Fantasia 2016.03 (16 July 2016): Parasyte: Part 1, Outer Limits of Animation, Terra Formars, The Master Cleanse, and Bed of the Dead

Fun day Saturday, though the type that causes delays in postings because there's a lot playing the next day as well and because I saw a lot of shorts, which kind of need to be written up pretty quick.

So let's start with that:



Sorry about that; the weird angle just wouldn't give me a good view where the lighting didn't wash out everything. It was kind of an unusual "Outer Limits of Animation" show, though, in that there usually seem to be a fair number of local people just out of college (or maybe still there) filling the roster out and showing up on stage. I wonder if more of those were folded into the local part of the festival ("Fantastique Week-end") than before.

Anyway, that guy on the left is Diego Maclean, talking about how working with composer Luigi Allemano really helped shape his animated short. Sorry about the #HorriblePhotography.

Normally, Saturday would probably be a five-movie day, but this spanned two across the street and while they might have lined up later (or earlier), I was down for both Parasyte and the big Takashi Miike presentation:





You kind of know that Takashi Miike would be a guy who wears sunglasses indoors, right?

He made the usual jokes about getting lifetime achievement awards when he figures he's still got a lot of "lifetime" in him, saying he hopes to come back for Fantasia #40 for his second. It is a little surprising to see that, for a guy who has made about a hundred movies, he's really not that old (born in 1960), and is still pumping out two per year. One of the main things he talks about is not really seeing genre as a director, which I think can be a double-edged sword: He makes exciting movies that often go into unexpected places because he's not especially hung up on classification, but given that I love some genres for what they are specifically (science fiction, especially), I do worry about them getting a bit flattened.

Also: Someone told him that there are no cockroaches in Montreal, so maybe the effect of Terra Formars would be lessened. Is that true? I had never heard it before!

Yesterday's plan (because I'm a slave to a format): Parasyte Part 2, The Bacchus Lady, Bad Cat, In the Valley of Violence, and As the Gods Will.

Kiseijuu (Parasyte: Part 1)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the SGWU Alumni Aditorium (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

When I was mentioning Parasyte to a friend as something I was kind of considering skipping because these multi-part manga adaptations that are Japan's biggest blockbusters these days can eat a big chunk of the schedule. He quickly piped up that the manga was one of his favorites, so I penciled it in, not needing that hard a sale where "teenager whose right hand is a shapeshifting monster seeks to combat the monsters who control whole people" is concerned. That it's kind of a blast isn't necessarily surprising; that it's an impressive enough combination of teen angst, man-eating monsters, and cartoon slapstick to recommend it to those not necessarily enamored of that combination (depending on how good Part 2 turns out) kind of is.

The parasites don't know what they are as they hatch in the bay and come ashore in Tokyo; they're just following instincts to enter human bodies through the ear canal and, having consumed the brain and bonded with the body, feed, mainly on human beings. Shinichia Izumi (Shota Sometani) is relatively fortunate to be sleeping with earbuds in; but he can't do much aside improvise a tourniquet when the thing burrows into his hand. Soon that hand is stretching, acting on its own, manifesting eyes and a mouth, and calling itself "Migi". The fiercely pragmatic Migi (voice of Sadao Abe) isn't going to risk any harm coming to the bloodstream that brings it nutrients, but hiding it from his mother (Kimiko Yo) and lifelong friend Satomi Murano (Ai Hashimoto) is awkward, and that's before Migi starts detecting others like him, including the school's new chemistry teacher Ryoko Tamiya (Eri Fukatsu). Seeing everything as an experiment, she introduces Shinichi/Migi to two others in her network, "student" Hideo Shimada (Masahiro Higashide) and a cop who would rather Shinichi not no the name of the life he's taken over, going by "Mr. A" (Mansaku Ikeuchi) - the latter of which decides to treat Shinichi as a threat. And then--

Well, there's a lot of "and then". Though the original Parasyte was described to me as a relatively short manga, running eight volumes and not heading off on tangents like other popular Japanese comics, you can still see the serial structure in the movie, with what would have been big cliffhangers having to be resolved almost immediately and new characters and situations introduced throughout. It gives the movie an unusual ebb and flow not unlike binge-watching a TV series without episode breaks, so after about 80 minutes I found myself wondering if this was the big movie-ending cliffhanger. Screenwriter Ryota Kosawa does do a fair job of compacting it, with the only real issue being that certain things that were supposedly going on already are kind of casually introduced when the plot needs them.

Full review on EFC.

"Accidents, Bluders, and Calamities"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

The first short in the festival's annual "Au-delà de l'animation" presentation was, as we were told at the top, both a good bookend and the start of a number of themes that would carry through the block. Pop it out, though, and it's still a lot of fun, even if it does make one feel just a bit awful for laughing.

It's presented as a cautionary storybook read by a possum to his two kids, presented to us as live action with 26 CGI animals who all meet a tragic fate at the hand of the most dangerous thing in the world: Human beings. The mayhem is creative and kind of horrible, even if it does eventually lean heavily on insects enough that, by the end of the alphabet, the viewer isn't feeling too bad. Director James Cunningham does something kind of neat in that he often seems to be just shooting everyday scenes and adding the beasties in, which makes the ones where the action is a bit more elaborate even funnier because we're not really expecting the animals that have been more or less beneath human notice to have an effect on the action.

There's also some nice voice acting; Phillip Greeves has a soothing, pleasant voice that puts the audience in mind of a bedtime story despite the mayhem, while what I presume are the director's children (Drew & Eleanor Cunningham) occasionally interrupt, reminding us that, yeah, kids can enjoy nasty stuff even while still being sweet themselves. It's a bunch of funny juxtapositions, realized fairly well.

"Way of Giants"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

A big part of the credits for this short involve thanks to those who crowdfunded the musical score, and it's a good thing to point out; there's a handmade wooden flute at the center of the story, and it makes a beautiful soundtrack as crucial to the final work as the striking imagery. It feels complete, even if the silent storytelling can sometimes have the audience working a bit to tell what's going on as well as what it means to the characters.

Still, it does work when all is said and done. While it's initially a little confusing that the grandfather of a little girl who runs into the forest during her tribe's lumber harvest shares a lot of characteristics with a giant forest spirit, it also helps tie her learning about death and renewal, and how taking from the natural world can be a violent act and thus should be done with respect.

"Junction"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

A bright, candy-colored fantasy that plied audience members with temporary tattoos before the start of the block, "Junction" has writer/director Nathan Jurevicius adapting his own storybook about a family of face-changers who, by inserting a token into a slot in a mountain, see their visage changed into something else every year.

"Junction" is unapologetic digital animation, reveling in its objects' unnatural smoothness and lack of weight, often defying gravity or making something too flimsy to exist in the real world, and all the better for it; it comes across as a world of pure imagination, bolstered by sweet, enthusiastic narration. There's new imagination in every frame and a cute moment after the credits. What I particularly love is how Jurevicius plays with the human tendency to see faces in everything, making a circle of it as not only do these face-changers get heads that are shaped into other things that suggest faces, but there are plenty of faces to be found in the background. It's something we do, and it slides the idea that these illusions influence us in een while telling a fun story where those faces are very real.

"Le Bruit de Gris"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

Guys, it's a new "A Town Called Panic" short! Celebrate!

Those who are familiar with this stop-motion series likely don't need much more introduction than that; this one may be even more anarchic than usual, though, as Horse, Indian, Cowboy, and their friends go crazy creating in a plain gray lobby, only to be thwarted by a neighbor who likes things quiet and boring. They write, draw, and play music without much care - always a fun contrast to the painstaking work that goes into making it.

It's packed full of fun, and I'm now reminded that it's quite likely my nieces need to be introduced to these guys, because they're a chaotic delight.

"Journal Animé"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

More delightful chaos from France as the doodles filmmaker Donato Sansone does on top of the photos in his daily newspaper at the café take on a life of their own, giving a satirical edge to the stories within (most from late 2013) and generating general madness. It's a nifty format, and probably technically trickier than it looks giving the turning pages that aren't quite flat on the table.

I suspect that some of the gags are going to be lost on me because we only seem to hear news from France when it's a horrible tragedy, but there's something universal about taking the piss out of the official-seeming photographs that often define the news, and the quick jokes piled one on top of another, whether topical or just absurd cartooning, keep the laughs coming.

"Clouds"

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

There's an early image in Diego Maclean's "Clouds" that strikes me, in which the village's priests wear headgear that looks like fountain pens at first sight, both because it looks kind of strange and because it hints at the themes in a couple of larger ways: We see shapes that aren't necessarily there, and those elders are writing their own rules as a means of control.

They're approaching an old man whose job is to look at the clouds and draw what he sees, which will guide the sacrificial ritual performed later. It's uncomfortable as soon as the audience realizes what's going on, more so as the characters do, and Maclean subtly reinforces that what he sees is influenced in large part by what's on his mind, whether it be an obvious shape, how he's interacting with others, or his own crumbling faith.

It's quiet but pointed, and Maclean's simple linework sketches the characters quickly while making the fluffy, borderless clouds in the sky something else entirely. There's a little bit of a hiccup in the climax, but overall it's quite a beautiful little work.

"Stems"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

It's hard to believe that "Stems" is just two minutes long; writer/director Ainslie Henderson seems to look at materials for that long while talking about how he likes to make his stop-motion puppets out of found objects that had a life before he got to them, before he starts actually making them and having them come to brief life as he talks about how there's an innate sadness in stop-motion because the characters are so ephemeral.

That's fitting, though. As the film shows, these things stop living when he stops moving them bit by bit, but they create something that stakes out a place in a viewer's mind.

"Dernière Porte au Sud" ("Last Door South")

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

The conception of "The World" is one of the most immediately striking things in a short where the narrator describing it is a little boy with a second head, "Toto". It's a collection of rooms connected by corridors connected by staircases, and he's yet to explore to the end of it, though he tries, despite his similarly two-headed mother's misgivings. It's an eerie, black-and-white world where people have multiple heads, but we know right off that this boy isn't seeing the whole story.

There's tragedy to "Last Door South", born of exceptionally good intentions that never take into account that curiosity will quickly outstrip the limits necessary for a deception to take, although writer/director Sacha Frenier does a fine job of building that up, using the stop-motion animation to craft characters and situations that tell us we don't know some of the rules of how this story's world works while making sure that all the character work is crystal clear.

"Un Plan d'Enfer"

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

Huh, I didn't realize that this film was from the guys that did A Cat in Paris. It, too, involves cats, following two criminals with a master plan to use catnip to lure all the cats in the neighborhood to follow them, where they will distract the guard dog allowing them to steal a fortune in gold easily.

Naturally, you don't need to speak French to see that things aren't going to go according to plan (which is good, because it ran without subtitles), but even with relatively simple art, the characters are expressive and the slapstick very funny. Filmmakers Alain Gagnol & Jean-Loup Felicioli stage a goofy robbery that moves quick and gets good laughs.

"The Loneliest Stoplight"

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

This one isn't quite as good as I remembered it being when I saw it as part of the Oscar shorts package last year. It felt a little more like Bill Plympton the second time around, knowing it was his, and is still quite charming.

Maybe this sort of sentimentality isn't quite in his wheelhouse, but there are worse things to get good at if he wants to make more with this tone.

"The Animal Book"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016: Outer Limits of Animation, video)

Initially seeming like a too-close bookend with the first in the program ("Accidents, Bluders, and Calamities") in how it bizarrely features a lot of animal death, it quickly takes a different tone, as the bloody slapstick walks a fine line between absurd and horrifying, especially since the situation causing it (a driver falling asleep at the wheel) is dangerous in its own right. Directors Cho Hyun-a and Kim Su-jeong have a simple cartooning style that also has a bit of fussiness to it offsetting the cute rounded shapes.

The final pullback is very clever, though, as Cho & Kim show that the imaginative parts were, in fact, imaginary, although representing something very real (and almost adding a bit of horror to the whole set-up as an aside). It does momentarily make for a bit of an odd situation in that it's practically screaming that it is a metaphor, but there's not much denying that it works.

Terra Formars

* * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the SGWU Alumni Auditorium (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

As much as I've been enjoying the Terra Formars manga, I readily admit that a great part of its appeal is its utter ridiculousness and over-the-top action, which is crazy enough that recent volumes have had a hard time balancing the big action with a plot, as right now the story actually has enough going on that seeing it stretch out over multiple volumes because there's so much fighting can be really frustrating. Maybe, I thought, a movie might streamline that a bit, but as much as I love Takashi Miike, he's not exactly the guy who is going to get a conventional narrative out of a sprawling manga.

He tries, though; he and screenwriter Kazuki Nakashima mainly adapt the first, most accessible volume, which is pretty much a tale of survival as opposed to one with a lot of international intrigue, and it lets him play the movie a fairly straight horror movie at times, aside from the criminals and outcasts being on a terraformed Mars and fighting giant intelligent cockroaches with bug powers of their own to call upon. It's gross and messy, but kind of enjoyably weird. For better or worse, it often feels like the sort of thing that the Sushi Typhoon guys (Noboru Iguchi, Yoshihiro Nishimura, et al) would have made if they got their hands on some real money - unrepentant in its pulpiness but kind of sloppy as well.

Part of it, I think, is that Terra Formars isn't really built around characters; it's built around fights, with a new insect form (later volumes get into other animals as well) introduced for each fight and, once we've seen it, really not needed later, so you might as well off that guy and put the focus on someone new. It gives a movie plenty of eye-popping moments, but not a lot of cohesion, and even big dumb action movies about fighting humanoid cockroaches on Mars need some of that.

The Master Cleanse

* * * (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the SGWU Alumni Auditorium (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

Bobby Miller has a pretty nifty idea here, and I suspect my biggest issues with it are along the lines of "I might have done that differently" rather than actually finding fault with what he did. Maybe that means the metaphor is working and I've just got some stuff to work on.

It is a movie, after all, about a group of people who go to a retreat to cleanse and find that what they've purged has become something living. The characters come to love the beasties, but it was expelled for a reason, so... It's one of those ideas where, yeah, you can absolutely see what's going on and how it all reflects our own inner turmoil, but when the characters are played so naturally and other bits of the plot are turning on in-universe technicalities, it's tough to overcome the desire to treat these as real things rather than metaphorical ones.

Still, that Johny Galecki and Anna Friel are so believable and easy to connect with as two individuals doing the cleanse for different reasons is not exactly a bad thing. The kind-of-nebbishy-guy/sexy-but-hurting-girl combination is a bit overused for the wrong reasons (wish fulfillment by filmmakers much closer to the first than the second), but I like the vibe they give off, with Friel's Maggie knowing that guys like Galecki's Paul often punch above their weight and really just not looking for that sort of connection at this time and place. They come together very naturally, and getting them working together like this excuses a few other issues.

"Roadside Assistance"

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, digital)

It's the old, old story - man picks up incredibly attractive hitchhiker (Kelsey Deanne), there's implications and innuendo, and then it turns violent, and by now the idea that the lady could be the dangerous one isn't even necessarily flipping the script.

It works out pretty well in this case, though - writer/director Bears Fonté gives the pair fun dialogue that has them recognizing something is up, and the revelations are just the right blend of expected and twisted. Plus, Kelsey Deanne is pretty great as the hitchhiker - she gives the character this great combination of knowing she's going to provoke a reaction with how she looks and sarcastically not putting up with it going too far. She's dangerous, and sexual, but the doesn't make the two intrinsically linked.

Bed of the Dead

N/A (out of four)
Seen 16 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

Ah, nuts - just couldn't make it through this one without a ton of five-minute micro-naps, although I don't think I was keeping anyone out of the sold-out show. The big problem is that the parts I saw were pretty good, and I really can't fit the other screening in.

It's a goofy high-concept (a bed made from a cursed tree that has found its way into a hotel of sorts) stretched out to a kind of ridiculous extent, but there's always a feeling of genuine tension and terror to it, which is not usually the case with something this weird.

Fantasia 2016.02 (15 July 2016): A Conspiracy of Faith, Heart Attack, and Rupture

Thing I didn't notice about this year's AirBNB from the listing: It has no actual desk, which is on me, but it does make both working for the day job and writing for here a little tough. Fortunately, there are two coffee tables that can be stacked one on top of the other, but I think I may actually wind up using my laptop on my lap a lot. The screwy thing is that there's an office chair here.

Today was Guillermo del Toro day, but I pretty much bailed on that - as much as his press conference and the Master Class he was giving after the screening of Creature Designers: The Frankenstein Complex (in which he's interviewed) likely would have been great, there was this cascading list of other things that wouldn't work with it. Maybe next time he's at a festival I'm attending (which, hey, could happen).

Still, his stuff did run long enough that the run from de Seve to Hall for Rupture wasn't quite necessary, and I got there in plenty of time as it started fifteen or twenty minutes late. It also mean a good Q&A with these fine gentelmen:



Left to right, there's photographer Karim Hussain, producer Andrew Lazar, co-writer/director Steven Shainberg, and festival programmer and emcee Mitch Davis, who runs a great Q&A (which is worth mentioning, because I was trapped in a lousy one a week or so ago; it's a skill). It was a fun one - from the start, I kind of suspect that Shainberg's festival experience generally hadn't included being introduced by someone quite so enthusiastic as Mitch, but he rolled with it well.

Afterward, he said that the genesis of the movie came after watching Paranormal Activity, with it initially envisioned as an alien-invasion take on that. The found-footage method fell by the wayside, but I think a fair amount of that way of thinking about the movie found its way into Brian Nelson's script - it sticks pretty close to Noomi Rapace's Renee, basically following her, even if it doesn't get tied down to a specific POV.

This also allowed Karim Hussain to do a lot of neat stuff - he apparently really likes gels and other ways of pushing color on the screen, and he talked about how there's a lot about this movie that becomes much clearer when you watch it in fast-forward, as the color pallette changes, Rapace moves to the center of the screen, and so on. A lot of that was apparently designed by Shainberg, who is one of the most prepared directors he'd ever worked with, showing up on the first day of shooting with huge binders for everyone on the crew.

I'm hoping that Shainberg, Rapace, and a pretty good supporting cast get this an actual release; it's too good not to have on, but that doesn't always matter.

Today's plan (already in progress): Parasyte Part 1, The Outer Limits of Animation, Terra Formars, The Master Cleanse, and Bed of the Dead if I get into a sold-out show.

Flaskepost fra P (A Conspiracy of Faith)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

There's something kind of strange about an ongoing mystery series about a depressed detective who investigates the most horrifying cases without being able to do much to help. Mysteries, after all, are often meant to be reassuring in some way, that order can be restored from chaos. Religion has much of the same appeal, so there's some interesting work to be done in the latest "Department Q" story, A Conspiracy of Faith, but the whole is not quite the sum of the parts here as the filmmakers poke at that idea but don't quite elevate the film above the potboiler level.

As this film opens, Assad (Fares Fares) and Rose (Johanne Louise Schmidt) are working Copenhagen's cold-case desk without lead detective Carl Mørck (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), who is on leave following another breakdown of the sort that got him assigned to Department Q in the first place. Assad brings him back in when a message in a bottle is recovered and appears to point to a pair of children who were removed from school in Ballerup eight years ago and subsequently dropped off the map. It's fortuitous that that this message has surfaced now; in the town of Skals, Elias Steensgaard (Jakob Ulrik Lohmann) and his wife Rakel (Amanda Collin) are being visited by Johannes (Pål Sverre Hagen), a preacher in their obscure religion, and while he seems nice, their daughter Magdalena (Olivia Terpet Gammelgaard) is instinctively nervous around him, even before he offers her and her brother Samuel (Jasper Friis Møller) a ride home.

Jussi Adler-Olsen's novels are meant to be thrillers more than mysteries, at least based upon the two adaptations I've seen, so it's no surprise that Johannes is up to no good, but he's never quite so interesting a villain as someone with his twisted MO of infiltrating and targeting religious communities should be, and that's the film's greatest weakness - where the previous film had an intriguingly complex backstory, Johannes is just kind of a creep whose present is never fleshed out enough to be interesting and whose past is a series of flashbacks that aren't hefty enough to offer intriguing details until the end, and not much more than a mishmash of details that have shown up in his crimes. Pål Sverre Hagen does what he can in the role - his early scenes as the clearly untrustworthy "father" are obvious, but have a good menace, and he does do a good insane rant - but this guy is just never a worthy adversary.

Full review on EFC.

Freelance: Ham puay... Ham phak... Ham rak mor (aka Heart Attack)

* * * (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

I probably should take a lesson about not getting a good night's sleep and drinking a lot of Mountain Dew Kickstart from this movie in which a freelancer's skin starts breaking out in a rash from overwork, shouldn't I? Not that I work hard, I just fill hours. Still, there might be a pretty dermatologist...

It's a nice little movie (well, not little, as the sucker's 130 minutes long) about a "live to work" type maybe learning a little restraint as not only does his body break down, but a second woman enters his life in the form of this doctor, giving him interests outside work, even as his longtime best friend who sends a lot of photo-retouch work his way is starting to build a life of her own. There are times when i think director Nawapol Thamrongrattanarit could, perhaps, have compacted it, but I think the pacing does help - we get a sense of him only seeing this new friend once a month and briefly, along with the numbing grind he subjects himself to. It's kind of a tough bit of show-don't-tell that may not work for everybody, but there's a sweetness to it, allowing for a lecture on work-life balance that seems to come from a friendly place rather than above.

Rupture

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 15 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

By dint of being far from prolific but doing something fairly different each time out, Steven Shainberg is slowly creating an intriguingly eccentric filmography, though one that has a clear personality behind it. Rupture, his first film in ten years, is every bit as peculiar and discombobulating as Secretary, but it's also an impressively intense sci-fi thriller.

As much as things seem to be fairly normal to start - we're quickly introduced to single mother Renee Morgan (Noomi Rapace) as she tries to get her son Evan (Percy Hynes White) loaded in the car for a weekend at his father's - there are early signs that things aren't right: Some of the shots of these scenes are obvious surveillance video, and not only are there people sitting in a car just down the street, but they attach some sort of device to her car. Then, once she's alone, they force her off the road and kidnap her, driving days to a facility to test the limits of her fear, apparently believing that it will produce more than screaming. She is, however, more resourceful than they expect.

Remove all the science-fictional trappings and just make the villains plain nuts, and this would still be a damn good kidnap thriller. What Shainberg sacrifices in highlighting the peculiar right away he gains in having the audience watch everything intently from the start, and he doesn't give the audience a lot of down time to introduce people and establish personalities through words, although both the ruthless, practiced efficiency of the kidnappers and Renee's dogged determination say a lot. He's aggressive in having the audience discover what's going on alongside Renee, using both the lack of information and the fragmented, bizarre pieces she does find to help share her sense of panic. A tense score and a great sound mix - doors locking and unlocking are a triple-tap instead of just a single, familiar bang - only make the atmosphere more suffocating.

Full review on EFC.

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

I will probably not do one of these every week while I'm in Montreal, but I've got material I've wanted to use all week, and it will get on the web, darn it!

• As you may know, I moved to Davis Square just over a year ago. I really like it, but one of the things nobody told me about was the marching band that performs every Sunday. As you might expect, just going from place to place, I've heard the Ghostbusters theme a lot over the past year, and I figured the Somerville Theatre would have to play the remake, what with all that free advertising to take care of - heck, have the band there all weekend, getting folks psyched up. But, no, the new version of Ghostbusters plays the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond, Jordan's (Imax 3D), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX 2D/3D), Revere (including MX4D and XPlus), and the SuperLux.
  
  I know the Somerville probably wants the big screen for Star Trek next week, but it's a missed opportunity.
  
  The only other big-ish opener is The Infiltrator, which actually started on Wednesday at Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, and Assembly Row. That one stars Bryan Cranston as an undercover agent who played a key role in busting Pablo Escobar.
  
  If you've got kids in Revere, that theater is screening Transformers: Rescue Bots: Dinobots! on Saturday and Sunday morning.
• Another small slate means more Chinese movies at Boston Common. Not only do they keep the pretty darn good Cold War 2 around, but they have another, more romantic sequel in So Young 2. When Larry Met Mary is more of a romantic comedy, following a couple that meets in kindergarten, college, and ten years later.
  
  Sultan keeps cranking for those going to Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond for Indian cinema, although they also pick up Telugu horror comedy Nayaki and continue Kannada-language Godhi Banna Sadharan, with Bengali film Family Album playing Sunday afternoon. The big deal is on Thursday, when the new Rajnikanth film, Kabali - a gangster thriller - opens in both Tamil (with English subtitles) and Telugu.
  
  Fresh Pond also has a special screening of American indie Highway to Havasu on Tuesday.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre opens Captain Fantastic (along with Kendall Square and the Coolidge), with VIggo Mortensen as a weird father who has been raising his kids in the woods away from society, an thus creates a lot of friction when they return to the city for his wife's funeral. Having seen the trailer, I am totally rooting for Frank Langella as the angry father-in-law here.
  
  Because it's late and I stink, I didn't get this written in time to mention the first of the weekend's two "Summer of Psychosis" screenings, Don't Look Now on Friday, but there's another Saturday night, Lars von Trier's Antichrist on 35mm. They'll also hae a Big Screen Classic Monday, with Paul Newman in The Hustler, and a Rewind! show of The Sandlot on Thursday.
• Because it's late and I stink, I also didn't get this up in time for the first screening of Life, Animated at Kendall Square with subjects and filmmakers and family in attendance. That was Friday evening; there will be another Saturday at 11:20am, and the film - an IFFBoston selection about a man unable to speak as a child who made progress via immersion in classic Disney animation - continues for the week. Their other new specialty documentary is Eat That Question: Frank Zappa in His Own Words, which is what it sounds like - a movie about Frank Zappa culled from thirty years of Frank Zappa interview footage. That's the one-week booking
  
  They also have The Innocents, a Polish film set at the end of World War II where a French doctor is brought into a convent to deal with a crisis - several nuns there are pregnant, further complicated by how an anti-Catholic Communist government is coming to power. It also opens in West Newton.
• It's a kung fu weekend at The Brattle Theatre, with a double feature of two restored King Hu classics, Dragon Inn and A Touch of Zen. They also start a new "Reel Weird Brattle" series celebrating another guy who changed martial-arts cinema, Jackie Chan, with his directorial debut The Young Master platying in 35mm at 11:30pm Saturday and 12:30pm Sunday.
  
  On the vertical schedule, Monday & Tuesday have director Robert Siodmak and Burt Lancaster tangling with two great femmes fatales in a double feature of Criss Cross (Yvonne de Carlo) and The Killers (Ava Gardner). Matinees on Tuesday, because Tuesday night is Trash Night, so feel free to mock Kevin Sorbo as Kull the Conqueror. Wednesday brings the start of "Under the Influence", with new films (in this case, Carol) paired with something which clearly helped make it what it is (Douglas Sirk's All That Heaven Allows). Finally, Thursday is the start of "Kids International: A GKids Retrospective", looking at some of the great animated films this offshoot of the New York Children's Film Festival (and my go-to source for getting movies for the nieces) has brought to America, starting with two by Tomm Moore, The Secret of Kells and Song of the Sea.
• They may not be showing Ghostbusters, but The Somerville Theatre did pick up Wiener-Dog second-run, and that's something. They also continue their Saturday Midnight Specials program with a 35mm print of the original Fright Night. A few stops up the 77 line, The Capitol has a second run of Genius and a Throwback Thursday show of Bring It On & Can't Hardly Wait.
• The Harvard Film Archive began a new series, Eternity and History - The Cinema of Theo Angelopoulos, on Friday with Landscape in the Mist, which at 127 minutes compares to the other two Angelopoulos films playing this week, The Traveling Players (Sunday 7pm, 230 minutes) and The Weeping Meadow (Monday 7pm, 163 minutes). That still leaves time for a fair amount of Robert Aldrich, though; 4 for Texas played Friday, while Saturday offers up Hustle and The Killing of Sister George and Sunday has three episodes of Four Star Playhouse he directed, all starring Dick Powell. Those are 16mm, everything else is 35mm.
• There's more of the Boston French Film Festival at The Museum of Fine Arts, including Bang Bang: A Modern Love Story (Saturday), Two Friends (Saturday), Dark Diamond (Sunday/Thursday), The Measure of a Man (Sunday/Wednesday), Parisienne (Sunday/Thursday), The Great Game (Wednesday), and Our Women (Thursday).
• The Boston Jewish Film Festival is doing Summer Encores at The West Newton Cinema, and they have two this week - Indignation on Sunday and Soft Vengeance on Wednesday. Apparently, Dough is still showing once a day there (although it looks to be what this bumps most of the time), with free brownies on the weekends.
• The Regent Theatre has a screening of Lazarus Rising (which apparently has won a few award at smaller action-oriented film festivals) Saturday night, with three of director John Depew's short films thrown in as a bonus.
• Outdoor moies at Joe's Boston Free Films has a few expected family films showing outdoors - Monsters Inc., Cinderella, The Good Dinosaur - but the oddball outdoor pick of the week is Cinema Somerville showing a 1903 version of Alice in Wonderland along with Fleischer Brothers Superman cartoons on Thursday.

You can see what I'm doing here, and it doesn't leave much time for new releases except on Monday, when I'll probably sneak Ghostbusters in so I can see it in 3D before it's relegated to tiny rooms when I get back.

Fantasia 2016.01 (14 July 2016): Five and Outlaws and Angels

Ah, Montreal! How I love coming here for your long, varied, entirely delightful festival every summer, even if it does involve a seven-plus-hour ride on the bus after a night when I punted preparing at a reasonable hour to see Zardoz at the Brattle and wound up with about three hours of sleep. Not the best way to do it, but I got here, into my rented apartment, and tagged with a media pass and program and ready to go.

I even had time to plot all this out:



Of course, you'll notice, I've deviated from it already; a little look at the fine print on my badge alerted me that it wasn't good for the official opening night film, King Dave, but would get me into Five. Of course, that movie had no subtitles listed, so I was prepared to bolt and see about getting something else done, even grabbing the seat where I could do that easiest. It had English, though, and it was good. King Dave, which was advertised as having subtitles, did not, so I guess I got lucky.

After that, I stuck around de Seve for Outlaws and Angels, which had been the plan. I liked that one a lot, and am now really surprised to see both that it is getting a tiny theatrical release in the USA today and a DVD release next month, although why you wouldn't put a movie that looks this great on Blu-ray as well puzzles me.

Speaking of releases, both Five and King Dave got releases in Montreal today, so I guess I could catch it sometime this week when I've got some free hours, but if it's not subbed at Fantasia, it probably won't be in random Montreal cineplexes.

But, hey, one day down. Today's plan (as you can see above): A Conspiracy of Faith, Heart Attack, and then running through the underground tunnel and hoping that Rupture starts late because those last two overlap by five minutes. Three and Antibirth are recommended.

Five

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

I'm not sure who first described sitcoms like Friends as belonging to a comedy subgenre along the lines of "young people living in downtown apartments they can't possibly afford", but the description is often apt even after making allowances for what can practically be shot. Few examples of the genre ever actually own up to that description like Five does, though, and even if it's not really a satire or parody of that kind of comedy, I wouldn't be surprised if that was where filmmaker Igor Gotesman started, with the pretty funny sequence of events on-screen following naturally even as they get out of control.

The apartment is a sweet five-bedroom in the heart of Paris, one room for each of five friends: Timothée (François Civil), a marijuana enthusiast currently on his fourth freshman year, none of them for subjects related to his natural talent in the kitchen; Nestor (Idrissa Hanrot), a grad student easily distracted by any pretty girl that comes along; Samuel (Pierre Niney), who tells his rich father that he is in medical school while really pursuing his dream of acting; Julia (Margot Bancilhon), our level-headed but sarcastic narrator; and Vadim (Igor Gotesman), her hypochondriac best friend since they were four. While the others can only afford about 500 euros per month, Sam is happy to pay the balance, but just as the others are moving in, his father finds out his son is not a doctor and cuts him off. And rather than letting the others know, he gets a new job as a restaurant's parking valet, with a sideline in weed. Of course, that is not the most stable business model. In the meantime, Tim is developing a crush on Julia, but it turns out that she and Vadim have been together for a year, and they're actually a bit worried about how to keep it secret now that they'll all be living together.

Though set up as an ensemble picture, it's Samuel's adventures in trying not to let his friends down - including acting-class mentor Madame Simone (Michèle Moretti) and potential girlfriend Maia (Lucie Boujenah) - that keeps everything moving, so it's kind of important that Pierre Niney rise to the occasion in that part, and that he does is a big part of why the movie works. Sam is introduced as kind of privileged and silly, and Niney plays him as having the sort of innocence that comes of not having heard the word "no" a lot, but he's also clearly afraid of it, so even though he's effervescent and optimistic throughout, there's something very relatable about how he deals with problems that will initially leave everybody fairly comfortable even if they're not solved. It doesn't hurt that writer/director/co-star Igor Gotesman makes sure to write Samuel as far from stupid, but actually kind of ingenious, and Niney is able to sell a lot of funny moments with that off-kilter intelligence.

Full review on EFC.

Outlaws and Angels

* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 14 July 2016 in the J.A. de Sève Theatre (Fantasia 2016, DCP)

JT Mollner's Outlaws and Angels is a blood-soaked Western that may be a little too much for some, and even those who are fond of such things may think it's a bit much, albeit for different reasons. Even if the often-ugly story gives one reservations, it's still worth checking out, especially if you're lucky enough to see it on the big screen: It's gorgeous to look at, and has a great Eastwood performance to boot (although not the guy who leaps immediately to mind when one says "western").

It doesn't quite open with a bank robbery in 1887 Cuchillo, New Mexico - no, it introduces us to a couple of innocent bystanders first, then sets a band of killers on the lam. One's shot off his horse before he even gets his mask off, and what Henry (Chad Michael Murray), Joe (Keith Loneker), Samuel (Marty Lindsey), and Charie (Nathan Russell) don't realize is that one of the customers they killed was a cop, so you best believe that the sherrif is making sure that bounty hunter and expert tracker Josiah (Luke Wilson) is on their trail. That trail is destined to intersect with the Tildon clan - preacher father George (Ben Browder), even more pious Ada (Teri Polo), and daughters Charlotte (Madisen Beaty) and Florence (Francesca Eastwood), which seems like it could be a tense place even befoe a group of murderous bank robbers shows up.

It's probably a sign of the times that there's actually a Kodak company logo among the studios and production companies (including, believe it or not, Orion Pictures) indicating that it was shot on 35mm film, as this is now something that can't exactly be assumed. It is, however, an effort and expense that a viewer should be grateful Mollner and cinematographer Matthew Irving took; the picture is gorgeous, whether it be the New Mexico scenery or the copious amounts of bright red blood that gets spilled. More than that, a large portion of the film takes place over a sleepless night when the light is mostly supplied by fires and candles, a distinctive and evocative environment that digital photography seldom captures just right.

Full review on EFC.

This Week in China: Cold War, Cold War II, and Foolish Games

On the one hand, this proved to be some good Fantasia pre-gaming, with two Chinese movies in rapid succession, with one the night before so that it was being piled on. On the other hand, it's five days later and this is just going up. I will probably be able to work a little more writing time in while actually in Montreal, if only because I won't be working so much and will have immediate purpose, but I really had planned to get more done. There's a local festival and a half I wanted to write up before getting there, but that seems impossible, even with the seven-hour bus ride to use.

Ah, well. Still, a couple of interesting things to note about the latest Hong Kong thriller to get an American release right alongside its Chinese ones:

First, Hong Kong action is the best. We all know this, I hope, but I notice something in this one that had sort of been floating in my head without necessarily connecting to anything: When there's a police pursuit going on, everybody is calling out fairly specific locations, and it strikes me that the film's entire primary audience knows where all that stuff is and can probably figure out where a chase is heading by noting what freeway people are driving on.

Obviously, I don't know to what extent the filmmakers actually prize bust their hump in terms of that sort of continuity - perhaps not at all. But I wonder. A film or TV show about New York City can fudge geography and while the locals may snicker, there's a whole lot of America that will never know. That's not the case in Hong Kong, though, and you've got to figure that changes the psychology a little, and, as a result, calls for an even greater attention to detail. It also makes Hong Kong movies some of the most intensely local films there are, no matter the genre, and you can sometimes feel that in things like the Cold War pair, which at times can seem really confusing if you don't know the HKSAR's governmental structure. What's kind of interesting is that, in all the discussion of governance and administration, there's little talk of China as a whole country; it almost plays as pre-handover story (though the term "handover" itself is used to describe potential changes in administration within the movie). What to make, then, of the characters; discussing the importance of the rule of law and accountability, and would that be the case if the movie was set in Beijing.

Which raises an interesting question that I hadn't really thought about: I had assumed that the screening I was seeing was in Cantonese, since that's what they speak in Hong Kong and the language in which the film was shot. And yet, a Facebook ad that popped up to announce the movie's expansion mentioned "Mandarin in the United States, Cantonese in Canada". Which means I probably saw it in Mandarin, which would explain a few things, like why there seemed to be weird dubbing in a scene or two, including one with Chow Yun-fat, who IIRC is much better in Cantonese than Mandarin.

I'm curious about the rationale behind that decision, though - did Chinese immigration to Canada disproportionately come from Canton compared to the United States? Do the cities where it plays up there (Toronto, Vancouver, and Ottawa) not have a lot of Chinese-Canadian people, so it's playing for guys like me who like Hong Kong cinema while the American theaters are near Chinatowns where most people speak Mandarin? I'm legitimately curious.

I should have noticed that it didn't sound hugely different from Foolish Games, which I opted to see as part of a double feature rather than screw with Red Line shuttles on Saturday or Sunday. Fun, although not quite as frenetic as the trailer made it out to be, but what comedy is? A bear of one to find documentation on, though - my usual go-to sites for movie information - IMDB, HKMDB, ChineseMov.com had almost nothing on it, and very little on any of the cast. Which again fires my curiosity - are these sites too Western-skewing to have information on movies not featuring guys with high profiles outside of China, or is this a relatively independent movie made with and by up-and-coming/unknown talent that got released in the United States on the basis of "why not?" - I know getting something onto digitally-projected screens isn't quite as simple/cheap as emailing a trailer and UPSing a hard drive to the theater, but is it cheap enough to take a flier on getting onto a few screens, especially since the folks booking American theaters may not be able to tell the difference between a Chinese blockbuster and a Chinese indie.

Someday I'm going to have to actually send out emails and really learn about the distribution of Chinese (and to a lesser extent, Korean) films in the USA. But now I'm kind of sad, wondering if it might be easier to get an independent Chinese movie into AMC multiplexes than independent American ones.

Hon zin (Cold War)

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 July 2016 in Jay's Living Room (sequel prep, Amazon HD streaming)

Several scenes in Cold War focus on a wall-sized declaration that Hong Kong is "The Safest City in Asia", which is not necessarily something that one would guess from its cinematic output: They are good at crime thrillers both because they've got some of the world's best at staging action and are not nearly as afraid of showing everybody as compromised as some of their neighbors. Leung Lok-man and Luk Kim-ching are a relatively new writing/directing team, and they made a movie that leans more on convoluted infighting than shootouts but still gets impressively tense.

As it starts, the city's police commissioner is at a conference in Copenhagen boasting about the city's crime record when a bomb explodes at a downtown cineplex and a drunk driver splits his car in half. It's the latter that may prove more dangerous - the police van sent to investigate disappears, and what looks like another bomb turns out to be a ransom demand. Deputy Commissioner of Operations M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai) is acting as commissioner, but with his son Joe (Eddie Peng Yu-yan) among the missing, Lee's opposite number in Management, Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok Fu-sing) pushes to take charge of the massive operation "Cold War" that Lee started.

The easy way to go with this movie would be a simple cat-and-mouse game between the cops and the kidnappers, maybe with some overlap if it turns out that they had an inside man. That's there, sure, but the greatest tensions are found in police headquarters; Lau and Lee are not only likely to be the top two choices as the next commissioner, but diametrically opposed in both temperament and methodology. Luk & Leung make things fairly dense from early on - the film opens with an (unsubtitled, at least on Amazon) organizational chart detailing how the HKPD is structured, and every time one of a dozen or two important characters are introduced, there's an on-screen indication of their name, rank, and specialty. Later in the movie, as it gets past the hostage situation and starts to look at the aftermath, the ICAC (more or less internal affairs) investigates Lau, bringing in another group of cops in suits. It's at around that point that the viewer might perhaps get a bit impatient; the main thrust seems both resolved and not at once. It holds together, and everything winds up connecting, but close attention needs to be paid.

Even if the viewer trips over some of the plot, he or she can certainly get the main gist of what's going on by watching the two leads. They're both scowling types in this situation, but Aaron Kwok is impressive in how he plays Lau as the straight-arrow without making the character naïve or hopelessly optimistic, and there's no denying the calculating intelligence and ambition he displays as well. Tony Leung Ka-fai, on the other hand, is playing the former street cop who, while far from stupid, tends to default to the use of force. Leung, sleek with his shaved head and trim goatee, always looks ready to charge at his problems, and it's easy to tell that while his son being one of the hostages means that his intensity is up a couple notches, he's probably like this all the time. Each excels playing off their own coterie of subordinates, but crank it up when they've got to face off, giving the impression that propriety is all that keeps them from ripping each other apart.

There's a good group around them, as well. Andy Lau is the biggest name, but he's just there for something slightly larger than a cameo as the Secretary of Security. Charlie Yeun Choi-nei plays the head of public relations, and playing against Kwok tends to keep Lau seeming reasonable. Eddie Peng and Joyce Cheng do good work to put a face on the hostages, while Aarif Lee Chi-ting enters midway through the movie but makes himself an important part of it as the pushy but dedicated corruption investigator. Andy On, Gordon Lam, and Chin Ka-lok handle a lot of the action and do so well.

Compared to some crime movies, Cold War is somewhat light on action compared to reciting regulations, but Leung & Luk don't let it become dull; they trust the audience to absorb the situation being set up and move on to the next thing, keeping pressure on by having the cast dial it up to just a few steps away from self-parody (and getting a fairly aggressive score from Peter Kam). When the action does come, though, it's good, big stuff. They're excellent at achieving clarity when cars are tailing each other or sight lines need to be established, while scenes that need to act as exclamation points don't mess around at all, especially an explosive finale.

A big hit in its native territory, the film has spawned a sequel that got a simultaneous American release, which is superior but leans on what is set up here quite a bit. Even if you're not thinking of doing a double feature, this is a pretty sharp thriller, certainly upholding the Hong Kong tradition of crime movies that hit hard and move quickly.

(Formerly at EFC)

Full review on EFC.

Hon zin II (Cold War 2)

* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2016 in AMC Boston Common #11 (first-run, DCP)

Hitting American screens the same time it premieres in Hong Kong, Cold War 2 might be a tough sell to even those looking for a different flavor of crime and action in the middle of a disappointing summer movie season: It's a Cantonese-language sequel that is fairly specific to its setting and picks up right where the first one left off, with the one actor with name recognition this side of the Pacific in something of a supporting role. But, while a little bit of catch-up viewing of the first film is advised (and not something one would likely regret), it's worth a look on its own, with a few terrific action sequence surrounded by an impressively twisty thriller.

(If you haven't seen the first, maybe skip the rest, as it's hard to describe what this one is about without referencing the other.)

When Cold War ended, the HKPD believed that they had the mastermind in custody with Deputy Commissioner (Management) Sean Lau (Aaron Kwok Fu-sing) set to become the new commissioner as both his superior and Deputy Commissioner (Operations) M.B. Lee (Tony Leung Ka-fai) take early retirement. However, not only was the stolen police van was still missing, but Lau had received a call threatening his wife (Ma Yili). Soon after the funeral of an officer who died during "Operation Cold War", she is kidnapped, with the ransom being the release of perpetrator Joe Lee (Eddie Peng Yu-yan), M.B.'s son who was, apparently, just part of a larger conspiracy. The exchange is a disaster, leading to an inquiry headed up by Representative Oswald Kan (Chow Yun-fat) - during which Lee, after meeting with former Commissioner Peter Choi (Chang Kuo-chu), accuses Lau of taking bribes.

Both Kan and Lau start their own investigations, with the former leaning on his barrister niece Isabelle Au (Janice Man Wing-san) and the latter on Billy Cheung (Aarif Lee Chi-ting), the internal affairs officer who investigated him, and while that seems like a lot of moving parts, Cold War 2 is more straightforward than its predecessor even as it scales up. The larger conspiracy revealed here gives a convoluted, dangerous plan more return, and getting a main character more directly involved keeps it from being nothing but shadows. As much as this is still a high-level game of cat-and-mouse with three or four factions working at cross-purposes, not hiding what's going on keeps things running smoothly even as returning writer/directors "Sunny" Luk Kim-ching and "Longmond" Leung Lok-man (with Jack Ng Wai-lun also contributing to the script) throw more on the pile without slowing down much.

They do still have some of the problems with overstuffing that plagued their first film, as well as the occasional thing that doesn't quite seem to match. It occasionally feels like the large cast, including many people credited as "guest stars" or "special appearances", was hard to schedule, resulting in supporting characters being shuffled in and out as needed. Given just how rigidly Lee was dedicated to the law in the first movie, the natural assumption when he is brought into the conspiracy is that he intends to bring it down, and when his actions don't necessarily line up with that, I wonder if maybe Luk & Leung could have done a little more work getting into Lee's head than just moving on to the next thing. That next thing is not always exciting, either, especially during the first half; audience members may find themselves fidgeting during a long string of scenes that are formal police and legislative procedure.

Stick it out, though, because just as that's starting to wear, one character tails another into a tunnel, and an absolutely terrific action sequence breaks out, initially paced so that the audience is getting a tingle indicating that something is going to go down even while cars just seem to be innocuously following each other, and then full of impressive choreography and stunt/effects work when that something goes down. Unlike a lot of action bits that play as ends unto themselves, the ones here are not just violent in nature but upend the story, tending to create a new status quo and emotionally fueling what comes afterward or creating a genuine sense of catharsis. Luk & Leung, along with action director Chin Ka-lok, do this so well that a little CGI that's not quite up to Hollywood standards (though not that far off) can't derail the genuine feeling of excitement.

Most of the surviving cast of characters returns, most notably the two leads, and they give the same sort of performances they did in 2012, although they're starting from a less confrontational place than they did in the first. Aaron Kwok and Tony Leung Ka-fai play Lau and Lee as a little wiser with their intensity more fired by personal concerns than the strictly professional things that fired them in the first, but they're given chances to do somewhat subtler work when the chess games start later on. The other returnees - Charlie Yeung Choi-nei, Eddie Peng Yu-nan, Aarif Lee Chi-ting - get a little more to do and manage to make their characters feel a bit more three-dimensional and less purpose-built.

There are a bunch of good new additions, too. Chang Kuo-chu pops in and establishes himself as a force to be reckoned right away, more so than Lee Waise as the actual alpha villain. The biggest, though, is Chow Yun-fat as Oswald Kan; Chow hasn't had the greatest run lately - those Man from Macau movies have not been very good, and Office had him play cold - but Oswald is a part that reminds one just how charismatic he can be even as he's being calculating, and he manages to get one of the few laughs these films allow. Janice Man Wing-san charms pretty quickly as Oswald's niece Isabelle, so it's a bit of a bummer than most of their scenes together are simple character-establishing things.

The film ends on a scene that is both more and less blatant a cliffhanger than the first had - there's room for a Cold War 3 should the box office warrant it, although it likely won't be such a direct continuation and expansion as this one. Indeed, these two films merge into one larger, possibly even better thriller, something well worth checking out even if Hong Kong action isn't always your cup of tea.

(Formerly at EFC)

Foolish Plans

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 8 July 2016 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, DCP)

"Screwball" is probably the hardest thing to pull off in the movies, and given that the phrase "foolish plans" is probably part of any definition of the genre, it's not surprising that filmmaker Jiang Tao is on the right track with his latest movie. Making the peculiar look effortless can be a tough gig, though, and it's often easy to see how Jiang and his movie are working - the film has a charm that can't be denied, even if it sometimes doesn't quite get the pacing right.

It's got three friends and roommates working as propmen on a movie - schemer Sung Da-hu (Wang Zijian), husky but good-natured Zheng Qiu (Xiu Rui), and charming but somewhat awkward Wu Chenfeng (Wang Ning). Even before producer "President" JIn is threatening to shut the production down, the three are fired for a number of screwups, and "Feng" is considering going back to his home village, where local girl Duoduo (Cya Liu Ya-se) would be willing to marry him. There's a hitch, though - Feng is already married, to Jin's last mistress Sheng Jiaoyang ("Angel" Wang Ou), a paper marriage to legitimize the baby she was carrying. Since Jin is a real heel - he sent out thugs when he noticed Zheng flirting with latest mistress Lisa (Crystal Chen Yang) - Da-hu suggests they shake him down for their back pay while Feng seeks a divorce. The trouble is, Feng is pretty taken when he meets Jiaoyang for a second time - oh, and Jin soon drops dead of a heart attack, so both the cops and his underworld partners are taking a good look at the people trying to pry what they consider their money loose from him.

There are bits of Foolish Plans that hint at a film trying a bit too hard, like the way that Feng, Zheng, and Da-hu apparently live in an apartment in the middle of a scrapyard that provides equipment they might need for building props or whatever other devices they might need later. There are also times when it struggles to find something for all three of the roommates to do - there are a few scenes toward the start about Da-hu dealing with a guy who makes restorations for museums that will only vaguely tie in with the rest of the stories, if that (this part has a fair number of on-screen graphics that don't receive even the sometimes-rough subtitling the rest of the film gets), and Zheng gets sidelined for a while with what seem like merely obligatory check-ins.

For the most part, though, it stays amiably rather than affectedly quirky. Jiang may be rushing into things to start, but once Feng and Jiaoyang meet each other for a second time, something clicks - aside from how it's surprising for being a character gleefully going off-script rather than being caught up by circumstance, it counters the cynical scheming of Da-hu with something downright charming, at least initially. It lets him create an upbeat mood that plays well against jokes about crime and possible murder, and if they don't quite come at a rapid-fire pace, they come quick enough, climaxing with a slapstick finale that, yes, uses a bunch of visual effects, but has almost everything running in the right silly direction.

The cast is fun, too. Wang Ning and Wang Ou are technically the leads as Feng and Jiaoyang, goofiness and time are apportioned among the ensemble well, and everybody gets to have some fun. Wangs Ning and Ou do have great chemistry, though, from her dismissive ignorance of him in the opening scene to cheery sparks to working at potential cross-purposes, really selling that, despite sort of being presented as the least eccentric, they're kind of weird. Xiu Rui and Wang Zijian would be comic relief characters in other movies, but just part of the gang here, and both (Xiu especially) are good at being funny on the edges while being important to the story. Xya Liu Ya-se doesn't appear as more than a photograph until halfway through, but she fits in well, even if Duoduo does bring a little drama.

Bringing in drama is kind of an issue here - at about 112 minutes long, the film is a bit flabby for a broad comedy, and never more so when it follows something really goofy with something dramatic (there's a big section I'd like to rip out of the last act, because a movie doesn't need to have both "funny" and "serious" resolutions). There are also a couple of weird tone things that may say more about the viewer than the movie, most notably that while I can easily deal with threats of murder as a way to move a comedy forward, a woman coming back from her lover with a bruised face can seem a bit much.

Foolish Plans is not a perfect screwball comedy; there might not actually be such a thing in today's naturalistic, less buttoned-down movie world. It's pretty funny with a couple of very funny moments, not a bad matinee.

(Formerly at EFC)

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

Quiet-ish weekend, which is good, because I'm heading to Montreal on Thursday. Folks, do Fantasia. It's awesome, although there's plenty good in Boston, too.

• Kind of quiet at the multiplexes, where there's a new 3D animated film for the kids: The Secret Lives of Pets comes from Illumination, the Minions guys, and has a bunch of dogs, cats, and the like banding together when one gets lost trying to get rid of his beloved owner's new shelter dog. Yeah, it's kind of Toy Story. It's at the Capitol (2D only), Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton (2D only), Boston Common, Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX 2D/3D), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
  
  More adult (or, arguably, older-skewing) material is opening in the form of Mike and Dave Need Wedding Dates, with Zac Efron and Adam Devine playing brothers who tend to find trouble left to their own devices, but when they bring blind dates (Anna Kendrick & Aubrey Plaza) to their sister's wedding, they are unprepared for how rowdy the girls are. At the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere.
• That relatively small slate leaves room for Boston Common to open two Chinese movies. From Hong Kong comes Cold War 2, which seems to return most of the cast from the first (not released in US theaters/home video but streaming on Amazon and pretty darn good) and then adds Chow Yun-fat to another story of Hong Kong's two deputy police chiefs who don't trust each other amid a crisis plotted by a criminal mastermind. The mainland offers up Foolish Plans, a screwball comedy where three best friends get dragged into a scheme to marry the boss's pregnant mistress which, naturally, goes very wrong.
  
  The Indian films at Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond most notably include Sultan, starring Salman Khan as a MMA star, who I suspect will at some point triumph over Chilean action star Marko Zaror, stretching disbelief hard. There are also screenings of Kannada-language film Godhi Banna Sadharan and Tamil-language comedy/horror/romance Dhilluku Dhuddu. They'll also have a screening of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday night, with a different shadowcast than the one at Boston Common Saturday nights.
• The Brattle Theatre has a preiew of Raiders!: The Story of the Greatest Fan Film Ever Made with filmmakers in attendance a couple weeks back, but its actual run starts happens this weekend, with screenings from Friday to Monday. The Brattle will be doing their best to keep the audience around for at least a double feature, as Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Adaptation (the fan film in question) plays Saturday evening and a triple feature of the first three Indiana Jones movies on Sunday (all on DCP, so no sounding the Raiders of the Lost Ark in 35mm alarm). An inducement to stick around nearly as good as Raiders plays at 9:30 from Friday to Sunday, the terrific South Korean supernatural thriller The Wailing, one of the best things to come out this year.
  
  The summer "vertical" schedule starts after that, with Monday and Tuesday given to the last leg of the "75 Years of Film Noir" series of series, this one dedicated to Femmes Fatales. The first pairing is a great one, with Otto Preminger's Angel Face pairing Robert Mitchum and Jean Simmons, while Mitchum deals with Jane Greer and Kirk Douglas in Out of the Past. The other two series won't start until a bit later, as they show Zardoz on Wednesday as a warm-up to their annual Trailer Treats party on Thursday.
• Kendall Square has some of the smallest turnover I can remember them having, only opening Zero Days. It's the new documentary from the very prolific Alex Gibney, who examines the Stuxnet worm that the US used to attack the Iranian nuclear program, and through it cyber-warfare in the twenty-first century.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre is one of two places picking up Hunt for the Wilderpeople this week (the Kendall already had it and it also opens at the Lexington Venue); the new one from Taika Waititi was a favorite at IFFBoston (and also plays Fantasia), featuring Sam Neill as a foster father who goes into the bush with his charge when it looks like they may be separated.
  
  The Coolidge has a fairly full slate of special event screenings this week as well. The two midnight shows as part of "pscyho summer" are classics: The Shining (Friday) is the best-known one, but Saturday's Possession is right up there (and likely makes an interesting Sam Neill double feature with Wilderpeople) even if it'sbest-known to hardcore horror fans. Then, on Monday night, the Big Screen Classic is Pulp Fiction, while Thursday's Cinema Jukebox show is Cry-Baby, with a special performance beforehand by Diablo Gato. All four are on 35mm.
• The Somerville Theatre is all about the 35mm in their specials as well. The Saturday midnight is Seven, but Sunday's silents are a pretty elaborate program, too: A W.C. Fields double feature of So's Your Old Man & It's the Old Army Gang (the latter with Louise Brooks!) is nice to begin with, but they'll have W.C.'s granddaught Dr. Harriet Fields there as well, plus Fields's first silent short and a number of short subjects with sound. Later in the week, their friends atThe Capitol in Arlington will do a sports-oriented Throwback Thursday with Space Jam and The Bad News Bears
• The Museum of Fine Artscontinues their 21st Annual Boston French Film Festival with Down By Love (Friday), Vincent (Friday/Sunday), Seasons (Friday/Saturday), French Blood (Saturday/Thursday), Fatima (Saturday), The Innocents (Saturday/Sunday), A Decent Man (Thursday), and Two Friends (Thursday).
• The Harvard Film Archive was closed last weekend to install new seating, but they get back to the business of showing all of the movies Robert Aldrich directed now that this is done. This week's selections are Too Late the Hero (Friday 7pm), The Garment Jungle (Friday 9:30pm), Autumn Leaves (Saturday 7pm), his final film and series namesake ...All the Marbles (Saturday 9:15pm), a few shorter works (Sunday 5pm), The Grissom Gang (Sunday 7pm), and Twilight's Last Gleaming (Monday 7pm). The latter is digital, and two of Sunday's three shorts are on 16mm, but the rest are 35mm prints..
• Outdoor moies at Joe's Boston Free Films indicates two chances to see The Wizard of Oz (the Boston Harbor Hotel on Friday and the Prudential on Saturday), and two Thursday series in Somerille: The Peanuts Movie in Seven Hills Park and 1953 film noir The Hitch-Hiker at the Community Growing Center.

Before catch a bus to Montreal on Thursday, I'm figuring on Cold War 2, Wilderpeople, Mike and Dave, and whatever else will probably be long gone before I start seeing regular movies again. And, yeah, I should probably see Zardoz.

Now You See Me 2

Stupid 24-hour MoviePass rule; somehow I spazzed out and forgot that I couldn't use it for a 3:40pm show after having seen So I Married My Anti-Fan the night before. I think I was just so excited about actually being able to get out of work at the time of the pre-holiday early release (because we're all working from home until something like mid-August) that my enthusiasm to actually catch something before going to the ballgame at 7pm, even if it was the probably-not-very-good sequel to a movie I didn't particularly like, blotted this fact out.

Which meant I was really looking at the price I was paying at a multiplex for the first time in a while, and... $12.49 for a pre-4pm ticket, compared to $13.99 after? Yikes. Do I even want to know what my friends in Maine are paying?

Now You See Me 2

* ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 July 2016 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, DCP)

There are both optimistic and pessimistic reasons not to give the sequel to 2013's Now You See Me the obvious title of "...Now You Don't". In the case of it being another box-office success, there's no obvious place to go for a third entry; in the case that it's not, you don't exactly want to hand the jerks who right headlines for trade publications anything too obvious. They might as well have gone for it, since there's not exactly enough material for a sequel, and the original was not good enough to just do it again without something new.

Sadly, my theory that revenge-seeing mastermind slash FBI agent Dylan Rhodes (Mark Ruffalo) killed his accomplices/dupes off-screen at the end of the first movie turns out to not be the case; the lot of them are now working for "The Eye", a secret society that Rhodes apparently didn't make up last time. They've been in hiding for the past year, training, but are summoned to expose how a new smartphone will completely decimate piracy. It goes completely wrong, with showman J. Daniel Atlas (Jesse Eisenberg), mesmerist Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), card sharp Jack Wilder (Dave Franco), and new recruit Lula (Lizzy Caplan) sliding down a disposal chute in New York and somehow coming out in Macau, where mysterious tech baron Walter Mabry (Daniel Radcliffe) blackmails them into trying to steal the chip that they had intended to expose, with Rhodes trying to track down what went wrong with the help of Thaddeus Bradley (Morgan Freeman), the professional debunker he left holding the bag in the previous year's caper.

For reasons quickly glossed over, Henley Reeves is no longer part of the group, and it's weird that Isla Fisher and Melanie Laurent are considered expendable/replaceable but the filmmakers just have to bring back Michael Caine's character despite the film not needing more in the way of villains, right? Maybe the ladies just weren't available, and while Michael Caine at 83 is no longer so afraid of unemployment that he'll take anything, he apparently still likes to keep working and does make his scenes better. There are some other things about the sequel that come off as strange, though, like how they set a large chunk of the film in Macau, even having everyone in the Cantonese-speaking city speak Mandarin to hopefully appeal to the Chinese market, but don't give Taiwanese star Jay Chou much to do at all. "The Eye", prviously said to be the guardians of real magic, are now apparently just a secret organization that uses illusionists like "The Horsemen" as vigilantes - though not so secret that they won't project their Eye-of-Horus logo into the sky like they were trying to summon some sort of Egyptian-themed Batman.

Full review on EFC.

So I Married My Anti-Fan

I don't know how widespread this situation is, or whether it just applies to Chinese movies playing at AMC Boston Common, but I think we've been seeing the trailer for The Wasted Times for a solid year - I'm pretty sure it started before I came back from Fantasia last August and just kept showing up before every single thing China Lion or Well Go brought over to the point where I have honestly begun to entertain the theory that it's not actually a real movie, but just a trailer meant to parody self-referential Chinese art-house films, right down to how the one line of English dialogue makes it into the preview, even if it is "stupid stinky yellow bastards".

(Funny-ish story about that: The only time I remember that line eliciting a strong reaction was when the preview played before The Boy and the Beast, a Japanese animated film that probably drew a whiter audience than the Chinese films do; they gasped, while the "a bunch of Chinese folks and Jay" audiences for other movies either take it in stride or silently cringe along with me. I've got no idea what conclusions to draw from it, other than that I'm forgetting early shock and we've all just gotten used to it or the anime fans just didn't recognize the trailer as satiric, although it seems hard to miss.)

It didn't play before this one, though, and that makes me wonder if China Lion and AMC have just given up on that playing, or the combination of a new release date of 26 December 2016 and a more busy slate of other Asian movies has just seen them decide to sit on it for a few months.

So I Married My Anti-Fan (aka No One's Life Is Easy)

* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 June 2016 in AMC Boston Common #6 (first-run, DCP)

There are bits of So I Married an Anti-Fan (actually "So I Married My Anti-Fan" on-screen, although being marketed in North America as "No One's Life Is Easy") with some real potential; director Kim Jae-young, adapting a manhwa by Jiwan, does a fair job of wrapping an amiable romantic comedy around show-business satire without trying to be above it. Both the romance and the parody would work a little better if they didn't so often seem to be on autopilot, even if that does get them going in the right direction.

It starts with tabloid intern Fang Miaomiao (Yuan Shanshan) and her friend/photographer Qifei (Mei Nyan-jia) trying to get pictures of South Korean musician Houzhun (Park Chan-yeol), a move which eventually gets Miaomiao fired as the "Woman Sense" magazine she works for is entering a partnership with Houzhun's management company. With a lot of anger and time on her hands, she dedicates herself to becoming an "anti-fan" - which, ironically, gives Houzhun's management the idea of a reality show pairing the two. As you might expect, this initially leads them to not only resent but actively dislike each other, although, given time...

I suspect that, watching this as an American, I'm missing a fair bit of context, as much as I've ready about how thoroughly corporate and branded pop bands are in much of East Asia, it isn't ingrained like it might be for a native fan - star Park Chan-yeol, for instance, is not just a member of Korean boy band EXO but it's "sub-unit" EXO-K, with co-star "Seohyun" Seo Ju-hyun similarly a member of Girls' Generation sub-group TTS, and I don't think it quite works like that on this side of the Pacific yet. Having Houzhun take part in this sort of reality show might be more of an in-joke for his fans than folks coming in cold; he has done a fair number of them. Though there are bits explaining the idea of the "anti-fan", a fair amount of the pop culture exposition comes in terms of on-screen graphics that aren't subtitled.

Full review on EFC.

Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 1 July 2016 - 7 July 2016

Looking at which movies are playing on which screens, I'm just dumbfounded that everybody seems to think there's more interest in a pulp character nobody has cared about in decades (and then, because he was part of something else) than a new Steven Spielberg movie. And that, when all is said and done, a horror sequel will probably be more popular anyway.

• Still, I am most looking forward to The BFG myself: It is Steven Spielberg adapting a Roald Dahl novel with a screenplay by Melissa Matheson (they previously did a little movie called "E.T." together), with Mark Rylance doing motion capture as the "big, friendly giant" of the title (he got an Oscar acting for Spielberg in Bridge of Spies just a few months ago). Oh, and Spielberg did nice work in 3D with Tintin, so it might be neat to see how he uses it in live action. It is at the Captiol, Apple Fresh Pond, West Newton (2D only), Boston Common, Assembly Row, Fenway, and Revere (including XPlus).
  
  Still, many of the premium 3D screens are going to The Legend of Tarzan, with Alexander Skarsgård going shirtless in the title role, Margot Robbie as Jane, Christoph Waltz as the fillain, and Samuel L. Jackson & Djimon Hounsou on-hand to try and make you forget that this is about a white guy who is the savior of the African jungle. David Yates may have done well with the Harry Potter stuff, but he's also not Spielberg. It's at the Capitol, Apple Fresh Pond (2D only), Jordan's Furniture (Imax 3D), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax 3D), Assembly Row (including Imax 3D), Fenway (including RPX 2D/3D), Revere (including MX4D), and the SuperLux.
  
  The big (non-Finding Dory) winner at the box office will probably be The Purge: Election Year, with writer/director James DeMonaco doing for overt political satire as the third entry in the series puts a presidential candidate who vows to end its central idea of all crime being legal for one night in the crosshairs. It's at the Somerville, Apple Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, Revere, and the SuperLux.
• The Coolidge Corner Theatre has new movies on both of their main screens this weekend, with Swiss Army Man getting a lot of the publicity. It's a Sundance hit with Paul Dano as a man stranded on a deserted island with only a farting corpse (played by Daniel Radcliffe) to help - fortunately, the corpse does have other abilities. It's pretty charming, really, and also plays at the Somerville, West Newton, Kendall Square, the Embassy, and Boston Common.
  
  There's been less publicity for Our Kind of Traitor, although it's got a fine cast starting with Ewan McGregor and Naomie Harris as a couple on vacation who are passed information by a Russian money-launderer (Stellan Skarsgård). It can also be found at West Newton, the Kendall, and Boston Common.
  
  In addition to that, the good folks at the Coolidge are keeping very busy with special screenings. For July they're actually doing two midnight "Summer of Psychos" midnight shows per weekend, with this week's program featuring Taxi Driver on Friday night and Falling Down on Saturday, both in 35mm. They take the 35mm projectors on the road on Wednesday, showing The Muppet Movie on Boston's Rose Kennedy Greenway on Wednesday (rain date Thursday). Back in Brookline, they celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Alloy Orchestra on Wednesday and Thursday, with two screenings of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.
• Swiss Army Man and Our Kind of Traitor are just about half of what's opening at Landmark's Kendall Square, which turns over about five screens. One of the most anticipated things they're getting is The Hunt for the Wilderpeople, the newest from New Zealand's Taika Waititi, in which a foster kid (Julian Dennison) seems to finally find a home but winds up heading into the bush with his "uncle" (Sam Neill) when things go wrong. It was pretty popular at IFFBoston, if I remember correctly, and will be expanding to other local screens in the coming weeks. Also from down under comes Last Cab to Darwin, in which a dying cabbie drives cross-country for euthanasia, although the people he meets along the way, I'm guessing may give him a new lease on life. It's booked for a week.
  
  They're also the first place in the area to get Wiener-Dog, a new comedy from Todd Solondz in which a dachshund winds up bouncing between multiple humans. And while The Music of Strangers: Yo-Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble expands to other theaters this week - the Coolidge, West Newton, and the Lexington Venue - the Kendall welcomes back musician Reylon Yount & The Silk Road Project's Laura Freid for a Saturday afternoon Q&A.
• All the new American stuff means Apple Cinemas Fresh Pond doesn't have much room for Indian stuff, with just scattered screenings of Udta Punjab (subtited Hindi) and Rojulu Marayi (Telugu, I think), at least until Wednesday, when Sultan opens, starring Salman Khan as a MMA star. Notably, Chilean action star Marko Zaror seems to be credited second. They do give a couple slots a day to American indie Buddymoon, in which a man dumped just days before his wedding opts to use the already-booked trip to the mountains of Oregon to hang out with his best man. Wackiness (and, presumably, finding the actual right girl) ensues.
  
  There's space for a Chinese movie over at Boston Common, though. No One's Life Is Easy: So I Married an Anti-Fan (actually "So I Married My Anti-Fan" on the DCP) is cute, with Yuan Shanshan as a young tabloid writer who gets on the wrong side of Korean pop star Hu Jun (Park Chanyeol) only to discover actual dislike rather than resentment when they are paired for a reality show. It is, of course, a romantic comedy.
• David Lynch's Blue Velvet get a re-release at The Brattle Theatre, having the place mostly to itself for the first week of the July/August calendar. Maybe I'll get around to seeing it this time. The only interruption is on Monday, when Jaws bumps it for a couple of Fourth-of-July screenings.
• The 18th Annual Roxbury International Fim Festival wraps up on Friday at The Museum of Fine Arts, with closing features including Sembene!, How We Met (with director Oscar Rene Lozoya on-hand), and 9 Rides (post-film Skype Q&A with director Matthew Cherry). No other film programs until Thursday, when the MFA starts their 21st Annual Boston French Film Festival with the multiple-Cesar-winning Fatima.
• The "Midnight Special" at The Somerville Theatre this weekend is El Topo; they'll be showing Alejandro Jodorowsky's surreal Western (which basically invented the midnight movie) on 35mm. They push Free State of Jones over to The Capitol in Arlington, who will be playing a double feature of Crossroads and Crybaby on the 7th as part of their Throwback Thursday series.
• In addition to the Coolidge's presentation of The Muppet Movie on Wednesday, Joe's Boston Free Films shows An Affair to Remember at the Boston Harbor Hotel Friday night, Minions at the Prudential Center Saturday & the Waltham Lyman Estate Thursday, and Zookeeper at Revere Beach on Thursday Plus, of course, the big fireworks display Monday night, which is not only awesome itself but will have a great many theaters shutting down early.

I figure on checking out The BFG, Our Kind of Traitor and Tarzan, having already caught Swiss Army Man and So I Married My Anti-Fan. I'll probably hit one of the Metropolis screenings as well.

Swiss Army Man

IFFBoston hosted the preview screening of Swiss Army Man at the Somerville Theatre, and I've heard people involved with the fest joke about the effect elevation has on movies like Swiss Army Man: It's apparently really easy to get lightheaded at Park City, so something that hits one right really works, distributors pay big money, and then, when you get back to sea level, hmm, well, okay, that was interesting, but maybe not quite great...

Thankfully, Swiss Army Man is better than that, but I do kind of wonder if all the high-altitude elation it received at Sundance (with fans knowing they had to explain why it's not just the "farting corpse movie") made people give the kind-of-messy last act a little more of a pass than they might otherwise have done. It's no disaster, but it does very much seem like the Daniels were stretched between needing it to give the other stuff weight but not fleshing it out quite so much.

And...

SPOILERS

... is there some sort of "Ebert's Little Movie Glossary" for scenes like the one Swiss Army Man finishes with? It's kind of of a piece with Safety Not Guaranteed, where a big part of the film's power relies on recognizing reality, but because the filmmakers and audiences fall so in love with the delusion, the fantastic elements need to be brought into the film's real world? I liked it in Safety, but not so much here, and I wonder if I'd turn on the working time machine in that if I watched it now.

!SRELIOPS

Swiss Army Man

* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 25 June 2016 in Somerville Theatre #3 (IFFBoston Preview Series, DCP)

There is no denying that Swiss Army Man is a memorable movie: It's creative, energetic, and full of cleverness and whimsy. It's got the best work some members of the cast have ever done. The question, then, is whether there's a great movie in total when the clock starts winding down and it's time to decide what all that unquestionably appealing material is leading to. That's perhaps a little less brilliant, but it doesn't squander the goodwill that the unique bulk of the film has earned.

It opens with Hank (Paul Dano), alone on a Pacific island after some unspecified disaster, just about to end it all as much out of boredom as despair. Seeing that a person has washed up on shore, he changes his mind, only to find that the man is dead. That doesn't stop him, though, and he starts treating the corpse (Daniel Radcliffe) as a companion, even if the bacteria in its gut are making it unusually flatulent. On the other hand, that seems to be the source of some incredible abilities that might help Hank get off his island, even before "Manny" starts talking.

We know how movies like this work; the peculiar companion that appears when Hank is at the literal end of his rope is probably not entirely real, but a way for Hank to stay sane and focused until rescue/escape. For a while, viewers are probably filing every weird thing that Manny's multifunctional body does, from spewing water out of his mouth to using the gassy buildup for propulsion, either trying to figure out what's really going on or expecting a flashback montage that shows how Hank was managing it himself. That filmmakers Dan Kwan and Daniel Scheinert ultimately get the audience to treat this as unimportant is a testament to their skills; the imagery is delightful and fantastical on its own, and what Hank and Manny are doing is interesting and fast-moving enough that the reasons behind it aren't so important.

Full review on EFC.