Every year that I write one of these wrap-ups, I point out that it's an awful shame that this collection of Oscar-nominated short films is the best chance many will get to see this kind of production which isn't expanded to a commercially-viable length and can be tremendously focused as a result. It can be tough to talk oneself into the short programs at a festival, if that's even an option, and traditional means of exhibition don't exactly have room for these subjects, especially now. It's a tremendous boost to them to get this nomination, and if the Oscar Shorts programs are playing near you or are on your cable system's On-Demand menu, these five films are a heck of a package.
That these nominations are a big deal is something the film makes explicit, as four of them include images of the filmmakers, cast, and crew hearing their nominations and being blown away, well-aware that what just happened may be life-changing, and if they actually win… Well, they probably can't imagine that, although given the subject matter of many of these shorts, they'll have a couple minutes further to both get their movie seen and plead the cases of something so important that they would spend a lot of time and likely more money than they can recoup to make a film of it.
Although, it's worth noting, these things are thankfully getting easier to see - even if the package doesn't show near you, think back on this list a few months - I've found that, as I have been fixing some broken links on this blog, a surprising number of short films can be found on Amazon, Vimeo, and other streaming services, including many nominees from past years. They often require even more digging than their feature-length cousins to discover - nobody streaming movies online has come up with something as easily and enjoyably browsable as a video store - but they are available in ways that have not been the case in prior years. Even if you can't catch this year's nominees before the ceremony, why not use the reminder that there are great short films up for awards to catch up with those from years past?
"DeKalb Elementary"
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The first of the films nominated this year, "DeKalb Elementary" from filmmaker Reed Van Dyk, is a terrific little real-time thriller predicated almost entirely on the threat of something happening: As the school day begins, a man (Bo Mitchell) comes into the office, asking to make a phone call, but while the people at the front desk aren't paying complete attention, he pulls out a rifle, and soon the situation has shrunk to just him, administrative assistant Cassandra Rice (Tarra Riggs), and the muffled voice on the other end of the 911 call she makes, relaying his confused, aimless instructions.
Basing his film on an actual 911 call, Van Dyk structures his film as a contrast between confusion and capability, with Bo Mitchell giving a sweaty, nervous performance as the gunman while Tarra Riggs projects a fascinating sort of forced calm. There is never an easy interplay between them, but the way that they interact is fascinating. At the most obvious surface level, the audience is struck by the fact that Rice is used to dealing with children, and she approaches this man in the same way, carefully, slowly, aiming for clarity rather than confrontation - and it's clearly the right choice to make. Van Dyk's use of the elementary school as the background is canny, whether in how he chose the story or wrote the script, as it's not a cheap multiplier but an examination of how to best handle this sort of crisis. It's also worth noting that the two main characters are a white man and an African-American woman, and while this isn't something Van Dyk ever has characters remark upon in the film, it seems pointed - everybody that the audience sees at the school is black, and doesn't really question when this guy saunters in and asks to use the phone before he casually takes hostages, with Rice required to empathize with him rather than vice versa. It's an extreme sort of entitlement that is downplayed enough as to be taken for granted.
It may just be a quirk of casting, something not considered beyond trying to be faithful to the real-life participants (which, we should remember, is not something that filmmakers always bother much with), but it's also something that has the ring of truth, as does the increased tension and thoroughly believable reactions in the last few minutes - as good as Riggs has been through the rest of the picture, she's even better at the end. That density of detail is a large part of what makes "DeKalb Elementary" worthy of a nomination; it's a very well-done story in the most basic, functional sense, but shows even more truth as a viewer looks closer.
"The Silent Child"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
By contrast, "The Silent Child" puts things a little more in the foreground in its story of Joanne (writer Rachel Shenton), who has just taken a job as the tutor to Libby (Maisie Sly), a severely hearing-impaired four-year-old whose parents Sue and Paul (Rachel Fielding & Philip York) seem to mean well but are not truly prepared for the disruption tending to her needs can be, both in terms of expectations and a life that is already busy with two teenagers (Sam Rees & Annie Cusselle) and Paul's ailing mother (Anna Barry). The film has a lot of information to deliver on its way to closing title cards about how most deaf children are born into families that aren't truly ready for these unique challenges.comes across as both
This information that they want to communicate lets Shenton and director Chris Overton do a fair job of working the two sides of the story in different ways. They are not shy about being straightforward with the uplifting teacher-student story, and why not? Shenton writes herself a part that is well within her skill set, and she's got a pretty terrific part in young Maisie Sly, who gives Overton and the crew what they need to show how miserable and frustrated Libby can be at an age where a lot of kids might not get more nuanced than "bratty". This material lets the part of the story that is more individual to this family unfold, and while the filmmakers don't shy away from highlighting the pieces that Joanne is going to piece together, they don't spell it out with a fight, either.
It's not necessarily the most interesting narrative; a lot of it seems fueled by Sue being jealous of the pretty younger woman who can get through to her daughter, which is the sort of thing that feels simultaneously true-to-life and regressively cliched. It's good work that the film winds up far less focused on that sort of melodrama than it could, injecting just enough to give color and humanity to an easily-dismissed situation.
"My Nephew Emmett"
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
As soon as many see the title of this film and the caption stating it takes place on 28 August 1955 in Money, Mississippi, they'll feel a tension even if they came into this short blind and don't remember the exact date and location of Emmett Till's lynching; it's an event that has grown in infamy in the subsequent decades, enough so that viewers may worry that they're getting a mere recreation of it, which can seem exploitative even if many, living under better circumstances, could probably use the jolt of horror that simply reading the facts cannot deliver.
Writer/director Kevin Wilson Jr. delivers that, using the very fame of this case to let the audience watch dominoes fall from far away, as when a discussion at the local watering hole has Emmett's uncle, preacher Mose Wright (L.B. Williams), knowing that the 14-year-old kid may be getting himself into trouble he can't predict, let alone handle. It's heightened later on when white men come to his house, with early emphasis on how the borders of a black man's home are not respected, from the flashlights shining into bedrooms at 2:30AM to the utter entitlement the invaders feel to cross Mose's threshold. The confrontation is staged like a standoff but still emphasizes the powerlessness Mose feels.
It's what actor L.B. Williams does leading up to that sequence which makes the film truly memorable, though, as Wilson shows Mose at the end of a long day and life in general, the sort of situation where you've got to go down to the river and pump a few buckets of water just to take a relaxing bath. Williams is wiry and makes Mose move without limp or hesitation but without hurrying too much; he's learned how to keep things steady and not make a lifetime of wear obvious. It's the stance of a survivor but one who is not so ideally strong that he can't fold, a dignity that is pushed to shame later on. It's a contrast to Dane Rhodes, who plays the man knocking at his door - just big enough to have had an extra meal while still clearly insecure enough to push his black neighbors down, with a hint that he can be pretty likable among his peer group until the slurs start coming out of his mouth. It's a pair of terrific performances that slot into Williams's singular perspective on a story that is often used as a stand-in for all lynchings exceptionally well.
"The Eleven O'Clock"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The set-up for "The Eleven O'Clock" is simple enough that the audience can see ninety percent of it sliding into place as it happens and then spot just how useful the other ten is as it's coming into play, and while it's not always great for a thing that plays as a well-oiled machine to give the viewer to have such a clear view of the mechanism in question, it works here as it sets up Terry Phillips (writer Josh Lawson) as a psychiatrist confronted with temp Linda (Jessica Donoghue) instead of the usual receptionist and being informed that his first patient, Nathan Klein (Damon Herriman), has "grandiose delusions"... of being a psychiatrist.
It's a straightforward gag that works in large part because Lawson and Herriman have play the duelling "analysts" so as to both tap into the ego that they need to presume they can solve others' problems (but which patients resent) while coming at it from different directions, one stuffy and one manic. Lawson's script calls for lots of back-and-forth banter that goes from snappy to snippy, especially once word-association begins and Linda being roped in and hung up upon frequently threatens to send things careening in another direction. Director Derin Seale and his crew keep the pacing quick, and do interesting things with space, as a giant lobby makes Linda feel even more trapped in her tiny alcove, while the office seems to rapidly shrink around Terry and Nathan, with the point of view flipping back and forth in a way that is sharp but not jarring.
"The Eleven O'Clock" is the only comedy of the quintet, which always seems to be the way, like the collectie Academy knows that one of the things shorts do best is this precision timing that lasts just as long as the joke, but still can't help but give more recognition to the ones that focus on something important.
"Watu Wote" ("All of Us")
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 11 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
And sometimes that "more important" can also overlap with "not as well-reported as it should be in the West". That's the case with "Watu Wote" (given an English title of "All of Us"), which opens with text describing the tensions between Christians and Muslims on the border between Kenya and Ethiopia, in particular noting the large number of attacks by terrorist group Al-Shabaab. That's the reason why Jue (Adelyne Wairimu) asks whether the bus from Nairobi to Rhamu will have a police escort in the more dangerous areas; she's also visibly - and sometimes vocally - unnerved by the number of Muslims on the bus. Of course, when the journey reaches that homestretch, the police car overheats and is unable to follow.
The incident that follows seems to have been something of a notable one in that region of Africa, but it's noteworthy that director Katja Benrath and primary screenwriter Julia Drache do not exactly play it up as revolutionary or necessary even unusual. Jua's rosary beads have been exchanged for a head covering almost before the audience realizes what has happened, and teacher Salah Farah (Abdiwali Farrah) pushes back against their attackers without dramatic pauses between his words or a dramatic swell to the score. This pivotal, climactic scene is not necessarily more tense for how the filmmakers play it; it may actually let a bit of the air out. I'm curious as to whether this was a conscious choice on their part to position the actions of Salah and Jua's neighbor as not primarily heroic but what should be expected of people whether they consider themselves brave or not. It's an intriguing realignment of the aspirational true story that emphasizes not just that ordinary people can and should resist violence, but that they must.
It's a message that gets across in large part because of how Benrath has her cast play the scenes leading up to it; both Adelyne Wairimu's Jua and Abdiwali Farrah's Salah often come off as abrasive and prone to suspicion of others' motives, and the actors convey that well; they're also given material that lets them show the characters as having more to them before being thrown in the crucible. The locations shooting is beautiful as well, and never fails to capture the right combination of vibrance and danger.
If I were a betting man, I'd put it on "My Nephew Emmett", and I'd have a hard time arguing against it as the most award-worthy of the bunch. The whole package is well worth checking out, of course, whether before or after the awards.
Tuesday, February 13, 2018
Sunday, February 11, 2018
Short Stuff: The 2017 Oscar-Nominated Animated Shorts
Or, "The 2018 Oscar-Nominated Shorts (Animation)", as the program would have it. They can say that officially so that it doesn't look stale, but I say that the proper title ought to refer to the year the films were released, and not the one where the awards are given.
At any rate, here we are once again, looking at the Oscar categories that historically have been some of the most opaque for the viewers at home despite potentially being a huge deal for the people nominated, as "Oscar-Winning Director" certainly makes people look twice at your loan or grant application when you're looking to fund the next project. They are, thankfully, much easier to see these days, as they are packaged into a single presentation and play in most cities with a decent boutique cinema, and are apparently available on demand elsewhere. I've long argued that the true worth of awards is not in who actually wins but in how they provide people with a list of noteworthy films (or films that have some noteworthy element) and a sense of urgency to see them, and being able to see these good short films in anticipation of the ceremonies is the very definition of that.
As usual, the animated films tend to be quite short indeed, so the presentation is not only broken up by amusing cartoon interludes, but three "Highly Commended" features have been added to the program. This year's program is very kid-friendly, basically one bloated corpse away from an American PG rating.
"Dear Basketball"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
If "Dear Basketball" is a vanity project on the part of Kobe Bryant, or a canny entry into producing films (like I said, "Oscar-Nominated" looks pretty good when you're trying to enter into a business relationship in this industry), it's certainly one where he found top talent - director Glen Keane was long one of Disney's best character animators before a shift to almost entirely working in CGI rearranged how the process worked, and composer John Williams is John Williams. As a New Englander whose default position is "screw the Lakers and screw Kobe in particular", I don't exactly doubt his sincerity, but I'll readily admit that it doesn't make my heart well up in a way that a similar project from, say, David Ortiz would. Bryant may be one of the greatest of all time, but he was never a bigger-than-the-game icon the way Jordan was, no matter how much ESPN insisted we should love him.
Still, it's capable as heck. Bryant's poem seems heartfelt even if his delivery sometimes seems like it's rehearsed rather than spilling out of him - there's a reason why you often leave emoting to the professionals - although it picks up in the end. John Williams's score is a fine five-minute John Williams score, uplifting but not really having the time to be playful that he has in his best work. It's Keane's work that impresses the most; his work at Disney was character design and animation, and as in his previous short "Duet", he spends much of his time focusing on that to the exclusion of all else, using rough lines and transparent shapes to convey form and movement, especially with flashbacks to Kobe as a kid as compared to the rotoscoped-seeming scenes of him on the court as a pro. Keane's first feature as a director is due in 2020, and this nomination has probably raised its profile.
"Negative Space"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
There's a methodical charm to "Negative Space", quite literally - filmmakers Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata are describing the proper method for packing luggage, and it's something that is enhanced just a bit by the fact that this is a stop-motion production, and all the folding, rolling up, and squeezing in is something the animators actually had to do. Not that other forms of animation are any less meticulous, but you can cheat a bit with pencil drawings and computer models; not so much with tangible things, even if Kuwahata & Ru are occasionally putting them in fanciful situations as their narrator talks about how packing suitcases with his oft-traveling father was a way that they bonded.
Those fanciful bits help pad this 5-minute short out a bit and make the pacing work, creating time for reminiscence that allows the world to fill in a little more, and just enough time for the viewer to adjust to a third new setting that waits just long enough to spring what has become an inevitable, but perfect, joke.And then it's done, having accomplished the neat trick of getting the audience to care about the set-up on its own without tossing it away for the punchline.
"Lou"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
Though the category stalwarts at Pixar did not have a short included with the release of Coco (and that Frozen follow-up is certainly not getting nominated for much), they did put "Lou" out in theaters, playing in front of Cars 3, which has been thoroughly forgotten. Still, this was almost certainly the best part of an afternoon watching Cars 3, and while it doesn't necessarily shine quite so brightly when placed in the middle of a group of excellent shorts rather than in front of a mediocre film, it's still an enjoyable cartoon.
It's not quite so ambitious as other recent Pixar/Disney shorts that have played before their features: The kids that make up the main characters and playground where the action takes place seem familiar, and even the title character - a chimera made of various objects in the school's lost & found - seems like it's constructed from reused models. That's perfectly fine; good storytelling is, after all, a matter of what artists do with their tools as opposed to how well they create new ones, and there's some fine character animation on display here, a lot of kids and one monster given distinct personalities and a lot of expressive slapstick. This may not be Pixar's most memorable short, but it is certainly an example of how they relentlessly crank out quality work.
"Revolting Rhymes Part One"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The BBC Christmas Special is nearly as regular a nominee as the year's Pixar short, and "Revolting Rhymes Part One" suggests that there may be some gaming the system going on in order to secure that spot - why else would this not simply be one hour-long special rather than two that run 29 minutes and are thus Oscar-eligible? It even ends on something of a cliffhanger rather than coming to a true conclusion, although it is self-contained enough that watching it alone is a satisfying half hour.
It's perhaps a bit familiar, though, in how it mashes up a number of fairy tales (Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and the Three Little Pigs cross paths here), gives them a more modern setting, and serves it up with a dry self-awareness. Filmmakers Jan Lachauer and Jakob Schuh do that fairly well here - there are plenty of good jokes, and Dominic West narrates the film in character as the Big Bad Wolf with a perfect sneer, and they do wonderful things with the friendship between Red and Snow - and only stretch things too far once or twice. It's just good enough that I'm curious to see where the second part goes, even if I'm not ordering a DVD right away.
"Garden Party"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
French entry "Garden Party", meanwhile, is rather less conventional, as it is populated almost entirely by photorealistic frogs and other amphibians hopping around a seemingly empty estate. The animation is good enough that it occasionally makes one wonder about categorization; is this an animated short or a live-action one with some impressive creature effects? It doesn't much matter, because the frogs themselves are funny, especially a big toad that gorges itself on rich food once it has found its way on top of a table.
What the filmmakers do that is most impressive, though, is to amp up just how sinister the situation is as the film goes. The frogs are never quite anthropomorphized enough to be cheerful, but they're not examples of horrific and uncaring nature, either, but the setting becomes more unnerving as the short continues - even without certain details showing up in the background and then moving forward, it slowly becomes clear that it's not a case that people have just left, giving the frogs free reign, but something happened. The big reveal isn't quite so well-executed as the one in "Negative Space", confirming what the audience has already guessed rather than twisting things around, and the dark comedy is a little shakier at the end than it was earlier. It makes for something genuinely weird, though, and a fine way to cap off a set of nominees that are otherwise very conventional, even when they're being eccentric.
"Lost Property Office"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
That eccentricity continues in the first of three "Highly Commended" shorts that fill the program out toward feature length, "Lost Property Office", in which writer/director Daniel Agdag tells the story of a drone working in the public transit system who meticulously collects, files, and repairs the items left behind, only to be laid off as nobody ever actually comes to claim them. It's the sort of story that combines dreary reality with a flight of fantasy, but does so well.
What makes it work is the detail, as is often the case with stop-motion projects that involve tinkering. The most obvious visual impression is just how thoroughly grey this Art Deco world is, with the most obvious visual jokes being the ads for drowning one's sorrows in alcohol that have the sharpest black-and-white contrast. Still, they tend to fade into the background once the viewer starts noting the body language of the main character. This "Edward Hopper" is extraordinarily well-designed, with a straight back and a face that, while not terribly detailed, suggests a bit of age and weather. There's a hint of despair when he learns about his redundancy that allows Agdag to fake the audience out with a couple of visual gags, but the whole of him makes it obvious things will go another way. He has too much pride and care despite how spare he is in a world that tends to the crowded and caricatured.
"Weeds"
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
Of the three extra shorts included, "Weeds" is the one that will likely lead to the most second-guessing of the nominations, as its three minutes of a dandelion seeing its friends whither and die in one patch of dirt before straining to uproot itself and make its way to a nearby spot that has a sprinkler and sunshine is spot-on perfect, giving the flower a distinct design and personality, suggesting that three feet can be a tremendous, perilous adventure, and ending on a moment that mixes triumph and tragedy as well as films fifty times its length.
Is its message tremendously obvious and on-the nose? Oh, yes; without ever directly stating its metaphor, Kevin Hudson's film is about as subtle as a well-labeled political cartoon. But that's the power of animation and cartooning, being able to pack that information tight and make it clear without having it come across as a lecture.
"Achoo"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The bright cartooning continues into the final short added to the collection, "Achoo", an amusing story of a small Chinese dragon whose stuffy nose prevents him from breathing fire and creating floating, flaming art the way that the larger dragons do, although he may be onto something by accident. It's a fluffy, kid-friendly short that can be a little clumsy, but errs on the side of being charming.
The filmmakers also have a knack for switching up visuals to impress; a "two-and-a-half-D" opening sequence gives the CGI shenanigans that follow a little more gravitas while the bigger dragons' successful artistry after watching the little guy stumble is a genuinely nifty effect. both make me curious as to whether the short was animated with 3D exhibition in mind, as does the different sort of effects animation used at the climax.
If I had a vote for this award, it would probably go to "Negative Space"; it's got the best balance of convention and creativity, though I suspect the smarter money when filling out your entry in the Oscar pool is probably on "Dear Basketball" or "Lou". "Dandelions", it seems, is the one that got robbed.
At any rate, here we are once again, looking at the Oscar categories that historically have been some of the most opaque for the viewers at home despite potentially being a huge deal for the people nominated, as "Oscar-Winning Director" certainly makes people look twice at your loan or grant application when you're looking to fund the next project. They are, thankfully, much easier to see these days, as they are packaged into a single presentation and play in most cities with a decent boutique cinema, and are apparently available on demand elsewhere. I've long argued that the true worth of awards is not in who actually wins but in how they provide people with a list of noteworthy films (or films that have some noteworthy element) and a sense of urgency to see them, and being able to see these good short films in anticipation of the ceremonies is the very definition of that.
As usual, the animated films tend to be quite short indeed, so the presentation is not only broken up by amusing cartoon interludes, but three "Highly Commended" features have been added to the program. This year's program is very kid-friendly, basically one bloated corpse away from an American PG rating.
"Dear Basketball"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
If "Dear Basketball" is a vanity project on the part of Kobe Bryant, or a canny entry into producing films (like I said, "Oscar-Nominated" looks pretty good when you're trying to enter into a business relationship in this industry), it's certainly one where he found top talent - director Glen Keane was long one of Disney's best character animators before a shift to almost entirely working in CGI rearranged how the process worked, and composer John Williams is John Williams. As a New Englander whose default position is "screw the Lakers and screw Kobe in particular", I don't exactly doubt his sincerity, but I'll readily admit that it doesn't make my heart well up in a way that a similar project from, say, David Ortiz would. Bryant may be one of the greatest of all time, but he was never a bigger-than-the-game icon the way Jordan was, no matter how much ESPN insisted we should love him.
Still, it's capable as heck. Bryant's poem seems heartfelt even if his delivery sometimes seems like it's rehearsed rather than spilling out of him - there's a reason why you often leave emoting to the professionals - although it picks up in the end. John Williams's score is a fine five-minute John Williams score, uplifting but not really having the time to be playful that he has in his best work. It's Keane's work that impresses the most; his work at Disney was character design and animation, and as in his previous short "Duet", he spends much of his time focusing on that to the exclusion of all else, using rough lines and transparent shapes to convey form and movement, especially with flashbacks to Kobe as a kid as compared to the rotoscoped-seeming scenes of him on the court as a pro. Keane's first feature as a director is due in 2020, and this nomination has probably raised its profile.
"Negative Space"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
There's a methodical charm to "Negative Space", quite literally - filmmakers Max Porter and Ru Kuwahata are describing the proper method for packing luggage, and it's something that is enhanced just a bit by the fact that this is a stop-motion production, and all the folding, rolling up, and squeezing in is something the animators actually had to do. Not that other forms of animation are any less meticulous, but you can cheat a bit with pencil drawings and computer models; not so much with tangible things, even if Kuwahata & Ru are occasionally putting them in fanciful situations as their narrator talks about how packing suitcases with his oft-traveling father was a way that they bonded.
Those fanciful bits help pad this 5-minute short out a bit and make the pacing work, creating time for reminiscence that allows the world to fill in a little more, and just enough time for the viewer to adjust to a third new setting that waits just long enough to spring what has become an inevitable, but perfect, joke.And then it's done, having accomplished the neat trick of getting the audience to care about the set-up on its own without tossing it away for the punchline.
"Lou"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
Though the category stalwarts at Pixar did not have a short included with the release of Coco (and that Frozen follow-up is certainly not getting nominated for much), they did put "Lou" out in theaters, playing in front of Cars 3, which has been thoroughly forgotten. Still, this was almost certainly the best part of an afternoon watching Cars 3, and while it doesn't necessarily shine quite so brightly when placed in the middle of a group of excellent shorts rather than in front of a mediocre film, it's still an enjoyable cartoon.
It's not quite so ambitious as other recent Pixar/Disney shorts that have played before their features: The kids that make up the main characters and playground where the action takes place seem familiar, and even the title character - a chimera made of various objects in the school's lost & found - seems like it's constructed from reused models. That's perfectly fine; good storytelling is, after all, a matter of what artists do with their tools as opposed to how well they create new ones, and there's some fine character animation on display here, a lot of kids and one monster given distinct personalities and a lot of expressive slapstick. This may not be Pixar's most memorable short, but it is certainly an example of how they relentlessly crank out quality work.
"Revolting Rhymes Part One"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The BBC Christmas Special is nearly as regular a nominee as the year's Pixar short, and "Revolting Rhymes Part One" suggests that there may be some gaming the system going on in order to secure that spot - why else would this not simply be one hour-long special rather than two that run 29 minutes and are thus Oscar-eligible? It even ends on something of a cliffhanger rather than coming to a true conclusion, although it is self-contained enough that watching it alone is a satisfying half hour.
It's perhaps a bit familiar, though, in how it mashes up a number of fairy tales (Red Riding Hood, Snow White, and the Three Little Pigs cross paths here), gives them a more modern setting, and serves it up with a dry self-awareness. Filmmakers Jan Lachauer and Jakob Schuh do that fairly well here - there are plenty of good jokes, and Dominic West narrates the film in character as the Big Bad Wolf with a perfect sneer, and they do wonderful things with the friendship between Red and Snow - and only stretch things too far once or twice. It's just good enough that I'm curious to see where the second part goes, even if I'm not ordering a DVD right away.
"Garden Party"
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
French entry "Garden Party", meanwhile, is rather less conventional, as it is populated almost entirely by photorealistic frogs and other amphibians hopping around a seemingly empty estate. The animation is good enough that it occasionally makes one wonder about categorization; is this an animated short or a live-action one with some impressive creature effects? It doesn't much matter, because the frogs themselves are funny, especially a big toad that gorges itself on rich food once it has found its way on top of a table.
What the filmmakers do that is most impressive, though, is to amp up just how sinister the situation is as the film goes. The frogs are never quite anthropomorphized enough to be cheerful, but they're not examples of horrific and uncaring nature, either, but the setting becomes more unnerving as the short continues - even without certain details showing up in the background and then moving forward, it slowly becomes clear that it's not a case that people have just left, giving the frogs free reign, but something happened. The big reveal isn't quite so well-executed as the one in "Negative Space", confirming what the audience has already guessed rather than twisting things around, and the dark comedy is a little shakier at the end than it was earlier. It makes for something genuinely weird, though, and a fine way to cap off a set of nominees that are otherwise very conventional, even when they're being eccentric.
"Lost Property Office"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
That eccentricity continues in the first of three "Highly Commended" shorts that fill the program out toward feature length, "Lost Property Office", in which writer/director Daniel Agdag tells the story of a drone working in the public transit system who meticulously collects, files, and repairs the items left behind, only to be laid off as nobody ever actually comes to claim them. It's the sort of story that combines dreary reality with a flight of fantasy, but does so well.
What makes it work is the detail, as is often the case with stop-motion projects that involve tinkering. The most obvious visual impression is just how thoroughly grey this Art Deco world is, with the most obvious visual jokes being the ads for drowning one's sorrows in alcohol that have the sharpest black-and-white contrast. Still, they tend to fade into the background once the viewer starts noting the body language of the main character. This "Edward Hopper" is extraordinarily well-designed, with a straight back and a face that, while not terribly detailed, suggests a bit of age and weather. There's a hint of despair when he learns about his redundancy that allows Agdag to fake the audience out with a couple of visual gags, but the whole of him makes it obvious things will go another way. He has too much pride and care despite how spare he is in a world that tends to the crowded and caricatured.
"Weeds"
* * * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
Of the three extra shorts included, "Weeds" is the one that will likely lead to the most second-guessing of the nominations, as its three minutes of a dandelion seeing its friends whither and die in one patch of dirt before straining to uproot itself and make its way to a nearby spot that has a sprinkler and sunshine is spot-on perfect, giving the flower a distinct design and personality, suggesting that three feet can be a tremendous, perilous adventure, and ending on a moment that mixes triumph and tragedy as well as films fifty times its length.
Is its message tremendously obvious and on-the nose? Oh, yes; without ever directly stating its metaphor, Kevin Hudson's film is about as subtle as a well-labeled political cartoon. But that's the power of animation and cartooning, being able to pack that information tight and make it clear without having it come across as a lecture.
"Achoo"
* * * (out of four)
Seen 10 February 2017 in Landmark Kendall Square #1 (Oscar-Nominated Shorts, DCP)
The bright cartooning continues into the final short added to the collection, "Achoo", an amusing story of a small Chinese dragon whose stuffy nose prevents him from breathing fire and creating floating, flaming art the way that the larger dragons do, although he may be onto something by accident. It's a fluffy, kid-friendly short that can be a little clumsy, but errs on the side of being charming.
The filmmakers also have a knack for switching up visuals to impress; a "two-and-a-half-D" opening sequence gives the CGI shenanigans that follow a little more gravitas while the bigger dragons' successful artistry after watching the little guy stumble is a genuinely nifty effect. both make me curious as to whether the short was animated with 3D exhibition in mind, as does the different sort of effects animation used at the climax.
If I had a vote for this award, it would probably go to "Negative Space"; it's got the best balance of convention and creativity, though I suspect the smarter money when filling out your entry in the Oscar pool is probably on "Dear Basketball" or "Lou". "Dandelions", it seems, is the one that got robbed.
Saturday, February 10, 2018
Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival 2018.01: Junk Head & Ayla
I think the new phone's camera gets cinema marquees better than the old one.
So, hey, it's time for the festival that I want to be so much better than it is, and whose moments of actually being pretty good make the rest harder to swallow. That's this year's opening night in a nutshell: Junk Head is an amazing accomplishment and a nifty movie, and then you follow it up with Ayla, which is pretty terrible. There's also a side of initially claiming Junk Head was a North American premiere despite the fact that I saw it in Montreal last summer and it played Fantastic Fest in Austin.
It's kind of a tough opening night, really - Junk Head is long and Ayla is kind of pretentious, so while there's some potential in both films, but I don't think either is what you'd call a crowd-pleaser.
It might be a few days before the next one of these gets posted, as I'm going to be trying to fit Oscar shorts in before vacation, and that will get posted first.
Junk Head
* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 February 2017 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, digital)
Junk Head was one of the most striking things I saw at Fantasia last year, but it's also one that has its flaws; it's long for an animated film, and episodic, without actually arriving at a finish, and a second viewing had me a little less bowled-over by the sheer level of achievement that a handful of people (and one in particular) and noting the length a bit more. It's still an amazing-looking movie, well worth catching during its Sunday encore if you missed it on Friday.
Full review on EFC (from Fantasia).
Ayla
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 February 2017 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, digital)
About ten or fifteen minutes into Ayla, I was wondering when the first really necessary scene would be. There's a flash-forward, a bunch of bits that don't establish much at all, and just generally a long slog until it gets to the actual useful information and gives the characters some amount of personality. Writer/director Elias plays a lot of formal tricks that don't really help, with hallucinations, extremely mannered dialogue and characterization (a couple of scenes with BIll Oberst Jr as extremely different but equally daft hotel managers are the worst offenders, but not the only ones), and things like having dialogue spoken over barely-connected imagery all suggest not that he's a next-level artist but that he can't simply tell the story in a clear way.
And while there's some potential for the story of a man who lost his sister when they were small children somehow has her revived as an adult - or at least, a peculiar woman who looks like the digitally-aged picture of four-year-old Ayla appears in a supernatural event. There's a potentially interesting vibe of her still being a child in there (although, dude, four-year-olds can talk), and a sort of vampirism aspect that suggests both that this Ayla is draining him and that, metaphorically, holding onto that grief is hollowing him out as well. The trouble is, Elias really hasn't constructed a story around that, and the audience is left with an idea that the filmmakers don't really do much with. There's also a weird incest-y thread that needs either a much more detailed and horrific backstory that the audience is given or some sort of exploration of how mixed up things can get inside a disturbed mind.
It doesn't help that the cast really doesn't seem up to this, either - Nicholas Wilder is technically giving a believable performance as grieving brother Elton, but it's so off-putting and seemingly detached that it's hard to figure what his girlfriend (Sarah Schoofs) sees in him. That relationship seemingly only exists in order to put Elton in a place where he can be shocked by Ayla appearing. Tristan Risk handles the revenant's odd physicality well, but never really makes her into anything as either memory or monster. D'Angelo Midili is okay as the more sensible, grounded brother, but Dee Wallace is unable to do much with terrible material as their mother.
By the time it's over - with the trademark slow credit roll to get the movie over 85 minutes - one can certainly see what Elias is trying to do, but it seems undeniable that his opinion of his craft is well ahead of his actual ability to tell a story. We can see what he's going for, but it's boring and sloppy, the work of someone who doesn't seem to have mastered the basics before trying to break rules.
So, hey, it's time for the festival that I want to be so much better than it is, and whose moments of actually being pretty good make the rest harder to swallow. That's this year's opening night in a nutshell: Junk Head is an amazing accomplishment and a nifty movie, and then you follow it up with Ayla, which is pretty terrible. There's also a side of initially claiming Junk Head was a North American premiere despite the fact that I saw it in Montreal last summer and it played Fantastic Fest in Austin.
It's kind of a tough opening night, really - Junk Head is long and Ayla is kind of pretentious, so while there's some potential in both films, but I don't think either is what you'd call a crowd-pleaser.
It might be a few days before the next one of these gets posted, as I'm going to be trying to fit Oscar shorts in before vacation, and that will get posted first.
Junk Head
* * * (out of four)
Seen 9 February 2017 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, digital)
Junk Head was one of the most striking things I saw at Fantasia last year, but it's also one that has its flaws; it's long for an animated film, and episodic, without actually arriving at a finish, and a second viewing had me a little less bowled-over by the sheer level of achievement that a handful of people (and one in particular) and noting the length a bit more. It's still an amazing-looking movie, well worth catching during its Sunday encore if you missed it on Friday.
Full review on EFC (from Fantasia).
Ayla
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen 9 February 2017 in Somerville Theatre #2 (Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival, digital)
About ten or fifteen minutes into Ayla, I was wondering when the first really necessary scene would be. There's a flash-forward, a bunch of bits that don't establish much at all, and just generally a long slog until it gets to the actual useful information and gives the characters some amount of personality. Writer/director Elias plays a lot of formal tricks that don't really help, with hallucinations, extremely mannered dialogue and characterization (a couple of scenes with BIll Oberst Jr as extremely different but equally daft hotel managers are the worst offenders, but not the only ones), and things like having dialogue spoken over barely-connected imagery all suggest not that he's a next-level artist but that he can't simply tell the story in a clear way.
And while there's some potential for the story of a man who lost his sister when they were small children somehow has her revived as an adult - or at least, a peculiar woman who looks like the digitally-aged picture of four-year-old Ayla appears in a supernatural event. There's a potentially interesting vibe of her still being a child in there (although, dude, four-year-olds can talk), and a sort of vampirism aspect that suggests both that this Ayla is draining him and that, metaphorically, holding onto that grief is hollowing him out as well. The trouble is, Elias really hasn't constructed a story around that, and the audience is left with an idea that the filmmakers don't really do much with. There's also a weird incest-y thread that needs either a much more detailed and horrific backstory that the audience is given or some sort of exploration of how mixed up things can get inside a disturbed mind.
It doesn't help that the cast really doesn't seem up to this, either - Nicholas Wilder is technically giving a believable performance as grieving brother Elton, but it's so off-putting and seemingly detached that it's hard to figure what his girlfriend (Sarah Schoofs) sees in him. That relationship seemingly only exists in order to put Elton in a place where he can be shocked by Ayla appearing. Tristan Risk handles the revenant's odd physicality well, but never really makes her into anything as either memory or monster. D'Angelo Midili is okay as the more sensible, grounded brother, but Dee Wallace is unable to do much with terrible material as their mother.
By the time it's over - with the trademark slow credit roll to get the movie over 85 minutes - one can certainly see what Elias is trying to do, but it seems undeniable that his opinion of his craft is well ahead of his actual ability to tell a story. We can see what he's going for, but it's boring and sloppy, the work of someone who doesn't seem to have mastered the basics before trying to break rules.
Friday, February 09, 2018
Finishing the Series I: Sha Po Lang 3: Paradox, Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City, The Monkey King, The Vanished Murderer
My shelves of media are what you might call a large number of ambitious projects all jammed into the same space, the inevitable consequence of my being paid well enough to get a copy of any movie or book that interests me despite knowing that I probably don't have time to actually watch or read them. It's gotten to the point where a sort of decision paralysis sets in as soon as I do have a couple of hours, the same sort of thing that has me wasting a couple hours in the morning when I'm on vacation because the city I'm in has so much to offer. I've taken to constantly reorganizing my to-read shelves graphic novels to pull the unread volumes of series that had a new entry toward the front, but the main effect of that is to emphasize just how far behind I'm falling.
With the movies, I'm trying to take a more practical approach. Find a theme, go through the unwatched material, post about it. Basically, program myself a repertory series like you'd find at a cinema, only it always starts at the most convenient moment and extends as long (or short) as you'd like. That led to watching a bunch of 3D stuff toward the end of last year. Right now, I'm going with "entries in series that I haven't watched yet".
That one actually had its genesis in my first order of Hong Kong Blu-rays a couple years ago, when previews for The Monkey King 2 and From Vegas to Macau 3 started playing at Boston Common despite neither predecessor having gotten an American release (though I had seen the first From Vegas to Macau at Fantasia a couple years earlier). They didn't make it to my house on time, so they wound up sitting on the shelf until I found myself ordering Sha Po Lang 3: Paradox.
As much as I try to watch a lot of it, I don't really follow Asian cinema like I do American stuff, so I mostly don't know things exist until they slap me in the face by having a trailer show up, or appearing in a festival program, or in this case, my getting an email newsletter from an online store that says "SPL 3" somewhere. Having enjoyed the first two, my reaction is basically "how has this appeared on video somewhere in the world without me having a chance to see it on a big screen?" And while I'm clicking buttons to order it, I do find myself stopping short - what if it's because it isn't very good? A new SPL movie that came out in Hong Kong theaters in September would be something Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Well Go, Chopflix, etc., would jump on, right? Maybe it's just bad timing - the producers wouldn't give it to Fantasia two months before release, the Drafthouse guys don't really do much with Asian movies, and I guess those weeks might have been kind of crowded. Still, it's a testament to how used to instant gratification we've got where Chinese movies are concerned that this delay made me suspicious when twenty years ago, we would have been grateful for what scraps we got.
Fortunately, the movie was okay. More disappointing pictures have shown up in local theaters the same week they opened in China, but I kind of see why Well Go and Chopflix didn't release it theatrically. Kind of surprised that Well Go doesn't have a disc up for pre-order, though.
I kind of figured to go in reverse-alphabetical order after that, just based on how unwatched discs were piling up, which made Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City next up. The perfect excuse soon came up, too: Donald Trump's first State of the Union address wreaked havoc on local television schedules - and, really, guys-who-run-WLVI, why did you bump Black Lightning for that? Aside from how there would be lots of folks in the Boston area looking for counterprogramming, you'd think that particular show would have an audience not interested in his nonsense. Anyway, I joked on Twitter that in a choice between SOTU and a Takashi Miike movie about a ridiculous superhero who wakes up in the future and must fight a pop idol extracted from his worst impulses, it was an easy choice. It was not necessarily a great movie, but every Miike thing has at least a few scenes that amaze in their insanity, and it was nice to spend an evening being amused by absurdity rather than riled up by it as many were.
Worth mentioning: This thing has been sitting on my shelf so long that, even though it's a Blu-ray Disc, the packaging is DVD-sized. I don't recall whether Funimation was offering two separate SKUs for the packaging, but the thought process seemed to be that it would look more sensible next to the DVD-only release of Zebraman like that, or that most of their releases would still be standard-def with an HD version as a bonus.
I jumped out of order for The Monkey King, figuring that I probably wouldn't drill down that far by the time movie The Monkey King 3 hit theaters for Chinese New Year, and even though the second served as a reset for the series, that was what the disc was there for. It wasn't good, unfortunately, although it had some nifty 3D bits. It was still better than The Vanished Murderer, which I ordered because I liked the first and the second didn't show up in the US. That one was just generally bud, even if it did a lot of the surface things well enough to recall its much better predecessor.
I was going to finish this batch up with Tremors 5, but it looks like I've run up against the start of the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival and then vacation, so it will be a couple of weeks before I get back to this project. By which point, it's entirely possible I'll change the plan up because a plan that asks you to jump right into Tremors spin-offs without the people who created it is kind of suspect.
Sha po lang: taam long (Paradox)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen on 20 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, HK Blu-ray)
So far as I know, no North America distributor has yet bought up the rights to the latest entry in the "Sha Po Lang" franchise, renamed it Kill Zone 3, and waited until nearly a year after its Hong Kong release to release it, and that's both kind of surprising and kind of not: As much as noteworthy Chinese movies have been getting same-day (or at least quick) releases abroad in recent years, and this series is certainly noteworthy, this entry is a different beast, less focused on the martial-arts action and more on the dark, underlying themes.
It continues the series' tradition of starting fresh with each entry, with characters from the previous film in different roles. In this case, Louis Koo Tin-lok plays Lee Chung-chi, a Hong Kong detective who tends to still think of his daughter Wing-chi (Hanna Chan Hon-na) as a little girl, although she's not that pre-schooler any more, breaking the news that she's in love and pregnant as Chung-chi is buying her dinner for her sixteenth birthday. Inspector Lee does not take that well, and soon Wing-chi has run off to Pattaya, Thailand, to visit a friend who works there as a tattoo artist (Iris Lam). She goes missing, and Lee convinces local detective Chui Kit (Yue Wu) to let him tag along on the case. It turns out that she's been kidnapped by organ traffickers led by ex-mercenary Sacha (Chris Collins), and the mayor needs a new heart.
Louis Koo is a big star in Hong Kong, but he's not primarily a kung fu guy like the previous stars of these movies (Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, and Tony Jaa). He can play intense with the best of them, and doing so forms the backbone of this movie, from the tightly-coiled rage as Lee discovers just how grown-up Wing-chi is to his determination upon discovering who is responsible for the horrific ordeal she's been put through. It's not a terribly broad range of emotion to play, but Koo finds the right nuance for each scene to keep Lee from just being a set-jaw robot with one operating mode; whether Lee is pushed further into despair or given a temporary glimpse of hope, it feels authentic right down to a moment visiting Chui's wife in the hospital where he still seems focused but not unable to grasp what others are also going through. The crime film industry cranks out enough cops like Lee Chung-chi every year that it's tough to make a new one stick out, and while Koo may not manage that, he doesn't often misstep and the movie gets the job done because of him.
Full review at EFC
Zeburâman: Zebura Shiti no gyakushû (Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 30 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City came out three years before The Purge, and that you didn't hear the fans of Japanese pop culture in general and the prolific Takashi Miike in particular grumble is that the thing they have in common is an indication of just what a shotgun approach Miike can take to making movies: Though he had slowed down from his earlier insane pace, he was still cranking out two features a year, and not all of them are exactly carefully crafted. Zebraman 2 bounces between ideas and gags like Miike's career as a whole does, but at that scale it's more randomness than variety.
After the events of the first Zebraman movie, titular superhero Shin'ichi Ichikawa (Sho Aikawa) has become a hounded public figure, unable to return to his job as a disrespected third-grade teacher and abandoned by his family. One day, he finds himself in the grasp of a mad scientist, spun in a bizarre centrifuge, and then he wakes up fifteen years in the future, amnesiac, and wouldn't you know it, it's almost "Zebra Time" - the five minutes at 5am and 5pm in Zebra City (the former Tokyo) when all crime is legal and even encouraged. He's found riddled with bullets by Junpei Ichiba (Naoki Tanaka), an actor who used to play Zebraman on TV, and taken to a clinic run by Kohei Asano (Masahiro Inoue), one of his former students. There he's told that mad scientist Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) is mayor and his daughter Yui (Riisa Naka) is the city's mascot, a pop-star "Zebra Queen". Ichikawa and Yui are connected somehow, and the latter is looking for Sumire (Mei Nagano), a little girl who still has one of the green alien parasites Zebraman defeated fifteen years ago inside her.
It's not hard to see where Miike and writer Kankuro Kudo (who also wrote the first) are going with this, because they are not shy about dropping dialogue about needing to balance black and white, or separating evil elements from good, throughout the entire movie. It's not a bad way to go with the idea, especially with Ichikawa having an all-white costume while Yui is in black for much of the movie, but it's something that probably has to be given a bit more thought than color choices which themselves are more or less abandoned in the last act so that Zebraman can have a cool black costume rather than the deliberately silly but memorable one from the first movie. It's the sort of superhero-movie philosophy that sounds kind of weighty - you can scratch your chin and say, yes, Kudo and Miike are trying to say something here - but is actually kind of an inch deep and jettisoned when it comes time to actually examine how Zebra Time supposedly decreases overall crime or when some other shiny object crosses their paths.
Full review at EFC
Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong (The Monkey King)
* * (out of four)
Seen on 3-4 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, 3D Blu-ray)
I'm not sure whether Monkey King Sun Wukong has been more ubiquitous as an on-screen character in recent years or if it's just a matter of more Chinese films coming to international audiences' attention and the guy suddenly seeming to show up every six months. That seems more likely, because one would think this film being a DC-movie type disaster (not well-liked but making too much at the box office to be considered a failure) would otherwise put the kibosh on not just Cheang Pou-soi's planned trilogy but other planned takes on the story; instead, everybody else kept going while Cheang found a way to make The Monkey King 2 but basically start from scratch. It's certainly not hard to see why the filmmakers more or less discarded everything about this movie before making its two sequels; this version of The Monkey King just does not work and even though some of its most visible elements aren't really the problem, you kind of need to show that you're making changes rather than doing it quietly.
This one starts out well before the "Havoc in Heaven" part of the Monkey King mythology, with a war between deities and demons that the former eventually wins, with the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-fat) casting would-be usurper the Buffalo Demon King (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) down into a fiery hellscape. Heaven has been so damaged, though, that goddess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin) changes herself to crystal in order to pull it back together, with one fragment falling to Earth and birthing a powerful demigod with the form of the monkeys in the area. Seeing the potential for both virtue and vice in this Monkey King (Donnie Yen Ji-dan), the sage Master Puti (Hai Yitian) takes him on as a pupil, naming him "Sun Wukong". Still alternately egotistical and naive, Wukong is able to be convinced by the Buffalo Demon King to demand his place in Heaven, which would give disaffected guardian Erlangshen (Peter Ho Yun-tung) a chance to lower the defenses and let the demons attack again.
The star would be the most visible change when the sequel came out, but it's worth mentioning that Donnie Yen doesn't really make a bad Sun Wukong here. He's buried under a ton of prosthetics, but he nails the childish combination of innocence and petulance that the Havoc In Heaven phase of this character needs, and his emoting through all the latex and fur sells the film's last act. He doesn't really get a chance to show off his martial arts prowess as well as one would hope, despite being both star and action director - the movie is so larger-than-life and full of CGI and wire work that it's tough to see choreography in the fights - but his physicality works for the character. It's not hard to justify switching him out for Aaron Kwok in later movies, since Kwok's Buffalo Demon King is the best thing inn this one, projecting self-assurance and righteousness as he tricks Wukong and recites his grievances even while still maintaining the sneer that makes him clearly the film's villain.
(It ultimately worked out for the best; Kwok played a more mature, hardened Wukong well in #2, and maybe if Yen is making Monkey King movies, he doesn't do Rogue One, and who'd want that?)
Full review at EFC
Xiao shi de xiong shou (The Vanished Murderer)
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 5-6 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
The Bullet Vanishes was a nifty little period mystery that featured the most entertaining variation on "she stabbed him with an icicle" to come about in a while, and it seemed to draw a decent crowd, so it was something of a surprise when this sequel - from the same creative team and looking just as slick - didn't also open in North America the way its predecessor did. Finally watching it, the reason why is clear - the new film is wall-to-wall nonsense, and only rarely the impressively bizarre sort.
It opens with former guard Song Donglu (Lau Ching-wan) being called back to prison to investigate the escape of Fuyuan (Jiang Yiyan), who apparently left the smitten detective with a nifty puzzle when she decided to escape custody, then sending him a letter saying she's in the city of Xiang and to come find her. The unusual arrest - he finds her at the grave of a family friend and then she takes him to watch Professor Huo Hua (Lam Ka-tung) lecture on philosophy - is cut short when a man jumps to his death in front of them, his shirt carrying a message protesting businessman Gao Minxiong (Guo Xiaodong). Fuyuan takes that opportunity to escape, but constable Mao Jin (Rhydian Vaughan) finds Donglu and the one-time fiancee he met on the train, Chang Sheng (Li Xiaolu), standing over the body. Donglu sees something suspicious about the whole set-up, leading the three to work together to investigate the connection this apparent suicide has to both other crimes and Fuyuan.
Screenwriter Yeung Sin-ling does seem to have a pretty solid idea of how this all fits together; what she doesn't seem to have is a coherent plan for Donglu and his team to actually figure it out and do something about it. A whole lot of weight is carried to letters and number puzzles from Fuyuan that contain secret clues as far as the plot is concerned, and there is a sudden interest in hypnosis at one point so that the history Songlu and Sheng Chang share can come out all at once rather than being teased or revealing itself as it becomes relevant. And it's not even that the movie director Law Chi-leung makes of Yeung's script often jumps from point A to point E without what seem like fairly necessary stops in between; the film actually has multiple levels of dumb: It is possible to spend so much time annoyed that the movie never offers a solution to the problem of how Fuyuan got out of her cell when the tunnel she dug proved to be a red herring that it doesn't occur to the viewer to wonder just how the heck she was digging a tunnel from an upper floor in the first place.
Full review at EFC
With the movies, I'm trying to take a more practical approach. Find a theme, go through the unwatched material, post about it. Basically, program myself a repertory series like you'd find at a cinema, only it always starts at the most convenient moment and extends as long (or short) as you'd like. That led to watching a bunch of 3D stuff toward the end of last year. Right now, I'm going with "entries in series that I haven't watched yet".
That one actually had its genesis in my first order of Hong Kong Blu-rays a couple years ago, when previews for The Monkey King 2 and From Vegas to Macau 3 started playing at Boston Common despite neither predecessor having gotten an American release (though I had seen the first From Vegas to Macau at Fantasia a couple years earlier). They didn't make it to my house on time, so they wound up sitting on the shelf until I found myself ordering Sha Po Lang 3: Paradox.
As much as I try to watch a lot of it, I don't really follow Asian cinema like I do American stuff, so I mostly don't know things exist until they slap me in the face by having a trailer show up, or appearing in a festival program, or in this case, my getting an email newsletter from an online store that says "SPL 3" somewhere. Having enjoyed the first two, my reaction is basically "how has this appeared on video somewhere in the world without me having a chance to see it on a big screen?" And while I'm clicking buttons to order it, I do find myself stopping short - what if it's because it isn't very good? A new SPL movie that came out in Hong Kong theaters in September would be something Fantasia, Fantastic Fest, Well Go, Chopflix, etc., would jump on, right? Maybe it's just bad timing - the producers wouldn't give it to Fantasia two months before release, the Drafthouse guys don't really do much with Asian movies, and I guess those weeks might have been kind of crowded. Still, it's a testament to how used to instant gratification we've got where Chinese movies are concerned that this delay made me suspicious when twenty years ago, we would have been grateful for what scraps we got.
Fortunately, the movie was okay. More disappointing pictures have shown up in local theaters the same week they opened in China, but I kind of see why Well Go and Chopflix didn't release it theatrically. Kind of surprised that Well Go doesn't have a disc up for pre-order, though.
I kind of figured to go in reverse-alphabetical order after that, just based on how unwatched discs were piling up, which made Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City next up. The perfect excuse soon came up, too: Donald Trump's first State of the Union address wreaked havoc on local television schedules - and, really, guys-who-run-WLVI, why did you bump Black Lightning for that? Aside from how there would be lots of folks in the Boston area looking for counterprogramming, you'd think that particular show would have an audience not interested in his nonsense. Anyway, I joked on Twitter that in a choice between SOTU and a Takashi Miike movie about a ridiculous superhero who wakes up in the future and must fight a pop idol extracted from his worst impulses, it was an easy choice. It was not necessarily a great movie, but every Miike thing has at least a few scenes that amaze in their insanity, and it was nice to spend an evening being amused by absurdity rather than riled up by it as many were.
Worth mentioning: This thing has been sitting on my shelf so long that, even though it's a Blu-ray Disc, the packaging is DVD-sized. I don't recall whether Funimation was offering two separate SKUs for the packaging, but the thought process seemed to be that it would look more sensible next to the DVD-only release of Zebraman like that, or that most of their releases would still be standard-def with an HD version as a bonus.
I jumped out of order for The Monkey King, figuring that I probably wouldn't drill down that far by the time movie The Monkey King 3 hit theaters for Chinese New Year, and even though the second served as a reset for the series, that was what the disc was there for. It wasn't good, unfortunately, although it had some nifty 3D bits. It was still better than The Vanished Murderer, which I ordered because I liked the first and the second didn't show up in the US. That one was just generally bud, even if it did a lot of the surface things well enough to recall its much better predecessor.
I was going to finish this batch up with Tremors 5, but it looks like I've run up against the start of the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival and then vacation, so it will be a couple of weeks before I get back to this project. By which point, it's entirely possible I'll change the plan up because a plan that asks you to jump right into Tremors spin-offs without the people who created it is kind of suspect.
Sha po lang: taam long (Paradox)
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen on 20 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, HK Blu-ray)
So far as I know, no North America distributor has yet bought up the rights to the latest entry in the "Sha Po Lang" franchise, renamed it Kill Zone 3, and waited until nearly a year after its Hong Kong release to release it, and that's both kind of surprising and kind of not: As much as noteworthy Chinese movies have been getting same-day (or at least quick) releases abroad in recent years, and this series is certainly noteworthy, this entry is a different beast, less focused on the martial-arts action and more on the dark, underlying themes.
It continues the series' tradition of starting fresh with each entry, with characters from the previous film in different roles. In this case, Louis Koo Tin-lok plays Lee Chung-chi, a Hong Kong detective who tends to still think of his daughter Wing-chi (Hanna Chan Hon-na) as a little girl, although she's not that pre-schooler any more, breaking the news that she's in love and pregnant as Chung-chi is buying her dinner for her sixteenth birthday. Inspector Lee does not take that well, and soon Wing-chi has run off to Pattaya, Thailand, to visit a friend who works there as a tattoo artist (Iris Lam). She goes missing, and Lee convinces local detective Chui Kit (Yue Wu) to let him tag along on the case. It turns out that she's been kidnapped by organ traffickers led by ex-mercenary Sacha (Chris Collins), and the mayor needs a new heart.
Louis Koo is a big star in Hong Kong, but he's not primarily a kung fu guy like the previous stars of these movies (Donnie Yen, Wu Jing, and Tony Jaa). He can play intense with the best of them, and doing so forms the backbone of this movie, from the tightly-coiled rage as Lee discovers just how grown-up Wing-chi is to his determination upon discovering who is responsible for the horrific ordeal she's been put through. It's not a terribly broad range of emotion to play, but Koo finds the right nuance for each scene to keep Lee from just being a set-jaw robot with one operating mode; whether Lee is pushed further into despair or given a temporary glimpse of hope, it feels authentic right down to a moment visiting Chui's wife in the hospital where he still seems focused but not unable to grasp what others are also going through. The crime film industry cranks out enough cops like Lee Chung-chi every year that it's tough to make a new one stick out, and while Koo may not manage that, he doesn't often misstep and the movie gets the job done because of him.
Full review at EFC
Zeburâman: Zebura Shiti no gyakushû (Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 30 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City came out three years before The Purge, and that you didn't hear the fans of Japanese pop culture in general and the prolific Takashi Miike in particular grumble is that the thing they have in common is an indication of just what a shotgun approach Miike can take to making movies: Though he had slowed down from his earlier insane pace, he was still cranking out two features a year, and not all of them are exactly carefully crafted. Zebraman 2 bounces between ideas and gags like Miike's career as a whole does, but at that scale it's more randomness than variety.
After the events of the first Zebraman movie, titular superhero Shin'ichi Ichikawa (Sho Aikawa) has become a hounded public figure, unable to return to his job as a disrespected third-grade teacher and abandoned by his family. One day, he finds himself in the grasp of a mad scientist, spun in a bizarre centrifuge, and then he wakes up fifteen years in the future, amnesiac, and wouldn't you know it, it's almost "Zebra Time" - the five minutes at 5am and 5pm in Zebra City (the former Tokyo) when all crime is legal and even encouraged. He's found riddled with bullets by Junpei Ichiba (Naoki Tanaka), an actor who used to play Zebraman on TV, and taken to a clinic run by Kohei Asano (Masahiro Inoue), one of his former students. There he's told that mad scientist Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) is mayor and his daughter Yui (Riisa Naka) is the city's mascot, a pop-star "Zebra Queen". Ichikawa and Yui are connected somehow, and the latter is looking for Sumire (Mei Nagano), a little girl who still has one of the green alien parasites Zebraman defeated fifteen years ago inside her.
It's not hard to see where Miike and writer Kankuro Kudo (who also wrote the first) are going with this, because they are not shy about dropping dialogue about needing to balance black and white, or separating evil elements from good, throughout the entire movie. It's not a bad way to go with the idea, especially with Ichikawa having an all-white costume while Yui is in black for much of the movie, but it's something that probably has to be given a bit more thought than color choices which themselves are more or less abandoned in the last act so that Zebraman can have a cool black costume rather than the deliberately silly but memorable one from the first movie. It's the sort of superhero-movie philosophy that sounds kind of weighty - you can scratch your chin and say, yes, Kudo and Miike are trying to say something here - but is actually kind of an inch deep and jettisoned when it comes time to actually examine how Zebra Time supposedly decreases overall crime or when some other shiny object crosses their paths.
Full review at EFC
Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong (The Monkey King)
* * (out of four)
Seen on 3-4 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, 3D Blu-ray)
I'm not sure whether Monkey King Sun Wukong has been more ubiquitous as an on-screen character in recent years or if it's just a matter of more Chinese films coming to international audiences' attention and the guy suddenly seeming to show up every six months. That seems more likely, because one would think this film being a DC-movie type disaster (not well-liked but making too much at the box office to be considered a failure) would otherwise put the kibosh on not just Cheang Pou-soi's planned trilogy but other planned takes on the story; instead, everybody else kept going while Cheang found a way to make The Monkey King 2 but basically start from scratch. It's certainly not hard to see why the filmmakers more or less discarded everything about this movie before making its two sequels; this version of The Monkey King just does not work and even though some of its most visible elements aren't really the problem, you kind of need to show that you're making changes rather than doing it quietly.
This one starts out well before the "Havoc in Heaven" part of the Monkey King mythology, with a war between deities and demons that the former eventually wins, with the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-fat) casting would-be usurper the Buffalo Demon King (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) down into a fiery hellscape. Heaven has been so damaged, though, that goddess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin) changes herself to crystal in order to pull it back together, with one fragment falling to Earth and birthing a powerful demigod with the form of the monkeys in the area. Seeing the potential for both virtue and vice in this Monkey King (Donnie Yen Ji-dan), the sage Master Puti (Hai Yitian) takes him on as a pupil, naming him "Sun Wukong". Still alternately egotistical and naive, Wukong is able to be convinced by the Buffalo Demon King to demand his place in Heaven, which would give disaffected guardian Erlangshen (Peter Ho Yun-tung) a chance to lower the defenses and let the demons attack again.
The star would be the most visible change when the sequel came out, but it's worth mentioning that Donnie Yen doesn't really make a bad Sun Wukong here. He's buried under a ton of prosthetics, but he nails the childish combination of innocence and petulance that the Havoc In Heaven phase of this character needs, and his emoting through all the latex and fur sells the film's last act. He doesn't really get a chance to show off his martial arts prowess as well as one would hope, despite being both star and action director - the movie is so larger-than-life and full of CGI and wire work that it's tough to see choreography in the fights - but his physicality works for the character. It's not hard to justify switching him out for Aaron Kwok in later movies, since Kwok's Buffalo Demon King is the best thing inn this one, projecting self-assurance and righteousness as he tricks Wukong and recites his grievances even while still maintaining the sneer that makes him clearly the film's villain.
(It ultimately worked out for the best; Kwok played a more mature, hardened Wukong well in #2, and maybe if Yen is making Monkey King movies, he doesn't do Rogue One, and who'd want that?)
Full review at EFC
Xiao shi de xiong shou (The Vanished Murderer)
* ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 5-6 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
The Bullet Vanishes was a nifty little period mystery that featured the most entertaining variation on "she stabbed him with an icicle" to come about in a while, and it seemed to draw a decent crowd, so it was something of a surprise when this sequel - from the same creative team and looking just as slick - didn't also open in North America the way its predecessor did. Finally watching it, the reason why is clear - the new film is wall-to-wall nonsense, and only rarely the impressively bizarre sort.
It opens with former guard Song Donglu (Lau Ching-wan) being called back to prison to investigate the escape of Fuyuan (Jiang Yiyan), who apparently left the smitten detective with a nifty puzzle when she decided to escape custody, then sending him a letter saying she's in the city of Xiang and to come find her. The unusual arrest - he finds her at the grave of a family friend and then she takes him to watch Professor Huo Hua (Lam Ka-tung) lecture on philosophy - is cut short when a man jumps to his death in front of them, his shirt carrying a message protesting businessman Gao Minxiong (Guo Xiaodong). Fuyuan takes that opportunity to escape, but constable Mao Jin (Rhydian Vaughan) finds Donglu and the one-time fiancee he met on the train, Chang Sheng (Li Xiaolu), standing over the body. Donglu sees something suspicious about the whole set-up, leading the three to work together to investigate the connection this apparent suicide has to both other crimes and Fuyuan.
Screenwriter Yeung Sin-ling does seem to have a pretty solid idea of how this all fits together; what she doesn't seem to have is a coherent plan for Donglu and his team to actually figure it out and do something about it. A whole lot of weight is carried to letters and number puzzles from Fuyuan that contain secret clues as far as the plot is concerned, and there is a sudden interest in hypnosis at one point so that the history Songlu and Sheng Chang share can come out all at once rather than being teased or revealing itself as it becomes relevant. And it's not even that the movie director Law Chi-leung makes of Yeung's script often jumps from point A to point E without what seem like fairly necessary stops in between; the film actually has multiple levels of dumb: It is possible to spend so much time annoyed that the movie never offers a solution to the problem of how Fuyuan got out of her cell when the tunnel she dug proved to be a red herring that it doesn't occur to the viewer to wonder just how the heck she was digging a tunnel from an upper floor in the first place.
Full review at EFC
Thursday, February 08, 2018
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 9 February 2018 - 15 February 2018
Ah, the weekend before Valentine's Day, which has become about the latest entry in a series of kinky romances, me having a fraught relationship with a film festival, and what seems like a late-ish arrival for the Oscar-nominated short films.
I'll be mostly living at the Somerville Theater for the sci-fi festival but also trying to fit all the Oscar shorts in during the weekend.
- Starting with the most interesting material, the Oscar-Nominated Shorts start showing up this weekend, with Kendall Square splitting one theater between the Animated shorts and the Live-Action ones (with the animation getting more and better screening times) while two programs of Documentary shorts play at The Coolidge Corner Theatre; CinemaSalem has both in their screening room. Both have their other screens filled with feature-length nominees.
The Coolidge continues to have many showtimes of Phantom Thread on 70mm film and has a number of other repertory programs. The "Women in Horror" midnights include 35mm prints of director Antonina Bird's Ravenous on Friday and Rachel Talalay's Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare on Saturday. They also have a Saturday midnight of My Best Fiend, Coolidge honoree Werner Herzog's chronicle of his tumultuous relationship with frequent star Klaus Kinski. The Sunday morning Goethe-Institut German movie is In Times of Fading Light, which takes place in the days immediately before the fall of the Berlin Wall (which, as of a few days ago, has been down for longer than it was up). The weekly Daniel Day-Lewis movie is Lincoln, and plays on Monday rather than the usual Tuesday to line up with Lincoln's birthday. There's also Open Screen on Tuesday, and a 35mm Valentine's Day screening of When Harry Met Sally on Wednesday. - Friday is the first day of the Boston Sci-Fi Film Festival at The Somerville Theatre, and the opening night film, at least, is pretty darn spiffy - I saw Junk Head at Fantasia and was impressed as heck with the bizarre stop-motion feature. There's also the latest from Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Before We Vanish, on Wednesday night, and matinees of The Iron Giant and Howl's Moving Castle during the weekend, and the rest… Well, the rest can be dodgy at this festival.
- Over in the multiplexes, there's a lot of screens for 50 Shades Freed, the finale of the series chronicling the love story between a billionaire with unusual sexual appetites and a seemingly unassuming woman who won his heart. It's at Fresh Pond, Jordan's Furniture (Imax), the Embassy, Boston Common (including Imax), Fenway (including RPX), the Seaport (including Icon-X), South Bay (including Imax and Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row (including Imax), Revere (including XPlus), and the SuperLux.
Clint Eastwood directs The 15:17 to Paris, centered around a recreation of a group of off-duty soldiers who thwart a terrorist attack on a European train, with the actual people involved playing themselves. It's at the Capitol, Fresh Pond, the Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, the Seaport, South Bay, Revere, and the SuperLux. There's also Peter Rabbit, which looks like a good reminder that another iconic British children's book character's movie, Paddington 2, is still playing around town, although the talking-rabbit movie is at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, South Bay, Assembly Row, and Revere.
Anime fans can look forward to Mazinger Z: Infinity at Fenway and Revere on Sunday afternoon and Monday evening, while Revere also has a screening of The Dark Knight on Sunday. - The Brattle Theatre continues the This Week in Dystopia series this weekend with three double features: Strange Days & Idiocracy on Friday, Children of Men & A Clockwork Orange on Saturday, and The Handmaid's Tale & The Hunger Games on Sunday, with Sunday also featuring a matinee of Fritz Lang's Metropolis. Most in 35mm, with Metropolis and The Hunger Games on Sunday. Most feature special introductions, as well.
There's also guests on Monday, with filmmakers Daniel McCabe and Horeb Bulambo Shindano the guests of the DocYard to talk about their film This Is Congo, a look at the long-running civil conflicts in the world. There are Valentine's shows on Tuesday and Wednesday, with a 35mm print of Casablanca at 4pm and 7pm (though the latter times are sold out) and The Princess Bride at 10pm. There's also a special members-only secret screening on Thursday. - Apple Fresh Pond and Fenway both keep Padmaavat for a third week, though there are no more 3D screenings. Fresh Pond also opens Pad Man, which tells the tale of a man who revolutionized the production of women's sanitary pads. There's also Tamil comedy Kalakalappu 2 on Saturday & Sunday, as well as Telugu films Intelligent (Friday), Toli Prema, and Gaythri (through Sunday). They also have English-language indie Permission, in which a woman about to be married is told he should try and date other people.
For those more into Spanish-language film, Revere adds Mexican comedy La Boda de Valentina, with Marimar Vega as a successful woman in New York who is dreading introducing her American boyfriend to her family when he proposes. They continue Dominican film Colao, and Bilal from the UAE as well. - The Harvard Film Archive welcomes Kevin Jerome Everson on Friday and Saturday, introducing Eerie the first day and a shorts program on the second, with another shorts program on Monday. There's also a Saturday afternoon show of the Princess and the Frog for just five bucks, Frederick Wiseman's jumbo-sized docPublic Housing on Sunday.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues the Boston Festival of Films From Japan with Harmonium (Friday/Sunday), Takashi Miike's Blade of the Immortal (Friday), and Rage (Thursday). They also have more screenings of BJFF alum In Between on Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday. There's also a Valentine's Day screening of The Princess Bride on Wednesday, though it's already listed as sold out.
- Emerson's Bright Lights welcomes director Leslie McCleave on Tuesday to discuss his film The Blind Boys of Alabama: How Sweet the Sound, with "Heroin(e)" filmmaker Elaine McMillion Sheldon introducing her short film on Thursday. Note that while both are free and open to the public, "Heroin(e)" is listed as playing at 5pm rather than the usual 7pm.
- Jeff Rapsis will be at the Aeronaut Brewery on Sunday evening, accompanying Buster Keaton in The Cameraman.
- The Institute for Contemporary Art will have matinee screenings of Sundance Film Festival Shorts on Saturday and Sunday. They also have David Lynch The Art Life as part of their "Month of Sundays" series of free films about contemporary artists with museum admission.
I'll be mostly living at the Somerville Theater for the sci-fi festival but also trying to fit all the Oscar shorts in during the weekend.
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
I am very glad that this one is getting at least part of a second week at Kendall Square (although with just early matinees, that basically means Saturday and Sunday for most people); it's a good movie that seems to have been counting on Oscar nominations to go wider, but didn't get them. That's a bit of a surprise; even though the Best Actress category was going to be tough to crack, I'd figure Hollywood liking movies about Hollywood might help out, and that Elvis Costello had a shot for best song. Not enough, apparently.
It's a shame, because I really liked what Bening did here, and considering that I've never been a particular fan of hers - didn't dislike her, but never considered going to a movie because she was in it - that's a pretty big feather in the film's cap. It's a genuinely nifty take on the movie' themes that could easily be too much but isn't. It surprised and delighted me early rather than necessarily having to sneak up on me, and while I don't know which way is ideal for a movie, this one certainly worked well enough for me.
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 6 February 2018 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
It's only reasonable to be somewhat skeptical about Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool; present-day Annette Bening doesn't quite recall the image of Gloria Grahame in one's head, and that is potentially a huge hurdle for the movie to get over, especially since a large part of the audience is people who do have an image of her in her 1940s-1950s heyday in their heads (as opposed to the later years of smaller roles and TV work). It works in large part because the filmmakers are able to use and subvert that dissonance, creating an oft-intriguing story of fighting and accepting the march of time out of it.
Gloria Grahame was, as one person in the film points out, a big deal in black and white in the early 1950s, even winning an Oscar, but not so much afterwards; in 1981 she collapses backstage in Lancaster, England. Her emergency contact turns out to be Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a much less famous and much younger actor living with his parents (Julie Waters & Kenneth Cranham) in Liverpool. They bring her into the house to recuperate, which naturally causes Peter to reflect on how they met in London and became lovers two years previously.
The initial scenes where the audience meets Gloria as weakened and diminished - in obvious contrast to the thirty-year-old stills she keeps in her dressing room alongside inscribed gifts from the likes of Humphrey Bogart - are certainly jarring and imply a fairly familiar characterization, but screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (working from the real-life Peter's memoir) and director Paul McGuigan have something a little different in mind. Instead of giving us the salty and jaded woman who has contempt for her naive younger self, the movie works because the filmmakers have Bening play it like the youthful Grahame of In a Lonely Place: coquettish and sly, with a breathy voice, like it's never really sunken in that she's not that girl anymore. It's a trick that can backfire, and that it doesn't is a testament to how good Berning's performance is - the audience can see not just Bening imitating Grahame, but Grahame imitating herself.
Full review at EFC
It's a shame, because I really liked what Bening did here, and considering that I've never been a particular fan of hers - didn't dislike her, but never considered going to a movie because she was in it - that's a pretty big feather in the film's cap. It's a genuinely nifty take on the movie' themes that could easily be too much but isn't. It surprised and delighted me early rather than necessarily having to sneak up on me, and while I don't know which way is ideal for a movie, this one certainly worked well enough for me.
Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 6 February 2018 in Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
It's only reasonable to be somewhat skeptical about Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool; present-day Annette Bening doesn't quite recall the image of Gloria Grahame in one's head, and that is potentially a huge hurdle for the movie to get over, especially since a large part of the audience is people who do have an image of her in her 1940s-1950s heyday in their heads (as opposed to the later years of smaller roles and TV work). It works in large part because the filmmakers are able to use and subvert that dissonance, creating an oft-intriguing story of fighting and accepting the march of time out of it.
Gloria Grahame was, as one person in the film points out, a big deal in black and white in the early 1950s, even winning an Oscar, but not so much afterwards; in 1981 she collapses backstage in Lancaster, England. Her emergency contact turns out to be Peter Turner (Jamie Bell), a much less famous and much younger actor living with his parents (Julie Waters & Kenneth Cranham) in Liverpool. They bring her into the house to recuperate, which naturally causes Peter to reflect on how they met in London and became lovers two years previously.
The initial scenes where the audience meets Gloria as weakened and diminished - in obvious contrast to the thirty-year-old stills she keeps in her dressing room alongside inscribed gifts from the likes of Humphrey Bogart - are certainly jarring and imply a fairly familiar characterization, but screenwriter Matt Greenhalgh (working from the real-life Peter's memoir) and director Paul McGuigan have something a little different in mind. Instead of giving us the salty and jaded woman who has contempt for her naive younger self, the movie works because the filmmakers have Bening play it like the youthful Grahame of In a Lonely Place: coquettish and sly, with a breathy voice, like it's never really sunken in that she's not that girl anymore. It's a trick that can backfire, and that it doesn't is a testament to how good Berning's performance is - the audience can see not just Bening imitating Grahame, but Grahame imitating herself.
Full review at EFC
Monday, February 05, 2018
This Week In Tickets: 29 January 2018 - February 2018
Two handwritten notes on the calendar means I actually watched two of the Blu-rays that have been sitting on my shelf long enough to have moved at least once. On the other hand, nine came in the mail, which is not really a sustainable pace.
The week started off with a trek to Fenway to catch Padmaavat after not being able to catch it the day before. It's a bunch of fun, and I think my opinion of it has increased in the meantime. It's also always fun to talk about movies with the Indian folks at work on their home turf, so to speak.
My current kick on making a dent in the movie collection is watching the entries in series that I haven't seen yet, more or less making a pile of those discs in alphabetical order, and that left Zebraman 2 on top, which is fair enough; it's from early enough in the days of HD discs that it's packaged like a DVD that has a high-def disc as a bonus feature. It's a system that I made an exception to late Saturday night, since I figured there was no way I would get to The Monkey King before the third entry comes out on the 16th, especially with a week of film festival in there. Not that it's really necessary to catch up, since I saw #2 a week before this disc arrived and the series was revamped before that one.
Wednesday and Thursday were busy in the usual way- basically, I hang out at the comic shop while my DVR records about six hours of stuff on Thursday and then try and watch it on Thursday - and then Friday was given to BPM (Beats Per Minute), a pretty terrific picture from France that won a bunch of awards at Cannes and had a few folks I know claiming it was robbed in the Oscar nominations. It is pretty good.
I was going to go for a double feature on Saturday, but laundry and other chores pushed the front half to the next day, but I still made it out to Assembly Row for Winchester. The 90 bus is direct, but almost always late. Decent enough movie, although I wanted to like it a bit more, given my fondness for the directors.
I did the double feature on Sunday, starting off with Till the End of the World, a solid, interesting survival romance from China. The back half wound up being I, Tonya as I try and catch up with some things before Oscars despite having a couple of weeks of time booked between now and then.
That one is actually being published here just before on my Letterboxd page, so if you're reading this right after it went up, you may actually be ahead of that! A rare, rare occurrence.
Zeburâman: Zebura Shiti no gyakushû (Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 30 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City came out three years before The Purge, and that you didn't hear the fans of Japanese pop culture in general and the prolific Takashi Miike in particular grumble is that the thing they have in common is an indication of just what a shotgun approach Miike can take to making movies: Though he had slowed down from his earlier insane pace, he was still cranking out two features a year, and not all of them are exactly carefully crafted. Zebraman 2 bounces between ideas and gags like Miike's career as a whole does, but at that scale it's more randomness than variety.
After the events of the first Zebraman movie, titular superhero Shin'ichi Ichikawa (Sho Aikawa) has become a hounded public figure, unable to return to his job as a disrespected third-grade teacher and abandoned by his family. One day, he finds himself in the grasp of a mad scientist, spun in a bizarre centrifuge, and then he wakes up fifteen years in the future, amnesiac, and wouldn't you know it, it's almost "Zebra Time" - the five minutes at 5am and 5pm in Zebra City (the former Tokyo) when all crime is legal and even encouraged. He's found riddled with bullets by Junpei Ichiba (Naoki Tanaka), an actor who used to play Zebraman on TV, and taken to a clinic run by Kohei Asano (Masahiro Inoue), one of his former students. There he's told that mad scientist Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) is mayor and his daughter Yui (Riisa Naka) is the city's mascot, a pop-star "Zebra Queen". Ichikawa and Yui are connected somehow, and the latter is looking for Sumire (Mei Nagano), a little girl who still has one of the green alien parasites Zebraman defeated fifteen years ago inside her.
It's not hard to see where Miike and writer Kankuro Kudo (who also wrote the first) are going with this, because they are not shy about dropping dialogue about needing to balance black and white, or separating evil elements from good, throughout the entire movie. It's not a bad way to go with the idea, especially with Ichikawa having an all-white costume while Yui is in black for much of the movie, but it's something that probably has to be given a bit more thought than color choices which themselves are more or less abandoned in the last act so that Zebraman can have a cool black costume rather than the deliberately silly but memorable one from the first movie. It's the sort of superhero-movie philosophy that sounds kind of weighty - you can scratch your chin and say, yes, Kudo and Miike are trying to say something here - but is actually kind of an inch deep and jettisoned when it comes time to actually examine how Zebra Time supposedly decreases overall crime or when some other shiny object crosses their paths.
Full review at EFC
Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong (The Monkey King)
* * (out of four)
Seen on 3-4 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, 3D Blu-ray)
I'm not sure whether Monkey King Sun Wukong has been more ubiquitous as an on-screen character in recent years or if it's just a matter of more Chinese films coming to international audiences' attention and the guy suddenly seeming to show up every six months. That seems more likely, because one would think this film being a DC-movie type disaster (not well-liked but making too much at the box office to be considered a failure) would otherwise put the kibosh on not just Cheang Pou-soi's planned trilogy but other planned takes on the story; instead, everybody else kept going while Cheang found a way to make The Monkey King 2 but basically start from scratch. It's certainly not hard to see why the filmmakers more or less discarded everything about this movie before making its two sequels; this version of The Monkey King just does not work and even though some of its most visible elements aren't really the problem, you kind of need to show that you're making changes rather than doing it quietly.
This one starts out well before the "Havoc in Heaven" part of the Monkey King mythology, with a war between deities and demons that the former eventually wins, with the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-fat) casting would-be usurper the Buffalo Demon King (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) down into a fiery hellscape. Heaven has been so damaged, though, that goddess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin) changes herself to crystal in order to pull it back together, with one fragment falling to Earth and birthing a powerful demigod with the form of the monkeys in the area. Seeing the potential for both virtue and vice in this Monkey King (Donnie Yen Ji-dan), the sage Master Puti (Hai Yitian) takes him on as a pupil, naming him "Sun Wukong". Still alternately egotistical and naive, Wukong is able to be convinced by the Buffalo Demon King to demand his place in Heaven, which would give disaffected guardian Erlangshen (Peter Ho Yun-tung) a chance to lower the defenses and let the demons attack again.
The star would be the most visible change when the sequel came out, but it's worth mentioning that Donnie Yen doesn't really make a bad Sun Wukong here. He's buried under a ton of prosthetics, but he nails the childish combination of innocence and petulance that the Havoc In Heaven phase of this character needs, and his emoting through all the latex and fur sells the film's last act. He doesn't really get a chance to show off his martial arts prowess as well as one would hope, despite being both star and action director - the movie is so larger-than-life and full of CGI and wire work that it's tough to see choreography in the fights - but his physicality works for the character. It's not hard to justify switching him out for Aaron Kwok in later movies, since Kwok's Buffalo Demon King is the best thing inn this one, projecting self-assurance and righteousness as he tricks Wukong and recites his grievances even while still maintaining the sneer that makes him clearly the film's villain.
(It ultimately worked out for the best; Kwok played a more mature, hardened Wukong well in #2, and maybe if Yen is making Monkey King movies, he doesn't do Rogue One, and who'd want that?)
Full review at EFC
I, Tonya
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 4 February 2018 in Somerville Theatre #5 (first-run, DCP)
I'm not sure I, Tonya really needs or benefits from the fourth-wall-breaking, unreliable-narrator conceit that gives it its title, especially at the beginning, because it comes across as a thoroughly capable and interesting conventional biography. It is zeroed in on the idea that, whether Tonya Harding was knowingly complicit in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan or not, her background made her easy to cast as the villain, because she is not what one expects an Olympian to be, with a large side-order of how those that look down on Harding cannot conceive of the desperation the situations she and others starting out at a disadvantage find themselves in. That material is fantastic, and the meta-material seems like a distraction.
It's necessary, though, as advancing that point of view means suggesting that Harding herself is innocent, a controversial position not widely believed. It is necessary in order to get at that truth of how nobody ever truly have Harding her due for doing things as a figure skater that no woman before her had because she didn't fit the profile, and the fact that she and everyone around her are quite capable of living down to expectations muddies the waters but also challenges the audience. It also gives Margot Robbie some of her most obviously entertaining moments as she looks right at the audience and lays Harding bare. I don't know, necessarily, that moments like that are more interesting than the ones where she feels that she has finally achieved the respect she deserves.
The film is plenty entertaining, but sometimes too obvious, from the very familiar songs on the soundtrack to how it makes such an effort to establish Tonya's role as ambiguous and then presents her version of the story above all others. As a character says early on, it's a story that says a lot about America, even if the filmmakers can't quite decide which parts deserve the most emphasis.
The week started off with a trek to Fenway to catch Padmaavat after not being able to catch it the day before. It's a bunch of fun, and I think my opinion of it has increased in the meantime. It's also always fun to talk about movies with the Indian folks at work on their home turf, so to speak.
My current kick on making a dent in the movie collection is watching the entries in series that I haven't seen yet, more or less making a pile of those discs in alphabetical order, and that left Zebraman 2 on top, which is fair enough; it's from early enough in the days of HD discs that it's packaged like a DVD that has a high-def disc as a bonus feature. It's a system that I made an exception to late Saturday night, since I figured there was no way I would get to The Monkey King before the third entry comes out on the 16th, especially with a week of film festival in there. Not that it's really necessary to catch up, since I saw #2 a week before this disc arrived and the series was revamped before that one.
Wednesday and Thursday were busy in the usual way- basically, I hang out at the comic shop while my DVR records about six hours of stuff on Thursday and then try and watch it on Thursday - and then Friday was given to BPM (Beats Per Minute), a pretty terrific picture from France that won a bunch of awards at Cannes and had a few folks I know claiming it was robbed in the Oscar nominations. It is pretty good.
I was going to go for a double feature on Saturday, but laundry and other chores pushed the front half to the next day, but I still made it out to Assembly Row for Winchester. The 90 bus is direct, but almost always late. Decent enough movie, although I wanted to like it a bit more, given my fondness for the directors.
I did the double feature on Sunday, starting off with Till the End of the World, a solid, interesting survival romance from China. The back half wound up being I, Tonya as I try and catch up with some things before Oscars despite having a couple of weeks of time booked between now and then.
That one is actually being published here just before on my Letterboxd page, so if you're reading this right after it went up, you may actually be ahead of that! A rare, rare occurrence.
Zeburâman: Zebura Shiti no gyakushû (Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City)
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 30 January 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, Blu-ray)
Zebraman 2: Attack on Zebra City came out three years before The Purge, and that you didn't hear the fans of Japanese pop culture in general and the prolific Takashi Miike in particular grumble is that the thing they have in common is an indication of just what a shotgun approach Miike can take to making movies: Though he had slowed down from his earlier insane pace, he was still cranking out two features a year, and not all of them are exactly carefully crafted. Zebraman 2 bounces between ideas and gags like Miike's career as a whole does, but at that scale it's more randomness than variety.
After the events of the first Zebraman movie, titular superhero Shin'ichi Ichikawa (Sho Aikawa) has become a hounded public figure, unable to return to his job as a disrespected third-grade teacher and abandoned by his family. One day, he finds himself in the grasp of a mad scientist, spun in a bizarre centrifuge, and then he wakes up fifteen years in the future, amnesiac, and wouldn't you know it, it's almost "Zebra Time" - the five minutes at 5am and 5pm in Zebra City (the former Tokyo) when all crime is legal and even encouraged. He's found riddled with bullets by Junpei Ichiba (Naoki Tanaka), an actor who used to play Zebraman on TV, and taken to a clinic run by Kohei Asano (Masahiro Inoue), one of his former students. There he's told that mad scientist Kozo Aihara (Guadalcanal Taka) is mayor and his daughter Yui (Riisa Naka) is the city's mascot, a pop-star "Zebra Queen". Ichikawa and Yui are connected somehow, and the latter is looking for Sumire (Mei Nagano), a little girl who still has one of the green alien parasites Zebraman defeated fifteen years ago inside her.
It's not hard to see where Miike and writer Kankuro Kudo (who also wrote the first) are going with this, because they are not shy about dropping dialogue about needing to balance black and white, or separating evil elements from good, throughout the entire movie. It's not a bad way to go with the idea, especially with Ichikawa having an all-white costume while Yui is in black for much of the movie, but it's something that probably has to be given a bit more thought than color choices which themselves are more or less abandoned in the last act so that Zebraman can have a cool black costume rather than the deliberately silly but memorable one from the first movie. It's the sort of superhero-movie philosophy that sounds kind of weighty - you can scratch your chin and say, yes, Kudo and Miike are trying to say something here - but is actually kind of an inch deep and jettisoned when it comes time to actually examine how Zebra Time supposedly decreases overall crime or when some other shiny object crosses their paths.
Full review at EFC
Xi you ji: Da nao tian gong (The Monkey King)
* * (out of four)
Seen on 3-4 February 2018 in Jay's Living Room (finishing the series, 3D Blu-ray)
I'm not sure whether Monkey King Sun Wukong has been more ubiquitous as an on-screen character in recent years or if it's just a matter of more Chinese films coming to international audiences' attention and the guy suddenly seeming to show up every six months. That seems more likely, because one would think this film being a DC-movie type disaster (not well-liked but making too much at the box office to be considered a failure) would otherwise put the kibosh on not just Cheang Pou-soi's planned trilogy but other planned takes on the story; instead, everybody else kept going while Cheang found a way to make The Monkey King 2 but basically start from scratch. It's certainly not hard to see why the filmmakers more or less discarded everything about this movie before making its two sequels; this version of The Monkey King just does not work and even though some of its most visible elements aren't really the problem, you kind of need to show that you're making changes rather than doing it quietly.
This one starts out well before the "Havoc in Heaven" part of the Monkey King mythology, with a war between deities and demons that the former eventually wins, with the Jade Emperor (Chow Yun-fat) casting would-be usurper the Buffalo Demon King (Aaron Kwok Fu-shing) down into a fiery hellscape. Heaven has been so damaged, though, that goddess Nuwa (Zhang Zilin) changes herself to crystal in order to pull it back together, with one fragment falling to Earth and birthing a powerful demigod with the form of the monkeys in the area. Seeing the potential for both virtue and vice in this Monkey King (Donnie Yen Ji-dan), the sage Master Puti (Hai Yitian) takes him on as a pupil, naming him "Sun Wukong". Still alternately egotistical and naive, Wukong is able to be convinced by the Buffalo Demon King to demand his place in Heaven, which would give disaffected guardian Erlangshen (Peter Ho Yun-tung) a chance to lower the defenses and let the demons attack again.
The star would be the most visible change when the sequel came out, but it's worth mentioning that Donnie Yen doesn't really make a bad Sun Wukong here. He's buried under a ton of prosthetics, but he nails the childish combination of innocence and petulance that the Havoc In Heaven phase of this character needs, and his emoting through all the latex and fur sells the film's last act. He doesn't really get a chance to show off his martial arts prowess as well as one would hope, despite being both star and action director - the movie is so larger-than-life and full of CGI and wire work that it's tough to see choreography in the fights - but his physicality works for the character. It's not hard to justify switching him out for Aaron Kwok in later movies, since Kwok's Buffalo Demon King is the best thing inn this one, projecting self-assurance and righteousness as he tricks Wukong and recites his grievances even while still maintaining the sneer that makes him clearly the film's villain.
(It ultimately worked out for the best; Kwok played a more mature, hardened Wukong well in #2, and maybe if Yen is making Monkey King movies, he doesn't do Rogue One, and who'd want that?)
Full review at EFC
I, Tonya
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen on 4 February 2018 in Somerville Theatre #5 (first-run, DCP)
I'm not sure I, Tonya really needs or benefits from the fourth-wall-breaking, unreliable-narrator conceit that gives it its title, especially at the beginning, because it comes across as a thoroughly capable and interesting conventional biography. It is zeroed in on the idea that, whether Tonya Harding was knowingly complicit in the attack on Nancy Kerrigan or not, her background made her easy to cast as the villain, because she is not what one expects an Olympian to be, with a large side-order of how those that look down on Harding cannot conceive of the desperation the situations she and others starting out at a disadvantage find themselves in. That material is fantastic, and the meta-material seems like a distraction.
It's necessary, though, as advancing that point of view means suggesting that Harding herself is innocent, a controversial position not widely believed. It is necessary in order to get at that truth of how nobody ever truly have Harding her due for doing things as a figure skater that no woman before her had because she didn't fit the profile, and the fact that she and everyone around her are quite capable of living down to expectations muddies the waters but also challenges the audience. It also gives Margot Robbie some of her most obviously entertaining moments as she looks right at the audience and lays Harding bare. I don't know, necessarily, that moments like that are more interesting than the ones where she feels that she has finally achieved the respect she deserves.
The film is plenty entertaining, but sometimes too obvious, from the very familiar songs on the soundtrack to how it makes such an effort to establish Tonya's role as ambiguous and then presents her version of the story above all others. As a character says early on, it's a story that says a lot about America, even if the filmmakers can't quite decide which parts deserve the most emphasis.
Till the End of the World
This thing where MoviePass has decided to strong-arm AMC by not letting their card be used at ten of their biggest theaters, including the one at Boston Common, is kind of a bummer. I suspect that, to a certain extent, it's set up so that AMC doesn't actually lose a whole lot of business: If, to use a not-entirely-hypothetical example, I and other MoviePass members opt to see Winchester at Assembly Row or South Bay rather than the Common, the chain doesn't lose a lot of money but they've got a sharp illustration of how a chunk of their business will go where their subscription card is good rather than being particularly loyal to a particular theater or company. But for stuff that only opens at Boston Common, whether it be because they've got 19 high-capacity screens to fill or because they're right next to Chinatown, it can be a bit dicier.
In this case, for instance, I'mcheap thrifty, so I save a couple bucks going to a matinee rather than an evening show, and probably get lighter snacks than I might have. But, then, at least I'm seeing it at all; it's a pretty sparsely attended screening (though not so much so that there aren't people sitting in my usual seats when I get there) and I idly wonder how much not having MP available there just cut the audience. I suspect, in this case, it wasn't much, given that Chinese film fans are a bit of a captive audience in that they can't see these movies anywhere else in the Boston area and I suspect that there aren't a whole lot of folks like me who are looking at their MoviePass membership and thinking "well, if it's not going to cost me more, why not see the Chinese Antarctic survival romance?"; on the other hand, I wouldn't be surprised if there weren't a few foreign students or Chinese-American kids who joined specifically to see Chinese stuff at Boston Common.
It'd be a shame if that was keeping people from seeing this; it is, as I say in the review, something that merits big-screen, uncompressed presentation. I suspect I'd knock a partial star off it if I wasn't seeing it theatrically. It's designed for scale, and would just be a different beast without it.
Nan ji jue lian (Till the End of the World)
* * * (out of four)
Seen on 4 February 2018 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
Till the End of the World feels like the sort of movie that they used to show us in school when they needed to give the teachers a break or there was a hole in the lesson plan - an attention-grabbing story of survival that nevertheless had something like a PG rating and enough science and practical information that we could be said to be learning something useful. It's not bad, as that sort of thing goes, and has the sort of Antarctic photography that's worth seeing on the big screen, even if it is kind of too long and gets heavy by the end.
It's genial enough even as it starts in what seems like overly-familiar territory, with "Fortune" Wu Fu Chun (Mark Chao You-ting) making a bit of an ass of himself as his charter plane flies over Antarctica - he has a plan to stage destination weddings on the continent - with two other passengers, Natasha and Jing Ruyi (Yang Zishan), who are heading for scientific outposts. There won't be much time for that, though, when the plane flies into a storm and goes down, with Natasha not long for the world and Ruyi's leg broken. Fortunately, Fu Chun is able to find a shed in which they can take shelter, and Ruyi thinks it might be one 20km away from her base. She doesn't know which direction, though, and that's a lot of ground for Fu-chun to cover when they have an estimated 70 days of supplies.
The two-person cast proves to be all the movie needs, in large part because filmmaker Wu You-yin doesn't spend a lot of time making them rub each other the wrong way just to have conflict. Mark Chao tones the immaturity down after the plane goes down, but he's still able to make plenty of comic moments work even while conveying Fu Chun's growing maturity and determination. Yang Zishan similarly sheds the early portrayal of Ruyi as uptight and a bit snobbish, converting it into a believable pessimism that nevertheless has room for changed perspective later on. The love story stops being understated after a while, but it's earned, and even when it seems like it might be a matter of survival instinct as much as true affection, that's legitimate, and it works for them.
Full review at EFC
In this case, for instance, I'm
It'd be a shame if that was keeping people from seeing this; it is, as I say in the review, something that merits big-screen, uncompressed presentation. I suspect I'd knock a partial star off it if I wasn't seeing it theatrically. It's designed for scale, and would just be a different beast without it.
Nan ji jue lian (Till the End of the World)
* * * (out of four)
Seen on 4 February 2018 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
Till the End of the World feels like the sort of movie that they used to show us in school when they needed to give the teachers a break or there was a hole in the lesson plan - an attention-grabbing story of survival that nevertheless had something like a PG rating and enough science and practical information that we could be said to be learning something useful. It's not bad, as that sort of thing goes, and has the sort of Antarctic photography that's worth seeing on the big screen, even if it is kind of too long and gets heavy by the end.
It's genial enough even as it starts in what seems like overly-familiar territory, with "Fortune" Wu Fu Chun (Mark Chao You-ting) making a bit of an ass of himself as his charter plane flies over Antarctica - he has a plan to stage destination weddings on the continent - with two other passengers, Natasha and Jing Ruyi (Yang Zishan), who are heading for scientific outposts. There won't be much time for that, though, when the plane flies into a storm and goes down, with Natasha not long for the world and Ruyi's leg broken. Fortunately, Fu Chun is able to find a shed in which they can take shelter, and Ruyi thinks it might be one 20km away from her base. She doesn't know which direction, though, and that's a lot of ground for Fu-chun to cover when they have an estimated 70 days of supplies.
The two-person cast proves to be all the movie needs, in large part because filmmaker Wu You-yin doesn't spend a lot of time making them rub each other the wrong way just to have conflict. Mark Chao tones the immaturity down after the plane goes down, but he's still able to make plenty of comic moments work even while conveying Fu Chun's growing maturity and determination. Yang Zishan similarly sheds the early portrayal of Ruyi as uptight and a bit snobbish, converting it into a believable pessimism that nevertheless has room for changed perspective later on. The love story stops being understated after a while, but it's earned, and even when it seems like it might be a matter of survival instinct as much as true affection, that's legitimate, and it works for them.
Full review at EFC
Sunday, February 04, 2018
Winchester
As much as this review is a lot of "Jay really likes the Spierig Brothers and what they do well is why the movie is as good as it is", I have to admit that I probably won't ever see all their features. One of them is Jigsaw, which despite being sold as a sort of soft reboot, is effectively Saw 8, and when you've only see the first film in a series that has apparently grown famous for its convoluted continuity, well, being a fan of the team brought in for Part 8 isn't going to get a person into theaters. It probably doesn't help that, when I asked folks online about whether it's worth it as a fan of the Spierigs, I was basically told that they brought a level of basic competence you don't expect to Saw sequels, but it's still a Saw movie. Yikes.
Anyway, that's the movie I didn't see. The one I did see was all right, although I don't know if the experience was necessarily enhanced by the kids behind me saying they were going to leave if it got too scary and yelling "what the fuck" over stuff that's not that weird. Even for a PG-13 horror movie, it's not really terribly scary - a few jumps and some reasonably effective bits, but in a way too logical in how it's put together to really unsettle you, and a little too well aware of the studio wanting a PG-13 to really go for the gross-out or shock.
Winchester
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen on 3 February 2018 in AMC Assembly Row #6 (first-run, DCP)
Winchester is one of those movies that is just good enough that one can understand why it attracted a fair amount of talent while also falling well short of its potential. It's full of enough good performances, solid ideas, and capable work that it's especially disappointing when it eventually shows a lack of ambition, or at the very least, the inability to deliver on its earlier potential.
The Winchester in question is Sarah (Helen Mirren), the widow who still owns 51% of the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company and whose unusual behavior goes well past a belief in spiritualism that is excessive even for 1906, but to constant expansion and renovation of her house, now a seven-story structure with little apparent rhyme or reason, with rooms demolished as often as they are added. The board therefore hires a psychiatrist, one Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke), to examine her, with the implication of a bonus if the abuser of various substances issues the "correct" evaluation. And so he goes to the house in San Jose, where Sarah lives with niece Marion (Sarah Snook), her son Henry (Finn Scicluna-O'Prey), a small army of servants, and builders working around the clock, seven days a week. Her claim that the constant construction is to draw out the ghosts of those killed by the family's rifles is peculiar, but strange enough things are going on to potentially shape Price's skepticism.
The Spierig Brothers (Michael and Peter) are one of genre film's more interesting teams, if not one of the more prolific ones (this is just their fifth feature starting from Undead in 2003, and that includes last year's franchise work on Jigsaw), and the story of Sarah and the Winchester House isn't necessarily a stretch for them but does give them a chance to come up with some striking visuals and engage in a little bit of world-building. They and original screenwriter Tom Vaughan do an admirable job of building a supernatural story that makes sense by its own internal logic, slips into a period setting fairly smoothly, and still leaves room for surprises and scares. They're pretty good at knowing when to use a jump and when to have something silent and imposing, and there's enough understanding that the audience knows many of the tricks to make scenes like an early one where a mirror keeps coming into view a little more fun. Winchester may not be the meticulously realized world of Daybreakers or the perfect pretzel twist of Predestination, and it's not always put together with the lightest touch, but there's a bit more thought to how this all fits together than many horror movies display.
Full review at EFC
Anyway, that's the movie I didn't see. The one I did see was all right, although I don't know if the experience was necessarily enhanced by the kids behind me saying they were going to leave if it got too scary and yelling "what the fuck" over stuff that's not that weird. Even for a PG-13 horror movie, it's not really terribly scary - a few jumps and some reasonably effective bits, but in a way too logical in how it's put together to really unsettle you, and a little too well aware of the studio wanting a PG-13 to really go for the gross-out or shock.
Winchester
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen on 3 February 2018 in AMC Assembly Row #6 (first-run, DCP)
Winchester is one of those movies that is just good enough that one can understand why it attracted a fair amount of talent while also falling well short of its potential. It's full of enough good performances, solid ideas, and capable work that it's especially disappointing when it eventually shows a lack of ambition, or at the very least, the inability to deliver on its earlier potential.
The Winchester in question is Sarah (Helen Mirren), the widow who still owns 51% of the Winchester Repeating Rifle Company and whose unusual behavior goes well past a belief in spiritualism that is excessive even for 1906, but to constant expansion and renovation of her house, now a seven-story structure with little apparent rhyme or reason, with rooms demolished as often as they are added. The board therefore hires a psychiatrist, one Dr. Eric Price (Jason Clarke), to examine her, with the implication of a bonus if the abuser of various substances issues the "correct" evaluation. And so he goes to the house in San Jose, where Sarah lives with niece Marion (Sarah Snook), her son Henry (Finn Scicluna-O'Prey), a small army of servants, and builders working around the clock, seven days a week. Her claim that the constant construction is to draw out the ghosts of those killed by the family's rifles is peculiar, but strange enough things are going on to potentially shape Price's skepticism.
The Spierig Brothers (Michael and Peter) are one of genre film's more interesting teams, if not one of the more prolific ones (this is just their fifth feature starting from Undead in 2003, and that includes last year's franchise work on Jigsaw), and the story of Sarah and the Winchester House isn't necessarily a stretch for them but does give them a chance to come up with some striking visuals and engage in a little bit of world-building. They and original screenwriter Tom Vaughan do an admirable job of building a supernatural story that makes sense by its own internal logic, slips into a period setting fairly smoothly, and still leaves room for surprises and scares. They're pretty good at knowing when to use a jump and when to have something silent and imposing, and there's enough understanding that the audience knows many of the tricks to make scenes like an early one where a mirror keeps coming into view a little more fun. Winchester may not be the meticulously realized world of Daybreakers or the perfect pretzel twist of Predestination, and it's not always put together with the lightest touch, but there's a bit more thought to how this all fits together than many horror movies display.
Full review at EFC
Saturday, February 03, 2018
BPM: Beats Per Minute
I sent off a three-tweet reply the other day because a certain website put up a dumb article about how limited releases don't make sense any more and how certain movies likely had their awards and box office potential undercut by that sort of strategy. Indeed, the article argues, it's anachronistic and counterproductive now because there is little to no print cost and because the average moviegoer learns about things from national/international websites rather than their local paper.
I suspect that part of the reason I found it so annoying was that I had said things like that myself in the past before learning the tiniest scrap about how modern film distribution works, and if I could see that fatal flaw in that argument now, certainly someone who wrote on a higher-profile website and maybe even got paid for it could see that the trouble with that argument is that there are actual movie theaters between the studios trying to get their films to audiences and the audiences who might want to see said movies, and they have their own challenges.
Firstly, there's not as many of them as there used to be. Sure, there are many places putting up spiffy new multiplexes, but the big releases claim most of those screens, in part because a room that once might have held 100 people holds 45 now, with the comfy reclining chairs - it takes more screens to accommodate the demand for those blockbusters, so even if these films weren't being given limited releases, they wouldn't necessarily crack the multiplexes. So that means these boutique releases tend to play smaller, independent local theaters that only have one to four screens, and the ones that weren't driven out of business by the digital conversion are having to compete with the places that offer recliners, expanded concessions, and the like.
And those guys have a lot less room to shrug off booking something that doesn't play. If a place with "19" at the end of its name has something that people have no interest in, it's no big deal; they take the hit, kick it out after a week, and use the screen for something produced by Marvel the next week. A single-screen theater takes that sort of risk and sees the same result, and maybe they have trouble making payroll. So a limited release helps them see that, yeah, this thing is popular with more than critics, it got a huge per-screen average in the big cities, folks are giving it good word-of-mouth, it's worth fitting into their schedule a couple weeks later or at the first option - which may be some time away, if they're the kind of theater that sets their line-up for a couple months at a time because bi-monthly calendars increase turnout.
The trouble is, if things break just wrong, that first opportunity may mean that by the time a local theater has a window, they might be bumping against something being available to stream online. Which brings us to BPM (Beats Per Minute). It had its limited release in NY/LA back in October, and has just landed at the Brattle Theatre in Boston for a one-week booking now, and we're lucky to get that. Why? Well, a French film about AIDS activists in the early 1990s was probably never going to play the multiplexes, even if the one at Boston Common is pretty decent about putting stuff outside the mainstream on screens #17-19 (metaphorically speaking). The boutique multiplex had a recent renovation and though they haven't changed their programming much, there's a bit more opening on two screens rather than one, and maybe a bit more hanging around an extra week because there are fewer seats available and it takes longer to fill the local demand - maybe something like BPM gets squeezed out of a screen in that case. And so it eventually falls to the Brattle, but they've set their November/December calendar, and by the time they see that it's not going to open anywhere closer than Salem (where a locally-owned theater did find a spot for it in January), they're looking at the January/February calendar, and by the time it actually shows, you can rent the movie on Amazon.
Is this situation likely how distributor The Orchard wanted things to play out? I doubt it. They probably would have liked a thousand screens right off the bat and rapid expansion to cities like Boston. But just because they can get hundreds of copies of the movie to theaters without having to spend thousands of dollars each on a print, with a lot of the press coming at the start and hitting the whole country at the same time, does not mean there are theaters in every metro area able to take the risk of booking it at that point, and now many of them are much less likely to do so a couple months in, when it looks like they might be competing with streaming.
Those of us who can really should head down to the Brattle to catch this movie - it's terrific and has the sort of style and energy that works well on the big screen, and we're lucky that this sort of limited-release system still (barely) works well enough to get it there.
120 battements par minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)]
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen on 2 February 2018 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run, DCP)
120 Beats Per Minute (to translate its French name literally) is a fairly long movie, and it's in large part because it keeps going after the rallying-cry scene that would often serve as the fist-pumping finale for a film about activism and activists. It's a shift in focus that reminds the audience that this fight is not something abstract, but a matter of life and death, a fight that in many cases would pay off for the next wave of people infected with HIV (or, given that much of the work is focused on prevention, not infected). It's a shift from what's come before, but a good one - the bulk of Beats Per Minute is a terrific movie, but one cannily aware that what makes a good movie doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
It takes place in the early 1990s, focused on ACT UP Paris, an AIDS advocacy organization noted for its guerrilla protest style that routinely results in arrests but is generally able to avoid actual injuries or serious damage. As it opens, four new members are joining the weekly meetings, including student Jérémie (Ariel Borenstein) and HIV-negative Nathan (Arnaud Valois), as the members of longer standing break down a recent activity where organizer Sophie (Adèle Haenel) thought that firebrand Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) crossed a line. It's a well-organized but tumultuous meeting of a group that shares those same characteristics.
Writer/director Robin Campillo spends much of the early going focusing on the group and how it goes about its business, obeying a lot of the same rules as a fly-on-the-wall documentary in that he doesn't necessarily worry about making sure every potential situation is either foreshadowed or explained as it comes up in order to give the audience an easy point of entry - the "orientation" is more about how the weekly meeting works than about the unfortunate state of AIDS education and the epidemic itself in France at the time. It's a choice that is quietly engrossing, allowing an audience that may be inclined to view this sort of protester as an undisciplined agitator to see the level of commitment and consideration that goes into their every action and perhaps gives the next generation some appreciation of what was involved in this sort of organization before everybody had an immediate wireless connection to everybody else.
Full review at EFC
I suspect that part of the reason I found it so annoying was that I had said things like that myself in the past before learning the tiniest scrap about how modern film distribution works, and if I could see that fatal flaw in that argument now, certainly someone who wrote on a higher-profile website and maybe even got paid for it could see that the trouble with that argument is that there are actual movie theaters between the studios trying to get their films to audiences and the audiences who might want to see said movies, and they have their own challenges.
Firstly, there's not as many of them as there used to be. Sure, there are many places putting up spiffy new multiplexes, but the big releases claim most of those screens, in part because a room that once might have held 100 people holds 45 now, with the comfy reclining chairs - it takes more screens to accommodate the demand for those blockbusters, so even if these films weren't being given limited releases, they wouldn't necessarily crack the multiplexes. So that means these boutique releases tend to play smaller, independent local theaters that only have one to four screens, and the ones that weren't driven out of business by the digital conversion are having to compete with the places that offer recliners, expanded concessions, and the like.
And those guys have a lot less room to shrug off booking something that doesn't play. If a place with "19" at the end of its name has something that people have no interest in, it's no big deal; they take the hit, kick it out after a week, and use the screen for something produced by Marvel the next week. A single-screen theater takes that sort of risk and sees the same result, and maybe they have trouble making payroll. So a limited release helps them see that, yeah, this thing is popular with more than critics, it got a huge per-screen average in the big cities, folks are giving it good word-of-mouth, it's worth fitting into their schedule a couple weeks later or at the first option - which may be some time away, if they're the kind of theater that sets their line-up for a couple months at a time because bi-monthly calendars increase turnout.
The trouble is, if things break just wrong, that first opportunity may mean that by the time a local theater has a window, they might be bumping against something being available to stream online. Which brings us to BPM (Beats Per Minute). It had its limited release in NY/LA back in October, and has just landed at the Brattle Theatre in Boston for a one-week booking now, and we're lucky to get that. Why? Well, a French film about AIDS activists in the early 1990s was probably never going to play the multiplexes, even if the one at Boston Common is pretty decent about putting stuff outside the mainstream on screens #17-19 (metaphorically speaking). The boutique multiplex had a recent renovation and though they haven't changed their programming much, there's a bit more opening on two screens rather than one, and maybe a bit more hanging around an extra week because there are fewer seats available and it takes longer to fill the local demand - maybe something like BPM gets squeezed out of a screen in that case. And so it eventually falls to the Brattle, but they've set their November/December calendar, and by the time they see that it's not going to open anywhere closer than Salem (where a locally-owned theater did find a spot for it in January), they're looking at the January/February calendar, and by the time it actually shows, you can rent the movie on Amazon.
Is this situation likely how distributor The Orchard wanted things to play out? I doubt it. They probably would have liked a thousand screens right off the bat and rapid expansion to cities like Boston. But just because they can get hundreds of copies of the movie to theaters without having to spend thousands of dollars each on a print, with a lot of the press coming at the start and hitting the whole country at the same time, does not mean there are theaters in every metro area able to take the risk of booking it at that point, and now many of them are much less likely to do so a couple months in, when it looks like they might be competing with streaming.
Those of us who can really should head down to the Brattle to catch this movie - it's terrific and has the sort of style and energy that works well on the big screen, and we're lucky that this sort of limited-release system still (barely) works well enough to get it there.
120 battements par minute [BPM (Beats Per Minute)]
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen on 2 February 2018 in the Brattle Theatre (first-run, DCP)
120 Beats Per Minute (to translate its French name literally) is a fairly long movie, and it's in large part because it keeps going after the rallying-cry scene that would often serve as the fist-pumping finale for a film about activism and activists. It's a shift in focus that reminds the audience that this fight is not something abstract, but a matter of life and death, a fight that in many cases would pay off for the next wave of people infected with HIV (or, given that much of the work is focused on prevention, not infected). It's a shift from what's come before, but a good one - the bulk of Beats Per Minute is a terrific movie, but one cannily aware that what makes a good movie doesn't necessarily tell the whole story.
It takes place in the early 1990s, focused on ACT UP Paris, an AIDS advocacy organization noted for its guerrilla protest style that routinely results in arrests but is generally able to avoid actual injuries or serious damage. As it opens, four new members are joining the weekly meetings, including student Jérémie (Ariel Borenstein) and HIV-negative Nathan (Arnaud Valois), as the members of longer standing break down a recent activity where organizer Sophie (Adèle Haenel) thought that firebrand Sean (Nahuel Pérez Biscayart) crossed a line. It's a well-organized but tumultuous meeting of a group that shares those same characteristics.
Writer/director Robin Campillo spends much of the early going focusing on the group and how it goes about its business, obeying a lot of the same rules as a fly-on-the-wall documentary in that he doesn't necessarily worry about making sure every potential situation is either foreshadowed or explained as it comes up in order to give the audience an easy point of entry - the "orientation" is more about how the weekly meeting works than about the unfortunate state of AIDS education and the epidemic itself in France at the time. It's a choice that is quietly engrossing, allowing an audience that may be inclined to view this sort of protester as an undisciplined agitator to see the level of commitment and consideration that goes into their every action and perhaps gives the next generation some appreciation of what was involved in this sort of organization before everybody had an immediate wireless connection to everybody else.
Full review at EFC
Friday, February 02, 2018
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 2 February 2018 - 8 February 2018
Google's movie listings, gone. Now Flixter just redirects to Fandango. So now it looks like Rotten Tomatoes is the best spot to find that sort of information in one page, but since they have the same owners, that will probably stink as well. Why nobody is willing to just do a simple, compact listing is beyond me. But, we assemble this as we can.
I'm looking at BPM, Winchester, Film Stars Don't Die…, and maybe a couple other things. It's really time to cram stuff like I, Tonya, Call Me By Your Name, and Lady Bird, since there's a lot more new releases and festivals and vacations coming up starting next weekend.
- Only one really noteworthy wide release this week, but it's kind of exciting to some, as the Spierig Brothers have a new one, with Winchester starring Helen Mirren as Sarah Winchester, the insane heiress to her family's rifle company who build the most peculiar house in the world to hold the ghosts of all the people those weapons killed. But, maybe, what if she wasn't? The Spierigs are some of most creative genre filmmakers out there, and this is much more interesting than them doing a Saw sequel. It's at Fresh Pond, Boston Common, Fenway, the Seaport, South Bay (in Dolby Cinema), Assembly Row, and Revere (including XPlus).
Revere also opens Bilal: A New Breed of Hero, a Saudi/UAE-produced animated adventure that's apparently been sitting on the shelf for a couple of years. Revere also shows The Dark Night on Thursday evening. Assembly Row bumps The Greatest Showman up to Imax. - The Brattle Theatre has a one-week run of BPM: Beats Per Minute, Robin Campillo's acclaimed story of the early days of ACT UP in the 1990s. It got a bunch of awards at Cannes and by all accounts works as a thrilling drama, love story, and historical document. There's also a special presentation of experimental film Outfitumentary with director K8 Hardy in person on Wednesday, as well as a live recording of the "This Week in Dystopia" followed by a 35mm screening of Idiocracy with co-writer Etan Cohen in person on Thursday.
- Film Stars Don't Die in Liverpool was likely hoping for some Oscar nominations, didn't get them, and as a result is only opening at Kendall Square. It features Annette Bening as 1950s hollywood legend Gloria Grahame, who strikes up a friendship and possible romance with a young actor (Jamie Bell). They (and Fenway) will also have a couple screenings of Eureka Seven Hi-Evolution 1, which is apparently fills in the backstory behind the popular anime and manga series.
- Apple Fresh Pond and Fenway both keep Padmaavat on a full screen, although Fenway will only be showing the first show of the day in 3D during the second week. Fenway also has screenings of Humble Politician Nograj on Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon, featuring Danish Salt as a corrupt politician trying to move up to a new office. Fresh Pond also continues Telugu thriller Bhaagmathie and opens Kannada-language romantic comedy Raju, Tamil action-comedy Chalo, and Telugu comedy Touch Chesi Chudu. There's also weekend matinees of Tamil adventure Oru Nalla Naal Paath (Saturday/Sunday) and Malayalm comedy Aadu 2 (Saturday).
Over at Boston Common, the Chinese film of the week is Till the End of the World, with Mark Chao and Yang Zishan as two only two survivors of an airplane crash who must survive and, perhaps, fall in love They also get A Silent Voice, and, yeah, they did have that three months ago - this time around, it's an English dub, rather than the subtitled version from last year. - The Coolidge Corner Theatre adds screenings of I, Tonya and Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri to its mix of award-nominated movies. The midnight team starts a month of women in horror this weekend, with American Psycho on Friday night and The Slumber Party Massacre on Saturday, both on 35mm; the mornings after will go to the other extreme with Mary Poppins Saturday and Sunday morning. There's also a 35mm screening of There Will Be Blood on Tuesday, part of the "Daniel Day Lewis: I'm Finished" series, and it's worth noting that some of the screenings of Day-Lewis's final film, Phantom Thread, will be projected from DCPs rather than 70mm film this week (The Somerville Theatre is also advertising this as the film's last week in 35mm there).
On Thursday, they will be giving their annual Coolidge Award to Werner Herzog, who will do a Q&A after an afternoon screening of his recent documentary Into the Inferno while engaging in a discussion of his career with friend Herbert Golder in the evening. The other theaters will be dark that day, and there will be other screenings of his films over the next month. - The Harvard Film Archive's screenings are split between three singular documentarians this weekend. Kevin Jerome Everson will be in town next weekend, but they start his retrospective on Friday with Tonsler Park and Quality Control on Monday. Agnès Varda will come a couple weeks later, and her The Beaches of Agnès plays Friday and One Sings, the Other Doesn't on Friday, both on 35mm. Frederick Wiseman's The Store plays earlier Saturday evening, and he will be there in person on Sunday afternoon for his nearly six-hour Near Death, also delivering his second Norton Lecture in the Sanders Theatre on Monday afternoon.
- The Museum of Fine Arts opens their February calendar with the monthly "On the Fringe" show, in this case a 35mm print of Joe Versus the Volcano, part of an "Indie Film in the 90s" series. Much of the rest of the week is given to their Boston Festival of Films From Japan, including Tokyo Idols (Friday/Thursday),Teiichi Battle of Supreme High (Saturday), Jellyfish Eyes (Sunday), Resistance at Tule Lake (Sunday/Thursday), Rage (Wendesday), and Your Name (Thursday, this time subtitled). They also begin a run of In Between, a favorite from the Boston Jewish Film Festival featuring three young Palestinian women living outside the family homes; it plays Saturday, Sunday, and Thursday
- The two films playing as part of Emerson's Bright Lights series at the Paramount Theater this week are, if nothing else, visual knockouts in different ways - Good Time on Tuesday is a perfect throwback to grimy/grainy thrillers of decades past, while Loving Vincent on Thursday is an impressively hand-painted animated film investigating Van Gogh's last days. Both are free to the public and followed by discussion by school faculty.
- CinemaSalem uses their small room for In the Fade, a pretty darn terrific drama that played IFFBoston's Fall Focus and features a terrific performance by Diane Kruger as a mother whose family is destroyed by neo-Nazi attack.
I'm looking at BPM, Winchester, Film Stars Don't Die…, and maybe a couple other things. It's really time to cram stuff like I, Tonya, Call Me By Your Name, and Lady Bird, since there's a lot more new releases and festivals and vacations coming up starting next weekend.
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