Boston Sci-fi Film Festival 2016.07: Alienation, The Phoenix Incident, and Mafia: Survival Game

Went out of order on this one, because The Phoenix Incident had a Fathom Events screening on Thursday, so I figured it would make sense to have the review out by then, as that would almost certainly be its biggest release, even if it has a regular release planned. But, no, I get emails from the PR firm handling the film saying it's embargoed. Embargoes are dumb in most situations, but this one seems even more so considering that it was already released on video in the UK (in some form).

But, anyway, enough about that...



First film on the night was Alienated, with producer Princeton Holt and writer/director Brian Ackley. I get into it a fair amount in the review, but their movie really loses me as it goes on, until I found myself really disliking it.

They seemed like nice folks; a little too fond of improv in their movie for my liking, and similarly sort of dismissing the inability to show the art which all the characters were talking about. There was also a sort of rambling talk about independent filmmaking and diversity in the industry.



Here's Keith Arem, director of The Phoenix Incident. Similarly enthusiastic, though an entertainment industry veteran (albeit from the gaming end), so he seemed more accustomed to what amounts to making a presentation. He wound up talking up unconventional distribution and the plans for an integrated app and viral content.

Then, after that, Mafia: Survival Game, which was terrible and had the second-worst projection of the festival to boot. You'd think something with a fair-sized Russian studio behind it would be able to send a DCP, even after the Friday-night debacle, rather than downloading a cruddy file to project on a substandard projector (which, again, is not the fault of the Somerville Theatre projection staff at all)..

Alienated

* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

Given the focus of the festival in question, it's not surprising that a fair number of the negative assessments of Alienated were along the lines of it barely being science fiction, but that's letting it off too easily. This movie is a chore to sit through regardless of which genre labels it is tagged with, an improvised mess that never discovers a route around its problems or a way to mask is unpleasantness compelling.

It takes place, mostly, in the home of Nate (George Katt) and Paige (Jen Burry), a couple that has been together long enough to no longer be amused by each others' quirks when not taking the other for granted. Paige is the breadwinner right now, with Nate apparently looking for work in a half-heated fashion, between posting 9/11 conspiracy theories online and working on paintings, one of which was recently given to an ex-girlfriend. It's a point of contention between them even when Paige just wants to take a bath and watch The Michael J. Fox Show after work, even if it's a rerun. Not likely, because Nate saw a UFO earlier and thinks that Paige should be a lot more interested in that.

This kind of soured-relationship movie tends to bring out one of three feelings toward its outcome in a viewer: Either you hope that the couple will work things out because there seems to be something with saving; you sadly hope they break up because, even if there's something appealing in one or both beneath the fighting, it's too far gone or some ingredient was wrong from the start; or you hope that they'll stick together because they are two genuinely miserable people and their staying together not only prevents them from spreading that may to other partners but increases the chance of a double homicide which just gets rid of them altogether. That Alienated falls into the third category is actually kind of impressive; it's easy enough to lose patience with Nate, but especially since Paige at least seems to be showing enough interest in his art for Nate's condescension to make her sympathetic, but Paige's particular flavor of passive aggression eventually becomes wearing as well.

Full review on EFC.

The Phoenix Incident

* * 1/4 (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, DCP)

I think that I vaguely recall the "Phoenix Lights" that give this film its name; at least, there was a feeling of familiarity when the footage appeared which demonstrates that filmmaker Keith Arem has either done a nice job of integrating real-world material or creating something that seems real. That's better than a lot of people making a science fiction story that fits into the real world's shadows manage, but like a lot of sci-fi looking to fit into that niche, it runs into some pretty hard limits on what it can actually accomplish.

If you don't remember the Phoenix Lights, they were a set of unusually synchronized UFOs that appeared in the sky over Phoenix, Arizona, on 13 Match 1997. Less widely-reported, the film posits, is that four young men - Glenn Lauder (Yuri Lowenthal), Ryan Stone (Troy Baker), Jacob Reynolds (Liam O'Brien), and Mitch Adams (Travis Willingham) - out four-wheeling in the desert went missing that night. Police investigations initially focused on Walton S. Grayson (Michael Adamthwaite), a local cultist/hermit, but he was never charged - perhaps because of pressure brought to bear by the Air Force.

Arem presents this as a mock documentary which incorporates a fair amount of found footage, and while this occasionally makes a film unusually compelling and gives the filmmakers an in-story reason for things to be kept hidden and excuses a few other rough edges, it's a style that has some overhead. Here, that includes a fair amount of time spent explaining that Glenn was the sort of X-Games enthusiast who built wearable cameras to capture his tricks because GoPro was not yet a thing in 1997, time spent arguing about turning the camera off, and a fair chunk of material where the unseen filmmakers hear that having your only son disappear without any sort of closure is awful from the people left behind a and get stonewalled by a fair number of bland government functionaries. When they do get information, it's because an informant shot in shadows to preserve his anonymity (something that the structure of this sort of film prevents the audience from carrying about, so it's all window-dressing) is narrating but not showing anything. Even when this sort of thing is made to look authentic enough, as is the case here, it's all material that is honestly not that important but takes up a fair amount of time.

Full review on EFC. (At least, come 6 April 2016)

Mafiya (Mafia: Survival Game)

* (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

Nearly every time I see a movie based upon a video game, I can't but help but comment about how directly translating that medium's structures and mechanisms to film creates something incredibly awkward. That is nothing, however, compared to watching Mafia: Survival Game slavishly stick to the party card game that inspired it and fundamentally miss what makes something a watchable movie.

It reimagines this game as the most popular television show in the year 2072, where 12 people - some of them prisoners who will be freed if they win - compete for a pot of a million dollars that will be split among the survivors. This is meant quite literally - at the end of every round, the participants vote, and whoever is voted off is sent into a virtual reality simulation of his or her worst fears, and if you die in that... Well, you know.

This is the point where I would normally list out those contestants, but it's very close to pointless, especially since I only managed to get eleven down while taking notes. They have, in theory, been chosen like the contestants on an actual reality show, with clashing personality types and folks with connected backstories, and there are some potentially interesting ideas in there - ballerina Maria (Natalya Rudova) competing against her stalker Ari or one of the prisoners (Artyom Suchkov) being on death row because the oligarchs convinced him to take the fall for a friend's drunk driving - but with twelve of them to cram into 96 minutes, and occasional forays into the control room with the show's creator (Viktor Verzhbitskiy) that certainly feel like Ed Harris's scenes in The Truman Show, there's just not enough time for any of them to be anything but shallow.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 11 March 2016 - 17 March 2016

It kind of looks like a fun weekend with a fair amount of off-the-beaten path stuff coming out.

• Consider 10 Cloverfield Lane, a sort of cousin the Cloverfield that sneaked onto the schedule with little fanfare before the teaser came out just a couple of months ago, and stars Mary Elizabeth Winstead as a woman who wakes up in the locked bunker of a man (John Goodman) who says the world has ended outside. Maybe the title gives a hint how, maybe it doesn't. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Jordan's (in Imax), Boston Common (including Imax), Assembly Row (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
  
  Then there's The Brothers Grimsby, with Sacha Baron Cohen and Mark Strong playing brothers separated as children, one a good-natured idiot and the other basically James Bond, who reunite at a fairly inconvenient time for the latter. It's got a fun cast but that 82-minute runtime sort of screams "cut down to fit extra showtimes in before word-of-mouth kills it", though that seems a little less common these days. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, Revere, and the SuperLux. The week's other mainstream comedy is The Perfect Match, a player-gets-played romantic comedy featuring Terrence Jenkins and Cassie Ventura. It's at Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
  
  There's also The Young Messiah, a movie about Jesus as a seven-year-old... Wait, is that really based on a novel by Anne Rice? Huh. That's at Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere; those locations, Apple Fresh Pond, and Fenway (at least) will also open Miracles from Heaven on Wednesday.
• Kendall Square, meanwhile, is the only place opening Knight of Cups this week, a much more urban art-house movie from Terrence Malick than his usual pastorals. This one stars Christian Bale as a Hollywood writer and includes Cate Blanchet, Natalie Portman, Imogen Poots, Freida Pinto, and Natalie Portman as the women in his life.
  
  They also get Embrace of the Serpent, Columbia's Oscar-nominated film about a pair of western scientists and their lifelong friendship with an Amazonian who is the last of his people. That's the thing on the official one-week calendar, although I suspect Trapped, a documentary about the fight against the attempt to crush abortion access through regulation, may have the more limited run. And speaking of limitedd runs, they will be screening Psycho-Pass: The Movie one Tuesday & Wednesday evenings; it's a follow-up movie to a popular anime series about a future where criminal intent is analyzed and squelched before it can be acted upon.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre's new release will mostly be in the screening room, because Rams, an Icelandic film about estranged brothers fighting to save their prize-winning sheep from a disease-mandated cull, is probably kind of a specialty thing. It does have some times in the GoldScreen and even Theater #2, though. They also book The Revenant for a one-week run (mostly) on their main screen, including an "Off the Couch" screening on Tuesday.
  
  Midnight on Friday & Saturday has Lady Snowblood, a classic revenge film about a woman in feudal Japan trained from birth to avenge her mother. Period revenge seems to be the theme Sunday morning as well, as this month's Goethe-Institut German film is The Dark Valley, in which a mysterious stranger is offered shelter in a secluded town for the winter, only to have the patriarch's children be murdered. That's Sunday morning; Monday night they have a 35mm presentation of Killer of Sheep that ties into the Huntington Theatre's production of How I Learned What I Learned. On Thursday, there's a "Francophonie Film Festival" presentation of Les Conquérants, a French film about two half-brothers who go in search of a relic that their father stole in order to return it to its rightful place.
• The Brattle Theatre spends most of the week celebrating film noir's 75th anniversary with Prime Noir of the 1940s, and can you blame them? It's a week full of great stuff, mostly in 35mm. Note that some of this has moved around since the schedule was printed, starting with Friday's They Live by Night, pushed up so that it can be introduced by critic A.O. Scott. The series continues with Ministry of Fear & The Big Clock on Saturday, Bogie & Bacall double feature Key Largo & To Have and Have Not on Sunday, Act of Violence & Crack-Up on Monday, Kiss of Death (DCP, moved from Friday) on Wednesday, and Thieves' Highway (DCP) & They Live By Night (replacing Force of Evil) on Thursday. There's also a Trash Night on Tuesday, although the VHS crud of the month has not been announced.
• The folks at The Harvard Film Archive are letting a Visiting Lecturer program much of their schedule for the next couple of months, and considering how iconoclastic that guy is, Guy Maddin Presents... should be a kick. This week's selections include Something Wild (Friday 7pm), Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Friday 9:15pm), On Dangerous Ground (Saturday 7pm), Hell Drivers (Saturday 9pm), and The Wind (Monday 7pm with live accompaniment by Martin Marks), all in 35mm. On Sunday, they have a different visitor, as John Gianvito visits with a massive Filipino documentary, Wake, starting at 3pm and running for about four and a half hours.
• The Museum of Fine Arts has more screenings of Theory of Obscurity: A Film about the Residents(Friday) and In the Shadow of Women (Friday/Saturday/Sunday/Wednesday/Thursday), and also starts a run of Talent Has Hunger, a documentary shot over seven years at the New England Conservatory, focusing on master cellist Paul Katz, whom the description makes sound like the opposite of JK Simmons in Whiplash. Friday night's premiere has filmmaker Josh Aronson, Katz, and a number of special guests; it also plays Saturday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday.
  
  There's also a screening of Speed Sisters, a documentary on the first all-woman car racing team in the Middle East, on Sunday with director Amber Fares on-hand. Filmmakers and others will also visit on Wednesday for "Dreaming Against the World: Mu Xin in Focus", a documentary on the oft-overlooked but courageous Chinese artist. Director Tolga Karaçelik will be on hand Thursday with Ivy, where a cargo ship's crew descends into anarchy when the owner goes bankrupt. That's opening night for the Boston Turkish Film Festival.
• Spring break has finished, so Bright Lights is back at Emerson's Paramount Theatre. This week's two free screenings are highly-awarded films: Room on Tuesday with the school's director of Violence Prevention and Response leading a discussion afterward and Tangerine with star Mya Taylor on Thursday.
• Given how well Neerja seems to be holding on at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond, I almost feel like I should check it out; maybe if it gets week five. In the meantime, they have a few other, mostly-unsubtitled (as far as I can tell) movies: Tamil romantic comedy Kadhalum Kadanthu, Tamil horror(?) anthology Aviyal, Telugu romance Kalyana Vaibhogame, Malayalam comedy Maheshinte Prathikaa.
  
  They're also doing a little more cult material, with a midnight screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday (it appears Boston Common does not have their usual Saturday screening this week) and Hedwig and the Angry Inch at 7:30pm on Thursday.
• The Somerville Theatre has the last three nights of Irish Film Festival Boston, which includes new films and retrospectives, including Michael Collins and Garage, directed by Lenny Abrahamson of Room. Between the festival and live events, they're down to three or four screens most of the week, but have one more 70mm screening of The Hateful Eight on Thursday.

My plans? A bunch of noir, 10 Cloverfield Lane, and who knows what else.

The Wave

You're expected to do a bit of outcome-based analysis with disaster movies: There's a strong "if they'd only listed to that guy, so many lives wouldn't have been lost!" undercurrent to so many of them. But this one sometimes seems to go way off in the other direction.

SPOILERS!

I mean, that bus full of people who had evacuated all dying while Idun and Sondre survive - kind of rough, right? Part of it's liking Vibeke and how that moment of her and Sondre checking each other out in the hallway seemed more genuine than a lot of films that do more, but there really is the expectation that there's some sort of karmic balance to these things, that panic will get you killed but doing the right thing, even if it doesn't save you, will let you die bravely.

The other thing about that bus: It means that the Ejikods are kind of terrible at saving anyone other than their own family, doesn't it? Kristian rescuing Anna when she was pinned between the cars was negated minutes later when he escaped from the SUV uninjured while she was killed, while everybody in the hotel Idun was evacuating, aside from the son who was skateboarding around the basement with his headphones on - right down to deliberately drowning the last one (she had reasons, but still)! The funny thing about that is, The Wave had really seemed to go out of its way to not make this a movie where a ton of people dying was okay so long as the family wound up together and past their differences, but instead, the simple fact of being family with the protagonist is all that can save you.

!SRELIOPS

I suppose that this sort of cancels out, and the end result is that these disasters are random and unsentimental. Which, on a certain level, is good - movies that reduce them to acts of god that kill thousands to teach one family a lesson, at least as far as the viewer's emotional reaction to the movie is concerned are kind of awful and encourage a really nasty sort of egocentric way of looking at the world. And yet, there's no denying that something is missing from these stories without it. It's a quandary.

Bølgen (The Wave)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 7 Match 2016 in Landmark Kendall Square #3 (first-run, DCP)

It's odd but fortunate that The Wave is getting an American theatrical release; it's the sort of international genre film that tends to go straight to video-on-demand and maybe doesn't even get a Region A Blu-ray. It's understandable, since massive destruction is the thing Hollywood does better than anyone else and there's thus little need to import more, despite the focus and specificity that something produced elsewhere can offer while still looking great on the big screen.

In this case, the place is the town of Geiranger, a scenic spot on a fjord sitting beneath the mountain Åkneset. Geologist Kristian Ejikod (Kristoffer Joner) has been part of the team monitoring the mountain for years, though he's about to take a job for an oil company in the city. On his last day, they get some odd seismic reasons which bear further investigation, because a big enough rockslide would trigger a wave that, when traveling through the narrow straits in the area, could reach a height of 80 meters when it arrives at the town ten minutes later. For reference, the hotel where Kristian's wife Idun (Ane Dahl Torp) is putting in one of her last shifts, is 1.7 meters above sea level.

There's a certain template to the disaster movie built out of how disasters often happen relatively quickly but audiences generally expect to spend more than an hour and a half in the theater once they've paid the going rate for a screen with all the relevant bells and whistles: A getting-to-know-you period establishing some sort of personal stakes, a visual-effects centerpiece, and then, unless you can afford/sell repeated aftershocks or recurrent catastrophe, the rescue of people who got trapped in a place that was momentarily safe but will now kill them slowly. You can practically set your watch to it, and either director Roar Uthaug or one of the writers was cheeky enough to actually have Kristian do so, starting a ten minute countdown as soon as he finds out that the mountain has collapsed (it's a sporty model that also indicates elevation, so we know exactly how much higher everyone has to climb while it counts down). Its not hard to guess what happens on either side of those ten minutes, either.

Full review on EFC.

Boston Sci-fi Film Festival 2016.02: Embers, Arrowhead, House of Time and Einstein's God Model

It's surprisingly peaceful to forget your phone sometimes, especially when you're spending the day at the movies just a block or two away from where you left it in your apartment. That's what I did on the second day of this festival, although it didn't actually put me or off touch with much - I had my tablet with me and the cable company's WiFi actually works fairly well in the Somerville Theatre, so I could write and look stud fairly well when need be. It just meant that there were few buzzing notifications that distracted me during the movie.

It did mean using the tablets camera during filmmaker Q&As instead of the phone's, and while they're probably exactly the same, I bet I looked like 75% more of a tool.



That's Embers director Claire Carré and co-writer Charles Spano, who made one of the niftiest small-scale indies in the festival. One thing that came through to a very impressive extent was just how much they researched the subject and made sure that what they depicted on-screen made sense in terms of what we know about memory loss and cases of people being unable to form new memories. It's the sort of thing that many filmmakers would probably be willing to let go, because why weigh down your big idea with anything having to do with neurology, but which probably gave their movie a subconscious level of realism.

They also mentioned that it was kind of an unusual shoot, taking place in three or four distinct locations - outside New York, the area around Gary, Indiana, and Poland. The latter came about kind of late in the game, with it sounding like they weren't going to show any of the film from the perspective of people with long-term memory until they found this great bunker to shoot in. Having those scenes also wound up increasing the amount of effects work done, though, both for the virtual-reality interface to Miranda's computer and when they discovered that what they thought was a simple cello piece was really hard, necessitating a body double. Aside from that, there was also a fair amount of graffiti removal done in other scenes, under the rationale that people who couldn't recall their own names probably wouldn't be tagging.

Very cool folks; here's hoping we see a lot more from them.



Here's some of the cast and crew of Einstein's God Model - co-star Mallory Bordonaro, writer/director Philip T.Johnson, co-star/producer Kenneth Hughes, and producer Craig Dow. It's not really a great movie, but it's a fair bit better than one which had its path to realization (guy loves movies but takes a different career path before putting something together) generally has. Oddly, it's got a release date listed on IMDB, which seems likely to be self-distribution or a VOD release with maybe a theater in someone's hometown.

Looking at these two visits back-to-back from much later, I'm a little more tempted to roll my eyes at the festival's participation-ribbon approach to awards, given that Einstein's God Model won "Best Science" based on name-dropping and is own claims of being based on real science. The Embers folks sure seemed to integrate more research and also showed characters trying to do actual problem-solving, whereas Embers got a "Judges' Commendation".

Next up: Skipping ahead a few days to get a review up before a movie has its one-night theatrical release.

Embers

* * * (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

The shots of present-day ruins that open Embers are a reminder of sorts that worlds end all the time, on the scale of individual hopes and dreams, though those tiny apocalypses are often part of a greater calamity. That perspective is what makes this particular movie work - it has its one great disaster, but has the curiosity to ponder all of the person-sized ones that result.

Those shots of run-down buildings soon give way to the people inside one as a guy (Jason Ritter) and a girl (Iva Gocheva) awaken with no memory, but they can speak well enough and reason that the matching handkerchiefs tired to their wrists are a symbol that they are meant to be together. Elsewhere, a young boy (Silvan Friedman) wandering alone crosses paths with an older man, at least until they encounter someone whose lack of personal history has him practically feral (Karl Glusman). James Robertson (Tucker Smallwood) is a bit more stable; he literally wrote the book on cognition before the pandemic and has devised systems to keep afloat while trying to train his memory. And in an underground bunker, Miranda (Greta Fernandez) lives with her father (Roberto Cots), regularly quizzed by a computer to make sure that she has not been affected by what happened outside seven years ago, practicing the cello, and bored out of her mind.

Amnesia as an infectious disease is not a particularly new concept, but it's rarely as well thought-out as it is in Embers, even if director Claire Carré and co-writer Charles Spano don't put all their research and backstory on the screen directly. The most intriguing idea in the film, and the one which gives it a hidden foundation, is the implication that many people knew what was coming and made what preparations they could. And while we're trained, to a certain extent, to admire the preparations of Dr. Robertson and Miranda's father for being practical and possibly clever enough to at least partially beat this disease back, the simple step taken by the young couple who guess each other's names every morning seems the most important - they probably couldn't do what those other characters did, but maybe this kept them from becoming like "Chaos" (as the raging man is listed in the credits).

Full review on EFC.

Arrowhead

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre Micro-Cinema (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

Though all independent films have to deal with the realities of building something that can potentially make its investment back, it's a little more obvious for genre films, especially science fiction. Not only does every bit of visual world-building cost, but the safest eventual market (basic cable) restricts the filmmaker by having fairly specific content and length standards. It's hard to tell what boxed Arrowhead in the most, but it leads to a film with decent ideas that can never get behind one and run with it for more than a short stretch.

It opens with a fair chunk of exposition about one general defeating another but being the sort of less-than-magnanimous victor that inspires resistance and imprisons a lot of guys in mining camps. One of them is Kye Cortland (Dan Mor), tech-savvy enough to make himself useful to the guards but loyal to the fugitive General Hatch (Mark Redpath). He escapes, naturally, but winds up stranded in an even more inhospitable planet with young biologist Tarren Hollis (Aleisha Rose). The ship's computer R33F (voice of Shaun Micallef) is sometimes helpful, but this place is as weird as it is dangerous.

That danger comes in a lot of different forms, and there are moments when the viewer will likely wish writer/director Jesse O'Brien had just picked one. As much as "what you might expect except for that one thing" often can keep a science fiction story from being much less creative than it should, not having that singular bit of mystery to focus on (our multiple mysteries that have some sort of connection), O'Brien never gets his story to build to anything or mean anything. The explanations that come at the end don't have much to do with half of what the characters have dealt with, and the challenges don't resonate with their inner conflicts. Nothing is ever pushing in the same direction.

Full review on EFC.

House of Time

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

Ambiguity is a powerful tool for filmmakers and other storytellers if they can handle the challenges of using the same material to build two opposing narratives at once, and not just because pulling it off is an impressive achievement. It engages audiences' intellects as well as their emotions, gives them something to talk about afterward, and makes things feel more sophisticated than masterfully crafted clarity. The thing to watch out for - and what makes House of Time take a hard fall - is that pursuing ambiguity can lead to paralysis, an unwillingness to do anything that might mark one path as true, making that lack of a definitive answer the entire point rather than a reason to think more about a particular subject.

It doesn't quite present itself as a puzzle from the beginning, but it comes close, quickly introducing the idea that Robert d'Eglantine (Maxime Dambrin) has invited five friends plus associate Elsa Orsic (Julie Judd) to an out-of-the-way country house on 18 May 2014 that he claims was near the site of secret SS experiments during the war that created a sort of wake that would take them back in time 70 years that night. Thinking it just a peculiar party game, the guests dress in period clothing and, sure enough, their mobile phones stop working at the appointed hour. That can be explained, especially since Robert has the resources not only for a hidden signal jammer but the other obstacles that keep them from exploring the world outside. But what of Mathilde Barthélémy (Esther Comar), an injured Resistance operative who shows up soon enough. She readily admits to having been an actress, but would she take a bullet for this sort of role?

Taken on its own, the idea that the five guests (Elsa is there to be a medic of sorts) may either have been transported back to the Second World War or be part of an elaborate and potentially sadistic bit of role-play seems like it could be entertaining and even have a philosophical bent, but for some reason, director Jonathan Helpert and writer Jean Helpert are only willing or able to push things so far. That the question is open due to the lack of knowledge rather than conflicting information isn't a cheat, but it's the less exciting way to make a movie out of the situation. It necessitates the mystery being the source of the movie's tension rather than potentially being surrounded by Nazis or the likelihood that a friend is playing a cruel joke.

Full review on EFC.

Einstein's God Model

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 February 2016 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-fi Film Festival, digital)

There's an atom-thin line between movies that separate themselves from the pack by being prepared with irreverence, eccentric characters, and black comedy and the ones that fail horribly because injecting that sort of thing into something that wants to be at least partially taken seriously is really hard to do, and I'm not quite sure which side Einstein's God Model falls on. There are moments when filmmaker Philip T. Johnson shows the wit to stand out from the large crowd of people building movies out of whatever discarded analog equipment they can find, but not as many as one might like; still, the good bits make it more memorable than a lot of the homebrew sci-fi out there.

After an opening that shows an experiment from a few years back going as badly as they usually do in this sort of prologue, we meet Brayden Taylor (Aaron Graham) and Abbey Lucey (Kirby O'Connell), a young couple sweet and likable enough that Abbey can't be long for this world. Her death seems Brayden into a downward spiral until he eventually discovers a device developed decades ago with the intent of communicating with the dead. The last scientist investigating it is dead, but his protégé Louis Masterbrook (Kenneth Hughes) is eager to insist, and he gets them in touch with Craig Leeham (Brad Norman), a medium who owes his powers to that experiment from the start.

Johnson puts a claim that this is based on "real science" and spends a lot of time name-dropping will-known physicists and inventors throughout the film, especially in a set of opening titles that will definitely amuse some in the audience, but it's likely not that much better than is typical. When you get right down to it, it's basically talking about ghosts and using lab equipment as props rather than religious or spiritual iconography. That's tricky; the best ghost stories work based more on pure emotion than mechanics, and taking a science-fictional approach inverts that, potentially pushing things too far toward procedure compared to feeling, and that's an obstacle that Einstein's God Model occasionally stumbles over, especially at the climax, when the shell game overwhelms the emotional attachment that supposedly enables it.

Full review on EFC.

Zootopia

My brother posted Friday night about seeing this in a theater with about six other people, all adults, so let me say this: I saw it in a theater packed with families and small children the way you're supposed to.

Seriously, though, I'm kind of surprised they managed to find a sparsely-attended show; I got to the 3pm one I went to at 2:30 and there were only scattered singles available (Assembly Row is a place with assigned seating) and heard that it was much the same at the 4pm Imax show already. Kids and families seem to be really enthusiastic about this, which kind of surprises me, as I didn't get much of an impression about people being hugely excited about it, although maybe hearing people with and without kids repeating the sloth bit from the trailer should have tipped me off. It looks like it's doing well enough that maybe the Imax places are having second thoughts about bumping it for 10 Cloverfield Lane next week, which looks like it won't have nearly as much monster as its cousin.

Anyway, one thing I did notice in the relativley low-key advertising leading up to it is that the Disney Feature Animation label seems to mean a lot less these days. Maybe I'm not hanging around the right places on the Internet anymore, but it seems like you never hear of a new one of these enumerated the way you used to (as in, Snow White was #1, Aladdin was #32, etc.). It's probably healthy that they're not saddled with the responsibility of being the Next Disney Animated Classic anymore - I don't know if something like Zootopia gets made rather than something trying harder to be timeless if that's the case - but I don't know that Disney on its own is necessarily considered a benchmark for quality animation any more. Pixar seems to be the gold standard, and they've earned it, but Disney seems to be roughly equal with DreamWorks now, a notch or two above Blue Sky and Illumination, and probably only ahead of Laika because those guys haven't ramped up to one movie per year.

It's cool, though - unlike when everyone was trying to have the equivalent of Disney's Feature Animation department back in the 1990s, this seems to have happened fairly organicallly. And, who knows, if there enough things as good as Tangled, Wreck-It Ralph, Frozen, and Zootopia made, maybe we weon't hae to think about the Disney legacy being handed over to Pixar or DreamWorks, but just having a down period.

As much as I like this movie, I do think that it's kind of funny that it's the second-best animated film about a city full of animal people living together (after The Boy and the Beast), and that I found myself awfully close to typing the same sentence about understanding that it makes a certain amount of sense to downplay the different sizes of the characters as things go on despite the differences in scale being a big part of what was nifty early on that I mentioned reviewing Gods of Egypt. Neither of those are things you exactly expect to be themes, you know?

Zootopia

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 Match 2016 in AMC Assembly Row #3 (first-run, RealdD 3D DCP)

The packed theater for Zootopia gives me hope that maybe, just maybe, Disney has stumbled upon something little girls like almost as much as Frozen. That's a fine movie, after all, but I suspect even those of us who like it the most (and only see their nieces every couple months or so) are ready for the little kids in their lives to move on. If this is the thing that does it, it will be a switch to something that is cute, clever, and funny.

Zootopia is a city in which "evolved" anthropomorphic mammals live together, having evolved beyond the need for the carnivorous ones to eat the others, although as Judy Hopps (voice of Ginnifer Godwin) discovers on her first day as the city's first bunny-rabbit cop - where she is put on parking duty despite her being at the top of her class - that doesn't mean that everybody entirely gets along, or that there isn't a lot of prejudice to overcome. That's part of why she promises a distraught otter (voice of Octavia Spencer) that she'll find her missing husband when everyone else seems to have other priorities, though her captain (voice of Idris Elba) says if she can't do it within 48 hours, she's off the force. That means Judy will have to enlist the help of Nick Wilde (voice of Jason Bateman), a con-man with whom she has more in common than either would like to admit, even though her parents warned her about foxes above all other predators.

There is a moral to the story that the three directors and seven or so writers credited are telling, and the adults in the audience probably won't find it terrible subtle, although they should probably remind themselves that they're not exactly the movie's primary audience. Institutional prejudice is a tough idea around which to build a movie for kids, in part for the reasons that adults don't really have a handle on dealing with it (it's even tougher to navigate the conflicting ideals of treating everyone as equals and acknowledging differences when there are animal jokes to be made), but also because the idea that the world might be stacked against them is something adults and family entertainment often attempt to shield them from; aside from kindness, it's aspirational - if those ideas aren't in a kid's head, maybe he or she is more likely to actually build a world without them. The filmmakers handle it pretty well, although when talking to kids about the subject afterwards, it's probably best to just stick to the broad strokes rather than try to find a one-to-one mapping for every bit of satire and also acknowledge that the need to have a story with surprises can undercut the theme a bit.

That story's fun, at least, especially since the filmmakers tend to use it as a framework to do lots of different things - what could very easily be a simple mystery plot takes Judy and Nick through all sorts of different environments, with a lot of what goes on being working as bite-sized bits that could probably stand on their own as comic shorts without a lot being changed, although it all comes together pretty nicely. It's not always new jokes, but everything is presented with enthusiasm and cheer that makes it easy to like.

It doesn't hurt that the world of Zootopia is visually terrific. The filmmakers have a lot of fun with scale early on, especially when a chase scene flips all the nifty examples of Judy trying to get by in places where nearly everything is made for much larger animals so that she's the giant trying not to casually wreak havoc with a misplaced paw (this gets pushed aside toward the end, and its absence is felt a bit). Aside from that, the designers and animators do a terrific job of finding an appealing middle ground where it would be easy to be pulled too far in one direction: The city feels modern but doesn't erase the characters' animal personalities, and while CGI characters are generally less stretchy and malleable than their hand-drawn cousins, they generally don't feel stiff here.

Heck, they feel lively enough that Nick and Judy have some of their funniest bits with stunned reaction shots being a counter to that. They are a delightful pair, two of many fun animals in the movie, and like the best animated characters,a result of great teamwork: Ginnifer Godwin's voice work for Judy (a near-seamless match with that of Della Saba, who voices her as a kid) is full of enthusiasm and optimism, which also seems to be Judy's natural state visually, but both sides have room for her to be pugnacious or saddened. Nick's shabby appearance despite sleek lines is a perfect match for Jason Bateman's dry sarcasm, even if they don't share much in the way of appearance. And what goes for them goes for many of the others in the film, all of whom are quickly grasped and amusing without just being one-note.

That cleverness makes Zootopia very easy to watch, especially when surrounded by kids delighted at the very cute animal characters. It's probably a little too contemporary and specific in certain ways to join the ranks of the classic Disney movies, but those traits work for it as well, and, hey, if its the one my nieces are constantly playing when it hits video in a few months, I'll be their parents will find it a nice change from princesses.

(Formerly at EFC)

Jai Gangaajal

I mentioned in the review that I was kind of surprised that this movie wasn't getting a little more notice considering star Priyanka Chopra's current high profile in the USA (and how the producers of the movie have said things along the lines about how it was a trial run or audition for Quantico, sort of easing her into the role of the tough cop), but wondered if maybe that sort of thing worked against her: It doesn't necessarily matter how much Chopra in a sexy dress makes someone's eyes pop out of their head at the Oscars or on Quantico (or the ads for it), the American audience just isn't going to be drawn to her in a subtitled movie, and it's probably not even worth the effort for the theaters showing said movie to make the attempt to reach for the crossover audience. We, as a group, can be shallow.

And, heck, I wonder if her doing so much American stuff gets her out of the eye of the Indian audience, as Apple only has it for a few shows at odd times. Which is fair; I'm pretty sure that it was me and an older Indian gentleman for me at the early show.

I did think of a couple of the Indian guys at work while watching it, though for a reason they'd probably find odd. One is at least second-generation, if not more, and was something close to offended to be told that the most popular sport in India is not cricket, or even soccer, but field hockey, a game played almost exclusively by high-school girls in America. It was a whole thing for at least the rest of the day.

So, I found myself laughing a bit more than I should have when a character was beaten half to death in this movie because the assailant did not use a baseball bat the way they might anywhere else - even in parts of the world where they don't really play baseball, goons seem to find the things, to the point where I wonder if sporting-goods stores report buyers to the police because why else would hey want it? - but with a field hockey stick. But, hey, it was just me and that other guy, who was in the last row 30 feet behind me, so nobody saw it.

Oh, and one more thing: About three of the listings for Indian movies this week had the word "goons" in the official description, which amused me because it's kind of a funny word in America, used less when you mean to indicate a real threat. It just now occurred to me that the word we're more likely to use here, "thug", might be kind of off-limits in India, even if the Thugee cult is pretty much a Western invention.

Jai Gangaajal

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 Match 2016 in Apple Cinemas Cambridge #1 (first-run, DCP)

I'm not sure how much of a coincidence it is that Priyanka Chopra's most recent Bollywood film is getting is global release on a weekend when she has a fairly high profile in the United States - she was part of the Oscar ceremonies last week and her American TV show returns to the air this weekend - but it probably doesn't hurt. Those venturing to whatever theater in their city shows Indian films as a result may find themselves a bit disappointed; Jai Gangaajal is a middle-of-the-road cop movie that has the occasional spark but could probably do with a little bit less going on over a little less time.

It starts in a reasonably promising fashion, with Bhola Nath "BN" Singh (Prakash Jha) starting a new day in a house far too nice for an honest Bankipur cop to afford and going to work to find out what MLA Babloo Pandey (Manav Kaul) needs done, pointedly making sure he had nothing to do with the hunt for a lackey wanted for kidnapping and rape. Babloo, at the moment, needs BN to help out his brother Pabloo (Ninad Kamat), currently strong-arming poor villagers and a public market off their land to make way for a power plant. BN's boss sees what's going on and decides to shake things up by resigning everybody away from their corruption centers, but a political ally of Babloo's, Minister Ramakant Chaudhari (Kiran Karmarkar) intervenes, replacing the troublesome captain with Abha Mathur (Chopra), on her first superintendent posting and whose family had received a favor or two. This does not, however, translate into her attacking her job with anything short of complete diligence.

Jai Gangaajal is described in some places as being a sequel to filmmaker Prakash Jha's 2003 film Gangaajal, but it's more a variation on the theme - both feature young superintendents given a corrupt unit and gangsters with relations in politics, but there do not appear to be any characters shared between the two. There are probably a fair number of parallels, though, because the story is fairly standard stuff, with the expected moments of intimidation, the guys at the top getting nervous more because the timing is bad than any belief that the honest cops can touch them, the expected crises of conscience. Jha spends a fair chunk of time on the set-up, making sure a fair number of names and faces are familiar before dropping Abha in the middle of it, but not creating anything really new.

Full review on EFC.

The Boy and the Beast

I'm not sure how many theaters The Boy and the Beast got into this week, but it's got to be the biggest proper release for a Japanese animated film since The Wind Rises, and the biggest for a non-Ghibli one since... Man, I can't remember the last time something like it played screens like Boston Common for an actual one-solid-week, shows-all-day booking.

And the audience was pretty good, too! Room #17 at the Common is pretty good-sized, and while I sat down front because anime audiences can be awful - in the past, I've found that they seem so used to watching pirated copies on their laptop that you got a lot more phones and talking than anywhere else - it was already pretty well-populated when I got there with many coming in during the previews and first twenty minutes of the movie. It was a good crowd, too, making me wonder if Mamoru Hosada is kind of becoming the consensus choice of the folks who loved Ghibli and Satoshi Kon.

I hope it does really well, not just because it's very good, but because Japanese pop cinema is some of the most fun in the world - every year several of my favorite things at Fantasia come from Japan, a dizzying array of adventure, action, animation, surrealism, bizarre comedy, and independent-minded drama - but the Japanese movie industry seems to persist in staying insular, making it very expensive for foreign distributors to license things while at the same time making their Region A Blu-rays too expensive to import even if they had English subtitles. As China and Korea have stepped up quick worldwide releases, Japan sometimes seems thoroughly mired in the twentieth century in terms of sharing its cinema with the world. In some ways, it's a victim of Japanese culture's own popularity - where China, Korea, and India are often marketing to expatriates in America and making speed a virtue, Japan is mostly marketing to non-Japanese-Americans here and has found the traditional foreign-film model effective.

It might be changing, though. We didn't exactly get The Boy and the Beast fast, but we got it big enough in part because theaters seem to feel Asian cinema can do okay with good targeted marketing, and the Attack on Titan movies crossed the Pacific fairly quickly, even if they mostly got limited showtimes. Maybe it won't be too much to hope for to get the new Makoto Shinkai or Terra Formars later this year!

Bakemono no ko (aka the Boy and the Beast)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 4 March 2016 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run, DCP)

I've been wrong about these things on a fairly regular basis, so I'm not going to question the American release of Mamoru Hosada's The Boy and the Beast on the same day that the Walt Disney Company puts out their own animated movie set in a city of animal people; maybe it will pick up some overflow from sold-out shows and introduce some new families to Japanese animation and one of its most exciting current filmmakers. If so, they're in for a treat; it's a terrific movie, mature but suitable for all but the youngest kids, smart and entertaining.

We're given a little background on Jutengai, a bustling city in a world of intelligent beasts connected to ours. Its Lord aims to reincarnate as a god in the next few years, and his successor will be chosen by a battle between warthog Iozen (voice of Kazuhiro Yamaji) and ursine Kumatetsu (voice of Koji Yakusho) - the former much-respected while the latter is strong but unrefined and disagreeable. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Ren (voice of Aoi Miyazaki) flees from his relatives after his mother dies, following a visiting Kumatetsu down a mysterious alley in Shibuya and to Juntengai. He becomes Kumatetsu's pupil under the name "Kyuta", although theirs is hardly a traditional teacher/student relationship. The other beasts are worried, though, as the blackness in human hearts is a well-known danger.

There's a visual reference to Moby Dick early on, and the book becomes an important touchstone later in the film, with Kaede (voice of Suzu Hirose), a bookish girl Ren meets when he is able to return to the human world, outright spelling out that it is less a battle between a man and a whale than one with himself. It's clear from the start that this is a battle that both Kumatetsu and his apprentice are fighting and one where the other can serve as an important ally. The film never suffers for wearing its heart on its sleeve like this, though; by the time Kaede says this, we've already seen how bestial Ren appeared at first and has sent Kumatetsu and Kyuta on a pilgrimage to learn what strength is.

For all that Hosada isn't ashamed to put what he's doing front and center, he's also surprisingly inventive, especially since one might expect him to stumble writing his first screenplay without usual co-writer Satoko Okudera. He deploys the image of Ren's dead mother with great care, for instance, letting the the audience feel what the loss means to him despite never actually seeing her as anything else. He goes interesting places when Ren rediscovers the human world, proving surprisingly gentle in demonstrating the pull it exerts on Ren. He telegraphs what the ultimate conflict of the story will be, but the details intrigue, and the action-filled last act, when many films would be pushing characters to emotional extremes, has a great deal of introspection and emotional connection, though not with the sort of detached philosophizing that derails many an anime.

It's a sight to see, as well. The opening sequence has Hosada having a little fun with some of the most obviously digital bits of the film, though he mostly keeps with the traditional hand-drawn look. There's a disarming simplicity to many of the designs and shots where detail is not needed, but the characters who need to be the most expressive are, and brilliantly so: Kumatetsu seldom gets twisted or distorted, but still communicates his personality most vividly through body language, while Kyuta starts out all gangly arms and messy hair but seems to stabilize as he grows, even filling out in such a way that the audience likely won't catch how smoothly an animated character can grow. One of Hosada's underrated talents is that, despite his characters often having quite simple designs, they remain easily recognizable as they age, grow, don different clothes and change hairstyles.

It's not just subtle stuff, though - though the Lord is a wise old rabbit, there's a bit of Bugs Bunny in him as he jumps from one place to another as soon as you take your eyes off him. The big action sequence in the end is impressively grand in scale without changing style too much from the rest of the movie (though Hosada does use different looks at times, especially when using surveillance cameras in the human world). There are some impressive bits of design work, such as the form that the darkness the beasts fear takes, but what's most delightful is how light on their feet characters feel during the martial-arts sequences; the natural movement seems so perfect that I'd suspect rotoscoping, except that seldom looks so smooth.

The film was presented in subtitled Japanese at my local theater, although I gather that it is playing with an English-language soundtrack at some venues; I strongly suspect that the original Japanese is preferable. Even leaving the soundtrack out of it, The Boy and the Beast is a fantastically-crafted movie, not ostentatious and with some edges left appropriately rough, but quietly near-perfect in nearly every way.

Formerly at EFC

Eddie the Eagle

This is probably a better movie than I make it sound in the review, because it's a lot easier for me to home in on why it didn't really land for me more than why it does. Sure, Taron Egerton and Hugh Jackman give amiable performances, but I don't know acting as well as story, so it's harder for me too dissect. I didn't come out of this movie grumpy or particularly feeling like it was a bad way to set the MoviePass 24-hour clock, but I didn't feel hugely impressed, either.

I wonder, a bit, whether my basic disdain for the Olympics as an organization, kicked into overdrive by the recent attempt to hold them in Boston, which would have been a terrible mess that locals would have had to pay for. The extortion and waste that goes into these things is astonishing, and when you consider how NBC has made them very difficult to enjoy as sports, or even global events, versus stories of American athletes, over what must be two decades by now... Well, it becomes hard to remember that these games were exciting during the 1980s, even if part of it was from them being a Cold War proxy. It's hard for me to get back in the mindset that the Olympics were noble and grand. Is it the same for others?

Oh, and one other thing: As an American who grew up in this time period, I can help but be disappointed that there was no reference to the Wide World of Sports opening, specifically "the agony of defeat", at all. Sure, it's a British film and story, but you'd think Jackman's made-up American trainer would mention it!

Eddie the Eagle

* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 26 February 2016 in Regal Fenway #7 (first-run, DCP)

This film starts with the customary "based upon a true story" text, although a few minutes on the Internet indicates that while, yes, a British skier by the name of Harry "Eddie" Edwards did compete in the 1988 Winter Olympics in the ski-jumping events, most of the story leading up to that in the movie is, shall we say, embellished. I almost wish they'd embellished it more; Eddie the Eagleis a smooth but rote Inspirational Sports Story, and a version that is either barbed but true-to-life or more absurdly exaggerated would certainly have been more interesting.

In this one, Eddie starts out in a leg brace but still dreams of not just being an athlete but am Olympian, although he doesn't discover what he feels is his true calling until a skiing center is built nearby. He grows to become on of Britain's top skiers, but is rejected from the 1984 team as much for his working-class background as anything else. Eddie (Taron Egerton) has barely been working with his plasterer father for days before he his upon a new plan - become a ski-jumper, which Britain hasn't had for decades. To that end, he heads to a German training camp, trying to learn by trial and error until alcoholic groundsman Bronson Peary (Hugh Jackman), a disgraced former member of the American team, ages to help the British kid train before he gets killed.

Do people still think of the Olympics as a laudable goal and institution in and of itself, rather than just the highest and most visible level of composition for certain sports surrounded by a whole mess of corruption (and, especially in America, shredded into bland TV programming)? That is certainly the impression I get of the Games, with this film's "by amateurs, we mean gentlemen" visible on the margins. I ask, because the Olympics themselves being the goal is at the core of why Eddie the Eagle often seems somewhat hollow - Eddie's goal isn't actually the drive to achieve greatness in any particular area, or to crash the party of the upper classes that have been keeping the likes of him down. It is, basically, to get on TV, and the film seldom confronts that; the nobility of chasing any dream rather than getting into the boring but practical family business is taken as a given, and it makes the signature moment that gives the film its title kind of muddled: Is just being there because you were able to find a way past the gatekeepers what we should cheer for in a sports movie, or does that undercut the ideals that made Eddie want to be an Olympian? It's a contradiction that the film never truly addresses.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 4 March 2016 - 10 March 2016

Oscars over, spring coming, it's sort of time to get back into the regular swing of things. Kind of an interesting group of stuff coming out this week.

• The biggest release, by the measure of pushing Deadpool off the Imax screens, is Disney's Zootopia, which has Ginnifer Godwin giving voice to an enthusiastic rookie police-rabbit in a city of anthropomorphic animals, with Jason Bateman as her fox partner. The trailer is super-cute, although it's weird that the movies made by Disney's main feature animation group are now sort of afterthoughts after Pixar and DreamWorks movies these days. Anyway, it's at the Capitol (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond, Belmont Studio (2D only), West Newton (2D only), Jordan's (3D Imax), Fenway (including 2D RPX matinees), Boston Common (including 3D Imax), Assembly Row (including 3D Imax), Revere (including MX4D), and the SuperLux (2D in the afternoon, 3D in the evening).
  
  There's also an exciting animated import - The Boy and the Beast, the newest from Japan's Mamoru Hosada, in which a human orphan finds himself transported to a strange alternate world populated by humanoid beasts and becomes the apprentice to one of them. Hosada is one of the best - The Girl Who Leapt through Time, Summer Wars, and Wolf Children were all varying degrees of excellent - and Boston Common is playing this film subtitled (although, since the trailer was dubbed, it might be wise to check the marquee before buying tickets to a specific show). They also keep The Mermaid around for a third week, with it also playing Revere (3D only there). Both Boston Common and Revere also get The Other Side of the Door, a horror movie featuring Sarah Wayne Callies as a grieving mother who goes to an ancient temple to say a final goodbye to her son and, obviously, does the one thing you're not supposed to do.
  
  There are also a couple movies more targeted to adults opening, most notably Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, featuring Tina Fey as a reporter whose decision to shake her life up takes her to Afghanistan. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux. Those more in the mood for a big (likely) dumb action movie can check out London Has Fallen, with Aaron Eckhart as the President and Gerard Butler as his Secret Service bodyguard smack in the middle of a plot to assassinate basically all of the world's leaders. It's at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Fenway (including evening RPX shows), Boston Common, Assembly Row, Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
  
  The Oscars also mean a few thins come back - Room arrives at Boston Common and Assembly Row (and back to a full schedule at Kendal Square), while Spotlight returns to Fenway and the SuperLux (and returns to a full-day schedule at Kendall Square and the Embassy). Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival selection The Phoenix Incident plays Thursday evening at Fenway and Revere; it's a found-footage thing that picks up a bit in the end when it stops hiding stuff.
• Filling out the schedule for award-winners means Kendall Square just opens one new movie this week, and its a bit atypical - The Wave is a big disaster movie from Norway. It takes place in a small coastal town where seismic activity means that a tsunami is coming - and also threatens to crush the town from the other side as the mountain collapses.
• I'm mildly surprised that Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond isn't giving more showtimes to Jai Gangaajal - it only plays odd days through Monday. The film stars Priyanka Chopra as a recently-promoted police officer dealing with both "very powerful goons" and corruption within the force (a lot of the descriptions for Indian movies this week reference "goons"), and you'd think this would be a bigger deal the week that Quantico returns and after she presented at the Oscars, but I almost wonder if Chopra having some American fame means she's less of a big deal for Indian audiences, while any new fans she has in America just won't seek out her Bollywood work (this was actually made just before she started Quantico). Also playing at various times: Telugu romance Kalyana Vaibhogame, Tamil action-comedy Pokkiri Raja, Malayam revenge comedy Maheshinte Prathikaa, Kannada comedy 1st Rank Raju, and the third week of subtitled Hindi hijack drama Neerja.
  
  They also have a couple of special features, including a presentation of WEMF Radio on Wednesday night. The main feature is The Mayor of Rock n' Roll, directed by local Mark Phinney (who got a fair amount of praise for his previous film Fat) and written by star/musician Brendan Boogie. The program also includes the station director Spo's "Thriller"-length music video "Marky Mark", as well as a number of other videos by local musicians. Then, on Thursday, they have their second Not Really "Rotten to the Core" movie, Tank Girl, which I like more than reason dictates.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre brings in the Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Language Film, Son of Saul, and your reward for waiting for this Holocaust drama is that they have wrangled a 35mm print of it - almost unheard of for a smaller/foreign film these days!
  
  They also have plenty of special events. The midnight feature on Friday & Saturday is Madman, a cult-favorite slasher from 1982. Sunday morning's Talk Cinema presentation is drone-warfare drama Eye in the Sky, which stars Helen Mirren and appears to feature Alan Rickman's final non-voiceover work, something worth acting director Gavin Hood about as he does a post-film Q&A via skype. There's Open Screen on Tuesday, and then a free GlobeDocs presentation of Jim, a documentary on war photographer James Foley, on Wednesday (RSVP required).
• The Brattle Theatre has a couple of repertory programs this week, starting with a tribute to cinematographers Haskell Wexler & Vilmos Zsigmond. It kicks off on Friday with a 35mm print of the Zsigmond-shot Close Encounters of the Third Kind, which also plays on Saturday as part of a double-feature with Wexler's Medium Cool (note that the previously scheduled movies for Saturday, McCabe & Mrs. Miller and Matewan, will not show). Sunday's double feature is The Rose, which they both worked on, and a 35mm print of Who's Afraid of Virgina Woolf?, which won Wexler his final Oscar.
  
  The weekend also includes a couple of one-off shows: A sold-out Saturday matinee of anime hit Kizumonogatari Part 1: Tekketsu, and a free Sunday screening of Rock in Reykjavik, a documentary on the Icelandic music screen that's part of the "Taste of Iceland" event, and hosted by Sigtryggur Baldursson, managing director of Iceland Music Export. The DocYard presents Democrats on Monday, with director Camilla Nielsson skyping in afterward to discuss her documentary on Zimbabwe's recent attempt to create a more democratic constitution, spearheaded by two political rivals. Then, on Tuesday, they're planning to show Cloverfield in advance of its "cousin" arriving in theaters next weekend, although it's still marked as tentative.
  
  Then, on Wednesday, they start the fourth leg of their series of series celebrating film noir's 75th anniversary by jumping back in time to feature Prime Noir of the 1940s. It starts with an all-time classic, Laura, playing as a double feature with a 35mm print of Max Ophuls's The Reckless Moment. Both halves of the double feature on Thursday - The Blue Dahlia and This Gun for Hire - are not only on film, but feature the due of Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake. There's another full week of good stuff after that.
• Hey, did you see that The Somerville Theatre has quietly brought The Hateful Eight back on 70mm when they don't have some live show or special event using the main screen? It looks like the last screenings are on Sunday, so if you haven't seen it the way it's meant to be seen yet, you've got one last chance!
  
  They have no official Silents, Please program this month, but they'll have a nice substitute Saturday night with Moon of Israel, a German religious epic from 1924 that is being screened on a recently-restored 35mm print with accompaniment by Austrian pianist Gerhard Gruber. It's presented by the Jewish Arts Collaborative and Boston Jewish Film Festival. They will also play host to the Irish Film Festival Boston starting Thursday, which starts with its Best Feature winner You're Ugly Too and best short "More than God", both of which will have their directors on-hand.
• This week's David Bowie tribute presentation is at The Regent Theatre, which screens Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars on Friday and Sunday.
• The Harvard Film Archive continues its Jean Epstein retrospective with a selection of short films at 7pm Friday, The Man with the Hispano Car at 9pm that night, The Red Inn on 16mm (and with accompaniment by Jeff Rapsis) at 7pm Saturday, and, to cap things off, The Woman at the End of the World and short documentary "Brittany" at 9pm Saturday, with that double feature having no subtitles. They also conclude "Innocence Abroad" on Sunday with Three Coins in the Fountain, before welcoming Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid two present two of his films in person. Policeman plays Sunday night and The Kindergarten teacher on Monday. The Lapid films are DCP, but everything else is 35mm except where noted.
• The Museum of Fine Arts continues to show Theory of Obscurity: A Film about the Residents, with screenings on Friday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday. There are also more HD presentations of Bolshoi Ballet performances: Wozzeck (Friday with Q&A from Professor Joseph Auner and Ballets Russes Arts Initiative director Anna Weinstein; also Sunday), The Bolt (Saturday with Northeastern Professor Harlow Robinson & Weinstein), Eugene Onegin (Saturday with Weinstein), The Flames of Paris (Sunday). They will also begin a run of In the Shadow of Women on Wednesday, a French movie about romantically entangled documentary filmmakers that is a sort of throwback to the New Wave.
• Bright Lights is on spring break, but ArtsEmerson will use the Paramount's Bright Screening Room a bit. Friday night, they will present Becoming Bulletproof, a documentary about a group of actors, many disabled, who meet up to make short films every year, and follow it up with the one documented, "Bulletproof". They will also present the Black Maria Film Festival on Saturday night, a short film presentation that includes independent films from across the country.

Man, I feel behind, but I'm going to try for The Boy and the Beast, Zootopia, Son of Saul, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, The Wave, Jai Gangaajal, Moon of Israel, and some noir.

Jack of the Red Hearts

It's an odd coincidence that Boston Common has been playing a movie about autism the week after they had one about bipolar disorder, right? It's not like they're building a program - it's just the week these things had their release - but it's still an odd thing to cluster like that.

This movie mostly caught my interest because Famke Janssen was in it, although that probably should have been a warning, as she's often been the best thing in a disappointing movie. Still, it also caught my eye for being written and directed by women as well as pretty much having women and girls in nearly ever key role. Not something you should necessarily have to look for, but I'd just read a column about someone who was taking a challenge to make sure he watched an average of one film directed by a woman per week and noticing that, unless you were really searching things out as opposed to just trying to be a little more conscientious within your usual habits, it could be pretty darn difficult. I think I do a little better than others on this count, but, go on, guess which other film playing at this 19-plex could be described that way(*).

One other thing that kind of surprised me was the set of previews playing for it, almost all for animated or other kid-focused films, likely because this was a rare live-action film rated PG, even if it wasn't particularly aimed at young viewers. Before going in, I figured that there was about a 107% chance of the awful and ubiquitous Miracles from Heaven trailer being included, given how they both seem to have a sort of "screw experts, you just need a good heart to get past these very real problems" thing going on. Surprisingly not the case, so I guess even sure things sometimes don't come to pass.

Jack of the Red Hearts

* * (out of four)
Seen 28 February 2016 in AMC Boston Common #4 (first-run, DCP)

I don't know much about raising kids or autism, let alone the combination of the two, but I probably know just enough to find Jack of the Red Hearts a bit more alarming than it was perhaps meant to be. The filmmakers just don't seem to have enough darkness in their heart to be cruel to their characters or audience, even if the alternative seems to be trying to sell a good outcome that comes from bad decisions.

"Jack", in this case, is short for "Jacqueline", the name of an eighteen-year-old dropout (AnnaSophia Robb) who is already mastering the basics of con artistry and is for obvious reasons considered a bad influence on the sister still in the foster care system (Sophia Anne Caruso), even if she's not the one who gave the younger girl the nickname "Coke". Kay (Famke Jansen), on the other hand, is the mother of autistic eleven-year-old Glory (Taylor Richardson), looking to hire a companion for her daughter and go back to work. Jack waylays the actual highly-qualified caregiver and takes her place, only to find that not only is Glory a low-functioning handful without a savant upside, but there's also a cute son (Israel Broussard) who quickly develops both a crush on the supposedly mid-twenties "Donna" and suspicions that she's not what she seems.

This seems like a fairly unlikely set-up to start with - Kay and her husband Mark (Scott Cohen) seem engaged and worried enough where their daughter's care is concerned to hire someone without an interview and pay her cash under the table even if money is tight, though that's the only way this story works - and it never deals with that sensibly. Director Janet Grillo and writer Jennifer Deaton have everybody suspect far too little until something really obvious happens, and they're so intent on making a story about characters trying to overcome family challenges that they can't do anything with how Jack is being predatory, either as black comedy or just to make her inevitable growth into a less selfish person a greater accomplishment.

Full review on EFC.

(*) Kung Fu Panda 3, and it has a co-director.

Short Stuff: The 2015 Oscar-Nominated Documentary Shorts

So, by the time I finish writing this, the award will probably have been awarded. That's just how the schedule worked out here this year, but so what? Considering the material they cover, and how little other exposure they get, it's well worth being reminded that these short films exist, and that receiving these nominations gives them a bit more of a chance to be seen.

Quick links:
"Body Team 12"
"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness"
"Last Day of Freedom"
"Chau, Beyond the Lines"
"Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah"

"Body Team 12"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

America seemed to lose its collective mind over Ebola a year or two ago, and then, when it didn't prove to be the national disaster people thought. It's a real, ongoing issue in Liberia, though, and "Body Team 12" is a fine, ground-level look at the people who do the final work of collecting the bodies of the dead.

Director David Darg mostly follows Garmai Sumo, a single mother working for the Red Cross and the only woman on her Monrovia-based team. She's a personable narrator, empathetic but business-like when discussing the sobering work the team does and how it clashes with the need of the victims' families to grieve, but lively away from the job, giving the audience implicit hope that though this is a crisis, it's a surmountable one. Darg is careful to make sure this comes from Sumo naturally and without exaggeration, just as he is not particularly keen to point out just how underfunded and improvised this group is, though it's hard to miss that they're carrying bodies away in pickup tricks and re-using things that first-world countries would consider disposable even if nobody specifically mentions it.

"Body Team 12" is the shortest of the nominated films, thirteen minutes while the others all male use of close to the full forty that the category allows. That is a badge Darg should wear with honor, as his film is streamlined while still being informative, and doesn't try to force a narrative that distorts what he is trying to say. More easily-digested sort documentaries with clarity would be a welcome trend.

"A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness"

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

It's been some time since a documentary made me seethe with anger the way "A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness" did. I knew enough about the subject matter to be sure that anger was coming - it tells the story of Saba Qaiser, a 19-year-old woman who nearly fell victim to one of the over 1,000 "honor killings" that happen in Pakistan annually but managed to survive multiple bullet wounds (including one to the face) and being thrown in the river - but the kicker, that the community would pressure her to forgive the father and uncle who did it, was where the real rage showed up.

Showing something awful doesn't always provoke rage and rage itself isn't enough for a movie to be considered great, even in the documentary category, but director Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy is a great storyteller. From the very start, when Saba describes only meeting her husband through a few exchanged letters, she regularly builds her film in a way that gives those not familiar with Pakistani culture chances to be surprised and thus more engaged in learning about it but doesn't require that reaction to work. She (and editor Geof Bartz) also display a skill that is often crucial to making a good documentary but which is all too often unappreciated - they are able to work around material that they don't have, from the capture of Saba's attackers to what happens in a closed courtroom. It's good stuff to start with, but Obaid-Chinoyputs it together near-perfectly.

Much of what Obaid-Chinoy is able to do with this story would be for naught without Saba herself, of course, and she's a strong anchor for the film even when her injuries may make the audience want to look away. She's not the film's only compelling voice - the supportive detective and pro bono lawyer are important for showing that there is a solid cadre of people in Pakistan who want change, which re-frames the narrative somewhat - but her level presence on screen reminds the audience of what she went through to survive that night without framing her as strictly a victim or activist. It makes the latter moments perhaps less rawly emotional than they could be had Obaid-Chinoy taken a more strident tack - it's more deflating than crushing when things start lining up against her quest for justice - but it also allows the film to display the state of the struggle: Difficult, with a lot stacked against it, but hopefully moving in the right direction.

"Last Day of Freedom"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 21 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

It's interesting that the nominations and the choices made in assembling the nominees as a package put "A Girl in the River" right next to "Last Day of Freedom" - the righteous anger of the first serve as a direct contrast to the other's pleas for mercy and understanding. Dig a little and there is some common ground, though mainly in the broadest terms. This one, after all, tells a different story from a different direction, as narrator Bill Babbitt recounts the life of his brother Manny, teaching the gaps in and our of Manny's control that would eventually lead to his execution for murder.

"Animated documentary" sounds like an oxymoron, but filmmakers Dee Hibbert-Jones & Nomi Talisman are able to use it to get at the truth of the story Bill tells in ways traditional documentaries can't: They can show events for which no footage exists (or emphasize elements that were not central to what images there may be), or revisit locations as they were as opposed to add they are now. It allows them to build the entire half-hour film around Bill's monologue without it feeling static - not only is the style they use a bit jumpy, but his lines can become something else without a cut or a less natural-seeming visual effect. And while the fact that the Babbitts are black is at times important, it never becomes their first trait as it so often does in contemporary stories of crime and punishment, helping to give the other factors more weight.

The animation is the most obvious thing that sets this sort apart, but it would do the film a disservice to treat it as the only tool Talisman & Hibbert-Jones have in their arsenal. The animation makes it a little more difficult to see how much of Bill's story just came out in a stream of consciousness and how much was prompted in an interview and later pieced together through editing, but the the of them do well to allow a little rambling - that's how memory works - but always get back to the main thread. They do an excellent job of relating their tale's events clearly enough to reach certain conclusions, but leaving room for a little equivocation and uncertainty. Perhaps most impressively, the filmmakers wind up moving in the opposite direction as many documentarians - though it initially seems like Bill is going to be talking about the death penalty, their film soon grows into a story of multiple connected issues, but of individual people more than anything else.

"Chau, Beyond the Lines" (aka "War Within the Walls")

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 28 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

In another interesting juxtaposition (if you see what was broken up into two programs here back-to-back), both that short and "Chau, Beyond the Lines" deal with the fallout of the Vietnam War. Filmmaker Courtney March's subject initially doesn't appear to belong in Ho Chi Minh City's Lang Hao Binh Agent Orange Care Center where he has lived practically since infancy, as a close-up shows a good-looking teenager's face before other shots reveal his weak, skeletal limbs and knobby knees, and how he drags his right leg when walking in something of a crouched position. He dreams of being an artist and fashion designer, but always falls behind in an annual drawing competition at the War Remnants Museum because he is so weak physically.

Chau is, in fact, in better shape than many at the "camp", and the first act of the film seldom let's the audience forget this - it can't, as it would be difficult to frame a shot there that didn't include a child with missing limbs or an unnerving facial deformity. That Marsh will often allow the camera to linger on them or follow the activity is a shallow thing to complain about, as the world in general could probably stand more reminders of how the effects of these war crimes persist into the present, but it's not always good for the film. It focuses on the circumstances that created Chau's challenges, but not on him, most tellingly when mention is made of him having friction with the nurses but not much sign of what that means on-screen.

And while Marsh perhaps never gives a complete picture of Chau, she keeps returning to him - adding up the gaps mentioned in the film gives something like five or six years - and in that time, something resembling a story develops. It's a thin one, in some ways, but admirably focused; Marsh knew what she was driving for when cutting it, and she builds toward a modest but satisfying conclusion with relatively little bombast. The appealing characterization Chau had from the start solidifies as the audience watches him navigate the world outside the camp, and while there is sometimes a sense that the film puts too upbeat a face on something horrific, its version of Chau's story is nevertheless satisfying.

"Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah"

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 28 February 2016 at the Institute for Contemporary Art Boston (Oscar Shorts, digital)

That sort of focus is something that "Claude Lanzmann: Spectres of the Shoah" could perhaps have used more of. It feels like a DVD extra, but a making-of documentary for Shoah, a ten-hour film that was in production and the editing room for twelve years, needs something larger than a film which qualifies as a short subject, especially if it has vague ideas about covering the director as well. This needs to be a feature or home in on some specific aspect of its subject.

When director Adam Benzine does concentrate on one aspect - how he got and filed interviews with various subjects, from a barber who survived the camps to a former Nazi - the film does come alive. Lanzmann may be elderly, but he is still sharp, explaining in precise detail why he made certain decisions or recalling incidents that placed him in danger. Those are more compelling moments than when he falls into the art-house French filmmaker pattern of broadly philosophical pronouncements, or when other interviewees like Max Ophuls make comments about Lanzmann having a difficult personality that are not explored at all. When Benzine has to jump around, he has a hard time going into any sort of depth.

Admittedly, my own interest in this particular film is hurt by never having seen Shoah; more than any of the other nominees, this one is almost certainly more illuminating with greater context, and perhaps ill-served by being presented alongside for other films aiming to communicate with a broad audience. It's no crime to target a relatively specific audience if the filmmaker serves them well, but I suspect that anybody who knows Shoah will enough to be interested in this short might prefer something with the room to go into greater depth.

Writing this a few days after the prize had actually been awarded to "A Girl in the River" is a bit unusual and may seem pointless to some, given how articles like this are often presented in terms of handicapping the awards race as much as considering the films themselves. It's actually somewhat freeing to do so, which isn't terribly surprising, reminding one of what Louis CK said when introducing the awards: More than anything else in the Oscars, being highlighted by a win or even a nomination in this category can potentially change someone's life, both for the filmmaker and subject, and they're works that come from a place of incredible passion (nobody is getting rich by following a disabled kids in Ho Chi Minh City for six years!). So, find this package of films wherever you can and give them a look, even if it won't help your Oscar pool at this late date.