I must admit to being mildly surprised that this is only playing at Kendall Square right now; both the Coolidge and West Newton tend to be aggressive in booking movies pointed at the Jewish community, and I'd think an Israeli military comedy would fill the bill. Sure, the jokes aren't often specifically Israeli or Jewish - I think the only one or two that I didn't get involved how Zohar grew up in a kibbutz - but that would mostly be a plus, right?
Then again, it will probably show up at one or the other in a week or two, after its Kendall Square run. It looks like a one-week booking, but the theater's new, prettier, but less informative website doesn't say much on the subject.
Worth seeking out, though - it's a pretty funny movie. I'm not sure it's quite a M*A*S*H for a new generation/place (and I hope the Frank Burns reference in the review doesn't go over some readers' heads, because then I'm old), in part because anything it has to say about the absurdity of militarization in general is a bit blunted by how it avoids saying anything about the reason for that military presence at all. Despite some of what happens, it's a fairly light comedy set against a war whose ethics are far murkier for an American audience than they likely are for an Israeli one, and the occasional mentions that there's a war on rather than this taking place during a time of peace bring that home a bit.
Zero Motivation
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 12 December 2014 at Landmark Kendall Square #9 (first-run, DCP)
Having a crappy job or two is often a rite of passage for folks in their late teens and early twenties, and if you live in a country like Israel with mandatory military service, having that turn out to be your crappy job means that you've probably gotten pretty lucky, compared to how things could have turned out. The joke, of course, is that those for whom that is the case are too young and fortunate to realize it at the time, and that adds a nice little sting to the already quite funny Zero Motivation.
Daffi (Nelly Tagar) and Zohar (Dana Ivgy) are both doing their time in the army as office support on a fairly remote base in 2004, and they've become best friends during that assignment. Neither is particularly hard working, with Daffi enough of a ditz that her entire job is shredding papers, but she still craves a transfer to Tel Aviv and thinks she has it when replacement secretary Tehila (Yonit Tobi) gets off the bus with them after a weekend leave. Things do not go as planned, though - not for them and not for Rama (Shani Klein), the actually-committed officer in charge of the office, which also includes testy Russian Irena (Tamara Klingon) and Livnat (Heli Twito) & Liat (Meytal Gal), who have an annoying habit of singing in unison all day long.
Zero Motivation looks to be a sort of slacker comedy at first, and that probably describes the film as well as anything, although both the setting and the cast mark it as out of the ordinary for that genre. Talya Lavie breaks it into smaller (though connected) stories, rather than the string of funny anecdotes one might be expecting. Things also take surprisingly dark turns at a couple of points, showing that the insanity in this situation is not just fish-out-of-water absurdity, but something approaching genuine madness.
Full review at EFC.
Saturday, December 13, 2014
Thursday, December 11, 2014
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 12 December - 16 December 2014
Not often I have my weekend so specifically booked up beforehand, but there's some fun stuff on the way.
My plans? As I said, pretty mapped out, with tickets already grabbed for Etheria and the Brattle preview of Inherent Vice (I believe they all went to members). I will probably try to fit Top Five, Back in Time, Zero Motivation, a couple of the Demys, and maybe Lingaa in there. Maybe Exodus and Black Christmas. Oh, and Red Sox tickets go on sale Saturday, so there's that...
- One of the most entertaining-looking ones looks to be Top Five, a new movie from writer/director/star Chris Rock, playing a guy with a similar background (former stand-up/actor moving into more serious roles) who has a long interview with journalist Roasario Dawson as they crisscross New York. Two smart, funny folks I like a lot right there. It's at Fenway, Boston Common, Assembly Row, and Revere.
The other big opening is Ridley's Scott's 3D Exodus: Gods and Kings, another retelling of the story of Moses (Christian Bale, with Joel Edgerton as Ramses), which means it stands a chance of being the second-best Biblical movie of the year (nothing's beating Noah). It's at the Capitol, Apple (2D only), Embassy, Boston Common, Fenway, Assembly Row, and Revere.
Also, this is likely the last chance to see Interstellar on the premium screens, as most Imax/Imax-branded places will be doing a Hobbit marathon on Monday and early shows ofThere and Back AgainThe Battle of Five Armies on Tuesday. - Boston Common also shares a couple of movies that also open at Kendall Square. Wild stars Reese Witherspoon as a woman who hikes the Pacific Crest trail in an attempt to jar herself off a self-destructive path after the death of her mother, despite having no experience in that sort of thing. It's based on a true story, as is The Imitation Game, which stars Benedict Cumberbatch as Alan Turing, the father of the modern computer who broke the Enigma code during World War II while hiding his homosexuality (a crime in the UK at the time). Word is it stops short of his tragic end, though.
They also get Zero Motivation, and it's kind of shocking that they're the only ones, as this comedy about Israeli women serving their mandatory military service in a small, out-of-the-way base seems like it would be something other local theaters would pounce on. It recently played the Boston Jewish Film Festival and has won a number of awards at other fests. - The Indian film playing at Apple Cinemas/iMovieCafe with English subtitles this week is not Hindi, but Tamil: Lingaa stars superstar Rajnikanth and Sonakshi Sinha, and appears to be a historical adventure with Rajini as father and son trying to build a dam despite the British refusing to assist. There will also be screenings in the Telugu language, and I don't suppose it matters which one those of us using subtitles see. I remind you that Rajini was the star of the absolutely bonkers Endhirian and writer/director K.S. Ravikumar also wrote the actor's recent animated adventure Kochadaiiyaan. I also warn that these are $20 tickets, no matter the time of day.
The other near-day-and-date international release comes from China: Back in Time tells the story of a person's first love back in 1980s Beijing, and how it shaped him into the man he is today. It stars Eddie Peng and Ni Ni, and apparently opened ahead of John Woo's new film back home. It plays at Fenway, which is also keeping Women Who Flirt around for matinees. - The Brattle will be pairing a new restoration of documentary Burroughs: The Movie with other films based on author William S. Burroughs's work from Friday to Saturday: A 70-minute "assault version" of Nova Express on Friday & Saturday (director Andre Perkowski is continually adding to his combination of novel-reading and found footage), and a 35mm print of David Cronenberg's version of Naked Lunch on Saturday & Sunday. All are single features, and note that the times on Saturday have shifted some to accommodate an unrelated preview screening.
The rest of the week has special screenings. On Monday, The DocYard presents Approaching the Elephant with filmmaker Amanda Rose Wilder on had to discuss her documentary on the Teddy McArdle Free School and its unusual means of operation. There's a Trash Night screening of Starcrash on Tuesday (and, honestly, the images look like the thing's too much fun to have people "enhancing" the experience, and then the place is closed on Wednesday for recovery or a private event. Thursday brings a special screening of The Loudest Sound, a locally-produced film with the cast and crew there for a Q&A afterward. - Though The Somerville Theatre is using the big room for burlesque show The Slutcracker all through December (hey, it's a tradition!), the good folks at All Things Horror will be taking over the Micro-Cinema on Saturday night and Sunday afternoon for the Etheria Film Night a program that includes Axelle Carolyn's feature debut Soulmate along with seven short films, all science fiction, fantasy, and horror and directed by women. Tickets are available on Ticketleap.
- The Coolidge Corner Theatre shuffles things between screens a little but keeps the same line-up, although The Babadook only gets out of the Goldscreen for midnights (screen #2 on Friday, the Screening Room on Saturday). The other midnights are more in the Christmas spirit, with a 35mm print of Black Christmas playing Friday (screen #1) & Saturday (screen #2), while Johnny Cupcakes presents Home Alone in the big room on Saturday (there's also a kid-oriented free screening at Assembly Row that morning, but the two events are unrelated).
The other specials don't require staying up so late, with the Goethe-Institut showing their monthly German film - Superegos, a comedy about a fence who specializes in rare books hiding out with a senile psychiatrist - playing Sunday morning. Monday night, on the other hand, offers a Big Screen Classic of Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (featuring Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert) on 35mm. - The Harvard Film Archive has their last two screenings of Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour on Friday and Saturday, and also continues the Jacques Demy series with Bay of Angels (Friday 7pm), Break of Day (Saturday 9pm on 16mm), The Pied Piper (Sunday 5pm on DCP), The Young Girls of Rochefort (Sunday 7pm, followed by Agnes Varda's 25th anniversary retrospective doc), and Lady Oscar (Monday 7pm). All Demy films are 35mm unless noted.
- The Museum of Fine Arts has its final screening of Bad Hair on Friday, but continues The Films of Catherine Breillat with Sex Is Comedy (35mm Friday), Anatomy of Hell (35mm Saturday & Wednesday), The Last Mistress (Saturday & Wednesday), The Sleeping Beauty (Thursday), and Bluebeard (Thursday). National Gallery has a Sunday-afternoon screening, and also opens at The West Newton Cinema.
My plans? As I said, pretty mapped out, with tickets already grabbed for Etheria and the Brattle preview of Inherent Vice (I believe they all went to members). I will probably try to fit Top Five, Back in Time, Zero Motivation, a couple of the Demys, and maybe Lingaa in there. Maybe Exodus and Black Christmas. Oh, and Red Sox tickets go on sale Saturday, so there's that...
This That Week In Tickets: 3 November 2014 - 9 November 2014
Sometimes the page looks like slow and steady but contains double features. Sometimes it's about pacing yourself, sometimes it's about taking advantage of your location.
On Monday, for instance, I must have either been working from home or out of work really early in order to get to Before I Go to Sleep at a 6:45pm show, but I think I probably wanted to do grocery shopping or the like afterward, so I went for a relatively early one. Pretty firmly in the "I've seen worse" category, and not one that leaves a lasting impression.
Tuesday night, I made a bit of a last-minute change; I think I was planning to see Nightcrawler, but went with Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans instead. Sometimes, you are just in the mood to see people mauled by tigers.
Friday, I did an on the way home from work double feature - the Capitol is on my bus route, so that's where I caught Big Hero 6, and had a good time with it. After that, it was a quick bus ride to Apple Cinemas near Alewife, where I caught The Lookalike, which could have been better.
Saturday got spent at the Somerville Theatre, where they were playing Interstellar on the big screen (unfortunately, that room is in demand, but they're still playing it in 35mm). Ian mentioned that it was done on film as much as possible, without even a digital intermediate, and looks that good.
After that, it was a fairly quick turnaround for St. Vincent, a generally likable little movie with a nice cast, including Bill Murray doing more to play a character than usual. Because I saw that at 7:15pm, MoviePass's 24-hour rule meant I headed out to Assembly Row for a slightly later screening of Nightcrawler than was at the local theaters. Not complaining about the comfy seats, even if it is more time on the T than usual.
Before I Go to Sleep
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 November 2014 in AMC Boston Common #9 (first-run, DCP)
The fun part of Before I Go to Sleep, I think, is watching Mark Strong be the concerned and most likely legit doctor and Colin Firth be the guy who is pretty clearly up to no good, which is fun against-type casting, even if neither they not Nicole Kidman (as a woman who wakes up each morning with no memory of the past dozen or so years) really have much interesting to do. Kidman's thing of basically playing a woman in her twenties who wakes up to find she's settled down and aged (if better than many) is a neat idea, but Kidman plays her as too vacant to really be interesting.
On top of the performances just being okay but lacking the details that make characters actually interesting, it's just very difficult to build interesting momentum with stories built around resetting to zero on a regular basis. All too often, the writers seem to be spending so much time and effort on clever mechanisms that they lack much else, and once the obvious turns off events happen, the result is often more frustration than suspense.
It makes for a movie about regularly forgetting everything that is itself rather forgettable, and I'm going to guess that this isn't what the people making it had in mind.
Big Hero 6
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2014 in Arlington Capitol #5 (first-run, RealD DCP)
Marvel wasn't testing to see whether it could achieve superhero saturation on its own this year - they have very little control over when Fox or Sony will release something based the Marvel properties that those studios have the rights to - but it's not surprising that the closest thing to an acknowledgment that Big Hero 6 first appeared in a comic is a Stan Lee cameo. There are other reasons, likely including keeping the question of diversity from getting ugly (it's one of the more enjoyably diverse casts you'll see, but it got there by making an all-Japanese team more white, although that team was built on a lot of stereotypes...).
Happily, though, what they ended up with is a lot of fun. From the first shots of illicit robot fighting to the whimsical hybrid world of San Fransokyo, it's a colorful environment packed with nifty optimistic-future details, one that looks great in 3D. It's got a lot of orphaning going on - not only are Hiro Hamada's parents lost when the movie starts, but he soon losses his older brother Tadashi and a mentor to boot - but it takes this situation much more seriously than many movies, for kids and otherwise, do; it's not something that primarily means that the hero must solve things on his or her own but has become extra-plucky and capable because he/she has had extra responsibilities. It's something that Hiro struggles with, and the emotional core of the movie. It's not quite so heavy as to get in the way of a lot of funny and exciting bits, though, because this is a good light adventure.
And, wow, did the kids around me love Baymax. A robotic nurse built by Hiro's brother who becomes the boy's best friend, Baymax is a great creation, an unapologetic cartoon who is an endless source of gentle humor - impressive, because gentle physical comedy is hard to pull off - and even those of us prone to bristle a bit at treating a machine with clever software as a person can see the 'bot as an ongoing expression of Tadashi's love and concern. That's pretty clever.
It's kind of amusing that this movie came out the same weekend as Interstellar, if only because it seems extremely unlikely that two movies with this climax (guy and robot sidekick dive into a singularity to retrieve something from a pocket universe) would be playing at the same time. I also hope my niece(s) watch and dig it, because I think at least one would love Honey Lemon - she's a superhero who loves both science and total girly-girl accoutrements without it seeming like any sort of contradiction! - and is love to get her that sort of thing for Christmas rather than just more Frozen stuff.
St. Vincent
* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 November 2014 in Somerville Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)
Here's a question to ponder a bit: How much of the highly-enjoyable later stages of Bill Murray's career has been built on the discovery that he has previously-unsuspected acting chops and how much has been based upon casting him in place where he can make the most out of a dry delivery and somewhat befuddled or arch characterization? I don't mean this as an "emperor has no clothes" statement, but it's worth noting that his title character in St. Vincent demands more outside his usual persona than usual, and it's not hard to see the stretching that Murray has to do.
That doesn't hurt the movie much; even if you can see Murray acting more clearly than usual - in large part because he's a guy who historically hasn't varied his accent much trying a new one on - he's still a bunch of fun to watch, an entertaining curmudgeon who plays well off the entire cast. That cast is packed with actors doing nice work - a toned-down Melissa McCarthy, an offbeat Naomi Watts, Chris O'Down stealing every scene he's in as a teacher at the Catholic school attended by Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), the kid Vincent winds up babysitting during the afternoon. It's generally funny stuff, good-natured and with just enough abrasiveness to prevent it from being saccharine.
At least, for a while. It eventually reaches exactly the ending you'd expect, and that's maybe a little bit of a disappointment considering how enjoyably prickly things had been up until then, but I'm not one to argue against sincerity.
Nightcrawler
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2014 in AMC Assembly Row #7 (first-run, DCP)
Given how long it took Los Angeles Plays Itself to get any sort of official release, it's a shame that it didn't get updated, but even in that case, Nightcrawler came out just late enough to not be included. Nightcrawlers like Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom are not a phenomenon exclusive to that city, but it does seem to be their natural environment. Writer/director Dan Gilroy gets this, spinning an unlikely but dark and thrilling story.
It rests on the back of Gyllenhaal, who plays Bloom as something approaching thoroughly crazed - he blinks maybe twice during the movie, has a towering ego, and a naked sociopathy that is honestly stunning to behold. It's the sort of thing that can be kind of wearing, but somehow Gyllenhaal and Gilroy are able to draw us in more than they push us away. This isn't really a fascinating character, but an oddly magnetic one, and he manages to make the rest of the cast look almost sympathetic even if they'd be monsters in other movies. Especially Rene Russo's sharklike news director (we do not see enough of her these days)
There are also a couple of great sequences in the picture, one of which leads directly to the other. The first may be far from the usual "action" piece, but it's tremendously suspenseful, especially as it immediately forms the spine of a mocking, satirical scene soon after. That's pretty near the exact right tone for the movie - exciting, but also fairly relentless in mocking how exciting an audience might find what goes on.
On Monday, for instance, I must have either been working from home or out of work really early in order to get to Before I Go to Sleep at a 6:45pm show, but I think I probably wanted to do grocery shopping or the like afterward, so I went for a relatively early one. Pretty firmly in the "I've seen worse" category, and not one that leaves a lasting impression.
Tuesday night, I made a bit of a last-minute change; I think I was planning to see Nightcrawler, but went with Roar: Tigers of the Sundarbans instead. Sometimes, you are just in the mood to see people mauled by tigers.
Friday, I did an on the way home from work double feature - the Capitol is on my bus route, so that's where I caught Big Hero 6, and had a good time with it. After that, it was a quick bus ride to Apple Cinemas near Alewife, where I caught The Lookalike, which could have been better.
Saturday got spent at the Somerville Theatre, where they were playing Interstellar on the big screen (unfortunately, that room is in demand, but they're still playing it in 35mm). Ian mentioned that it was done on film as much as possible, without even a digital intermediate, and looks that good.
After that, it was a fairly quick turnaround for St. Vincent, a generally likable little movie with a nice cast, including Bill Murray doing more to play a character than usual. Because I saw that at 7:15pm, MoviePass's 24-hour rule meant I headed out to Assembly Row for a slightly later screening of Nightcrawler than was at the local theaters. Not complaining about the comfy seats, even if it is more time on the T than usual.
Before I Go to Sleep
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 3 November 2014 in AMC Boston Common #9 (first-run, DCP)
The fun part of Before I Go to Sleep, I think, is watching Mark Strong be the concerned and most likely legit doctor and Colin Firth be the guy who is pretty clearly up to no good, which is fun against-type casting, even if neither they not Nicole Kidman (as a woman who wakes up each morning with no memory of the past dozen or so years) really have much interesting to do. Kidman's thing of basically playing a woman in her twenties who wakes up to find she's settled down and aged (if better than many) is a neat idea, but Kidman plays her as too vacant to really be interesting.
On top of the performances just being okay but lacking the details that make characters actually interesting, it's just very difficult to build interesting momentum with stories built around resetting to zero on a regular basis. All too often, the writers seem to be spending so much time and effort on clever mechanisms that they lack much else, and once the obvious turns off events happen, the result is often more frustration than suspense.
It makes for a movie about regularly forgetting everything that is itself rather forgettable, and I'm going to guess that this isn't what the people making it had in mind.
Big Hero 6
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 7 November 2014 in Arlington Capitol #5 (first-run, RealD DCP)
Marvel wasn't testing to see whether it could achieve superhero saturation on its own this year - they have very little control over when Fox or Sony will release something based the Marvel properties that those studios have the rights to - but it's not surprising that the closest thing to an acknowledgment that Big Hero 6 first appeared in a comic is a Stan Lee cameo. There are other reasons, likely including keeping the question of diversity from getting ugly (it's one of the more enjoyably diverse casts you'll see, but it got there by making an all-Japanese team more white, although that team was built on a lot of stereotypes...).
Happily, though, what they ended up with is a lot of fun. From the first shots of illicit robot fighting to the whimsical hybrid world of San Fransokyo, it's a colorful environment packed with nifty optimistic-future details, one that looks great in 3D. It's got a lot of orphaning going on - not only are Hiro Hamada's parents lost when the movie starts, but he soon losses his older brother Tadashi and a mentor to boot - but it takes this situation much more seriously than many movies, for kids and otherwise, do; it's not something that primarily means that the hero must solve things on his or her own but has become extra-plucky and capable because he/she has had extra responsibilities. It's something that Hiro struggles with, and the emotional core of the movie. It's not quite so heavy as to get in the way of a lot of funny and exciting bits, though, because this is a good light adventure.
And, wow, did the kids around me love Baymax. A robotic nurse built by Hiro's brother who becomes the boy's best friend, Baymax is a great creation, an unapologetic cartoon who is an endless source of gentle humor - impressive, because gentle physical comedy is hard to pull off - and even those of us prone to bristle a bit at treating a machine with clever software as a person can see the 'bot as an ongoing expression of Tadashi's love and concern. That's pretty clever.
It's kind of amusing that this movie came out the same weekend as Interstellar, if only because it seems extremely unlikely that two movies with this climax (guy and robot sidekick dive into a singularity to retrieve something from a pocket universe) would be playing at the same time. I also hope my niece(s) watch and dig it, because I think at least one would love Honey Lemon - she's a superhero who loves both science and total girly-girl accoutrements without it seeming like any sort of contradiction! - and is love to get her that sort of thing for Christmas rather than just more Frozen stuff.
St. Vincent
* * * (out of four)
Seen 8 November 2014 in Somerville Theatre #2 (first-run, DCP)
Here's a question to ponder a bit: How much of the highly-enjoyable later stages of Bill Murray's career has been built on the discovery that he has previously-unsuspected acting chops and how much has been based upon casting him in place where he can make the most out of a dry delivery and somewhat befuddled or arch characterization? I don't mean this as an "emperor has no clothes" statement, but it's worth noting that his title character in St. Vincent demands more outside his usual persona than usual, and it's not hard to see the stretching that Murray has to do.
That doesn't hurt the movie much; even if you can see Murray acting more clearly than usual - in large part because he's a guy who historically hasn't varied his accent much trying a new one on - he's still a bunch of fun to watch, an entertaining curmudgeon who plays well off the entire cast. That cast is packed with actors doing nice work - a toned-down Melissa McCarthy, an offbeat Naomi Watts, Chris O'Down stealing every scene he's in as a teacher at the Catholic school attended by Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), the kid Vincent winds up babysitting during the afternoon. It's generally funny stuff, good-natured and with just enough abrasiveness to prevent it from being saccharine.
At least, for a while. It eventually reaches exactly the ending you'd expect, and that's maybe a little bit of a disappointment considering how enjoyably prickly things had been up until then, but I'm not one to argue against sincerity.
Nightcrawler
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 9 November 2014 in AMC Assembly Row #7 (first-run, DCP)
Given how long it took Los Angeles Plays Itself to get any sort of official release, it's a shame that it didn't get updated, but even in that case, Nightcrawler came out just late enough to not be included. Nightcrawlers like Jake Gyllenhaal's Louis Bloom are not a phenomenon exclusive to that city, but it does seem to be their natural environment. Writer/director Dan Gilroy gets this, spinning an unlikely but dark and thrilling story.
It rests on the back of Gyllenhaal, who plays Bloom as something approaching thoroughly crazed - he blinks maybe twice during the movie, has a towering ego, and a naked sociopathy that is honestly stunning to behold. It's the sort of thing that can be kind of wearing, but somehow Gyllenhaal and Gilroy are able to draw us in more than they push us away. This isn't really a fascinating character, but an oddly magnetic one, and he manages to make the rest of the cast look almost sympathetic even if they'd be monsters in other movies. Especially Rene Russo's sharklike news director (we do not see enough of her these days)
There are also a couple of great sequences in the picture, one of which leads directly to the other. The first may be far from the usual "action" piece, but it's tremendously suspenseful, especially as it immediately forms the spine of a mocking, satirical scene soon after. That's pretty near the exact right tone for the movie - exciting, but also fairly relentless in mocking how exciting an audience might find what goes on.
Tuesday, December 09, 2014
Fantastic Fest Catch-up, Second Half: Purgatory, From the Dark, The Guest, The Absent One, Haemoo, and It Follows
So, remember what I said in the last Fantastic Fest catch-up about how it can be pretty easy to finish a review even a couple months later if you did the capsule at the time? Sorry, Local God. Back in September, I wrote that you had some memorable scenes, but come December? Well, as I like to say when I'm trying to get festival reviews done as quickly as possible, sometimes things fall out the back of your brain.
I'd feel worse about it if I had attended on a Press Badge, but that wasn't the case; I was the third person to apply for one from my outlet and we're not exactly big enough to merit that. As it turns out, I wound up being the only one who posted any Fantastic Fest stuff to eFilmCritic, and while that kind of stings a little - there was an anxious week or two where fan badges sold out while I was waiting to hear if I would get a press badge - I'm not going to be bitter about it. Going to film festivals and writing reviews is half vacation and half avocation for me, and I am not in a situation where I can't afford to pay for my time off and hobbies. Plus, I would have felt bad if me getting a press pass meant that someone who needs it to do a job went without. Fantastic Fest is a big enough festival these days that freelancers - which, basically, is everyone writing about movies online - probably have to list their entire potential reach at every outlet they work for to qualify for a badge, and if they don't generate material for every one, well, that just may not have worked out.
(The need to freelance for multiple outlets is why, as much as I love seeing and writing about movies and idly dream of doing this for a living, it will only ever be just a hobby for me. The idea of having to put together five employers means I'm much better off financially writing SQL code from nine to five and then writing when I really should be sleeping. I'd probably be better if I had an editor and had to hone my skills in competition, but I'm not built for that.)
Besides, I'm as bad as anyone - when they couldn't give me a FF badge, the good folks at the festival offered me one for MondoCon, and my reply was along the lines of "wouldn't say no", even though I strongly suspected that I wouldn't get near the poster art festival running in parallel with Fantastic Fest unless I had some pretty terrible luck with the lottery system for movie tickets.
So, anyway, here are the links to the six reviews: Purgatory, From the Dark, The Guest, The Absent One, Haemoo, and It Follows.
I'll probably be one-and-done with Fantastic Fest; the way that these reviews wound up getting put on hold and dragged out of me doesn't indicate a lack of enthusiasm, but does show how busy fall gets, movie-and-other-things-wise. If I feel like bulking up on genre film festivals next year, there's the New York Asian Film Festival before Fantasia and Sitges around my early-October birthday (and let's face it, as much as folks like Austin, if your two options are a week there and a week on the coast of Spain...).
Now to try and catch up on everything else before the New Year!
Purgatorio
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Though it's not uncommon to encounter one that makes a good case for its greater length at all, most horror movies would be best served running seventy-five to eighty minutes, long enough to set a story up, make the audience jump a few times, and stick a twist or two in without giving them the chance to realize that what's going on makes no sense. So let's give a cheer to Purgatorio, a nifty little thriller that doesn't have an ounce of fat on it.
It starts as any number of scary movies do, with Marta (Oona Chaplin) and her husband Luis (Andrés Gertrúdix) moving into a new apartment in a recently renovated building. Luis works the night shift, so Marta is unpacking on her own until Ana (Ana Fernandez), one of the very few other neighbors, is unexpectedly called into work herself and asks Marta to watch her son Daniel (Sergi Mendez). It doesn't take long for the kid to reveal himself to be more than a bit of a brat, with a taste for creepy and tasteless pranks. And if any of the weird goings-on are for real...
I didn't think much of Purgatorio for much of its first third or so; it starts off on a fairly slow burn, holding the sort of information that might normally be used as foreshadowing or myth-building back, so there didn't seem to be much story. The cast was doing the best that they could with artificial constraints, making for a few good moments, but it was looking kind of forgettable.
Full review on EFC
From the Dark
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #9 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
From the Dark has the feel of the first movie from a new horror talent, but Conor McMahon has actually been doing for a while, never quite having the same sort of breakout as others in the Irish horror scene. This probably won't be the one that leads a producer to give him a still-modest ten or twenty times the money something like this costs for his next project, but it's decent fodder for genre fans, with a couple high points worth recommending.
It's got a familiar starting point - young couple Mark (Stephen Cromwell) and Sarah (Niamh Algar) are driving to some relative via the back roads of Ireland when their car breaks down. It is, of course, the middle of a mobile phone dead zone. Mark sets out to find someone with a landline; after a while Sarah follows. Darkness falls, which is too bad, because whatever the owner of the farmhouse they found unearthed while digging peat greatly prefers the dark to the light.
Give McMahon credit for building a reasonably solid horror movie out of almost nothing here, but it really strains against its tiny budget. The premise of it - a light-averse peat bog zombie thing - requires darkness, but there are long stretches of this movie where I felt like I couldn't see anything either because of the dark or because there were lights being shone directly in my eyes, and it was more aggravating than eerie. McMahon and cinematographer Michael Lavelle could have shown much more of what was going on without losing the visceral sensation of stumbling around in the dark except for the blinding moments and reduced the frustration immensely.
Full review on EFC
The Guest
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #4 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Initially, The Guest almost seemed like a step back for the team of writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard. It introduced a pleasant enough cast and set up a kind of familiar "stranger in the house is more dangerous than anyone knows" situation which the group was good enough to make go well, but it lacked the zing of You're Next. And then a thoroughly unremarkable scene starts a chain that gets Lance Reddick involved. After that, it's still the same movie in a lot of ways, but it gets bigger and crazier, just flat-out exciting.
The stranger is David (Dan Stevens), who introduces himself to the Petersen family as a comrade-in-arms of the son that died in the Middle East, saying he'd check in on them if he was ever in the area. The family - mother Laura (Sheila Kelley), father Spencer (Leland Orser), bullied younger brother Luke (Brendan Meyer), and sister Anna (Maika Monroe) - react with the expected mixed emotions, but he seems sincere and helpful, though most don't realize how violently helpful he has been. So Anna isn't entirely suspicious when she calls the Army looking for a little more information, but David's name gets the called flagged and sent to a mysterious defense contractor, who dispatch a no-nuance troubleshooter (Reddick) to the area immediately.
And that's when the movie becomes a real kick, to be honest. It wasn't bad before, but it looked like it was going to be as close to a typical indie thriller as to team is capable of (or one of the things pointed at young adults built around the star's handsomeness, often just as bad), a very familiar story told competently but forgetably. Thankfully, it doesn't stop there; it gets just big, nuts, and self-aware enough to drop jaws in a good way. The kills are neither treated as a perfunctory narrative necessity nor something the audience is meant to whoop and cheer for, and while the filmmakers go for a very familiar plot point, the portion size is just enough that the action becomes bigger than life but not big enough for the audience to check out.
Full review on EFC
Fasandræberne (The Absent One)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #8 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
I swear I've heard of the Department Q books from somewhere, even though I haven't really been keeping up on detective fiction as much as I'd like. If they're going to keep cranking out movies this good in adapting them, I hope they make it over here as well as the Dragon Tattoo series briefly did. This second movie based on the series is a nifty, intense little thriller.
Department Q is a desk in the Copenhagen police department manned by two people, Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Assad (Fares Fares), that investigates cold cases. The one they had just been dropped on their desk is a doozy, a cop's kid who was murdered twenty years ago, with the dead girl's father always thinking that some of the evidence used to put the now-released Bjarne Thøgersen (Kristian Høgh Jeppesen) away as a juvenile didn't add up. As Carl and Assad reopen the investigation, they find the investigation leading in two very different directions - one toward rich and powerful Ditlev Pram (Pilou Asbæk) & Ulrik Dybbøl (David Dencik), the other toward homeless Kimmie Lassen (Danica Curcic).
It is kind of a familiar sort of detective story set-up - the too-intense sleuth with the partner who grounds him, the case that leads into decadence among the elite going all the way back to boarding school, the finale that, let's face it, involves a lot of things that would get these guys fired from the police force. The script by Nikolaj Arcel & Rasmus Heisterberg (adapted from Jussi Adler-Olsen's novel) is not exactly a mystery story much of the time - while Carl & Assad do have to do some digging to figure out what happened, it's laid out fairly clearly for the audience, enough that the wave of details and subplots is appreciated for more than just filling time.
Full review on EFC
Haemoo
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #6 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
This one has received a lot of notice in part because of Bong Joon-ho's involvement as a producer and co-writer for long-time collaborator Shim Sung-bo, and if that helps it out, that's great. It's a nifty little movie, the sort of thriller that South Korea seems to do better than anyone else right now - the type that plunges the audience into much darker than expected territory and still keeps one on the edge of his or her seat out of genuine excitement.
It takes place in 1998, and times are tough in the port city of Yeosu, South Korea. Kang Chul-joo (Kim Yun-seok), the captain of a small fishing boat, has just been told that the owners intend to sell the old ship for scrap, putting him and his crew out of work. He would like to buy the Jeonjiho, but fish won't let them make that sort of money fast enough. Smuggling people in from the North will do it, but it's a job for which these grizzled fishermen are ill-suited; they almost lose young and idealistic hand Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun) when he dives into the sea to rescue Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri), one of just a couple women in the group. Still, what happens when a Coast Guard ship stops them for an inspection is far worse.
Haemoo is based upon a real incident, and comes to the screen by way of the stage, but those looking for an introspective film built around the characters talking about the moral dilemmas they face are in for a few shocks. There is not much opportunity for big, memorable speeches at all, and if Bong & Shim have done much to make the dialog of their (generally) unrefined working-class characters snappier, it doesn't make it to the subtitles. And that's probably good, because the film becomes a quite starkly horrifying thing in the blink of an eye, and it would not do for a glib or self-satisfied impression to come through.
Full review on EFC
It Follows
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #5 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
It Follows is genuinely weird in a few places, and there are moments when I think writer/director David Robert Mitchell had a great idea for a horror movie without any idea of how he would finish it. This thing is pure distilled "stalker who won't stop and whom nobody will believe exists" without much worry about mythology, and that's okay - it lets Mitchell really get at the emotion of never feeling safe again, and the ending he comes up with is, in its own way, kind of fantastic.
The premise is simple - as soon as Jamie "Jay" Height (Maika Monroe) has sex with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), his curse - a strange pursuer that only he could see - is passed on to her. It can take any form, but it is always coming, its intentions are not good, and it never stops. Soon Jay isn't sleeping, and is otherwise acting weirder than her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), their friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and Paul (Keir Gilchrist), or neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) can ever recall.
What is "It"? Mitchell doesn't say, and in some ways that's terrific. His heroes are teenagers who don't know anything, and the setting - basically 1980s Michigan, although cars and some electronics are present-day models - doesn't give them instant access to information. It is a set-up that minimizes the importance of mythology while leaving plenty of room for the characters to try and figure stuff out. It is an impressively clever way of concentrating the story and with it the audience's attention in specific areas: Not just how good they are at figuring out puzzles, but how committed they are to doing the right thing. There's an easy out if Jay is willing to just think of her own safety, but the movie has been built to make that seem unlikely.
Full review on EFC
I'd feel worse about it if I had attended on a Press Badge, but that wasn't the case; I was the third person to apply for one from my outlet and we're not exactly big enough to merit that. As it turns out, I wound up being the only one who posted any Fantastic Fest stuff to eFilmCritic, and while that kind of stings a little - there was an anxious week or two where fan badges sold out while I was waiting to hear if I would get a press badge - I'm not going to be bitter about it. Going to film festivals and writing reviews is half vacation and half avocation for me, and I am not in a situation where I can't afford to pay for my time off and hobbies. Plus, I would have felt bad if me getting a press pass meant that someone who needs it to do a job went without. Fantastic Fest is a big enough festival these days that freelancers - which, basically, is everyone writing about movies online - probably have to list their entire potential reach at every outlet they work for to qualify for a badge, and if they don't generate material for every one, well, that just may not have worked out.
(The need to freelance for multiple outlets is why, as much as I love seeing and writing about movies and idly dream of doing this for a living, it will only ever be just a hobby for me. The idea of having to put together five employers means I'm much better off financially writing SQL code from nine to five and then writing when I really should be sleeping. I'd probably be better if I had an editor and had to hone my skills in competition, but I'm not built for that.)
Besides, I'm as bad as anyone - when they couldn't give me a FF badge, the good folks at the festival offered me one for MondoCon, and my reply was along the lines of "wouldn't say no", even though I strongly suspected that I wouldn't get near the poster art festival running in parallel with Fantastic Fest unless I had some pretty terrible luck with the lottery system for movie tickets.
So, anyway, here are the links to the six reviews: Purgatory, From the Dark, The Guest, The Absent One, Haemoo, and It Follows.
I'll probably be one-and-done with Fantastic Fest; the way that these reviews wound up getting put on hold and dragged out of me doesn't indicate a lack of enthusiasm, but does show how busy fall gets, movie-and-other-things-wise. If I feel like bulking up on genre film festivals next year, there's the New York Asian Film Festival before Fantasia and Sitges around my early-October birthday (and let's face it, as much as folks like Austin, if your two options are a week there and a week on the coast of Spain...).
Now to try and catch up on everything else before the New Year!
Purgatorio
* * * (out of four)
Seen 22 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Though it's not uncommon to encounter one that makes a good case for its greater length at all, most horror movies would be best served running seventy-five to eighty minutes, long enough to set a story up, make the audience jump a few times, and stick a twist or two in without giving them the chance to realize that what's going on makes no sense. So let's give a cheer to Purgatorio, a nifty little thriller that doesn't have an ounce of fat on it.
It starts as any number of scary movies do, with Marta (Oona Chaplin) and her husband Luis (Andrés Gertrúdix) moving into a new apartment in a recently renovated building. Luis works the night shift, so Marta is unpacking on her own until Ana (Ana Fernandez), one of the very few other neighbors, is unexpectedly called into work herself and asks Marta to watch her son Daniel (Sergi Mendez). It doesn't take long for the kid to reveal himself to be more than a bit of a brat, with a taste for creepy and tasteless pranks. And if any of the weird goings-on are for real...
I didn't think much of Purgatorio for much of its first third or so; it starts off on a fairly slow burn, holding the sort of information that might normally be used as foreshadowing or myth-building back, so there didn't seem to be much story. The cast was doing the best that they could with artificial constraints, making for a few good moments, but it was looking kind of forgettable.
Full review on EFC
From the Dark
* * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 22 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #9 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
From the Dark has the feel of the first movie from a new horror talent, but Conor McMahon has actually been doing for a while, never quite having the same sort of breakout as others in the Irish horror scene. This probably won't be the one that leads a producer to give him a still-modest ten or twenty times the money something like this costs for his next project, but it's decent fodder for genre fans, with a couple high points worth recommending.
It's got a familiar starting point - young couple Mark (Stephen Cromwell) and Sarah (Niamh Algar) are driving to some relative via the back roads of Ireland when their car breaks down. It is, of course, the middle of a mobile phone dead zone. Mark sets out to find someone with a landline; after a while Sarah follows. Darkness falls, which is too bad, because whatever the owner of the farmhouse they found unearthed while digging peat greatly prefers the dark to the light.
Give McMahon credit for building a reasonably solid horror movie out of almost nothing here, but it really strains against its tiny budget. The premise of it - a light-averse peat bog zombie thing - requires darkness, but there are long stretches of this movie where I felt like I couldn't see anything either because of the dark or because there were lights being shone directly in my eyes, and it was more aggravating than eerie. McMahon and cinematographer Michael Lavelle could have shown much more of what was going on without losing the visceral sensation of stumbling around in the dark except for the blinding moments and reduced the frustration immensely.
Full review on EFC
The Guest
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 23 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #4 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Initially, The Guest almost seemed like a step back for the team of writer Simon Barrett and director Adam Wingard. It introduced a pleasant enough cast and set up a kind of familiar "stranger in the house is more dangerous than anyone knows" situation which the group was good enough to make go well, but it lacked the zing of You're Next. And then a thoroughly unremarkable scene starts a chain that gets Lance Reddick involved. After that, it's still the same movie in a lot of ways, but it gets bigger and crazier, just flat-out exciting.
The stranger is David (Dan Stevens), who introduces himself to the Petersen family as a comrade-in-arms of the son that died in the Middle East, saying he'd check in on them if he was ever in the area. The family - mother Laura (Sheila Kelley), father Spencer (Leland Orser), bullied younger brother Luke (Brendan Meyer), and sister Anna (Maika Monroe) - react with the expected mixed emotions, but he seems sincere and helpful, though most don't realize how violently helpful he has been. So Anna isn't entirely suspicious when she calls the Army looking for a little more information, but David's name gets the called flagged and sent to a mysterious defense contractor, who dispatch a no-nuance troubleshooter (Reddick) to the area immediately.
And that's when the movie becomes a real kick, to be honest. It wasn't bad before, but it looked like it was going to be as close to a typical indie thriller as to team is capable of (or one of the things pointed at young adults built around the star's handsomeness, often just as bad), a very familiar story told competently but forgetably. Thankfully, it doesn't stop there; it gets just big, nuts, and self-aware enough to drop jaws in a good way. The kills are neither treated as a perfunctory narrative necessity nor something the audience is meant to whoop and cheer for, and while the filmmakers go for a very familiar plot point, the portion size is just enough that the action becomes bigger than life but not big enough for the audience to check out.
Full review on EFC
Fasandræberne (The Absent One)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #8 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
I swear I've heard of the Department Q books from somewhere, even though I haven't really been keeping up on detective fiction as much as I'd like. If they're going to keep cranking out movies this good in adapting them, I hope they make it over here as well as the Dragon Tattoo series briefly did. This second movie based on the series is a nifty, intense little thriller.
Department Q is a desk in the Copenhagen police department manned by two people, Carl (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) and Assad (Fares Fares), that investigates cold cases. The one they had just been dropped on their desk is a doozy, a cop's kid who was murdered twenty years ago, with the dead girl's father always thinking that some of the evidence used to put the now-released Bjarne Thøgersen (Kristian Høgh Jeppesen) away as a juvenile didn't add up. As Carl and Assad reopen the investigation, they find the investigation leading in two very different directions - one toward rich and powerful Ditlev Pram (Pilou Asbæk) & Ulrik Dybbøl (David Dencik), the other toward homeless Kimmie Lassen (Danica Curcic).
It is kind of a familiar sort of detective story set-up - the too-intense sleuth with the partner who grounds him, the case that leads into decadence among the elite going all the way back to boarding school, the finale that, let's face it, involves a lot of things that would get these guys fired from the police force. The script by Nikolaj Arcel & Rasmus Heisterberg (adapted from Jussi Adler-Olsen's novel) is not exactly a mystery story much of the time - while Carl & Assad do have to do some digging to figure out what happened, it's laid out fairly clearly for the audience, enough that the wave of details and subplots is appreciated for more than just filling time.
Full review on EFC
Haemoo
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #6 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
This one has received a lot of notice in part because of Bong Joon-ho's involvement as a producer and co-writer for long-time collaborator Shim Sung-bo, and if that helps it out, that's great. It's a nifty little movie, the sort of thriller that South Korea seems to do better than anyone else right now - the type that plunges the audience into much darker than expected territory and still keeps one on the edge of his or her seat out of genuine excitement.
It takes place in 1998, and times are tough in the port city of Yeosu, South Korea. Kang Chul-joo (Kim Yun-seok), the captain of a small fishing boat, has just been told that the owners intend to sell the old ship for scrap, putting him and his crew out of work. He would like to buy the Jeonjiho, but fish won't let them make that sort of money fast enough. Smuggling people in from the North will do it, but it's a job for which these grizzled fishermen are ill-suited; they almost lose young and idealistic hand Dong-sik (Park Yoo-chun) when he dives into the sea to rescue Hong-mae (Han Ye-ri), one of just a couple women in the group. Still, what happens when a Coast Guard ship stops them for an inspection is far worse.
Haemoo is based upon a real incident, and comes to the screen by way of the stage, but those looking for an introspective film built around the characters talking about the moral dilemmas they face are in for a few shocks. There is not much opportunity for big, memorable speeches at all, and if Bong & Shim have done much to make the dialog of their (generally) unrefined working-class characters snappier, it doesn't make it to the subtitles. And that's probably good, because the film becomes a quite starkly horrifying thing in the blink of an eye, and it would not do for a glib or self-satisfied impression to come through.
Full review on EFC
It Follows
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 24 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #5 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
It Follows is genuinely weird in a few places, and there are moments when I think writer/director David Robert Mitchell had a great idea for a horror movie without any idea of how he would finish it. This thing is pure distilled "stalker who won't stop and whom nobody will believe exists" without much worry about mythology, and that's okay - it lets Mitchell really get at the emotion of never feeling safe again, and the ending he comes up with is, in its own way, kind of fantastic.
The premise is simple - as soon as Jamie "Jay" Height (Maika Monroe) has sex with her boyfriend Hugh (Jake Weary), his curse - a strange pursuer that only he could see - is passed on to her. It can take any form, but it is always coming, its intentions are not good, and it never stops. Soon Jay isn't sleeping, and is otherwise acting weirder than her sister Kelly (Lili Sepe), their friends Yara (Olivia Luccardi) and Paul (Keir Gilchrist), or neighbor Greg (Daniel Zovatto) can ever recall.
What is "It"? Mitchell doesn't say, and in some ways that's terrific. His heroes are teenagers who don't know anything, and the setting - basically 1980s Michigan, although cars and some electronics are present-day models - doesn't give them instant access to information. It is a set-up that minimizes the importance of mythology while leaving plenty of room for the characters to try and figure stuff out. It is an impressively clever way of concentrating the story and with it the audience's attention in specific areas: Not just how good they are at figuring out puzzles, but how committed they are to doing the right thing. There's an easy out if Jay is willing to just think of her own safety, but the movie has been built to make that seem unlikely.
Full review on EFC
Sunday, December 07, 2014
Miss Julie
Thing that I probably spent far too much time thinking about during Miss Julie: Nora McMenamy (picture here) doesn't look nearly as much like a young Jessica Chastain as Mackenzie Foy in Interstellar (picture here). Sure, part of it may just be a matter of a couple of years - "Little Miss Julie" is supposed to be ten and young Murph about twelve, I think - and I suspect Liv Ullmann is trying to make a point by having Nora's round child's face become Chastain's.
The other thing that stuck with me (enough that I added a paragraph to the EFC review after sending it elsewhere without commenting) is how darn light out it was for a movie that takes place overnight in Ireland. I wondered if Ullmann was trying to stay true to the play's Swedish origins, even though it being light all night isn't referenced in the English-language dialog at all.
Miss Julie
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 December 2014 at Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run, DCP)
One often talks of "opening up" plays when adapting them to film, doing things to obscure the fact that they were originally created to take place in a limited number of limited spaces, all viewed from a single vantage point. For her new English-language version of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, filmmaker Liv Ullmann does something unusual: She pushes the walls as far back as she can, but opts not to fill the space, resulting in a production that is cinematic while still emphasizing its theatrical origins.
Only three characters show up on screen: John (Colin Farrell), a valet on a large Irish estate; Kathleen (Samantha Morton), the cook to whom he is more-or-less engaged; and Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of the Baron. It is Midsummer Night, and there are no others around, with the gentry off elsewhere and the rest of the servants having a revel of their own in the barn. Julie opts to stick around the castle and attempt to seduce the handsome valet, right in front of the man's finacée if she chooses, for she is the lady of the house and the lines one does not cross are very clear in 1890.
Strindberg's Froken Julie is (at least as presented here) a play so obsessed with class, propriety, and a woman's virtue that it threatens to become obsolete to a modern audience, coming off as less an earnest and insightful drama of manners than a sort of satire. Western society is not yet classless or above judging people for what they do in private, but the rigidity on display here often seems oddly anti-dramatic, with the lack of choices not as interesting as a number which would require different sorts of sacrifices. There is also a strange tendency for attitudes to undergo very large shifts between acts, which can seem a bit jarring on-screen, as the fade to black in cinema is not quite the strong punctuation that lights going down is on the stage.
Full review at EFC.
The other thing that stuck with me (enough that I added a paragraph to the EFC review after sending it elsewhere without commenting) is how darn light out it was for a movie that takes place overnight in Ireland. I wondered if Ullmann was trying to stay true to the play's Swedish origins, even though it being light all night isn't referenced in the English-language dialog at all.
Miss Julie
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 6 December 2014 at Landmark Kendall Square #4 (first-run, DCP)
One often talks of "opening up" plays when adapting them to film, doing things to obscure the fact that they were originally created to take place in a limited number of limited spaces, all viewed from a single vantage point. For her new English-language version of August Strindberg's Miss Julie, filmmaker Liv Ullmann does something unusual: She pushes the walls as far back as she can, but opts not to fill the space, resulting in a production that is cinematic while still emphasizing its theatrical origins.
Only three characters show up on screen: John (Colin Farrell), a valet on a large Irish estate; Kathleen (Samantha Morton), the cook to whom he is more-or-less engaged; and Miss Julie (Jessica Chastain), the daughter of the Baron. It is Midsummer Night, and there are no others around, with the gentry off elsewhere and the rest of the servants having a revel of their own in the barn. Julie opts to stick around the castle and attempt to seduce the handsome valet, right in front of the man's finacée if she chooses, for she is the lady of the house and the lines one does not cross are very clear in 1890.
Strindberg's Froken Julie is (at least as presented here) a play so obsessed with class, propriety, and a woman's virtue that it threatens to become obsolete to a modern audience, coming off as less an earnest and insightful drama of manners than a sort of satire. Western society is not yet classless or above judging people for what they do in private, but the rigidity on display here often seems oddly anti-dramatic, with the lack of choices not as interesting as a number which would require different sorts of sacrifices. There is also a strange tendency for attitudes to undergo very large shifts between acts, which can seem a bit jarring on-screen, as the fade to black in cinema is not quite the strong punctuation that lights going down is on the stage.
Full review at EFC.
Saturday, December 06, 2014
The Pyramid
Look, folks, if you're going to see one horror movie this weekend, go to the Brattle and see The Babadook; it is better in nearly every way but the presence of ancient Egyptian monsters. But I like this sort of movie a lot more than slashers that don't involve crawling through ancient tunnels, potentially getting buried in sand, or falling into a pit whose floor is filled with spikes. I had fun and got that little thing where I wanted to the movie to keep going with this a lot more than I often do with not-good movies.
I admit, I'm mostly a mark for this sort of thing in superficial ways. I gawp at ancient Egypt exhibits whenever I get the chance even if I don't actually learn a whole lot - and I've given myself more chances than usual in the past year, seeing the King Tut display in Montreal this summer and the impressive set-up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple weeks ago. The part of my brain that likes the old and alien responds, and I kind of wish filmmakers would play to it more often.
But, still - Babadook first. Then this. Then other ancient Egypt stuff when Exodus hits next week.
The Pyramid
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 December 2014 at Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, 4K DCP)
I can (and to a certain extent, will) rattle off the ways that The Pyramid is disappointing, subpar, and lucky to find a particularly barren release date in order to avoid a direct-to-VOD fate. But even though I can see the film's weaknesses, I readily admit - I kind of love this sort of adventure-horror, with the underground chambers full of writing in dead languages and secret passages and death-traps, so I'm inclined to cut it some slack. That said, the filmmakers do a better job than most trying to make a modern horror movie out of this sort of pulp adventure.
With last year's protests and confrontations in Cairo as the backdrop, we're introduced to father/daughter archaeologists Miles (Denis O'Hare) and Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw), investigating a completely buried tetrahedral pyramid some sixty miles away that was found via satellite radar. Just as they find a tunnel in, the dig is called off, with orders to evacuate the foreigners. Nora's boyfriend Michael Zahir (Amir K) manages to buy a little time to send a robot down the tunnel, but when they lose the signal, they opt to retrieve NASA's multi-million-dollar piece of equipment, with documentarian Sunni (Christa Nicola) and her cameraman Fitzie (James Buckley) in tow. This, obviouslly, is not a great idea.
There is a fair bit of unnecessary ornamentation to the movie, especially at the beginning; the perfunctory character introductions are not only bog-standard but don't even set up conflicts and traits that will pay off later: The early discussion of how Miles doesn't really cotton to Nora's high-tech methods (think Sam Neill not getting along with the imaging systems in the opening minutes of Jurassic Park without the charm) matters not at all once they're inside the pyramid, and a comment about how Fitzie always has to get the shot seems really strange when his defining characteristic has been wanting to run away. There is enough effort put into establishing video sources in the beginning to make the film seem like it will be found-footage until director Gregory Levasseur decides to go the hybrid route, making a conventional movie with a lot of first-person shots.
Full review at EFC.
I admit, I'm mostly a mark for this sort of thing in superficial ways. I gawp at ancient Egypt exhibits whenever I get the chance even if I don't actually learn a whole lot - and I've given myself more chances than usual in the past year, seeing the King Tut display in Montreal this summer and the impressive set-up in the Metropolitan Museum of Art a couple weeks ago. The part of my brain that likes the old and alien responds, and I kind of wish filmmakers would play to it more often.
But, still - Babadook first. Then this. Then other ancient Egypt stuff when Exodus hits next week.
The Pyramid
* * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 5 December 2014 at Regal Fenway #8 (first-run, 4K DCP)
I can (and to a certain extent, will) rattle off the ways that The Pyramid is disappointing, subpar, and lucky to find a particularly barren release date in order to avoid a direct-to-VOD fate. But even though I can see the film's weaknesses, I readily admit - I kind of love this sort of adventure-horror, with the underground chambers full of writing in dead languages and secret passages and death-traps, so I'm inclined to cut it some slack. That said, the filmmakers do a better job than most trying to make a modern horror movie out of this sort of pulp adventure.
With last year's protests and confrontations in Cairo as the backdrop, we're introduced to father/daughter archaeologists Miles (Denis O'Hare) and Nora Holden (Ashley Hinshaw), investigating a completely buried tetrahedral pyramid some sixty miles away that was found via satellite radar. Just as they find a tunnel in, the dig is called off, with orders to evacuate the foreigners. Nora's boyfriend Michael Zahir (Amir K) manages to buy a little time to send a robot down the tunnel, but when they lose the signal, they opt to retrieve NASA's multi-million-dollar piece of equipment, with documentarian Sunni (Christa Nicola) and her cameraman Fitzie (James Buckley) in tow. This, obviouslly, is not a great idea.
There is a fair bit of unnecessary ornamentation to the movie, especially at the beginning; the perfunctory character introductions are not only bog-standard but don't even set up conflicts and traits that will pay off later: The early discussion of how Miles doesn't really cotton to Nora's high-tech methods (think Sam Neill not getting along with the imaging systems in the opening minutes of Jurassic Park without the charm) matters not at all once they're inside the pyramid, and a comment about how Fitzie always has to get the shot seems really strange when his defining characteristic has been wanting to run away. There is enough effort put into establishing video sources in the beginning to make the film seem like it will be found-footage until director Gregory Levasseur decides to go the hybrid route, making a conventional movie with a lot of first-person shots.
Full review at EFC.
Thursday, December 04, 2014
Next Week in Tickets: Films playing Boston 5 December - 11 December 2014
I think the studios expected the stuff released before Thanksgiving to be bigger hits, because the release schedule is sparse enough that I'm kind of surprised certain indie movies aren't picking up screens at larger theaters. It's not often when arguably the biggest movie of the week is at the Brattle.
My plans? Pyramid, Miss Julie, maybe a second look at The Babadook and paying attention to all the nice things people are saying about Beyond the Lights, Whiplash, and Citizenfour. It is, as mentioned, a thin week.
- That movie is The Babadook, a supernatural thriller from Australia directed by Jennifer Kent and starring Essie Davis as an overextended single mom who really doesn't need a monster out of her son's pop-up book added to the mix. I liked it a lot at Fantastic Fest, and that was one of the more subdued reactions. More recently, William Friedkin (director of The Exorcist) and Stephen King have been showering it with superlatives, and they are folks who know what they're talking about. It's scary and also smart enough that you really don't have to be a horror fan to go for it. It plays all week except Tuesday at The Brattle.
Tuesday? The final entry in the IFFBoston Fall Focus, one which they had at the Festival in April, Starred Up. It stars Jack O'Connell as a young offender moved to the same prison as his father. It is, apparently, not opening here otherwise, so don't miss it if you want to see it. - The Babdook also opens at The Coolidge Corner Theatre, albeit in the 14-seat GoldScreen for every show but the Friday & Saturday midnights. Also at midnight those days: A 35mm print of Batman Returns, part of their run of Christmas-themed midnights in December. It also likely makes a fun double feature with Birdman.
No other new openings, but there are special screenings throughout the whole week. On Sunday morning, there's a Talk Cinema screening of Red Army, a documentary about the Soviet army's hockey team, which was a huge success for generations. Monday night's Science on Screen is Airplane! on 35mm with MIT aeronautics professor R. John Hansman on hand for an introduction. Tuesday features an NT Live presentation of John and the monthly Open Screen. Wednesday and Thursday both have Alzheimer's-related screenings, with AlzTogether presenting documentary Alive Inside along with discussion from music therapists. There's also a 10am screening especially designed for Alzheimer's patients the next morning. - Kendall Square picks up three movies. Miss Julie is the one full of big names, with with Liv Ullmann directing Jessica Chastain, Colin Farrell, and Samantha Morton in the famous love-triangle story. There's also two documentaries: Keep On Keepin' On is the story of a friendship between a young, blind piano prodigy and a 90-year-old jazz musician also losing his sight. The other doc is Antarctica: A Year on the Ice, a look at the people who work at the bottom of the world (though probably not as peculiar as Werner Herzog's Encounters at the End of the World).
- At the big theaters, you're basically looking at The Pyramid, an Alexandre Aja-produced horror movie that involves a newly-discovered pyramid that may have monsters inside. It's at Fenway, Boston Common, and Revere.
With few other wide releases, Boston Common re-opens John Wick, Fenway re-opens Nightcrawler, Apple gets St. Vincent, and the Arlington Capitol picks up Gone Girl. - Fenway and Apple Cinemas also have Action Jackson, which stars Ajay Devgan and Sonakshi Sinha, not Carl Weathers, and has a great deal more singing and dancing. Apple's iMovieCafe also has Telugu-language basketball comedy Chakkiligintha without subtitles. And, coming Thursday, they'll be opening Lingaa, the new Rajnikanth starrer, in Tamil & Telugu with English subtitles.
- ArtsEmerson has two films at the Bright Screening Room at the Paramount Theater: OxyMorons on Saturday is an up-close look at oxycontin addiction; Monday is 25 to Life, a documentary about a man who kept his HIV-positive status, trying to change his life and redeem himself.
- The Harvard Film Archive has student programming using their space on Friday and Saturday, with a couple more screenings of Alain Resnais's Hiroshima, Mon Amour, on Sunday and Monday. There's also one Jacques Demy screening on Sunday evening, Three Seats for the 26th.
- The Museum of Fine Arts continues showing Bad Hair on Friday, Sunday, Wednesday, and Thursday. There's also a double feature of French documentary series Apocalypse: World War I on Saturday. There's also a couple entries in a series of The Films of Catherine Breillat, both on 35mm: Romance on Sunday & Wednesday, and Sex Is Comedy on Thursday.
- The Regent Theatre has an Alive Mind presentation of A Gesar Bard's Tale, a tale of an illiterate Tibetan villager who becomes known as a holy man after a series of visions, only later to have his village devastated by an earthquake. That's booked through Gathr, and it's worth noting that they have a number of interesting screenings looking for pre-sales, including The Tale of the Princess Kaguya at Fenway on January 8th. Tugg has a couple as well.
- I missed the screening in the UMass Boston Film Series last week, but they do have another - Vessel - on Thursday. As usual, there will be director Q&A after this free screening of Diana Whitten's film about abortions on the high seas, but note that it will be playing at 4pm rather than the usual 7pm.
- Joe's Calendar is always worth a look; Frozen is showing three times on the Tufts campus this weekend, and AMC Assembly Row will be starting a free holiday film series on Saturday mornings (early - 9:30am) with The Polar Express.
- Don't forget, All Things Horror has the Etheria Film Night on the 13th & 14th; get your tickets early because it's in a very small room.
My plans? Pyramid, Miss Julie, maybe a second look at The Babadook and paying attention to all the nice things people are saying about Beyond the Lights, Whiplash, and Citizenfour. It is, as mentioned, a thin week.
Monday, December 01, 2014
Foxcatcher
Guys, this is a weird thing to see an hour after Penguins of Madagascar.
That's all I've got aside from what's in the review.
Well, not quite. One thing I couldn't help but notice as the credits ran that Mark Schultz is a producer on the film. He also co-wrote a memoir that apparently was not used as the basis to the film, which seems unusual, although this has been in production for a while. It might be interesting to read, seeing how the film doesn't necessarily portray Mark badly, but as a pawn of sorts, with implications of abuse that goes beyond the psychological. I'm mildly curious as to whether this was something of a creation of the screenwriters or deliberately shunted to the side in order to keep it from overpowering the rest of what was going on.
Foxcatcher
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2014 at College Corner Theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)
A quick bit of research suggests that Foxcatcher, aside from seeming to compact its events into a shorter period of time, only hints at some of the more obviously bizarre parts of the story. In doing so, one might argue, the filmmakers get at a darker and more general set of truths. It almost doesn't need the punctuation at the end of its sentence.
It starts with Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), an athlete who won a gold medal for wrestling in the 1984 Olympics, barely scraping by three years later. He trains with his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) - also a champion and a highly respected coach - when he can, but the intensity of the training necessary is very difficult without other means of financial support. Enter John du Pont (Steve Carell), as in the chemical company, eager to support USA Wrestling and even willing to put Mark and some of the other members of the team up at his family's Foxcatcher Farm, where he's built a training facility. The thing is, eccentric rich guys often march to the beat of extremely different drummers.
Actually, it doesn't quite start with Mark; the film opens with imagery of how the du Ponts used the property before John converted it into an athletic center - breeding and training dogs and horses and using them to hunt foxes. It's no great leap to see John continuing that, in a fashion, only now the animals are men. There's something about the sport that suggests the animalistic, and director Bennett Miller plays into it, never humanizing the support by explaining the rules, instead initially focusing on Mark and his opponents bent over, circling each other, grunting and swiping at each other like wolves or bears. It's easy to see a man born to great wealth asserting dominion over those he sees as lesser beasts, even if he does feel fondness and admiration for them, the same way his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) does for her horses.
Full review at EFC.
That's all I've got aside from what's in the review.
Well, not quite. One thing I couldn't help but notice as the credits ran that Mark Schultz is a producer on the film. He also co-wrote a memoir that apparently was not used as the basis to the film, which seems unusual, although this has been in production for a while. It might be interesting to read, seeing how the film doesn't necessarily portray Mark badly, but as a pawn of sorts, with implications of abuse that goes beyond the psychological. I'm mildly curious as to whether this was something of a creation of the screenwriters or deliberately shunted to the side in order to keep it from overpowering the rest of what was going on.
Foxcatcher
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2014 at College Corner Theatre #3 (first-run, DCP)
A quick bit of research suggests that Foxcatcher, aside from seeming to compact its events into a shorter period of time, only hints at some of the more obviously bizarre parts of the story. In doing so, one might argue, the filmmakers get at a darker and more general set of truths. It almost doesn't need the punctuation at the end of its sentence.
It starts with Mark Schultz (Channing Tatum), an athlete who won a gold medal for wrestling in the 1984 Olympics, barely scraping by three years later. He trains with his brother Dave (Mark Ruffalo) - also a champion and a highly respected coach - when he can, but the intensity of the training necessary is very difficult without other means of financial support. Enter John du Pont (Steve Carell), as in the chemical company, eager to support USA Wrestling and even willing to put Mark and some of the other members of the team up at his family's Foxcatcher Farm, where he's built a training facility. The thing is, eccentric rich guys often march to the beat of extremely different drummers.
Actually, it doesn't quite start with Mark; the film opens with imagery of how the du Ponts used the property before John converted it into an athletic center - breeding and training dogs and horses and using them to hunt foxes. It's no great leap to see John continuing that, in a fashion, only now the animals are men. There's something about the sport that suggests the animalistic, and director Bennett Miller plays into it, never humanizing the support by explaining the rules, instead initially focusing on Mark and his opponents bent over, circling each other, grunting and swiping at each other like wolves or bears. It's easy to see a man born to great wealth asserting dominion over those he sees as lesser beasts, even if he does feel fondness and admiration for them, the same way his mother (Vanessa Redgrave) does for her horses.
Full review at EFC.
Penguins of Madagascar
Folks, 10am is kind of early for a film screening. For evidence, I submit this screening of Penguins of Madagascar, which played to me and me alone. Even families which could have saved twenty bucks by going to this showtime rather than a 1:05 one didn't make it, which is okay, because the concession stand for this part of the theater wasn't open yet. It was early.
Which is kind of a bummer; I kind of like getting a sense of what works for kids in these movies, whether I'm going to write about them or not. Sure, they probably wouldn't laugh at the Werner Herzog appearance - maybe nobody but those who saw Encounters at the End of the World would - but I'm curious as to what would hit.
On the other hand, there were some pretty good previews before the movie. I can't say I'm terribly enamored of the idea that King Julien is also getting a spin-off series on Netflix (worth noting: Sacha Baron Cohen isn't signed on), but it's not for me anyway. I find myself very conflicted on Peter Pan prequel Pan - on the one hand, origins nobody really cares about, later enemies starting out as friends, apparent chosen ones, and so on, are not things I'm a fan of, and Rooney Mara playing Tiger Lily seems like an unnavigable politically incorrect minefield. On the other, it looks great and Joe Wright is directing it, generally a good thing.
On the other hand, I'm finding myself warming up to Paddington a bit more; maybe I just want to see Nicole Kidman as an evil taxidermist. And the trailer for DreamWorks Animation's next animated one, Home, suggests that it will look amazing even by their high standards.
And then, last but certainly not least... Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
It's weird; by the time I actually saw it, on Sunday - after it had been officially released on Friday and leaked a day or two earlier - it seemed like everybody had already been talking about it forever, with frame-by-frame breakdowns and searches for easter eggs and analysis to exhaustion online, which I didn't look at because I see my previews in the theater, thank you very much. But it's amazing how those eighty-eight seconds just grabbed me; there's something about Star Wars that makes a viewer want to believe, and this trailer, chock full of things that look both familiar and new, taps right into it. I'm already imagining a story that has the Solo kids chasing after some new threat that comes from this "Awakening", with John Boyega's Stormtrooper the only witness, thus forcing an uneasy alliance. And that capper with the Falcon and TIEs... Yeah, take my money.
Penguins of Madagascar
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2014 at AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD DCP)
DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar series turned out much better than could be expected, but came to a natural end with number three. Not that this will necessarily stop them from making more, but if the big-name voice cast also feels like it's done, it's a good thing they've got some obvious characters to spin off in the scene-stealing penguins. And while it's always risky to give characters designed to be fun in small doses movies of their own, Penguins of Madagascar is fast-paced and amusing enough to keep the kids in the audience entertained.
It starts with a flashback to ten years ago, when fluffy kid penguins Skipper (voice of Tom McGrath), Kowalski (voice of Chris Miller), and Rico (voice of Conrad Vernon) stepped out of their flock's endless march to chase a loose egg, from which hatches Private (voice of Christopher Knights), and kicks off a series of events that ignite their taste for adventure. In the present, that means bailing on the circus from the last movie to infiltrate Fort Knox - only to be hijacked to Venice by mad scientist Dr. Octavius Brine (voice of John Malkovich). In escaping, they cross paths with four agents from an agency called The North Wind: Polar bear Corporal (voice of Peter Stormare), seal Short Fuse (voice of Ken Jeong), snow owl Eva (voice of Annet Mahendru), and wolf Classified (voice of Benedict Cumberbatch) - not his actual name, but what Skipper starts calling him, and given that sort of misunderstanding, it's not surprising that the North Wind team underestimates the penguins' potential contribution.
It's pretty obvious where the movie is going to go from almost minute one - folks dismiss penguins as not being particularly capable because they're cute, whether it be Classified looking down his snout at Skipper and company or the older penguins constantly underestimating Private, so you can confidently lay money on Private having to save the day in the final act. But while an adult can see it coming from a mile away, that doesn't mean kids watching it (especially during the holiday season, which can be an endless string of relatives saying they're so cute and are growing up too fast) won't know exactly how the penguins feel. Maybe you don't need four writers to come up with this, but it is a little impressive how they and directors Eric Darnell & Simon J. Smith are able to both build gags around penguins being cute and the rebellious nature of these characters who don't necessarily want that reputation.
Full review at EFC.
Which is kind of a bummer; I kind of like getting a sense of what works for kids in these movies, whether I'm going to write about them or not. Sure, they probably wouldn't laugh at the Werner Herzog appearance - maybe nobody but those who saw Encounters at the End of the World would - but I'm curious as to what would hit.
On the other hand, there were some pretty good previews before the movie. I can't say I'm terribly enamored of the idea that King Julien is also getting a spin-off series on Netflix (worth noting: Sacha Baron Cohen isn't signed on), but it's not for me anyway. I find myself very conflicted on Peter Pan prequel Pan - on the one hand, origins nobody really cares about, later enemies starting out as friends, apparent chosen ones, and so on, are not things I'm a fan of, and Rooney Mara playing Tiger Lily seems like an unnavigable politically incorrect minefield. On the other, it looks great and Joe Wright is directing it, generally a good thing.
On the other hand, I'm finding myself warming up to Paddington a bit more; maybe I just want to see Nicole Kidman as an evil taxidermist. And the trailer for DreamWorks Animation's next animated one, Home, suggests that it will look amazing even by their high standards.
And then, last but certainly not least... Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
It's weird; by the time I actually saw it, on Sunday - after it had been officially released on Friday and leaked a day or two earlier - it seemed like everybody had already been talking about it forever, with frame-by-frame breakdowns and searches for easter eggs and analysis to exhaustion online, which I didn't look at because I see my previews in the theater, thank you very much. But it's amazing how those eighty-eight seconds just grabbed me; there's something about Star Wars that makes a viewer want to believe, and this trailer, chock full of things that look both familiar and new, taps right into it. I'm already imagining a story that has the Solo kids chasing after some new threat that comes from this "Awakening", with John Boyega's Stormtrooper the only witness, thus forcing an uneasy alliance. And that capper with the Falcon and TIEs... Yeah, take my money.
Penguins of Madagascar
* * * (out of four)
Seen 30 November 2014 at AMC Boston Common #1 (first-run, RealD DCP)
DreamWorks Animation's Madagascar series turned out much better than could be expected, but came to a natural end with number three. Not that this will necessarily stop them from making more, but if the big-name voice cast also feels like it's done, it's a good thing they've got some obvious characters to spin off in the scene-stealing penguins. And while it's always risky to give characters designed to be fun in small doses movies of their own, Penguins of Madagascar is fast-paced and amusing enough to keep the kids in the audience entertained.
It starts with a flashback to ten years ago, when fluffy kid penguins Skipper (voice of Tom McGrath), Kowalski (voice of Chris Miller), and Rico (voice of Conrad Vernon) stepped out of their flock's endless march to chase a loose egg, from which hatches Private (voice of Christopher Knights), and kicks off a series of events that ignite their taste for adventure. In the present, that means bailing on the circus from the last movie to infiltrate Fort Knox - only to be hijacked to Venice by mad scientist Dr. Octavius Brine (voice of John Malkovich). In escaping, they cross paths with four agents from an agency called The North Wind: Polar bear Corporal (voice of Peter Stormare), seal Short Fuse (voice of Ken Jeong), snow owl Eva (voice of Annet Mahendru), and wolf Classified (voice of Benedict Cumberbatch) - not his actual name, but what Skipper starts calling him, and given that sort of misunderstanding, it's not surprising that the North Wind team underestimates the penguins' potential contribution.
It's pretty obvious where the movie is going to go from almost minute one - folks dismiss penguins as not being particularly capable because they're cute, whether it be Classified looking down his snout at Skipper and company or the older penguins constantly underestimating Private, so you can confidently lay money on Private having to save the day in the final act. But while an adult can see it coming from a mile away, that doesn't mean kids watching it (especially during the holiday season, which can be an endless string of relatives saying they're so cute and are growing up too fast) won't know exactly how the penguins feel. Maybe you don't need four writers to come up with this, but it is a little impressive how they and directors Eric Darnell & Simon J. Smith are able to both build gags around penguins being cute and the rebellious nature of these characters who don't necessarily want that reputation.
Full review at EFC.
Sunday, November 30, 2014
Fantastic Fest Catch-up, First Half: Over Your Dead Body, Wyrmwood, Tommy, The World of Kanako, The Tribe, and Tokyo Tribe
Two months later, I've finally finished half the reviews I opted to save until later during Fantastic Fest. It has been a busy time, and during the burst over the past couple of weeks, I've been tremendously glad that I (a) kept notes while watching the movies and (b) wrote short reviews for the blog the day of/next morning; a whole bunch of the stuff below and on eFilmCritic is basically those things expanded. Some by a little, some by a lot.
Also, it's worth noting that my TWIT entry on those week is fairly heavy on the things that I didn't love, and as such omits thanks to a lot of people who deserve it: Alex Johnson, who sold me the pass he couldn't use when I found myself without one just a couple of weeks out; Adrian Charlie, who got me in contact with Mr. Johnson; Jason Whyte, who has been encouraging me to go for years (that means he owes me a trip to Fantasia, right?); William Goss, who said hi and whom I wished I'd had a chance to hang and chat with more; Mike Snoonian & Izzy Lee, other Boston folks who gave me something to grab on to when the crowd was more than I could handle; and all the great people at the festival, who worked their butts off to make a festival whose energy and playlist certainly cannot be denied.
There. I feel much better now. Follow them all.
And now, the movies: Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, crazy Aussie zombie movie Wyrmwood, Swedish thriller Tommy, Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako, gut-wrenching sign-language drama The Tribe, and Sion Sono's hip-hop action opus Tokyo Tribe.
There. Having hit the halfway point (both in terms of days and unfinished reviews), I believe I am allowed to drink one of the not-available-in-Boston sodas that I purchased on the way out of Texas.
Kuime (Over Your Dead Body)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #8 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
In addition to his film work, Takashi Miike has directed a few stage productions, experience that he likely dipped into for Over Your Dead Body (Kuime in Japanese). At times, I kind of wish that was where the film stayed; it has all the material for an intriguing backstage drama and the diversion into horror is kind of all over the place.
The play being staged is Yotsuya Kaiden, a classic kabuki tale of a poor samurai scheming to improve his position, even if it involves shedding a wife who has brought him as far as she can. Kosuke Hasegawa (Ebizo Ickikawa) plays Iemon the samurai on the stage, co-starring with real-life girlfriend Miyuki Goto (Kou Shibasaki) as Iwa. Given the drama between rehearsals - another cast member, Miyuki's married former boyfriend Jun (Hideaki Ito), would like to start an affair; the young actress (Miho Nakanishi) playing a supporting role is the type who professes her desire to follow in Miyuki's footsteps and then does so by sleeping with Kosuke; and cheerful stage assistant Kayo (Hitomi Katayama) knows every part just in case someone needs her to fill in - it's no wonder that the supernatural themes of the play seem to be bleeding into the world around Miyuki.
If there's one thing you can count on from Miike, it's that he will go to weird places and present what he finds in a memorable way, and that's certainly the case here. It's just that, as is often the case, he, writer Kikumi Yamagishi, and the film itself go to so many different strange places that the story starts to seem random once the supernatural becomes involved. Strict rules aren't necessary but not having every scare pulling in different directions would probably help, and while there's there's a clear connection between the creepy dolls and the movie's most obviously horrific sequence, childlessness doesn't seem to be the strong motivator for Miyuki that it is for Iwa, and some of the other moments just feel random. The individual results are certainly disgusting in memorable ways, at least.
Full review on EFC
Wyrmwood
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #9 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
It's no bad thing, I say, that Wyrmwood feels like a season's worth of an eventful TV series packed into an hour and a half; it's an exhausting ride at times, but there's not ten or fifteen minutes anywhere in the movie that don't come across as exciting or have at least one really cool thing in them. Though making it over four years surely has brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner ready to take a break for a while, it's one of the rare movies where the audience's inevitable requests for a sequel seems like a great idea.
Things kick off quickly, with a light in the sky and something in the air kicking off a zombie apocalypse that quickly decimates Australia, leaving is with a manageable number of initial survivors: Mechanic Barry (Jay Gallagher), his wife Annie (Catherine Terracini), and daughter Meganne (Meganne West); good-natured aborigine Benny (Leon Burchill); crusty middle-aged tinkerer Frank (Keith Agius); and Barry's sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey), whom the others will spend much of the movie trying to track down. Trouble is, she's already been found by some military types and a mad scientist (Berryn Schwerdt), who are never as helpful as one would hope in this sort of crisis.
Director Kiah Roache-Turner and brother/co-writer Tristan start things off with a flash-forward that establishes a tone of raucous action, which may be a little overdone as a device but is also a bit nice to have in the back of one's pocket when events take a turn toward the Walking Dead-variety "unbearable price of survival" misery factory. That doesn't last too terribly long; the Roache-Turners are soon getting past the point in the middle where it starts to run down a bit - in addition to the justifiably-depressed hero, there's a little too much "evil government/business eager to kill the remains of an already reduced population" on the other side with little in between - keeping just enough of that edge around to push everyone through the end.
Full review on EFC
Tommy (2014)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Tommy starts out looking like it might be a certain type of movie - you know, the one where the underestimated woman at the center is eventually revealed to always be three steps ahead of everyone around her (or if not quite that far ahead, still the smartest person in the room) - with a certain type of twist - seeing it all from her perspective. I'd like to see that movie someday, but this one is more about a gamble, which some may not find quite so satisfying. I dig it, though.
The woman in question is Estelle (Moa Gammel), just returned to Stockholm after fleeing the country with her husband Tommy and daughter Isabel (Inez Buckner) after a heist gone wrong left a couple of cops dead and Tommy holding the bag a year ago. Tommy, she says, will soon follow, and he wants his share when he does, something which naturally puts the other members of the crew on edge - Bobby (Ola Rapace) is doing quite well for himself and dating Estelle's sister Blanca (Lykke Li Zachrisson), Matte (Alexej Manvelov) is trying to go straight, and Estelle's godfather Steve (Johan Rabaeus) says he'll help but tends to make phone calls after she leaves.
Moa Gammel has a neat trick to accomplish in presenting Estelle as someone who could be that woman, and by the same token is someone the characters she encounters is going to underestimate. After all, she doesn't come from a family of criminal masterminds, but one of molls (her mother seemed to go for crooks too). Because the movie is necessarily keeping the details of Estelle's and/or Tommy's plans close to the vest, she doesn't get to give a great underdog performance or show Estelle as always calculating, but that's okay; there's enough going on with her outside of the step-by-step process of recovering Tommy's money to keep things interesting. The scenes with her family are especially good; it's always clear from looking at Gammel that Estelle has opinions about Blanca getting involved in the same sort of life she and their mother did, string enough the subject doesn't even have to be raised in connection with Isabel. She tension and desperation (when genuine or a put-on) well, and she does a nice job of building a relationship with the absent Tommy.
Full review on EFC
Kawaki. (The World of Kanako)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
The latest from Tetsuya Nakashima is not quite so sublime as his mid-aughts peak (Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko is a heck of a one-two punch), and it kind of stretches out too long, padded by some increasingly ugly violence. On the plus side, though, it is energetic as all heck, propelling the audience through the underworld with a protagonist that they're not supposed to like, but who makes it hard to look away.
High-school student Kanako Fukushima (Nana Komatsu) has, as of 16 August 2013, been missing for six days, making her mother Kiriko (Asuka Kurosawa) desperate enough to call her ex-husband Azikazu (Koji Yahusho), a drunken mess of an ex-cop that she had damn good reason for divorcing. Azikazu immediately shows what lost human being he could be, but he could be a dog with a bone where a case is concerned, finding through conversations with Kanako's middle-school friend Nami (Fumi Nikaido), classmate Emi (Ai Hashimoto), and more, that Kanako may have become a bigger piece of scum than he is - his quest goes through a criminal underworld where Kanako is not necessarily a victim.
Though Kanako is the character mentioned in the title, Azikazu is the guy that the audience will be spending the bulk of the movie with, and Koji Yakusho is pretty great as the title character's terrible father. He is playing something of a monster, and not the restrained variety where a tiny bit less feeling than one might expect is the signal that something is off; Yakusho tears into his material to make Azikazu a practically feral beast. It's the sort of performance that dares the audience to sympathize with him for being an honest, focused animal than the likes of his former partner Asai (Satoshi Tsumabuki in a delightfully oily turn) or how he's able to let forth an animalistic rage as he tears into progressively more vile criminals. Still, even when Azikazu is doing our saying something that sounds like the right thing for the right reasons, there's a certain sort of vacancy, like he's distilled anger that just happens to be pointed in the right direction.
Full review on EFC
Plemya (The Tribe)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #5 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Well, that's certainly something I'm glad to have seen, although I'm also sort of thankful that I'll likely never see the like again. The excited parts of that sentence are to be expected from a movie whose opening titles say it's in sign language and will not be subtitled, but maybe not the nervous ones. And yet, it's a sign of a great movie when even those are thrilling as well as horrifying.
I suspect that what we see in The Tribe - a sequestered, young population turning away from their supposed reason for being there but instead wreaking mayhem - happens at a lot of boarding schools, but seeing it happen at a Ukrainian school for the Deaf makes it hit a bit harder. Although no explanations are given, it's not hard to figure out what's going on in these kids' heads: The hearing world finds them a nuisance worthy of only grudging concessions, and this is the first time they they've been able to band together to do what they want, and with that anger it comes out as violence, crime, and sex. There is one classroom scene early on, but after that, academics seem irrelevant - the only time we see the kids doing anything resembling study later, the purpose is immediately undercut.
It's a harrowing ride, with traditional bullying at the start, lawlessness in the middle (which filmmaker Miroslav Slaboshpitsky often uses as a perverse way to show students coming together), and horrors the audience might wish to unsee at the end. It's a bleak movie that often elicits cringes, but to his credit, Slaboshpitsky never seems to just be engaging in exploitation; everything moves the story of new student Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko) forward in some way, from the opening scenes where he has difficulty finding the school, to his crush on classmate Anya (Yana Novikova) - who along with roommate Svetka (Rosa Babiy) turns tricks to try and afford the papers to emigrate to Italy - to the ugly place that leads. Slaboshpitsky shows the audience much more than it wants to see at times, but it seldom feels like too much.
Full review on EFC
Tokyo Tribe
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #4 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Sion Sono has never really been the quiet, contemplative sort of art-house director, but his last few films seem to have been brimming with the sort of constant action that would make genre filmmakers jealous, with Tokyo Tribe an almost non-stop barrage of over-the-top insanity once the fighting starts. The surprising thing is that an audience can be somewhat forgiven for not registering that fact, since the veneer on top of it - a busy manga adaptation told as a hip-hop musical - is crazy enough in its way that it may be what the audience remembers.
And that's not exactly unfair. That style has Tokyo Tribe moving forward at a constant fast pace, with jokes and details packed into every corner, more characters than the audience can possibly process, and moments of jaw-dropping insanity that you can almost imagine Sono giggling as he put them into the script for how silly they are (the beatboxing server in the banquet scenes may have been my favorite thing Sono has ever gone for while she was on-screen). There's garish designs, tanks, slapstick, and other over-the-top madness.
What is going on? Well, as narrator MC Show (Shota Sometani) lays it down, every neighborhood in Tokyo is run by a themed gang kept in balance largely by the central Musashino Saru, whose leader Tera (Ryuta Sato) is all about peace and love. Another gang, the Bukuro Wu-ronz, led by Bubba (Riki Takeuchi), is looking to make a move, and by attacking Mera, sets the other gangs at each other's throats, with even Tera's friend Kai (Young Dais) looking to fight despite being hugely outmatched physically by Bubba's son Mera (Ryohei Suzuki). And if that's not enough, there's a kung fu princess (Nana Seino) hiding out in one of the prefectures, and delivering her to her clan for sacrifice would give Bubba the ally he needs to claim all of Tokyo.
Full review on EFC
Also, it's worth noting that my TWIT entry on those week is fairly heavy on the things that I didn't love, and as such omits thanks to a lot of people who deserve it: Alex Johnson, who sold me the pass he couldn't use when I found myself without one just a couple of weeks out; Adrian Charlie, who got me in contact with Mr. Johnson; Jason Whyte, who has been encouraging me to go for years (that means he owes me a trip to Fantasia, right?); William Goss, who said hi and whom I wished I'd had a chance to hang and chat with more; Mike Snoonian & Izzy Lee, other Boston folks who gave me something to grab on to when the crowd was more than I could handle; and all the great people at the festival, who worked their butts off to make a festival whose energy and playlist certainly cannot be denied.
There. I feel much better now. Follow them all.
And now, the movies: Takashi Miike's Over Your Dead Body, crazy Aussie zombie movie Wyrmwood, Swedish thriller Tommy, Tetsuya Nakashima's The World of Kanako, gut-wrenching sign-language drama The Tribe, and Sion Sono's hip-hop action opus Tokyo Tribe.
There. Having hit the halfway point (both in terms of days and unfinished reviews), I believe I am allowed to drink one of the not-available-in-Boston sodas that I purchased on the way out of Texas.
Kuime (Over Your Dead Body)
* * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #8 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
In addition to his film work, Takashi Miike has directed a few stage productions, experience that he likely dipped into for Over Your Dead Body (Kuime in Japanese). At times, I kind of wish that was where the film stayed; it has all the material for an intriguing backstage drama and the diversion into horror is kind of all over the place.
The play being staged is Yotsuya Kaiden, a classic kabuki tale of a poor samurai scheming to improve his position, even if it involves shedding a wife who has brought him as far as she can. Kosuke Hasegawa (Ebizo Ickikawa) plays Iemon the samurai on the stage, co-starring with real-life girlfriend Miyuki Goto (Kou Shibasaki) as Iwa. Given the drama between rehearsals - another cast member, Miyuki's married former boyfriend Jun (Hideaki Ito), would like to start an affair; the young actress (Miho Nakanishi) playing a supporting role is the type who professes her desire to follow in Miyuki's footsteps and then does so by sleeping with Kosuke; and cheerful stage assistant Kayo (Hitomi Katayama) knows every part just in case someone needs her to fill in - it's no wonder that the supernatural themes of the play seem to be bleeding into the world around Miyuki.
If there's one thing you can count on from Miike, it's that he will go to weird places and present what he finds in a memorable way, and that's certainly the case here. It's just that, as is often the case, he, writer Kikumi Yamagishi, and the film itself go to so many different strange places that the story starts to seem random once the supernatural becomes involved. Strict rules aren't necessary but not having every scare pulling in different directions would probably help, and while there's there's a clear connection between the creepy dolls and the movie's most obviously horrific sequence, childlessness doesn't seem to be the strong motivator for Miyuki that it is for Iwa, and some of the other moments just feel random. The individual results are certainly disgusting in memorable ways, at least.
Full review on EFC
Wyrmwood
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 19 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #9 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
It's no bad thing, I say, that Wyrmwood feels like a season's worth of an eventful TV series packed into an hour and a half; it's an exhausting ride at times, but there's not ten or fifteen minutes anywhere in the movie that don't come across as exciting or have at least one really cool thing in them. Though making it over four years surely has brothers Kiah and Tristan Roache-Turner ready to take a break for a while, it's one of the rare movies where the audience's inevitable requests for a sequel seems like a great idea.
Things kick off quickly, with a light in the sky and something in the air kicking off a zombie apocalypse that quickly decimates Australia, leaving is with a manageable number of initial survivors: Mechanic Barry (Jay Gallagher), his wife Annie (Catherine Terracini), and daughter Meganne (Meganne West); good-natured aborigine Benny (Leon Burchill); crusty middle-aged tinkerer Frank (Keith Agius); and Barry's sister Brooke (Bianca Bradey), whom the others will spend much of the movie trying to track down. Trouble is, she's already been found by some military types and a mad scientist (Berryn Schwerdt), who are never as helpful as one would hope in this sort of crisis.
Director Kiah Roache-Turner and brother/co-writer Tristan start things off with a flash-forward that establishes a tone of raucous action, which may be a little overdone as a device but is also a bit nice to have in the back of one's pocket when events take a turn toward the Walking Dead-variety "unbearable price of survival" misery factory. That doesn't last too terribly long; the Roache-Turners are soon getting past the point in the middle where it starts to run down a bit - in addition to the justifiably-depressed hero, there's a little too much "evil government/business eager to kill the remains of an already reduced population" on the other side with little in between - keeping just enough of that edge around to push everyone through the end.
Full review on EFC
Tommy (2014)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Tommy starts out looking like it might be a certain type of movie - you know, the one where the underestimated woman at the center is eventually revealed to always be three steps ahead of everyone around her (or if not quite that far ahead, still the smartest person in the room) - with a certain type of twist - seeing it all from her perspective. I'd like to see that movie someday, but this one is more about a gamble, which some may not find quite so satisfying. I dig it, though.
The woman in question is Estelle (Moa Gammel), just returned to Stockholm after fleeing the country with her husband Tommy and daughter Isabel (Inez Buckner) after a heist gone wrong left a couple of cops dead and Tommy holding the bag a year ago. Tommy, she says, will soon follow, and he wants his share when he does, something which naturally puts the other members of the crew on edge - Bobby (Ola Rapace) is doing quite well for himself and dating Estelle's sister Blanca (Lykke Li Zachrisson), Matte (Alexej Manvelov) is trying to go straight, and Estelle's godfather Steve (Johan Rabaeus) says he'll help but tends to make phone calls after she leaves.
Moa Gammel has a neat trick to accomplish in presenting Estelle as someone who could be that woman, and by the same token is someone the characters she encounters is going to underestimate. After all, she doesn't come from a family of criminal masterminds, but one of molls (her mother seemed to go for crooks too). Because the movie is necessarily keeping the details of Estelle's and/or Tommy's plans close to the vest, she doesn't get to give a great underdog performance or show Estelle as always calculating, but that's okay; there's enough going on with her outside of the step-by-step process of recovering Tommy's money to keep things interesting. The scenes with her family are especially good; it's always clear from looking at Gammel that Estelle has opinions about Blanca getting involved in the same sort of life she and their mother did, string enough the subject doesn't even have to be raised in connection with Isabel. She tension and desperation (when genuine or a put-on) well, and she does a nice job of building a relationship with the absent Tommy.
Full review on EFC
Kawaki. (The World of Kanako)
* * * ¼ (out of four)
Seen 20 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #7 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
The latest from Tetsuya Nakashima is not quite so sublime as his mid-aughts peak (Kamikaze Girls and Memories of Matsuko is a heck of a one-two punch), and it kind of stretches out too long, padded by some increasingly ugly violence. On the plus side, though, it is energetic as all heck, propelling the audience through the underworld with a protagonist that they're not supposed to like, but who makes it hard to look away.
High-school student Kanako Fukushima (Nana Komatsu) has, as of 16 August 2013, been missing for six days, making her mother Kiriko (Asuka Kurosawa) desperate enough to call her ex-husband Azikazu (Koji Yahusho), a drunken mess of an ex-cop that she had damn good reason for divorcing. Azikazu immediately shows what lost human being he could be, but he could be a dog with a bone where a case is concerned, finding through conversations with Kanako's middle-school friend Nami (Fumi Nikaido), classmate Emi (Ai Hashimoto), and more, that Kanako may have become a bigger piece of scum than he is - his quest goes through a criminal underworld where Kanako is not necessarily a victim.
Though Kanako is the character mentioned in the title, Azikazu is the guy that the audience will be spending the bulk of the movie with, and Koji Yakusho is pretty great as the title character's terrible father. He is playing something of a monster, and not the restrained variety where a tiny bit less feeling than one might expect is the signal that something is off; Yakusho tears into his material to make Azikazu a practically feral beast. It's the sort of performance that dares the audience to sympathize with him for being an honest, focused animal than the likes of his former partner Asai (Satoshi Tsumabuki in a delightfully oily turn) or how he's able to let forth an animalistic rage as he tears into progressively more vile criminals. Still, even when Azikazu is doing our saying something that sounds like the right thing for the right reasons, there's a certain sort of vacancy, like he's distilled anger that just happens to be pointed in the right direction.
Full review on EFC
Plemya (The Tribe)
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #5 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Well, that's certainly something I'm glad to have seen, although I'm also sort of thankful that I'll likely never see the like again. The excited parts of that sentence are to be expected from a movie whose opening titles say it's in sign language and will not be subtitled, but maybe not the nervous ones. And yet, it's a sign of a great movie when even those are thrilling as well as horrifying.
I suspect that what we see in The Tribe - a sequestered, young population turning away from their supposed reason for being there but instead wreaking mayhem - happens at a lot of boarding schools, but seeing it happen at a Ukrainian school for the Deaf makes it hit a bit harder. Although no explanations are given, it's not hard to figure out what's going on in these kids' heads: The hearing world finds them a nuisance worthy of only grudging concessions, and this is the first time they they've been able to band together to do what they want, and with that anger it comes out as violence, crime, and sex. There is one classroom scene early on, but after that, academics seem irrelevant - the only time we see the kids doing anything resembling study later, the purpose is immediately undercut.
It's a harrowing ride, with traditional bullying at the start, lawlessness in the middle (which filmmaker Miroslav Slaboshpitsky often uses as a perverse way to show students coming together), and horrors the audience might wish to unsee at the end. It's a bleak movie that often elicits cringes, but to his credit, Slaboshpitsky never seems to just be engaging in exploitation; everything moves the story of new student Sergey (Grigoriy Fesenko) forward in some way, from the opening scenes where he has difficulty finding the school, to his crush on classmate Anya (Yana Novikova) - who along with roommate Svetka (Rosa Babiy) turns tricks to try and afford the papers to emigrate to Italy - to the ugly place that leads. Slaboshpitsky shows the audience much more than it wants to see at times, but it seldom feels like too much.
Full review on EFC
Tokyo Tribe
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 21 September 2014 in Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar #4 (Fantastic Fest, DCP)
Sion Sono has never really been the quiet, contemplative sort of art-house director, but his last few films seem to have been brimming with the sort of constant action that would make genre filmmakers jealous, with Tokyo Tribe an almost non-stop barrage of over-the-top insanity once the fighting starts. The surprising thing is that an audience can be somewhat forgiven for not registering that fact, since the veneer on top of it - a busy manga adaptation told as a hip-hop musical - is crazy enough in its way that it may be what the audience remembers.
And that's not exactly unfair. That style has Tokyo Tribe moving forward at a constant fast pace, with jokes and details packed into every corner, more characters than the audience can possibly process, and moments of jaw-dropping insanity that you can almost imagine Sono giggling as he put them into the script for how silly they are (the beatboxing server in the banquet scenes may have been my favorite thing Sono has ever gone for while she was on-screen). There's garish designs, tanks, slapstick, and other over-the-top madness.
What is going on? Well, as narrator MC Show (Shota Sometani) lays it down, every neighborhood in Tokyo is run by a themed gang kept in balance largely by the central Musashino Saru, whose leader Tera (Ryuta Sato) is all about peace and love. Another gang, the Bukuro Wu-ronz, led by Bubba (Riki Takeuchi), is looking to make a move, and by attacking Mera, sets the other gangs at each other's throats, with even Tera's friend Kai (Young Dais) looking to fight despite being hugely outmatched physically by Bubba's son Mera (Ryohei Suzuki). And if that's not enough, there's a kung fu princess (Nana Seino) hiding out in one of the prefectures, and delivering her to her clan for sacrifice would give Bubba the ally he needs to claim all of Tokyo.
Full review on EFC
Saturday, November 29, 2014
This That Week In Tickets: 27 October 2014 - 2 November 2014
Plays & pictures, which became a lot more of a theme as I was writing up Birdman.
It's been a while since I saw these movies, so those two empty days involved the Giants winning the World Series in large part because of Pablo Sandoval, who is now on my local team. Yay!
First up, though, was NT Live Frankenstein with Cumberbatch & Miller, which I've wanted to see since watching it the other way around three and a half years ago.
I'd been planning on seeing Bitter Honey, but didn't find out about the director visiting until a random ad popped up on Facebook, which was neat, but the definition of under the radar.
On Halloween, I hemmed and hawed on what to do but eventually opted to go to Izzy's presentation of Jeffrey Combs in Nevermore; it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I could see why everyone had been excited to see it at Fantasia a couple years ago. I stuck around for The Masque of the Red Death after that, but I was kind of wiped out.
Saturday, I became the not-quite-last person to see Boyhood, although it certainly felt like I was living dangerously with it, waiting for locations, times, and my availability to line up. Surprise, it's as good as they say. Then I headed down the Red Line for Birdman, which made for a pretty good day.
Sunday was lazy until I opted for the Silent Fritz Lang double feature of Four Around a Woman & The Moving Image, which are neat looks at the early work of a master, if incomplete ones.
NT Live: Frankenstein
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 October 2014 in Regal Fenway #8 (NT Live, DCP)
Three and a half years ago, I saw this production with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Victor and Jonny Lee Miller playing the Creature, and I hoped ever since that I would get to see the other version, mildly shocked that they haven't put something that would be a pretty easy sell (along with the two Sherlock Holmeses, it also features Naomie Harris and is directed by Danny Boyle) out on Blu-ray. But, if you can pull it out every once in a while and get people to pay $15 for it, why wouldn't you?
And, yeah, I'll probably pay another $15 the next time it reappears, because this thing is really good. I found it better on a second viewing, too, because the first time around I was a bit too annoyed about them moving the camera and cutting despite this being a stage production, and this time I was able to just appreciate how amazing the production was in terms of staging and lighting .
Also, last time around I mentioned that Cumberbatch as Victor and Miller as the monster seemed like the natural casting, making me curious to see it the other way around. That was before Miller had been cast as Sherlock Holmes on Elementary, so I didn't know him from much. I did like that he played Victor as a very different type of temperamental genius than Holmes, and on side, Cumberbatch's stroke-victim take on the Creature maybe worked a bit better for me than Miller's two-year-old. It's curious to me that in both versions, I find that Miller was able to bring a bit more humor in.
What needs to happen now, though, is for the makers of Sherlock and Elementary to find a character from the canon that neither show has used and cast Miller and Cumberbatch, respectively, in the part. In addition to resulting in great work, these cross-casting bits have given audiences a fascinating look at how two different actors in similar circumstances can do different things with the same role, and I want to see them stretch it a bit more.
Nevermore
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 October 2014 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Izzy Lee presents, live)
What a weird experience. Glad I saw it now, but not so enraptured that I wish I had sacrificed a movie or two to see it in Montreal (other than being curious as to whether the Boston references were new for this performance). It's a neat play, though.
One thing I didn't realize was just how distinctive Jeffrey Combs's voice is. Even with the impressive make-up and accent, he was still the guy from The Frighteners and Deep Space Nine, not quite to the point of being unable to see his portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe, but always aware that it was Combs playing the part. In some ways, when the play gets away from the spooky, bitter, and morose Poe I expected to a very funny one, it works in part because I can see Combs doing that.
Then it starts to be about drinking and I don't quite tune out, but... Well, I just don't respond strongly to "guy gets drunk and makes an ass of himself", even when it's as well done as it is here. Combs does the thing, and does it well, but it's done in a sort of heavy-handed way and is sort of too-familiar besides.
Masque of the Red Death
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 October 2014 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Halloween!, 35mm)
A Poe-adapted follow up to the play in 35mm (and one I don't remember from a series the Brattle did a couple years back) made for a good Halloween capper. I think, even at an hour and a half, it stretches what I remember being a fairly short original story enough that I found myself just wanting it to get on with things and struggling to stay awake (I was on work + supper + play + movie by that point), so I can't necessarily judge it fairly.
Still, it's hard to deny that they theater got a fine 35mm print and that is a heck of a bonus when you get a Corman movie that looks as good as this one. Corman was ambitious here, and had a pretty darn good crew to put things together, with the crown jewel (at least in retrospect) being Nicolas Roeg as director of photography. The colors jump off the screen, and while the costumes and settings may not be the sort of sumptuous ones that respectable period pieces get, it certainly doesn't look cheap or half-hearted.
The script may stretch, but it has horrors to present, and one of the best weapons Corman has is Vincent Price at his villainous best. There's an art to smoothly talking about how one worships Satan without sounding the wrong kind of insane, and few ever managed it better than Price. Jane Asher as the virtuous prisoner and Hazel Court as the scheming lady of the manor keep things interesting (and, yeah, sexy). I hope I get another chance to watch it again in this sort of environment soon, because it's easily one of my favorite Corman pictures.
Boyhood
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 November 2014 in Arlington Captiol #3 (second-run, DCP)
Well, that certainly is all it's cracked up to be.
It almost has to be; although Richard Linklater set out to make a film that followed a boy growing up over a period of twelve years, I still imagine he would have maybe looked to other things or repurposed the footage if, after a year or three, what he was getting just didn't work. And once you've got that good start, the confidence to press on must appear.
At that point, I suspect the biggest concern is not going big, but sticking to this very human-sized story that adds and discards characters, not necessarily bringing them back later because, for better or for worse, that's not how life works, with everything building to a final resolution. And, sure, the thing that brings me my biggest bit of discontent comes from that - I don't know that Mason (Ellar Coltrane) necessarily grows up into a tremendously interesting young man. The things that carry through the movie that affected me the most are probably Mason's parents (played from start to finish by Particia Arquette & Ethan Hawke) getting their lives together, although that may be just a function of my age.
Still, there's no denying that there's an authenticity to Boyhood that one doesn't see elsewhere. A year ago, I noted a film at Fantasia where something seemed off because the kid they had playing Haley Joel Osment's character as a young boy clearly wasn't 12-year-old Osment, which comes with the territory. You accept good actors who don't look related, hard-working make-up people, or casting family in movies with this kind of sweep because you need to, but seeing the real thing is wonderful and astonishing here. It draws you into the story in a way that mimics real life in a way other movies can't, linking to how one processes time passing in reality rather than figuring it out in film.
With this, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have two of the most ambitious projects in terms of examining people over time ever in film under their belts (it and Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight arguably only fall behind 7 Up and its follow-ups there), and this is arguably the most controlled of them, mostly going where Linklater scripted it out from the start. Heck of a thing, that, and while I'm curious how something with a firmer plot would look done like this, I half-wonder if it's even possible.
Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 November 2014 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
The world needs a Michael Keaton comeback, and if Birdman does nothing other than remind it of this fact, then it has done the world a valuable service. That it's also one of the most exciting movies you ca watch in a theater right now is just a great big bonus.
Sure, it may seem too clever by half to cast Keaton as a guy who has fallen into relatively undeserved obscurity since bailing on another comic book sequel twenty years ago, but that's arguably what movie stars are for, and the fact that the audience can still jump into this metastory, filling in the background of Keaton's character Riggan Thomson, shows he still is one. It's interesting that Keaton says Riggan is not much like him at all, and I can sort of see that - there's something about Riggan that is really desperate to be respected, even though that will apparently never happen, while Keaton seems like a guy who goes forward, does the work, occasionally coming up with something pretty darn good like The Merry Gentleman but more often than not taking what comes his way without being ashamed of his c.v. That portrayal of the character is still terrific, though - there's self-doubt and desperation to Riggan, but despite how far his character can be from what the audience is familiar with, and how strangely some of his delusion is expressed, it's easy to empathize with this guy.
He's surrounded by other great characters: Emma Stone is beautifully sharp as the daughter he's trying to help and connect with who resents it, for instance, and Edward Norton is hilariously bigger-than-life as the new co-star whose monstrous tendencies are overlooked because he is of this place in a way that Riggan won't be allowed to be. That's brought out best by Linsday Duncan in her few scenes as Tabitha - she's actually playing one of the most monstrous evil critics I can ever remember seeing, and while there's no mistaking it, she doesn't froth and rave like so many do. Her sneering is defensive and, in a way, sad. She's worth hating but not worth getting worked up about.
Interestingly, for as much as filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's characters obsess over how the stage is legitimate theater, with the likes of Riggan dilettantes desperate for respect who should be kept out, he's determined to do things that only movies can pull off, with a roving camera that follows characters from one location to another, hiding jumps in time in mid-pan and letting close-ups and special effects help tell the story without pulling away from the rest. The long shots stitched together pull the audience along, and Iñárritu never lets the grass grow under the audience's feet.
I almost wonder, on reflection, if this is something he's been frustrated personally. Like Keaton saying he's not much like Riggan in the press, Iñárritu has talked about how superhero movies are "cultural genocide", and he certainly seems sincere enough in dissing them (and having made mostly very-serious movies until this), but I wonder if there isn't something to how Riggan's embarrassment at having been Birdman - which is still remembered fondly by people around the globe twenty years later - is meant to contrast with the snobby theater people whose work, by its nature, will disappear from memory. Characters fret about how now these empty spectacles seen around the world will be actors' legacies rather than small stories seen by a privileged few, but is it really such a bad thing?
It's been a while since I saw these movies, so those two empty days involved the Giants winning the World Series in large part because of Pablo Sandoval, who is now on my local team. Yay!
First up, though, was NT Live Frankenstein with Cumberbatch & Miller, which I've wanted to see since watching it the other way around three and a half years ago.
I'd been planning on seeing Bitter Honey, but didn't find out about the director visiting until a random ad popped up on Facebook, which was neat, but the definition of under the radar.
On Halloween, I hemmed and hawed on what to do but eventually opted to go to Izzy's presentation of Jeffrey Combs in Nevermore; it wasn't quite what I was expecting, but I could see why everyone had been excited to see it at Fantasia a couple years ago. I stuck around for The Masque of the Red Death after that, but I was kind of wiped out.
Saturday, I became the not-quite-last person to see Boyhood, although it certainly felt like I was living dangerously with it, waiting for locations, times, and my availability to line up. Surprise, it's as good as they say. Then I headed down the Red Line for Birdman, which made for a pretty good day.
Sunday was lazy until I opted for the Silent Fritz Lang double feature of Four Around a Woman & The Moving Image, which are neat looks at the early work of a master, if incomplete ones.
NT Live: Frankenstein
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 27 October 2014 in Regal Fenway #8 (NT Live, DCP)
Three and a half years ago, I saw this production with Benedict Cumberbatch playing Victor and Jonny Lee Miller playing the Creature, and I hoped ever since that I would get to see the other version, mildly shocked that they haven't put something that would be a pretty easy sell (along with the two Sherlock Holmeses, it also features Naomie Harris and is directed by Danny Boyle) out on Blu-ray. But, if you can pull it out every once in a while and get people to pay $15 for it, why wouldn't you?
And, yeah, I'll probably pay another $15 the next time it reappears, because this thing is really good. I found it better on a second viewing, too, because the first time around I was a bit too annoyed about them moving the camera and cutting despite this being a stage production, and this time I was able to just appreciate how amazing the production was in terms of staging and lighting .
Also, last time around I mentioned that Cumberbatch as Victor and Miller as the monster seemed like the natural casting, making me curious to see it the other way around. That was before Miller had been cast as Sherlock Holmes on Elementary, so I didn't know him from much. I did like that he played Victor as a very different type of temperamental genius than Holmes, and on side, Cumberbatch's stroke-victim take on the Creature maybe worked a bit better for me than Miller's two-year-old. It's curious to me that in both versions, I find that Miller was able to bring a bit more humor in.
What needs to happen now, though, is for the makers of Sherlock and Elementary to find a character from the canon that neither show has used and cast Miller and Cumberbatch, respectively, in the part. In addition to resulting in great work, these cross-casting bits have given audiences a fascinating look at how two different actors in similar circumstances can do different things with the same role, and I want to see them stretch it a bit more.
Nevermore
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 October 2014 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Izzy Lee presents, live)
What a weird experience. Glad I saw it now, but not so enraptured that I wish I had sacrificed a movie or two to see it in Montreal (other than being curious as to whether the Boston references were new for this performance). It's a neat play, though.
One thing I didn't realize was just how distinctive Jeffrey Combs's voice is. Even with the impressive make-up and accent, he was still the guy from The Frighteners and Deep Space Nine, not quite to the point of being unable to see his portrayal of Edgar Allan Poe, but always aware that it was Combs playing the part. In some ways, when the play gets away from the spooky, bitter, and morose Poe I expected to a very funny one, it works in part because I can see Combs doing that.
Then it starts to be about drinking and I don't quite tune out, but... Well, I just don't respond strongly to "guy gets drunk and makes an ass of himself", even when it's as well done as it is here. Combs does the thing, and does it well, but it's done in a sort of heavy-handed way and is sort of too-familiar besides.
Masque of the Red Death
* * * (out of four)
Seen 31 October 2014 in Somerville Theatre #1 (Halloween!, 35mm)
A Poe-adapted follow up to the play in 35mm (and one I don't remember from a series the Brattle did a couple years back) made for a good Halloween capper. I think, even at an hour and a half, it stretches what I remember being a fairly short original story enough that I found myself just wanting it to get on with things and struggling to stay awake (I was on work + supper + play + movie by that point), so I can't necessarily judge it fairly.
Still, it's hard to deny that they theater got a fine 35mm print and that is a heck of a bonus when you get a Corman movie that looks as good as this one. Corman was ambitious here, and had a pretty darn good crew to put things together, with the crown jewel (at least in retrospect) being Nicolas Roeg as director of photography. The colors jump off the screen, and while the costumes and settings may not be the sort of sumptuous ones that respectable period pieces get, it certainly doesn't look cheap or half-hearted.
The script may stretch, but it has horrors to present, and one of the best weapons Corman has is Vincent Price at his villainous best. There's an art to smoothly talking about how one worships Satan without sounding the wrong kind of insane, and few ever managed it better than Price. Jane Asher as the virtuous prisoner and Hazel Court as the scheming lady of the manor keep things interesting (and, yeah, sexy). I hope I get another chance to watch it again in this sort of environment soon, because it's easily one of my favorite Corman pictures.
Boyhood
* * * ¾ (out of four)
Seen 1 November 2014 in Arlington Captiol #3 (second-run, DCP)
Well, that certainly is all it's cracked up to be.
It almost has to be; although Richard Linklater set out to make a film that followed a boy growing up over a period of twelve years, I still imagine he would have maybe looked to other things or repurposed the footage if, after a year or three, what he was getting just didn't work. And once you've got that good start, the confidence to press on must appear.
At that point, I suspect the biggest concern is not going big, but sticking to this very human-sized story that adds and discards characters, not necessarily bringing them back later because, for better or for worse, that's not how life works, with everything building to a final resolution. And, sure, the thing that brings me my biggest bit of discontent comes from that - I don't know that Mason (Ellar Coltrane) necessarily grows up into a tremendously interesting young man. The things that carry through the movie that affected me the most are probably Mason's parents (played from start to finish by Particia Arquette & Ethan Hawke) getting their lives together, although that may be just a function of my age.
Still, there's no denying that there's an authenticity to Boyhood that one doesn't see elsewhere. A year ago, I noted a film at Fantasia where something seemed off because the kid they had playing Haley Joel Osment's character as a young boy clearly wasn't 12-year-old Osment, which comes with the territory. You accept good actors who don't look related, hard-working make-up people, or casting family in movies with this kind of sweep because you need to, but seeing the real thing is wonderful and astonishing here. It draws you into the story in a way that mimics real life in a way other movies can't, linking to how one processes time passing in reality rather than figuring it out in film.
With this, Richard Linklater and Ethan Hawke have two of the most ambitious projects in terms of examining people over time ever in film under their belts (it and Before Sunrise/Sunset/Midnight arguably only fall behind 7 Up and its follow-ups there), and this is arguably the most controlled of them, mostly going where Linklater scripted it out from the start. Heck of a thing, that, and while I'm curious how something with a firmer plot would look done like this, I half-wonder if it's even possible.
Birdman: or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance)
* * * ½ (out of four)
Seen 1 November 2014 in AMC Boston Common #12 (first-run, DCP)
The world needs a Michael Keaton comeback, and if Birdman does nothing other than remind it of this fact, then it has done the world a valuable service. That it's also one of the most exciting movies you ca watch in a theater right now is just a great big bonus.
Sure, it may seem too clever by half to cast Keaton as a guy who has fallen into relatively undeserved obscurity since bailing on another comic book sequel twenty years ago, but that's arguably what movie stars are for, and the fact that the audience can still jump into this metastory, filling in the background of Keaton's character Riggan Thomson, shows he still is one. It's interesting that Keaton says Riggan is not much like him at all, and I can sort of see that - there's something about Riggan that is really desperate to be respected, even though that will apparently never happen, while Keaton seems like a guy who goes forward, does the work, occasionally coming up with something pretty darn good like The Merry Gentleman but more often than not taking what comes his way without being ashamed of his c.v. That portrayal of the character is still terrific, though - there's self-doubt and desperation to Riggan, but despite how far his character can be from what the audience is familiar with, and how strangely some of his delusion is expressed, it's easy to empathize with this guy.
He's surrounded by other great characters: Emma Stone is beautifully sharp as the daughter he's trying to help and connect with who resents it, for instance, and Edward Norton is hilariously bigger-than-life as the new co-star whose monstrous tendencies are overlooked because he is of this place in a way that Riggan won't be allowed to be. That's brought out best by Linsday Duncan in her few scenes as Tabitha - she's actually playing one of the most monstrous evil critics I can ever remember seeing, and while there's no mistaking it, she doesn't froth and rave like so many do. Her sneering is defensive and, in a way, sad. She's worth hating but not worth getting worked up about.
Interestingly, for as much as filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu's characters obsess over how the stage is legitimate theater, with the likes of Riggan dilettantes desperate for respect who should be kept out, he's determined to do things that only movies can pull off, with a roving camera that follows characters from one location to another, hiding jumps in time in mid-pan and letting close-ups and special effects help tell the story without pulling away from the rest. The long shots stitched together pull the audience along, and Iñárritu never lets the grass grow under the audience's feet.
I almost wonder, on reflection, if this is something he's been frustrated personally. Like Keaton saying he's not much like Riggan in the press, Iñárritu has talked about how superhero movies are "cultural genocide", and he certainly seems sincere enough in dissing them (and having made mostly very-serious movies until this), but I wonder if there isn't something to how Riggan's embarrassment at having been Birdman - which is still remembered fondly by people around the globe twenty years later - is meant to contrast with the snobby theater people whose work, by its nature, will disappear from memory. Characters fret about how now these empty spectacles seen around the world will be actors' legacies rather than small stories seen by a privileged few, but is it really such a bad thing?
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