday and Saturday after selling out last weekend. The midnight shows on the other screen are David Lynch flicksto celebrate the imminent return of Twin Peaks, with a 35mm of prequel film Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me on Friday and Lost Highway on Saturday. In between, there’s a kids’ show of Despicable Me Saturday morning. On Wednesday, they have a work-in-progress screening of Soul Witness: The Brookline Holocaust Witness Project, including a Q&A with producer R. Harvey Bravman and a tribute to the founders of the project. Then, on Thursday, they have a Cinema Jukebox presentation of Pink Floyd: The Wall on 35mm with a pre-show performance by local high-schoolers. - The Museum of Science adds ”Amazon Adventure” to their rotation, relatively unusual in that this biography of explorer Henry Bates is a dramatic film rather than a documentary, presented in full-scale OMNIMAX. It’s also slated to open in IMAX 3D at the New England Aquarium on the 24th. Note the capital letter there; that means we’re talking about genuine 70mm-threaded-horizontally-projected-with-a-lamp-that-doubles-as-a-death-ray-onto-a-screen-the-size-of-a-medium-office-building IMAX.
- The Brattle Theatre has a weekend of films in conjunction with The Cambridge Science Festival: “Contact!” mostly focuses on films about peaceful first contact, with Arrival on Friday and screenings of The Iron Giant, Arrival, Gattaca (followed by a special panel discussion), and Paul on Saturday, plus a double feature of Contact (on 35mm) and the classic The Day the Earth Stood Still on Sunday.
It cuts into their traditional Muppet Madness! program, which isn’t even really an alternate marathon on Marathon Monday this year, with matinee and evening double features of The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth surrounding a late-afternoon sing-along screening of The Muppet Movie. On Tuesday, IFFBoston presents a free screening of the fantastic Free Fire with writer/director Ben Wheatley doing a Q&A afterward. There’s nothing on the schedule for Wednesday, and then they host the Women in Comedy Festival starting Thursday (after opening night at the Somerville on Wednesday). - The Harvard Film Archive continues their Jem Cohen retrospective, with a program of shorts at 7pm Friday night and feature Counting at 9pm on Saturday. They share the screen with the last three Contemporary French Alternatives - A German Youth (Friday 9:15pm), La Sapienza (Saturday 7pm), and A Young Poet (Sunday 7pm). On Monday, Paul Bush will present a program of his experimental and animated short films on 16mm and 35mm.
- The Museum of Fine Arts hasmore Frederick Wiseman on tap, with Missile (16mm Friday/Thursday), Fire at Sea (Saturday, High School 2 (Saturday/Thursday)), Public Housing (16mm Sunday), Ballet (16mm Wednesday), and Central Park (16mm Wednesday). Hollywood Scriptures:Migrations also continues this week, with When I Saw You (Friday) and Dheepan (Sunday).
- Telugu film Mister and Tamil drama Pa Paandi join Tamil film Kaatru Veliyidal at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond this week, with Malayalam drama Take Off screening Saturday, and Bengali film Asamapta on Sunday. They also have their monthly screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show with the Teseracte Players on Friday (as always, Full Body Cast does their think with RHPS at Boston Common on Saturday).
- Though the Wicked Queer festival is over, they present the two Bright Lights shows at the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount this week, and they’re both good ones: Park Chan-wook’s The Handmaiden on Tuesday and Barry Jenkins’s Oscar-winner Moonlight on Thursday. As always, free and followed by discussion, so check them out.
- The Bright room will be the home base for The Boston International Film Festival, which runs through Monday at the Paramount, Broadway Entertainment Studios, and a few shows at AMC Boston Common.
- Belmont World Film is back to Monday nights at the Studio Cinema for the rest of the schedule, with this week’s Where I Grow Old following two Portuguese friends who move to Brazil but pine for home.
I’m catching Colossal, The Fate of the Furious, Their Finest, Your Name, Get Out, Trainspotting 2, Personal Shopper, and maybe Tommy’s Honour. Plus a ballgame or two. I know, some of those names have shown up before, but I mean it!
Monday, April 10, 2017
BUFF 2017.03: Buster’s Mal Heart & 68 Kill
Friday at BUFF was a bit more defined by what I didn’t wind up seeing than I’d necessarily like: There was no getting back to Cambridge from work in Burlington in time to see the Homegrown Horror shorts at 5:45pm, which is a bummer; Chris generally does a pretty good job of programming that block, and it’s always fun to see these movies that are unabashedly New England. On the other end, I skipped out on the “Midnight Transgressions” block because I’m old and need sleep on the one hand and because I just don’t love the nastier material. It’s a little harder given the current location of my apartment, too - I’d rather not be walking at 2:30am.
So, I was just at two of three slots, and the first was on the schedule as a secret screening. It was promoted in the program as one of the best/most anticipated genre movies of the year, so my first guess was Free Fire, which fits that bill and is made by Ben Wheatley - a guy who may not have actually had any movies play BUFF but is certainly their type of filmmaker. A couple days before the festival started, I got a publicity email for Netflix’s Death Note movie, and figured that might make more sense as a secret, since it wouldn’t be hitting the service until July, although director Adam Wingard is someone who has played the festival before.
Instead, we got Buster’s Mal Heart, which is okay, and makes sense as a secret screening because a known playdate might cannibalize a chunk of the audience that might be interested in it when/if it opens in late April. Which doesn’t say much about it being anticipated. And, it’s only kind of so-so as a movie. It’s got some interesting bits to it, but it’s kind of an acquired taste.
The second feature of the night was pretty darn good, though, the newest from festival veteran Trent Haaga, and although he couldn’t be there, he sent a fun video introduction from Japan.
”Three Point Dynamics”
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Because I spent my education studying science and math instead of storytelling, I suspect that I would have liked Keaton Smith’s “Three Point Dynamics” much more if the quantum physics its main character was going on about were comprehensible, or at least were fake in a way that gave him a chance to explain it so that their details could be reflected thematically. I can’t know the mind of the filmmaker, but I’m more inclined to be interested when the story seems to be inspired by possibilities rather than just using them as a prop. And just in terms of storytelling, it might be useful to have a handle on whether this guy is a crank or what he intends to do.
Still, deal the movie you’ve got rather than the one you wish you had, right? By those standards, “Three Point Dynamics” is still kind of scattered, although it’s got an impressive core, as we’re introduced to an older guy who comes across as an eccentric but harmless crackpot, annoying the other people at the bus stop and getting himself involved in awkward situations around younger people, only to get shifts in perspective to show that this behavior isn’t really cute, but probably indicative of more troubling issues. That’s fairly well-done, as are some of the flourishes: The dreams of being trapped in roofless towers that extend a long way upwards but seem to have no doors or ways to reach the top, or how the scientist’s shirt and bolo tie have triangle motifs. Is there something important about the triangles in the necklace of the girl he meets, or is it just coincidence? Maybe, maybe not, and that’s the trouble with “Three Point Dynamics” - it falters not necessarily because it’s not entirely clear, but because its symbols don’t seem to matter one way or the other.
Buster’s Mal Heart
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
I like where writer/director Sarah Adina Smith’s head is at with Buster’s Mal Heart, and I think I’d like the actual movie more if she’d played it something closer to straight, rather than getting cute with narrative gimmicks, black comedy, and other diversions. The central driver of what’s going on with its main character is something that merits a lot of thought and consideration, and making a puzzle out of it tends to deny it that.
“Buster” is what the locals call Jonah (Rami Malek), because they don’t know his name; he’s just a crazy guy who lives in the woods, calling rants in to talk radio, breaking into unoccupied houses when it gets cold in the winter. He wasn’t always like this; a few years back, he was the amiable night manager at a nearby hotel. It wasn’t necessarily comfortable living with his in-laws, but he and wife Marty (Kate Lyn Sheil) figured that this is what would allow them to save up and buy a small bit of property to settle with daughter Roxy (Sukha Belle Potter), living off the land as much as they could. That quest for independence is shared with a guy who starts hanging around the hotel lobby (DJ Qualls); who lives off the grid, not even wanting to give out his name, doing Y2K-compliance work for cash, with talk about an semi-mystical “Inversion” about to come.
It’s interesting that Smith drops that Y2K reference in there; nothing else about the film seems to be pointedly set in that time period, and what plot there is does not hinge much on this guy’s work, nor does it seem like it would be particularly ruined by tech like smartphones. And yet, it’s an important and apropos moment to consider - for all that nothing actually happened, it was a moment when it seemed like “the system” could collapse, something which could feel like a clean start to several of the characters. It’s a freedom Jonah and his new friend crave for various reasons. What initially seems like a laudable desire for self-reliance on Jonah’s part grows stronger even as Marty starts looking at apartments, an arrangement anathema to Jonah’s desire for independence - and, perhaps, too much like the hotel that takes him for granted - with the idea of this “Inversion” taking on mystical qualities, another step on the road to being a talk-radio crank.
Full review on EFC.
”Walden Pink”
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
There’s a certain style-slash-genre of short films that you see at festivals like this, built around a cranky straight-man who confronts a series of low-key peculiarities and indignities, either with an extra-bizarre twist as the climax or just petering out. Trying to write this up two weeks later, but not really having any details come back, I’m guessing it is the petering-out sort; I remember the opening image of a sad sack sitting at a park bench in black and white, leading to a couple of hostile confrontations with folks seem kind of especially clueless. There’s a Chekhov’s Gun that never fires.
I do remember it as being pretty okay, though; the film never becomes as misanthropic as its title character and the jokes don’t overextend. Filmmaker Peter Bolte (credited with just about everything) makes a clean-looking movie, which is not always the case with this sort of thing. It’s not exactly a sticky one, but it’s a decent bit of work that bodes well for the next thing he does.
68 Kill
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
68 Kill is an impressively tacky bit of trailer-trash pulp, which is in no way meant as an insult - Trent Haaga's latest is fast-paced, funny, and impressively violent, but also never boring and frequently inventive. It’s a bloody, high-spirited caper whose filmmakers sometimes don’t know the line between enjoyable anarchy and unpleasant excess, but it’s at least made with an energy level that keeps the fun stuff from being retroactively spoiled.
Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) and LIza (AnnaLynne McCord) seem like a bit of a mismatch, with Liza far too good-looking for a gangly guy who pumps septic tanks for a living, but since she’s a call girl and the living embodiment of the idea that all the hot ones are crazy, she’s probably burned more bridges than just the strip club. One of her johns (David Maldonado) has made the mistake of letting slip that he’s got sixty-eight grand in his safe, and she sells Chip on stealing it, saying no-one will get hurt. Of course, not only do people get hurt, but a girl winds up in Chip’s trunk, though Liza says she can solve that problem by selling Violet to LIza’s creepy brother Dwayne (Sam Eidson). It is, on every level, more than the generally-well-meaning Chip signed up for.
Chip being dumb but generally decent is the fuel that drives the movie, and it’s the sort of thing that isn’t as easy as it looks. He’s got to be dumb and prone to bringing trouble upon himself, capable enough to get out of some of it, goofy enough for a laugh, and just barely serious enough to believe that a couple of women who seem like they’d have better options would generally choose him. The last is the one that tends to raise the most eyebrows; Gubler gives an energetic and funny performance - he knows his physical comedy and how get a laugh out of sincere horror - but the amount Chip gets laid what is basically a day and a half seems to land things a little more squarely in the male fantasy area than even a film this happily excessive can sell.
Full review on EFC.
So, I was just at two of three slots, and the first was on the schedule as a secret screening. It was promoted in the program as one of the best/most anticipated genre movies of the year, so my first guess was Free Fire, which fits that bill and is made by Ben Wheatley - a guy who may not have actually had any movies play BUFF but is certainly their type of filmmaker. A couple days before the festival started, I got a publicity email for Netflix’s Death Note movie, and figured that might make more sense as a secret, since it wouldn’t be hitting the service until July, although director Adam Wingard is someone who has played the festival before.
Instead, we got Buster’s Mal Heart, which is okay, and makes sense as a secret screening because a known playdate might cannibalize a chunk of the audience that might be interested in it when/if it opens in late April. Which doesn’t say much about it being anticipated. And, it’s only kind of so-so as a movie. It’s got some interesting bits to it, but it’s kind of an acquired taste.
The second feature of the night was pretty darn good, though, the newest from festival veteran Trent Haaga, and although he couldn’t be there, he sent a fun video introduction from Japan.
”Three Point Dynamics”
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
Because I spent my education studying science and math instead of storytelling, I suspect that I would have liked Keaton Smith’s “Three Point Dynamics” much more if the quantum physics its main character was going on about were comprehensible, or at least were fake in a way that gave him a chance to explain it so that their details could be reflected thematically. I can’t know the mind of the filmmaker, but I’m more inclined to be interested when the story seems to be inspired by possibilities rather than just using them as a prop. And just in terms of storytelling, it might be useful to have a handle on whether this guy is a crank or what he intends to do.
Still, deal the movie you’ve got rather than the one you wish you had, right? By those standards, “Three Point Dynamics” is still kind of scattered, although it’s got an impressive core, as we’re introduced to an older guy who comes across as an eccentric but harmless crackpot, annoying the other people at the bus stop and getting himself involved in awkward situations around younger people, only to get shifts in perspective to show that this behavior isn’t really cute, but probably indicative of more troubling issues. That’s fairly well-done, as are some of the flourishes: The dreams of being trapped in roofless towers that extend a long way upwards but seem to have no doors or ways to reach the top, or how the scientist’s shirt and bolo tie have triangle motifs. Is there something important about the triangles in the necklace of the girl he meets, or is it just coincidence? Maybe, maybe not, and that’s the trouble with “Three Point Dynamics” - it falters not necessarily because it’s not entirely clear, but because its symbols don’t seem to matter one way or the other.
Buster’s Mal Heart
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
I like where writer/director Sarah Adina Smith’s head is at with Buster’s Mal Heart, and I think I’d like the actual movie more if she’d played it something closer to straight, rather than getting cute with narrative gimmicks, black comedy, and other diversions. The central driver of what’s going on with its main character is something that merits a lot of thought and consideration, and making a puzzle out of it tends to deny it that.
“Buster” is what the locals call Jonah (Rami Malek), because they don’t know his name; he’s just a crazy guy who lives in the woods, calling rants in to talk radio, breaking into unoccupied houses when it gets cold in the winter. He wasn’t always like this; a few years back, he was the amiable night manager at a nearby hotel. It wasn’t necessarily comfortable living with his in-laws, but he and wife Marty (Kate Lyn Sheil) figured that this is what would allow them to save up and buy a small bit of property to settle with daughter Roxy (Sukha Belle Potter), living off the land as much as they could. That quest for independence is shared with a guy who starts hanging around the hotel lobby (DJ Qualls); who lives off the grid, not even wanting to give out his name, doing Y2K-compliance work for cash, with talk about an semi-mystical “Inversion” about to come.
It’s interesting that Smith drops that Y2K reference in there; nothing else about the film seems to be pointedly set in that time period, and what plot there is does not hinge much on this guy’s work, nor does it seem like it would be particularly ruined by tech like smartphones. And yet, it’s an important and apropos moment to consider - for all that nothing actually happened, it was a moment when it seemed like “the system” could collapse, something which could feel like a clean start to several of the characters. It’s a freedom Jonah and his new friend crave for various reasons. What initially seems like a laudable desire for self-reliance on Jonah’s part grows stronger even as Marty starts looking at apartments, an arrangement anathema to Jonah’s desire for independence - and, perhaps, too much like the hotel that takes him for granted - with the idea of this “Inversion” taking on mystical qualities, another step on the road to being a talk-radio crank.
Full review on EFC.
”Walden Pink”
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, digital)
There’s a certain style-slash-genre of short films that you see at festivals like this, built around a cranky straight-man who confronts a series of low-key peculiarities and indignities, either with an extra-bizarre twist as the climax or just petering out. Trying to write this up two weeks later, but not really having any details come back, I’m guessing it is the petering-out sort; I remember the opening image of a sad sack sitting at a park bench in black and white, leading to a couple of hostile confrontations with folks seem kind of especially clueless. There’s a Chekhov’s Gun that never fires.
I do remember it as being pretty okay, though; the film never becomes as misanthropic as its title character and the jokes don’t overextend. Filmmaker Peter Bolte (credited with just about everything) makes a clean-looking movie, which is not always the case with this sort of thing. It’s not exactly a sticky one, but it’s a decent bit of work that bodes well for the next thing he does.
68 Kill
* * * (out of four)
Seen 24 March 2017 in the Brattle Theatre (Boston Underground Film Festival, DCP)
68 Kill is an impressively tacky bit of trailer-trash pulp, which is in no way meant as an insult - Trent Haaga's latest is fast-paced, funny, and impressively violent, but also never boring and frequently inventive. It’s a bloody, high-spirited caper whose filmmakers sometimes don’t know the line between enjoyable anarchy and unpleasant excess, but it’s at least made with an energy level that keeps the fun stuff from being retroactively spoiled.
Chip (Matthew Gray Gubler) and LIza (AnnaLynne McCord) seem like a bit of a mismatch, with Liza far too good-looking for a gangly guy who pumps septic tanks for a living, but since she’s a call girl and the living embodiment of the idea that all the hot ones are crazy, she’s probably burned more bridges than just the strip club. One of her johns (David Maldonado) has made the mistake of letting slip that he’s got sixty-eight grand in his safe, and she sells Chip on stealing it, saying no-one will get hurt. Of course, not only do people get hurt, but a girl winds up in Chip’s trunk, though Liza says she can solve that problem by selling Violet to LIza’s creepy brother Dwayne (Sam Eidson). It is, on every level, more than the generally-well-meaning Chip signed up for.
Chip being dumb but generally decent is the fuel that drives the movie, and it’s the sort of thing that isn’t as easy as it looks. He’s got to be dumb and prone to bringing trouble upon himself, capable enough to get out of some of it, goofy enough for a laugh, and just barely serious enough to believe that a couple of women who seem like they’d have better options would generally choose him. The last is the one that tends to raise the most eyebrows; Gubler gives an energetic and funny performance - he knows his physical comedy and how get a laugh out of sincere horror - but the amount Chip gets laid what is basically a day and a half seems to land things a little more squarely in the male fantasy area than even a film this happily excessive can sell.
Full review on EFC.
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