Having missed this one at Fantasia, I was glad to have the opportunity to catch up, even if the only theater it played in my area was something of a hike. I think it played a somewhat broader range of theaters when it had its US premiere in July, but, well, I was in Canada then, and the situation basically boiled down to being able see two of Maquia, Hanagatami and Under the Silver Lake (with the bonus that the second screening of Hanagatami would have wiped out Laplace's Witch. I guess it worked out for the best, in that I could catch this later, but Hanagatami was enough of a mess to make it seem like a less-than-ideal choice. Then again, actually getting to see it on the big screen a couple months later argues for "good choice", so you never can tell.
On the other hand, going to Revere just wrecks a day. This was a 1pm show, but I had to leave the apartment at around 10:30am to catch the first of two buses, including a wait at Sullivan long enough for an MBTA employee to ask if I was loitering. Then the 3:30-ish bus back didn't show up by 4pm, so I took another route which might have been a bit longer. That's roughly seven hours to see a 120-minute movie, so it's a good thing it's a comfy theater with what is unquestionably the best cinema pizza in the general area. And that the movie was good.
Here's hoping it's out on Blu-ray soon enough. It's the sort of smart anime that often seems to get kind of smothered by the entries in long series with weird punctuation, and anything that makes me say that it's the best someone has done something since Satoshi Kon - here's hoping the recent cinema presentations of Perfect Blue imply his stuff is about to get HD releases! - is obviously doing something right.
Sayonara no asa ni yakusoku no hana o kazarô (Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 September 2018 in Showcase Cinema de Lux Revere #17 (special presentation, DCP)
Maquia reminds me more than a bit of the anime that captured imaginations when I was younger, fantasy that takes some time revealing its details before integrating them into the background, building up a human story that nevertheless came quite be told the same in any other world. It's epic and intimate all at once, meticulously constructed.
It opens in the mythic land of Iorph, where the long-lived "Clan of the Separated" record the knowledge of the world by weaving it into Hibiol cloth. Maquia (voice of Manaka Iwami) is fifteen and a capable apprentice, though far more timid than best friend Leilia (voice of Ai Kayano) and her boyfriend Krim (voice of Yuki Kaji), and when soldiers from the city-state of Mezante arrives riding the dragon-like Renato, she is sent to find the elder, only to find herself carried away when both she and a Renato get tangled by the cloth. She winds up alone in the outside world, though not for long - she soon discovers an infant who has also lost everyone due to war, whom she names Ariel. A friendly widow (voice of Rina Sato) with two boys of her own takes them in, although it can't last: It's one thing to look like a teenager when your son is a baby, quite another when he's six.
Other events push Maquia and Ariel to hit the road that first time, and it's some canny writing on the part of filmmaker Mari Okada, intertwining what are big moments in Maquia's development as a person with larger-scale fantasy storytelling without ever feeling like large groups of people are fighting and dying so that one young woman can learn a moral lesson. Okada jumps forward several times, usually by just enough that the audience can see time has passed but only once by so much that there's a sharp discontinuity to Maquia's life, and the sweep of the movie shows up interesting ways: The pristine fairy-tale kingdom of Mezante industrializes, the dragons burn up from within, and Mido's dog dies, reminding the audience early that some lives happen faster than others. Okada connects fantasy, the end of an era, and personal maturation in an elegant manner.
Full review at EFC.
Tuesday, September 11, 2018
Friday, September 07, 2018
Fantasia 2018.18: Penguin Highway, International Science Fiction Shorts, Circo Animato, One Cut of the Dead, and Five Fingers for Marseilles
I am not sure whether having two shorts programs on the same day is sensible or crazy, but it probably means that this particular post will wind up very late, though only this post.
Plenty of filmmakers, though!
So, for the International Sci-Fi shorts, we have "Spin" director Leticia Belliccini, "Be My Guest" director David Jermyn, "Greater Good" director Andrea Ashton, "One Day the Sun Turned Black" director Joe Lueben, and "They Wait For Us" directors George Thomson & Lukas Schrank.
It was a pretty good group of shorts, with Belliccini noting that they didn't have a location until relatively late in the process, because permitting didn't come through at the other places, and it didn't become a one-shot movie (or at least cannily edited to look like one-shot) until that location was chosen. It's a pretty impressive result, as was what Ashton achieved with her short, initially part of a 72-hour-film project, which is usually good fun and good practice but doesn't necessarily produce something worth a festival entry. Some folks had nit-picky questions, but, guys, 72 hours is not a lot of time to smooth everything out, and in the case of some of the particular questions asked, sometimes people don't act perfectly in real time, and it's okay if a movie captures that.
Also: "One Day the Sun Turned Black" was something Joe Lueben came up with inspired by something in a paper by one of the kids he teaches (though the kid doesn't seem to be credited), and let me just say that though I think it's based on a neat idea and a pretty good movie, folks in the audience had opinions on the white guy making a movie about white people who have to change their skin color to survive in a world where the sun has changed. As they should! It's an intriguing what-if that goes some questionable if unintended places when you look at it closely. I don't know if it works at another scale, but it's an idea that kind of fascinates me.
(Another one where people were nitpicking afterward, about how a less-bright sun probably wouldn't necessitate more melanin or how one character didn't have white-person hair, and, folks, please remind me to not be that guy, especially when the movie is 14 minutes long! At that scale, it is okay to leave a lot of explanation out, because there's just not time and those details, fun as they may be when you get them right, just aren't important.)
For the animated shorts, fewer movies were represented but often more of the team. Here we have "Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor" animator Raph Bard and director Rick Trembles (though that is but a small sample of the jobs each did); "Albatross Soup" illustrator Fiona Smyth, composer Daniel Rosato, and Director Winnie Chung; and "Space Between the Stars" director Samuel Bradley. An interesting group, with a fair number of questions for Bradley because the company which produced the short (and for which he works), Guru Studio, is apparently kind of a big deal in animation, working on a number of series, but not necessarily doing these one-off things so much, although Bradley found it incredibly gratifying.
Winnie Chung came at "Albatross Soup" from a different angle; she mostly works in live-action and documentary, came across the albatross soup riddle from some friends, and thought the process of working it out would be nifty to visualize. She said she probably could have just gone from there, but wound up bringing in other groups so that the audience would hear different accents and ethnicities, a sort of audio contrast to how Smyth went with different visual styles. Smyth, from what I gather, doesn't do a whole lot of animation work herself, so that made for an interesting, unique short.
Then there was Trembles, who can seem to land in that weird spot where you're not sure whether he is trying really hard to be iconoclastic or if he's the genuine article. It doesn't really matter. Having Raph Bard around to kind of puncture that a bit ("are you going to explain my process when I'm standing right here?") made that team's questions go down easier, and it was an interesting talk about how their styles contrasted and made the short better - he's very Fleischer-like with lots of short motion loops while she tends to go for something bigger and smoother.
After that, it was across the street for One Cut of the Dead and Five Fingers for Marseilles, which was pretty good, although I get the feeling that the audience for that 9:30pm movie on the third Sunday of the festival is roughly 50% tired but committed people and 50% folks with a serious interest in (South) African cinema. It's pretty good, but I was pretty worn out.
Next up…. Okay, let's not pretend that I posted this and some chunk of 30 reviews the next day. It's taken some time.
Penguin Highway (Pengin haiwei)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
For a movie about penguins just showing out of nowhere in a precocious kid's hometown, and that being the tip of the iceberg as far as weirdness gets, Penguin Highway is kind of dry. There's an angle from which that's kind of nifty - the film and its hero don't just love science as a reference book that contains interesting facts, but as a rigorous process that allows them to expand their knowledge - but that does cut down on the goofy antics, and the strangeness gets kind of straight-faced at times. It's got a bunch of fun scenes when things do get silly, but its whimsy and focus do sometimes work at cross purposes.
Aoyama (voice of Kana Kita) is a very focused fourth-grader, whether one is talking about his studies, his attempts to beat his classmate Hamamoto at chess, retaliating at the guys who bullied his friend Uchida without throwing a punch, pursuing his intense crush on the busty receptionist at the dentist's office (voice of Yu Aoi), or investigating just where the heck all the penguins who show up out of nowhere are coming from and going. What he doesn't initially realize is that there's another scientific mystery, just outside of town, that may dwarf a bunch of random penguins.
Most kids' movies position the kid like Aoyama as a side character - even when the main character is a meant to be sort of a nerd, this guy is so eccentric that he makes the other guy more relatable for a large audience. He is, at times, humorous and frustrating in equal measures and often for the same reasons: The very serious, self-important knowledge of just how smart he is can make a viewer nod every time someone seems exasperated with the little brat, but is also fantastic raw material for voice actress Kana Kita to make deadpan magic (aided by animators giving him a small mouth inside a big, round kid's face for those lines). He's definitely a weird kid that takes some effort on the part of the audience, but the filmmakers make his quirks add up to something rather than making them things that must be chipped away.
Full review at EFC.
"Be My Guest"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's natural to snicker a bit at sci-fi shorts like "Be My Guest" which build an ambitious story around a prop that looks to be made out of junk found in the director's garage, but a lot can be forgiven if it actually uses that as a jumping-off point for something interesting, which writer/director David Jermyn manages here. It's kind of basic, telling the story of a guy (Zachary Bennett) who rents the use of his body out to someone online almost entirely from his perspective, so the audience experiences time jumps rather than tha actor sort of playing a dual role, and its early talk of "hibernation" at times makes it feel like the filmmakers hae their sci-fi concepts confused.
It winds up working well enough, though, because the audience can see the relevance to real-world concerns easy enough - a husband who is literally not present, a gig economy that offers people a bit of money but no actual experience, being destroyed by envy that one has helped create. Jermyn occasionally just lays the metaphor right out there, but clarity is often better than ambiguity when you actually have something to say.
"Exit Strategy"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
As with the short that preceded it, "Exit Strategy" lays what it was going for down without a lot of embellishment when it gets to the finish, but it's interesting how it gets there, and likely fairly rewatchable as the audience discovers what is actually going on. Which isn't hard; if you're seeing it in a science fiction block, it telegraphs where it's going pretty hard, and even if you're not, you can probably guess. Still, writer/director Travis Bible plays just exactly which fantasy cardy he's playing fairly close to the vest, enough to keep a viewer guessing about where it's leading for a while.
I suspect that a second time through will make one really appreciate the work done by Christopher O'Shea as Shane, the brusque genius brother. It's a performance that initially just looks like a socially-stunted nerd but more clearly becomes a man carrying a weight as it goes on, but with a little hint of not exactly being unhappy to spend time with Matt. Richard Kohnke turns in a nice, simply sincere performance as that brother. His job is to basically be a good guy and mean what he says, which is earnest when the audience might be braced for another twist. It lets the movie back off a bit in its last scene, giving it a low-key but emotionally satisfying ending.
"Spin"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Director Léticia Belliccini said in a Q&A that the location they found would determine the shape of this short, and it's hard to imagine it in a place where she didn't have just enough room to play while still making her characters feel boxed in. Two or three minutes in, you realize you haven't seen a cut yet, and as she keeps her camera a few steps behind Mallard (Johan Libéreau) as he races about the apartment building and courtyard in a panic after witnessing his wife (Armelle Gerbault) being attacked, it becomes a nifty trick. He seems unstuck in time, chasing a doppelganger and visiting happier times but being shadowed by his own guilt.
Story-wise, it's the sort of thing one might have to watch two or three times in a row to really absorb all of what's going on, but it's the sort of propulsive movie where you can enjoy getting about 75% there because seeing it come vaguely into shape is enjoyably tantalizing, not slowed down much by dialogue, as Belliccini mostly advances the story through action and movement. There's the occasional quick change without a hidden cut, the feeling of pieces coming together, and it's a strong enough mood with everything else working together so well that even those who prefer a more thoroughly explained narrative should enjoy it.
"One Day the Sun Turned Black"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
The neat idea behind "One Day the Sun Turned Black" could probably become an impassable minefield if not handled carefully, but the thing is, a big part of the appeal is that it's got a land mine or two buried in it, placed kind of indiscriminately, just waiting to explode in a hail of well-intentioned but misdirected commentary on race and appropriation. It's a fertile enough universe that it might be interesting to see it as an anthology, put together by a more diverse group of filmmakers than the white man who made this one.
Joe Lueben and his collaborators tell a good story, though, first positing that something happened with the sun, not only causing it to appear black in the sky but showering the Earth with some sort of radiation that does a number on fair skin. So dark-skinned Harmony (Shavonna Banks) can jog around the park but her very Caucasian father (Daniel Martin Berkey) can't, leading to him living the life of a shut-in, his already aggrieved mental state exacerbated by the talk radio he listens to. It's not a story that has a lot of events, or dramatic speeches, but it works in large part because most people will get the generational conflict there - young people embracing a world that is less white-by-default while their elders are torn between retreat and defiance.
The devil is in the details, and my favorite one comes when Harmony buys a bottle of "pigment" at the corner store - it's not just that what's going on starts to fully snap into place, but that the African-American woman ringing her up packs a lot of context into just a couple of looks and lines, telling us that, yes, there is a lot more to this situation than things being uncomfortable for a woman and her prejudiced father. Lueben strikes a nice balance between the personal story and the larger world, making sure that the audience sees that these two sides don't exist in isolation. It's good enough and rich enough to make one curious about more stories within that world even if one also worries that it's the sort of scenario that stokes white paranoia.
"Expire" ("Exhale")
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's been a month, my notes stink, I'm basically giving this a pass. It looked gorgeous, a quality vision of a post-apocalyptic world where breathable air must be zealously conserved, but pretty much no story that stuck.
"Greater Good"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Products of 48-hour film challenges don't often actually make festival programs; they're more about having fun and maybe just convincing people that making a movie is an actual thing that they can do rather than something that requires trained professionals and huge budgets. Sometimes, though, you get something like "Greater Good", which has a simple but solid idea, just the right resources to tell the story, and no time to second-guess all the details.
It is, after all, very easy to second-guess this one. The plot involves pregnant Madeline Knight (Miranda Plant) surprised by the arrival of Dr. Alexis Livingston (Annelies Lee-Reid) of the Department of Alternate Timelines along with a woman said to be her future daughter (Lauren Kneteman), who has committed an atrocity in 2041; Livingston offers Madeline a syringe that will safely, painlessly induce miscarriage. The three actresses all play their roles well, and the filmmakers keep the focus squarely on the classic moral dilemma of what one should do with that sort of foreknowledge. It's sad but not manipulatively so - it doesn't celebrate the doing of bad things for good reasons to excess - and finishes quickly without ever having strayed far off course.
Which is where it could have become a mess; it's exceptionally easy to look at this story and say "but how does she know Livingston's on the level" or "as far as the people in the future know, this Department has never actually changed anyone's mind" or want to dig into just what Isabelle's crimes were and if time travel might just be the ultimate tyranny, preserving not justice but the status quo. These are good questions, but for the purposes of this story, not actually important, and I suspect that making the movie fast kept the filmmakers from undermining themselves trying to answer them. There is just no time, so you focus on what can be controlled, and that works out pretty well in this case (plus or minus a plinky, maudlin score).
"El aleteo del colibrí" ("The Flapping of the Hummingbird")
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
This short is a stylish enough bit of work, but one that falls into the category of films that feel like they have weighty concerns (the festival description talks about fate and free will, while the opening points out that of the 60 thousand thoughts humans have per day, 90% are about imagining the futre) but which in practical terms, aren't really saying anything important. This one follows Fran (Adrià Collado), a middle-aged man not really satisfied working at a gas station/convenience store, who is having a spat with his wife Sara (Melena Miquel) and thus doesn't let her call distract him from a shoplifter (Igor Szpakowski). Writer/director Mertxell A. Valls rewinds, goes into bullet-time, takes different perspectives and plays with how small changes could alter the action. It's the sort of thing that seems profound, but maybe actually isn't.
It's still put together in terrific fashion, though - writer/director Mertxell A. Valls is good at focusing the audience's attention on small but important things, highlighting the way that small choices seem like they can have much riding on them, pointing out pathways that could cause things to go differently, accepting complexity but not overwhelming the audience. The small cast is generally excellent, as well - Collado gets the most room to create his character, but all of them create characters that fit their purpose perfectly, but also seem like they have a life beyond the film, that they've arrived at the start of the film through a messy process, and as a result are easy to root for. Not so much to win, but to stumble through, which is all most of us can hope for.
"They Wait for Us"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Another one I'm going to pass on I'm afraid; it's just not registering a month later.
"The Origin of Sound"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
You can fall down a rabbit hole considering "The Origin of Sound" as part of a festival shorts block; it's got smaller animations of different styles within it, making the whole thing a kind of fractal experience (now, imagine if you're at a festival that shows multiple animation blocks in a day…). That's not quite the most interesting thing about it, but it's fun to think about.
It also makes the short kind of inside-baseball, in a way, God creating sound as a metaphor for animators adding sound to their creations, though it's a fun one. The creation he's adding it to is something of a cliche - an amusingly resigned husband and his perpetually annoyed wife - but it's played out in visually distinctive fashion with live actors being manipulated like stop-motion puppets or at least giving the impression of such. It's neat to look at, although maybe a bit too drab after a while, compared to the bright and varied cartoons the sound man is taking his rude noises from.
It goes on a while and eventually this gag gets a little worn, especially since a lot of these cartoons are either little but (or reduced to) basic gross-out gags. It feels like directors Paul Driessen & Toon Loenders are taking the long way around to get to a single pratfall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - what better ending is there for a cartoon, really?
"Island of the Deceased"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A kind of impressively gross bit of animation which starts with a man plucking the eye from a mummified corpse to place into a taxidermied girl and continues from there to feature a whole bunch of cadaver art and surreal, spooky imagery. It's impressive and atmospheric - director Kim Ji-hyeon has a fine eye for macabre design and uses churning backgrounds to make the island setting feel even tighter, like there's some sort of force field around it. The story is thin - of course these grounds are cursed and the people who trespass will be consumed - but presented well enough that it's okay.
I must admit, I often feel like shorts like this are just on the border of something - very impressive for those who already find the macabre enticing but not quite able to convince those who don't already love that sort of thing of its twisted beauty. It's impressive, and others will like it more than me, just not transcendent enough to cross the gap.
"I Don't Like the Comics You Drew"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Maybe you need a little context for this one. Lei Lei's animations are often filled with fine detail, color, and a scrolling two-dimensional world that seems overwhelming while still being somewhat abstracted and whimsical. This has a lot of the same style, but the drawings are simplified, more monochrome, with thick black lines, and attention much more focused on the foreground than the environment. It feels like a guy who, having generally been nice and encouraging to all the people seeking his approval, has finally snapped.
It's a style that pairs nicely with the music by Shanghai Restoration Project (who did the soundtrack for Have a Nice Day, last year's memorable Chinese animated noir), a diss track that is catchy and funny while getting some genuine frustration to come through. It's a project that integrates both halves well, not feeling like music slapped onto a cartoon or like a music video, but an excellent collaboration all around.
"Crazy Cat"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I liked this one a lot. I'm not much of a gamer, and even though the pixel-art style of this one harkens back to when I actually really did play video games, that's not an automatic plus. There's a lot to like about its particular cute designs (which can handle a little violence being done to them) and synth-y soundtrack; they don't necessarily reference something especially specific to my eyes and ears, and director Seo Ji-hyeong's world of anthropomorphised animals seems fun and eccentric on its own.
I like the way it does a bit more than just tell a story without words, too - you get that the cat of the title has some pretty severe anxiety issues, probably related to her bunny nemesis, and copes with it by imagining her life as an RPG or dungeon crawl and everyday challenges she has to face as boss battles. Seo does a nice job of differentiating the pixel art so that there's a clear distinction between an actual game, the real world, and how the character copes. There's enough in common to keep transitions from beig jarring, even though there's some delightful absurdity in someone being a jerk on the subway becoming a fight to the death.
It's funny and cute, but also good communication, which always impresses.
"Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
This isn't quite a pilot for a series, technically - I believe director Rick Trembles did an even shorter take on his monster-inspired characters to get this one made - but it feels like one, spending its ten minutes to both introduce the characters and their world and also give them an adventure, and it feels kind of insufficient on both counts: Drac, Cobweb, Ghost, and Braindead are all more concepts than friends and neighbors, while the whole thing with the barnacles never quite feels like either a story or a joke about how crazy apocalyptic stuff intersects with these guys' lives and they just shrug it off. Double the running time to broadcast-series length or get a couple more episodes under the belt, and maybe it comes into focus.
It's kind of fun, though - the characters do pop as individuals despite being obviously inspired by classic monster imagery, and Trembles does a fair job of indulging his campier impulses without having them become the entire short. He's very much a fan of the spookier Fleischer toons, referencing their obvious animation cycles and happily increasing the gore, but he's wise enough to let co-director Raph Bard break those cycles when something more free-flowing is needed.
I don't know if more "Building 108" would get things working or wear out the joke, but I'd kind of like to see him get the chance to find out, if that's his intention.
"The Voice Over"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
The gag behind "The Voice Over" isn't a new one - there have been a number of short films where the narrator was revealed to be a voice in the protagonist's head - but its filmmakers do a fine job of sneaking up on that, playing the kind of cutesy cartoon gag where "going crazy" is just aggravation before jumping right to antipsychotic drugs, and that feels downright ruthless. It shifts the feel of the film, which was kind of cute but nervy, into something with a genuine edge.
"One Small Step"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
"One Small Step" is such a beautifully designed dialogue-free short, built to efficiently grab at the audience's heartstrings and pull, that someone watching it without logos would almost certainly presume that it's this year's Pixar short film. That's not what every filmmaker aspires to, but when you hit that goal as well as this one does, you're doing something right.
Admittedly, this hits a lot of my sweet spots, with a kid who absolutely adores space; an immigrant dad working hard to support her dreams, both making her adorable moon boots as a kid and to send her to college; bright, colorful visuals that emphasize the excitement of the goal; and bright, sharp design that can feel a bit mocking when she is falling short. The falling short isn't necessarily a sweet spot in and of itself, but it's the unexpected thing that makes the story work - there's a moment when it genuinely feels like this may become a movie about learning to still love something after it's clear you won't be part of it in the way you'd dreamed.
And it may be that story, eventually; it ends with hope but no guarantees. Still, it's a charmer, and a delightfully sweet moment in the middle of an often-bloody program.
"Lovely Girl"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I remember this vaguely from my notes ("Girl accepting flowers puts guy in trippy happy place… then not"), and that I kind of liked it, especially with the Chubby Checker song in the background - it communicated in the moment, the heady experience of being loved and then having doubts.
"Albatross Soup"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A pretty good "animate-to-voices" piece, although I wonder how it would play if you've heard the "Albatross Soup" riddle before. Do the various voices trying to puzzle it out become frustrating, or does the impressive, varied art still impress. Truth be told, I kind of didn't like the riddle itself, finding myself reacting "wait, what?" to each step toward solving it. It's a mean one.
Not liking the riddle itself, though, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the sound of people solving it. That variety of voices clearly enjoying the mental exercise is the strong base that the filmmakers start from, and artist Fiona Smyth gives director Winnie Chung creative, constantly-shifting imagery to illustrate it. It's a fine example of a film depicting not so much what is happening but a thought process, with what's shown having a properly ephermeral, not-solid feel.
"Simbiosis Carnal"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Images stick, but not the whole. There were, I recall, some very nice bits of design where the male and female figures hit both "sexy" and "cute" even as they shifted shape and position.
"Space Between Stars"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Something initially misfied in my brain while watching this, thinking it was about alien astronauts whose spaceship has been overrun by robots, when it's actually the other way around, with those cute octopi actually being the interstellar equivalent of parasites being fought off by the ship's automatic defenses. That's kind of the point, minus the credentialed dummy missing a couple of important seconds to write something down: Both are travelers in the void, doing what evolution or engineers have made them to do, their conflict inevitable and as fierce as anything in nature, with human viewers subconsciously taking sides for entirely superficial reasons.
Part of the reason for being able to take such a claim is that it is consciously and brilliantly designed, with the aliens in round shapes pastel blues and while the machines are foreboding reds. The audience is perhaps hypersensitive to that because director Samuel W. Bradley and his animators present the action with the smooth lines and bold palette of an infographic, switching the brain into learning mode and helping the viewer pick up geography, capabilities, and the like as the well-orchestrated and high-stakes action (accompanied by a nifty Jim Guthrie score) begins. From there, it's smooth and thrilling, despite the way that its abstraction could be distancing.
"The Ricochet Splendid"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
It's hard to review "The Ricochet Splendid" without more or less repeating what it says in the festival program or sounding like you're trying to write a blurb for the program: It's the terrific opening credits for an anime series that sadly does not really exist. I kind of doubt that 2Veinte has any plans to make a series out of it, because it's probably too big to fit the budget, but I am impressed as heck that filmmaker Pablo Gostanian so often manages to find a spot where a viewer will think "not sure if parody or awesome" at least two or three times. It's a canny act of pastiche, with its footage deliberately leaving a lot of gaps that might be hard to reconcile, action that is over the top but maybe not more than the real thing, and a legitimately catchy theme song and a title that, like a lot of Japanese adventure series, seems pretty meaningless but sure as heck sounds cool.
I'll take more if you've got it, but enjoy it as a singular work otherwise.
"Crying Bitch"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Well, there's a title I'll have a hard time recommending to the women I know who would probably enjoy the heck out of this short. I love you when you're at your weirdest, Japan, but you don't always make it easy!
Still, I enjoy the heck out of this one, which offers Sho Mineo as a philandering husband, Miko Terada as his young lover, and Hinako Saeki as the wife who is just about ready to snap. Writer/director Reiki Tsuno often builds the movie like it, personally, is about to snap, with sudden changes from day to night implying that something you're taking as a given might flip instantly, with violence that may be spontaneous and excessive or reluctantly practiced, but which is probably a long time coming but hard to stop.
The film seems a little rough at times, like there was a hard cap on how much they could shoot so they accepted good enough rather than perfect, but it's a steady good enough, and the conception and editing was solid enough to hold that together. That leaves "Crying Bitch" memorable inn its outrageousness, but not sloppy or poorly-executed.
Kamera wo Tomeru na! (One Cut of the Dead)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Fantasia Underground, DCP)
It's not unusual to have a conversation about a television show and have someone say that the first year isn't very good, but if you hang in there for something like fifteen hours, it starts to get good, but also occasionally have the same people say that they turned a movie off ten minutes in. One Cut of the Dead is an odd movie because is more or less counts on at least part of the audience cutting it the same slack they would a serial whose early segments aren't actually that good. A risky play, but one that is eventually rewarded.
It opens in fairly conventional manner, in some sort of abandoned factory setting with a zombie attacking his girlfriend - a scene ruined by the boom operator (Hiroshi Ichibara) being caught in the shot, but by actor Kazuki Kamiya (Kazuki Nagaya) apparently not not committing fully to his part as the zombie, for which director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) excoriates him after yelling cut. But the camera keeps rolling, capturing makeup artist Nao (Harumi Syuhama) telling Kazuki and co-star Aika Matsumoto (Yuzuki Akiyama) that the director is just high-strung, and there are actually legends about the place where they are shooting - legends which appear to be all too true, which means Higurashi will have a heck of a one-shot zombie movie, at least if anybody survives the shooting.
How much a viewer likes cheap, cheesy zombie movies is an important factor in how much they will enjoy One Cut of the Dead, because while that description above is not the entirety of what the movie has to offer, it is a long unbroken stretch where filmmaker Shinichiro Ueda is not spoofing sub-streaming zombie movies or presenting it with any sort of irony or wink at the audience - it is effectively what it appears to be, with the long-take gimmick feeling like an overreach. Some folks go for that, and they'll probably dig that first half-hour or so on its own merits, but if that's not your thing, it is a lot of pretty awful set-up to get to a hilarious last act - you have to dig through three layers of bad to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff doesn't really work without the bad. Throw some bland flashback material in, and It is a slog for nearly an hour to get to 30 minutes of good material.
Full review at EFC.
Five Fingers for Marseilles
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Five Fingers for Marseilles is being labeled a "South African Western", which describes it as well as anything but also doesn't feel quite right. There's too much history to the characters, and not enough frontier, but that seems a bit like quibbling. It feels more like a western than anything else, especially once it gets to the end.
The action opens not in the South African city of Marseilles, but "Railway", the black-populated township that was just outside, during the apartheid era, and introduces six kids: Zulu, the group's leader; Tau, his hard-headed brother; "Pastor" Unathi the storyteller; "Pockets" Bongani, from a richer family; "Cockroach" Luyanda, a big, quiet boy - the "five fingers" who fancy themselves rebels - and Lerato, the girl the brothers both like. A clash with the white police sends Tau on the run, where he'll eventually become an outlaw. Twenty years later, he's released from prison and decides to return home, though the Marseilles that Tau (Vuyo Dabula) finds is different: Zulu has died and his son Sizwe (Lizwi Vilakazi) is having little luck as a farmer, while Lerato (Zethu Dlomo) is one of the few that has stayed in Railway after main city's integration. Pockets (Kenneth Nkosi) is mayor, Luyanda (Mduduzi Mabaso) is chief of police, but both of them tend to let a gangster calling himself "The Ghost" (Hamilton Dhlamini) have his way. Tau had hoped to live a quiet life, but it looks like his hometown still needs heroes.
Five Fingers takes the shape of a Western, and a beautiful one. The deserts and scrublands of South Africa feel just as open as those of California, dangerous and beautiful. Director Michael Matthews and his crew never pretend that it's anything but the late twentieth century, but by and large make the movie feel like it's got a foot in multiple eras - the shantytown of Railway feels like a western town, there aren't a lot of familiar product logos on display, and some of the wardrobe and prop choices feel meant to evoke another era even if they are modern. If a weapon seems personalized and weathered, it doesn't really matter that it's a Kalashnikov. Matthews and cinematographer Shaun Lee happily quote Sergio Leone, sometimes using kids with slingshots, sometimes with their weary adult selves. The raids by the Ghost are horrific and violent.
Full review at EFC.
Plenty of filmmakers, though!
So, for the International Sci-Fi shorts, we have "Spin" director Leticia Belliccini, "Be My Guest" director David Jermyn, "Greater Good" director Andrea Ashton, "One Day the Sun Turned Black" director Joe Lueben, and "They Wait For Us" directors George Thomson & Lukas Schrank.
It was a pretty good group of shorts, with Belliccini noting that they didn't have a location until relatively late in the process, because permitting didn't come through at the other places, and it didn't become a one-shot movie (or at least cannily edited to look like one-shot) until that location was chosen. It's a pretty impressive result, as was what Ashton achieved with her short, initially part of a 72-hour-film project, which is usually good fun and good practice but doesn't necessarily produce something worth a festival entry. Some folks had nit-picky questions, but, guys, 72 hours is not a lot of time to smooth everything out, and in the case of some of the particular questions asked, sometimes people don't act perfectly in real time, and it's okay if a movie captures that.
Also: "One Day the Sun Turned Black" was something Joe Lueben came up with inspired by something in a paper by one of the kids he teaches (though the kid doesn't seem to be credited), and let me just say that though I think it's based on a neat idea and a pretty good movie, folks in the audience had opinions on the white guy making a movie about white people who have to change their skin color to survive in a world where the sun has changed. As they should! It's an intriguing what-if that goes some questionable if unintended places when you look at it closely. I don't know if it works at another scale, but it's an idea that kind of fascinates me.
(Another one where people were nitpicking afterward, about how a less-bright sun probably wouldn't necessitate more melanin or how one character didn't have white-person hair, and, folks, please remind me to not be that guy, especially when the movie is 14 minutes long! At that scale, it is okay to leave a lot of explanation out, because there's just not time and those details, fun as they may be when you get them right, just aren't important.)
For the animated shorts, fewer movies were represented but often more of the team. Here we have "Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor" animator Raph Bard and director Rick Trembles (though that is but a small sample of the jobs each did); "Albatross Soup" illustrator Fiona Smyth, composer Daniel Rosato, and Director Winnie Chung; and "Space Between the Stars" director Samuel Bradley. An interesting group, with a fair number of questions for Bradley because the company which produced the short (and for which he works), Guru Studio, is apparently kind of a big deal in animation, working on a number of series, but not necessarily doing these one-off things so much, although Bradley found it incredibly gratifying.
Winnie Chung came at "Albatross Soup" from a different angle; she mostly works in live-action and documentary, came across the albatross soup riddle from some friends, and thought the process of working it out would be nifty to visualize. She said she probably could have just gone from there, but wound up bringing in other groups so that the audience would hear different accents and ethnicities, a sort of audio contrast to how Smyth went with different visual styles. Smyth, from what I gather, doesn't do a whole lot of animation work herself, so that made for an interesting, unique short.
Then there was Trembles, who can seem to land in that weird spot where you're not sure whether he is trying really hard to be iconoclastic or if he's the genuine article. It doesn't really matter. Having Raph Bard around to kind of puncture that a bit ("are you going to explain my process when I'm standing right here?") made that team's questions go down easier, and it was an interesting talk about how their styles contrasted and made the short better - he's very Fleischer-like with lots of short motion loops while she tends to go for something bigger and smoother.
After that, it was across the street for One Cut of the Dead and Five Fingers for Marseilles, which was pretty good, although I get the feeling that the audience for that 9:30pm movie on the third Sunday of the festival is roughly 50% tired but committed people and 50% folks with a serious interest in (South) African cinema. It's pretty good, but I was pretty worn out.
Next up…. Okay, let's not pretend that I posted this and some chunk of 30 reviews the next day. It's taken some time.
Penguin Highway (Pengin haiwei)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: AXIS, digital)
For a movie about penguins just showing out of nowhere in a precocious kid's hometown, and that being the tip of the iceberg as far as weirdness gets, Penguin Highway is kind of dry. There's an angle from which that's kind of nifty - the film and its hero don't just love science as a reference book that contains interesting facts, but as a rigorous process that allows them to expand their knowledge - but that does cut down on the goofy antics, and the strangeness gets kind of straight-faced at times. It's got a bunch of fun scenes when things do get silly, but its whimsy and focus do sometimes work at cross purposes.
Aoyama (voice of Kana Kita) is a very focused fourth-grader, whether one is talking about his studies, his attempts to beat his classmate Hamamoto at chess, retaliating at the guys who bullied his friend Uchida without throwing a punch, pursuing his intense crush on the busty receptionist at the dentist's office (voice of Yu Aoi), or investigating just where the heck all the penguins who show up out of nowhere are coming from and going. What he doesn't initially realize is that there's another scientific mystery, just outside of town, that may dwarf a bunch of random penguins.
Most kids' movies position the kid like Aoyama as a side character - even when the main character is a meant to be sort of a nerd, this guy is so eccentric that he makes the other guy more relatable for a large audience. He is, at times, humorous and frustrating in equal measures and often for the same reasons: The very serious, self-important knowledge of just how smart he is can make a viewer nod every time someone seems exasperated with the little brat, but is also fantastic raw material for voice actress Kana Kita to make deadpan magic (aided by animators giving him a small mouth inside a big, round kid's face for those lines). He's definitely a weird kid that takes some effort on the part of the audience, but the filmmakers make his quirks add up to something rather than making them things that must be chipped away.
Full review at EFC.
"Be My Guest"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's natural to snicker a bit at sci-fi shorts like "Be My Guest" which build an ambitious story around a prop that looks to be made out of junk found in the director's garage, but a lot can be forgiven if it actually uses that as a jumping-off point for something interesting, which writer/director David Jermyn manages here. It's kind of basic, telling the story of a guy (Zachary Bennett) who rents the use of his body out to someone online almost entirely from his perspective, so the audience experiences time jumps rather than tha actor sort of playing a dual role, and its early talk of "hibernation" at times makes it feel like the filmmakers hae their sci-fi concepts confused.
It winds up working well enough, though, because the audience can see the relevance to real-world concerns easy enough - a husband who is literally not present, a gig economy that offers people a bit of money but no actual experience, being destroyed by envy that one has helped create. Jermyn occasionally just lays the metaphor right out there, but clarity is often better than ambiguity when you actually have something to say.
"Exit Strategy"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
As with the short that preceded it, "Exit Strategy" lays what it was going for down without a lot of embellishment when it gets to the finish, but it's interesting how it gets there, and likely fairly rewatchable as the audience discovers what is actually going on. Which isn't hard; if you're seeing it in a science fiction block, it telegraphs where it's going pretty hard, and even if you're not, you can probably guess. Still, writer/director Travis Bible plays just exactly which fantasy cardy he's playing fairly close to the vest, enough to keep a viewer guessing about where it's leading for a while.
I suspect that a second time through will make one really appreciate the work done by Christopher O'Shea as Shane, the brusque genius brother. It's a performance that initially just looks like a socially-stunted nerd but more clearly becomes a man carrying a weight as it goes on, but with a little hint of not exactly being unhappy to spend time with Matt. Richard Kohnke turns in a nice, simply sincere performance as that brother. His job is to basically be a good guy and mean what he says, which is earnest when the audience might be braced for another twist. It lets the movie back off a bit in its last scene, giving it a low-key but emotionally satisfying ending.
"Spin"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Director Léticia Belliccini said in a Q&A that the location they found would determine the shape of this short, and it's hard to imagine it in a place where she didn't have just enough room to play while still making her characters feel boxed in. Two or three minutes in, you realize you haven't seen a cut yet, and as she keeps her camera a few steps behind Mallard (Johan Libéreau) as he races about the apartment building and courtyard in a panic after witnessing his wife (Armelle Gerbault) being attacked, it becomes a nifty trick. He seems unstuck in time, chasing a doppelganger and visiting happier times but being shadowed by his own guilt.
Story-wise, it's the sort of thing one might have to watch two or three times in a row to really absorb all of what's going on, but it's the sort of propulsive movie where you can enjoy getting about 75% there because seeing it come vaguely into shape is enjoyably tantalizing, not slowed down much by dialogue, as Belliccini mostly advances the story through action and movement. There's the occasional quick change without a hidden cut, the feeling of pieces coming together, and it's a strong enough mood with everything else working together so well that even those who prefer a more thoroughly explained narrative should enjoy it.
"One Day the Sun Turned Black"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
The neat idea behind "One Day the Sun Turned Black" could probably become an impassable minefield if not handled carefully, but the thing is, a big part of the appeal is that it's got a land mine or two buried in it, placed kind of indiscriminately, just waiting to explode in a hail of well-intentioned but misdirected commentary on race and appropriation. It's a fertile enough universe that it might be interesting to see it as an anthology, put together by a more diverse group of filmmakers than the white man who made this one.
Joe Lueben and his collaborators tell a good story, though, first positing that something happened with the sun, not only causing it to appear black in the sky but showering the Earth with some sort of radiation that does a number on fair skin. So dark-skinned Harmony (Shavonna Banks) can jog around the park but her very Caucasian father (Daniel Martin Berkey) can't, leading to him living the life of a shut-in, his already aggrieved mental state exacerbated by the talk radio he listens to. It's not a story that has a lot of events, or dramatic speeches, but it works in large part because most people will get the generational conflict there - young people embracing a world that is less white-by-default while their elders are torn between retreat and defiance.
The devil is in the details, and my favorite one comes when Harmony buys a bottle of "pigment" at the corner store - it's not just that what's going on starts to fully snap into place, but that the African-American woman ringing her up packs a lot of context into just a couple of looks and lines, telling us that, yes, there is a lot more to this situation than things being uncomfortable for a woman and her prejudiced father. Lueben strikes a nice balance between the personal story and the larger world, making sure that the audience sees that these two sides don't exist in isolation. It's good enough and rich enough to make one curious about more stories within that world even if one also worries that it's the sort of scenario that stokes white paranoia.
"Expire" ("Exhale")
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
It's been a month, my notes stink, I'm basically giving this a pass. It looked gorgeous, a quality vision of a post-apocalyptic world where breathable air must be zealously conserved, but pretty much no story that stuck.
"Greater Good"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Products of 48-hour film challenges don't often actually make festival programs; they're more about having fun and maybe just convincing people that making a movie is an actual thing that they can do rather than something that requires trained professionals and huge budgets. Sometimes, though, you get something like "Greater Good", which has a simple but solid idea, just the right resources to tell the story, and no time to second-guess all the details.
It is, after all, very easy to second-guess this one. The plot involves pregnant Madeline Knight (Miranda Plant) surprised by the arrival of Dr. Alexis Livingston (Annelies Lee-Reid) of the Department of Alternate Timelines along with a woman said to be her future daughter (Lauren Kneteman), who has committed an atrocity in 2041; Livingston offers Madeline a syringe that will safely, painlessly induce miscarriage. The three actresses all play their roles well, and the filmmakers keep the focus squarely on the classic moral dilemma of what one should do with that sort of foreknowledge. It's sad but not manipulatively so - it doesn't celebrate the doing of bad things for good reasons to excess - and finishes quickly without ever having strayed far off course.
Which is where it could have become a mess; it's exceptionally easy to look at this story and say "but how does she know Livingston's on the level" or "as far as the people in the future know, this Department has never actually changed anyone's mind" or want to dig into just what Isabelle's crimes were and if time travel might just be the ultimate tyranny, preserving not justice but the status quo. These are good questions, but for the purposes of this story, not actually important, and I suspect that making the movie fast kept the filmmakers from undermining themselves trying to answer them. There is just no time, so you focus on what can be controlled, and that works out pretty well in this case (plus or minus a plinky, maudlin score).
"El aleteo del colibrí" ("The Flapping of the Hummingbird")
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
This short is a stylish enough bit of work, but one that falls into the category of films that feel like they have weighty concerns (the festival description talks about fate and free will, while the opening points out that of the 60 thousand thoughts humans have per day, 90% are about imagining the futre) but which in practical terms, aren't really saying anything important. This one follows Fran (Adrià Collado), a middle-aged man not really satisfied working at a gas station/convenience store, who is having a spat with his wife Sara (Melena Miquel) and thus doesn't let her call distract him from a shoplifter (Igor Szpakowski). Writer/director Mertxell A. Valls rewinds, goes into bullet-time, takes different perspectives and plays with how small changes could alter the action. It's the sort of thing that seems profound, but maybe actually isn't.
It's still put together in terrific fashion, though - writer/director Mertxell A. Valls is good at focusing the audience's attention on small but important things, highlighting the way that small choices seem like they can have much riding on them, pointing out pathways that could cause things to go differently, accepting complexity but not overwhelming the audience. The small cast is generally excellent, as well - Collado gets the most room to create his character, but all of them create characters that fit their purpose perfectly, but also seem like they have a life beyond the film, that they've arrived at the start of the film through a messy process, and as a result are easy to root for. Not so much to win, but to stumble through, which is all most of us can hope for.
"They Wait for Us"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: International Science Fiction Short Film Showcase, digital)
Another one I'm going to pass on I'm afraid; it's just not registering a month later.
"The Origin of Sound"
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
You can fall down a rabbit hole considering "The Origin of Sound" as part of a festival shorts block; it's got smaller animations of different styles within it, making the whole thing a kind of fractal experience (now, imagine if you're at a festival that shows multiple animation blocks in a day…). That's not quite the most interesting thing about it, but it's fun to think about.
It also makes the short kind of inside-baseball, in a way, God creating sound as a metaphor for animators adding sound to their creations, though it's a fun one. The creation he's adding it to is something of a cliche - an amusingly resigned husband and his perpetually annoyed wife - but it's played out in visually distinctive fashion with live actors being manipulated like stop-motion puppets or at least giving the impression of such. It's neat to look at, although maybe a bit too drab after a while, compared to the bright and varied cartoons the sound man is taking his rude noises from.
It goes on a while and eventually this gag gets a little worn, especially since a lot of these cartoons are either little but (or reduced to) basic gross-out gags. It feels like directors Paul Driessen & Toon Loenders are taking the long way around to get to a single pratfall, but that's not necessarily a bad thing - what better ending is there for a cartoon, really?
"Island of the Deceased"
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A kind of impressively gross bit of animation which starts with a man plucking the eye from a mummified corpse to place into a taxidermied girl and continues from there to feature a whole bunch of cadaver art and surreal, spooky imagery. It's impressive and atmospheric - director Kim Ji-hyeon has a fine eye for macabre design and uses churning backgrounds to make the island setting feel even tighter, like there's some sort of force field around it. The story is thin - of course these grounds are cursed and the people who trespass will be consumed - but presented well enough that it's okay.
I must admit, I often feel like shorts like this are just on the border of something - very impressive for those who already find the macabre enticing but not quite able to convince those who don't already love that sort of thing of its twisted beauty. It's impressive, and others will like it more than me, just not transcendent enough to cross the gap.
"I Don't Like the Comics You Drew"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Maybe you need a little context for this one. Lei Lei's animations are often filled with fine detail, color, and a scrolling two-dimensional world that seems overwhelming while still being somewhat abstracted and whimsical. This has a lot of the same style, but the drawings are simplified, more monochrome, with thick black lines, and attention much more focused on the foreground than the environment. It feels like a guy who, having generally been nice and encouraging to all the people seeking his approval, has finally snapped.
It's a style that pairs nicely with the music by Shanghai Restoration Project (who did the soundtrack for Have a Nice Day, last year's memorable Chinese animated noir), a diss track that is catchy and funny while getting some genuine frustration to come through. It's a project that integrates both halves well, not feeling like music slapped onto a cartoon or like a music video, but an excellent collaboration all around.
"Crazy Cat"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I liked this one a lot. I'm not much of a gamer, and even though the pixel-art style of this one harkens back to when I actually really did play video games, that's not an automatic plus. There's a lot to like about its particular cute designs (which can handle a little violence being done to them) and synth-y soundtrack; they don't necessarily reference something especially specific to my eyes and ears, and director Seo Ji-hyeong's world of anthropomorphised animals seems fun and eccentric on its own.
I like the way it does a bit more than just tell a story without words, too - you get that the cat of the title has some pretty severe anxiety issues, probably related to her bunny nemesis, and copes with it by imagining her life as an RPG or dungeon crawl and everyday challenges she has to face as boss battles. Seo does a nice job of differentiating the pixel art so that there's a clear distinction between an actual game, the real world, and how the character copes. There's enough in common to keep transitions from beig jarring, even though there's some delightful absurdity in someone being a jerk on the subway becoming a fight to the death.
It's funny and cute, but also good communication, which always impresses.
"Building 108: Barnacle Bill the Tailor"
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
This isn't quite a pilot for a series, technically - I believe director Rick Trembles did an even shorter take on his monster-inspired characters to get this one made - but it feels like one, spending its ten minutes to both introduce the characters and their world and also give them an adventure, and it feels kind of insufficient on both counts: Drac, Cobweb, Ghost, and Braindead are all more concepts than friends and neighbors, while the whole thing with the barnacles never quite feels like either a story or a joke about how crazy apocalyptic stuff intersects with these guys' lives and they just shrug it off. Double the running time to broadcast-series length or get a couple more episodes under the belt, and maybe it comes into focus.
It's kind of fun, though - the characters do pop as individuals despite being obviously inspired by classic monster imagery, and Trembles does a fair job of indulging his campier impulses without having them become the entire short. He's very much a fan of the spookier Fleischer toons, referencing their obvious animation cycles and happily increasing the gore, but he's wise enough to let co-director Raph Bard break those cycles when something more free-flowing is needed.
I don't know if more "Building 108" would get things working or wear out the joke, but I'd kind of like to see him get the chance to find out, if that's his intention.
"The Voice Over"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
The gag behind "The Voice Over" isn't a new one - there have been a number of short films where the narrator was revealed to be a voice in the protagonist's head - but its filmmakers do a fine job of sneaking up on that, playing the kind of cutesy cartoon gag where "going crazy" is just aggravation before jumping right to antipsychotic drugs, and that feels downright ruthless. It shifts the feel of the film, which was kind of cute but nervy, into something with a genuine edge.
"One Small Step"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
"One Small Step" is such a beautifully designed dialogue-free short, built to efficiently grab at the audience's heartstrings and pull, that someone watching it without logos would almost certainly presume that it's this year's Pixar short film. That's not what every filmmaker aspires to, but when you hit that goal as well as this one does, you're doing something right.
Admittedly, this hits a lot of my sweet spots, with a kid who absolutely adores space; an immigrant dad working hard to support her dreams, both making her adorable moon boots as a kid and to send her to college; bright, colorful visuals that emphasize the excitement of the goal; and bright, sharp design that can feel a bit mocking when she is falling short. The falling short isn't necessarily a sweet spot in and of itself, but it's the unexpected thing that makes the story work - there's a moment when it genuinely feels like this may become a movie about learning to still love something after it's clear you won't be part of it in the way you'd dreamed.
And it may be that story, eventually; it ends with hope but no guarantees. Still, it's a charmer, and a delightfully sweet moment in the middle of an often-bloody program.
"Lovely Girl"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
I remember this vaguely from my notes ("Girl accepting flowers puts guy in trippy happy place… then not"), and that I kind of liked it, especially with the Chubby Checker song in the background - it communicated in the moment, the heady experience of being loved and then having doubts.
"Albatross Soup"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
A pretty good "animate-to-voices" piece, although I wonder how it would play if you've heard the "Albatross Soup" riddle before. Do the various voices trying to puzzle it out become frustrating, or does the impressive, varied art still impress. Truth be told, I kind of didn't like the riddle itself, finding myself reacting "wait, what?" to each step toward solving it. It's a mean one.
Not liking the riddle itself, though, doesn't mean you can't enjoy the sound of people solving it. That variety of voices clearly enjoying the mental exercise is the strong base that the filmmakers start from, and artist Fiona Smyth gives director Winnie Chung creative, constantly-shifting imagery to illustrate it. It's a fine example of a film depicting not so much what is happening but a thought process, with what's shown having a properly ephermeral, not-solid feel.
"Simbiosis Carnal"
N/A (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Images stick, but not the whole. There were, I recall, some very nice bits of design where the male and female figures hit both "sexy" and "cute" even as they shifted shape and position.
"Space Between Stars"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
Something initially misfied in my brain while watching this, thinking it was about alien astronauts whose spaceship has been overrun by robots, when it's actually the other way around, with those cute octopi actually being the interstellar equivalent of parasites being fought off by the ship's automatic defenses. That's kind of the point, minus the credentialed dummy missing a couple of important seconds to write something down: Both are travelers in the void, doing what evolution or engineers have made them to do, their conflict inevitable and as fierce as anything in nature, with human viewers subconsciously taking sides for entirely superficial reasons.
Part of the reason for being able to take such a claim is that it is consciously and brilliantly designed, with the aliens in round shapes pastel blues and while the machines are foreboding reds. The audience is perhaps hypersensitive to that because director Samuel W. Bradley and his animators present the action with the smooth lines and bold palette of an infographic, switching the brain into learning mode and helping the viewer pick up geography, capabilities, and the like as the well-orchestrated and high-stakes action (accompanied by a nifty Jim Guthrie score) begins. From there, it's smooth and thrilling, despite the way that its abstraction could be distancing.
"The Ricochet Splendid"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival: Circo Animato, digital)
It's hard to review "The Ricochet Splendid" without more or less repeating what it says in the festival program or sounding like you're trying to write a blurb for the program: It's the terrific opening credits for an anime series that sadly does not really exist. I kind of doubt that 2Veinte has any plans to make a series out of it, because it's probably too big to fit the budget, but I am impressed as heck that filmmaker Pablo Gostanian so often manages to find a spot where a viewer will think "not sure if parody or awesome" at least two or three times. It's a canny act of pastiche, with its footage deliberately leaving a lot of gaps that might be hard to reconcile, action that is over the top but maybe not more than the real thing, and a legitimately catchy theme song and a title that, like a lot of Japanese adventure series, seems pretty meaningless but sure as heck sounds cool.
I'll take more if you've got it, but enjoy it as a singular work otherwise.
"Crying Bitch"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Well, there's a title I'll have a hard time recommending to the women I know who would probably enjoy the heck out of this short. I love you when you're at your weirdest, Japan, but you don't always make it easy!
Still, I enjoy the heck out of this one, which offers Sho Mineo as a philandering husband, Miko Terada as his young lover, and Hinako Saeki as the wife who is just about ready to snap. Writer/director Reiki Tsuno often builds the movie like it, personally, is about to snap, with sudden changes from day to night implying that something you're taking as a given might flip instantly, with violence that may be spontaneous and excessive or reluctantly practiced, but which is probably a long time coming but hard to stop.
The film seems a little rough at times, like there was a hard cap on how much they could shoot so they accepted good enough rather than perfect, but it's a steady good enough, and the conception and editing was solid enough to hold that together. That leaves "Crying Bitch" memorable inn its outrageousness, but not sloppy or poorly-executed.
Kamera wo Tomeru na! (One Cut of the Dead)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival: Fantasia Underground, DCP)
It's not unusual to have a conversation about a television show and have someone say that the first year isn't very good, but if you hang in there for something like fifteen hours, it starts to get good, but also occasionally have the same people say that they turned a movie off ten minutes in. One Cut of the Dead is an odd movie because is more or less counts on at least part of the audience cutting it the same slack they would a serial whose early segments aren't actually that good. A risky play, but one that is eventually rewarded.
It opens in fairly conventional manner, in some sort of abandoned factory setting with a zombie attacking his girlfriend - a scene ruined by the boom operator (Hiroshi Ichibara) being caught in the shot, but by actor Kazuki Kamiya (Kazuki Nagaya) apparently not not committing fully to his part as the zombie, for which director Takayuki Higurashi (Takayuki Hamatsu) excoriates him after yelling cut. But the camera keeps rolling, capturing makeup artist Nao (Harumi Syuhama) telling Kazuki and co-star Aika Matsumoto (Yuzuki Akiyama) that the director is just high-strung, and there are actually legends about the place where they are shooting - legends which appear to be all too true, which means Higurashi will have a heck of a one-shot zombie movie, at least if anybody survives the shooting.
How much a viewer likes cheap, cheesy zombie movies is an important factor in how much they will enjoy One Cut of the Dead, because while that description above is not the entirety of what the movie has to offer, it is a long unbroken stretch where filmmaker Shinichiro Ueda is not spoofing sub-streaming zombie movies or presenting it with any sort of irony or wink at the audience - it is effectively what it appears to be, with the long-take gimmick feeling like an overreach. Some folks go for that, and they'll probably dig that first half-hour or so on its own merits, but if that's not your thing, it is a lot of pretty awful set-up to get to a hilarious last act - you have to dig through three layers of bad to get to the good stuff, and that good stuff doesn't really work without the bad. Throw some bland flashback material in, and It is a slog for nearly an hour to get to 30 minutes of good material.
Full review at EFC.
Five Fingers for Marseilles
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 29 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, digital)
Five Fingers for Marseilles is being labeled a "South African Western", which describes it as well as anything but also doesn't feel quite right. There's too much history to the characters, and not enough frontier, but that seems a bit like quibbling. It feels more like a western than anything else, especially once it gets to the end.
The action opens not in the South African city of Marseilles, but "Railway", the black-populated township that was just outside, during the apartheid era, and introduces six kids: Zulu, the group's leader; Tau, his hard-headed brother; "Pastor" Unathi the storyteller; "Pockets" Bongani, from a richer family; "Cockroach" Luyanda, a big, quiet boy - the "five fingers" who fancy themselves rebels - and Lerato, the girl the brothers both like. A clash with the white police sends Tau on the run, where he'll eventually become an outlaw. Twenty years later, he's released from prison and decides to return home, though the Marseilles that Tau (Vuyo Dabula) finds is different: Zulu has died and his son Sizwe (Lizwi Vilakazi) is having little luck as a farmer, while Lerato (Zethu Dlomo) is one of the few that has stayed in Railway after main city's integration. Pockets (Kenneth Nkosi) is mayor, Luyanda (Mduduzi Mabaso) is chief of police, but both of them tend to let a gangster calling himself "The Ghost" (Hamilton Dhlamini) have his way. Tau had hoped to live a quiet life, but it looks like his hometown still needs heroes.
Five Fingers takes the shape of a Western, and a beautiful one. The deserts and scrublands of South Africa feel just as open as those of California, dangerous and beautiful. Director Michael Matthews and his crew never pretend that it's anything but the late twentieth century, but by and large make the movie feel like it's got a foot in multiple eras - the shantytown of Railway feels like a western town, there aren't a lot of familiar product logos on display, and some of the wardrobe and prop choices feel meant to evoke another era even if they are modern. If a weapon seems personalized and weathered, it doesn't really matter that it's a Kalashnikov. Matthews and cinematographer Shaun Lee happily quote Sergio Leone, sometimes using kids with slingshots, sometimes with their weary adult selves. The raids by the Ghost are horrific and violent.
Full review at EFC.
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 7 September 2018 - 13 September 2018
The Toronto Film Festival has started, which means it's one of the deadest weeks in the North American film schedule because all the good stuff for the fall is going to premiere there and then roll out over the coming months.
So, aside from The Captain, it mostly looks like a good week to catch up with BlacKkKlansman, Juliet, Naked, and Operation Finale, at least where new releases are concerned. I'll probably try and go out to Revere for Maquia, though.
- So, for now, they fill the screens with iffy stuff. The Nun, for instance, is the latest spin-off from The Conjuring, which apparently explains a villain from one of those movies. That's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax & Dolby CInema), Assembly Row (including Imax & Dolby Cinema), Revere (including Xplus and MX4D), and the SuperLux. If your taste runs more toward action than horror, Jennifer Garner stars in Peppermint from Taken director Pierre Morel featuring Jennifer Garner as a woman looking to avenge her murdered daughter. That plays Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
Smaller opening for God Bless the Broken Road - Boston Common and Revere - which follows a war widow whose path crosses with a stock car driver.
Revere plays animated Fantasia selection Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms on Sunday afternoon, with Boston Common showing Years 3 & 4 of Harry Potter (Prisoner of Azkaban & Goblet of Fire) that day. Fenway and Revere have a TCM presentation of The Sound of Music on Sunday and Wednesday. Fenway also has a Monday night screening of Slice, in which a group of misfits seek out the possibly-supernatural explanation behind murdered pizza delivery man. Boston Common, Fenway, and Assembly Row also show Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue on Monday. - The Captain plays Kendall Square, with filmmaker Robert Schwentke returning to Germany after a decade and a half in Hollywood for this drama shot in black and white about a deserter in the final days of World War II who finds an officer's uniform and relishes the way people start to look at him when he wears it. There's also a free GlobeDocs presentation of Roll Red Roll on Wednesday, with director Nancy Schwartzman on-hand to do Q&A after her true-crime documentary.
- Operation Finale expands to The Coolidge Corner Theatre, but their other new release, Fantasia selection What Keeps You Alive, is just playing at midnight on Friday and Saturday. It's a pretty neat thriller, in which a woman finds out a lot more than she would have liked about her wife during an anniversary weekend at the family's lake house. The main screen's midnights are blaxploitation milestones: Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song on Friday and Ganja & Hess on Saturday, both new digital restorations. Tuesday brings both a Wide Lens presentation of Fruitvale Station and Open Screen, while Wednesday's Bergman 100 screening is a 35mm print of Through a Glass Darkly. They're also running film on Thursday for a Cinema Jukebox screening of Neil Young: Heart of Gold.
- There are different Bollywood movies in different places this week, as Fenway opens Paltan, a drama about the 1962 Indo-Sino War, while Apple Fresh Pond gets Stree, a horror-comedy based on a 1990s urban legend. They also have Telugu romantic comedy C/O Kancharapalem and "mystery romantic thriller" Manu in the same language. U Turn opens Wednesday, Sailaja Reddy Alludu & Seema Raja on Thursday.
- The Brattle Theatre continues their Tribute to Robby Müller with To Live and Die in L.A. in 35mm on Friday; a double feature of Paris, Texas & The American Friend on Saturday; Kings of the Road & Down by Law (the latter on 35mm) Sunday; a 35mm print of Honeysuckle Rose on Tuesday; and a concluding 35mm double feature of When Pigs Fly & Mystery Train on Wednesday. They also have a DocYard screening of Hale County This Morning, This Evening on Monday with director RaMell Ross attending, and Grrl Haus: Boston Edition, Part 1, a collection of short films by women, including four locals who will do Q&A afterward.
- The Harvard Film Archive is your Bergman 100 headquarters this month, with this week's offerings including Summer with Monika (Friday 7pm), The Magician (Friday 9pm), Hour of the Wolf (Saturday 7pm), Shame (Saturday 9pm), and Sawdust and Tinsel (Sunday 7pm), all but the last on 35mm. They also seem to be stepping their family series up to bi-weekly, with a $5 Saturday afternoon screening of The Breadwinner (free with a Cambridge library card). On Monday, they have a 16mm print of Renate Sami & Petra Seeger's Cesare Pavese. Turin - Santo Stefano Belbo playing as a double feature with From the Cloud to the Resistance, based upon Pavase's work.
- New month means new "On the Fringe" at The Museum of Fine Arts; this time it's a 35mm print of Slums of Beverly Hills playing Friday. The also continue runs of I, Claude Monet (Friday/Wednesday), The Chronicles of Anna Magdalena Bach (Saturday/Wednesday), Radu Judes Scarred Hearts (Sunday), and Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf (Saturday/Sunday). They wrap the week with a Thursday Sunset Cinema of The Wicker Man, complete with live music and a lesson on making floral crowns.
- The Somerville Theatre has a "Slaughterhouse Movie Club" special on Friday, with "In Space, No One Can Hear You Strip" before a 35mm screening of They Live. They also host a few Boston Comedy Festival events over the next week, including the premiere of Sweeney Killing Sweeney, with Steve Sweeney as a standup comic who is told to cut the Boston-centric characters from his act, only to find them coming to life and looking to kill him.
- The Regent Theatre plays four programs of the New York Dog Film Festival: "Second Chances" Friday at 7pm, "Love Changes Everything" Friday at 9pm, "Life with Dogs" Saturday at 2pm, and "Who Rescued Whom?" Saturday at 4pm. There are more good boys and girls on Saturday and Sunday with Life in the Doghouse, about two South Carolina men who have rescued more than ten thousand abused animals and found them forever homes. There's also a return of Yellow Submarine on Wednesday, because they love their sing-alongs in Arlington.
- The Museum of Science adds Pandas to their mix of films in the Omni Theater.
- Visitors to The ICA can catch Arthur Jafa's Dreams Are Colder than Death Sunday afternoon to complement their Jara exhibition ("Love Is the Message, The Message Is Death").
So, aside from The Captain, it mostly looks like a good week to catch up with BlacKkKlansman, Juliet, Naked, and Operation Finale, at least where new releases are concerned. I'll probably try and go out to Revere for Maquia, though.
Tuesday, September 04, 2018
The Little Stranger
I'm sure I'm not the first person to say this, but the Mary Poppins Returns preview is a slight change in the music away from being the trailer for a horror movie. Maybe that's why AMC put it in front of The Little Stranger, aside from both being part of that very broad "movies set in mid-Twentieth-Century England" genre, I'm not sure what the two have in common.
SPOILERS!
The Little Stranger is a drab little movie, but it's got just enough going on under the surface that I found myself almost talking myself into liking it at some points today. At some point I came up with that goofy "love triangle between a man, a woman, and a house" line, and then I figured, wait, what if Suki is effectively the house now, what's that add to it… But there's really not much there, even with the last scene. I try to construct a narrative of Faraday isolating Caroline from anyone else who shows her affection - her brother, her dog, maybe her mother, since he's pointedly not with Caroline at the suicide - and it's certainly a case where this is metaphorically what he's doing, but there's just not enough clear intent.
!SRELIOPS
The Little Stranger
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 September 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)
Somewhere in the middle of The Little Stranger, the filmmakers seem to decide or remember that it's going to be a ghost story and start having weird things happen. It hasn't been great at being anything else, but that still seems like the least interesting choice they could have made. It's a bland, generic haunting, and never seems to serve as the metaphor for a dying way of life that it should be, just a way to tidy up.
Things start with something seeming off, as Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) is called to The Hundreds, a large, decaying manse in Warwickshire, to tend to maid Betty (Liv Hill), who is not actually ailing but figures a poor bill of health would be an excuse to leave the creepy place. It's not exactly a homecoming for Faraday - his mother left her job there before he was born and he only visited once, as a child - but he's always been drawn to the place. Now, only three member of the Ayres family remain: Roderick (Will Poulter), whose heroism during the war left the young man traumatized and disfigured; his sister Caroline (Ruth Wilson), returned home to care for him; and their mother (Charlotte Rampling), who still seems to favor her first, lost child. Faraday soon becomes close to the siblings, treating Roderick's leg and being matched with Caroline when numbers at an event need evening out.
This all takes place in the late 1940s, a time when the United Kingdom is remaking itself after World War II, and though it is mostly happening off-screen, there are pointed comments about the methods - Faraday's colleague mentions the new National Health Service while Roderick mentions that the new inheritance taxes have strangled his family, forcing him to sell part of the estate to a developer who will create a whole neighborhood of single family homes on the property. The irony here is that Caroline seems to find this liberating - she is mentioned as having flourished in her wartime auxiliary service, and immediately empathizes with people having their own modest homes - while Faraday reacts with shock and horror. This is an attack on the way of life he has known and his aspirations, even if they are not realistically within his reach. The film is, then, a sort of love triangle between a man, a woman, and a house, as well as a snapshot of that moment in time.
Full review at EFC.
SPOILERS!
The Little Stranger is a drab little movie, but it's got just enough going on under the surface that I found myself almost talking myself into liking it at some points today. At some point I came up with that goofy "love triangle between a man, a woman, and a house" line, and then I figured, wait, what if Suki is effectively the house now, what's that add to it… But there's really not much there, even with the last scene. I try to construct a narrative of Faraday isolating Caroline from anyone else who shows her affection - her brother, her dog, maybe her mother, since he's pointedly not with Caroline at the suicide - and it's certainly a case where this is metaphorically what he's doing, but there's just not enough clear intent.
!SRELIOPS
The Little Stranger
* * (out of four)
Seen 3 September 2018 in AMC Boston Common #15 (first-run, DCP)
Somewhere in the middle of The Little Stranger, the filmmakers seem to decide or remember that it's going to be a ghost story and start having weird things happen. It hasn't been great at being anything else, but that still seems like the least interesting choice they could have made. It's a bland, generic haunting, and never seems to serve as the metaphor for a dying way of life that it should be, just a way to tidy up.
Things start with something seeming off, as Dr. Faraday (Domhnall Gleeson) is called to The Hundreds, a large, decaying manse in Warwickshire, to tend to maid Betty (Liv Hill), who is not actually ailing but figures a poor bill of health would be an excuse to leave the creepy place. It's not exactly a homecoming for Faraday - his mother left her job there before he was born and he only visited once, as a child - but he's always been drawn to the place. Now, only three member of the Ayres family remain: Roderick (Will Poulter), whose heroism during the war left the young man traumatized and disfigured; his sister Caroline (Ruth Wilson), returned home to care for him; and their mother (Charlotte Rampling), who still seems to favor her first, lost child. Faraday soon becomes close to the siblings, treating Roderick's leg and being matched with Caroline when numbers at an event need evening out.
This all takes place in the late 1940s, a time when the United Kingdom is remaking itself after World War II, and though it is mostly happening off-screen, there are pointed comments about the methods - Faraday's colleague mentions the new National Health Service while Roderick mentions that the new inheritance taxes have strangled his family, forcing him to sell part of the estate to a developer who will create a whole neighborhood of single family homes on the property. The irony here is that Caroline seems to find this liberating - she is mentioned as having flourished in her wartime auxiliary service, and immediately empathizes with people having their own modest homes - while Faraday reacts with shock and horror. This is an attack on the way of life he has known and his aspirations, even if they are not realistically within his reach. The film is, then, a sort of love triangle between a man, a woman, and a house, as well as a snapshot of that moment in time.
Full review at EFC.
Monday, September 03, 2018
This Week in Tickets: 27 August 2018 - 2 September 2018
Not going to lie - I've been an absolute slug this week. I've managed to get some tidying-up done around the house, put a bit of a dent in the pile of comics, and managed to fight the DVR down to 80%, but that's not really what this blog is about.
So, not much until Friday, when I caught the better-than-expected L Storm. Not sure what the "LL" on the ticket where it usually says "ID" means, but they didn't ask for a photo ID. Whether this means AMC trusts me now, they're not going to bother to have ticket-takers check during busy periods, or they're just happy for anyone showing up at certain shows is anybody's guess. On Sunday… Well, hey, why wasn't I aware that those Marvel Imax screenings were just $8? I might have opted for more, even if their chronological scheduling didn't really favor the ones I wanted to see again on the big screen. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was an easy IMAX 3D revisit, though.
As always, follow my Letterboxd for more short stuff, though it sometimes winds up here at roughly the same time.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 September 2018 in AMC Boston Common #2 (Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary, Imax 3D)
Marvel movies are fun enough to be rewatchable, but they're the kind of smart blockbuster that doesn't necessarily reveal more on second or third viewings; so much as they don't expose too many gaps. Guardians 2 works, but the pop culture references are a bit more strained, the enthusiastic violence doesn't become less questionable, and the fun of hearing unexpected tracks on its mix-tape soundtrack is not quite what it was - I started to wonder what it would sound like if Tyler Bates got to score the big moments.
A lot of what works the first time through still works now, though - it's an exceptionally well-cast movie, and writer/director James Gunn gives his cast room to be well-rounded and emotional while also being broad, larger-than-life comic book characters. The best addition is Kurt Russell, who for a while stood as Marvel's best pure villain - malevolent but charming, with goals that make perfect sense from his perspective, and the sort of arch, not-quite-human perspective that lets him underline things like dissecting "Brandy" with less a knowing wink to the audience than a sense that his trying too hard to manipulate his son is part of the character.
And it looks great, the sort of thing you absolutely want to see in Imax or on a 4K HDR set, with popping colors, big open spaces to play in, great effects, and a willingness to embrace the goofier parts of the Marvel Universe - as a Marvel fan, actually seeing a shot of Ego the Living Planet was one of the best moments when I thought "oh, they're going for it" since Thanos first appeared at the end of The Avengers. The big, outer-space action is still terrific, even with a couple of Star Wars movies to raise the bar since.
So, not much until Friday, when I caught the better-than-expected L Storm. Not sure what the "LL" on the ticket where it usually says "ID" means, but they didn't ask for a photo ID. Whether this means AMC trusts me now, they're not going to bother to have ticket-takers check during busy periods, or they're just happy for anyone showing up at certain shows is anybody's guess. On Sunday… Well, hey, why wasn't I aware that those Marvel Imax screenings were just $8? I might have opted for more, even if their chronological scheduling didn't really favor the ones I wanted to see again on the big screen. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 was an easy IMAX 3D revisit, though.
As always, follow my Letterboxd for more short stuff, though it sometimes winds up here at roughly the same time.
Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 2 September 2018 in AMC Boston Common #2 (Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary, Imax 3D)
Marvel movies are fun enough to be rewatchable, but they're the kind of smart blockbuster that doesn't necessarily reveal more on second or third viewings; so much as they don't expose too many gaps. Guardians 2 works, but the pop culture references are a bit more strained, the enthusiastic violence doesn't become less questionable, and the fun of hearing unexpected tracks on its mix-tape soundtrack is not quite what it was - I started to wonder what it would sound like if Tyler Bates got to score the big moments.
A lot of what works the first time through still works now, though - it's an exceptionally well-cast movie, and writer/director James Gunn gives his cast room to be well-rounded and emotional while also being broad, larger-than-life comic book characters. The best addition is Kurt Russell, who for a while stood as Marvel's best pure villain - malevolent but charming, with goals that make perfect sense from his perspective, and the sort of arch, not-quite-human perspective that lets him underline things like dissecting "Brandy" with less a knowing wink to the audience than a sense that his trying too hard to manipulate his son is part of the character.
And it looks great, the sort of thing you absolutely want to see in Imax or on a 4K HDR set, with popping colors, big open spaces to play in, great effects, and a willingness to embrace the goofier parts of the Marvel Universe - as a Marvel fan, actually seeing a shot of Ego the Living Planet was one of the best moments when I thought "oh, they're going for it" since Thanos first appeared at the end of The Avengers. The big, outer-space action is still terrific, even with a couple of Star Wars movies to raise the bar since.
Sunday, September 02, 2018
L Storm
You know what's fun - when you go to a movie kind of out of a sense of obligation because you've seen the previous two and didn't really hate them, and find that it's kind of fun. L Storm is not the best thing to come out of Hong Kong lately, but it's impressively capable, and starts off with the kind of quick, athletic chase that triggers the "oooh, I love Hong Kong" part of my movie-watching brain.
(It also kind of triggered the "I should take my next winter-months vacation there" brain, but I'm not going to lie - I probably won't for the stupid reason that I never developed a taste for veggies or noodles, don't like ordering food when I don't know exactly what's in it, but don't want to be the westerner searching HK for burgers and pizza. On the other hand, there's a London Eye-looking Ferris Wheel there and that's sort of become a thing.)
Hopefully that happens a lot the weekend of December 21st, when all three western movies for which there were previews (Aquaman, Alita: Battle Angel, and Bumblebee) open. They all look kind of pretty, and they've got people involved that catch my interest, but… meh. Meh all around. I kind of wonder how they might have scattered like rats if Disney had done the smart thing and moved Solo there. Alita probably stays in July, but the others…?
Those will look good in 3D, and I wonder how L Storm would have looked that way. I think it was actually shot with a 3D rig - maybe the credits for stereo conversion were all in Chinese, but you can usually see some English in the tech credits, and there was nothing stereo-related there - and there's some old-school "weirdly foregrounded objects" and other things that look like it was shot that way. We didn't get it that way here - I verified that it's 3D by doing a search and being directed to 3D showtimes in Hong Kong - although you wouldn't necessarily know if you weren't enough of a fan to notice the framing. It's interesting to me how, in a week showing the extent to which the U.S. has turned its back on the format (sub-par video releases for Return of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Found Footage 3D, some odd choices in which movies got which format in the Marvel-Imax series), even mid-tier films seem to get shot and released that way in the Chinas.
L Feng Bao (L Storm)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 August 2018 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
I don't know that L Storm is quite the improvement on its immediate predecessor that S Storm was to Z Storm, but the extent to which this series has figured out its strengths and managed to make a decent series out of corruption, inter-agency squabbling, and white-collar crime is impressive. These won't become classics, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of solid, unbloated crime at the movies.
As things start, two different law enforcement agencies are staking out the same border crossing. Chief "William" Luk Chi Lim (Louis Koo Tin-lok) of the Independent Commision Against Corruption is watching Dik Wai-kit (Michael Tse Tin-wah), a border guard suspected of taking bribes to allow smugglers through; Lau Po-kyeung (Julian Cheung Chi-lam), newly promoted to a job within the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit, is tracking Zhao Mei-xin (Sienna Li Xin-yue), who has brought a large amount of cash to be laundered by Tsui Yau-choi (Liu Kai-chi). They don't quite get in each other's way, but both get away, in part due to the intervention of Ho Tai-wo (Patrick Tam Yiu-man). Though Luk and Lau clashed on a previous case, they resolve to stay out of each other's way, but the ICAC's case is sabotaged when an accusation of corruption is leveled against Luk himself, with "L Squad" investigator Ching Tak-ming (Kevin Cheng Ka-wing) leading it and Luk's only lead to clear his name a seemingly unconnected model, Eva Ng (Sephy Tang Lai-yan).
The cop-on-the-run story is not exactly a new angle, but to watch this series is to see its utility. Louis Koo has been first-billed on all three of these movies, William Luk supposedly the central character, but neither of the previous two particularly seemed like star vehicles for him; S Storm, in particular, had him seeming almost like a guest star. From the start, Luk is leading teams, running after suspects, figuring out mysteries. It's not just his movie, but it feels a bit more focused - Luk, Ching, and Lau all have teams, some of them familiar from the previous movies for those who have seen them, but director David Lam and writers Wong Ho-wa and Ho Man-lung keep the complex story from being spread out over too many people. It's sometimes predictable, but it works.
Full review at EFC.
(It also kind of triggered the "I should take my next winter-months vacation there" brain, but I'm not going to lie - I probably won't for the stupid reason that I never developed a taste for veggies or noodles, don't like ordering food when I don't know exactly what's in it, but don't want to be the westerner searching HK for burgers and pizza. On the other hand, there's a London Eye-looking Ferris Wheel there and that's sort of become a thing.)
Hopefully that happens a lot the weekend of December 21st, when all three western movies for which there were previews (Aquaman, Alita: Battle Angel, and Bumblebee) open. They all look kind of pretty, and they've got people involved that catch my interest, but… meh. Meh all around. I kind of wonder how they might have scattered like rats if Disney had done the smart thing and moved Solo there. Alita probably stays in July, but the others…?
Those will look good in 3D, and I wonder how L Storm would have looked that way. I think it was actually shot with a 3D rig - maybe the credits for stereo conversion were all in Chinese, but you can usually see some English in the tech credits, and there was nothing stereo-related there - and there's some old-school "weirdly foregrounded objects" and other things that look like it was shot that way. We didn't get it that way here - I verified that it's 3D by doing a search and being directed to 3D showtimes in Hong Kong - although you wouldn't necessarily know if you weren't enough of a fan to notice the framing. It's interesting to me how, in a week showing the extent to which the U.S. has turned its back on the format (sub-par video releases for Return of the Creature from the Black Lagoon and Found Footage 3D, some odd choices in which movies got which format in the Marvel-Imax series), even mid-tier films seem to get shot and released that way in the Chinas.
L Feng Bao (L Storm)
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 August 2018 in AMC Boston Common #10 (first-run, DCP)
I don't know that L Storm is quite the improvement on its immediate predecessor that S Storm was to Z Storm, but the extent to which this series has figured out its strengths and managed to make a decent series out of corruption, inter-agency squabbling, and white-collar crime is impressive. These won't become classics, but there's nothing wrong with a bit of solid, unbloated crime at the movies.
As things start, two different law enforcement agencies are staking out the same border crossing. Chief "William" Luk Chi Lim (Louis Koo Tin-lok) of the Independent Commision Against Corruption is watching Dik Wai-kit (Michael Tse Tin-wah), a border guard suspected of taking bribes to allow smugglers through; Lau Po-kyeung (Julian Cheung Chi-lam), newly promoted to a job within the Joint Financial Intelligence Unit, is tracking Zhao Mei-xin (Sienna Li Xin-yue), who has brought a large amount of cash to be laundered by Tsui Yau-choi (Liu Kai-chi). They don't quite get in each other's way, but both get away, in part due to the intervention of Ho Tai-wo (Patrick Tam Yiu-man). Though Luk and Lau clashed on a previous case, they resolve to stay out of each other's way, but the ICAC's case is sabotaged when an accusation of corruption is leveled against Luk himself, with "L Squad" investigator Ching Tak-ming (Kevin Cheng Ka-wing) leading it and Luk's only lead to clear his name a seemingly unconnected model, Eva Ng (Sephy Tang Lai-yan).
The cop-on-the-run story is not exactly a new angle, but to watch this series is to see its utility. Louis Koo has been first-billed on all three of these movies, William Luk supposedly the central character, but neither of the previous two particularly seemed like star vehicles for him; S Storm, in particular, had him seeming almost like a guest star. From the start, Luk is leading teams, running after suspects, figuring out mysteries. It's not just his movie, but it feels a bit more focused - Luk, Ching, and Lau all have teams, some of them familiar from the previous movies for those who have seen them, but director David Lam and writers Wong Ho-wa and Ho Man-lung keep the complex story from being spread out over too many people. It's sometimes predictable, but it works.
Full review at EFC.
Thursday, August 30, 2018
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 31 August 2018 - 6 September 2018
Labor Day is a weird holiday weekend, in that a lot of people have time to go to the movies, something opening this weekend doesn't have this wide-open period of time to rack ticket sales up. Imax has been taking to doing special events for this weekend, and it looks like other folks have followed suit.
Mostly catching up, but also going for L Storm, Operation Finale, and probably Juliet, Naked. And, hey, Jaws. You can't go the summer without Jaws.
- This year, the places with Imax-branded screens - Jordan's Furniture, Boston Common, and Assembly Row - got started early, with the Marvel Studios 10th Anniversary series kicking off Thursday afternoon. For five days from then until Monday, they'll be showing Marvel's output in order four a day, from Iron Man to Ant-Man and the Wasp. Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday (afternoon) feature some of the bigger hits. It's a good week to abuse one's A-List membership, but also one where the three/week allowed can be expended quickly.
AMC will also be starting a month-long Harry Potter series this weekend, with two every weekend for the next four weeks. Boston Common is only place on the T where you can catch it, with Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone and Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets on Sunday afternoon.
Regal Fenway doesn't have an actual Imax-branded screen, but their RPX screen will be marathoning Lord of the Rings from Friday to Thursday, at a very affordable $5 per film. They also marathon the Conjuring movies in story order (so Annabelle: Creation/Annabelle/The Conjuring/The Conjuring 2) on Saturday ahead of Thursday's opening of The Nun. - Operation Finale, with Oscar Isaac as the Nazi hunter who tracked down Adolf Eichmann (Ben Kingsley), opened at some places Wednesday and as of this weekend is playing all over, including at the Capitol, Kendall Square, West Newton, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
There's also the pretty-good Fantasia selection Searching, which stars John Cho as a father whose daughter has gone missing and Debra Messing as the detective assigned to the case, notable in part for being presented via the screens the father uses over the course of the story. It's at Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay, Assembly Row, Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
There's also some stuff that looks like it's kind of getting dumped. Kin has a kid finding some sort of alien or top-secret government gun and creating opportunity and trouble for his ex-con brother. Surprisingly good supporting cast, at least. That plays Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay (including Imax), Revere. The Little Stranger plays the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, and Revere; it stars Domhnall Gleeson as a doctor called back to the manor where he grew up (as the child as a servant) to investigate strange goings-on with the children.
Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere on Sunday have the second of two days of 25th Anniversary screenings of Rudy on Sunday. Revere plays animated Fantasia selection Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms on Wednesday; the next night, Boston Common, Fenway, and Assembly Row show Satoshi Kon's Perfect Blue, which is a masterpiece. - It's not quite Oscar season yet, but you're starting to get the stuff that might not be all-around contenders, but look the part at least in a spot or two. That's the word on The Wife, at least, which stars Glenn Close as the self-effacing spouse of a beloved novelist (Jonathan Pryce); folks love Close but seem indifferent to the rest. It's at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, West Newton, and Kendall Square. There's also Juliet, Naked, which features Rose Byrne as a woman who becomes friends-at-least with the American musician (Ethan Hawke) her boyfriend idolizes. It's at the Coolidge, West Newton (it's actually been there for a week), Kendall Square, Boston Common and the Seaport.
The Coolidge midnights focus on revenge flicks this weekend, with Friday featuring the restored Ms. 45 while Get My Gun plays Saturday. On Monday, they mark the official end of Jaws season with the summer's last 35mm screening (including a seminar for those who choose). Tuesday has a special screening of 93Queen, a documentary about a group of Hasidic women who formed the first all-female volunteer ambulance corps in New York City. Wednesday features a 35mm print of Smiles of a Summer Night, part of the local cinemas' "Bergman 100" celebration. - Kendall Square is at least the first place in the area to get The Bookshop, which looks like it should open wider, being as it is a charming period English movie with Emily Mortimer as the new arrival in town who opens a bookstore, Patricia Clarkson as the stodgy neighbor opposed, and Bill Nighy as the wounded man who is quietly pleased at this change in his hometown. It could be more interesting than that - Isabel Coixet has an unconventional history at points - but boy, does it look like standard boutique-house fare.
They also pick up A Midsummer Night's Dream, which features Rachael Leigh Cook among others in a modern-day version of Shakespeare's play, which sometimes works, but that trailer… Yikes. - I'm not sure whether there's any logic behind the Mexican movie getting released on Labor Day weekend or whether it just worked once so Lion's Gate decided to do it every year, but this year the movie in question is Ya Veremos, with Mauricio Ochmann & Fernanda Castillo as separated parents whose son tries to pull them back together with a wish list of things to do as a family before he has risky eye surgery. It's at Boston Common and Revere.
Boston Common also has two from Hong Kong this weekend: Big Brother (Fantasia's closing night movie) features Boston's Own Donnie Yen (™ this blog) as a former soldier turned Liberal Studies teacher at his old school. It's goofy in its sincerity, but has a couple of impressive fights, with Yen making both halves work. There's also L Storm, the third in a series featuring Louis Koo as the leader of an anti-corruption squad that operates separately from the regular police.
Apple Fresh Pond still has screenings of Gold, Geetha Govindam, Kolamavu Kokila, and Lakshmi. They also have Tamil thriller Imaikkaa Nodigal Telugu film Narthanasala. Bollywood comedy Yamla Pagla Deewana Phir Se opens at Fenway. - The Brattle Theatre starts their summer calendar with a new restoration of Persona, which also kicks off the fall "Ingmar Bergman 100" program with one of his most influential films. It runs through Tuesday, but cedes the last show of the day to The Night is Short, Walk on Girl, a surreal, delightful fantasy from Masaaki Yuasa, one of my favorites from last year's Fantasia.
On Wednesday, they start their Tribute to Robby Müller, a cinematographer whose career spanned art-house to indie to Hollywood. That night's show is Dead Man, while Thursday offers a 35mm double feature of Barfly and 24 Hour Party People. - The Harvard Film Archive was dark through most of August, but there's still room for a "Cinema of Resistance" presentation on Friday, in this case Ermanno Oimi's The Tree of Wooden Clogs. Labor Day weekend is also when they have their annual marathon, and this year The Big Fight is a mostly-35mm, mostly-chronological trip through the history of boxing films: Chaplin's "The Champion" and King Vidor's The Champ from the silent era (accompanied by Bertrand Laurence), Robert Wise's The Set-Up, Walter Hill's Hard Times (digital, with Bronson & Coburn), Champion with Kirk Douglas, Requiem for a Heavyweight, and Raging Bull to finish it off
- The Museum of Fine Arts finishes their run of Ava and the "Heroic!" series with a screening of Princess Mononoke (subtitled) on Friday. Saturday marks the start of a new month and a new calendar, with documentary I, Claude Monet (Saturday/Wednesday/Thursday), a fiftieth-anniversary run of The Chronicles of Anna Magdalena Bach (Saturday/Wednesday/Thursday), Radu Judes Scarred Hearts (Sunday), and a Jump Cut presentation of Five Seasons: The Gardens of Piet Oudolf (Sunday).
- The Regent Theatre plays both programs of the New York Cat Film Festival on Thursday: "Nobody Owns a Cat" at 7:30pm and "Little Works of Art" at 9pm.
- Outdoor screenings dry up this weekend, with Joe's Free Films showing little aside from Out of Africa at the Harbor Hotel on Friday, and some stragglers on Tuesday, including the absolute final Jaws at Remnant Brewing in Somerville.
Mostly catching up, but also going for L Storm, Operation Finale, and probably Juliet, Naked. And, hey, Jaws. You can't go the summer without Jaws.
Wednesday, August 29, 2018
Fantasia 2018 Catchup 00: Summer of '84, Our House, Arizona, and What Keeps You Alive
Two days left to finish and I've already fallen behind stuff that's hitting theaters (if not around here) and streaming. Fortunately, they're all pretty good and someone else has already reviewed the one I didn't love for eFilmCritic so I can hold off on that one until it hits Boston.
I must say, I'm mildly surprised that the review for Summer of '84 got retweeted by both the lead actor and writer, when a fair chunk of my review was "I kind of hate this kid, he's the sort of self-serving little brat that grows up to write movies where he's the hero and pretty girls fall for him for no reason." I've got to tell you, I am not entirely sure whether they were just retreating any vaguely positive reference to their movie or if the movie is a lot more self-aware than I initially gave it credit for.
Stuff has always turned around fast after genre festivals - it is not doing a distributor any good sitting on their virtual shelves - but this seems like a bit more than usual, and with Fresh Pond not doing nearly as much in the way of lesser movies on screens #8-10 these days, there's not much opportunity to see them on a big screen. Fortunately, What Keeps You Alive will be hitting Brookline next week, playing the Coolidge's "After Midnite" series on the 7th & 8th of September. Hopefully, it will get some earlier shows as well, because I say only half in jest that I find the eight hours on a bus each way to Montreal much easier than trying to get back to Somerville from the Coolidge at 1:45am.
Summer of '84
* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Give the Roadkill Superstar team their due: This is the second time in a row where I've gone into one of their video-store-inspired movies skeptical but had them win me over. The initially clumsy nostalgia and self-seriousness builds to a genuinely suspenseful back half, making the movie a bit better than the stylish but empty throwback it could have been.
It opens rough, with foreboding narration by Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) about how there's a heart of darkness in suburbia. Soon, though, he's delivering newspapers to his Oregon neighborhood in the morning, hanging out with his the other neighborhood kids - Dale "Woody Woodworth" (Caleb Emery), his portly best friend, abrasive Tommy "Eats" Eaton (Judah Lewis), and slightly-nerdier-than-the-rest Curtis Farraday (Cory Gruter-Andrew) - during the day, and playing hide-and-seek with the younger kids at night. Davey's bedroom is well-placed, directly across the street from that of Nikki Kaszuba (Tiera Skovbye), so the boys spend a fair amount of time there. It's not entirely idyllic, though - the TV station where Davey's father (Jason Gray-Stanford) works is starting to use the phrase "serial killer" when talking about the number of kids who have gone missing from neighboring towns, and Davey has got the idea that it might be his neighbor, Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer). The thing is, Mr. Mackey is also a policeman, so Davey's going to have to convince his friends to investigate themselves.
Kids like Davey grow up to write movies - he likes to borrow his father's camcorder, among his other hobbies - and that very much seems to be what happened here. Maybe not, but there certainly seems to be a bit of wish-fulfillment in not just how Davey seems to be the leader of this group despite being, by all evidence, kind of a nut (even if he didn't suspect Mr. Mackey specifically, what sort of weirdo gets excited about there being a serial killer in town?), but how the cute girl across the way basically decides to drop herself into his life despite his being, as mentioned, a nut, and one who clearly spends a fair amount of time at his window with binoculars. The film strains a bit at how Davey can drag his friends into his weird obsession, but tends to land on just this side of credible. Graham Verchere is, necessary morbidity aside, able to make Davey earnest as heck, so completely convinced of his theory that the other guys might follow along so far as it looks like they might just get grounded rather than face real danger, and he's able to manage that half of the character while also finding the sweet spot where Davey is excited about Nikki's attention but not coming off as either any sort of saint or nice guy with a purpose.
Full review at EFC.
Our House
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Earlier on in this festival, I reviewed a horror remake and discovered that I had inadvertently come close enough to recreating what I had written about the original movie that I would probably get flagged as plagiarizing myself by the automated services that check for such things. I initially avoided going back to see what I wrote about Phasma Ex Machina (aka "Ghost from the Machine") out of curiosity, to see if this happens every time I see a remake where I vaguely remember watching the original, but it turns out that this one is enough its own thing to recommend on its own.
The story is still roughly the same - grad student Ethan (Thomas Mann) and his girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz) leave a family dinner early because a window opens up where they can test their wireless electricity project at the lab, which means that Ethan is not home when his parents (John Ralston & Marcia Bennett) are killed in a traffic accident. Three months later, his life is different - he's working in the local hardware store and more concerned about getting younger siblings Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer) to school in the morning than the science project gathering dust in his basement, at least until a part ordered before the tragedy arrives, and the electromagnetic field he creates potentially serving as a medium for more than just electricity.
Time flies; the film this remakes is only eight years old and parts of the script seem kind of quaint; I do believe that there is a point where one of Ethan's colleagues is recording their revolutionary wireless electricity invention with a phone that charges wirelessly. Obviously not the same thing, but it shows how fast and loose things get around the plot device - it absolutely had to be tested that night to set up later feelings of guilt, something that uses enough power to black out the city but can be run out of residential basement, especially if they turn out the lights. The film has more than a few moments where you scratch your head, wondering if these guys have ever seen a movie about machines that amplify the spiritual world and a few others that basically say "you know how this goes" as they skip into familiar territory.
Full review at EFC.
Arizona
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Arizona starts out in a smart, timely spot, taking advantage of the vast number of hollowed-out, prefabricated, unfinished developments in the Southwest to create both a memorable sense of desperation and an isolated setting, but somewhere along the way the black comedy of people unwilling to take responsibility for increasingly horrible actions and a twisted American dream becomes a standard direct-to-video thriller. Eventually, a guy chasing a woman and his daughter with a gun is just that, no matter how clever it started out.
But, back up, and meet Cassie (Rosemarie DeWitt), who is trying to sell those places despite their many shortcomings because she's six months behind on the mortgage for her own, sold to her by her boss Gary Bartha, and it's not easy to be confident about it when you might run across someone who has given in to despair during a showing. Sonny (Danny McBride), on the other hand, is less the type for despair than rage, and when his argument with Gary ends in disaster, his panic leads to him kidnapping Cassie, not taking into account that her daughter Morgan (Lolli Sorenson) will soon be home from school, or that his ex-wife might drop by, or…
The film initially presents itself as a black comedy, and a good one, something the mortgage crisis seems to bring out in people. It's the sort of thing that lets them put righteous indignation and self-destructive foolishness in the same person, and in Danny McBride, they find something close to an ideal vessel. He's got a warm, jovial presence that can shift to unhinged at the drop of a hat, and he can milk perfectly-executed moments of dumb, entitled white male privilege just enough to make sure that the audience gets the point without seeming to hit them over the head with it, even after the film has shifted to be more a chase than a comedy. Rosemarie DeWitt plays her part as a well-intentioned mirror, especially toward the beginning, more completely sympathetic but still desperate enough for the audience to believe she might completely throw in with Sonny, though she handles her earlier shift from comic to thriller well.
Full review at EFC.
What Keeps You Alive
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
I haven't perused the listings for the local LGBTQ festival as closely as I have others in recent years, but I don't recall many entries that seemed as unrepentantly pulpy as What Keeps You Alive. It doesn't exactly have main characters who just happen to be gay, but it's also not a niche film, or an introduction, or really outside of the mainstream in any way. It's just a darn good thriller that shows that everyone should watch their backs when they go out to the pretty country with the spotty cell phone reception.
That's where Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and wife Julie (Brittany Allen) are headed, to a really beautiful lake house that has been in Jackie's family for years. It's not entirely idyllic - the boathouse seems to have collapsed over the winter, for a start - but Julie is impressed, looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. She's excited to meet Sarah (Martha MacIsaac), a close friend from Jackie's childhood, and her husband Daniel (Joey Klein), although it's a little odd that Sarah called Jackie "Megan".
Writer/director Colin Minihan lets that stew for a while, letting the audience file it back in their heads as something where they are expecting another bit of related information so that when the two connect, there's that thrilling "oh, shit!" moment before things go to hell. Instead, he jumps straight to the violence, kicking things into high gear early and not leaving a whole lot to be explained. Details will be filled in, sure, but for now, it's about running, hiding, recovering from what may be the year's second-nastiest fall after the one in Revenge, and trying to out-think an exceptionally crafty opponent. It's not a completely streamlined thriller, but it doesn't waste time on building sympathy for its villain or trying to build a metaphor. It is what it is, and it's good enough at being that to not feel like it's just going through the motions.
Full review at EFC.
I must say, I'm mildly surprised that the review for Summer of '84 got retweeted by both the lead actor and writer, when a fair chunk of my review was "I kind of hate this kid, he's the sort of self-serving little brat that grows up to write movies where he's the hero and pretty girls fall for him for no reason." I've got to tell you, I am not entirely sure whether they were just retreating any vaguely positive reference to their movie or if the movie is a lot more self-aware than I initially gave it credit for.
Stuff has always turned around fast after genre festivals - it is not doing a distributor any good sitting on their virtual shelves - but this seems like a bit more than usual, and with Fresh Pond not doing nearly as much in the way of lesser movies on screens #8-10 these days, there's not much opportunity to see them on a big screen. Fortunately, What Keeps You Alive will be hitting Brookline next week, playing the Coolidge's "After Midnite" series on the 7th & 8th of September. Hopefully, it will get some earlier shows as well, because I say only half in jest that I find the eight hours on a bus each way to Montreal much easier than trying to get back to Somerville from the Coolidge at 1:45am.
Summer of '84
* * * (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Give the Roadkill Superstar team their due: This is the second time in a row where I've gone into one of their video-store-inspired movies skeptical but had them win me over. The initially clumsy nostalgia and self-seriousness builds to a genuinely suspenseful back half, making the movie a bit better than the stylish but empty throwback it could have been.
It opens rough, with foreboding narration by Davey Armstrong (Graham Verchere) about how there's a heart of darkness in suburbia. Soon, though, he's delivering newspapers to his Oregon neighborhood in the morning, hanging out with his the other neighborhood kids - Dale "Woody Woodworth" (Caleb Emery), his portly best friend, abrasive Tommy "Eats" Eaton (Judah Lewis), and slightly-nerdier-than-the-rest Curtis Farraday (Cory Gruter-Andrew) - during the day, and playing hide-and-seek with the younger kids at night. Davey's bedroom is well-placed, directly across the street from that of Nikki Kaszuba (Tiera Skovbye), so the boys spend a fair amount of time there. It's not entirely idyllic, though - the TV station where Davey's father (Jason Gray-Stanford) works is starting to use the phrase "serial killer" when talking about the number of kids who have gone missing from neighboring towns, and Davey has got the idea that it might be his neighbor, Wayne Mackey (Rich Sommer). The thing is, Mr. Mackey is also a policeman, so Davey's going to have to convince his friends to investigate themselves.
Kids like Davey grow up to write movies - he likes to borrow his father's camcorder, among his other hobbies - and that very much seems to be what happened here. Maybe not, but there certainly seems to be a bit of wish-fulfillment in not just how Davey seems to be the leader of this group despite being, by all evidence, kind of a nut (even if he didn't suspect Mr. Mackey specifically, what sort of weirdo gets excited about there being a serial killer in town?), but how the cute girl across the way basically decides to drop herself into his life despite his being, as mentioned, a nut, and one who clearly spends a fair amount of time at his window with binoculars. The film strains a bit at how Davey can drag his friends into his weird obsession, but tends to land on just this side of credible. Graham Verchere is, necessary morbidity aside, able to make Davey earnest as heck, so completely convinced of his theory that the other guys might follow along so far as it looks like they might just get grounded rather than face real danger, and he's able to manage that half of the character while also finding the sweet spot where Davey is excited about Nikki's attention but not coming off as either any sort of saint or nice guy with a purpose.
Full review at EFC.
Our House
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 22 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Earlier on in this festival, I reviewed a horror remake and discovered that I had inadvertently come close enough to recreating what I had written about the original movie that I would probably get flagged as plagiarizing myself by the automated services that check for such things. I initially avoided going back to see what I wrote about Phasma Ex Machina (aka "Ghost from the Machine") out of curiosity, to see if this happens every time I see a remake where I vaguely remember watching the original, but it turns out that this one is enough its own thing to recommend on its own.
The story is still roughly the same - grad student Ethan (Thomas Mann) and his girlfriend Hannah (Nicola Peltz) leave a family dinner early because a window opens up where they can test their wireless electricity project at the lab, which means that Ethan is not home when his parents (John Ralston & Marcia Bennett) are killed in a traffic accident. Three months later, his life is different - he's working in the local hardware store and more concerned about getting younger siblings Matt (Percy Hynes White) and Becca (Kate Moyer) to school in the morning than the science project gathering dust in his basement, at least until a part ordered before the tragedy arrives, and the electromagnetic field he creates potentially serving as a medium for more than just electricity.
Time flies; the film this remakes is only eight years old and parts of the script seem kind of quaint; I do believe that there is a point where one of Ethan's colleagues is recording their revolutionary wireless electricity invention with a phone that charges wirelessly. Obviously not the same thing, but it shows how fast and loose things get around the plot device - it absolutely had to be tested that night to set up later feelings of guilt, something that uses enough power to black out the city but can be run out of residential basement, especially if they turn out the lights. The film has more than a few moments where you scratch your head, wondering if these guys have ever seen a movie about machines that amplify the spiritual world and a few others that basically say "you know how this goes" as they skip into familiar territory.
Full review at EFC.
Arizona
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 31 July 2018 in Auditorium des Diplômés de la SGWU (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
Arizona starts out in a smart, timely spot, taking advantage of the vast number of hollowed-out, prefabricated, unfinished developments in the Southwest to create both a memorable sense of desperation and an isolated setting, but somewhere along the way the black comedy of people unwilling to take responsibility for increasingly horrible actions and a twisted American dream becomes a standard direct-to-video thriller. Eventually, a guy chasing a woman and his daughter with a gun is just that, no matter how clever it started out.
But, back up, and meet Cassie (Rosemarie DeWitt), who is trying to sell those places despite their many shortcomings because she's six months behind on the mortgage for her own, sold to her by her boss Gary Bartha, and it's not easy to be confident about it when you might run across someone who has given in to despair during a showing. Sonny (Danny McBride), on the other hand, is less the type for despair than rage, and when his argument with Gary ends in disaster, his panic leads to him kidnapping Cassie, not taking into account that her daughter Morgan (Lolli Sorenson) will soon be home from school, or that his ex-wife might drop by, or…
The film initially presents itself as a black comedy, and a good one, something the mortgage crisis seems to bring out in people. It's the sort of thing that lets them put righteous indignation and self-destructive foolishness in the same person, and in Danny McBride, they find something close to an ideal vessel. He's got a warm, jovial presence that can shift to unhinged at the drop of a hat, and he can milk perfectly-executed moments of dumb, entitled white male privilege just enough to make sure that the audience gets the point without seeming to hit them over the head with it, even after the film has shifted to be more a chase than a comedy. Rosemarie DeWitt plays her part as a well-intentioned mirror, especially toward the beginning, more completely sympathetic but still desperate enough for the audience to believe she might completely throw in with Sonny, though she handles her earlier shift from comic to thriller well.
Full review at EFC.
What Keeps You Alive
* * * (out of four)
Seen 2 August 2018 in Salle J.A. DeSève (Fantasia International Film Festival, DCP)
I haven't perused the listings for the local LGBTQ festival as closely as I have others in recent years, but I don't recall many entries that seemed as unrepentantly pulpy as What Keeps You Alive. It doesn't exactly have main characters who just happen to be gay, but it's also not a niche film, or an introduction, or really outside of the mainstream in any way. It's just a darn good thriller that shows that everyone should watch their backs when they go out to the pretty country with the spotty cell phone reception.
That's where Jackie (Hannah Emily Anderson) and wife Julie (Brittany Allen) are headed, to a really beautiful lake house that has been in Jackie's family for years. It's not entirely idyllic - the boathouse seems to have collapsed over the winter, for a start - but Julie is impressed, looking forward to a nice, relaxing weekend. She's excited to meet Sarah (Martha MacIsaac), a close friend from Jackie's childhood, and her husband Daniel (Joey Klein), although it's a little odd that Sarah called Jackie "Megan".
Writer/director Colin Minihan lets that stew for a while, letting the audience file it back in their heads as something where they are expecting another bit of related information so that when the two connect, there's that thrilling "oh, shit!" moment before things go to hell. Instead, he jumps straight to the violence, kicking things into high gear early and not leaving a whole lot to be explained. Details will be filled in, sure, but for now, it's about running, hiding, recovering from what may be the year's second-nastiest fall after the one in Revenge, and trying to out-think an exceptionally crafty opponent. It's not a completely streamlined thriller, but it doesn't waste time on building sympathy for its villain or trying to build a metaphor. It is what it is, and it's good enough at being that to not feel like it's just going through the motions.
Full review at EFC.
Tuesday, August 28, 2018
This Week in Tickets: 20 August 2018 - 26 August 2018
Late summer is for baseball, ignoring the major releases, and procrastinatnig on catching up on the stuff that's worth it.
I generally try and space my baseball games out, but sometimes they schedule the game with the Snoopy bobblehead giveaway the day before the one in my season ticket package, and what can you do then? You go to both, confident that you'll see at least one victory given how the Red Sox have rolled this year, and it suddenly becomes clear that the Indians are not just a decent team in a lousy division, but pretty good. It at least looked like they'd get back in it on Monday, but it didn't happen.
Errands to run much of the rest of the week, but I got out to Kendall Square to see Support the Girls on Friday, which meant that both going to something else during IFFBoston and hanging on to MoviePass weren't bad choices - as much as AMC's A-List started out looking like "MoviePass but limited to AMC", things have changed enough that MoviePass now seems like "A-List for Landmark". Not particularly enthused about the Chinese movie that had been advertised for months, I hit Go Brother! instead,and that was a mixed bag.
Anyway, short week, so no smaller reviews to put here. Follow my Letterboxd for more short stuff.
I generally try and space my baseball games out, but sometimes they schedule the game with the Snoopy bobblehead giveaway the day before the one in my season ticket package, and what can you do then? You go to both, confident that you'll see at least one victory given how the Red Sox have rolled this year, and it suddenly becomes clear that the Indians are not just a decent team in a lousy division, but pretty good. It at least looked like they'd get back in it on Monday, but it didn't happen.
Errands to run much of the rest of the week, but I got out to Kendall Square to see Support the Girls on Friday, which meant that both going to something else during IFFBoston and hanging on to MoviePass weren't bad choices - as much as AMC's A-List started out looking like "MoviePass but limited to AMC", things have changed enough that MoviePass now seems like "A-List for Landmark". Not particularly enthused about the Chinese movie that had been advertised for months, I hit Go Brother! instead,and that was a mixed bag.
Anyway, short week, so no smaller reviews to put here. Follow my Letterboxd for more short stuff.
Go Brother!
Part of the fun of my preferred "just in front of the moat" seats is that I'll often sit down, fiddle with my phone until the previews start, and not realize until the end of the movie that the theater actually filled in pretty well behind me, as it did here. I'm curious who and what the big draw was - I was most impressed by Zhang Zifeng but I could easily see Peng Yuchang being the sort of teen idol that pulls the young crowd in. It doesn't seem like this got the advertising that Oolong Courtyard did, but, as usual, that's from the perspective of a white guy who only finds out about most of these movies when they drop right in front of my face; for all I know, Magnum has been pushing this hard in places young Chinese-Americans would see it.
Also, half a cup of respect to them for occasionally bringing back the attached teaser - which, in the digital age, seems to mean having it actually being part of the movie's DCP files rather than a seperate file to put in the playlist. Having one made From Vegas to Macau III playing Boston seem like a bigger deal than it should have a couple years ago, and although the one on this was mostly Chinese text that I couldn't quickly pick the English out of, it looks like a new "Mr. & Mrs. ______" movie with Chapman To is coming out next month, except that I can't find anything about one and it's just been two weeks since Wong Jing's last movie. I'm curious, though, much the same way I am excited by the teasers for counterfeiting thriller Project Gutenberg. The trailer for that one doesn't give you much plot but does end with Chow Yun-fat in sunglasses lighting a cigar with a $100 bill, and I am down for that.
More than I was for this movie, although I kind of feel weird about my main complaint. It is a movie about teenagers, mostly girls, and maybe I shouldn't feel disrespected on their behalf. It feels like Shimiao should be a lot more upset about being lied to and kept in the dark, especially since this took the form of being treated badly, rather than just being grateful for her family's protective instincts. It's the sort of thing you see a lot in the sort of manga this is based off and other Chinese movies, so maybe it's just something where west and east are out of sync.
Kuai ba wo ge dai zou (Go Brother!)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 August 2018 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
The line between someone being well-intentioned and protective in a sweet way and being the same in a creepy way is not always clear, especially in movies like this one, which work by making something weird into something emotional. The makers of Go Brother! are just capable enough to make one see their characters' good intentions, but not quite able to either confront or paper over how lousy their actions can be.
There's not a jury in the world that would convict Shimiao ("Wendy" Zhang Zifeng) if she murdered her brother Shifen (Peng Yuchang) - he steals her allowance, reads her diary, resets her alarm, and then, once she's running late for school, texts her to bring the backpack he forgot at home. For all that, she still covers for him when he gets in trouble at school, but when he (and their parents) once more lets him down, this time on her birthday, she wishes that she were an only child. The next morning, things are weird - Shifen is still around, but now he's the brother to Shimiao's celebrity-obsessed best friend Miaomiao (Zhao Jinmai), pulling all the same crap on her. And while she initially doesn't miss that, how she looks at things can change when she sees them from a new perspective.
Part of that is how it throws the problems in her parents' marriage, and how Shifen is aiding his parents in hiding that from Shimiao (and later Miaomiao), into sharp focus, and the attitudes in play around that rankle. She's seventeen by the time the movie really gets going, not twelve, and Shifen can't be much more than a year older than her unless high school lasts a fair amount longer in China than it does in North America. And while it's entirely possible that Shifen being trusted more than his sister(s) with this knowledge despite his acting like an immature twit is simply a reflection of the culture, one certainly not limited to China, it's one that the filmmakers seem to buy into even when they're acknowledging that there's a point where it becomes wildly impractical. They're generally clumsy talking about divorce and blended families - enough to make me wonder if this is relatively uncharted waters in that country - but the way that the filmmakers seem determined to cast Shifen as the misunderstood hero of the tale is not ideal.
Full review at EFC.
Also, half a cup of respect to them for occasionally bringing back the attached teaser - which, in the digital age, seems to mean having it actually being part of the movie's DCP files rather than a seperate file to put in the playlist. Having one made From Vegas to Macau III playing Boston seem like a bigger deal than it should have a couple years ago, and although the one on this was mostly Chinese text that I couldn't quickly pick the English out of, it looks like a new "Mr. & Mrs. ______" movie with Chapman To is coming out next month, except that I can't find anything about one and it's just been two weeks since Wong Jing's last movie. I'm curious, though, much the same way I am excited by the teasers for counterfeiting thriller Project Gutenberg. The trailer for that one doesn't give you much plot but does end with Chow Yun-fat in sunglasses lighting a cigar with a $100 bill, and I am down for that.
More than I was for this movie, although I kind of feel weird about my main complaint. It is a movie about teenagers, mostly girls, and maybe I shouldn't feel disrespected on their behalf. It feels like Shimiao should be a lot more upset about being lied to and kept in the dark, especially since this took the form of being treated badly, rather than just being grateful for her family's protective instincts. It's the sort of thing you see a lot in the sort of manga this is based off and other Chinese movies, so maybe it's just something where west and east are out of sync.
Kuai ba wo ge dai zou (Go Brother!)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 August 2018 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
The line between someone being well-intentioned and protective in a sweet way and being the same in a creepy way is not always clear, especially in movies like this one, which work by making something weird into something emotional. The makers of Go Brother! are just capable enough to make one see their characters' good intentions, but not quite able to either confront or paper over how lousy their actions can be.
There's not a jury in the world that would convict Shimiao ("Wendy" Zhang Zifeng) if she murdered her brother Shifen (Peng Yuchang) - he steals her allowance, reads her diary, resets her alarm, and then, once she's running late for school, texts her to bring the backpack he forgot at home. For all that, she still covers for him when he gets in trouble at school, but when he (and their parents) once more lets him down, this time on her birthday, she wishes that she were an only child. The next morning, things are weird - Shifen is still around, but now he's the brother to Shimiao's celebrity-obsessed best friend Miaomiao (Zhao Jinmai), pulling all the same crap on her. And while she initially doesn't miss that, how she looks at things can change when she sees them from a new perspective.
Part of that is how it throws the problems in her parents' marriage, and how Shifen is aiding his parents in hiding that from Shimiao (and later Miaomiao), into sharp focus, and the attitudes in play around that rankle. She's seventeen by the time the movie really gets going, not twelve, and Shifen can't be much more than a year older than her unless high school lasts a fair amount longer in China than it does in North America. And while it's entirely possible that Shifen being trusted more than his sister(s) with this knowledge despite his acting like an immature twit is simply a reflection of the culture, one certainly not limited to China, it's one that the filmmakers seem to buy into even when they're acknowledging that there's a point where it becomes wildly impractical. They're generally clumsy talking about divorce and blended families - enough to make me wonder if this is relatively uncharted waters in that country - but the way that the filmmakers seem determined to cast Shifen as the misunderstood hero of the tale is not ideal.
Full review at EFC.
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